Chapter: I must now return to Miss Alethea Pontifex, of whom I have said perhaps
too little hitherto, considering how great her influence upon my hero's
destiny proved to be.

On the death of her father, which happened when she was about thirty-two
years old, she parted company with her sisters, between whom and herself
there had been little sympathy, and came up to London.  She was
determined, so she said, to make the rest of her life as happy as she
could, and she had clearer ideas about the best way of setting to work to
do this than women, or indeed men, generally have.

Her fortune consisted, as I have said, of 5000 pounds, which had come to
her by her mother's marriage settlements, and 15,000 pounds left her by
her father, over both which sums she had now absolute control.  These
brought her in about 900 pounds a year, and the money being invested in
none but the soundest securities, she had no anxiety about her income.
She meant to be rich, so she formed a scheme of expenditure which
involved an annual outlay of about 500 pounds, and determined to put the
rest by.  "If I do this," she said laughingly, "I shall probably just
succeed in living comfortably within my income."  In accordance with this
scheme she took unfurnished apartments in a house in Gower Street, of
which the lower floors were let out as offices.  John Pontifex tried to
get her to take a house to herself, but Alethea told him to mind his own
business so plainly that he had to beat a retreat.  She had never liked
him, and from that time dropped him almost entirely.

Without going much into society she yet became acquainted with most of
the men and women who had attained a position in the literary, artistic
and scientific worlds, and it was singular how highly her opinion was
valued in spite of her never having attempted in any way to distinguish
herself.  She could have written if she had chosen, but she enjoyed
seeing others write and encouraging them better than taking a more active
part herself.  Perhaps literary people liked her all the better because
she did not write.

I, as she very well knew, had always been devoted to her, and she might
have had a score of other admirers if she had liked, but she had
discouraged them all, and railed at matrimony as women seldom do unless
they have a comfortable income of their own.  She by no means, however,
railed at man as she railed at matrimony, and though living after a
fashion in which even the most censorious could find nothing to complain
of, as far as she properly could she defended those of her own sex whom
the world condemned most severely.

In religion she was, I should think, as nearly a freethinker as anyone
could be whose mind seldom turned upon the subject.  She went to church,
but disliked equally those who aired either religion or irreligion.  I
remember once hearing her press a late well-known philosopher to write a
novel instead of pursuing his attacks upon religion.  The philosopher did
not much like this, and dilated upon the importance of showing people the
folly of much that they pretended to believe.  She smiled and said
demurely, "Have they not Moses and the prophets?  Let them hear them."
But she would say a wicked thing quietly on her own account sometimes,
and called my attention once to a note in her prayer-book which gave
account of the walk to Emmaus with the two disciples, and how Christ had
said to them "O fools and slow of heart to believe ALL that the prophets
have spoken"--the "all" being printed in small capitals.

Though scarcely on terms with her brother John, she had kept up closer
relations with Theobald and his family, and had paid a few days' visit to
Battersby once in every two years or so.  Alethea had always tried to
like Theobald and join forces with him as much as she could (for they two
were the hares of the family, the rest being all hounds), but it was no
use.  I believe her chief reason for maintaining relations with her
brother was that she might keep an eye on his children and give them a
lift if they proved nice.

When Miss Pontifex had come down to Battersby in old times the children
had not been beaten, and their lessons had been made lighter.  She easily
saw that they were overworked and unhappy, but she could hardly guess how
all-reaching was the regime under which they lived.  She knew she could
not interfere effectually then, and wisely forbore to make too many
enquiries.  Her time, if ever it was to come, would be when the children
were no longer living under the same roof as their parents.  It ended in
her making up her mind to have nothing to do with either Joey or
Charlotte, but to see so much of Ernest as should enable her to form an
opinion about his disposition and abilities.

He had now been a year and a half at Roughborough and was nearly fourteen
years old, so that his character had begun to shape.  His aunt had not
seen him for some little time and, thinking that if she was to exploit
him she could do so now perhaps better than at any other time, she
resolved to go down to Roughborough on some pretext which should be good
enough for Theobald, and to take stock of her nephew under circumstances
in which she could get him for some few hours to herself.  Accordingly in
August 1849, when Ernest was just entering on his fourth half year a cab
drove up to Dr Skinner's door with Miss Pontifex, who asked and obtained
leave for Ernest to come and dine with her at the Swan Hotel.  She had
written to Ernest to say she was coming and he was of course on the look-
out for her.  He had not seen her for so long that he was rather shy at
first, but her good nature soon set him at his ease.  She was so strongly
biassed in favour of anything young that her heart warmed towards him at
once, though his appearance was less prepossessing than she had hoped.
She took him to a cake shop and gave him whatever he liked as soon as she
had got him off the school premises; and Ernest felt at once that she
contrasted favourably even with his aunts the Misses Allaby, who were so
very sweet and good.  The Misses Allaby were very poor; sixpence was to
them what five shillings was to Alethea.  What chance had they against
one who, if she had a mind, could put by out of her income twice as much
as they, poor women, could spend?

The boy had plenty of prattle in him when he was not snubbed, and Alethea
encouraged him to chatter about whatever came uppermost.  He was always
ready to trust anyone who was kind to him; it took many years to make him
reasonably wary in this respect--if indeed, as I sometimes doubt, he ever
will be as wary as he ought to be--and in a short time he had quite
dissociated his aunt from his papa and mamma and the rest, with whom his
instinct told him he should be on his guard.  Little did he know how
great, as far as he was concerned, were the issues that depended upon his
behaviour.  If he had known, he would perhaps have played his part less
successfully.

His aunt drew from him more details of his home and school life than his
papa and mamma would have approved of, but he had no idea that he was
being pumped.  She got out of him all about the happy Sunday evenings,
and how he and Joey and Charlotte quarrelled sometimes, but she took no
side and treated everything as though it were a matter of course.  Like
all the boys, he could mimic Dr Skinner, and when warmed with dinner, and
two glasses of sherry which made him nearly tipsy, he favoured his aunt
with samples of the Doctor's manner and spoke of him familiarly as "Sam."

"Sam," he said, "is an awful old humbug."  It was the sherry that brought
out this piece of swagger, for whatever else he was Dr Skinner was a
reality to Master Ernest, before which, indeed, he sank into his boots in
no time.  Alethea smiled and said, "I must not say anything to that, must
I?"  Ernest said, "I suppose not," and was checked.  By-and-by he vented
a number of small second-hand priggishnesses which he had caught up
believing them to be the correct thing, and made it plain that even at
that early age Ernest believed in Ernest with a belief which was amusing
from its absurdity.  His aunt judged him charitably as she was sure to
do; she knew very well where the priggishness came from, and seeing that
the string of his tongue had been loosened sufficiently gave him no more
sherry.

It was after dinner, however, that he completed the conquest of his aunt.
She then discovered that, like herself, he was passionately fond of
music, and that, too, of the highest class.  He knew, and hummed or
whistled to her all sorts of pieces out of the works of the great
masters, which a boy of his age could hardly be expected to know, and it
was evident that this was purely instinctive, inasmuch as music received
no kind of encouragement at Roughborough.  There was no boy in the school
as fond of music as he was.  He picked up his knowledge, he said, from
the organist of St Michael's Church who used to practise sometimes on a
week-day afternoon.  Ernest had heard the organ booming away as he was
passing outside the church and had sneaked inside and up into the organ
loft.  In the course of time the organist became accustomed to him as a
familiar visitant, and the pair became friends.

It was this which decided Alethea that the boy was worth taking pains
with.  "He likes the best music," she thought, "and he hates Dr Skinner.
This is a very fair beginning."  When she sent him away at night with a
sovereign in his pocket (and he had only hoped to get five shillings) she
felt as though she had had a good deal more than her money's worth for
her money.





Next day Miss Pontifex returned to town, with her thoughts full of her
nephew and how she could best be of use to him.

It appeared to her that to do him any real service she must devote
herself almost entirely to him; she must in fact give up living in
London, at any rate for a long time, and live at Roughborough where she
could see him continually.  This was a serious undertaking; she had lived
in London for the last twelve years, and naturally disliked the prospect
of a small country town such as Roughborough.  Was it a prudent thing to
attempt so much?  Must not people take their chances in this world?  Can
anyone do much for anyone else unless by making a will in his favour and
dying then and there?  Should not each look after his own happiness, and
will not the world be best carried on if everyone minds his own business
and leaves other people to mind theirs?  Life is not a donkey race in
which everyone is to ride his neighbour's donkey and the last is to win,
and the psalmist long since formulated a common experience when he
declared that no man may deliver his brother nor make agreement unto God
for him, for it cost more to redeem their souls, so that he must let that
alone for ever.

All these excellent reasons for letting her nephew alone occurred to her,
and many more, but against them there pleaded a woman's love for
children, and her desire to find someone among the younger branches of
her own family to whom she could become warmly attached, and whom she
could attach warmly to herself.

Over and above this she wanted someone to leave her money to; she was not
going to leave it to people about whom she knew very little, merely
because they happened to be sons and daughters of brothers and sisters
whom she had never liked.  She knew the power and value of money
exceedingly well, and how many lovable people suffer and die yearly for
the want of it; she was little likely to leave it without being satisfied
that her legatees were square, lovable, and more or less hard up.  She
wanted those to have it who would be most likely to use it genially and
sensibly, and whom it would thus be likely to make most happy; if she
could find one such among her nephews and nieces, so much the better; it
was worth taking a great deal of pains to see whether she could or could
not; but if she failed, she must find an heir who was not related to her
by blood.

"Of course," she had said to me, more than once, "I shall make a mess of
it.  I shall choose some nice-looking, well-dressed screw, with
gentlemanly manners which will take me in, and he will go and paint
Academy pictures, or write for the _Times_, or do something just as
horrid the moment the breath is out of my body."

As yet, however, she had made no will at all, and this was one of the few
things that troubled her.  I believe she would have left most of her
money to me if I had not stopped her.  My father left me abundantly well
off, and my mode of life has been always simple, so that I have never
known uneasiness about money; moreover I was especially anxious that
there should be no occasion given for ill-natured talk; she knew well,
therefore, that her leaving her money to me would be of all things the
most likely to weaken the ties that existed between us, provided that I
was aware of it, but I did not mind her talking about whom she should
make her heir, so long as it was well understood that I was not to be the
person.

Ernest had satisfied her as having enough in him to tempt her strongly to
take him up, but it was not till after many days' reflection that she
gravitated towards actually doing so, with all the break in her daily
ways that this would entail.  At least, she said it took her some days,
and certainly it appeared to do so, but from the moment she had begun to
broach the subject, I had guessed how things were going to end.

It was now arranged she should take a house at Roughborough, and go and
live there for a couple of years.  As a compromise, however, to meet some
of my objections, it was also arranged that she should keep her rooms in
Gower Street, and come to town for a week once in each month; of course,
also, she would leave Roughborough for the greater part of the holidays.
After two years, the thing was to come to an end, unless it proved a
great success.  She should by that time, at any rate, have made up her
mind what the boy's character was, and would then act as circumstances
might determine.

The pretext she put forward ostensibly was that her doctor said she ought
to be a year or two in the country after so many years of London life,
and had recommended Roughborough on account of the purity of its air, and
its easy access to and from London--for by this time the railway had
reached it.  She was anxious not to give her brother and sister any right
to complain, if on seeing more of her nephew she found she could not get
on with him, and she was also anxious not to raise false hopes of any
kind in the boy's own mind.

Having settled how everything was to be, she wrote to Theobald and said
she meant to take a house in Roughborough from the Michaelmas then
approaching, and mentioned, as though casually, that one of the
attractions of the place would be that her nephew was at school there and
she should hope to see more of him than she had done hitherto.

Theobald and Christina knew how dearly Alethea loved London, and thought
it very odd that she should want to go and live at Roughborough, but they
did not suspect that she was going there solely on her nephew's account,
much less that she had thought of making Ernest her heir.  If they had
guessed this, they would have been so jealous that I half believe they
would have asked her to go and live somewhere else.  Alethea however, was
two or three years younger than Theobald; she was still some years short
of fifty, and might very well live to eighty-five or ninety; her money,
therefore, was not worth taking much trouble about, and her brother and
sister-in-law had dismissed it, so to speak, from their minds with costs,
assuming, however, that if anything did happen to her while they were
still alive, the money would, as a matter of course, come to them.

The prospect of Alethea seeing much of Ernest was a serious matter.
Christina smelt mischief from afar, as indeed she often did.  Alethea was
worldly--as worldly, that is to say, as a sister of Theobald's could be.
In her letter to Theobald she had said she knew how much of his and
Christina's thoughts were taken up with anxiety for the boy's welfare.
Alethea had thought this handsome enough, but Christina had wanted
something better and stronger.  "How can she know how much we think of
our darling?" she had exclaimed, when Theobald showed her his sister's
letter.  "I think, my dear, Alethea would understand these things better
if she had children of her own."  The least that would have satisfied
Christina was to have been told that there never yet had been any parents
comparable to Theobald and herself.  She did not feel easy that an
alliance of some kind would not grow up between aunt and nephew, and
neither she nor Theobald wanted Ernest to have any allies.  Joey and
Charlotte were quite as many allies as were good for him.  After all,
however, if Alethea chose to go and live at Roughborough, they could not
well stop her, and must make the best of it.

In a few weeks' time Alethea did choose to go and live at Roughborough.  A
house was found with a field and a nice little garden which suited her
very well.  "At any rate," she said to herself, "I will have fresh eggs
and flowers."  She even considered the question of keeping a cow, but in
the end decided not to do so.  She furnished her house throughout anew,
taking nothing whatever from her establishment in Gower Street, and by
Michaelmas--for the house was empty when she took it--she was settled
comfortably, and had begun to make herself at home.

One of Miss Pontifex's first moves was to ask a dozen of the smartest and
most gentlemanly boys to breakfast with her.  From her seat in church she
could see the faces of the upper-form boys, and soon made up her mind
which of them it would be best to cultivate.  Miss Pontifex, sitting
opposite the boys in church, and reckoning them up with her keen eyes
from under her veil by all a woman's criteria, came to a truer conclusion
about the greater number of those she scrutinized than even Dr Skinner
had done.  She fell in love with one boy from seeing him put on his
gloves.

Miss Pontifex, as I have said, got hold of some of these youngsters
through Ernest, and fed them well.  No boy can resist being fed well by a
good-natured and still handsome woman.  Boys are very like nice dogs in
this respect--give them a bone and they will like you at once.  Alethea
employed every other little artifice which she thought likely to win
their allegiance to herself, and through this their countenance for her
nephew.  She found the football club in a slight money difficulty and at
once gave half a sovereign towards its removal.  The boys had no chance
against her, she shot them down one after another as easily as though
they had been roosting pheasants.  Nor did she escape scathless herself,
for, as she wrote to me, she quite lost her heart to half a dozen of
them.  "How much nicer they are," she said, "and how much more they know
than those who profess to teach them!"

I believe it has been lately maintained that it is the young and fair who
are the truly old and truly experienced, inasmuch as it is they who alone
have a living memory to guide them; "the whole charm," it has been said,
"of youth lies in its advantage over age in respect of experience, and
when this has for some reason failed or been misapplied, the charm is
broken.  When we say that we are getting old, we should say rather that
we are getting new or young, and are suffering from inexperience; trying
to do things which we have never done before, and failing worse and
worse, till in the end we are landed in the utter impotence of death."

Miss Pontifex died many a long year before the above passage was written,
but she had arrived independently at much the same conclusion.

She first, therefore, squared the boys.  Dr Skinner was even more easily
dealt with.  He and Mrs Skinner called, as a matter of course, as soon as
Miss Pontifex was settled.  She fooled him to the top of his bent, and
obtained the promise of a MS. copy of one of his minor poems (for Dr
Skinner had the reputation of being quite one of our most facile and
elegant minor poets) on the occasion of his first visit.  The other
masters and masters' wives were not forgotten.  Alethea laid herself out
to please, as indeed she did wherever she went, and if any woman lays
herself out to do this, she generally succeeds.





Miss Pontifex soon found out that Ernest did not like games, but she saw
also that he could hardly be expected to like them.  He was perfectly
well shaped but unusually devoid of physical strength.  He got a fair
share of this in after life, but it came much later with him than with
other boys, and at the time of which I am writing he was a mere little
skeleton.  He wanted something to develop his arms and chest without
knocking him about as much as the school games did.  To supply this want
by some means which should add also to his pleasure was Alethea's first
anxiety.  Rowing would have answered every purpose, but unfortunately
there was no river at Roughborough.

Whatever it was to be, it must be something which he should like as much
as other boys liked cricket or football, and he must think the wish for
it to have come originally from himself; it was not very easy to find
anything that would do, but ere long it occurred to her that she might
enlist his love of music on her side, and asked him one day when he was
spending a half-holiday at her house whether he would like her to buy an
organ for him to play on.  Of course, the boy said yes; then she told him
about her grandfather and the organs he had built.  It had never entered
into his head that he could make one, but when he gathered from what his
aunt had said that this was not out of the question, he rose as eagerly
to the bait as she could have desired, and wanted to begin learning to
saw and plane so that he might make the wooden pipes at once.

Miss Pontifex did not see how she could have hit upon anything more
suitable, and she liked the idea that he would incidentally get a
knowledge of carpentering, for she was impressed, perhaps foolishly, with
the wisdom of the German custom which gives every boy a handicraft of
some sort.

Writing to me on this matter, she said "Professions are all very well for
those who have connection and interest as well as capital, but otherwise
they are white elephants.  How many men do not you and I know who have
talent, assiduity, excellent good sense, straightforwardness, every
quality in fact which should command success, and who yet go on from year
to year waiting and hoping against hope for the work which never comes?
How, indeed, is it likely to come unless to those who either are born
with interest, or who marry in order to get it?  Ernest's father and
mother have no interest, and if they had they would not use it.  I
suppose they will make him a clergyman, or try to do so--perhaps it is
the best thing to do with him, for he could buy a living with the money
his grandfather left him, but there is no knowing what the boy will think
of it when the time comes, and for aught we know he may insist on going
to the backwoods of America, as so many other young men are doing now."  .
. . But, anyway, he would like making an organ, and this could do him no
harm, so the sooner he began the better.

Alethea thought it would save trouble in the end if she told her brother
and sister-in-law of this scheme.  "I do not suppose," she wrote, "that
Dr Skinner will approve very cordially of my attempt to introduce organ-
building into the _curriculum_ of Roughborough, but I will see what I can
do with him, for I have set my heart on owning an organ built by Ernest's
own hands, which he may play on as much as he likes while it remains in
my house and which I will lend him permanently as soon as he gets one of
his own, but which is to be my property for the present, inasmuch as I
mean to pay for it."  This was put in to make it plain to Theobald and
Christina that they should not be out of pocket in the matter.

If Alethea had been as poor as the Misses Allaby, the reader may guess
what Ernest's papa and mamma would have said to this proposal; but then,
if she had been as poor as they, she would never have made it.  They did
not like Ernest's getting more and more into his aunt's good books, still
it was perhaps better that he should do so than that she should be driven
back upon the John Pontifexes.  The only thing, said Theobald, which made
him hesitate, was that the boy might be thrown with low associates later
on if he were to be encouraged in his taste for music--a taste which
Theobald had always disliked.  He had observed with regret that Ernest
had ere now shown rather a hankering after low company, and he might make
acquaintance with those who would corrupt his innocence.  Christina
shuddered at this, but when they had aired their scruples sufficiently
they felt (and when people begin to "feel," they are invariably going to
take what they believe to be the more worldly course) that to oppose
Alethea's proposal would be injuring their son's prospects more than was
right, so they consented, but not too graciously.

After a time, however, Christina got used to the idea, and then
considerations occurred to her which made her throw herself into it with
characteristic ardour.  If Miss Pontifex had been a railway stock she
might have been said to have been buoyant in the Battersby market for
some few days; buoyant for long together she could never be, still for a
time there really was an upward movement.  Christina's mind wandered to
the organ itself; she seemed to have made it with her own hands; there
would be no other in England to compare with it for combined sweetness
and power.  She already heard the famous Dr Walmisley of Cambridge
mistaking it for a Father Smith.  It would come, no doubt, in reality to
Battersby Church, which wanted an organ, for it must be all nonsense
about Alethea's wishing to keep it, and Ernest would not have a house of
his own for ever so many years, and they could never have it at the
Rectory.  Oh, no!  Battersby Church was the only proper place for it.

Of course, they would have a grand opening, and the Bishop would come
down, and perhaps young Figgins might be on a visit to them--she must ask
Ernest if young Figgins had yet left Roughborough--he might even persuade
his grandfather Lord Lonsford to be present.  Lord Lonsford and the
Bishop and everyone else would then compliment her, and Dr Wesley or Dr
Walmisley, who should preside (it did not much matter which), would say
to her, "My dear Mrs Pontifex, I never yet played upon so remarkable an
instrument."  Then she would give him one of her very sweetest smiles and
say she feared he was flattering her, on which he would rejoin with some
pleasant little trifle about remarkable men (the remarkable man being for
the moment Ernest) having invariably had remarkable women for their
mothers--and so on and so on.  The advantage of doing one's praising for
oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right
places.

Theobald wrote Ernest a short and surly letter _a propos_ of his aunt's
intentions in this matter.

"I will not commit myself," he said, "to an opinion whether anything will
come of it; this will depend entirely upon your own exertions; you have
had singular advantages hitherto, and your kind aunt is showing every
desire to befriend you, but you must give greater proof of stability and
steadiness of character than you have given yet if this organ matter is
not to prove in the end to be only one disappointment the more.

"I must insist on two things: firstly that this new iron in the fire does
not distract your attention from your Latin and Greek"--("They aren't
mine," thought Ernest, "and never have been")--"and secondly, that you
bring no smell of glue or shavings into the house here, if you make any
part of the organ during your holidays."

Ernest was still too young to know how unpleasant a letter he was
receiving.  He believed the innuendoes contained in it to be perfectly
just.  He knew he was sadly deficient in perseverance.  He liked some
things for a little while, and then found he did not like them any
more--and this was as bad as anything well could be.  His father's letter
gave him one of his many fits of melancholy over his own worthlessness,
but the thought of the organ consoled him, and he felt sure that here at
any rate was something to which he could apply himself steadily without
growing tired of it.

It was settled that the organ was not to be begun before the Christmas
holidays were over, and that till then Ernest should do a little plain
carpentering, so as to get to know how to use his tools.  Miss Pontifex
had a carpenter's bench set up in an outhouse upon her own premises, and
made terms with the most respectable carpenter in Roughborough, by which
one of his men was to come for a couple of hours twice a week and set
Ernest on the right way; then she discovered she wanted this or that
simple piece of work done, and gave the boy a commission to do it, paying
him handsomely as well as finding him in tools and materials.  She never
gave him a syllable of good advice, or talked to him about everything's
depending upon his own exertions, but she kissed him often, and would
come into the workshop and act the part of one who took an interest in
what was being done so cleverly as ere long to become really interested.

What boy would not take kindly to almost anything with such assistance?
All boys like making things; the exercise of sawing, planing and
hammering, proved exactly what his aunt had wanted to find--something
that should exercise, but not too much, and at the same time amuse him;
when Ernest's sallow face was flushed with his work, and his eyes were
sparkling with pleasure, he looked quite a different boy from the one his
aunt had taken in hand only a few months earlier.  His inner self never
told him that this was humbug, as it did about Latin and Greek.  Making
stools and drawers was worth living for, and after Christmas there loomed
the organ, which was scarcely ever absent from his mind.

His aunt let him invite his friends, encouraging him to bring those whom
her quick sense told her were the most desirable.  She smartened him up
also in his personal appearance, always without preaching to him.  Indeed
she worked wonders during the short time that was allowed her, and if her
life had been spared I cannot think that my hero would have come under
the shadow of that cloud which cast so heavy a gloom over his younger
manhood; but unfortunately for him his gleam of sunshine was too hot and
too brilliant to last, and he had many a storm yet to weather, before he
became fairly happy.  For the present, however, he was supremely so, and
his aunt was happy and grateful for his happiness, the improvement she
saw in him, and his unrepressed affection for herself.  She became fonder
of him from day to day in spite of his many faults and almost incredible
foolishnesses.  It was perhaps on account of these very things that she
saw how much he had need of her; but at any rate, from whatever cause,
she became strengthened in her determination to be to him in the place of
parents, and to find in him a son rather than a nephew.  But still she
made no will.





All went well for the first part of the following half year.  Miss
Pontifex spent the greater part of her holidays in London, and I also saw
her at Roughborough, where I spent a few days, staying at the "Swan."  I
heard all about my godson in whom, however, I took less interest than I
said I did.  I took more interest in the stage at that time than in
anything else, and as for Ernest, I found him a nuisance for engrossing
so much of his aunt's attention, and taking her so much from London.  The
organ was begun, and made fair progress during the first two months of
the half year.  Ernest was happier than he had ever been before, and was
struggling upwards.  The best boys took more notice of him for his aunt's
sake, and he consorted less with those who led him into mischief.

But much as Miss Pontifex had done, she could not all at once undo the
effect of such surroundings as the boy had had at Battersby.  Much as he
feared and disliked his father (though he still knew not how much this
was), he had caught much from him; if Theobald had been kinder Ernest
would have modelled himself upon him entirely, and ere long would
probably have become as thorough a little prig as could have easily been
found.

Fortunately his temper had come to him from his mother, who, when not
frightened, and when there was nothing on the horizon which might cross
the slightest whim of her husband, was an amiable, good-natured woman.  If
it was not such an awful thing to say of anyone, I should say that she
meant well.

Ernest had also inherited his mother's love of building castles in the
air, and--so I suppose it must be called--her vanity.  He was very fond
of showing off, and, provided he could attract attention, cared little
from whom it came, nor what it was for.  He caught up, parrot-like,
whatever jargon he heard from his elders, which he thought was the
correct thing, and aired it in season and out of season, as though it
were his own.

Miss Pontifex was old enough and wise enough to know that this is the way
in which even the greatest men as a general rule begin to develop, and
was more pleased with his receptiveness and reproductiveness than alarmed
at the things he caught and reproduced.

She saw that he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this rather
than to anything else.  She saw also that his conceit was not very
profound, and that his fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his
exaltation had been.  His impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in
anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind
to him, made her more anxious about him than any other point in his
character; she saw clearly that he would have to find himself rudely
undeceived many a time and oft, before he would learn to distinguish
friend from foe within reasonable time.  It was her perception of this
which led her to take the action which she was so soon called upon to
take.

Her health was for the most part excellent, and she had never had a
serious illness in her life.  One morning, however, soon after Easter
1850, she awoke feeling seriously unwell.  For some little time there had
been a talk of fever in the neighbourhood, but in those days the
precautions that ought to be taken against the spread of infection were
not so well understood as now, and nobody did anything.  In a day or two
it became plain that Miss Pontifex had got an attack of typhoid fever and
was dangerously ill.  On this she sent off a messenger to town, and
desired him not to return without her lawyer and myself.

We arrived on the afternoon of the day on which we had been summoned, and
found her still free from delirium: indeed, the cheery way in which she
received us made it difficult to think she could be in danger.  She at
once explained her wishes, which had reference, as I expected, to her
nephew, and repeated the substance of what I have already referred to as
her main source of uneasiness concerning him.  Then she begged me by our
long and close intimacy, by the suddenness of the danger that had fallen
on her and her powerlessness to avert it, to undertake what she said she
well knew, if she died, would be an unpleasant and invidious trust.

She wanted to leave the bulk of her money ostensibly to me, but in
reality to her nephew, so that I should hold it in trust for him till he
was twenty-eight years old, but neither he nor anyone else, except her
lawyer and myself, was to know anything about it.  She would leave 5000
pounds in other legacies, and 15,000 pounds to Ernest--which by the time
he was twenty-eight would have accumulated to, say, 30,000 pounds.  "Sell
out the debentures," she said, "where the money now is--and put it into
Midland Ordinary."

"Let him make his mistakes," she said, "upon the money his grandfather
left him.  I am no prophet, but even I can see that it will take that boy
many years to see things as his neighbours see them.  He will get no help
from his father and mother, who would never forgive him for his good luck
if I left him the money outright; I daresay I am wrong, but I think he
will have to lose the greater part or all of what he has, before he will
know how to keep what he will get from me."

Supposing he went bankrupt before he was twenty-eight years old, the
money was to be mine absolutely, but she could trust me, she said, to
hand it over to Ernest in due time.

"If," she continued, "I am mistaken, the worst that can happen is that he
will come into a larger sum at twenty-eight instead of a smaller sum at,
say, twenty-three, for I would never trust him with it earlier, and--if
he knows nothing about it he will not be unhappy for the want of it."

She begged me to take 2000 pounds in return for the trouble I should have
in taking charge of the boy's estate, and as a sign of the testatrix's
hope that I would now and again look after him while he was still young.
The remaining 3000 pounds I was to pay in legacies and annuities to
friends and servants.

In vain both her lawyer and myself remonstrated with her on the unusual
and hazardous nature of this arrangement.  We told her that sensible
people will not take a more sanguine view concerning human nature than
the Courts of Chancery do.  We said, in fact, everything that anyone else
would say.  She admitted everything, but urged that her time was short,
that nothing would induce her to leave her money to her nephew in the
usual way.  "It is an unusually foolish will," she said, "but he is an
unusually foolish boy;" and she smiled quite merrily at her little sally.
Like all the rest of her family, she was very stubborn when her mind was
made up.  So the thing was done as she wished it.

No provision was made for either my death or Ernest's--Miss Pontifex had
settled it that we were neither of us going to die, and was too ill to go
into details; she was so anxious, moreover, to sign her will while still
able to do so that we had practically no alternative but to do as she
told us.  If she recovered we could see things put on a more satisfactory
footing, and further discussion would evidently impair her chances of
recovery; it seemed then only too likely that it was a case of this will
or no will at all.

When the will was signed I wrote a letter in duplicate, saying that I
held all Miss Pontifex had left me in trust for Ernest except as regards
5000 pounds, but that he was not to come into the bequest, and was to
know nothing whatever about it directly or indirectly, till he was twenty-
eight years old, and if he was bankrupt before he came into it the money
was to be mine absolutely.  At the foot of each letter Miss Pontifex
wrote, "The above was my understanding when I made my will," and then
signed her name.  The solicitor and his clerk witnessed; I kept one copy
myself and handed the other to Miss Pontifex's solicitor.

When all this had been done she became more easy in her mind.  She talked
principally about her nephew.  "Don't scold him," she said, "if he is
volatile, and continually takes things up only to throw them down again.
How can he find out his strength or weakness otherwise?  A man's
profession," she said, and here she gave one of her wicked little laughs,
"is not like his wife, which he must take once for all, for better for
worse, without proof beforehand.  Let him go here and there, and learn
his truest liking by finding out what, after all, he catches himself
turning to most habitually--then let him stick to this; but I daresay
Ernest will be forty or five and forty before he settles down.  Then all
his previous infidelities will work together to him for good if he is the
boy I hope he is.

"Above all," she continued, "do not let him work up to his full strength,
except once or twice in his lifetime; nothing is well done nor worth
doing unless, take it all round, it has come pretty easily.  Theobald and
Christina would give him a pinch of salt and tell him to put it on the
tails of the seven deadly virtues;"--here she laughed again in her old
manner at once so mocking and so sweet--"I think if he likes pancakes he
had perhaps better eat them on Shrove Tuesday, but this is enough."  These
were the last coherent words she spoke.  From that time she grew
continually worse, and was never free from delirium till her death--which
took place less than a fortnight afterwards, to the inexpressible grief
of those who knew and loved her.





Letters had been written to Miss Pontifex's brothers and sisters, and one
and all came post-haste to Roughborough.  Before they arrived the poor
lady was already delirious, and for the sake of her own peace at the last
I am half glad she never recovered consciousness.

I had known these people all their lives, as none can know each other but
those who have played together as children; I knew how they had all of
them--perhaps Theobald least, but all of them more or less--made her life
a burden to her until the death of her father had made her her own
mistress, and I was displeased at their coming one after the other to
Roughborough, and inquiring whether their sister had recovered
consciousness sufficiently to be able to see them.  It was known that she
had sent for me on being taken ill, and that I remained at Roughborough,
and I own I was angered by the mingled air of suspicion, defiance and
inquisitiveness, with which they regarded me.  They would all, except
Theobald, I believe have cut me downright if they had not believed me to
know something they wanted to know themselves, and might have some chance
of learning from me--for it was plain I had been in some way concerned
with the making of their sister's will.  None of them suspected what the
ostensible nature of this would be, but I think they feared Miss Pontifex
was about to leave money for public uses.  John said to me in his
blandest manner that he fancied he remembered to have heard his sister
say that she thought of leaving money to found a college for the relief
of dramatic authors in distress; to this I made no rejoinder, and I have
no doubt his suspicions were deepened.

When the end came, I got Miss Pontifex's solicitor to write and tell her
brothers and sisters how she had left her money: they were not
unnaturally furious, and went each to his or her separate home without
attending the funeral, and without paying any attention to myself.  This
was perhaps the kindest thing they could have done by me, for their
behaviour made me so angry that I became almost reconciled to Alethea's
will out of pleasure at the anger it had aroused.  But for this I should
have felt the will keenly, as having been placed by it in the position
which of all others I had been most anxious to avoid, and as having
saddled me with a very heavy responsibility.  Still it was impossible for
me to escape, and I could only let things take their course.

Miss Pontifex had expressed a wish to be buried at Paleham; in the course
of the next few days I therefore took the body thither.  I had not been
to Paleham since the death of my father some six years earlier.  I had
often wished to go there, but had shrunk from doing so though my sister
had been two or three times.  I could not bear to see the house which had
been my home for so many years of my life in the hands of strangers; to
ring ceremoniously at a bell which I had never yet pulled except as a boy
in jest; to feel that I had nothing to do with a garden in which I had in
childhood gathered so many a nosegay, and which had seemed my own for
many years after I had reached man's estate; to see the rooms bereft of
every familiar feature, and made so unfamiliar in spite of their
familiarity.  Had there been any sufficient reason, I should have taken
these things as a matter of course, and should no doubt have found them
much worse in anticipation than in reality, but as there had been no
special reason why I should go to Paleham I had hitherto avoided doing
so.  Now, however, my going was a necessity, and I confess I never felt
more subdued than I did on arriving there with the dead playmate of my
childhood.

I found the village more changed than I had expected.  The railway had
come there, and a brand new yellow brick station was on the site of old
Mr and Mrs Pontifex's cottage.  Nothing but the carpenter's shop was now
standing.  I saw many faces I knew, but even in six years they seemed to
have grown wonderfully older.  Some of the very old were dead, and the
old were getting very old in their stead.  I felt like the changeling in
the fairy story who came back after a seven years' sleep.  Everyone
seemed glad to see me, though I had never given them particular cause to
be so, and everyone who remembered old Mr and Mrs Pontifex spoke warmly
of them and were pleased at their granddaughter's wishing to be laid near
them.  Entering the churchyard and standing in the twilight of a gusty
cloudy evening on the spot close beside old Mrs Pontifex's grave which I
had chosen for Alethea's, I thought of the many times that she, who would
lie there henceforth, and I, who must surely lie one day in some such
another place though when and where I knew not, had romped over this very
spot as childish lovers together.  Next morning I followed her to the
grave, and in due course set up a plain upright slab to her memory as
like as might be to those over the graves of her grandmother and
grandfather.  I gave the dates and places of her birth and death, but
added nothing except that this stone was set up by one who had known and
loved her.  Knowing how fond she had been of music I had been half
inclined at one time to inscribe a few bars of music, if I could find any
which seemed suitable to her character, but I knew how much she would
have disliked anything singular in connection with her tombstone and did
not do it.

Before, however, I had come to this conclusion, I had thought that Ernest
might be able to help me to the right thing, and had written to him upon
the subject.  The following is the answer I received--

   "Dear Godpapa,--I send you the best bit I can think of; it is the
   subject of the last of Handel's six grand fugues and goes thus:--

   [Music score]

   It would do better for a man, especially for an old man who was very
   sorry for things, than for a woman, but I cannot think of anything
   better; if you do not like it for Aunt Alethea I shall keep it for
   myself.--Your affectionate Godson, ERNEST PONTIFEX."

Was this the little lad who could get sweeties for two-pence but not for
two-pence-halfpenny?  Dear, dear me, I thought to myself, how these babes
and sucklings do give us the go-by surely.  Choosing his own epitaph at
fifteen as for a man who "had been very sorry for things," and such a
strain as that--why it might have done for Leonardo da Vinci himself.
Then I set the boy down as a conceited young jackanapes, which no doubt
he was,--but so are a great many other young people of Ernest's age.





If Theobald and Christina had not been too well pleased when Miss
Pontifex first took Ernest in hand, they were still less so when the
connection between the two was interrupted so prematurely.  They said
they had made sure from what their sister had said that she was going to
make Ernest her heir.  I do not think she had given them so much as a
hint to this effect.  Theobald indeed gave Ernest to understand that she
had done so in a letter which will be given shortly, but if Theobald
wanted to make himself disagreeable, a trifle light as air would
forthwith assume in his imagination whatever form was most convenient to
him.  I do not think they had even made up their minds what Alethea was
to do with her money before they knew of her being at the point of death,
and as I have said already, if they had thought it likely that Ernest
would be made heir over their own heads without their having at any rate
a life interest in the bequest, they would have soon thrown obstacles in
the way of further intimacy between aunt and nephew.

This, however, did not bar their right to feeling aggrieved now that
neither they nor Ernest had taken anything at all, and they could profess
disappointment on their boy's behalf which they would have been too proud
to admit upon their own.  In fact, it was only amiable of them to be
disappointed under these circumstances.

Christina said that the will was simply fraudulent, and was convinced
that it could be upset if she and Theobald went the right way to work.
Theobald, she said, should go before the Lord Chancellor, not in full
court but in chambers, where he could explain the whole matter; or,
perhaps it would be even better if she were to go herself--and I dare not
trust myself to describe the reverie to which this last idea gave rise.  I
believe in the end Theobald died, and the Lord Chancellor (who had become
a widower a few weeks earlier) made her an offer, which, however, she
firmly but not ungratefully declined; she should ever, she said, continue
to think of him as a friend--at this point the cook came in, saying the
butcher had called, and what would she please to order.

I think Theobald must have had an idea that there was something behind
the bequest to me, but he said nothing about it to Christina.  He was
angry and felt wronged, because he could not get at Alethea to give her a
piece of his mind any more than he had been able to get at his father.
"It is so mean of people," he exclaimed to himself, "to inflict an injury
of this sort, and then shirk facing those whom they have injured; let us
hope that, at any rate, they and I may meet in Heaven."  But of this he
was doubtful, for when people had done so great a wrong as this, it was
hardly to be supposed that they would go to Heaven at all--and as for his
meeting them in another place, the idea never so much as entered his
mind.

One so angry and, of late, so little used to contradiction might be
trusted, however, to avenge himself upon someone, and Theobald had long
since developed the organ, by means of which he might vent spleen with
least risk and greatest satisfaction to himself.  This organ, it may be
guessed, was nothing else than Ernest; to Ernest therefore he proceeded
to unburden himself, not personally, but by letter.

"You ought to know," he wrote, "that your Aunt Alethea had given your
mother and me to understand that it was her wish to make you her heir--in
the event, of course, of your conducting yourself in such a manner as to
give her confidence in you; as a matter of fact, however, she has left
you nothing, and the whole of her property has gone to your godfather, Mr
Overton.  Your mother and I are willing to hope that if she had lived
longer you would yet have succeeded in winning her good opinion, but it
is too late to think of this now.

"The carpentering and organ-building must at once be discontinued.  I
never believed in the project, and have seen no reason to alter my
original opinion.  I am not sorry for your own sake, that it is to be at
an end, nor, I am sure, will you regret it yourself in after years.

"A few words more as regards your own prospects.  You have, as I believe
you know, a small inheritance, which is yours legally under your
grandfather's will.  This bequest was made inadvertently, and, I believe,
entirely through a misunderstanding on the lawyer's part.  The bequest
was probably intended not to take effect till after the death of your
mother and myself; nevertheless, as the will is actually worded, it will
now be at your command if you live to be twenty-one years old.  From
this, however, large deductions must be made.  There will be legacy duty,
and I do not know whether I am not entitled to deduct the expenses of
your education and maintenance from birth to your coming of age; I shall
not in all likelihood insist on this right to the full, if you conduct
yourself properly, but a considerable sum should certainly be deducted,
there will therefore remain very little--say 1000 pounds or 2000 pounds
at the outside, as what will be actually yours--but the strictest account
shall be rendered you in due time.

"This, let me warn you most seriously, is all that you must expect from
me (even Ernest saw that it was not from Theobald at all) at any rate
till after my death, which for aught any of us know may be yet many years
distant.  It is not a large sum, but it is sufficient if supplemented by
steadiness and earnestness of purpose.  Your mother and I gave you the
name Ernest, hoping that it would remind you continually of--" but I
really cannot copy more of this effusion.  It was all the same old will-
shaking game and came practically to this, that Ernest was no good, and
that if he went on as he was going on now, he would probably have to go
about the streets begging without any shoes or stockings soon after he
had left school, or at any rate, college; and that he, Theobald, and
Christina were almost too good for this world altogether.

After he had written this Theobald felt quite good-natured, and sent to
the Mrs Thompson of the moment even more soup and wine than her usual not
illiberal allowance.

Ernest was deeply, passionately upset by his father's letter; to think
that even his dear aunt, the one person of his relations whom he really
loved, should have turned against him and thought badly of him after all.
This was the unkindest cut of all.  In the hurry of her illness Miss
Pontifex, while thinking only of his welfare, had omitted to make such
small present mention of him as would have made his father's innuendoes
stingless; and her illness being infectious, she had not seen him after
its nature was known.  I myself did not know of Theobald's letter, nor
think enough about my godson to guess what might easily be his state.  It
was not till many years afterwards that I found Theobald's letter in the
pocket of an old portfolio which Ernest had used at school, and in which
other old letters and school documents were collected which I have used
in this book.  He had forgotten that he had it, but told me when he saw
it that he remembered it as the first thing that made him begin to rise
against his father in a rebellion which he recognised as righteous,
though he dared not openly avow it.  Not the least serious thing was that
it would, he feared, be his duty to give up the legacy his grandfather
had left him; for if it was his only through a mistake, how could he keep
it?

During the rest of the half year Ernest was listless and unhappy.  He was
very fond of some of his schoolfellows, but afraid of those whom he
believed to be better than himself, and prone to idealise everyone into
being his superior except those who were obviously a good deal beneath
him.  He held himself much too cheap, and because he was without that
physical strength and vigour which he so much coveted, and also because
he knew he shirked his lessons, he believed that he was without anything
which could deserve the name of a good quality; he was naturally bad, and
one of those for whom there was no place for repentance, though he sought
it even with tears.  So he shrank out of sight of those whom in his
boyish way he idolised, never for a moment suspecting that he might have
capacities to the full as high as theirs though of a different kind, and
fell in more with those who were reputed of the baser sort, with whom he
could at any rate be upon equal terms.  Before the end of the half year
he had dropped from the estate to which he had been raised during his
aunt's stay at Roughborough, and his old dejection, varied, however, with
bursts of conceit rivalling those of his mother, resumed its sway over
him.  "Pontifex," said Dr Skinner, who had fallen upon him in hall one
day like a moral landslip, before he had time to escape, "do you never
laugh?  Do you always look so preternaturally grave?"  The doctor had not
meant to be unkind, but the boy turned crimson, and escaped.

There was one place only where he was happy, and that was in the old
church of St Michael, when his friend the organist was practising.  About
this time cheap editions of the great oratorios began to appear, and
Ernest got them all as soon as they were published; he would sometimes
sell a school-book to a second-hand dealer, and buy a number or two of
the "Messiah," or the "Creation," or "Elijah," with the proceeds.  This
was simply cheating his papa and mamma, but Ernest was falling low
again--or thought he was--and he wanted the music much, and the Sallust,
or whatever it was, little.  Sometimes the organist would go home,
leaving his keys with Ernest, so that he could play by himself and lock
up the organ and the church in time to get back for calling over.  At
other times, while his friend was playing, he would wander round the
church, looking at the monuments and the old stained glass windows,
enchanted as regards both ears and eyes, at once.  Once the old rector
got hold of him as he was watching a new window being put in, which the
rector had bought in Germany--the work, it was supposed, of Albert Durer.
He questioned Ernest, and finding that he was fond of music, he said in
his old trembling voice (for he was over eighty), "Then you should have
known Dr Burney who wrote the history of music.  I knew him exceedingly
well when I was a young man."  That made Ernest's heart beat, for he knew
that Dr Burney, when a boy at school at Chester, used to break bounds
that he might watch Handel smoking his pipe in the Exchange coffee
house--and now he was in the presence of one who, if he had not seen
Handel himself, had at least seen those who had seen him.

These were oases in his desert, but, as a general rule, the boy looked
thin and pale, and as though he had a secret which depressed him, which
no doubt he had, but for which I cannot blame him.  He rose, in spite of
himself, higher in the school, but fell ever into deeper and deeper
disgrace with the masters, and did not gain in the opinion of those boys
about whom he was persuaded that they could assuredly never know what it
was to have a secret weighing upon their minds.  This was what Ernest
felt so keenly; he did not much care about the boys who liked him, and
idolised some who kept him as far as possible at a distance, but this is
pretty much the case with all boys everywhere.

At last things reached a crisis, below which they could not very well go,
for at the end of the half year but one after his aunt's death, Ernest
brought back a document in his portmanteau, which Theobald stigmatised as
"infamous and outrageous."  I need hardly say I am alluding to his school
bill.

This document was always a source of anxiety to Ernest, for it was gone
into with scrupulous care, and he was a good deal cross-examined about
it.  He would sometimes "write in" for articles necessary for his
education, such as a portfolio, or a dictionary, and sell the same, as I
have explained, in order to eke out his pocket money, probably to buy
either music or tobacco.  These frauds were sometimes, as Ernest thought,
in imminent danger of being discovered, and it was a load off his breast
when the cross-examination was safely over.  This time Theobald had made
a great fuss about the extras, but had grudgingly passed them; it was
another matter, however, with the character and the moral statistics,
with which the bill concluded.

The page on which these details were to be found was as follows:

   REPORT OF THE CONDUCT AND PROGRESS OF ERNEST PONTIFEX.
   UPPER FIFTH FORM, HALF YEAR ENDING MIDSUMMER 1851

   Classics--Idle, listless and unimproving.
   Mathematics " " "
   Divinity " " "
   Conduct in house.--Orderly.
   General Conduct--Not satisfactory, on account of his great
   unpunctuality and inattention to duties.
   Monthly merit money 1s. 6d. 6d. 0d. 6d.  Total 2s. 6d.
   Number of merit marks 2 0 1 1 0 Total 4
   Number of penal marks 26 20 25 30 25 Total 126
   Number of extra penals 9 6 10 12 11 Total 48
   I recommend that his pocket money be made to depend upon his merit
   money.
   S. SKINNER, Head-master.





Ernest was thus in disgrace from the beginning of the holidays, but an
incident soon occurred which led him into delinquencies compared with
which all his previous sins were venial.

Among the servants at the Rectory was a remarkably pretty girl named
Ellen.  She came from Devonshire, and was the daughter of a fisherman who
had been drowned when she was a child.  Her mother set up a small shop in
the village where her husband had lived, and just managed to make a
living.  Ellen remained with her till she was fourteen, when she first
went out to service.  Four years later, when she was about eighteen, but
so well grown that she might have passed for twenty, she had been
strongly recommended to Christina, who was then in want of a housemaid,
and had now been at Battersby about twelve months.

As I have said the girl was remarkably pretty; she looked the perfection
of health and good temper, indeed there was a serene expression upon her
face which captivated almost all who saw her; she looked as if matters
had always gone well with her and were always going to do so, and as if
no conceivable combination of circumstances could put her for long
together out of temper either with herself or with anyone else.  Her
complexion was clear, but high; her eyes were grey and beautifully
shaped; her lips were full and restful, with something of an Egyptian
Sphinx-like character about them.  When I learned that she came from
Devonshire I fancied I saw a strain of far away Egyptian blood in her,
for I had heard, though I know not what foundation there was for the
story, that the Egyptians made settlements on the coast of Devonshire and
Cornwall long before the Romans conquered Britain.  Her hair was a rich
brown, and her figure--of about the middle height--perfect, but erring if
at all on the side of robustness.  Altogether she was one of those girls
about whom one is inclined to wonder how they can remain unmarried a week
or a day longer.

Her face (as indeed faces generally are, though I grant they lie
sometimes) was a fair index to her disposition.  She was good nature
itself, and everyone in the house, not excluding I believe even Theobald
himself after a fashion, was fond of her.  As for Christina she took the
very warmest interest in her, and used to have her into the dining-room
twice a week, and prepare her for confirmation (for by some accident she
had never been confirmed) by explaining to her the geography of Palestine
and the routes taken by St Paul on his various journeys in Asia Minor.

When Bishop Treadwell did actually come down to Battersby and hold a
confirmation there (Christina had her wish, he slept at Battersby, and
she had a grand dinner party for him, and called him "My lord" several
times), he was so much struck with her pretty face and modest demeanour
when he laid his hands upon her that he asked Christina about her.  When
she replied that Ellen was one of her own servants, the bishop seemed, so
she thought or chose to think, quite pleased that so pretty a girl should
have found so exceptionally good a situation.

Ernest used to get up early during the holidays so that he might play the
piano before breakfast without disturbing his papa and mamma--or rather,
perhaps, without being disturbed by them.  Ellen would generally be there
sweeping the drawing-room floor and dusting while he was playing, and the
boy, who was ready to make friends with most people, soon became very
fond of her.  He was not as a general rule sensitive to the charms of the
fair sex, indeed he had hardly been thrown in with any women except his
Aunts Allaby, and his Aunt Alethea, his mother, his sister Charlotte and
Mrs Jay; sometimes also he had had to take off his hat to the Miss
Skinners, and had felt as if he should sink into the earth on doing so,
but his shyness had worn off with Ellen, and the pair had become fast
friends.

Perhaps it was well that Ernest was not at home for very long together,
but as yet his affection though hearty was quite Platonic.  He was not
only innocent, but deplorably--I might even say guiltily--innocent.  His
preference was based upon the fact that Ellen never scolded him, but was
always smiling and good tempered; besides she used to like to hear him
play, and this gave him additional zest in playing.  The morning access
to the piano was indeed the one distinct advantage which the holidays had
in Ernest's eyes, for at school he could not get at a piano except quasi-
surreptitiously at the shop of Mr Pearsall, the music-seller.

On returning this midsummer he was shocked to find his favourite looking
pale and ill.  All her good spirits had left her, the roses had fled from
her cheek, and she seemed on the point of going into a decline.  She said
she was unhappy about her mother, whose health was failing, and was
afraid she was herself not long for this world.  Christina, of course,
noticed the change.  "I have often remarked," she said, "that those very
fresh-coloured, healthy-looking girls are the first to break up.  I have
given her calomel and James's powders repeatedly, and though she does not
like it, I think I must show her to Dr Martin when he next comes here."

"Very well, my dear," said Theobald, and so next time Dr Martin came
Ellen was sent for.  Dr Martin soon discovered what would probably have
been apparent to Christina herself if she had been able to conceive of
such an ailment in connection with a servant who lived under the same
roof as Theobald and herself--the purity of whose married life should
have preserved all unmarried people who came near them from any taint of
mischief.

When it was discovered that in three or four months more Ellen would
become a mother, Christina's natural good nature would have prompted her
to deal as leniently with the case as she could, if she had not been
panic-stricken lest any mercy on her and Theobald's part should be
construed into toleration, however partial, of so great a sin; hereon she
dashed off into the conviction that the only thing to do was to pay Ellen
her wages, and pack her off on the instant bag and baggage out of the
house which purity had more especially and particularly singled out for
its abiding city.  When she thought of the fearful contamination which
Ellen's continued presence even for a week would occasion, she could not
hesitate.

Then came the question--horrid thought!--as to who was the partner of
Ellen's guilt?  Was it, could it be, her own son, her darling Ernest?
Ernest was getting a big boy now.  She could excuse any young woman for
taking a fancy to him; as for himself, why she was sure he was behind no
young man of his age in appreciation of the charms of a nice-looking
young woman.  So long as he was innocent she did not mind this, but oh,
if he were guilty!

She could not bear to think of it, and yet it would be mere cowardice not
to look such a matter in the face--her hope was in the Lord, and she was
ready to bear cheerfully and make the best of any suffering He might
think fit to lay upon her.  That the baby must be either a boy or
girl--this much, at any rate, was clear.  No less clear was it that the
child, if a boy, would resemble Theobald, and if a girl, herself.
Resemblance, whether of body or mind, generally leaped over a generation.
The guilt of the parents must not be shared by the innocent offspring of
shame--oh! no--and such a child as this would be . . . She was off in one
of her reveries at once.

The child was in the act of being consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury
when Theobald came in from a visit in the parish, and was told of the
shocking discovery.

Christina said nothing about Ernest, and I believe was more than half
angry when the blame was laid upon other shoulders.  She was easily
consoled, however, and fell back on the double reflection, firstly, that
her son was pure, and secondly, that she was quite sure he would not have
been so had it not been for his religious convictions which had held him
back--as, of course, it was only to be expected they would.

Theobald agreed that no time must be lost in paying Ellen her wages and
packing her off.  So this was done, and less than two hours after Dr
Martin had entered the house Ellen was sitting beside John the coachman,
with her face muffled up so that it could not be seen, weeping bitterly
as she was being driven to the station.

 Alethea Pontifex, the unmarried younger sister of Theobald, visits Ernest at Roughborough and is much attracted to him. Though aware of the lamentable effects of his parental training, Alethea decides to take an active interest in Ernest because of his agreeable nature and his extraordinary interest in music. On the pretext of seeking a more healthful place to live outside London, Alethea takes a small house in Roughborough; there she ingratiates herself with the schoolmasters and pupils and, at the same time, affords Ernest a haven from his oppressive school life. Alethea's brief period of residency in Roughborough marks the happiest period of her nephew's young life. Ernest is provided with lessons in carpentry and then is given all the necessary tools and materials to construct an organ. Ernest prospers in health and spirit while he is engaged in these activities under the cheerful guidance of his aunt. Unfortunately, Alethea is suddenly stricken with typhoid fever and, after summoning Overton and her solicitor, dictates a will which provides for the bulk of her estate to be left in trust with Overton for Ernest until he reaches the age of twenty-eight. Following the untimely demise of his aunt, the saddened Ernest falls back into the deadly routine at school, a dreary situation which her presence had done so much to relieve. Another misfortune, however, is in the making for Ernest at Battersby. A young and charming domestic servant, Ellen, is discovered to be pregnant and, consequently, is forthwith ordered off the premises by Theobald. Christina, half suspecting Ernest of being Ellen's lover, both shudders and exults at the possibility of his involvement. Ernest, however, only knows Ellen as a friendly and pleasing presence in an otherwise drab and depressing household.

