 71 It seems he had been patrolling the streets for the last three or four nights. I suppose in search of something to do. At any rate knowing better what he wanted to get than how to get it. Nevertheless what he wanted was in reality so easily to be found that it took a highly educated scholar like himself to be unable to find it. But however this may be he had been scared and now saw lions where there were none and was shocked and frightened and night after night his courage had failed him and he had returned to his lodgings at Laystall Street without accomplishing his errand. He had not taken me into his confidence upon this matter and I had not inquired what he did with himself in the evenings. At last he had concluded that however painful it might be to him he would call on Mrs. Jupp, who he thought would be able to help him if anyone could. He had been walking moodily from seven till about nine and now resolved to go straight to Ash Pit Place and make a mother confessor of Mrs. Jupp without more delay. Of all the tasks that could be performed by mortal woman there was none which Mrs. Jupp would have liked better than the one Ernest was thinking of imposing upon her. Nor do I know that in his scared and broken down state he could have done much better than he now proposed. Miss Jupp would have made it very easy for him to open his grief to her. Indeed she would have coaxed it all out of him before he knew where he was. But the fates were against Mrs. Jupp and the meeting between my hero and his former landlady was postponed Zinedier for his determination had hardly been formed and he had not gone more than a hundred yards in the direction of Mrs. Jupp's house when a woman accosted him. He was turning from her as he had turned from so many others when she started back with a movement that aroused his curiosity. He had hardly seen her face but being determined to catch sight of it followed her as she hurried away and passed her. Then turning around he saw that she was none other than Ellen. The housemaid who had been dismissed by his mother eight years previously. He ought to have assigned Ellen's unwillingness to see him to its true cause but a guilty conscience made him think she had heard of his disgrace and was turning away from him in contempt. Brave as has been his resolutions about facing the world, this was more than he was prepared for. What you too shun me Ellen? he exclaimed. The girl was crying bitterly and did not understand him. Oh master earnest she sobbed. Let me go you are too good for the likes of me to speak to now. Why Ellen he said. What nonsense you talk. You haven't been in prison have you? Oh no no no not so bad as that she exclaimed passionately. Well I have said earnest with a forced laugh. I came out three or four days ago after six months with hard labor. Ellen did not believe him but she looked at him with a lor master earnest and dried her eyes at once. The ice was broken between them for as a matter of fact Ellen had been in prison several times and though she did not believe earnest his merely saying he had been in prison made her feel more at ease with him. For her there were two classes of people those who had been in prison and those who had not. The first she looked upon as fellow creatures and more or less Christians. The second with few exceptions she regarded with suspicion not wholly unmingled with contempt. Ellen earnest told her what had happened to him during the last six months and by and by she believed him. Master earnest said she after they had talked a quarter of an hour or so. There is a place over the way where they sell tripe and onions. I know you was always fond of tripe and onions. Let's go over and have some and we can talk better there. So the pair crossed the street and entered the tripe shop. Ernest ordered supper. And how is your poor dear mama and your dear papa, master Ernest, said Ellen, who had now recovered herself and was quite at home with my hero. Oh dear dear me she said I did love your pa. He was a good gentleman he was and your ma too. It would do anyone good to live with her I'm sure. Ernest was surprised and hardly knew what to say. He had expected to find Ellen indignant at the way she had been treated and inclined to lay the blame of her having fallen to her present state at his father's and mother's door. It was not so. Her only recollection of Battersby was as a place where she had had plenty to eat and drink, not too much hard work and where she had not been scolded. When she heard that Ernest had quarreled with his father and mother she assumed as a matter of course that the fault must lie entirely with Ernest. Oh your poor poor ma, said Ellen. She was always so very fond of you, master Ernest. You was always her favorite. I can't bear to think of anything between you and her. To think now of the way she used to have me into the dining room and teach me my catechism, that she did. Oh, master Ernest, you really must go and make it all up with her. Indeed you must. Ernest felt rueful, but he had resisted so valiantly already that the devil might have saved himself the trouble of trying to get at him through Ellen in the matter of his father and mother. He changed the subject, and the pair warmed to one another as they had their tripe and pots of beer. For all people in the world Ellen was perhaps the one to whom Ernest could have spoken most freely at this juncture. He told her what he thought he could have told no one else. You know, Ellen, he concluded. I had learnt as a boy things I ought not to have learnt, and had never had a chance of that which would have set me straight. Gentle folks is always like that, said Ellen musingly. I believe you are right, but I am no longer a gentleman, Ellen, and I don't see why I should be like that any longer, my dear. I want you to help me to be like something else as soon as possible. Lord, master Ernest, whatever can you be meaning? The pair soon afterwards left the eating-house and walked up Fetter Lane together. Ellen had had hard times since she had left Battersby, but they had left little trace upon her. Ernest saw only the fresh-looking smiling face, the dimpled cheek, the clear blue eyes, and the lovely sphinx-like lips which he had remembered as a boy. At nineteen she had looked older than she was. Now she looked much younger. Indeed she looked hardly older than when Ernest had last seen her, and it would have taken a man of much greater experience than he possessed to suspect how completely she had fallen from her first estate. It never occurred to him that the poor condition of her wardrobe was due to her passion for ardent spirits, and that first and last she had served five or six times as much time in jail as he had. He ascribed the poverty of her attire to the attempts to keep herself respectable, which Ellen during supper had more than once alluded to. He had been charmed with the way in which she had declared that a pint of beer would make her tipsy, and had allowed herself to be forced into drinking the whole after a good deal of remonstrance. To him she appeared a very angel dropped from the sky, and all the more easy to get on with for being a fallen one. As he walked up Fetterlane with her towards Laystall Street, he thought of the wonderful goodness of God towards him and throwing in his way the very person of all others whom he was most glad to see, and whom, of all others, in spite of her living so near him, he might never have fallen in with but for a happy accident. When people get it into their heads that they are being especially favored by the Almighty, they had better as a general rule mind their peas and cues, and when they think they see the Devil's drift with more special clearness, let them remember that he has had much more experience than they have, and is probably meditating mischief. Already during supper the thought that in Ellen at last he had found a woman whom he could love well enough to wish to live with and marry had flitted across his mind, and the more that they chatted the more reasons kept suggesting themselves for thinking what might be folly in ordinary cases would not be folly in his. He must marry someone, that was already settled. He could not marry a lady, that was absurd. He must marry a poor woman. Yes, but a fallen one. Was he not fallen himself? Ellen would fall no more. He had only to look at her to be sure of this. He could not live with her in sin, not for more than the shortest time that could elapse before their marriage. He no longer believed in the supernatural element of Christianity, but the Christian morality at any rate was indisputable. Besides they might have children, and a stigma would rest upon them. Whom had he to consult but himself now? His father and mother never need know, and even if they did they should be thankful to see him marry to any woman who would make him as happy as Ellen would. As for not being able to afford marriage, how did poor people do? Did not a good wife rather help matters than not? Where one could live, two could do so, and if Ellen was three or four years older than he was, well, what was that? Have you, gentle reader, ever loved at first sight? When you fell in love at first sight, how long, let me ask, did it take you to become ready to fling every other consideration to the winds, except that of obtaining possession of the loved one? Or rather how long would it have taken you if you had had no father or mother, nothing to lose in the way of money, position, friends, professional advancement, or whatnot? And if the object of your affections was as free from all of these impedimenta as you were yourself? If you were a young John Stuart Mill, perhaps it would have taken you some time, but suppose your nature was quixotic, impulsive, altruistic, guileless. Suppose you were a hungry man starving for something to love and lean upon, for one whose burdens you might bear, and who might help you to bear yours. Suppose you were down on your luck, still stunned by a horrible shock, and this bright vista of a happy future floated suddenly before you. How long under these circumstances do you think you would reflect before you would decide on embracing what chance had thrown in your way? It did not take my hero long, for before he got past the ham and beef shop near the top of Thetter Lane, he had told Ellen that she must come home with him and live with him till they could get married, which they would do upon the first day that the law allowed. I think the devil must have chuckled and made tolerably sure of his game this time. CHAPTER 72 Ernest told Ellen of his difficulty about finding employment. But what do you think of going into a shop for, my dear, said Ellen? Why not take a little shop yourself? Ernest asked how much this would cost. Ellen told him that it might take a house in some small street, say near the elephant and castle, for seventeen shillings or eighteen shillings a week, and let off the top two floors for ten shillings, keeping back the parlor and shopped for themselves. If he could raise five or six pounds to buy some second-hand clothes to stock the shop with, they could mend them and clean them, and she could look after the women's clothes while he did the men's. Then he could mend and make if he could get the orders. They could soon make a business of two pounds a week in this way. She had a friend who began like that and had now moved to a better shop, where she made five pounds or six pounds a week at least, and she, Ellen, had done the greater part of the buying and selling herself. Here was a new light indeed. It was as though he had got his five thousand pounds back again all of a sudden, and perhaps ever so much more later on into the bargain. Ellen seemed more than ever to be his good genius. She went out and got a few rashes of bacon for his and her breakfast. She cooked them much more nicely than he had been able to do, and laid breakfast for him and made coffee and some nice brown toast. Ernest had been his own cook and housemaid for the last few days, and had not given himself satisfaction. Here he suddenly found himself with someone to wait on him again. Not only had Ellen pointed out to him how he could earn a living when no one except himself had known how to advise him, but here she was so pretty and smiling, looking after even his comforts, and restoring him practically in all respects that he much cared about to the position which he had lost, or rather putting him in one that he had already liked much better. No wonder he was radiant when he came to explain his plans to me. He had some difficulty in telling all that had happened. He hesitated, blushed, hummed, and hawed. Misgivings began to cross his mind when he found himself obliged to tell his story to someone else. He felt inclined to slur over things, but I wanted to get at the facts, so I helped him over the bad places and questioned him till I had got out pretty nearly the whole story as I have given it above. I hope I did not show it, but I was very angry. I had begun to like Ernest. I don't know why, but I have never heard that any young man to whom I had become attached was going to get married without hating his intended instinctively, though I had never seen her. I have observed that most bachelors feel the same thing, though we are generally at some pains to hide the fact. Perhaps it is because we know we ought to have got married ourselves. Ordinarily we say we are delighted. In the present case I did not feel obliged to do this, though I made an effort to conceal my vexation. That a young man of so much promise, who was heir also to what was now a handsome fortune, should fling himself away upon such a person as Ellen was quite too provoking, and the more so because of the unexpectedness of the whole affair. I begged him not to marry Ellen yet, not at least until he had known her for a longer time. He would not hear of it. He had given his word, and if he had not given it he should go and give it at once. I had hitherto found him upon most matters singularly docile and easy to manage, but on this point I could do nothing with him. His recent victory over his father and mother had increased his strength, and I was nowhere. I would have told him of his true position, but I knew very well that this would only make him more bent on having his own way. For with so much money why should he not please himself? I said nothing therefore on this head, and yet all that I could urge went for very little with one who believed himself to be an artisan or nothing. Really from his own standpoint there was nothing very outrageous in what he was doing. He had known and been fond of Ellen years before. He knew her to come of respectable people and to have been born a good character and to have been universally liked at Battersby. She was then a quick, smart, hardworking girl and a very pretty one. When at last they met again she was on her best behavior. In fact, she was modesty and demureness itself. What wonder then that his imagination should fail to realize the changes that eight years must have worked? He knew too much against himself and was too bankrupt in love to be squeamish. If Ellen had been only what he thought her and if his prospects had been in reality no better than he believed they were, I do not know that there is anything much more imprudent in what Ernest proposed than there is in half the marriages that take place every day. There was nothing for it however but to make the best of the inevitable. So I wished my young friend good fortune and told him he could have whatever money he wanted to start his shop with if what he had in hand was not sufficient. He thanked me, asked me to be kind enough to let him do all my mending and repairing and to get him any other like orders that I could and left me to my own reflections. I was even more angry when he was gone than I had been while he was with me. His frank boyish face had beamed with a happiness that rarely visited it. Except at Cambridge he had hardly known what happiness meant and even there his life had been clouded as of a man for whom wisdom at its greatest of its entrances was quite shut out. I had seen enough of the world and of him to have observed this but it was impossible or I thought it had been impossible for me to have helped him. Whether I ought to have tried to help him or not I do not know but I am sure that the young of all animals often do want help upon matters about which anyone would say a priori that there should be no difficulty. One would think that a young seal would want no teaching how to swim nor yet a bird to fly but in practice a young seal drowns of put out of its depth before its parents have taught it to swim and so again even the young hawk must be taught to fly before it can do so. I grant that the tendency of the times is to exaggerate the good which teaching can do but in trying to teach too much in most matters we have neglected others in respect of which a little sensible teaching would do no harm. I know it is the fashion to say that young people must find out things for themselves and so they probably would if they had fair play to the extent of not having obstacles put in their way but they seldom have fair play. As a general rule they meet with foul play and foul play from those who live by selling them stones made into a great variety of shapes and sizes so as to form a tolerable imitation of bread. Some are lucky enough to meet with few obstacles some are plucky enough to override them but in the greater number of cases if people are saved at all they are saved so as by fire. While Ernest was with me Ellen was looking out for a shop on the south side of the Thames near the elephant and castle which was then almost a new and very rising neighborhood. By one o'clock she had found several from which a selection was to be made and before night the pair had made their choice. Ernest brought Ellen to me. I did not want to see her but could not well refuse. He had laid out a few of his shillings upon her wardrobe so that she was neatly dressed and indeed she looked very pretty and so good that I could hardly be surprised at Ernest's infatuation when the other circumstances of the case were taken into consideration. Of course we hated one another instinctively from the first moment we set eyes on one another but we each told Ernest that we had been most favorably impressed. Then I was taken to see the shop. An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed. Decay sets in at once in every part of it and what mold and wind and weather would spare street boys commonly destroy. Ernest's shop in its untenanted state was a dirty unsavory place enough. The house was not old but it had been run up by a gerry builder and its constitution had no stamina whatever. It was only being kept warm and quiet that it would remain in health for many months together. Now it had been empty for some weeks and the cats had got in by night while the boys had broken the windows by day. The parlor floor was covered with stones and dirt and in the area was a dead dog which had been killed in the street and been thrown down into the first unprotected place that could be found. There was a strong smell throughout the house but whether it was bugs or rats or cats or drains or a compound of all four I could not determine. The sashes did not fit, the flimsy doors hung badly, the skirting was gone in several places and there was not a few holes in the floor. The locks were loose at the paper was torn and dirty, the stairs were weak and one felt the treads give as one went up them. Over and above these drawbacks the house had an ill name by reason of the fact that the wife of the last occupant had hanged herself in it and not very many weeks previously. She had set down a bloater before the fire for her husband's tea and had made him a round of toast. Then she left the room as though about to return to it shortly but instead of doing so she went into the back kitchen and hanged herself without a word. It was this which had kept the house empty so long in spite of its excellent position as a corner shop. The last tenant had left immediately after the inquest and if the owner had had it done up then people would have got over the tragedy that had been enacted in it but the combination of bad condition and bad fame had hindered many from taking it who like Ellen could see that it had great business capabilities. Almost anything would have sold there but it happened also that there was no secondhand closed shop in close proximity so that everything combined in its favor except its filthy state and its reputation. When I saw it I thought I would rather die than live in such an awful place but then I had been living in the temple for the last five and twenty years. Ernest was lodging in Leistal Street and had just come out of prison before this he had lived in Ash pit place so that this house had no terrors for him provided he could get it done up. The difficulty was that the landlord was hard to move in this respect. It ended in my finding the money to do everything that was wanted and taking a lease of the house for five years at the same rental as that paid by the last occupant. I then sublet it to Ernest of course taking care that it was put more efficiently into repair than his landlord was at all likely to have put it. A week later I called and found everything so completely transformed that I should hardly have recognized the house. All the ceilings had been whitewashed. All the rooms papered. The broken glass hacked out and reinstated. The defective woodwork renewed. All the sashes, cupboards, and doors had been painted. The drains had been thoroughly overhauled. Everything in fact that could be done had been done and the rooms now looked as cheerful as they had been forbidding when I had last seen them. The people who had done the repairs were supposed to have cleaned the house down before leaving but Ellen had given it another scrub from top to bottom herself after they were gone and it was clean as a new pin. I almost felt as though I could have lived in it myself and as for Ernest he was in seventh heaven. He said it was all my doing and Ellen's. There was already a counter in the shop and a few fittings so that nothing now remained but to get some stock and set them out for sale. Ernest said he could not begin better than by selling his clerical wardrobe and his books for though the shop was intended especially for the sale of second hand clothes yet Ellen said there was no reason why they should not sell a few books too. So a beginning was made by selling books he had had at school and college at about one shelling of volume taking them all around and I have heard him say that he learned more that proved of practical use to him through stocking his books on a bench in front of his shop and selling them than he had done from all the years of study which he had bestowed upon their contents for the inquiries that were made of him whether he had such and such a book taught him what he could sell and what he could not how much he could get for this and how much for that having made ever such a little beginning with books he took to attending book sales as well as clothes sales and air along this branch of his business became no less important than the tailoring and would I have no doubt have been the one which he would have settled down to exclusively if he had been called upon to remain a tradesman but this is anticipating I made a contribution and a stipulation Ernest wanted to sink the gentleman completely until such time as he could work his way up again if he had been left to himself he would have lived with Ellen in the shop back parlor and kitchen and have let out both the upper floors according to his original program I did not want him however to cut himself adrift from music letters and polite life and fear that unless he had some kind of den into which he could retire he would air along become the tradesmen and nothing else I therefore insisted on taking the first floor front and back myself and furnishing them with the things which had been left at Mrs. Jupp's I bought these things from him for a small sum and had them moved into his present abode I went to Mrs. Jupp's to arrange all this as Ernest did not like going to Ash Pit Place I had half expected to find the furniture sold and Mrs. Jupp gone but it was not so with all her faults the poor old woman was perfectly honest I told her that prior had taken all Ernest's money and run away with it she hated prior I never knew anyone she exclaimed as white-livered in the faces that prior he hasn't gotten upright vein in his whole body why all that time when he used to come breakfasting with Mr. Pontifex morning after morning it took me to a perfect shadow the way he carried on there was no doing anything to please him right first I used to get them eggs and bacon and he didn't like that and then I got him a bit of fish and he didn't like that or else it was too dear and you know fish is dearer than ever and then I got him a bit of German and he said it rose on him then I tried sausages and he said they hit him in the eye worse even than German oh how I used to wander my room and fret about it inwardly and cry for hours and all about them paltry breakfast and it wasn't Mr. Pontifex he'd like anything that anyone chose to give him and so the pianos to go she continued what beautiful tunes Mr. Pontifex did play upon it to be sure and there was one I liked better than any I ever heard I was in the room when he played it once and when I said oh Mr. Pontifex that's the kind of woman I am he said no Mrs. Jupp it isn't for this tune is old but no one can say you are old but bless you he meant nothing by it it was only his mucky flattery like myself she was vexed at his getting married she didn't like his being married and she didn't like his not being married but anyhow it was Ellen's fault not his and she hoped he would be happy but after all she concluded it ain't you and it ain't me and it ain't him and it ain't her it's what you must call the fortunes of matrimony for there ain't no other word for it in the course of the afternoon the furniture arrived at earnest new abode in the first floor we placed the piano tables pictures bookshelves and a couple of armchairs and all the little household gods which he had brought from Cambridge the back room was furnished exactly as his bedroom at Ash pit place had been new things being got for the bridal apartment downstairs these two first floor rooms I insisted on retaining as my own but Ernest was to use them whenever he pleased he was never to sublet even the bedroom but was to keep it for himself in case his wife should be ill at any time or in case he might be ill himself in less than a fortnight from the time of his leaving prison all these arrangements had been completed and Ernest felt that he had again linked himself on to the life which he had led before his imprisonment with a few important differences however which were greatly to his advantage he was no longer a clergyman he was about to marry a woman to whom he was much attached and he had parted company forever with his father and mother true he had lost all his money his reputation and his position as a gentleman he had in fact had to burn his house down in order to get his roast suckling pig but if asked whether he would rather be as he was now or as he was on the day before his arrest he would not have had a moment's hesitation in preferring his present to his past if his present could only have been purchased at the expense of all that he had gone through it was still worth purchasing at the price and he would go through it all again if necessary the loss of the money was the worst but ellen said she was sure they would get on and she knew all about it as for the loss of reputation considering that he had ellen and me left it did not come to much i saw the house on the afternoon of the day on which all was finished and there remained nothing but to buy some stock and begin selling when i was gone after he had had his tea he stole up to his castle the first floor front he lit his pipe and sat down to the piano he played hondle for an hour or so and then set himself to the table to read and write he took all his sermons and all the theological works he had begun to compose during the time he had been a clergyman and put them in the fire as he saw them consume he felt as though he had got rid of another incubus then he took up some of the little pieces he had begun to write during the latter part of his undergraduate life at Cambridge and began to cut them about and rewrite them as he worked quietly at bees till he heard the clock strike 10 and it was time to go to bed he felt that he was now not only happy but supremely happy next day ellen took him to Debenham's auction rooms and they surveyed the lots of clothes which were hung up all around the auction room to be viewed ellen had had sufficient experience to know about how much each lot ought to fetch she overhauled lot after lot and valued it in a very short time Ernest himself began to have a pretty fair idea what each lot should go for and before the morning was over valued a dozen lots running at prices about which ellen said he would not hurt if he could get them for that so far from disliking this work or finding it tedious he liked it very much indeed he would have liked anything which did not overtax his physical strength and which held out a prospect of bringing him in money ellen would not let him buy anything on the occasion of this sale she said he had better see one sale first and watch how prices actually went so at twelve o'clock when the sale began he saw the lots sold which he and ellen had marked and by the time the sale was over he knew enough to be able to bid with safety whenever he should actually want to buy knowledge of this sort is very easily acquired by anyone who is in bona fide want of it but ellen did not want him to buy at auctions not much at least at present private dealings she said was best if i for example had any cast off clothes he was to buy them from my laundress and get a connection with other laundresses to whom he might give a trifle more than they got at present for whatever clothes their masters might give them and yet make a good profit if gentlemen sold their things he was to try and get them to sell to him he flinched at nothing perhaps he would have flinched if he had had any idea how utre his proceedings were but the very ignorance of the world which had ruined him up till now by a happy irony began to work its own cure if some malignant fairy had meant to curse him in this respect she had overdone her malice he did not know he was doing anything strange he only knew that he had no money and must provide for himself a wife and a possible family more than this he wanted to have some leisure in an evening so that he might read and write and keep up his music if anyone would show him how he could do better than he was doing he should be much obliged to them but to himself it seemed that he was doing sufficiently well for at the end of the first week the pair found that they had made a clear profit of three pounds in a few weeks this had increased to four pounds and by the new year they had made a profit of five pounds in one week earnest had by this time been married some two months for he had stuck to his original plan of marrying ellen on the first day he could legally do so this date was a little delayed by the change of a boat from lay stall street to black friars but on the first day that it could be done it was done he had never had more than 250 pounds a year even in the times of his affluence so that a profit of five pounds a week if it could be maintained steadily would place him where he had been as far as income went and though he should have to feed two mouths instead of one yet his expenses in other ways were so much curtailed by his changed social position that take it all around his income was practically what it had been a 12 month before the next thing to do was to increase it and put by money prosperity depends as we all know in great measure upon energy and good sense but it also depends not a little upon pure luck that is to say upon connections which are in such a tangle that it is more easy to say that they do not exist than to try to trace them a neighborhood may have an excellent reputation as being likely to be a rising one and yet may become suddenly eclipsed by another which no one would have thought so promising a fever hospital may divert the stream of business or a new station attracted so little indeed can be certainly known that it is better not to try to know more than is in everybody's mouth and to leave the rest to chance luck which certainly had not been too kind to my hero hither too now seemed to have taken him under her protection the neighborhood prospered and he with it it seemed as though he no sooner bought a thing and put it into his shop then it sold with a profit of from 30 to 50 percent he learned bookkeeping and watched his accounts carefully following up any success immediately he began to buy other things besides clothes such as books music odds and ends of furniture etc whether it was luck or business aptitude or energy or the politeness with which he treated all his customers i cannot say but to the surprise of no one more than himself he went ahead faster than he had anticipated even in his wildest dreams and by easter was established in a strong position as the owner of a business which was bringing him in between four and five hundred a year and which he understood how to extend end of chapter 72 recording by ronda featherman chapters 73 and 74 of the way of all flesh this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by ronda featherman the way of all flesh by samuel butler chapter 73 ellen and he got on capital e all the better perhaps because the disparity between them was so great that neither did ellen want to be elevated nor did earnest want to elevate her he was very fond of her and very kind to her they had interests which they could serve in common they had antecedents with a good part of which each was familiar they had each of them excellent tempers and this was enough ellen did not seem jealous at earnest preferring to sit the greater part of his time after the day's work was done in the first floor front where i occasionally visited him she might have come and sat with him if she had liked but somehow or other she generally found enough to occupy her down below she had the tact also to encourage him to go out of an evening whenever he had a mind without in the least caring that he should take her to and this suited earnest very well he was i should say much happier in his married life than people generally are at first it had been very painful to him to meet any of his old friends as he sometimes accidentally did but this soon passed either they cut him or he cut them it was not nice being cut for the first time or two but after that it became rather pleasant than not and when he began to see that he was going ahead he cared very little what people might say about his antecedents the ordeal is a painful one but if a man's moral and intellectual constitution are naturally sound there is nothing which will give him so much strength of character as having been well cut it was easy for him to keep his expenditure down for his tastes were not luxurious he liked theaters outings into the country on a sunday and tobacco but he did not care for much else except writing and music as for the usual run of concerts he hated them he worshipped hondle he liked often back and the airs that went about the streets but he cared nothing between these two extremes music therefore cost him little as for theaters i got him and ellen as many orders as they liked so these cost them nothing the sunday outings were a small item for a shilling or two he could get a return ticket to someplace far enough out of town to give him a good walk and a thorough change for the day ellen went with him the first few times but she said she found it too much for her there were a few of her old friends whom she would sometimes like to see and they and he she said would not hit it off perhaps too well so it would be better for him to go alone this seemed so sensible and suited earnest so exactly that he readily fell into it nor did he suspect dangers which were apparent enough to me when i heard how she had treated the matter i kept silent however and for a time all continued to go well as i have said one of his chief pleasures was in writing if a man carries with him a little sketchbook and is continually jotting down sketches he has the artistic instinct a hundred things may hinder his due development but the instinct is there the literary instinct may be known by a man's keeping a small notebook in his waistcoat pocket into which he jots down anything that strikes him or any good thing that he hears said or a reference to any passage which he thinks will come in useful to him earnest had such a notebook always with him even when he was at Cambridge he had begun the practice without anyone's having suggested it to him these notes he copied out from time to time into a book which as they accumulated he was driven into indexing approximately as he went along when i found this out i knew that he had the literary instinct and when i saw his notes i began to hope great things of him for a long time i was disappointed he was kept back by the nature of the subjects he chose which were generally metaphysical in vain i tried to get him away from these to matters which had a greater interest for the general public when i begged him to try his hand at some pretty graceful little story which should be full of what people knew and liked best he would immediately set to work upon a treatise to show the grounds on which all belief rested you are stirring mud i said or poking at a sleeping dog you are trying to make people resume consciousness about things which with sensible men have already passed into the unconscious stage the men whom you would disturb are in front of you and not as you fancy behind you it is you who are the lager not they he could not see it he said he was engaged on an essay upon the famous quad semper quad ubeak quad ab omnibus of saint vincence de larence this was the more provoking because he showed himself able to do better things if he had liked i was then at work upon my burlesque the impatient griselda and was sometimes at my wits end for a piece of business or a situation he gave me many suggestions all of which were marked by excellent good sense nevertheless i could not prevail with him to put philosophy on one side and was obliged to leave him to himself for a long time as i have said his choice of subjects continued to be such as i could not approve he was continually studying scientific and metaphysical writers in the hope of either finding or making for himself a philosopher's stone in the shape of a system which should go on all fours under all circumstances instead of being liable to be upset at every touch and turn as every system yet promulgated has turned out to be he kept to the pursuit of this will of the wisp so long as i gave up hope and set him down as another fly that had been caught as it were by a piece of paper dobbed over with some sticky stuff that had not even the merit of being sweet but to my surprise he at last declared that he was satisfied and had found what he wanted i supposed he had only hit upon some new low here when to my relief he told me that he had concluded that no system which should go perfectly upon all fours was possible in as much as no one could get behind bishop berkeley and therefore no absolutely incontrovertible first premise could ever be laid having found this he was just as well pleased as if he had found the most perfect system imaginable all he wanted he said was to know which way it was to be that is to say whether a system was possible or not and if possible then what the system was to be having found out that no system based on an absolute certainty was possible he was contented i had only a very vague idea who bishop berkeley was but was thankful to him for having defended us from an incontrovertible first premise i'm afraid i said a few words implying that after a great deal of trouble he had arrived at the conclusion which sensible people reach without bothering their brains so much he said yes but i was not born sensible a child of ordinary powers learns to walk at a year or two without knowing much about it failing ordinary powers he had better learn laboriously than never learn it all i am sorry i was not stronger but to do as i did was my only chance he looked so meek that i was vexed with myself for having said what i had more especially when i remembered his bringing up which had doubtless done much to impair his power of taking a common sense view of things he continued i see it all now the people like townally are the only ones who know anything that is worth knowing and like that of course i can never be but to make townally is possible there must be hewers of wood and drawers of water men in fact through whom conscious knowledge must pass before it can reach those who can apply it gracefully and instinctively as the townally's can i am a hewer of wood but if i accept the position frankly and do not set up to be a townally it does not matter he's still therefore stuck to science instead of turning to literature proper as i hoped he would have done but he can find himself henceforth to inquiries on specific subjects concerning which an increase of our knowledge as he said was possible having in fact an infinite vexation of spirit arrived at a conclusion which cut at the roots of all knowledge he settled contentedly down to the pursuit of knowledge and has pursued it ever since in spite of occasional excursions into the regions of literature proper but this is anticipating and may perhaps also convey a wrong impression for from the outset he did occasionally turn his attention to work which must be more properly called literary than either scientific or metaphysical chapter 74 about six months after he had set up his shop his prosperity had reached its climax it seemed even then as though he were likely to go ahead no less fast than here to four and i doubt not that he would have done so if success or non-success had depended upon himself alone unfortunately he was not the only person to be reckoned with one morning he had gone out to attend some sales leaving his wife perfectly well as usual in good spirits and looking very pretty when he came back he found her sitting on a chair in the back parlor with her hair over her face sobbing and crying as though her heart would break she said she had been frightened in the morning by a man who had pretended to be a customer and had threatened her unless she gave him some things and she had had to give them to him in order to save herself from violence she had been in hysterics ever since the man had gone this was her story but her speech was so incoherent that it was not easy to make out what she said earnest knew she was with child and thinking this might have something to do with the matter would have said for a doctor if ellen had not begged him not to do so anyone who had had experience of drunken people would have seen at a glance what the matter was but my hero knew nothing about them nothing that is to say about the drunkenness of the habitual drunkard which shows itself very differently from that of one who gets drunk only once in a way the idea that his wife could drink had never even crossed his mind indeed she always made a fuss about the taking more than a very little beer and never touched spirits he did not know much more about hysterics than he did about drunkenness but he had always heard that women who were about to become mothers were liable to be easily upset and were often rather flighty so he was not greatly surprised and thought he had settled the matter by registering the discovery that being about to become a father has its troublesome as well as its pleasant side the great change in ellen's life consequent upon her meeting earnest and getting married had for a time actually sobered her by shaking her out of her old ways drunkenness is so much a matter of habit and habit so much a matter of surroundings that if you completely change the surroundings you will sometimes get rid of the drunkenness altogether ellen had intended remaining always sober hence forward and never having had so long a steady fit before believed she was now cured so she perhaps would have been if she had seen none of her old acquaintances when however her new life was beginning to lose its newness and when her old acquaintances came to see her her present surroundings became more like her past and on this she herself began to get like her past too at first she only got a little tipsy and struggled against a relapse but it was no use she soon lost the heart to fight and now her object was not to try and keep sober but to get gin without her husbands finding it out so the hysterics continued and she managed to make her husband still think that they were due to her being about to become a mother the worse her attacks were the more devoted he became in his attention to her at last he insisted that a doctor should see her the doctor of course took in the situation at a glance but said nothing to earnest except in such a guarded way that he did not understand the hints that were thrown out to him he was much too downright and matter of fact to be quick at taking hints of this sort he hoped that as soon as his wife's confinement was over she would regain her health and had no thought save how to spare her as far as possible till that happy time should come in the mornings she was generally better as long that is to say as earnest remained at home but he had to go out buying and on his return would generally find that she had had another attack as soon as he had left the house at times she would laugh and cry for half an hour together at others she would lie in a semi-comatose state upon the bed and when he came back he would find that the shop had been neglected and all the work of the household left undone still he took it for granted that this was all part of the usual course when women were going to become mothers and when ellen share of the work settled down more and more upon his own shoulders he did it all and rudged away without a murmur nevertheless he began to feel in a vague way more as if he had felt an ash pit place at rough burrow or at battersby and to lose the buoyancy of spirits which had made another man of him during the first six months of his married life it was not only that he had to do so much household work for even the cooking cleaning up slops bed making and fire lighting air long devolved upon him but his business no longer prospered he could buy as hither too but ellen seemed unable to sell as she had sold at first the fact was that she sold as well as ever but kept back part of the proceeds in order to buy gin and she did this more and more till even the unsuspecting earnest ought to have seen that she was not telling the truth when she sold better that is to say when she did not think it's safe to keep back more than a certain amount she got money out of him on the plea that she had a longing for this or that and that it would perhaps irreparably damage the baby if her longing was denied her all seemed right reasonable and unavoidable nevertheless earnest saw that until the confinement was over he was likely to have a hard time of it all however would then come right again end of chapter 74 recording by ronda fetterman chapter 75 and 76 of the way of all flesh this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by ronda fetterman the way of all flesh by samuel butler chapter 75 in the month of september 1860 a girl was born and earnest was proud and happy the birth of the child and a rather alarming talk which the doctor had given to ellen sobered her for a few weeks and it really seemed as though his hopes were about to be fulfilled the expenses of his wife's confinement were heavy and he was obliged to trench upon his savings but he had no doubt about soon recouping this now that ellen was herself again for a time indeed his business did revive a little nevertheless it seemed as though the interruption to his prosperity had in some way broken the spell of good luck which had attended him in the outset he was still sanguine however and worked night and day with a will but there was no more music or reading or writing now his sunday outings were put to a stop and but for the first floor being led to myself he would have lost his citadel there too but he seldom used it for ellen had to wait more and more upon the baby and as a consequence earnest had to wait more and more upon ellen one afternoon about a couple of months after the baby had been born and just as my unhappy hero was beginning to feel more hopeful and therefore better able to bear his burdens he returned from a sale and found ellen in the same hysterical condition that he had found her in in the spring she said she was again with child and earnest still believed her all the troubles of the preceding six months began again then and there and grew worse and worse continually money did not come in quickly for ellen cheated him by keeping it back and dealing improperly with the goods he bought when it did come in she got it out of him as before on pretexts which it seemed inhuman to inquire into it was always the same story buy and buy a new feature began to show itself earnest had inherited his father's punctuality and exactness as regards money he liked to know the worst of what he had to pay at once he hated having expenses sprung upon him which if not foreseen might and ought to have been so but now bills began to be brought to him for things ordered by ellen without his knowledge or for which he had already given her the money this was awful and even earnest turned when he remonstrated with her not for having bought the things but for having said nothing to him about the money's being owing ellen met him with hysteria and there was a scene she had now pretty well forgotten the hard times she had known when she had been on her own resources and reproached him downright with having married her on that moment the scales fell from earnest eyes as they had fallen when townally had said no no no he said nothing but he woke up once for all to the fact that he had made a mistake in marrying a touch had again come which had revealed him to himself he went upstairs to the disused citadel flung himself into the armchair and covered his face with his hands he still did not know that his wife drank but he could no longer trust her and his dream of happiness was over he had been saved from the church so is by fire but still saved but what could now save him from his marriage he had made the same mistake that he had made in wedding himself to the church but with a hundred times worse results he had learned nothing by experience he was an esau one of those wretches whose hearts the lord had hardened who having ears heard not having eyes saw not and who should find no place for repentance though they sawed it even with tears yet had he not on the whole tried to find out what the ways of god were and to follow them in singleness of heart to a certain extent yes but he had not been thorough he had not given up all for god he knew that very well he had done little as compared with what he might and ought to have done but still if he was being punished for this god was a hard task master and one too who was continually pouncing out upon his unhappy creatures from ambuscades in marrying ellen he had meant to avoid a life of sin and to take the course he believed to be moral and right with his antecedents and surroundings it was the most natural thing in the world for him to have done yet in what a frightful position had not his morality landed him could any amount of immorality have placed him in a much worse one what was morality worth if it was not that which on the whole brought a man peace at the last and could anyone have reasonable certainty that marriage would do this it seemed to him that in his attempt to be moral he had been following a devil which had disguised itself as an angel of light but if so what ground was there on which a man might rest the soul of his foot and tread in reasonable safety he was still too young to reach the answer uncommon sense an answer which he would have felt to be unworthy of anyone who had an ideal standard however this might be it was plain that he had now done for himself it had been thus with him all his life if there had come at any time a gleam of sunshine and hope it was to be obscured immediately why prison was happier than this there at any rate he had no money anxieties and these were beginning to weigh upon him now with all their horrors he was happier even now than he had been at batter's bee or at rough burrow and he would not go back even if he could to his Cambridge life but for all that the outlook was so gloomy in fact so hopeless that he felt as if he could have only too gladly gone to sleep and died in his arm chair once for all as he was musing thus and looking upon the wreck of his hopes for he saw well enough that as long as he was linked to Ellen he should never rise as he had dreamed of doing he heard a noise below and presently a neighbor ran upstairs and entered his room hurriedly good gracious mr pontifex she exclaimed for goodness sake come down quickly and help oh mrs pontifexes took with the horrors and she's orchard the unhappy man came down as he was bid and found his wife mad with delirium tremens he knew all now the neighbors thought he must have known that his wife drank all along but ellen had been so artful and he so simple that as i have said he had had no suspicion why said the woman who had summoned him she'll drink anything she can stand up and pay her money for earnest could hardly believe his ears but when the doctor had seen his wife and she had become more quiet he went over to the public house hard buy and made inquiries the result of which rendered further doubt impossible the public in took the opportunity to present my hero with a bill of several pounds for bottles of spirits supplied to his wife and what with his wife's confinement and the way business had fallen off he had not the money to pay with for the sum exceeded the remnant of his savings he came to me not for money but to tell me his miserable story i had seen for some time that there was something wrong and had suspected pretty shrewdly what the matter was but of course i said nothing earnest and i had been growing apart for some time i was vexed at his having married and he knew i was vexed though i did my best to hide it a man's friendships are like his will invalidated by marriage but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends the rift in friendship which invariably makes its appearance on the marriage of either of the parties to it was fast widening as it no less invariably does into the great gulf which is fixed between the married and the unmarried and i was beginning to leave my protege to a fate with which i had neither right nor power to meddle in fact i had begun to feel him rather a burden i did not so much mind this when i could be of use but i grudged it when i could be of none he had made his bed and he must lie upon it earnest had felt all this and had seldom come near me till now one evening late in eighteen sixty he called on me and with a very woby gone face told me his troubles as soon as i found that he no longer liked his wife i forgave him at once and was as much interested in him as ever there is nothing an old bachelor likes better than to find a young married man who wishes he had not got married especially when the case is such an extreme one that he need not pretend to hope that matters will come out all right again or encourage his young friend to make the best of it i was myself in favor of a separation and said i would make ellen an allowance myself of course intending that it should come out of earnest money but he would not hear of this he had married ellen he said and he must try to reform her he hated it but he must try and finding him as usual very obstinate i was obliged to acquiesce though with little confidence as to the result i was vexed at seeing him waste himself on such a barren task and again began to feel him burdensome i'm afraid i showed this for he again avoided me for some time and indeed for many months i hardly saw him at all ellen remained very ill for some days and then gradually recovered earnest hardly left her till she was out of danger when she had recovered he got the doctor to tell her that if she had such another attack she would certainly die this so frightened her that she took the pledge then he became more hopeful again when she was sober she was just what she was during the first days of her married life and so quick was he to forget pain that after a few days he was as fond of her as ever but ellen could not forgive him for knowing what he did she knew that he was on the watch to shield her from temptation and though he did his best to make her think that he had no further uneasiness about her she found that the burden of her union with respectability grow more and more heavy upon her and she looked back more and more longingly upon the lawless freedom of the life she had led before she met her husband i will dwell no longer on this part of my story during the spring months of 1861 she kept straight she had had her fling of dissipation and this together with the impression made upon her by having taken the pledge tamed her for a while the shop went fairly well and enabled earnest to make the two ends meet in the spring and summer of 1861 he even put by a little money again in the autumn his wife was confined of a boy a very fine one so everyone said she soon recovered and earnest was beginning to breathe freely and be almost sanguine when without a word of warning the storm broke again he returned one afternoon about two years after his marriage and found his wife lying upon the floor insensible from this time he became hopeless and began to go visibly downhill he had been knocked about too much and the luck had gone too long against him the wear and tear of the last three years had told on him and though not actually ill he was overworked below par and unfit for any further burden he struggled for a while to prevent himself from finding this out but facts were too strong for him again he called on me and told me what had happened i was glad the crisis had come i was sorry for ellen but a complete separation from her was the only chance for her husband even after this last outbreak he was unwilling to consent to this and talked nonsense about dying at his post till i got tired of him each time i saw him the old gloom had settled more and more deeply upon his face and i had about made up my mind to put an end to the situation by a coup de main such as bribing ellen to run away with somebody else or something of that kind when matters settled themselves as usual in a way which i had not anticipated chapter 76 the winter had been a trying one earnest had only paid his way by selling his piano with this he seemed to cut away the last link that connected him with his earlier life and to sink him once for all into the small shopkeeper it seemed to him that however low he might sink his pain could not last much longer for he should simply die if it did he hated ellen now and the pair lived in open want of harmony with each other if it had not been for his children he would have left her and gone to america but he could not leave the children with ellen and as for taking them with him he did not know how to do it nor what to do with them when he had got them to america if he had not lost energy he would probably in the end have taken the children and gone off but his nerve was shaken so day after day went by and nothing was done he had only got a few shillings in the world now except the value of his stock which was very little he could get perhaps three pounds or four pounds by selling his music and what few pictures and pieces of furniture still belong to him he thought of trying to live by his pen but his writing had dropped off long ago he no longer had an idea in his head look which way he would he saw no hope the end if it had not actually come was within easy distance and he was almost face to face with actual want when he saw people going about poorly clad or even without shoes and stockings he wondered whether within a few months time he too should not have to go about in this way the remorseless resistless hand of fate had caught him in its grip and was dragging him down down down still he staggered on going his daily rounds buying second-hand clothes and spending his evenings in cleaning and mending them one morning as he was returning from a house at the west end where he had bought some clothes from one of the servants he was struck by a small crowd which had gathered round a space that had been railed off on the grass near one of the paths in the green park it was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of march and unusually balmy for the time of year even Ernest melancholy was relieved for a while by the look of spring that pervaded earth and sky but it soon returned and smiling sadly he said to himself it may bring hope to others but for me there can be no hope henceforth as these words were in his mind he joined the small crowd who gathered round the railings and saw that they were looking at three sheep with very small lambs only a day or two old which had been penned off for shelter and protection from the others that ranged the park they were very pretty and londoners so seldom get a chance of seeing lambs that it was no wonder everyone stopped to look at them Ernest observed that no one seemed fonder of them than a great loverly butcher boy who leaned up against the railings with a tray of meat upon his shoulder he was looking at this boy and smiling at the grotesqueness of his admiration when he became aware that he was being watched intently by a man in coachman's livery who had also stopped to admire the lambs and was leaning against the opposite side of the enclosure Ernest knew him in a moment as john his father's old coachman at batter's and went up to him at once why master earnest he said with his strong northern accent i was thinking of you only this very morning and the pair shook hands heartily john was in an excellent place at the west end he had done very well he said ever since he had left batter's be except for the first year or two and that he said with a screw of the face had well nigh broke him Ernest asked how this was why you see said john i was always main fond of that last ellen whom you remember running after master earnest and giving your watch to i expect you haven't forgotten that day have you and here he left i don't know as i be the father of the child she carried away with her from batter's be but i very easily may have been anyhow after i had left your papa's place a few days i wrote to ellen to an address we had agreed upon and told her i would do what i ought to do and so i did for i married her within a month afterwards why lord loved the man whatever is the matter with him for as he had spoken the last few words of his story Ernest had turned white as a sheet and was leaning against the railings john said my hero gasping for breath are you sure of what you say are you quite sure you really married her of course i am said john i married her before the registrar at lechbury on the 15th of august 1851 give me your arm said earnest and take me into piccadilly and put me into a cab and come with me at once if you can spare time to mr overtons at the temple end of chapter 76 recording by ronda fetterman chapter 77 and 78 of the way of all flesh this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information order volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by ronda fetterman the way of all flesh by samuel butler chapter 77 i do not think Ernest himself was much more pleased at finding that he had never been married than i was to him however the shock of pleasure was positively numbing in its intensity as he felt his burden removed he reeled for the unaccustomed lightness of his movements his position was so shattered that his identity seemed to have been shattered also he was as one waking up from a horrible nightmare to find himself safe and sound in bed but who can hardly even yet believe that the room is not full of armed men who are about to spring upon him and it is i he said who not an hour ago complained that i was without hope it is i who for weeks have been railing at fortune and saying that though she smiled on others she never smiled at me why never was anyone half so fortunate as i am yes said i and you have been inoculated for marriage and have recovered and yet he said i was very fond of her till she took to drinking perhaps but is it not tenison who has said tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all you are an inveterate bachelor was the rejoinder then we had a long talk with john to whom i gave a five pound note upon the spot he said ellen used to drink at battersby the cook had taught her he had known it but was so fond of her that he had chanced it and married her to save her from the streets and in the hope of being able to keep her straight she had done with him just as she had done with earnest made him an excellent wife as long as she kept sober but a very bad one afterwards there isn't said john a sweeter tempered handier prettier girl than she was in all england nor one is knows better what a man likes and how to make him happy if you can keep her from drink but you can't keep her she's that artful she'll get it under your very eyes without you knowing it if she can't get any more of your things to pawn or sell she'll steal her neighbors that's how she got into trouble first when i was with her during the six months she was in prison i should have felt happy if i had not known she would come out again and then she did come out and before she had been free of fortnight she began shoplifting and going on the loose again all to get money to drink with so seeing i could do nothing with her and that she was just a killing of me i left her and came up to london and went into service again and i did not know what had become of her till you and mr. earnest here told me i hope you'll neither of you say you've seen me we assured him we would keep his counsel and then he left us with many protest stations of affection towards earnest to whom he had been always much attached we talked the situation over and decided first to get the children away and then to come to terms with ellen concerning their future custody as for herself i proposed that we should make her an allowance of say a pound a week to be paid so long as she gave no trouble earnest did not see where the pound a week was to come from so i eased his mind by saying i would pay it myself before the day was two hours older we had got the children about whom ellen had always appeared to be indifferent and had confided them to the care of my laundress a good motherly sort of woman who took to them and to whom they took at once then came the odious task of getting rid of their unhappy mother earnest heart smote him at the notion of the shock the breakup would be to her he was always thinking that people had a claim upon him for some inestimable service they had rendered him or for some irreparable mischief done to them by himself the case however was so clear that earnest scruples did not offer serious resistance i did not see why he should have the pain of another interview with his wife so i got mr ottery to manage the whole business it turned out that we need not have harrowed ourselves so much about the agony of mind which ellen would suffer on becoming an outcast again earnest saw mrs richards the neighbor who had called him down on the night when he first discovered his wife's drunkenness and got from her some details of ellen's opinions upon the matter she did not seem in the least conscious stricken she said thank goodness at last and although aware that her marriage was not a valid one evidently regarded this as a mere detail which it would not be worth anybody's while to go into more particularly as regards his breaking with her she said it was a good job both for him and for her this life she continued don't suit me earnest is too good for me he wants a woman as shall be a bit better than me and i want a man that shall be a bit worse than him we should have got on all very well if we had not lived together as married folks but i've been used to having a little place of my own however small for a many years and i don't want earnest or any other man always hanging about besides he's too steady his being in prison hasn't done him a bit of good he's just as grave as those who have never been in prison at all and he never swears nor curses come what may it makes me a feared of him and therefore i drink the worse what us poor girls want is not to be jumped up all of a sudden and made honest women of this is too much for us and throws us off our perch what we want is a regular friend or two will just keep us from starving and force us to be good for a bit together now and then that's about as much as we can stand he may have the children he can do better for them than i can and as for his money he may give it or keep it as he likes he's never done me any harm and i shall let him alone but if he means me to have it i suppose i'd better have it and have it she did and i thought earnest to himself when the arrangement was concluded am the man who thought himself unlucky i may as well say here all that need be said further about ellen for the next three years she used to call regularly at mr otteries every monday morning for her pound she was always neatly dressed and looked so quiet and pretty that no one would have suspected her antecedents at first she wanted sometimes to anticipate but after three or four ineffectual attempts on each of which occasions she told a most pitiful story she gave it up and took her money regularly without a word once she came with a bad black eye which a boy had thrown a stone and hit her by mistake but on the whole she looked pretty much the same at the end of the three years as she had done at the beginning then she explained that she was going to be married again mr ottery saw her on this and pointed out to her that she would very likely be again committing bigamy by doing so you may call it what you like she replied but i am going off to america with bill the butcher's man and we hope mr pontefex won't be too hard on us and stopped the allowance earnest was little likely to do this so the pair went in peace i believe it was bill who had blackened her eye and she liked him all the better for it from one or two little things i've been able to gather that the couple got on very well together and that in bill she has found a partner better suited to her than either john or earnest on his birthday earnest generally receives an envelope with an american postmark containing a bookmarker with a flaunting text upon it or a moral kettle holder or some other similar small token of recognition but no letter of the children she has taken no notice chapter 78 earnest was now well turned 26 years old and in little more than another year and a half would come into possession of his money i saw no reason for letting him have it earlier than the date fixed by miss pontefex herself at the same time i did not like his continuing the shop at blackfriars after the present crisis it was not till now that i fully understood how much he had suffered nor how nearly his supposed wife's habits had brought him to actual want i had indeed noted the old one worn looks settling upon his face but was either too indolent or too hopeless of being able to sustain a protracted and successful warfare with ellen to extend the sympathy and make the inquiries which i suppose i ought to have made and yet i hardly know what i could have done for nothing short of his finding out what he had found out would have detached him from his wife and nothing could do him much good as long as he continued to live with her after all i suppose i was right i suppose things did turn out all the better in the end for having been left to settle themselves at any rate whether they did or did not the whole thing was in too great a muddle for me to venture to tackle it so long as ellen was upon the scene now however that she was removed all my interest in my god son revived and i turned over many times in my mind what i had better do with him it was now three and a half years since he had come up to london and begun to live so to speak upon his own account of these years six months had been spent as a clergyman six months in jail and for two and a half years he had been acquiring twofold experience in the ways of business and of marriage he had failed i may say in everything that he had undertaken even as a prisoner yet his defeats had always been as it seemed to me something so like victories that i was satisfied of his being worth all the pains i could bestow upon him my only fear was lest i should meddle with him when it might be better for him to be let alone on the whole i concluded that a three and a half year apprenticeship to a rough life was enough the shop had done much for him it had kept him going after a fashion when he was in great need it had thrown him upon his own resources and taught him to see profitable openings all around him where a few months before he would have seen nothing but insuperable difficulties it had enlarged his sympathies by making him understand the lower classes and not confining his view of life to that taken by gentleman only when he went about the streets and saw the books outside the second hand bookstalls the bric-a-brac and curiosity shops and the infinite commercial activity which is omnipresent around us he understood it and sympathized with it as he could never have done if he had not kept a shop himself he has often told me that when he used to travel on a railway that overlooked populous suburbs and looked down upon street after street of dingy houses he used to wonder what kind of people lived in them what they did and felt and how far it was like what he did and felt himself now he said he knew all about it i am not very familiar with the writer of the odyssey who by the way i suspect strongly of having been a clergyman but he assuredly hit the right nail on the head when he epitomized his typical wise man as knowing the ways and farings of many men what culture is comparable to this what a lie what a sickly debilitating debauch did not earn a school and university career now seemed to him in comparison with his life in prison and as a tailor in blackfriars i have heard him say he would have gone through all he had suffered if it were only for the deeper insight it gave him into the spirit of the grecian and the surrey pantomimes what confidence again in his own power to swim if thrown into deep waters had not he won through his experiences during the last three years but as i have said i thought my godson had now seen as much of the undercurrents of life as was likely to be of use to him and that it was time he began to live in a style more suitable to his prospects his aunt had wished him to kiss the soil and he had kissed it with a vengeance but i did not like the notion of his coming suddenly from the position of a small shopkeeper to that of a man with an income of between three and four thousand a year to sudden a jump from bad fortune to good is just as dangerous as one from good to bad besides poverty is very wearing it is a quasi embryonic condition through which a man had better pass if he is to hold his later development securely but like measles or scarlet fever he had better have it mildly and get it over early no man is safe from losing every penny he has in the world unless he has had his facer how often do i not hear middle aged women and quiet family men say that they have no speculative tendency they never had touched and never would touch any but the very soundest best reputed investments and as for unlimited liability oh dear dear and they throw up their hands and eyes whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recognized as the easy prey of the first adventurer who comes across him he will commonly indeed wind up his discourse by saying that in spite of all his natural caution and his well-knowing of how foolish speculation is yet there are some investments which are called speculative but in reality are not so and he will pull out of his pocket the prospectus of a cornish gold mine it is only on having actually lost money that one realizes what an awful thing the loss of it is and finds out how easily it is lost by those who venture out of the middle of the most beaten path earnest had had his facer and he had had his attack of poverty young and sufficiently badly for a sensible man to be little likely to forget it i can fancy few pieces of good fortune greater than this happening to any man provided of course that he is not damaged irretrievably so strongly do i feel on this subject that if i had my way i would have a speculation master attached to every school the boys would be encouraged to read the money market review the railway news and all the best financial papers and should establish a stock exchange amongst themselves in which pence should stand as pounds then let them see how this making haste to get rich money's out in actual practice there might be a prize awarded by the headmaster to the most prudent dealer and the boys who lost their money time after time should be dismissed of course if any boy proved to have a genius for speculation and made money well and good let him speculate by all means if universities were not the worst teachers in the world i should like to see professorships of speculation established at oxford and cambridge when i reflect however that the only things worth doing which oxford and cambridge can do well are cooking cricket rowing and games of which there is no professorship i fear that the establishment of a professorial chair would end in teaching young men neither how to speculate nor how not to speculate but would simply turn them out as bad speculators i heard of one case in which a father actually carried my idea into practice he wanted his son to learn how little confidence was to be placed in glowing prospectuses and flaming articles and found him 500 pounds which he was to invest according to his lights the father expected he would lose the money but it did not turn out so in practice for the boy took so much pains and played so cautiously that the money kept growing and growing till the father took it away again increment in all as he was pleased to say in self-defense i had made my own mistakes with money about the year 1846 when everyone else was making them for a few years i had been so scared and had suffered so severely that when owing to the good advice of the broker who had advised my father and grandfather before me i came out in the end a winner and not a loser i played no more pranks but kept henceforward as nearly in the middle of the middle rut as i could i tried in fact to keep my money rather than to make more of it i had done with earnest money as with my own that is to say i let it alone after investing it in midland ordinary stock according to miss pontifex's instructions no amount of trouble would have been likely to have increased my god son's estate one half so much as it had increased without my taking any trouble at all midland stock at the end of august 1850 when i sold out miss pontifex's debentures stood at 32 pounds per 100 pounds i invested the whole of earnest 15 000 pounds at this price and did not change the investment till a few months before the time of which i have been writing lately that is to say until september 1861 i then sold at 129 pounds per share and invested in london and northwestern ordinary stock which i was advised was more likely to rise than midlands now were i bought the london and northwestern stock at 93 pounds per 100 pounds and my god son now in 1882 still holds it the original 15 000 pounds had increased in 11 years to over 60 000 pounds the accumulated interest which of course i had reinvested had come to about 10 000 pounds more so that earnest was then worth over 70 000 pounds at present he is worth nearly double that sum and all as the result of leaving well alone large as his property now was it ought to be increased still further during the year and a half that remained of his minority so that on coming of age he ought to have an income of at least 3500 pounds a year i wished him to understand bookkeeping by double entry i had myself as a young man been compelled to master this not very difficult art having acquired it i have become enamored of it and consider it the most necessary branch of any young man's education after reading and writing i was determined therefore that earnest should master it and proposed that he should become my steward bookkeeper and the manager of my hoardings for so i called the sum which my ledger showed to have accumulated from 15 000 pounds to 70 000 pounds i told him i was going to begin to spend the income as soon as it had amounted up to 80 000 pounds a few days after earnest discovery that he was still a bachelor while he was still at the very beginning of his honeymoon as it were of his renewed unmarried life i broached my scheme desired him to give up his shop and offered him 300 pounds a year for managing so far indeed as it required any managing his own property this 300 pounds a year i need hardly say i made him charged to the estate if anything had been wanting to complete his happiness it was this here within three or four days he found himself freed from one of the most hideous hopeless liaisons imaginable and at the same time raised from a life of almost squalor to the enjoyment of what would to him be a handsome income a pound a week he thought for ellen and the rest for myself no i said we will charge ellen's pound a week to the estate also you must have a clear 300 pounds for yourself i fixed upon this sum because it was the one which mr disraeli gave coningsby when coningsby was at the lowest ebb of his fortunes mr disraeli evidently thought 300 pounds a year the smallest sum on which coningsby could be expected to live and make the two ends meet with this however he thought his hero could manage to get along for a year or two in 1862 of which i am now writing prices had risen though not so much as they have since done on the other hand earnest had had less expensive antecedents than coningsby so on the whole i thought 300 pounds a year would be about the right thing for him end of chapter 78 recording by ronda fetterman