Chapter: Ernest was now so far convalescent as to be able to sit up for the
greater part of the day.  He had been three months in prison, and, though
not strong enough to leave the infirmary, was beyond all fear of a
relapse.  He was talking one day with Mr Hughes about his future, and
again expressed his intention of emigrating to Australia or New Zealand
with the money he should recover from Pryer.  Whenever he spoke of this
he noticed that Mr Hughes looked grave and was silent: he had thought
that perhaps the chaplain wanted him to return to his profession, and
disapproved of his evident anxiety to turn to something else; now,
however, he asked Mr Hughes point blank why it was that he disapproved of
his idea of emigrating.

Mr Hughes endeavoured to evade him, but Ernest was not to be put off.
There was something in the chaplain's manner which suggested that he knew
more than Ernest did, but did not like to say it.  This alarmed him so
much that he begged him not to keep him in suspense; after a little
hesitation Mr Hughes, thinking him now strong enough to stand it, broke
the news as gently as he could that the whole of Ernest's money had
disappeared.

The day after my return from Battersby I called on my solicitor, and was
told that he had written to Pryer, requiring him to refund the monies for
which he had given his I.O.U.'s.  Pryer replied that he had given orders
to his broker to close his operations, which unfortunately had resulted
so far in heavy loss, and that the balance should be paid to my solicitor
on the following settling day, then about a week distant.  When the time
came, we heard nothing from Pryer, and going to his lodgings found that
he had left with his few effects on the very day after he had heard from
us, and had not been seen since.

I had heard from Ernest the name of the broker who had been employed, and
went at once to see him.  He told me Pryer had closed all his accounts
for cash on the day that Ernest had been sentenced, and had received 2315
pounds, which was all that remained of Ernest's original 5000 pounds.
With this he had decamped, nor had we enough clue as to his whereabouts
to be able to take any steps to recover the money.  There was in fact
nothing to be done but to consider the whole as lost.  I may say here
that neither I nor Ernest ever heard of Pryer again, nor have any idea
what became of him.

This placed me in a difficult position.  I knew, of course, that in a few
years Ernest would have many times over as much money as he had lost, but
I knew also that he did not know this, and feared that the supposed loss
of all he had in the world might be more than he could stand when coupled
with his other misfortunes.

The prison authorities had found Theobald's address from a letter in
Ernest's pocket, and had communicated with him more than once concerning
his son's illness, but Theobald had not written to me, and I supposed my
godson to be in good health.  He would be just twenty-four years old when
he left prison, and if I followed out his aunt's instructions, would have
to battle with fortune for another four years as well as he could.  The
question before me was whether it was right to let him run so much risk,
or whether I should not to some extent transgress my instructions--which
there was nothing to prevent my doing if I thought Miss Pontifex would
have wished it--and let him have the same sum that he would have
recovered from Pryer.

If my godson had been an older man, and more fixed in any definite
groove, this is what I should have done, but he was still very young, and
more than commonly unformed for his age.  If, again, I had known of his
illness I should not have dared to lay any heavier burden on his back
than he had to bear already; but not being uneasy about his health, I
thought a few years of roughing it and of experience concerning the
importance of not playing tricks with money would do him no harm.  So I
decided to keep a sharp eye upon him as soon as he came out of prison,
and to let him splash about in deep water as best he could till I saw
whether he was able to swim, or was about to sink.  In the first case I
would let him go on swimming till he was nearly eight-and-twenty, when I
would prepare him gradually for the good fortune that awaited him; in the
second I would hurry up to the rescue.  So I wrote to say that Pryer had
absconded, and that he could have 100 pounds from his father when he came
out of prison.  I then waited to see what effect these tidings would
have, not expecting to receive an answer for three months, for I had been
told on enquiry that no letter could be received by a prisoner till after
he had been three months in gaol.  I also wrote to Theobald and told him
of Pryer's disappearance.

As a matter of fact, when my letter arrived the governor of the gaol read
it, and in a case of such importance would have relaxed the rules if
Ernest's state had allowed it; his illness prevented this, and the
governor left it to the chaplain and the doctor to break the news to him
when they thought him strong enough to bear it, which was now the case.
In the meantime I received a formal official document saying that my
letter had been received and would be communicated to the prisoner in due
course; I believe it was simply through a mistake on the part of a clerk
that I was not informed of Ernest's illness, but I heard nothing of it
till I saw him by his own desire a few days after the chaplin had broken
to him the substance of what I had written.

Ernest was terribly shocked when he heard of the loss of his money, but
his ignorance of the world prevented him from seeing the full extent of
the mischief.  He had never been in serious want of money yet, and did
not know what it meant.  In reality, money losses are the hardest to bear
of any by those who are old enough to comprehend them.

A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical
operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or
that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as
such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greater number
of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the
strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the
more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.  Suicide is a
common consequence of money losses; it is rarely sought as a means of
escape from bodily suffering.  If we feel that we have a competence at
our backs, so that we can die warm and quietly in our beds, with no need
to worry about expense, we live our lives out to the dregs, no matter how
excruciating our torments.  Job probably felt the loss of his flocks and
herds more than that of his wife and family, for he could enjoy his
flocks and herds without his family, but not his family--not for long--if
he had lost all his money.  Loss of money indeed is not only the worst
pain in itself, but it is the parent of all others.  Let a man have been
brought up to a moderate competence, and have no specially; then let his
money be suddenly taken from him, and how long is his health likely to
survive the change in all his little ways which loss of money will
entail?  How long again is the esteem and sympathy of friends likely to
survive ruin?  People may be very sorry for us, but their attitude
towards us hitherto has been based upon the supposition that we were
situated thus or thus in money matters; when this breaks down there must
be a restatement of the social problem so far as we are concerned; we
have been obtaining esteem under false pretences.  Granted, then, that
the three most serious losses which a man can suffer are those affecting
money, health and reputation.  Loss of money is far the worst, then comes
ill-health, and then loss of reputation; loss of reputation is a bad
third, for, if a man keeps health and money unimpaired, it will be
generally found that his loss of reputation is due to breaches of parvenu
conventions only, and not to violations of those older, better
established canons whose authority is unquestionable.  In this case a man
may grow a new reputation as easily as a lobster grows a new claw, or, if
he have health and money, may thrive in great peace of mind without any
reputation at all.  The only chance for a man who has lost his money is
that he shall still be young enough to stand uprooting and transplanting
without more than temporary derangement, and this I believed my godson
still to be.

By the prison rules he might receive and send a letter after he had been
in gaol three months, and might also receive one visit from a friend.
When he received my letter, he at once asked me to come and see him,
which of course I did.  I found him very much changed, and still so
feeble, that the exertion of coming from the infirmary to the cell in
which I was allowed to see him, and the agitation of seeing me were too
much for him.  At first he quite broke down, and I was so pained at the
state in which I found him, that I was on the point of breaking my
instructions then and there.  I contented myself, however, for the time,
with assuring him that I would help him as soon as he came out of prison,
and that, when he had made up his mind what he would do, he was to come
to me for what money might be necessary, if he could not get it from his
father.  To make it easier for him I told him that his aunt, on her death-
bed, had desired me to do something of this sort should an emergency
arise, so that he would only be taking what his aunt had left him.

"Then," said he, "I will not take the 100 pounds from my father, and I
will never see him or my mother again."

I said: "Take the 100 pounds, Ernest, and as much more as you can get,
and then do not see them again if you do not like."

This Ernest would not do.  If he took money from them, he could not cut
them, and he wanted to cut them.  I thought my godson would get on a
great deal better if he would only have the firmness to do as he
proposed, as regards breaking completely with his father and mother, and
said so.  "Then don't you like them?" said he, with a look of surprise.

"Like them!" said I, "I think they're horrid."

"Oh, that's the kindest thing of all you have done for me," he exclaimed,
"I thought all--all middle-aged people liked my father and mother."

He had been about to call me old, but I was only fifty-seven, and was not
going to have this, so I made a face when I saw him hesitating, which
drove him into "middle-aged."

"If you like it," said I, "I will say all your family are horrid except
yourself and your aunt Alethea.  The greater part of every family is
always odious; if there are one or two good ones in a very large family,
it is as much as can be expected."

"Thank you," he replied, gratefully, "I think I can now stand almost
anything.  I will come and see you as soon as I come out of gaol.  Good-
bye."  For the warder had told us that the time allowed for our interview
was at an end.





As soon as Ernest found that he had no money to look to upon leaving
prison he saw that his dreams about emigrating and farming must come to
an end, for he knew that he was incapable of working at the plough or
with the axe for long together himself.  And now it seemed he should have
no money to pay any one else for doing so.  It was this that resolved him
to part once and for all with his parents.  If he had been going abroad
he could have kept up relations with them, for they would have been too
far off to interfere with him.

He knew his father and mother would object to being cut; they would wish
to appear kind and forgiving; they would also dislike having no further
power to plague him; but he knew also very well that so long as he and
they ran in harness together they would be always pulling one way and he
another.  He wanted to drop the gentleman and go down into the ranks,
beginning on the lowest rung of the ladder, where no one would know of
his disgrace or mind it if he did know; his father and mother on the
other hand would wish him to clutch on to the fag-end of gentility at a
starvation salary and with no prospect of advancement.  Ernest had seen
enough in Ashpit Place to know that a tailor, if he did not drink and
attended to his business, could earn more money than a clerk or a curate,
while much less expense by way of show was required of him.  The tailor
also had more liberty, and a better chance of rising.  Ernest resolved at
once, as he had fallen so far, to fall still lower--promptly, gracefully
and with the idea of rising again, rather than cling to the skirts of a
respectability which would permit him to exist on sufferance only, and
make him pay an utterly extortionate price for an article which he could
do better without.

He arrived at this result more quickly than he might otherwise have done
through remembering something he had once heard his aunt say about
"kissing the soil."  This had impressed him and stuck by him perhaps by
reason of its brevity; when later on he came to know the story of
Hercules and Antaeus, he found it one of the very few ancient fables
which had a hold over him--his chiefest debt to classical literature.  His
aunt had wanted him to learn carpentering, as a means of kissing the soil
should his Hercules ever throw him.  It was too late for this now--or he
thought it was--but the mode of carrying out his aunt's idea was a
detail; there were a hundred ways of kissing the soil besides becoming a
carpenter.

He had told me this during our interview, and I had encouraged him to the
utmost of my power.  He showed so much more good sense than I had given
him credit for that I became comparatively easy about him, and determined
to let him play his own game, being always, however, ready to hand in
case things went too far wrong.  It was not simply because he disliked
his father and mother that he wanted to have no more to do with them; if
it had been only this he would have put up with them; but a warning voice
within told him distinctly enough that if he was clean cut away from them
he might still have a chance of success, whereas if they had anything
whatever to do with him, or even knew where he was, they would hamper him
and in the end ruin him.  Absolute independence he believed to be his
only chance of very life itself.

Over and above this--if this were not enough--Ernest had a faith in his
own destiny such as most young men, I suppose, feel, but the grounds of
which were not apparent to any one but himself.  Rightly or wrongly, in a
quiet way he believed he possessed a strength which, if he were only free
to use it in his own way, might do great things some day.  He did not
know when, nor where, nor how his opportunity was to come, but he never
doubted that it would come in spite of all that had happened, and above
all else he cherished the hope that he might know how to seize it if it
came, for whatever it was it would be something that no one else could do
so well as he could.  People said there were no dragons and giants for
adventurous men to fight with nowadays; it was beginning to dawn upon him
that there were just as many now as at any past time.

Monstrous as such a faith may seem in one who was qualifying himself for
a high mission by a term of imprisonment, he could no more help it than
he could help breathing; it was innate in him, and it was even more with
a view to this than for other reasons that he wished to sever the
connection between himself and his parents; for he knew that if ever the
day came in which it should appear that before him too there was a race
set in which it might be an honour to have run among the foremost, his
father and mother would be the first to let him and hinder him in running
it.  They had been the first to say that he ought to run such a race;
they would also be the first to trip him up if he took them at their
word, and then afterwards upbraid him for not having won.  Achievement of
any kind would be impossible for him unless he was free from those who
would be for ever dragging him back into the conventional.  The
conventional had been tried already and had been found wanting.

He had an opportunity now, if he chose to take it, of escaping once for
all from those who at once tormented him and would hold him earthward
should a chance of soaring open before him.  He should never have had it
but for his imprisonment; but for this the force of habit and routine
would have been too strong for him; he should hardly have had it if he
had not lost all his money; the gap would not have been so wide but that
he might have been inclined to throw a plank across it.  He rejoiced now,
therefore, over his loss of money as well as over his imprisonment, which
had made it more easy for him to follow his truest and most lasting
interests.

At times he wavered, when he thought of how his mother, who in her way,
as he thought, had loved him, would weep and think sadly over him, or how
perhaps she might even fall ill and die, and how the blame would rest
with him.  At these times his resolution was near breaking, but when he
found I applauded his design, the voice within, which bade him see his
father's and mother's faces no more, grew louder and more persistent.  If
he could not cut himself adrift from those who he knew would hamper him,
when so small an effort was wanted, his dream of a destiny was idle; what
was the prospect of a hundred pounds from his father in comparison with
jeopardy to this?  He still felt deeply the pain his disgrace had
inflicted upon his father and mother, but he was getting stronger, and
reflected that as he had run his chance with them for parents, so they
must run theirs with him for a son.

He had nearly settled down to this conclusion when he received a letter
from his father which made his decision final.  If the prison rules had
been interpreted strictly, he would not have been allowed to have this
letter for another three months, as he had already heard from me, but the
governor took a lenient view, and considered the letter from me to be a
business communication hardly coming under the category of a letter from
friends.  Theobald's letter therefore was given to his son.  It ran as
follows:--

   "My dear Ernest, My object in writing is not to upbraid you with the
   disgrace and shame you have inflicted upon your mother and myself, to
   say nothing of your brother Joey, and your sister.  Suffer of course
   we must, but we know to whom to look in our affliction, and are filled
   with anxiety rather on your behalf than our own.  Your mother is
   wonderful.  She is pretty well in health, and desires me to send you
   her love.

   "Have you considered your prospects on leaving prison?  I understand
   from Mr Overton that you have lost the legacy which your grandfather
   left you, together with all the interest that accrued during your
   minority, in the course of speculation upon the Stock Exchange!  If
   you have indeed been guilty of such appalling folly it is difficult to
   see what you can turn your hand to, and I suppose you will try to find
   a clerkship in an office.  Your salary will doubtless be low at first,
   but you have made your bed and must not complain if you have to lie
   upon it.  If you take pains to please your employers they will not be
   backward in promoting you.

   "When I first heard from Mr Overton of the unspeakable calamity which
   had befallen your mother and myself, I had resolved not to see you
   again.  I am unwilling, however, to have recourse to a measure which
   would deprive you of your last connecting link with respectable
   people.  Your mother and I will see you as soon as you come out of
   prison; not at Battersby--we do not wish you to come down here at
   present--but somewhere else, probably in London.  You need not shrink
   from seeing us; we shall not reproach you.  We will then decide about
   your future.

   "At present our impression is that you will find a fairer start
   probably in Australia or New Zealand than here, and I am prepared to
   find you 75 or even if necessary so far as 100 pounds to pay your
   passage money.  Once in the colony you must be dependent upon your own
   exertions.

   "May Heaven prosper them and you, and restore you to us years hence a
   respected member of society.--Your affectionate father, T. PONTIFEX."

Then there was a postscript in Christina's writing.

   "My darling, darling boy, pray with me daily and hourly that we may
   yet again become a happy, united, God-fearing family as we were before
   this horrible pain fell upon us.--Your sorrowing but ever loving
   mother, C. P."

This letter did not produce the effect on Ernest that it would have done
before his imprisonment began.  His father and mother thought they could
take him up as they had left him off.  They forgot the rapidity with
which development follows misfortune, if the sufferer is young and of a
sound temperament.  Ernest made no reply to his father's letter, but his
desire for a total break developed into something like a passion.  "There
are orphanages," he exclaimed to himself, "for children who have lost
their parents--oh! why, why, why, are there no harbours of refuge for
grown men who have not yet lost them?"  And he brooded over the bliss of
Melchisedek who had been born an orphan, without father, without mother,
and without descent.





When I think over all that Ernest told me about his prison meditations,
and the conclusions he was drawn to, it occurs to me that in reality he
was wanting to do the very last thing which it would have entered into
his head to think of wanting.  I mean that he was trying to give up
father and mother for Christ's sake.  He would have said he was giving
them up because he thought they hindered him in the pursuit of his truest
and most lasting happiness.  Granted, but what is this if it is not
Christ?  What is Christ if He is not this?  He who takes the highest and
most self-respecting view of his own welfare which it is in his power to
conceive, and adheres to it in spite of conventionality, is a Christian
whether he knows it and calls himself one, or whether he does not.  A
rose is not the less a rose because it does not know its own name.

What if circumstances had made his duty more easy for him than it would
be to most men?  That was his luck, as much as it is other people's luck
to have other duties made easy for them by accident of birth.  Surely if
people are born rich or handsome they have a right to their good fortune.
Some I know, will say that one man has no right to be born with a better
constitution than another; others again will say that luck is the only
righteous object of human veneration.  Both, I daresay, can make out a
very good case, but whichever may be right surely Ernest had as much
right to the good luck of finding a duty made easier as he had had to the
bad fortune of falling into the scrape which had got him into prison.  A
man is not to be sneered at for having a trump card in his hand; he is
only to be sneered at if he plays his trump card badly.

Indeed, I question whether it is ever much harder for anyone to give up
father and mother for Christ's sake than it was for Ernest.  The
relations between the parties will have almost always been severely
strained before it comes to this.  I doubt whether anyone was ever yet
required to give up those to whom he was tenderly attached for a mere
matter of conscience: he will have ceased to be tenderly attached to them
long before he is called upon to break with them; for differences of
opinion concerning any matter of vital importance spring from differences
of constitution, and these will already have led to so much other
disagreement that the "giving up" when it comes, is like giving up an
aching but very loose and hollow tooth.  It is the loss of those whom we
are not required to give up for Christ's sake which is really painful to
us.  Then there is a wrench in earnest.  Happily, no matter how light the
task that is demanded from us, it is enough if we do it; we reap our
reward, much as though it were a Herculean labour.

But to return, the conclusion Ernest came to was that he would be a
tailor.  He talked the matter over with the chaplain, who told him there
was no reason why he should not be able to earn his six or seven
shillings a day by the time he came out of prison, if he chose to learn
the trade during the remainder of his term--not quite three months; the
doctor said he was strong enough for this, and that it was about the only
thing he was as yet fit for; so he left the infirmary sooner than he
would otherwise have done and entered the tailor's shop, overjoyed at the
thoughts of seeing his way again, and confident of rising some day if he
could only get a firm foothold to start from.

Everyone whom he had to do with saw that he did not belong to what are
called the criminal classes, and finding him eager to learn and to save
trouble always treated him kindly and almost respectfully.  He did not
find the work irksome: it was far more pleasant than making Latin and
Greek verses at Roughborough; he felt that he would rather be here in
prison than at Roughborough again--yes, or even at Cambridge itself.  The
only trouble he was ever in danger of getting into was through exchanging
words or looks with the more decent-looking of his fellow-prisoners.  This
was forbidden, but he never missed a chance of breaking the rules in this
respect.

Any man of his ability who was at the same time anxious to learn would of
course make rapid progress, and before he left prison the warder said he
was as good a tailor with his three months' apprenticeship as many a man
was with twelve.  Ernest had never before been so much praised by any of
his teachers.  Each day as he grew stronger in health and more accustomed
to his surroundings he saw some fresh advantage in his position, an
advantage which he had not aimed at, but which had come almost in spite
of himself, and he marvelled at his own good fortune, which had ordered
things so greatly better for him than he could have ordered them for
himself.

His having lived six months in Ashpit Place was a case in point.  Things
were possible to him which to others like him would be impossible.  If
such a man as Towneley were told he must live henceforth in a house like
those in Ashpit Place it would be more than he could stand.  Ernest could
not have stood it himself if he had gone to live there of compulsion
through want of money.  It was only because he had felt himself able to
run away at any minute that he had not wanted to do so; now, however,
that he had become familiar with life in Ashpit Place he no longer minded
it, and could live gladly in lower parts of London than that so long as
he could pay his way.  It was from no prudence or forethought that he had
served this apprenticeship to life among the poor.  He had been trying in
a feeble way to be thorough in his work: he had not been thorough, the
whole thing had been a _fiasco_; but he had made a little puny effort in
the direction of being genuine, and behold, in his hour of need it had
been returned to him with a reward far richer than he had deserved.  He
could not have faced becoming one of the very poor unless he had had such
a bridge to conduct him over to them as he had found unwittingly in
Ashpit Place.  True, there had been drawbacks in the particular house he
had chosen, but he need not live in a house where there was a Mr Holt and
he should no longer be tied to the profession which he so much hated; if
there were neither screams nor scripture readings he could be happy in a
garret at three shillings a week, such as Miss Maitland lived in.

As he thought further he remembered that all things work together for
good to them that love God; was it possible, he asked himself, that he
too, however imperfectly, had been trying to love him?  He dared not
answer Yes, but he would try hard that it should be so.  Then there came
into his mind that noble air of Handel's: "Great God, who yet but darkly
known," and he felt it as he had never felt it before.  He had lost his
faith in Christianity, but his faith in something--he knew not what, but
that there was a something as yet but darkly known which made right right
and wrong wrong--his faith in this grew stronger and stronger daily.

Again there crossed his mind thoughts of the power which he felt to be in
him, and of how and where it was to find its vent.  The same instinct
which had led him to live among the poor because it was the nearest thing
to him which he could lay hold of with any clearness came to his
assistance here too.  He thought of the Australian gold and how those who
lived among it had never seen it though it abounded all around them:
"There is gold everywhere," he exclaimed inwardly, "to those who look for
it."  Might not his opportunity be close upon him if he looked carefully
enough at his immediate surroundings?  What was his position?  He had
lost all.  Could he not turn his having lost all into an opportunity?
Might he not, if he too sought the strength of the Lord, find, like St
Paul, that it was perfected in weakness?

He had nothing more to lose; money, friends, character, all were gone for
a very long time if not for ever; but there was something else also that
had taken its flight along with these.  I mean the fear of that which man
could do unto him.  _Cantabil vacuus_.  Who could hurt him more than he
had been hurt already?  Let him but be able to earn his bread, and he
knew of nothing which he dared not venture if it would make the world a
happier place for those who were young and loveable.  Herein he found so
much comfort that he almost wished he had lost his reputation even more
completely--for he saw that it was like a man's life which may be found
of them that lose it and lost of them that would find it.  He should not
have had the courage to give up all for Christ's sake, but now Christ had
mercifully taken all, and lo! it seemed as though all were found.

As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and the
denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes do; it
was a fight about names--not about things; practically the Church of
Rome, the Church of England, and the freethinker have the same ideal
standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most perfect saint who
is the most perfect gentleman.  Then he saw also that it matters little
what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make,
provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and
without insisting on it to the bitter end.  It is in the
uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want
of dogma that the danger lies.  This was the crowning point of the
edifice; when he had got here he no longer wished to molest even the
Pope.  The Archbishop of Canterbury might have hopped about all round him
and even picked crumbs out of his hand without running risk of getting a
sly sprinkle of salt.  That wary prelate himself might perhaps have been
of a different opinion, but the robins and thrushes that hop about our
lawns are not more needlessly distrustful of the hand that throws them
out crumbs of bread in winter, than the Archbishop would have been of my
hero.

Perhaps he was helped to arrive at the foregoing conclusion by an event
which almost thrust inconsistency upon him.  A few days after he had left
the infirmary the chaplain came to his cell and told him that the
prisoner who played the organ in chapel had just finished his sentence
and was leaving the prison; he therefore offered the post to Ernest, who
he already knew played the organ.  Ernest was at first in doubt whether
it would be right for him to assist at religious services more than he
was actually compelled to do, but the pleasure of playing the organ, and
the privileges which the post involved, made him see excellent reasons
for not riding consistency to death.  Having, then, once introduced an
element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not
to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable
indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the
indifferentism from which Mr Hawke had aroused him.

By becoming organist he was saved from the treadmill, for which the
doctor had said he was unfit as yet, but which he would probably have
been put to in due course as soon as he was stronger.  He might have
escaped the tailor's shop altogether and done only the comparatively
light work of attending to the chaplain's rooms if he had liked, but he
wanted to learn as much tailoring as he could, and did not therefore take
advantage of this offer; he was allowed, however, two hours a day in the
afternoon for practice.  From that moment his prison life ceased to be
monotonous, and the remaining two months of his sentence slipped by
almost as rapidly as they would have done if he had been free.  What with
music, books, learning his trade, and conversation with the chaplain, who
was just the kindly, sensible person that Ernest wanted in order to
steady him a little, the days went by so pleasantly that when the time
came for him to leave prison, he did so, or thought he did so, not
without regret.





In coming to the conclusion that he would sever the connection between
himself and his family once for all Ernest had reckoned without his
family.  Theobald wanted to be rid of his son, it is true, in so far as
he wished him to be no nearer at any rate than the Antipodes; but he had
no idea of entirely breaking with him.  He knew his son well enough to
have a pretty shrewd idea that this was what Ernest would wish himself,
and perhaps as much for this reason as for any other he was determined to
keep up the connection, provided it did not involve Ernest's coming to
Battersby nor any recurring outlay.

When the time approached for him to leave prison, his father and mother
consulted as to what course they should adopt.

"We must never leave him to himself," said Theobald impressively; "we can
neither of us wish that."

"Oh, no! no! dearest Theobald," exclaimed Christina.  "Whoever else
deserts him, and however distant he may be from us, he must still feel
that he has parents whose hearts beat with affection for him no matter
how cruelly he has pained them."

"He has been his own worst enemy," said Theobald.  "He has never loved us
as we deserved, and now he will be withheld by false shame from wishing
to see us.  He will avoid us if he can."

"Then we must go to him ourselves," said Christina, "whether he likes it
or not we must be at his side to support him as he enters again upon the
world."

"If we do not want him to give us the slip we must catch him as he leaves
prison."

"We will, we will; our faces shall be the first to gladden his eyes as he
comes out, and our voices the first to exhort him to return to the paths
of virtue."

"I think," said Theobald, "if he sees us in the street he will turn round
and run away from us.  He is intensely selfish."

"Then we must get leave to go inside the prison, and see him before he
gets outside."

After a good deal of discussion this was the plan they decided on
adopting, and having so decided, Theobald wrote to the governor of the
gaol asking whether he could be admitted inside the gaol to receive
Ernest when his sentence had expired.  He received answer in the
affirmative, and the pair left Battersby the day before Ernest was to
come out of prison.

Ernest had not reckoned on this, and was rather surprised on being told a
few minutes before nine that he was to go into the receiving room before
he left the prison as there were visitors waiting to see him.  His heart
fell, for he guessed who they were, but he screwed up his courage and
hastened to the receiving room.  There, sure enough, standing at the end
of the table nearest the door were the two people whom he regarded as the
most dangerous enemies he had in all the world--his father and mother.

He could not fly, but he knew that if he wavered he was lost.

His mother was crying, but she sprang forward to meet him and clasped him
in her arms.  "Oh, my boy, my boy," she sobbed, and she could say no
more.

Ernest was as white as a sheet.  His heart beat so that he could hardly
breathe.  He let his mother embrace him, and then withdrawing himself
stood silently before her with the tears falling from his eyes.

At first he could not speak.  For a minute or so the silence on all sides
was complete.  Then, gathering strength, he said in a low voice:

"Mother," (it was the first time he had called her anything but "mamma"?)
"we must part."  On this, turning to the warder, he said: "I believe I am
free to leave the prison if I wish to do so.  You cannot compel me to
remain here longer.  Please take me to the gates."

Theobald stepped forward.  "Ernest, you must not, shall not, leave us in
this way."

"Do not speak to me," said Ernest, his eyes flashing with a fire that was
unwonted in them.  Another warder then came up and took Theobald aside,
while the first conducted Ernest to the gates.

"Tell them," said Ernest, "from me that they must think of me as one
dead, for I am dead to them.  Say that my greatest pain is the thought of
the disgrace I have inflicted upon them, and that above all things else I
will study to avoid paining them hereafter; but say also that if they
write to me I will return their letters unopened, and that if they come
and see me I will protect myself in whatever way I can."

By this time he was at the prison gate, and in another moment was at
liberty.  After he had got a few steps out he turned his face to the
prison wall, leant against it for support, and wept as though his heart
would break.

Giving up father and mother for Christ's sake was not such an easy matter
after all.  If a man has been possessed by devils for long enough they
will rend him as they leave him, however imperatively they may have been
cast out.  Ernest did not stay long where he was, for he feared each
moment that his father and mother would come out.  He pulled himself
together and turned into the labyrinth of small streets which opened out
in front of him.

He had crossed his Rubicon--not perhaps very heroically or dramatically,
but then it is only in dramas that people act dramatically.  At any rate,
by hook or by crook, he had scrambled over, and was out upon the other
side.  Already he thought of much which he would gladly have said, and
blamed his want of presence of mind; but, after all, it mattered very
little.  Inclined though he was to make very great allowances for his
father and mother, he was indignant at their having thrust themselves
upon him without warning at a moment when the excitement of leaving
prison was already as much as he was fit for.  It was a mean advantage to
have taken over him, but he was glad they had taken it, for it made him
realise more fully than ever that his one chance lay in separating
himself completely from them.

The morning was grey, and the first signs of winter fog were beginning to
show themselves, for it was now the 30th of September.  Ernest wore the
clothes in which he had entered prison, and was therefore dressed as a
clergyman.  No one who looked at him would have seen any difference
between his present appearance and his appearance six months previously;
indeed, as he walked slowly through the dingy crowded lane called Eyre
Street Hill (which he well knew, for he had clerical friends in that
neighbourhood), the months he had passed in prison seemed to drop out of
his life, and so powerfully did association carry him away that, finding
himself in his old dress and in his old surroundings, he felt dragged
back into his old self--as though his six months of prison life had been
a dream from which he was now waking to take things up as he had left
them.  This was the effect of unchanged surroundings upon the unchanged
part of him.  But there was a changed part, and the effect of unchanged
surroundings upon this was to make everything seem almost as strange as
though he had never had any life but his prison one, and was now born
into a new world.

All our lives long, every day and every hour, we are engaged in the
process of accommodating our changed and unchanged selves to changed and
unchanged surroundings; living, in fact, in nothing else than this
process of accommodation; when we fail in it a little we are stupid, when
we fail flagrantly we are mad, when we suspend it temporarily we sleep,
when we give up the attempt altogether we die.  In quiet, uneventful
lives the changes internal and external are so small that there is little
or no strain in the process of fusion and accommodation; in other lives
there is great strain, but there is also great fusing and accommodating
power; in others great strain with little accommodating power.  A life
will be successful or not according as the power of accommodation is
equal to or unequal to the strain of fusing and adjusting internal and
external changes.

The trouble is that in the end we shall be driven to admit the unity of
the universe so completely as to be compelled to deny that there is
either an external or an internal, but must see everything both as
external and internal at one and the same time, subject and
object--external and internal--being unified as much as everything else.
This will knock our whole system over, but then every system has got to
be knocked over by something.

Much the best way out of this difficulty is to go in for separation
between internal and external--subject and object--when we find this
convenient, and unity between the same when we find unity convenient.
This is illogical, but extremes are alone logical, and they are always
absurd, the mean is alone practicable and it is always illogical.  It is
faith and not logic which is the supreme arbiter.  They say all roads
lead to Rome, and all philosophies that I have ever seen lead ultimately
either to some gross absurdity, or else to the conclusion already more
than once insisted on in these pages, that the just shall live by faith,
that is to say that sensible people will get through life by rule of
thumb as they may interpret it most conveniently without asking too many
questions for conscience sake.  Take any fact, and reason upon it to the
bitter end, and it will ere long lead to this as the only refuge from
some palpable folly.

But to return to my story.  When Ernest got to the top of the street and
looked back, he saw the grimy, sullen walls of his prison filling up the
end of it.  He paused for a minute or two.  "There," he said to himself,
"I was hemmed in by bolts which I could see and touch; here I am barred
by others which are none the less real--poverty and ignorance of the
world.  It was no part of my business to try to break the material bolts
of iron and escape from prison, but now that I am free I must surely seek
to break these others."

He had read somewhere of a prisoner who had made his escape by cutting up
his bedstead with an iron spoon.  He admired and marvelled at the man's
mind, but could not even try to imitate him; in the presence of
immaterial barriers, however, he was not so easily daunted, and felt as
though, even if the bed were iron and the spoon a wooden one, he could
find some means of making the wood cut the iron sooner or later.

He turned his back upon Eyre Street Hill and walked down Leather Lane
into Holborn.  Each step he took, each face or object that he knew,
helped at once to link him on to the life he had led before his
imprisonment, and at the same time to make him feel how completely that
imprisonment had cut his life into two parts, the one of which could bear
no resemblance to the other.

He passed down Fetter Lane into Fleet Street and so to the Temple, to
which I had just returned from my summer holiday.  It was about half past
nine, and I was having my breakfast, when I heard a timid knock at the
door and opened it to find Ernest.

 After two months of convalescence in the infirmary, Ernest is told by the prison chaplain that Pryer absconded with the remainder of his inheritance. Ernest immediately abandons his plan to emigrate to Australia or New Zealand and decides, instead, to become a tailor. Following the completion of his apprenticeship at this trade, Ernest is praised for learning as much in three months as most inmates learn in a year. More pleased with his lessons in tailoring than he ever was with those in Greek and Latin, Ernest also enjoys another kind of relief from the restrictions of prison life by serving as chapel organist. Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of his confinement, however, is the time he has to think about the new life he must begin when he regains his freedom. Most of Ernest's thoughts focus on religion and his parents. Although he is depressed to learn of his penury, he is not as alarmed by this fact as would be a mature adult. According to Overton, the loss of money is far worse than the loss of one's health or reputation; Ernest, on the other hand, is far more concerned with the threat to his welfare posed by his parents. At first outraged by his son's misconduct and imprisonment, Theobald gradually becomes more conciliatory toward Ernest and is prepared to offer him a small sum to begin life anew as an office clerk. Ernest, determined to be independent, reaches the conclusion that he must give up his parents for Christ's sake, and he does just that. When Theobald and Christina confront him upon his release, Ernest curtly tells them to think of him as one who is dead. In making a complete break with his parents, Ernest executes his conviction that the highest possible religious principle is the pursuit of self-satisfaction. Emotionally drained by his ordeal, Ernest resolutely seeks out the only person in whom he can confide, his friend and godfather, Edward Overton.

