 79 The question now arose what was to be done with the children. I explained to Ernest that their expenses must be charged to the estate and showed him how small a whole all the various items I proposed to charge would make in the income at my disposal. He was beginning to make difficulties when I quieted him by pointing out that the money had all come to me from his aunt over his own head and reminded him that there had been an understanding between her and me that I should do much as I was doing if occasion should arise. He wanted his children to be brought up in the fresh pure air and among other children who were happy and contented. But being still ignorant of the fortune that awaited him he insisted that they should pass their earlier years among the poor rather than the rich. I remonstrated but he was very decided about it and when I reflected that they were illegitimate. I was not sure but that what Ernest proposed might be as well for everyone in the end. They were still so young that it did not much matter where they were so long as they were with kindly decent people and in a healthy neighborhood. I shall be just as unkind to my children, he said, as my grandfather was to my father or my father to me. If they did not succeed in making their children love them, neither shall I. I say to myself that I should like to do so but so did they. I can make sure that they shall not know how much they would have hated me if they had had much to do with me. But this is all I can do. If I must ruin their prospects let me do so at a reasonable time before they are old enough to feel it. He mused a little and added with a laugh. A man first quarrels with his father about three quarters of a year before he is born. It is then he insists on setting up a separate establishment. When this has been once agreed to, the more complete the separation for ever after, the better for both. Then he said more seriously, I want to put the children where they will be well and happy and where they will not be betrayed into the misery of false expectations. In the end he remembered that on his Sunday walks he had more than once seen a couple who lived on the water side a few miles below Graves End, just where the sea was beginning, and who he thought would do. They had a family of their own fast coming on and the children seemed to thrive. Both father and mother indeed were comfortable well grown folks in whose hands young people would likely to have as fair a chance of coming to a good development as in those of any whom he knew. We went down to see this couple and as I thought no less well of them than Ernest did, we offered them a pound a week to take the children and bring them up as though they were their own. They jumped at the offer and in another day or two we brought the children down and left them, feeling that we had done as well as we could by them at any rate for the present. Then Ernest sent his small stock of goods to Debenhams, gave up the house he had taken two and a half years previously, and returned to civilization. I had expected that he would now rapidly recover and was disappointed to see him get as I thought decidedly worse. Indeed before long I thought him looking so ill that I insisted on his going with me to consult one of the most eminent doctors in London. This gentleman said there was no acute disease but that my young friend was suffering from nervous prostration, the result of long and severe mental suffering from which there was no remedy except time, prosperity and rest. He said that Ernest must have broken down later on but that he might have gone on for some months yet. It was the suddenness of the relief from tension which had knocked him over now. Cross him, said the doctor, at once. Crossing is the great medical discovery of the age. Shake him out of himself by shaking something else into him. I had not told him that money was no object to us and I think he had reckoned me up as not over-rich. He continued. Seeing is a mode of touching. Touching is a mode of feeding. Feeding is a mode of assimilation. Assimilation is a mode of recreation and reproduction and this is crossing. Shaking yourself into something else and something else into you. He spoke laughingly but it was plain he was serious. He continued. People are always coming to me who want crossing or change if you prefer it and who I know have not money enough to let them get away from London. This has set me thinking how I can best cross them even if they cannot leave home and I have made a list of cheap London amusements which I recommend to my patients. None of them cost more than a few shillings or take more than half a day or a day. I explained that there was no occasion to consider money in this case. I am glad of it, he said, still laughing. The homeopaths use Aurum as a medicine but they do not give it in large doses enough. If you can dose your young friend with this pretty freely, you will soon bring him round. However, Mr. Pontifex is not well enough to stand so great a change as going abroad yet. From what you tell me I should think he had had as much change lately as is good for him. If he were to go abroad now he would probably be taken seriously ill within a week. We must wait till he has recovered tone a little more. I will begin by ringing my London changes on him. He thought a little and then said, I have found the zoological gardens of service to many of my patients. I should prescribe for Mr. Pontifex a course of the larger mammals. Don't let him think he is taking them medicinally but let him go to their house twice a week for a fortnight and stay with the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, and the elephants till they begin to bore him. I find these beasts do my patients more good than any others. The monkeys are not a wide enough cross. They do not stimulate sufficiently. The larger carnivora are unsympathetic. The reptiles are worse than useless and the marsupials are not much better. Birds again except parrots are not very beneficial. He may look at them now and again but with the elephants and the pig tribe generally he should mix just now as freely as possible. Then you know to prevent monotony I should send him, say, to morning service at the abbey before he goes. He need not stay longer than the taedium. I don't know why but jubilates are seldom satisfactory. Just let him look in at the abbey and sit quietly in poet's corner till the main part of the music is over. Let him do this two or three times, not more, before he goes to the zoo. Then next day send him down to Gravesend by boat. By all means let him go to the theatres in the evenings and then let him come to see me again in a fortnight. Had the doctor been less eminent in his profession I should have doubted whether he was in earnest. But I knew him to be a man of business who would neither waste his own time nor that of his patience. As soon as we were out of the house we took a cab to Regent's Park and spent a couple of hours in sauntering round the different houses. Perhaps it was on account of what the doctor had told me but I certainly became aware of a feeling I had never experienced before. I mean that I was receiving an influx of new life or deriving new ways of looking at life which is the same thing by the process. I found the doctor quite right in his estimate of the larger mammals as the ones which on the whole were most beneficial and observed that earnest who had heard nothing of what the doctor had said to me lingered instinctively in front of them. As for the elephants, especially the baby elephant, he seemed to be drinking in large drafts of their lives to the recreation and regeneration of his own. We dined in the gardens and I noticed with pleasure that earnest appetite was already improved. Since this time, whenever I have been a little out of sorts myself, I have at once gone up to Regent's Park and have invariably been benefited. I mention this here in the hope that some one or other of my readers may find the hint a useful one. At the end of his fortnight my hero was much better, more so even than our friend the doctor had expected. Now, he said, Mr. Pontifex may go abroad and the sooner the better. Let him stay a couple of months. This was the first earnest had heard about his going abroad and he talked about my not being able to spare him for so long. I soon made this all right. It is now the beginning of April, said I. Go down to Marseille at once and take steamer to Nice. Then saunter down the Riviera to Genoa. From Genoa go to Florence, Rome and Naples, and come home by way of Venice and the Italian lakes. And won't you come too? He said eagerly. I said I did not mind if I did. So we began to make our arrangements next morning and completed them within a very few days. CHAPTER 80 We left by the night mail crossing from Dover. The night was soft and there was a bright moon upon the sea. Don't you love the smell of grease about the engine of a channel steamer? Isn't there a lot of hope in it? said earnest to me. For he had been to Normandy one summer as a boy with his father and mother and the smell carried him back to days before those in which he had begun to bruise himself against the great outside world. I always think one of the best parts of going abroad is the first thud of the piston and the first gurgling of the water when the paddle begins to strike it. It was very dreamy getting out at Calais. The trudging about with luggage in a foreign town at an hour when we were generally both of us in bed and fast asleep. But we settled down to sleep as soon as we got into the railway carriage and dozed till we had passed Amiens. Then waking when the first signs of morning Christmas were beginning to show themselves, I saw that earnest was already devouring every object we passed with quick sympathetic curiousness. There was not a peasant in a blouse driving his cart but times along the road to market, not a signalman's wife in her husband's hat and coat waving a green flag, not a shepherd taking out his sheep to the Dewey Pastors, not a bank of opening cow slips as we passed through the railway cuttings, but he was drinking it all in with an enjoyment too deep for words. The name of the engine that drew us was Mozart and earnest like this, too. We reached Paris by six and had just time to get across the town and take a morning express train to Marseille. But before noon my young friend was tired out and had resigned himself to a series of sleeps which were seldom intermitted for more than an hour or so together. He fought against this for a time, but in the end consoled himself by saying it was so nice to have so much pleasure that he could afford to throw a lot of it away. Having found a theory on which to justify himself, he slept in peace. At Marseille we rested, and there the excitement of the change proved, as I had feared it would, too much for my godson's still and feebled state. For a few days he was really ill, but after this he righted. For my own part I reckon being ill is one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. I remember being ill once in a foreign hotel myself and how much I enjoyed it. To lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, with no weight upon the mind, to hear the clinking of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the Scullion rinsed them and put them by. To watch the soft shadows come and go upon the ceiling as the sun came out or went behind a cloud. To listen to the pleasant murmurings of the fountain in the court below, and the shaking of the bells on the horse's collars and the clink of their hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them. Not only to be a lotus-eater, but to know that it was one's duty to be a lotus-eater. Oh, I thought to myself, if I could only now, having so forgotten care, drop off to sleep for ever. Would not this be a better piece of fortune than any I could ever hope for? Of course it would, but we would not take it though it were offered us. No matter what evil may befall us, we will mostly abide by it and see it out. I could see that Ernest felt much as I had felt myself. He said little, but noted everything. Once only did he frighten me. He had called me to his bedside just as it was getting dusk and said in a grave, quiet manner that he should like to speak to me. I have been thinking, he said, that I may perhaps never recover from this illness, and in case I do not, I should like you to know that there is only one thing which weighs upon me. I refer, he continued after a slight pause, to my conduct towards my father and mother. I have been much too good to them. I treated them much too considerably. On which he broke into a smile which assured me that there was nothing seriously amiss with him. On the walls of his bedroom were a series of French Revolution prints, representing events in the life of Lycurgus. There was grandeur d'hommes de l'Écougou, and l'Écougou conçut l'Iraq, and there was calciope à la cour. Under this was written in French and Spanish. Model de grâce et de beauté, la jeune calciope non moins sage que belle avait mérité l'estime et l'attachement du virtuel Lycurgus. Vivement est pris de temps de charme, l'illusque philosophe l'a conduisée dans le tombe de Junon, où il s'unir par un serment sacré. Après cette auguse cérémonie, Lycurgus s'embrassa de conduire sa jeune épouse au palais de son frère Polydec, roi de l'acédémon. Seigneur, lui dit-il, la virtuose calciope vient de recevoir mes voeux au pied des hôtels, j'ose vous prier d'approver cette union. Le roi témoigna d'abord comme surprise mais l'estime qu'il avait pour son frère lui inspira une réponse pleine de bienviance. Il s'approcha aussi tôt de calciope qu'il embrassa tendrement, comme là ensuite Lycurgus de prévenance est par une très satisfait. He called my attention to this and then said, somewhat timidly, that he would rather have married Ellen than calciope. I saw he was hardening and made no hesitation about proposing that in another day or two we should proceed upon our journey. I will not weary the reader by taking him with us over beaten ground. We stopped at Siena, Cortona, Orvieto, Perugia, and many other cities, and then after a fortnight passed between Rome and Naples went to the Venetian provinces and visited all those wondrous towns that lie between the southern slopes of the Alps and the northern ones of the Apennines, coming back at last by the St. Gothard. I doubt whether he had enjoyed the trip more than I did myself, but it was not till we were on the point of returning that Ernest had recovered strength enough to be called fairly well, and it was not for many months that he so completely lost all sense of the wounds which the last four years had inflicted on him, as to feel as though there were a scar and a scar only remaining. They say that when people have lost an arm or a foot they feel pains in it now and again for a long while after they have lost it. One pain which he had almost forgotten came upon him on his return to England. I mean the sting of his having been imprisoned. As long as he was only a small shopkeeper, his imprisonment mattered nothing. Nobody knew of it, and if they had known they would not have cared. Now, however, though he was returning to his old position, he was returning to it disgraced, and the pain from which he had been saved in the first instance by surrounding so new that he had hardly recognized his own identity in the middle of them came on him as from a wound inflicted yesterday. He thought of the high resolves which he had made in prison about using his disgrace as a vantage ground of strength rather than trying to make people forget it. That was all very well then, he thought to himself, when the grapes were beyond my reach, but now it is different. Besides, who but a prig would set himself high aims or make high resolves at all? Some of his old friends on learning that he had got rid of his supposed wife and was now comfortably off again wanted to renew their acquaintance. He was grateful to them and sometimes tried to meet their advances half way, but it did not do. An air long he shrank back into himself pretending not to know them. An infernal demon of honesty haunted him which made him say to himself, these men know a great deal, but do not know all if they did they would cut me and therefore I have no right to their acquaintance. He thought that everyone except himself was sans pair et sans reproche. Of course they must be for if they had not been would they not have been bound to warn all who had anything to do with them of their deficiencies. Well he could not do this and he would not have people's acquaintance under false pretenses. So he gave up even hankering after rehabilitation and fell back upon his old tastes for music and literature. Of course he has long since found out how silly all this was. How silly I mean in theory. For in practice it worked better than it ought to have done by keeping him free from liaisons which would have tied his tongue and made him see success elsewhere than where he came in time to see it. He did what he did instinctively and for no other reason than because it was most natural to him. So far as he thought at all he thought wrong. But what he did was right. I said something of this kind to him once, not so very long ago, and told him he had always aimed high. I never aimed at all, he replied a little indignantly, and you may be sure I should have aimed low enough if I had thought I had got the chance. I suppose after all that no one whose mind was not, to put it mildly, abnormal, ever yet aimed very high out of pure malice of forethought. I once saw fly a light a cup of hot coffee on which the milk had formed a thin skin. He perceived his extreme danger, and I noted with what ample strides and almost superhuman effort he struck across the treacherous surface and made for the edge of the cup, for the ground was not solid enough to let him raise himself from it by his wings. As I watched him I fancied that so supreme a moment of difficulty and danger might leave him with an increase of moral and physical power which might even descend in some measure to his offspring. But surely he would not have got the increased moral power if he could have helped it, and he will not knowingly alight upon another cup of hot coffee. The more I see the more sure I am that it does not matter why people do the right thing so long only as they do it, nor why they may have done the wrong thing if they have done it. The result depends upon the thing done and the motive goes for nothing. I have read somewhere but cannot remember where, that in some country district there was once a great scarcity of food, during which the poor suffered acutely. Many indeed actually died of starvation and all were hard put to it. In one village, however, there was a poor widow with a family of young children who, though she had a small visible means of subsistence, still looked well fed and comfortable, as also did all her little ones. How, everyone asked, did they manage to live? It was plain they had a secret, and it was equally plain that it could be no good one. For there came a hurried, hunted look over the poor woman's face if anyone alluded to the way in which she and hers drove when others starved. The family more over were sometimes seen out at unusual hours of the night, and evidently brought things home, which could hardly have been honestly come by. They knew they were under suspicion, and, being hitherto of excellent name, it made them very unhappy, for it must be confessed that they believe what they did to be uncanny, if not absolutely wicked. Nevertheless, in spite of this, they throve, and kept their strength when all their neighbors were pinched. At length matters came to a head, and the clergymen of the parish cross-questioned the poor woman so closely that, with many tears and a bitter sense of degradation, she confessed the truth. She and her children went into the hedges and gathered snails which they made into broth and ate. Could she ever be forgiven? Was there any hope of salvation for her, either in this world, or the next after such unnatural conduct? So again I have heard of an old Dowager Countess, whose money was all in consuls. She had had many sons, and in her anxiety to give the younger ones a good start, wanted a larger income than consuls would give her. She consulted her solicitor and was advised to sell her consuls, and invest in the London and North Western Railway, then about eighty-five. This was to her what eating snails was to the poor widow whose story I have told above, with shame and grief, as of one doing an unclean thing, but her boys must have their start she did as she was advised. Then for a long while she could not sleep at night and was haunted by the presage of disaster. Yet what happened? She started her boys and in a few years found her capital doubled into the bargain, on which she sold out and went back again to consuls and died in the full blessedness of fund-holding. She thought indeed that she was doing a wrong and dangerous thing, but this had absolutely nothing to do with it. Suppose she had invested in the full confidence of a recommendation by some eminent London banker whose advice was bad, and so had lost all her money, and suppose she had done this with a light heart and with no conviction of sin? Would her innocence of evil purpose and the excellence of her motive have stood her in any stead? Not they, but to return to my story. Townley gave my hero most trouble. Townley, as I have said, knew that Ernest would have money soon, but Ernest did not, of course, know that he knew it. Townley was rich himself and was married now. Ernest would be rich soon, had bona fide intended to be married already, and would doubtless marry a lawful wife later on. Such a man was worth taking pains with, and when Townley one day met Ernest in the street and Ernest tried to avoid him, Townley would not have it, but with his usual quick good nature read his thoughts, caught him, morally speaking, by the scruff of the neck, and turned him laughingly inside out, telling him he would have no such nonsense. Townley was just as much Ernest's idol now as he had ever been, and Ernest, who was very easily touched, felt more gratefully and warmly than ever towards him. But there was an unconscious something, which was stronger than Townley, and made my hero determined to break with him more determinately, perhaps then with any other living person. He thanked him in a low, hurried voice and pressed his hand, while tears came into his eyes in spite of all his efforts to repress them. If we meet again, he said, do not look at me, but if here after you hear of me writing things you do not like, think of me as charitably as you can. And so they parted. Townley is a good fellow, said I gravely, and you should not have cut him. Townley, he answered, is not only a good fellow, but he is without exception the very best man I ever saw in my life, except he paid me the compliment of saying yourself. Townley is my notion of everything which I should most like to be, but there is no real solidarity between us. I should be in perpetual fear of losing his good opinion if I said things he did not like, and I mean to say a great many things. He continued more merrily. Which Townley will not like? A man, as I have said already, can give up father and mother for Christ's sake tolerably easily for the most part, but it is not so easy to give up people like Townley. End of Chapter 80. Recording by Rhonda Federman. Chapters 81 and 82 of The Way of All Flesh. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rhonda Federman. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Chapter 81. So he fell away from all old friends except myself and three or four old intimates of my own, who were as sure to take to him as he to them, and who like myself enjoyed getting hold of a fresh young mind. Ernest attended to the keeping of my account books whenever there was anything which could possibly be attended to, which their seldom was, and spent the greater part of the rest of his time in adding to the many notes and tentative essays which he had already accumulated in his portfolios. Anyone who was used to writing could see at a glance that literature was his natural development, and I was pleased at seeing him settle down to it so spontaneously. I was less pleased, however, to observe that he would still occupy himself with none but the most serious. I had almost said solemn, subjects, just as he never cared about any but the most serious kind of music. I said to him one day that the very slender reward which God had attached to the pursuit of serious inquiry was a sufficient proof that he disapproved of it, or at any rate he did not set much store by it nor wish to encourage it. He said, oh, don't talk about rewards. Look at Milton, who got only five pounds for Paradise Lost. And a great deal too much, I rejoined promptly. I would have given him twice as much myself not to have written it at all. Ernest was a little shocked. At any rate, he said, laughingly, I don't write poetry. This was a cut at me, for my burlesques were, of course, written in rhyme. So I dropped the matter. After a time he took it into his head to reopen the question of his getting three hundred pounds a year for doing, as he said, absolutely nothing, and said he would try to find some employment which would bring him in enough to live upon. I laughed at this, but let him alone. He tried and tried very hard for a long while, but I need hardly say he was unsuccessful. The older I grow the more convinced I become of the folly and credulity of the public, but at the same time the harder do I see it is to impose oneself upon that folly and credulity. He tried editor after editor with article after article. Sometimes an editor listened to him and told him to leave his articles. He almost invariably, however, had them return to him in the end with a polite note saying that they were not suited for the particular paper to which he had sent them. And yet many of these very articles appeared in his later works and no one complained of them, not at least on the score of bad literary workmanship. I see, he said to me one day, that demand is very imperious and supply must be very suppliant. Once indeed the editor of an important monthly magazine accepted an article from him and he thought he had now got a footing in the literary world. The article was to appear in the next issue but one, and he was to receive proof from the printers in about ten days or a fortnight. But week after week passed and there was no proof, month after month went by and there was still no room for Ernest's article. At length, after about six months the editor one morning told him that he had filled every number of his review for the next ten months but that his article should definitely appear. On this he insisted on having his manuscript returned to him. Sometimes his articles were actually published and he found the editor had edited them according to his own fancy. Putting in jokes which he thought were funny or cutting out the very passage which Ernest had considered the point of the whole thing. And then, though the articles appeared, when it came to paying for them it was another matter and he never saw his money. Editors, he said to me one day about this time, are like the people who bought and sold in the Book of Revelation. There is not one but has the mark of the beast upon him. At last, after months of disappointment and many a tedious hour wasted in dingy anti-rooms. And of all anti-rooms those of editors appear to me to be the dreariest. He got a bona fide offer of employment from one of the first class weekly papers through an introduction I was able to get for him from one who had powerful influence with the paper in question. The editor sent him a dozen long books upon varied and difficult subjects and told him to review them in a single article within a week. In one book there was an editorial note to the effect that the writer was to be condemned. Ernest particularly admired the book he was desired to condemn. And feeling how hopeless it was for him to do anything like justice to the book submitted to him, returned them to the editor. At last one paper did actually take a dozen or so of articles from him and gave him cash down a couple of guineas apiece for them. But having done this it expired within a fortnight after the last of Ernest's articles had appeared. It certainly looked very much as if the other editors knew their business in declining to have anything to do with my unlucky godson. I was not sorry that he failed with periodical literature. For writing for reviews or newspapers is bad training for anyone who may aspire to write works of a more permanent interest. A young writer should have more time for reflection than he can get as a contributor to the daily or even weekly press. Ernest himself, however, was chagrined at finding how unremarkable he was. Why, he said to me, if I was a well-bred horse, or sheep, or a pure-bred pigeon, or lop-eared rabbit, I should be more salable. If I was even a cathedral in a colonial town people would give me something. But as it is they do not want me. And now that he was well and rested he wanted to set up shop again. But this, of course, I would not hear of. What care I, he said to me one day, about being what they call a gentleman? And his manner was almost fierce. What has being a gentleman ever done for me except make me less able to pray and more easy to be prayed upon? It has changed the manner of my being swindled. That is all. But for your kindness to me I should be penniless. Thank heaven I have placed my children where I have. I begged him to keep quiet a little longer and not talk about taking a shop. Will being a gentleman, he said, bring me money at the last and will anything bring me as much peace at the last as money will? They say that those who have riches enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven. By jove they do. They are like stroll-brugs. They live and live and live and are happy for a many a long year after they would have entered into the kingdom of heaven if they had been poor. I want to live long and to raise my children if I see that they would be happier for the raising. That is what I want and it is not what I am doing now that will help me. Being a gentleman is a luxury which I cannot afford. Therefore I do not want it. Let me go back to my shop again and do things for people which they want done and will pay me for doing for them. They know what they want and what is good for them better than I can tell them. It was hard to deny the soundness of this, and if he had been dependent only on the three hundred pounds a year which he was getting from me I should have advised him to open his shop again next morning. As it was I temporized and raised obstacles and quieted him from time to time as best I could. Of course he read Mr. Darwin's books as fast as they came out and adopted evolution as an article of faith. It seems to me, he said once, that I am like one of those caterpillars which, if they had been interrupted in making their hammock, must begin again from the beginning. So long as I went back a long way down in the social scale I got on all right and should have made money but for Ellen. But when I tried to take up the work at a higher stage I fell completely. I do not know whether the analogy holds good or not, but I am sure Ernest's instinct was right in telling him that after a heavy fall he had better begin life again at a very low stage and as I have just said I would have let him go back to his shop if I had not known what I did. As the time fixed upon by his aunt drew nearer I prepared him more and more for what was coming and at last on his 28th birthday I was able to tell him all and to show him the letter signed by his aunt upon her death bed to the effect that I was to hold the money in trust for him. His birthday happened that year, 1863, to be on a Sunday, but on the following day I transferred his shares into his own name and presented him with the account books which he had been keeping for the last year and a half. In spite of all that I had done to prepare him it was a long while before I could get him actually to believe that the money was his own. He did not say much, nor more did I, for I am not sure that I did not feel as much moved at having brought my long trusty ship to a satisfactory conclusion as Ernest did at finding himself owner of more than 70,000 pounds. When he did speak it was to jerk out a sentence or two of reflection at a time. If I were rendering this moment in music he said, I should allow myself free use of the augmented sex. A little later I remember his saying with a laugh that had something of a family likeness to his aunts. It is not the pleasure it causes me which I enjoy so. It is the pain it will cause to all my friends except yourself and townally. I said you cannot tell your father and mother. It would drive them mad. No, no, no he said. It would be too cruel. It would be like Isaac offering up Abraham and no thicket with a ram in it near at hand. Besides, why should I? We have cut each other these four years. Chapter 82 It almost seemed as though our casual mention of Theobald and Christina had in some way excited them from adorment to an active state. During the years that had elapsed since they had last appeared upon the scene they had remained at Battersby and had concentrated their affection upon their other children. It had been a bitter pill to Theobald to lose his power of plaguing his firstborn. If the truth were known I believe he had felt this more acutely than any disgrace which might have been shed upon him by earnest imprisonment. He had made one or two attempts to reopen negotiations through me, but I never said anything about them to earnest, for I knew it would upset him. I wrote however to Theobald that I had found his son inexorable and recommended him for the present at any rate to desist from returning to the subject. This I thought would be at once what earnest would like best and Theobald least. A few days, however, after earnest had come into his property, I received a letter from Theobald in closing one for earnest which I could not withhold. The letter ran thus, to my son earnest. Although you have more than once rejected my overtures, I appeal yet again to your better nature. Your mother, who has long been ailing, is, I believe, near her end. She is unable to keep anything on her stomach, and Dr. Martin holds out but little hopes of her recovery. She has expressed a wish to see you, and says she knows you will not refuse to come to her, which, considering her condition, I am unwilling to suppose you will. I remit you a post office order for your fare and will pay your return journey. If you want clothes to come in, order what you consider suitable and desire that the bill be sent to me, I will pay it immediately to an amount not exceeding eight or nine pounds, and if you will let me know what train you will come in by, I will send a carriage to meet you. Believe me, your affectionate father, T. Pontifex. Of course there could be no hesitation on earnest part. He could afford to smile now at his father's offering to pay for his clothes, and his sending him a post office order for the exact price of a second class ticket. And he was, of course, shocked at learning the state his mother was said to be in, and touched at her desire to see him. He telegraphed that he would come down at once. I saw him a little before he started, and was pleased to see how well his tailor had done by him. Townally himself could not have been appointed more becomingly. His portmanteau, his railway wrapper, everything he had about him, was in keeping. I thought he had grown much better looking than he had been at two or three and twenty. His year-and-a-half of peace had effaced all the ill effects of his previous suffering. And now that he had become actually rich, there was an air of ensouciance and good humor upon his face, as of a man with whom everything was going perfectly right, which would have made a much planar man good-looking. I was proud of him and delighted with him. I am sure, I said to myself, that whatever else he may do, he will never marry again. The journey was a painful one. As he drew near to the station and caught sight of each familiar feature, so strong was the force of association that he felt as though his coming into his aunt's money had been a dream. And he were again returning to his father's house as he had returned to it from Cambridge for the vacations. Do what he would, the old, dull weight of homesickness began to oppress him. His heart beat fast as he thought of his approaching meeting with his father and mother. And I shall have, he said to himself, to kiss Charlotte. Would his father meet him at the station? Would he be greeted as though nothing had happened, or would he be cold and distant? How again would he take the news of his son's good fortune? As the train drew up to the platform, Ernest's eye ran hurriedly over the few people who were in the station. His father's well-known form was not among them. But on the other side of the palings, which divided the station yard from the platform, he saw the pony carriage, looking as he thought rather shabby and recognized his father's coachman. In a few minutes, he was in the carriage driving towards Battersby. He could not help smiling as he saw the coachman give a look of surprise at finding him so much changed in personal appearance. The coachman was the more surprised because when Ernest had last been home, he had been dressed as a clergyman. And now he was not only a layman, but a layman who had got up regardless of expense. The change was so great that it was not till Ernest actually spoke to him that the coachman knew him. How are my father and mother? he asked hurriedly as he got into the carriage. The master's well, sir, was the answer. But the Mrs. is very sadly. The horse knew that he was going home and pulled hard at the reins. The weather was cold and raw, the very ideal of a November day. In one part of the road the floods were out, and near here they had to pass through a number of horsemen and dogs, for the hounds had met that morning at a place near Battersby. Ernest saw several people whom he knew, but they either, as is most likely, did not recognize him or did not know of his good luck. When Battersby Church Tower drew near, and he saw the rectory on top of the hill, its chimneys just showing above the leafless trees with which it was surrounded, he threw himself back in the carriage and covered his face with his hands. It came to an end, as even the worst quarters of an hour do, and in a few minutes more he was on the steps in front of his father's house. His father, hearing the carriage arrive, came a little way down the steps to meet him. Like the coachman he saw at a glance that Ernest was appointed as though money were abundant with him, and that he was looking robust and full of health and vigor. This was not what he had bargained for. He wanted Ernest to return, but he was to return as any respectable, well-regulated prodigal ought to return. Abject, broken-hearted, asking forgiveness from the tenderest and most long-suffering father in the whole world. If he should have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all, it should be only because absolute rags and tatters had been graciously dispensed with, whereas here he was swaggering in a gray ulster and a blue and white necktie, and looking better than Theobald had ever seen him in his life. It was unprincipled. Was it for this that he had been generous enough to offer to provide Ernest with decent clothes in which to come and visit his mother's deathbed? Could any advantage be meaner than the one which Ernest had taken? Well, he would not go to a penny beyond the eight or nine pounds which he had promised. It was fortunate he had given a limit. Why, he, Theobald had never been able to afford such a portmanteau in his life. He was still using an old one which his father had turned over to him when he went up to Cambridge. Besides, he had said clothes, not a portmanteau. Ernest saw what was passing through his father's mind, and felt that he ought to have prepared him in some way for what he now saw. But he had sent his telegram so immediately on receiving his father's letter, and had followed it so promptly that it would not have been easy to do so, even if he had thought of it. He put out his hand and said, laughingly, Oh, it's all paid for. I am afraid you do not know that Mr. Overton has handed over to me Aunt Aletheia's money. Theobald flushed scarlet. But why, he said, and these were the first words that actually crossed his lips. If the money was not his to keep, did he not hand it over to my brother John and me? He stammered a good deal and looked sheepish, but he got the words out. Because my dear father, said Ernest, still laughing, my aunt left it to him in trust for me, not in trust either for you or for my Uncle John. And it has accumulated till it is now over 70,000 pounds. But tell me, how is my mother? No, Ernest, said Theobald excitedly, the matter cannot rest here. I must know that this is all open and above board. This had the true Theobald ring and instantly brought the whole train of ideas which in Ernest's mind were connected with his father. The surroundings were the old familiar ones, but the surrounded were changed almost beyond power of recognition. He turned sharply on Theobald in a moment. I will not repeat the words he used, for they came out before he had time to consider them, and they might strike some of my readers as disrespectful. There were not many of them, but they were effectual. Theobald said nothing, but turned almost of an ashen color. He never again spoke to his son in such a way as to make it necessary for him to repeat what he had said on this occasion. Ernest quickly recovered his temper and again asked after his mother. Theobald was glad enough to take this opening now, and replied at once in the tone he would have assumed towards one he most particularly desired to conciliate, that she was getting rapidly worse in spite of all he had been able to do for her, and concluded that he would not be able to do for her. And concluded by saying she had been the comfort and mainstay of his life for more than 30 years, but that he could not wish it prolonged. The pair then went up to Christina's room, the one in which Ernest had been born. His father went before him and prepared her for her son's approach. The poor woman raised herself in bed as he came towards her, and weeping as she flung her arms around him, cried, Oh, I knew he would come. I knew I knew he could come. Ernest broke down and wept as he had not done for years. Oh, my boy, my boy, she said as soon as she could recover her voice. Have you never really been near us for all these years? Ah, you do not know how we have loved you and mourned over you. Papa just as much as I have. You know he shows his feelings less, but I can never tell you how very, very deeply he has felt for you. Sometimes at night I have thought I have heard footsteps in the garden, and have got quietly out of bed lest I should wake him, and gone to the window to look out. But there has been only dark or the grayness of the morning, and I have gone crying back to bed again. Still I think you have been near us, though you were too proud to let us know. And now at last I have you in my arms once more, my dearest, dearest boy. How cruel, how infamously unfeeling Ernest thought he had been. Mother, he said, forgive me. The fault was mine. I ought not to have been so hard. I was wrong, very wrong. The poor blubbering fellow meant what he said, and his heart yearned to his mother, as he had never thought that it could yearn again. But have you never, she continued, come, although it was in the dark and we did not know it? Oh, let me think that you have not been so cruel as we have thought you. Tell me that you came if only to comfort me and make me happier. Ernest was ready. I had no money to come with Mother till just lately. This was an excuse Christina could understand and make allowance for. Oh, then you would have come, and I will take the will for the deed, and now that I have you safe again, say that you will never, never leave me. Not till, not till. Oh, my boy, have they told you I am dying. She wept bitterly and buried her head in her pillow. End of Chapter 82. Recording by Rhonda Federman. The Way of All, Flesh by Samuel Butler. Chapter 83. Joey and Charlotte were in the room. Joey was now ordained and was curate to Theobald. He and Ernest had never been sympathetic, and Ernest saw at a glance that there was no chance of a rapprochement between them. He was a little startled at seeing Joey dressed as a clergyman, and looking so like what he had looked himself a few years earlier, for there was a good deal of family likeness between the pair. But Joey's face was cold, and it was illumined with no spark of Bohemianism. He was a clergyman and was going to do as other clergymen did, neither better nor worse. He greeted Ernest rather the Ohtanba. That is to say he began by trying to do so, but the affair tailed off unsatisfactorily. His sister presented her cheek to him to be kissed, how he hated it. He had been dreading it for the last three hours. She too was distant and reproachful in her manner, as such a superior person was sure to be. She had a grievance against him in as much as she was still unmarried. She laid the blame of this at Ernest's door. It was his misconduct she maintained in secret, which had prevented young men from making offers to her, and she ran him up a heavy bill for consequential damages. She and Joey had from the first developed an instinct for hunting with the hounds, and now these two had fairly identified themselves with the older generation. That is to say, as against Ernest. On this head there was an offensive and defensive alliance between them. But between themselves there was subdued but internecine warfare. This at least was what Ernest gathered, partly from his recollections of the parties concerned, and partly from his observations of their little ways during the first half hour after his arrival, while they were all together at his mother's bedroom. For as yet, of course, they did not know that he had money. He could see that they eyed him from time to time with a surprise not unmixed with indignation, and knew very well what they were thinking. Christina saw the change which had come over him, how much firmer and more vigorous both in mind and body he seemed than when she had last seen him. She saw, too, how well he was dressed, and, like the others, in spite of the return of all her affection for her first born, was a little alarmed about Theobald's pocket which she supposed would have to be mulked for all this magnificence. Perceiving this, Ernest relieved her mind and told her all about his aunt's bequest, and how I had husbanded it, in the presence of his brother and sister, who, however, pretended not to notice, or at any rate to notice as a matter in which they could hardly be expected to take an interest. His mother kicked a little at first against the moneys having gone to him, as she said, over his papa's head. Why, my dear, she said in a deprecating tone. This is more than ever your papa has had. But Ernest calmed her by suggesting that if Miss Pontifex had known how large the sum would become, she would have left the greater part of it to Theobald. This compromise was accepted by Christina, who, for width, ill as she was, entered with ardor into the new position, and taking it as a fresh point of departure, began spending Ernest's money for him. I may say in passing that Christina was right in saying that Theobald had never had so much money as his son was now possessed of. In the first place he had not had a fourteen years minority, with no outgoings to prevent the accumulation of the money. And in the second, he, like myself and almost everyone else, had suffered somewhat in the 1846 times. Not enough to cripple him or even seriously to hurt him, but enough to give him a scare and make him stick to debentures for the rest of his life. It was the fact of his son's being the richer man of the two, and of his being rich so young, which wrangled with Theobald even more than the fact of his having money at all. If he had had to wait till he was sixty or sixty-five, and become broken down from long failure in the meantime, why then he might have been allowed to have whatever some should suffice to keep him out of the workhouse and pay his deathbed expenses. But that he should come into seventy thousand pounds at eight and twenty, and have no wife and only two children. It was intolerable. Christina was too ill and in too great a hurry to spend the money to care much about such details as the foregoing, and she was naturally much more good-natured than Theobald. This piece of good fortune, she saw it at a glance, quite wiped out the disgrace of his having been imprisoned. There should be no more nonsense about that. The whole thing was a mistake, an unfortunate mistake, true, but the less said about it now, the better. Of course Ernest would come back and live at Battersby until he was married, and he would pay his father handsomely for board and lodging. In fact, it would be only right that Theobald should make a profit, nor would Ernest himself wish it to be other than a handsome one. This was far the best and simplest arrangement, and he could take his sister out more than Theobald or Joey cared to do, and would also doubtless entertain very handsomely at Battersby. Of course he would buy Joey a living, and make large presents yearly to his sister. Was there anything else? Oh, yes, he would become a county magnate now. A man with nearly four thousand pounds a year should certainly become a county magnate. He might even go into Parliament. He had very fair abilities, nothing indeed approaching such genius as Dr. Skinners, nor even as Theobalds. Still he was not deficient, and if he got into Parliament, so young too. There was nothing to hinder his being Prime Minister before he died, and if so, of course, he would become a peer. Oh, why did he not set about it all at once, so that she might live to hear people call her son my lord? Lord Battersby she thought would do very nicely, and if she was well enough to sit, he must certainly have her portrait painted at full length for one end of his large dining hall. It should be exhibited at the Royal Academy. Portrait of Lord Battersby's mother, she said to herself, and her heart fluttered with all its wanted vivacity. If she could not sit, happily she had been photographed not so very long ago, and the portrait had been as successful as any photograph could be of a face which depended so entirely upon its expression as her own. Perhaps the painter could take the portrait sufficiently from this. It was better after all that Ernest had given up the church. How far more wisely God arranges matters for us than ever we could do for ourselves. She saw it all now. It was Joey who would become the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Ernest would remain a layman and become Prime Minister. And so on, till her daughter told her it was time to take her medicine. I suppose this reverie, which is a mere fragment of what actually ran through Christina's brain, occupied about a minute and a half. But it, or the presence of her son, seemed to revive her spirits wonderfully. Ill, dying indeed, and suffering as she was, she brightened up so as to laugh once or twice quite merrily during the course of the afternoon. Next day Dr. Martin said she was so much better that he almost began to have hopes of her recovery again. Theobald, whenever this was touched upon as possible, would shake his head and say, we can't wish it prolonged. And then Charlotte caught Ernest unawares and said, You know, dear Ernest, that these ups and downs of talk are terribly agitating to Papa. He could stand whatever comes, but it is quite too wearing to him to think half a dozen different things backwards and forwards, up and down in the same 24 hours. And it would be kinder of you not to do it. I mean, not to say anything to him, even though Dr. Martin does hold out hopes. Charlotte had meant to imply that it was Ernest who was at the bottom of all the inconvenience felt by Theobald, herself, Joey, and everyone else, and she had actually got words out which should convey this. True, she had not dared to stick to them and had turned them off, but she had made them hers at any rate for one brief moment, and this was better than nothing. Ernest noticed throughout his mother's illness that Charlotte found immediate occasion to make herself disagreeable to him whenever either doctor or nurse pronounced her mother to be a little better, when she wrote to Crampsford to desire the prayers of the congregation. She was sure her mother would wish it and that the Crampsford people would be pleased at her remembrance of them. She was sending another letter on some quite different subject at the same time and put the two letters into the wrong envelopes. Ernest was asked to take these letters to the village post office and, imprudently, did so. When the error came to be discovered, Christina happened to have rallied a little. Charlotte flew at Ernest immediately and laid all the blame of the blunder upon his shoulders. Except that Joey and Charlotte were more fully developed, the house and its inmates, organic and inorganic, were little changed since Ernest had last seen them. The furniture and the ornaments on the chimney piece were just as they had ever been since he could remember anything at all. In the drawing room on either side of the fireplace, there hung the Carlo Dolce and the Sassafarato as in old times. There was the watercolor of a scene on the Lago Majori, copied by Charlotte from an original lenter by her drawing master, and finished under his direction. This was the picture of which one of the servants had said that it must be good, for Mr. Pontifex had given ten shillings for the frame. The paper on the walls was unchanged, the roses were still waiting for the bees, and the whole family still prayed night and morning to be made truly honest and conscientious. One picture only was removed, a photograph of himself which had hung under one of his father and between those of his brother and sister. Ernest noticed this at prayer time while his father was reading about Noah's Ark and how they dobbed it with slime, which, as it happened, had been Ernest's favorite text when he was a boy. Next morning, however, the photograph had found its way back again, a little dusty and with a bit of the gilding chipped off from one corner of the frame, but there sure enough it was. I suppose they had put it back when they found out how rich he had become. In the dining-room the Ravens were still trying to feed Elijah over the fireplace. What a crowd of reminiscences did not this picture bring back. Looking out of the window, there were the flower beds in the front garden exactly as they had been, and Ernest found himself looking hard against the blue door at the bottom of the garden to see if there was rain falling, as he had been used to look when he was a child doing lessons with his father. After their early dinner, when Joey and Ernest and their father were left alone, Theobald rose and stood in the middle of the hearth-rug under the Elijah picture and began to whistle in his old, absent way. He had two tunes only. One was, in my cottage near a wood, and the other was the Easter hymn. He had been trying to whistle them all his life, but had never succeeded. He whistled them as a clever bullfinch might whistle them. He had got them, but he had not got them right. He would be a semitone out in every third note, as though reverting to some remote musical progenitor, who had known none but the Lindian or the Freguian mode, or whatever would enable him to go most wrong while still keeping the tune near enough to be recognized. Theobald stood before the middle of the fire and whistled his tune softly in his own old way till Ernest left the room. The unchangedness of the external and the changedness of the internal he felt were likely to throw him completely off his balance. He strolled out of doors into the sodden spinny behind the house and solaced himself with a pipe. Air long he found himself at the door of the cottage of his father's coachman, who had married an old lady's maid of his mother's, to whom Ernest had been always much attached, as she also to him, for she had known him ever since he had been five or six years old. Her name was Susan. He sat down in the rocking chair before her fire, and Susan went on ironing at the table in front of the window, and a smell of hot flannel pervaded the kitchen. Susan had been retained too securely by Christina to be likely to side with Ernest all in a moment. He knew this very well, and did not call on her for the sake of support, moral or otherwise. He had called because he liked her, and also because he knew that he should gather much in a chat with her that he should not be able to arrive at in any other way. Oh Master Ernest, said Susan, why did you not come back when your poor papa and mama wanted you? I'm sure your ma has said to me a hundred times over if she has said it once that all should be exactly as it had been before. Ernest smiled to himself. It was no use explaining to Susan why he smiled, so he said nothing. For the first day or two I thought she never would get over it. She said it was a judgment upon her, and went on about things as she had said and done many years ago before your papa knew her, and I don't know what she didn't say or wouldn't have said only I stopped her. She seemed out of her mind like, and said that none of the neighbors would ever speak to her again. But the next day Mrs. Bushby, her that was Miss Cowie you know, called, and your ma always was so fond of her, and it seemed to do her a power of good. For the next day she went through all her dresses, and we settled how she should have them altered, and then all the neighbors called for miles and miles round, and your ma came in here, and said she had been going through the waters of misery, and the Lord had turned them to a well. Oh yes Susan said she, be sure it is so whom the Lord loveth he chased aneth Susan, and here she began to cry. As for him she went on, he has made his bed, and he must lie on it. When he comes out of prison his pa will know what is best to be done, and Master Ernest may be thankful that he has a pa so good and so long-suffering. Then when you would not see them, that was a cruel blow to your ma. Your pa did not say anything. You know your pa never does say very much unless he's downright waxy for the time. But your ma took on a dreadful for a few days, and I never saw the master look so black. But bless you it all went off in a few days, and I don't know that there's been much difference in either of them since then, not till your ma was took ill. On the night of his arrival he had behaved well at family prayers, and also on the following morning. His father read about David's dying injunctions to Solomon in the matter of Shimei, but he did not mind it. In the course of the day, however, his corns had been trodden on so many times that he was in a misbehaving humor. On this the second night after his arrival. He knelt next Charlotte and said the responses perfunctorily, not so perfunctorily that she should know for certain that he was doing it maliciously, but so perfunctorily as to make her uncertain whether he might be malicious or not. And when he had to pray to be made truly honest and conscientious, he emphasized the truly. I do not know whether Charlotte noticed anything, but she knelt at some distance from him during the rest of his stay. He assures me that this was the only spiteful thing he did during the whole time he was at Battersby. When he went up to his bedroom in which to do them justice they had given him a fire. He noticed what indeed he had noticed as soon as he was shown into it on his arrival, that there was an illuminated card framed and glazed over his bed with the words be the day weary or be the day long at last it ringeth to an even song. He wondered to himself how such people could leave such a card in a room in which their visitors would have to spend the last hours of their evening, but he let it alone. There's not enough difference between weary and long to warrant an or, he said, but I suppose it is all right. I believe Christina had bought the card at a bizarre in aid of the restoration of a neighboring church, and having been bought it had got to be used. Besides the sentiment was so touching and the illumination was really lovely. Anyhow, no irony could be more complete than leaving it in my hero's bedroom, though assuredly no irony had been intended. On the third day after Ernest's arrival, Christina relapsed again. For the last two days she had been in no pain and had slept a good deal. Her son's presence still seemed to cheer her, and she often said how thankful she was to be surrounded on her deathbed by a family so happy, so God-fearing, so united, but now she began to wander, and being more sensible of the approach of death seemed also more alarmed at the thoughts of the day of judgment. She ventured more than once or twice to return to the subject of her sins and implored Theobald to make quite sure that they were forgiven her. She hinted that she considered his professional reputation was at stake. It would never do for his own wife to fail in securing at any rate a pass. This was touching Theobald on a tender spot. He winced and rejoined with an impatient toss of the head. But, Christina, they are forgiven you, and then he entrenched himself in a firm but dignified manner behind the Lord's prayer. When he rose he left the room, but called Ernest out to say that he could not wish it prolonged. Joey was no more use in quieting his mother's anxiety than Theobald had been. Indeed, he was only Theobald and Water, at last Ernest, who had not liked into fearing, took the matter in hand and, sitting beside her, let her pour out her grief to him without let or hindrance. She said she knew she had not given up all for Christ's sake. It was this that weighed upon her. She had given up much and had always tried to give up more year by year. Still, she knew very well that she had not been so spiritually minded as she ought to have been. If she had, she should probably have been favored with some direct vision or communication, whereas even though God had vouchsafed such direct and visible angelic visits to one of her dear children, yet she had had none such herself, nor even had Theobald. She was talking rather to herself than to Ernest as she said these words, but they made him open his ears. He wanted to know whether the angel had appeared to Joey or to Charlotte. He asked his mother, but she seemed surprised, as though she expected him to know all about it. Then, as if she remembered, she checked herself and said, I, yes, you know nothing of all this, and perhaps it is as well. Ernest could not, of course, press the subject, so he never found out which of his near relations it was who had had direct communication with an immortal. The others never said anything to him about it, though whether this was because they were ashamed or because they feared he would not believe the story and thus increase his own damnation, he could not determine. Ernest has often thought about this since. He tried to get the facts out of Susan, who he was sure would know, but Charlotte had been beforehand with him. No master Ernest, said Susan when he began to question her. Your ma has sent a message to me by Ms. Charlotte, as I am not to say nothing at all about it, and I never will. Of course, no further questioning was possible. It had more than once occurred to Ernest that Charlotte did not in reality believe more than he did himself, and this incident went far to strengthen his surmises, but he wavered when he remembered how she had misdirected the letter, asking for the prayers of the congregation. I suppose, he said to himself gloomily, she does believe in it, after all. Then Christina returned to the subject of her own want of spiritual mindedness. She even harped on the old grievance of her having eaten black puddings. True, she had given them up years ago, but for how many years had she not persevered in eating them after she had had misgivings about their having been forbidden? Then there was something that weighed on her mind that had taken place before her marriage, and she should like. Ernest interrupted. My dear mother, he said, you were ill, and your mind is unstrung. Others can now judge better about you than you can. I assure you that to me you seem to have been the most devotedly unselfish wife and mother that ever lived. Even if you have not literally given up all for Christ's sake, you have done so practically as far as it was in your power, and more than this is not required of anyone. I believe you will not only be a saint, but a very distinguished one. At these words, Christina brightened. You give me hope, you give me hope, she cried, and dried her eyes. She made him assure her over and over again that this was his solemn conviction. She did not care about being a distinguished saint now. She would be quite content to be among the meanest who actually got into heaven, provided she could make sure of escaping that awful hell. The fear of this evidently was omnipresent with her, and in spite of all Ernest could say, he did not quite dispel it. She was rather ungrateful, I must confess, for after more than an hour's consolation from Ernest, she prayed for him that he might have the blessing in this world, inasmuch as she always feared that he was the only one of her children whom she should never meet in heaven. But she was then wandering, and was hardly aware of his presence. Her mind, in fact, was reverting to states in which it had been before her illness. On Sunday Ernest went to church as a matter of course, and noted that the ever-receding tide of evangelicalism had ebbed many a stage lower, even during the few years of his absence. His father used to walk to the church through the rectory garden and across a small, intervening field. He had been used to walk in a tall hat, his master's gown, and wearing a pair of Geneva bands. Ernest noticed that the bands were no longer, and low, greater marvels still. Theobald did not preach in his master's gown, but in a surplus. The whole character of the service was changed. You could not say it was high even now, for high church Theobald could never under any circumstances become. But the old, easy-going slovenliness, if I may say so, was gone forever. The orchestral accompaniments to the hymns had disappeared while my hero was yet a boy. But there had been no chanting for some years after the harmonium had been introduced. While Ernest was at Cambridge, Charlotte and Christina had prevailed on Theobald to allow the canticles to be sung. And sung they were to old-fashioned double-chance by Lord Mornington and Dr. Dupuis and others. Theobald did not like it, but he did it, or allowed it to be done. Then Christina said, My dear, do you know, I really think, Christina always really thought, that the people liked the chanting very much, and that it will be a means of bringing many to church who have stayed away hitherto. I was talking about it to Mrs. Goodhew, and to old misright only yesterday, and they quite agreed with me. But they all said that we ought to chant the glory be to the Father at the end of each of the Psalms instead of saying it. Theobald looked black. He felt the waters of chanting rising higher and higher upon him inch by inch. But he felt also, he knew not why, that he had better yield than fight. So he ordered glory be to the Father to be chanted in future. But he did not like it. Really, Mama dear, said Charlotte when the battle was won. You should not call it glory be to the Father. You should say Gloria. Of course my dear, said Christina, and she said Gloria forever after. Then she thought what a wonderfully clever girl Charlotte was, and how she ought to marry no one lower than a bishop. By and by when Theobald went away for an unusually long holiday one summer, he could find no one but a rather high church clergyman to take his duty. This gentleman was a man of weight in the neighborhood, having considerable private means, but without preferment. In the summer he would often help his brother clergyman, and it was through his being willing to take the duty at Battersby for a few Sundays that Theobald had been able to get away for so long. On his return, however, he found that the whole psalms were being chanted as well as the glories. The influential clergyman, Christina and Charlotte, took the bull by the horns as soon as Theobald returned, and laughed it all off, and the clergyman laughed and bounced, and Christina laughed and coaxed, and Charlotte uttered unexceptionable sentiments, and the thing was done now and could not be undone, and it was no use grieving over spilt milk. So henceforth the psalms were to be chanted, but Theobald gristled over it in his heart, and he did not like it. During this same absence, what had Mrs. Goodhew, an old misright, taken to doing but turning towards the east while repeating the belief? Theobald disliked this even worse than chanting. When he said something about it in a timid way at dinner after service, Charlotte said, Really, dear Papa, you must take to calling it the creed and not the belief. And Theobald winced impatiently and snorted meek defiance, but the spirit of her aunts Jane and Eliza was strong in Charlotte, and the thing was too small to fight about, and he turned it off with a laugh. As for Charlotte, thought Christina, I believe she knows everything. So Mrs. Goodhew, an old misright, continued to turn to the east during the time the creed was said, and by and by others followed their example, and ere long the few who had stood out yielded and turned eastward to. And then Theobald made as though he had thought it all very right and proper from the first. But like it he did not. By and by Charlotte tried to make him say hallelujah instead of hallelujah, but this was going too far, and Theobald turned and she got frightened and ran away. And they changed the double chance for single ones, and altered them psalm by psalm, and in the middle of the psalms, just where a cursory reader would see no reason why they should do so, they changed from major to minor, and from minor back to major, and then they got hymns ancient and modern, and as I have said, they robbed him of his beloved bands, and they made him preach in a surplus, and he must have celebration of the Holy Communion once a month, instead of only five times in the year as here to four, and he struggled in vain against the unseen influence which he felt to be working in season and out of season, against all that he had been accustomed to consider most distinctive of his party. Where it was or what it was, he knew not, nor exactly what it would do next, but he knew exceedingly well that go where he would, it was undermining him, that it was too persistent for him, that Christina and Charlotte liked it a great deal better than he did, and that it could end in nothing but Rome. Easter decorations indeed, Christmas decorations in reason were proper enough, but Easter decorations? Well, it might last his time. This was the course things had taken in the Church of England during the last 40 years. This set had been steadily in one direction. A few men who knew what they wanted made cat's paws of the Christmas and the charlots, and the Christmas and the charlots made cat's paws of the Mrs. Good Hughes and the Old Miss Wrights, and Mrs. Good Hughes and Old Miss Wrights told the Mr. Good Hughes and the Young Miss Wrights what they should do, and when the Mr. Good Hughes and the Young Miss Wrights did it, the little Good Hughes and the rest of the spiritual flock did as they did, and the Theobalds went for nothing. Step by step, day by day, year by year, parish by parish, diocese by diocese, this was how it was done, and yet the Church of England looks with no friendly eyes upon the theory of evolution or dissent with modification. My hero thought over these things, and remembered many a ruse on the part of Christina and Charlotte, and many a detail of the struggles which I cannot further interrupt my story to refer to, and he remembered his father's favorite retort that it could only end in Rome. When he was a boy he had firmly believed this, but he smiled now as he thought of another alternative clear enough to himself, but so horrible that it had not even occurred to Theobald. I mean the toppling over of the whole system. At that time he welcomed the hope that the absurdities and unrealities of the Church would end in her downfall. Since then he has come to think very differently, not as believing in the cow jumping over the moon more than he used to, or more probably that nine-tenths of the clergy themselves, who know as well as he does that their outward invisible symbols are out of date. But because he knows the baffling complexity of the problem when it comes to deciding what is actually to be done, also now that he has seen them more closely, he knows better the nature of those wolves in sheep's clothing, who are thirsting for the blood of their victim and exulting so clamorously over its anticipated early fall into their clutches. The spirit behind the Church is true, though her letter, true once, is now true no longer. The spirits behind the high priest of science is as lying as its letter. The Theobalds who do what they do because it seems to be the correct thing, but who in their hearts neither like it nor believe in it are in reality the least dangerous of all classes to the peace and liberties of mankind. The man to fear is he who goes at things with the cockshorness of pushing vulgarity and self-conceit. These are not vices which can be justly laid to the charge of the English clergy. Many of the farmers came up to Ernest when service was over and shook hands with him. He found everyone knew of his having come into a fortune. The fact was that Theobald had immediately told two or three of the greatest gossips in the village and the story was not long and spreading. It simplified matters, he said to himself, a good deal. Ernest was civil to Mrs. Goodhew for her husband's sake, but he gave Miss Wright the cut direct, for he knew that she was only Charlotte in disguise. A week passed slowly away. Two or three times the family took the sacrament together around Christina's deathbed. Theobalds and patients became more and more transparent dally, but fortunately Christina, who even if she had been well, would have been ready to shut her eyes to it, became weaker and less coherent in mind also so that she hardly, if at all, perceived it. After Ernest had been in the house about a week, his mother fell into a comatose state which lasted a couple of days and in the end went away so peacefully that it was like the blending of sea and sky in mid-ocean upon a soft hazy day when none can say where the earth ends and the heavens begin. Indeed, she died to the realities of life with less pain than she had waked from many of its illusions. She has been the comfort and mainstay of my life for more than thirty years, said Theobald as soon as it was all over, but one could not wish it prolonged. And he buried his face in his handkerchief to conceal his want of emotion. Ernest came back to town a day after his mother's death and returned to the funeral accompanied by myself. He wanted me to see his father in order to prevent any possible misapprehension about Miss Pontifex's intentions, and I was such an old friend of the family that my presence at Christina's funeral would surprise no one. With all her faults I had always rather liked Christina. She would have chopped Ernest or anyone else into little pieces of mincemeat to gratify the slightest wish of her husband, but she would not have chopped him up for anyone else. And so long as he did not cross her she was very fond of him. By nature she was of an even temper, more willing to be pleased than ruffled, very ready to do a good-natured action, provided it did not cost her much exertion nor involve expense to Theobald. Her own little purse did not matter. Anyone might have as much of that as he or she could get after she had reserved what was absolutely necessary for her dress. I could not hear of her end as Ernest described it to me without feeling very compassionate towards her. Indeed her own son could hardly have felt more so. I at once therefore consented to go down to the funeral. Perhaps I was also influenced by a desire to see Charlotte and Joey and whom I felt interested on hearing what my godson had told me. I found Theobald looking remarkably well. Everyone said he was bearing it so beautifully. He did indeed, once or twice, shake his head and say that his wife had been the comfort and mainstay of his life for over thirty years. But there the matter ended. I stayed over the next day which was Sunday and took my departure on the following morning after having told Theobald all that his son wished me to tell him. Theobald asked me to help him with Christina's epitaph. I would say, he said, as little as possible. Eulogies of the departed are in most cases both unnecessary and untrue. Christina's epitaph shall contain nothing which shall be either the one or the other. I should give her name, the dates of her birth and death, and of course say she was my wife. And then I think I would wind up with a simple text. Her favorite one, for example. None indeed could be more appropriate. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. I said I thought this would be very nice, and it was settled. So Ernest was sent to give the order to Mr. Prosser, the stone mason in the nearest town, who said it came from the Beatitudes. CHAPTER 84 On our way to town, Ernest broached his plans for spending the next year or two. I wanted him to try and get more into society again, but he brushed the society at once as the very last thing he had a fancy for. For society indeed of all sorts, except of course that of a few intimate friends, he had had an unconquerable aversion. I always did hate those people, he said. And they always have hated, and always will, hate me. I am an Ishmael by instinct, as much as by accident of circumstances. But if I keep out of society, I shall be less vulnerable than Ishmaels generally are. The moment a man goes into society, he becomes vulnerable all round. I was very sorry to hear him talk in this way, for at every strength a man may have, he should surely be able to make more of it if he act in concert than alone. I said this. I don't care, he answered, whether I make the most of my strength or not. I don't know whether I have any strength, but if I have, I dare say it will find some way of exerting itself. I will live as I like living, not as other people would like me to live. Thanks to my aunt and you, I can afford the luxury of a quiet, unobtrusive life of self-indulgence, said he laughing. And I mean to have it. You know I like writing, he added after a pause of some minutes. I have been a scribbler for years. If I am to come to the fore at all, it must be by writing. I had already long since come to that conclusion myself. Well, he continued. There are a lot of things that want saying which no one dares to say, a lot of shams which want attacking, and yet no one attacks them. It seems to me that I can say things which not another man in England except myself will venture to say, and yet which are crying to be said. I said, but who will listen? If you say things which nobody else would dare to say is not this much the same as saying what everyone else except yourself knows to be better left unsaid just now? Perhaps, he said, but I don't know it. I am bursting with these things, and it is my fate to say them. I knew there would be no stopping him, so I gave in and asked what question he felt special desire to burn his fingers with in the first instance. Marriage, he rejoined promptly, and the power of disposing of his property after a man is dead. The question of Christianity is virtually settled, or if not settled, there is no lack of those engaged in settling it. The question of the day now is marriage and the family system. That, I said dryly, is a hornet's nest indeed. Yes, he said no less dryly, but hornet's nests are exactly what I happen to like. Before, however, I begin to stir up this particular one, I propose to travel for a few years with the special object of finding out what nations now existing are the best, comliest and most lovable, and also what nations have been so in times past. I want to find out how these people live and have lived, and what their customs are. I have very vague notions upon the subject as yet, but the general impression I have formed is that, putting ourselves on one side, the most vigorous and amiable of known nations are the modern Italians, the old Greeks and Romans, and the South Sea Islanders. I believe that these nice peoples have not as a general rule been purists, but I want to see those of them who can yet be seen. They are the practical authorities on the question, what is best for man, and I should like to see them and find out what they do. Let us settle the fact first and fight about the moral tendencies afterwards. In fact, I said laughingly, you mean to have high old times. Neither higher nor lower was the answer than those people whom I can find to have been the best in all ages. But let us change the subject. He put his hand into his pocket and brought out a letter. My father, he said, gave me this letter this morning with the seal already broken. He passed it over to me, and I found it to be the one which Christina had written before the birth of her last child and which I have given in an earlier chapter. And you do not find this letter, said I, affect the conclusion which you have just told me you have come to concerning your present plans? He smiled and answered, no, but if you do what you have sometimes talked about and turn the adventures of my unworthy self into a novel, mind you, print this letter. Why so, said I, feeling as though such a letter as this should have been held sacred from the public gaze? Because my mother would have wished it published, if she had known you were writing about me and had this letter in your possession, she would above all things have desired that you should publish it. Therefore publish it if you write it all. This is why I have done so. Within a month, Ernest carried his intention into effect, and having made all the arrangements necessary for his children's welfare, left England before Christmas. I heard from him now and again and learned that he was visiting almost all parts of the world, but only staying in those places where he found the inhabitants unusually good-looking and agreeable. He said he had filled an immense quantity of notebooks, and I have no doubt he had. At last in the spring of 1867, he returned, his luggage stained with the variation of each hotel advertisement, twist here and Japan. He looked very brown and strong, and so well-favored that it almost seemed as if he must have caught some good looks from the people among whom he had been living. He came back to his old rooms in the temple and settled down as easily as if he had never been away a day. One of the first things we did was to go and see the children. We took the train to Gravesend and walked fence for a few miles across the river till we came to the solitary house where the good people lived with whom Ernest had placed them. It was a lovely April morning, but with a fresh air blowing from off the sea. The tide was high and the river was alive with shipping coming up with wind and tide. Seagulls wheeled around us overhead. Seaweed clung everywhere to the banks which the advancing tide had not yet covered. Everything was of the sea, sea, and the fine bracing air which blew over the water made me feel more hungry than I had done for many a day. I did not see how children could live in a better physical atmosphere than this, and applauded the selection which Ernest had made on behalf of his youngsters. While we were still a quarter of a mile off we heard shouts and children's laughter and could see a lot of boys and girls romping together and running after one another. We could not distinguish our own two, but when we got near they were soon made out, for the other children were blue-eyed, flaxen-pated little folks, whereas ours were dark and straight haired. We had written to say that we were coming, but had desired that nothing should be said to the children, so these paid no more attention to us than they would have done to any other stranger who happened to visit a spot so unfrequented except by seafaring folk which we plainly were not. The interest, however, in us was much quickened when it was discovered that we had got our pockets full of oranges and sweeties to an extent greater than it had entered into their small imaginations to conceive as possible. At first we had great difficulty in making them come near us. They were like a lot of young wild cults, very inquisitive, but very coy and not to be cajoled easily. The children were nine in all, five boys and two girls belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Rollings, and two to Ernest. I never saw a finer lot of children than the young Rollings. The boys were hearty, robust, fearless little fellows with eyes as clear as hawks. The elder girl was exquisitely pretty, but the younger one was a mere baby. I felt as I looked at them that if I had had children of my own I could have wished no better home for them, nor better companions. Georgie and Alice, Ernest's two children, were evidently quite as one family with the others and called Mr. and Mrs. Rollings Uncle and Aunt. They had been so young when they were first brought to the house that they had been looked upon in the light of new babies who had been born into the family. They knew nothing about Mr. and Mrs. Rollings being paid so much a week to look after them. Ernest asked them all what they wanted to be. They had only one idea. One in all, Georgie among the rest, wanted to be bargemen. Young ducks could hardly have a more evident hankering after the water. And what do you want, Alice? said Ernest. Oh, she said, I'm going to marry Jack here and be a bargeman's wife. Jack was the eldest boy, now nearly twelve, a sturdy little fellow, the image of what Mr. Rollings must have been at his age. As we looked at him so straight and well grown and well done all around, I could see it was in Ernest's mind as much as in mine that she could hardly do much better. Come here, Jack, my boy, said Ernest. Here is a shilling for you. The boy blushed and could hardly be got to come in spite of our previous blandishments. He had had pennies given him before, but shillings, never. His father caught him good-naturedly by the ear and lugged him to us. He is a good boy, Jack is, said Ernest to Mr. Rollings. I am sure of that. Yes, said Mr. Rollings, he is a wary good boy. Only that I can't get him to learn his reading and writing. He don't like going to school. That's the only complaint I have against him. I don't know what's the matter with all my children. And yours, Mr. Pontifex, is just as bad. But they, none of them, likes book learning. Though they learn anything else fast enough. Why, as for Jack here, he's almost as good a bargeman as I am. And he looked fondly and patronizingly towards his offspring. I think, said Ernest to Mr. Rollings, if he wants to marry Alice when he gets older, he had better do so. And he shall have as many barges as he likes. In the meantime, Mr. Rollings, say in what way money can be of use to you, and whatever you can make useful is at your disposal. I need hardly say that Ernest made matters easy for this good couple. One stipulation, however, he insisted on, namely, there was to be no more smuggling, and that the young people were to be kept out of this. For a little bird had told Ernest that smuggling, in a quiet way, was one of the resources of the Rollings family. Mr. Rollings was not sorry to assent to this, and I believed it is now many years since the Coast Guard people have suspected any of the Rollings family as offenders against the Revenue Law. Why should I take them from where they are, said Ernest to me in the train as we went home, to send them to schools where they will not be one half so happy, and where their illegitimacy will very likely be a worry to them? Georgie wants to be a bargeman. Let him begin as one. The sooner the better. He may as well begin with this as with anything else. Then, if he shows developments, I can be on the lookout to encourage them and make things easy for him. While if he shows no desire to go ahead, what on earth is the good of trying to shove him forward? Ernest, I believe, went on with the homily upon education generally, and upon the way in which young people should go through the embryonic stages with their money, as much as with their limbs, beginning life in a much lower social position than in which their parents were, and a lot more which has since been published. But I was getting on in years and the walk and the bracing air had made me sleepy, so air we had got past Greenhuth Station on our return journey, and I had sunk into a refreshing sleep.