 CHAPTER 39 Ernest had been out all the morning. He came into the yard of the rectory from the spinny behind the house, just as Ellen's things were being put into the carriage. He thought it was Ellen whom he then saw get into the carriage, but as her face had been hidden by her handkerchief he had not been able to see plainly who it was, and dismissed the idea as improbable. He went to the back kitchen window at which the cook was standing, peeling potatoes for dinner, and found her crying bitterly. Ernest was much distressed, for he liked the cook and of course wanted to know what all the matter was, who it was that had just gone off in the pony carriage, and why. The cook told him it was Ellen, but said that no earthly power should make it cross her lips why it was she was going away. When however Ernest took her au pied de la lettre and asked no further questions, she told him all about it after extorting the most solemn promises of secrecy. It took Ernest some minutes to arrive at the facts of the case, but when he understood them he leaned against the pump which stood near the back kitchen window and mingled his tears with the cooks. Then his blood began to boil within him. He did not see that after all his father and mother could have done much otherwise than they actually did. They might perhaps have been less precipitant and tried to keep the matter a little more quiet, but this would not have been easy, nor would it have mended things very materially. The bitter fact remains that if a girl does certain things, she must do them at her peril, no matter how young and pretty she is, nor to what temptation she has succumbed. This is the way of the world, and as yet there has been no help found for it. This can only see what he gathered from the cook, namely that his favorite, Ellen, was being turned adrift with a matter of three pounds in her pocket. To go she knew not where, and to do she knew not what, and that she had said she should hang or drown herself, which the boy implicitly believed she would. With greater promptitude than he had shown yet he reckoned up his money and found he had two shillings and three pence at his command. There was his knife which might sell for a shilling, and there was the silver watch his Aunt Alethea had given him shortly before she died. The carriage had been gone now a full quarter of an hour, and it must have got some distance ahead, but he would do his best to catch it up, and there were shortcuts which would perhaps give him a chance. He was off at once, and from the top of the hill, just past the rectory paddock, he could see the carriage, looking very small on a bit of road which showed perhaps a mile and a half in front of him. One of the most popular amusements at Ruffborough was an institution called the Hounds, more commonly known elsewhere as Hare and Hounds. But in this case the Hare was a couple of boys who were called foxes, and boys are so particular about correctness of nomenclature where their sports are concerned that I dare not say they played Hare and Hounds. These were the Hounds, and that was all. Ernest's want of muscular strength did not tell against him here. There was no jostling up against boys who, though neither older nor taller than he, were yet more robustly built. If it came to mere endurance he was as good as anyone else, so when his carpentering was stopped he had naturally taken to the Hounds as his favorite amusement. His lungs thus exercised had become developed, and as a run of six or seven miles across country was not more than he was used to, he did not despair by the help of the shortcuts of overtaking the carriage, or at the worst of catching Ellen at the station before the train left. So he ran and ran and ran till his first wind was gone and his second came, and he could breathe more easily. Never with the Hounds had he run so fast and with so few breaks as now, but with all his efforts and the help of the shortcuts he did not catch up to the carriage, and would probably not have done so had not John happened to turn his head and see him running and making signs for the carriage to stop a quarter of a mile off. He was now about five miles from home and was nearly done up. He was crimson with his exertion, covered with dust, and with his trousers and coat sleeves a trifle short for him he cut a poor figure enough as he thrust on Ellen his watch, his knife, and the little money he had. The one thing he implored of her was not to do those dreadful things which she threatened, for his sake, if for no other reason. Ellen at first would not hear of taking anything from him, but the coachman, who was from the North Country, sided with Ernest. Take it, my lass, he said kindly. Take what thou can get whilst thou canst get it. As for Master Ernest here, he has run well after thee. Or let him give thee what he has minded. Ellen did what she was told, and the two parted with many tears, the girl's last words being that she should never forget him, and that they should meet again hereafter. She was sure they would, and then she would repay him. Then Ernest got into a field by the roadside, flung himself on the grass, and waited under the shadow of a hedge till the carriage should pass on its return from the station and pick him up, for he was dead beat. Thoughts which had already occurred to him with some force now came more strongly before him, and he saw that he had got himself into one mess, or rather into half a dozen messes, the more. In the first place he should be late for dinner, and this was one of the offenses on which Theobald had no mercy. Also he should have to say where he had been, and there was a danger of being found out if he did not speak the truth. Not only this, but sooner or later it must come out that he was no longer in possession of the beautiful watch which his dear aunt had given him. And what, pray, had he done with it, or how had he lost it? The reader will know very well what he ought to have done. He should have gone straight home, and if questioned should have said, I have been running after the carriage to catch our housemaid Ellen whom I am very fond of. I have given her my watch, my knife, and all my pocket-money, so that I have now no pocket-money at all, and shall probably ask you for some more sooner than I otherwise might have done, and you will also have to buy me a new watch and a knife. But then, fancy the consternation, which such an announcement would have occasioned. Fancy the scowl and flashing eyes of the infuriated Theobald. You unprincipled young scoundrel, he would exclaim. Do you mean to vilify your own parents by implying that they have dealt harshly by one whose profligacy has disgraced their house, or he might take it with one of those sallies of sarcastic calm of which he believed himself to be a master? Very well, Ernest, very well, I shall say nothing. You can please yourself. You are not yet twenty-one, but pray, act as if you were your own master. Your poor aunt doubtless gave you the watch that you might fling it away upon the first improper character you came across. I think I can now understand, however, why she did not leave you her money. And after all, your godfather may just as well have it as the kind of people on whom you would lavish it if it were yours. Then his mother would burst into tears and implore him to repent and seek the things belonging to his peace while there was yet time, by falling on his knees to Theobald and assuring him of his unfailing love for him as the kindest and tenderest father in the universe. Ernest could do all this just as well as they could, and now as he lay on the grass, speeches, some one or other of which was as certain to come as the son to set, kept running in his head till they confuted the idea of telling the truth by reducing it to an absurdity. Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics. Having settled that he was to tell a lie, what lie should he tell? Should he say he had been robbed? He had enough imagination to know that he had not enough imagination to carry him out here. Young as he was, his instinct told him that the best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way, who husbands it too carefully to waste it where it can be dispensed with. The simplest course would be to say that he had lost the watch and was late for dinner because he had been looking for it. He had been out for a long walk. He chose the line across the fields that he had actually taken, and the weather being very hot he had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and carrying them over his arm, his watch, his money, and his knife had dropped out of them. He had gotten nearly home when he found out his loss and had run back as fast as he could, looking along the line he had followed till at last he had given it up. Seeing the carriage coming back from the station, he had let it pick him up and bring him home. This covered everything, the running and all, for his face still showed that he must have been running hard. The only question was whether he had been seen about the rectory by any but the servants for a couple of hours or so before Ellen had gone, and this he was happy to believe was not the case, for he had been out except during his few minutes' interview with the cook. His father had been out at the parish, his mother had certainly not come across him, and his brother and sister had also been out with the governess. He knew he could depend upon the cook and the other servants, the coachman would see to this. On the whole, therefore, both he and the coachman thought the story as proposed by Ernest, would about meet the requirements of the case. CHAPTER XIV When Ernest got home and sneaked in through the back door, he heard his father's voice in its angriest tones, inquiring whether Master Ernest had already returned. He felt as Jack must have felt in the story of Jack and the Bean Stock, when from the oven in which he was hidden he heard the ogre ask his wife what young children she had got for his supper. With much courage, and, as the event proved, with not less courage than discretion, he took the bull by the horns and announced himself at once as having just come in after having met with a terrible misfortune. Little by little he told his story, and though Theobald stormed somewhat about his incredible folly and carelessness, he got off better than he expected. Theobald and Christina had indeed at first been inclined to connect his absence from dinner with Ellen's dismissal, but on finding it clear, as Theobald said, that Ernest had not been in the house all the morning, and could therefore have known nothing about what had happened. He was acquitted on this account for once in a way, without a stain upon his character. Perhaps Theobald was in a good temper. He may have seen from the paper that morning that his stocks had been rising. It may have been this or twenty other things, but whatever it was, he did not scold so much as Ernest had expected, and seeing the boy look exhausted and believing him to be much grieved at the loss of his watch, Theobald actually prescribed a glass of wine after his dinner, which, strange to say, did not choke him, but made him see things more cheerfully than was usual with him. That night, when he said his prayers, he inserted a few paragraphs to the effect that he might not be discovered and that things might go well with Ellen, but he was anxious and ill at ease. His guilty conscience pointed out to him a score of weak places in his story, through any one of which detection might even yet easily enter. Next day and for many days afterwards he fled when no man was pursuing, and trembled each time he heard his father's voice calling for him. He already had so many causes of anxiety that he could stand little more, and in spite of all his endeavors to look cheerful, even his mother could see that something was preying on his mind. Then the idea returned to her that, after all, her son might not be innocent in the Ellen matter, and this was so interesting that she felt bound to get as near the truth as she could. Come here, my poor pale-faced, heavy-eyed boy, she said to him one day in her kindest manner. Come and sit down by me, and we will have a little quiet confidential talk together. Will we not? The boy went mechanically to the sofa. Whenever his mother wanted what she called a confidential talk with him, she always selected the sofa as the most suitable ground on which to open her campaign. All mothers do this. The sofa is, to them, what the dining-room is to fathers. In the present case the sofa was particularly well adapted for a strategic purpose, being an old-fashioned one with a high back, mattress, bolsters, and cushions. One safely penned into one of its deep corners. It was like a dentist's chair, not too easy to get out of again. Here she could get at him better to pull him about if this should seem desirable, or if she thought fit to cry she could bury her head into the sofa cushion and abandon herself to an agony of grief which seldom failed of its effect. None of her favorite maneuvers were so easily adopted in her usual seat, the armchair on the right-hand side of the fireplace, and so well did her son know from his mother's tone that this was going to be a sofa conversation, that he took his place like a lamb as soon as she began to speak and before she could reach the sofa herself. My dearest boy, began his mother, taking hold of his hand and placing it within her own. Promise me never to be afraid of either your dear papa or of me. Promise me this, my dear, as you love me, promise it to me. And she kissed him again and again, and stroked his hair. But with her other hand she still kept hold of his. She had got him, and she meant to keep him. The lad hung down his head and promised. What else could he do? You know there is no one, dear, dear Ernest, who loves you so much as your papa and I do. No one who watches so carefully over your interests or who is so anxious to enter into all your little joys and troubles as we are. But my dearest boy, it grieves me to think that sometimes you have not that perfect love for and confidence in us which you ought to have. You know, my darling, that it would be as much our pleasure as our duty to watch over the development of your moral and spiritual nature. But alas, you will not let us see your moral and spiritual nature. At times we are almost inclined to doubt whether you have a moral and spiritual nature at all. Of your inner life, my dear, we know nothing beyond such scraps as we can glean in spite of you, from little things which escape you almost before you know that you have said them. The boy winced at this. It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over. He knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, from time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve. His mother saw that he winced and enjoyed the scratch she had given him. Had she felt less confident of victory, she had better have foregone the pleasure of touching as it were the eyes at the end of the snail's horns, in order to enjoy seeing the snail draw them in again. But she knew that when she had got him well down into the sofa, and held his hand, she had the enemy almost absolutely at her mercy, and could do pretty much what she liked. Papa does not feel, she continued, that you love him with the fullness and unreserve which would prompt you to have no concealment from him, and to tell him everything freely and fearlessly as your most loving earthly friend next only to your heavenly father. Perfect love as we know casteth out fear. Your father loves you perfectly, my darling, but he does not feel as though you loved him perfectly in return. If you fear him, it is because you do not love him as he deserves, and I know it sometimes cuts him to the very heart to think that he has earned from you a deeper and more willing sympathy than you display towards him. Oh, Ernest, Ernest, do not grieve someone who is so good and noble-hearted by conduct which I can call by no other name than in gratitude. Ernest could never stand being spoken to in this way by his mother, for he still believed that she loved him, and that he was fond of her and had a friend in her, up to a certain point. But his mother was beginning to come to the end of her tether. She had played the domestic confidence trick upon him times without number already. Over and over again she had wheedled from him all she wanted to know and afterwards got him to the most horrible scrape by telling the whole to Theobald. Ernest had remonstrated more than once upon these occasions, and had pointed out to his mother how disastrous to him his confidences had been. But Christina had always joined issue with him and showed him in the clearest possible manner that in each case she had been right and that he could not reasonably complain. Generally it was her conscience that forbade her to be silent, and against this there was no appeal, for we are all bound to follow the dictates of our conscience. Ernest used to have to recite a hymn about conscience. It was to the effect that if you did not pay attention to its voice it would soon leave off speaking. My mom's conscience has not left off speaking, said Ernest one of his chums at Ruffborough. It's always jabbering. When a boy has once spoken so disrespectfully as this about his mother's conscience it is practically all over between him and her. Ernest through sheer force of habit of the sofa and of the return of the associated ideas was still so moved by the siren's voice as to yearn to sail towards her and fling himself into her arms. But it would not do. There were other associated ideas that returned also, and the mangled bones of too many murdered confessions were lying whitening round the skirts of his mother's dress to allow him by any possibility to trust her further. So he hung his head and looked sheepish but kept his own counsel. I see, my dearest, continued his mother, either that I am mistaken and that there is nothing on your mind or that you will not unburden yourself to me. But oh, Ernest, tell me at least this much. Is there nothing that you repent of, nothing which makes you unhappy in connection with that miserable girl, Ellen? His heart failed him. I am a dead boy now, he said to himself. He had not the faintest conception what his mother was driving at and thought she suspected about the watch, but he held his ground. I do not believe he was much more of a coward than his neighbors. Only he did not know that all sensible people are cowards when they are off their beat, or when they think they are going to be roughly handled. I believe that if the truth were known it would be found that even the valiant St. Michael himself tried hard to shirk his famous combat with the dragon. He pretended not to see all sorts of misconduct on the dragon's part, shut his eyes to the eating up of I do not know how many hundreds of men, women, and children whom he had promised to protect, allowed himself to be publicly insulted a dozen times over without resenting it. And in the end, when even an angel could stand at no longer, he shilly-shallied and temporized an unconscionable time before he would fix the day and hour for the encounter. As for the actual combat, it was much such another Wura Wura as Mrs. Alibi had had with the young man who had in the end married her eldest daughter, till after a time behold, there was the dragon lying dead, while he was himself alive and not very seriously hurt after all. I do not know what you mean, Mama, exclaimed Ernest anxiously and more or less hurriedly. His mother construed his manner into indignation at being suspected, and being rather frightened herself, she turned tail and scuttled off as fast as her tongue could carry her. Oh, she said, I see by your tone that you are innocent. Oh, oh, how I thank my heavenly father for this. May he, for his dear son's sake, keep you always pure. Your father, my dear, here, she spoke hurriedly, but gave him a searching look, was as pure as a spotless angel when he came to me, like him always be self-denying, truly truthful, both in word and deed, never forgetful whose son and grandson you are, nor of the name we gave you, of the sacred stream in whose waters your sins were washed out of you through the blood and blessing of Christ, et cetera. But Ernest cut this. I will not say short, but a great deal shorter than it would have been if Christina had had her say out by extricating himself from his mama's embrace and showing a clean pair of heels. As he got near the purlew of the kitchen, where he was more at ease, he heard his father calling for his mother, and again his guilty conscience rose against him. He has found all out now, cried, and he is going to tell mama and this time I am done for. But there was nothing in it. His father only wanted the key to the cellarette. Then Ernest slunk off into a copis or spinny behind the rectory paddock and consoled himself with a pipe of tobacco. Here in the wood with the summer sun streaming through the trees and a book in his pipe, the boy forgot his cares and had an interval of rest without which I verily believe his life would have been insupportable. Of course Ernest was made to look for his lost property and a reward was offered for it, but it seemed he had wandered a good deal off the path, thinking to find a lark's nest more than once, and looking for a watch and a purse on Battersby pie wipes was very like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, besides it might have been found and taken by some tramp or by a magpie of which there were many in the neighborhood, so that after a week or ten days the search was discontinued, and the unpleasant fact had to be faced that Ernest must have another watch, another knife, and a small sum of pocket money. It was only right, however, that Ernest should pay half the cost of the watch. This should be made easy for him, for it should be deducted from his pocket money in half-yearly installments, extending over two or it might be three years, in Ernest's own interests then, as well as those of his father and it would be well that the watch had cost as little as possible, so it was resolved to buy a second-hand one. Nothing was to be said to Ernest, but it was to be bought and laid upon his plate as a surprise just before the holidays were over. Theobald would have to go to the county town in a few days and could then find some second-hand watch which would answer sufficiently well. In the course of time, therefore, Theobald went, furnished with a long list of household commissions, among which was the purchase of a watch for Ernest. Those, as I have said, were always happy times, when Theobald was away for a whole day certain. The boy was beginning to feel easy in his mind, as though God had heard his prayers, and he was not going to be found out. Altogether the day had proved an unusually tranquil one. But alas, it was not to close as it had begun. The fickle atmosphere in which he lived was never more likely to breed a storm than after such an interval of brilliant calm. And when Theobald returned, Ernest had only to look in his face to see that a hurricane was approaching. Christina saw that something had gone very wrong and was quite frightened lest Theobald should have some serious money loss. He did not, however, at once unbuzzle himself, but rang the bell and said to the servant, Tell, Master Ernest, I wish to speak to him in the dining room. CHAPTERS 41 AND 42 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 Fetterman. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler. CHAPTER 41 Long before Ernest reached the dining room, his ill-divining soul had told him that his sin had found him out. What head of family ever sends for any of its members into the dining room, if his intentions are honourable? When he reached it, he found it empty. His father, having been called away for a few minutes unexpectedly upon some parish business, and he was left in the same kind of suspense as people are in after they have been ushered into their dentist's anti-room. Of all the rooms in the house, he hated the dining room worst. It was here that he had had to do his Latin and Greek lessons with his father. It had a smell of some particular kind of polish or varnish, which was used in polishing the furniture, and neither I nor Ernest can even now come within range of the smell of this kind of varnish without our hearts failing us. Over the chimney-piece there was a veritable old master, one of the few original pictures which Mr. George Pontifex had brought from Italy. It was supposed to be a Salvatore rosa, and had been bought as a great bargain. The subject was Elijah or Elisha, whichever it was, being fed by the ravens in the desert. There were the ravens in the upper right-hand corner with bread and meat and their beaks and claws, and there was the prophet in question in the lower left-hand corner, looking longingly up towards them. When Ernest was a very small boy, it had been a constant matter of regret to him that the food which the ravens carried never actually reached the prophet. He did not understand the limitation of the painter's art, and wanted the meat and the prophet to be brought into direct contact. One day, with the help of some steps which had been left in the room, he had clamored up to the picture, and with a piece of bread and butter traced a greasy line right across it, from the ravens to Elisha's mouth, after which he had felt more comfortable. Ernest's mind was drifting back to this youthful escapade when he heard his father's hand on the door, and in another second Theobald entered. Oh, Ernest, he said, in an offhand, rather cheery manner, there's a little matter which I should like you to explain to me, as I have no doubt you very easily can. Thump, thump, thump, went Ernest's heart against his ribs, but his father's manner was so much nicer than usual, that he began to think it might be, after all, only another false alarm. It had occurred to your mother and myself that we should like to set you up with a watch again before you went back to school. Oh, that's all, said Ernest to himself, quite relieved. And I have been today to look out for a second hand one, which should answer every purpose so long as you're at school. Theobald spoke as if watches had half a dozen purposes besides timekeeping, but he could hardly open his mouth without using one or the other of his tags, and answering every purpose was one of them. Ernest was breaking out into the usual expression of gratitude when Theobald continued, you are interrupting me, and Ernest's heart thumped again. You are interrupting me, Ernest. I have not yet done. Ernest was instantly dumb. I passed several shops with second hand watches for sale, but I saw none of a description and price which pleased me. Till at last I was shown one which had, so the shopman said, been left with him recently for sale, and which at once I recognized as the one which had been given you by your aunt Alethea. Even if I had failed to recognize it as perhaps I might have done, I should have identified it directly. It reached my hands in as much as it had E.P., a present from A.P., engraved upon the inside. I need say no more to show you that this was the very watch which you told your mother and me that had dropped out of your pocket. Up to this time Theobald's manner had been studiously calm, and his words had been uttered slowly. But here he suddenly quickened and flung off the mask as he added the words, or some such cock-and-bull story, which your mother and I were too truthful to disbelieve. You can guess what must be our feelings now. Ernest felt that this last home thrust was just. In his less anxious moments he had thought his papa and mama green for the readiness with which they believed him. But he could not deny that their credulity was a proof of their habitual truthfulness of mind. In common justice he must own that it was very dreadful for two such truthful people to have a son as untruthful as he knew himself to be. Believing that a son of your mother and myself would be incapable of falsehood, I had at once assumed that some tramp had picked up the watch and was now trying to dispose of it. This to the best of my belief was not accurate. Theobald's first assumption had been that it was Ernest who was trying to sell the watch, and it was an inspiration of the moment to say that his magnanimous mind had at once conceived the idea of a tramp. You may imagine how shocked I was when I discovered that the watch had been brought for sale by that miserable woman Ellen. Here Ernest Hart hardened a little, and he felt as near an approach to an instinct to turn as one so defenseless could be expected to feel. His father quickly perceived this and continued, Who was turned out of this house in circumstances which I will not pollute your ears by more particularly describing? I put aside the horrid conviction which was beginning to dawn upon me and assumed that in the interval between her dismissal and her leaving this house she had added theft to her other sin and having found your watch in your bedroom had preloined it. It even occurred to me that you might have missed your watch after the woman was gone, and suspecting who had taken it had run after the carriage in order to recover it. But when I told the shopman of my suspicions he assured me that the person who left it with him had declared most solemnly that it had been given her by her master's son whose property it was and who had a perfect right to dispose of it. He told me further that thinking the circumstances in which the watch was offered for sale somewhat suspicious he had insisted upon the woman's telling him the whole story of how she came by it before he would consent to buy it of her. He said that at first, as women of that stamp invariably do, she tried prevarication, but on being threatened that she should at once be given into custody if she did not tell the whole truth she described the way in which you had run after the carriage till as she said you were black in the face and insisted on giving her all your pocket money, your knife, and your watch. She added that my coachman John, whom I shall instantly discharge, was witness to the whole transaction. Now, Ernest, be pleased to tell me whether this appalling story is true or false. It never occurred to Ernest to ask his father why he did not hit a man his own size or to stop him midway in the story with a remonstrance against being kicked when he was down. The boy was too much shocked and shaken to be inventive. He could only drift and stammer out that the tale was true. So I feared, said Theobald. And now, Ernest, be good enough to ring the bell. When the bell had been answered, Theobald desired that John should be sent for. And when John came, Theobald calculated the wages due to him and desired him at once to leave the house. John's matter was quiet and respectful. He took his dismissal as a matter of course, for Theobald had hinted enough to make him understand why he was being discharged. But when he saw Ernest sitting pale and awestruck on the edge of his chair against the dining room wall, a sudden thought seemed to strike him. And turning to Theobald, he said in a broad northern accent, which I will not attempt to reproduce. Look here, master. I can guess what all this is about. Now before I goes, I want to have a word with you. Ernest, said Theobald, leave the room. No, master Ernest, you shan't. Said John, planting himself against the door. Now, master, he continued. You may do as you please about me. I've been a good servant to you. And I don't mean to say as you've been a bad master to me. But I do say that if you bear hardly on master Ernest here, I have those in the village as ill here on it and let me know. And if I do here on it, I'll come back and break every bone in your skin so there. John's breath came and went quickly as though he would have been well enough pleased to begin the bone-breaking business at once. Theobald turned an ashen color, not as he explained afterwards, at the idle threats of a detected and angry Ruffian, but at such atrocious insolence from one of his own servants. I shall leave, master Ernest, John, he rejoined proudly, to the reproaches of his own conscience. Thank God and thank John, thought Ernest. As for yourself, I admit that you have been an excellent servant until this unfortunate business came on. And I shall have much pleasure in giving you a character if you want one. Have you anything more to say? No more nor what I have said, said John sullenly. But what I've said I means and I'll stick to, character or no character. Oh, you need not be afraid about your character, John, said Theobald kindly. And as it is getting late, there can be no occasion for you to leave the house before tomorrow morning. To this there was no reply from John, who retired, packed up his things, and left the house at once. When Christina heard what had happened, she said she could condone all except that Theobald should have been subjected to such insolence from one of his own servants through the misconduct of his son. Theobald was the bravest man in the whole world and could easily have collared the wretch and turned him out of the room. But how far more dignified, how far nobler had been his reply? How it would tell in a novel or upon the stage, for though the stage was as a whole immoral, yet there were doubtless some plays which were improving spectacles. She could fancy the whole house hushed with excitement, adhering John's menace and hardly breathing by reason of their interest and expectation of the coming answer. Then the actor, probably the great and good Mr. McReady would say, I shall leave, Master Ernest John, to the reproaches of his own conscience. Oh, it was sublime, what a roar of applause must follow. Then she should enter herself and fling her arms about her husband's neck and call him her lion-hearted husband. When the curtain dropped, it would be buzzed about the house that the scene just witnessed had been drawn from real life and had actually occurred in the household of the reverend Theobald Pontifex, who had married a Miss Alibi, et cetera, et cetera. As regards Ernest, the suspicions which had already crossed her mind were deepened, but she thought it better to leave the matter where it was. At present she was in a very strong position. Ernest's official purity was firmly established, but at the same time he had shown himself so susceptible that she was able to fuse two contradictory impressions concerning him into a single idea and consider him as a kind of Joseph and Don Juan in one. This was what she had wanted all along, but her vanity being gratified by the possession of such a son, there was an end to it. The son himself was not. No doubt if John had not interfered, Ernest would have had to expiate his offence with ache, penury, and imprisonment. As it was, the boy was to consider himself as undergoing these punishments and as suffering pangs of unavailing remorse inflicted on him by his conscience into the bargain, but beyond the fact that Theobald kept him more closely to his holiday task and the continued coldness of his parents, no ostensible punishment was meted out against him. Ernest, however, tells me that he looks back upon this as the time when he began to know that he had a cordial and active dislike for both his parents, which I suppose means that he was now beginning to be aware that he was reaching man's estate. Chapter 42. About a week before he went back to school, his father again sent for him into the dining room and told him that he should restore him his watch, but that he should deduct the sum he had paid for it, for he had thought it better to pay a few shillings rather than dispute the ownership of the watch, seeing that Ernest had undoubtedly given it to Ellen from his pocket money in payments which should extend over two half years. He would therefore have to go back to Ruffborough this half year with only five shillings in his pocket. If he wanted more, he must earn more merit money. Ernest was not so careful about money as a pattern boy should be. He did not say to himself, now I have got a sovereign which must last me 15 weeks, therefore I may spend exactly one shilling in four pence in each week, and spend exactly one in four pence in each week accordingly. He ran through his money at about the same rate as other boys did. Being pretty well cleaned out a few days after he had got back to school, when he had no more money, he got a little into debt. And when as far in debt as he could see his way to repaying, he went without luxuries. Immediately he got any money, he would pay his debts. If there was any over, he would spend it. If there was not, and their seldom was, he would begin to go on tick again. His finance was always based upon the supposition that he could go back to school with one pound in his pocket, of which he owed, say, a matter of 15 shillings. There would be five shillings for sundry school subscriptions, but when these were paid, the weekly allowance of six pence given to each boy in hall, his merit money, which this half he was resolved should come to a good sum, and renewed credit would carry him through the half. The sudden failure of 15 shillings was disastrous to my hero's scheme of finance. His face betrayed his emotions so clearly that Theobald said he was determined to learn the truth at once and this time without days and days of falsehood before he reached it. The melancholy fact was not long and coming out, namely that the wretched earnest added debt to the vices of idleness, falsehood, and possibly, for it was not impossible, immorality. How had he come to get into debt? Did the other boys do so? Ernest reluctantly admitted that they did. With what shops did they get into debt? This was asking too much. Ernest said he didn't know. Oh, Ernest, Ernest exclaimed his mother who was in the room. Do not so soon a second time presume upon the forbearance of the tenderest hearted father in the world. Give time for one stab to heal before you wound him with another. This was all very fine, but what was Ernest to do? How could he get the school shopkeepers into trouble by owning that they let some of the boys go on tick with them? There was Mrs. Cross, a good old soul who used to sell hot rolls and butter for breakfast or eggs and toast or it might be the quarter of a fowl with bread sauce and mashed potatoes for which she would charge six penny. If she made a farthing out of the six pence it was as much as she did. When the boys would come trooping into her shop after the hounds, how often had not Ernest heard her say to her servant girls, now then you wonches get some cheers. All the boys were fond of her and was he Ernest to tell tales about her? It was horrible. Now look here Ernest said his father with the blackest scowl. I am going to put a stop to this nonsense once and for all. Either take me fully into your confidence as a son should take a father and trust me to deal with this matter as a clergyman and a man of the world or understand distinctly that I shall take the whole story to Dr. Skinner who I imagine will take much sterner measures than I should. Oh Ernest, Ernest sub-Christina be wise in time and trust those who have already shown you that they know but too well how to be forebearing. No genuine hero of romance should have hesitated for a moment. Nothing should have cajoled or frightened him into telling tales out of school. Ernest thought of his ideal boys. They, he well knew, would have let their tongues be cut out of them before information could have been rung from any word of theirs. But Ernest was not an ideal boy and he was not strong enough for his surroundings. I doubt how far any boy could withstand the moral pressure which was brought to bear upon him. At any rate, he could not do so. And after a little more writhing he yielded himself as passive prey to the enemy. He consoled himself with the reflection that his papa had not played the confidence trick on him quite as often as his mama had and that probably it was better he should tell his father than that his father should insist on Dr. Skinner making an inquiry. His papa's conscience jabbered a good deal but not as much as his mama's. The little fool forgot that he had not given his father as many chances of betraying him as he had given to Christina. Then it all came out. He owed this at Mrs. Crosses and this to Mrs. Jones and this at the swan and bottle public house to say nothing of another shilling or six pence or two in other quarters. Nevertheless, Theobald and Christina were not satiated but rather the more they discovered the greater grew their appetite for discovery. It was their obvious duty to find out everything for though they might rescue their own darling from this hot bit of iniquity without getting to know more than they knew at present were there not other papa's and mama's with darlings whom they were also bound to rescue? If it were yet possible, what boys then owed money to these harpies as well as Ernest? Here again was a feeble show of resistance but the thumb screws were instantly applied and Ernest demoralized as he already was recanted and submitted himself to the powers that were. He told only a little less than he knew or thought he knew. He was examined, re-examined, cross-examined, sent to the retirement of his own bedroom and cross-examined again. The smoking in Mrs. Jones' kitchen all came out, which boys smoked and which did not, which boys owed money and roughly how much and where, which boys swore and used bad language. Theobald was resolved that this time Ernest should, as he called it, take him into his confidence without reserve. So the school list which went with Dr. Skinner's half-yearly bills was brought out and the most secret character of each boy was gone through Seriatum by Mr. and Mrs. Pontifex. So far as it was in Ernest's power to give information concerning it and yet Theobald had on the preceding Sunday preached a less feeble sermon than he commonly preached upon the horrors of the inquisition. No matter how awful was the depravity revealed to them, the pair never flinched but probed and probed till they were on the point of reaching subjects more delicate than they had yet touched upon. Here Ernest's unconscious self took the matter up and made a resistance to which his conscious self was unequal by tumbling him off his chair in a fit of fainting. Dr. Martin was sent for and pronounced the boy to be seriously unwell. At the same time he prescribed absolute rest and absence from nervous excitement. So the anxious parents were unwillingly compelled to be content with what they had got already, being frightened into leading him a quiet life for the short remainder of the holidays. They were not idle but Satan confined as much mischief for busy hands as for idle ones. So he sent a little job in the direction of Battersby which Theobald and Christina undertook immediately. It would be a pity they reasoned that Ernest should leave Ruffborough now that he had been there three years. It would be difficult to find another school for him and to explain why he left Ruffborough. Besides, Dr. Skinner and Theobald were supposed to be old friends and it would be unpleasant to offend him. These were all valid reasons for not removing the boy. The proper thing to do then would be to warn Dr. Skinner confidentially of the state of his school and to furnish him with a school list annotated with the remarks extracted from Ernest which should be appended to the name of each boy. Theobald was the perfection of neatness. While his son was ill upstairs, he copied out the school list so that he could throw his comments into a tabular form which assumed the following shape. Only that of course I have changed the names. One cross in each square was to indicate occasional offense. Two stood for frequent and three for habitual delinquency. Smith smoking no cross. Drinking beer at the Swannan Bottle, no cross. Swearing in obscene language, two crosses. Notes will smoke next half. Brown smoking three crosses. Drinking beer at the Swannan Bottle, no cross. Swearing in obscene language, one cross. Jones smoking one cross. Drinking beer at the Swannan Bottle, two crosses. Swearing in obscene language, three crosses. Robinson smoking two crosses. Drinking beer at the Swannan Bottle, two crosses. Swearing in obscene language, one cross. And thus through the whole school. Of course, injustice to Ernest, Dr. Skinner would be bound over to secrecy before a word was said to him. But Ernest being thus protected, he could not be furnished with the facts too completely. End of chapter 42, recording by Rhonda Fetterman. Chapters 43 and 44 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 Fetterman. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Chapter 43. So important did Theobald consider this matter that he made a special journey to Ruffborough before the half year began. It was a relief to have him out of the house, but though his destination was not mentioned, Ernest guessed where he had gone. To this day he considers his conduct at this crisis to have been one of the most serious latches of his life, one which he could never think of without shame and indignation. He says he ought to have run away from home. But what good could he have done if he had? He would have been caught, brought back and examined two days later instead of two days earlier. A boy of barely 16 cannot stand against the moral pressure of a father and mother who have always oppressed him any more than he could cope physically with a powerful, full-grown man. True, he may allow himself to be killed rather than yield, but this is being so morbidly heroic as to come close round again to cowardice, for it is little else than suicide, which is universally condemned as cowardly. On the reassembling of this school it became apparent that something had gone wrong. Dr. Skinner called the boys together and with much pomp excommunicated Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Jones by declaring their shops to be out of bounds, the street in which the swan and bottle stood was also forbidden. The vices of drinking and smoking therefore were clearly aimed at. And before prayers, Dr. Skinner spoke a few impressive words about the abominable sin of using bad language. Ernest's feelings can be imagined. Next day at the hour when the daily punishments were read out, though there had not yet been time for him to have offended, Ernest Pontifex was declared to have incurred every punishment which the school provided for evildoers. He was placed on the idolists for the whole half year and on perpetual detentions. His bounds were curtailed. He was to attend junior callings over. In fact, he was so hemmed in with punishments upon every side that it was hardly possible for him to go outside the school gates. This unparalleled list of punishments inflicted on the first day of the half year and intended to last till the ensuing Christmas holidays was not connected with any specified offense. It required no great penetration therefore on the part of the boys to connect Ernest with the pudding Mrs. Crosses and Mrs. Jones shops out of bounds. Great indeed was the indignation about Mrs. Crosses. Who it was known, remember Dr. Skinner himself as a small boy, only just got into jackets and had doubtless let him have many a sausage and mashed potatoes upon deferred payment. The head boys assembled in conclave to consider what steps should be taken but hardly had they done so before Ernest knocked timidly at the head room door and took the bull by the horns by explaining the facts as far as he could bring himself to do so. He made a clean breast of everything except about the school list and the remarks he had made about each boy's character. This infamy was more than he could own to and he kept his counsel concerning it. Fortunately, he was safe in doing so. For Dr. Skinner, pendant and more pendant though he was had still just sense enough to turn on Theobald in the matter of the school list. Whether he resented being told that he did not know the characters of his own boys or whether he dreaded a scandal about the school, I know not but when Theobald had handed him the list over which he had expended so much pains Dr. Skinner had cut him uncommonly short and had then and there with more suavity than was usual with him, committed it to the flames before Theobald's own eyes. Ernest got off with the head boys easier than he expected. It was admitted that the offense, heinous though it was had been committed under extenuating circumstances. The frankness with which the culprit had confessed all his evidently unfaigned remorse and the fury with which Dr. Skinner was pursuing him tended to bring a bad reaction in his favor as though he had been more sinned against than sinning. As the half year wore on his spirits gradually revived and when attacked by one of his fits of self-abasement he was in some degree consoled by having found out that even his father and mother whom he had supposed so immaculate were no better than they should be. About the fifth of November it was a school custom to meet on a certain common not far from Ruffborough and burn somebody in effigy. This being the compromise arrived at in the matter of fireworks and Guy Fawkes festivities. This year it was decided that Pontifex's governor should be the victim and Ernest though a good deal exercised in mind as to what he ought to do in the end saw no sufficient reason for holding a loop from proceedings which as he justly remarked could not do his father any harm. It so happened that the bishop had held a confirmation at the school on the fifth of November. Dr. Skinner had not quite liked the selection of this day but the bishop was pressed by many engagements and had been compelled to make the arrangement as it then stood. Ernest was among those who had to be confirmed and was deeply impressed with the solemn importance of the ceremony. When he felt the huge old bishop drawing down upon him as he knelt in chapel, he could hardly breathe. And when the apparition paused before him and laid its hands upon his head he was frightened almost out of his wits. He felt that he had arrived at one of the great turning points of his life and that the Ernest of the future could resemble only very faintly the Ernest of the past. This happened at about noon but by the one o'clock dinner hour the effect of the confirmation had worn off and he saw no reason why he should forego his annual amusement with the bonfire. So he went with the others and was very valiant till the image was actually produced and was about to be burnt. Then he felt a little frightened. It was a poor thing enough made of paper, calico and straw but they had christened it the reverend Theobald Pontifex and he had a revulsion of feeling as he saw it being carried toward the bonfire. Still he held his ground and in a few minutes when all was over felt none the worse for having assisted at a ceremony which after all was prompted by a boyish love of mischief rather than by ranker. I should say that Ernest had written to his father and told him of the unprecedented way in which he was being treated. He even ventured to suggest that Theobald should interfere for his protection and reminded him how the story had been got out of him but Theobald had had enough of Dr. Skinner for the present. The burning of the school list had been a rebuff which did not encourage him to meddle a second time in the internal economics of Ruffborough. He therefore replied that he must either remove Ernest from Ruffborough altogether which would for many reasons be undesirable or trust to the discretion of the headmaster as regards the treatment he might think best for any of his pupils. Ernest said no more. He still felt that it was so discreditable to him to have allowed any confession to be rung from him that he could not press the promised amnesty for himself. It was during the Mother Cross row as it was long-styled among the boys that a remarkable phenomenon was witnessed at Ruffborough. I mean that of the headboys under certain conditions doing errands for their juniors. The headboys had no bounds and could go to Mrs. Cross's whenever they liked. They actually therefore made themselves go-betweens and would get anything from either Mrs. Cross's or Mrs. Jones's for any boy, no matter how low in the school, between the hours of quarter to nine and nine in the morning and a quarter to six and six in the afternoon. By degrees, however, the boys grew bolder and the shops, though not openly declared inbounds again, were tacitly allowed to be so. Chapter 44. I may spare the reader more details about my hero's school days. He rose always in spite of himself into the doctor's form and for the last two years or so of his time was among the preposterous, though he never rose into the upper half of them. He did little and I think the doctor rather gave him up as a boy whom he had better leave to himself, for he rarely made him construe and he used to send in his exercises or not pretty much as he liked. His tacit, unconscious obstinacy had in time affected more even than a few bold sallies in the first instance would have done. To the end of his career, his position into par was what it had been at the beginning, namely among the upper part of the less reputable class, whether of seniors or juniors, rather than among the lower part of the more respectable. Only once in the whole course of his school life did he get praise from Dr. Skinner for any exercise and this he has treasured as the best example of guarded approval, which he has ever seen. He had had to write a copy of Alkaix on the Dogs of the Monks of St. Bernard and when the exercise was returned to him he found the doctor had written on it. In this copy of Alkaix, which is still excessively bad, I fancy that I can discern some faint symptoms of improvement. Ernest says that if the exercise was any better than usual it must have been by a fluke, for he is sure that he always liked dogs, especially St. Bernard dogs, far too much to take any pleasure in writing Alkaix about them. As I look back upon it, he said to me but the other day with a hearty laugh, I respect myself more for having never once got the best mark for an exercise than I should do if I had got it every time it could be got. I am glad nothing could make me do Latin and Greek verses. I am glad Skinner could never get any moral influence over me. I am glad I was idle at school and I am glad my father overtasked me as a boy. Otherwise, likely enough, I should have acquiesced in the swindle and might have written as good a copy of Alkaix about the Dogs of the Monks of St. Bernard as my neighbors. And yet I don't know, for I remember there was another boy who sent in a Latin copy of some sort but for his own pleasure he wrote the following. The Dogs of the Monks of St. Bernard go to pick little children out of the snow and around their necks is the cordial gin tied with a little bit of Bob Bin. I should like to have written like that and I did try but I couldn't. I didn't quite like the last line and tried to mend it but I couldn't. I fancied I could see traces of bitterness against the instructors of his youth in earnest manner and said something to this effect. Oh no, he replied still laughing. No more than St. Anthony felt toward the devils who attempted him when he met some of them casually a hundred or a couple of hundred years afterwards. Of course he knew they were devils but that was all right enough. There must be devils. St. Anthony probably liked these devils better than most others and for old acquaintance's sake showed them as much indulgence as was compatible with decorum. Besides, you know, he added, St. Anthony tempted the devils quite as much as they tempted him. For his peculiar sanctity was a greater temptation to tempt him than they could stand. Strictly speaking it was the devils who were to be more pitied for they were led up by St. Anthony to be tempted and fell whereas St. Anthony did not fall. I believe I was a disagreeable and unintelligible boy and if ever I meet Skinner there is no one whom I would shake hands with or do a good turn to more readily. At home things went on rather better. The Ellen and Mother Cross rose sank slowly down upon the horizon and even at home he had quieter times now that he had become a preposter. Nevertheless the watchful eye and protecting hand were still ever over him to guard his comings in and his goings out and to spy out all his ways. Is it wonderful that the boy though always trying to keep up appearances as though he were cheerful and contented and at times actually being so wore an often anxious jaded look when he thought none were looking which told of an almost incessant conflict within. Doubtless Theobald saw these looks and knew how to interpret them but it was his profession to know how to shut his eyes to things that were inconvenient. No clergyman could keep his benefits for a month if he could not do this. Besides he had allowed himself for so many years to say things he ought not to have said and not to say the things he ought to have said that he was little likely to see anything that he thought it more convenient not to see unless he was made to do so. It was not much that was wanted to make no mysteries where nature has made none to bring his conscience under something like reasonable control to give Ernest his head a little more to ask fewer questions and to give him pocket money with a desire that it should be spent upon menu's placeer. Call that not much indeed, laughed Ernest as I read him what I have just written. Why it is the whole duty of a father but it is the mystery making which is the worst evil if people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence. To return, however, to Ruffborough. On the day of his leaving when he was sent for into the library to be shaken hands with he was surprised to feel that though assuredly glad to leave he did not do so with any special grudge against the doctor rankling in his breast. He had come to the end of it all and was still alive nor take it all around more seriously amiss than other people. Doctor Skinner had received him graciously and was even frolicsome after his own heavy fashion. Young people are almost always placable and Ernest felt as he went away that another such interview would not only have wiped off all old scores but have brought him round into the ranks of the doctor's admirers and supporters among whom it is only fair to say that the greater number of the more promising boys were found. Just before saying goodbye the doctor actually took down a volume from those shelves which had seemed so awful six years previously and gave it to him after having written his name in it and the words meaning with all kind wishes from the donor. This book was one written in Latin by a German, Schoeman decomatis etheniensibus. Not exactly light and cheerful reading but Ernest felt it was high time he got to understand the Athenian constitution and manner of voting. He had got them up a great many times already but had forgotten them as fast as he had learned them. Now however that the doctor had given him this book he would master the subject once and for all. How strange it was. He wanted to remember these things very badly. He knew he did but he could never retain them in spite of himself they no sooner fell upon his mind that they fell off it again. He had such a dreadful memory whereas if anyone played him a piece of music and told him where it came from he never forgot that though he made no effort to retain it and was not even conscious of trying to remember it at all. His mind must be badly formed and he was no good. Having still a short time to spare he got the keys of St. Michael's Church and went to have a farewell practice upon the organ which he could now play fairly well. He walked up and down the aisle for a while in a meditative mood and then settling down to the organ played They Lothe to Drink of the River about six times over after which he felt more composed and happier then tearing himself away from the instrument he loved so well he hurried to the station. As the train drew out he looked down from a high embankment on to the little house his aunt had taken and where it might be said she had died through her desire to do him a kindness. There were the two well-known bow windows out of which he had often stepped to run across the lawn into the workshop. He reproached himself with the little gratitude he had shown towards this kind lady. The only one of his relations whom he had ever felt as though he could have taken into his confidence. Dearly as he loved her memory he was glad she had not known the scrapes he had gotten into since she died. Perhaps she might not have forgiven them and how awful that would have been. But then if she had lived perhaps many of his ills would have been spared him. As he mused thus he grew sad again. Where, where he asked himself was it all to end? Was it to be always sin, shame and sorrow in the future as it had been in the past? And the ever-watchful eye in protecting hand of his father laying burdens on him greater than he could bear? Or was he too, some day or another, to come to feel that he was fairly well and happy? There was a gray mist across the sun so that the eye could bear its light and earnest while musing as above was looking right into the middle of the sun himself as into the face of one whom he knew and was fond of. At first his face was grave but kindly as a retired man who feels that a long task is over but in a few seconds the more humorous side of his misfortunes presented itself to him. And he smiled half reproachfully, half merrily as thinking how little all that had happened to him really mattered and how small were his hardships as compared with those of most people. Still looking into the eye of the sun and smiling dreamily he thought how he had helped to burn his father in effigy and his look grew merrier till at last he broke out into a laugh. Exactly at this moment the light veil of cloud parted from the sun and he was brought to terra firma by the breaking forth of the sunshine. On this he became aware that he was being watched attentively by a fellow traveler opposite to him an elderly gentleman with a large head and iron gray hair. My young friend said he, good-naturedly, you really must not carry on conversations with people in the sun while you are in a public railway carriage. The old gentleman said not another word but unfolded his times and began to read it. As for Ernest he blushed crimson. The pair did not speak during the rest of the time they were in the carriage but they eyed each other from time to time so that the face of each was impressed on the recollection of the other. End of chapter 44. Recording by Rhonda Fetterman. Chapters 45 and 46 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 Fetterman. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Chapter 45. Some people say that their school days were the happiest of their lives. They may be right but I always look with suspicion upon those whom I hear saying this. It is hard enough to know whether one is happy or unhappy now and still harder to compare the relative happiness or unhappiness of different times of one's life. The utmost that can be said is that we are fairly happy so long as we are not distinctly aware of being miserable. As I was talking with Ernest one day, not so long since about this, he said he was so happy now that he was sure he had never been happier and did not wish to be so. But that Cambridge was the first place where he had ever been consciously and continuously happy. How could any boy fail to feel an ecstasy of pleasure on first finding himself in rooms which he knows for the next few years are to be his castle. Here he will not be compelled to turn out of the most comfortable place as soon as he has ensconced himself in it because papa or mama happens to come into the room and he should give it up to them. The most cozy chair here is for himself. There is no one even to share the room with him or to interfere with his doing as he likes in it. Smoking included. Why if such a room looked out both back and front onto a blank dead wall, it would still be a paradise. How much more then when the view is of some quiet grassy court or cloister or garden as from the windows of the greater number of rooms at Oxford and Cambridge? Theobald as an old fellow and tutor of Emanuel at which college he had entered Ernest was able to obtain from the present tutor a certain preference in the choice of rooms. Ernest, therefore, were very pleasant ones looking out upon the grassy court that is bounded by the fellow's gardens. Theobald accompanied him to Cambridge and was at his best while doing so. He liked the jaunt and even he was not without a certain feeling of pride and having a full-blown son at the university. Some of the reflected rays of this splendor were allowed to fall upon Ernest himself. Theobald said he was willing to hope. This was one of his tags that his son would turn over a new leaf now that he had left school and for his own part he was only too ready. This was another tag to let bygones be bygones. Ernest, not yet having his name on the books was able to dine with his father at the fellow's table of one of the other colleges on the invitation of an old friend of Theobald's. He there made acquaintance with sundry of the good things of this life the very names of which were new to him and felt as he ate them that he was now indeed receiving a liberal education. When at length the time came for him to go to Emanuel where he was to sleep in his new rooms his father came with him to the gates and saw him safe into college. A few minutes more and he found himself alone in a room for which he had a latch key. From this time he dated many days which if not quite unclouded were upon the whole very happy ones. I need not however describe them as the life of a quiet steady going undergraduate has been told in a score of novels better than I can tell it. Some of Ernest's school fellows came up to Cambridge at the same time as himself and with these he continued on friendly terms during the whole of his college career. Other school fellows were only a year or two his seniors. These called on him and he thus made a sufficiently favorable entree into college life. A straight forwardness of character that was stamped upon his face, a love of humor and a temper which was more easily appeased than ruffled made up for some awkwardness and want of savoir faire. He soon became a not unpopular member of the best set of his year and though neither capable of becoming nor aspiring to become a leader was admitted by the leaders as among their nearer hangers on. Of ambition he had at that time not one particle. Greatness or indeed superiority of any kind seemed so far off and incomprehensible to him that the idea of connecting it with himself never crossed his mind. If he could escape the notice of all those with whom he did not feel himself unrepoor he conceived that he had triumphed sufficiently. He did not care about taking a good degree except that it must be good enough to keep his father and mother quiet. He did not dream of being able to get a fellowship. If he had, he would have tried hard to do so for he became so fond of Cambridge that he could not bear the thought of having to leave it. The briefness indeed of the season during which his present happiness was to last was almost the only thing that now seriously troubled him. Having less to attend to in the matter of growing and having got his head more free he took to reading fairly well. Not because he liked it but because he was told he ought to do so and his natural instinct like that of all very young men who are good for anything was to do as those in authority told him. The intention at Battersby was for Dr. Skinner had said that Ernest could never get a fellowship that he should take a sufficiently good degree to be able to get a tutorship or a master'ship in some school preparatory to taking orders. When he was twenty-one years old his money was to come into his own hands and the best thing he could do with it would be to buy the next presentation to a living the rector of which was now old and live on his master's ship or tutorship till the living fell in. He could buy a very good living for the son which his grandfather's legacy now amounted to for Theobald had never had any serious intention of making deductions for his son's maintenance and education and the money had accumulated till it was now about five thousand pounds. He had only talked about making deductions in order to stimulate the boy to exertion as far as possible by making him think that this was his only chance of escaping starvation or perhaps from pure love of teasing. When Ernest had a living of six hundred pounds or seven hundred pounds a year with a house and not too many parishioners why he might add to his income by taking pupils or even keeping a school and then say a thirty he might marry. It was not easy for Theobald to hit on any much more sensible plan. He could not get Ernest into business for he had no business connections. Besides he did not know what business meant. He had no interest again at the bar medicine was a profession which subjected its students toward deals and temptations which these fond parents shrank from on behalf of their boy. He would be thrown among companions and familiarized with details which might sully him and though he might stand it was only too possible that he would fall. Besides ordination was the road which Theobald knew and understood and indeed the only road about which he knew anything at all. So not unnaturally it was the one he chose for Ernest. The foregoing had been instilled into my hero from earliest boyhood much as it had been instilled into Theobald himself and with the same result. The conviction namely that he was certainly to be a clergyman but that it was a long way off yet and he supposed it was all right. As for the duty of reading hard and taking as good a degree as he could this was plain enough. So he set himself to work as I have said steadily and to the surprise of everyone as well as himself got a college scholarship of no great value but still a scholarship in his freshman's term. It is hardly necessary to say that Theobald stuck to the whole of this money believing the pocket money he allowed Ernest to be sufficient for him and knowing how dangerous it was for young men to have money at command. I do not suppose it even occurred to him to try and remember what he had felt when his father took a light course in regard to himself. Ernest's position in this respect was much what it had been at school except that things were on a larger scale. His tutors and cook's bills were paid for him. His father sent him his wine. Over and above this he had 50 pounds a year with which to keep himself in clothes and all other expenses. This was about the usual thing at Emanuel in Ernest's day though many had much less than this. Ernest did as he had done at school. He spent what he could soon after he received his money. He then incurred a few modest liabilities and then lived penuriously till next term when he would immediately pay his debts and start new ones to much the same extent as those which he had just got rid of. When he came into his 5,000 pounds and became independent of his father, 15 pounds or 20 pounds served to cover the whole of his unauthorized expenditure. He joined the boat club and was constant in his attendance at the boats. He still smoked but never took more wine or beer than was good for him, except perhaps on the occasion of a boating supper. But even then he found the consequences unpleasant and soon learned how to keep within safe limits. He attended chapel as often as he was compelled to do so. He communicated two or three times a year because his tutor told him he ought to. In fact he set himself to live soberly and cleanly as I imagine all his instincts prompted him to do and when he fell, as who that is born of woman can help sometimes doing, it was not till after a sharp tussle with a temptation that was more than his flesh and blood could stand. Then he was very penitent and would go a fairly long while without sinning again and this was how it had always been with him since he had arrived at years of indiscretion. Even to the end of his career at Cambridge he was not aware that he had it in him to do anything, but others had begun to see that he was not wanting an ability and sometimes told him so. He did not believe it. Indeed he knew very well that if they thought him clever they were being taken in but it pleased him to have been able to take them in and he tried to do so still further. He was therefore a good deal on the lookout for camps that he could catch and apply in season and might have done himself some mischief thus if he had not been ready to throw over any count as soon as he had come across another more nearly to his fancy. His friends used to say that when he rose he flew like a snipe, darting several times in various directions before he settled down to a steady straight flight but when he had once got into this he would keep to it. Chapter 46 When he was in his third year a magazine was founded at Cambridge the contributions to which were exclusively by undergraduates Ernest sent in an essay upon the Greek drama which he had declined to let me reproduce here without his being allowed to re-edit it. I have therefore been unable to give it in its original form but when pruned of its redundancies and this is all that has been done to it it runs as follows. I shall not attempt within the limits at my disposal to make a resume of the rise and progress of the Greek drama but will confine myself to considering whether the reputation enjoyed by the three chief Greek Tragedeans, Escalus, Sophocles, and Euripides is one that will be permanent or whether they will one day be held to have been overrated. Why I ask myself do I see much that I could easily admire in Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Aristophanes, Theocretus, parts of Lucretius, Horus's satires and epistles to say nothing of other ancient writers and yet find myself at once repelled by even those works of Escalus, Sophocles, and Euripides which are most generally admired. With the first named writers I am in the hands of men who feel, if not as I do, still as I can understand their feeling and as I am interested to see that they should have felt. With the second I have so little sympathy that I cannot understand how anyone can ever have taken any interest in them whatever. Their highest flights to me are dull, pompous and artificial productions which if they were to appear now for the first time would I should think either fall dead or be severely handled by the critics. I wish to know whether it is I who am at fault in this matter or whether part of the blame may not rest with the Tragedeans themselves. How far I wonder did the Athenians genuinely like these poets and how far was the applause which was lavished upon them due to fashion or effectation. How far in fact did admiration for the Orthodox Tragedeans take that place among the Athenians which going to church does among ourselves. This is a venturesome question considering the verdict now generally given for over 2,000 years nor should I have permitted myself to ask it if it had not been suggested to me by one whose reputation stands as high and has been sanctioned for as long time as those of the Tragedeans themselves. I mean by Aristophanes. Numbers, weight of authority and time have conspired to place Aristophanes on as high a literary pinnacle as any ancient writer, with the exception perhaps of Homer. But he makes no secret of heartily hating Euripides and Sophocles and I strongly suspect only praises Escalus that he may run down the other two with greater impunity. For after all there is no such difference between Escalus and his successors as will render the former very good and the latter very bad and the thrusts of Escalus which Aristophanes puts into the mouth of Euripides go home too well to have been written by an admirer. It may be observed that while Euripides accuses Escalus of being pump bundle worded which I suppose means bombastic and given to Rotomontad. Escalus retorts on Euripides that he is a gossip gleener, a describer of beggars and a rag stitcher from which it may be inferred that he was truer to the life of his own times than Escalus was. It happens however that a faithful rendering of contemporary life is the very quality which gives it most permanent interest to any work of fiction, whether in literature or painting and it is a not unnatural consequence that while only seven plays by Escalus and the same number by Sophocles have come down to us, we have no fewer than 19 by Euripides. This however is a digression. The question before us is whether Aristophanes really liked Escalus or only pretended to do so. It must be remembered that the claims of Escalus, Sophocles and Euripides to the foremost place among Tragedeans were held to be as incontrovertible as those of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, and Dariosto to be the greatest of Italian poets are held among the Italians of today. If we can fancy some witty, genial writer, we will say in Florence, finding himself bored by all the poets I have named, we can yet believe he would be unwilling to admit that he disliked them without exception. He would prefer to think he could see something at any rate in Dante whom he could idealize more easily in as much as he was more remote. In order to carry his countrymen the farther with him, he would endeavor to meet them more than was consistent with his own instincts. Without some such palliation as admiration for one at any rate of the Tragedeans, it would be almost as dangerous for Aristophanes to attack them as it would be for an Englishman now to say that he did not think very much of the Elizabethan dramatists. Yet which of us in his heart likes any of the Elizabethan dramatists except Shakespeare? Are they in reality anything else than literary strollbrugs? I conclude upon the whole that Aristophanes did not like any of the Tragedeans. Yet no one will deny that this keen, witty, outspoken writer was as good a judge of literary value and is able to see any beauties that the tragic dramas contained as nine-tenths at any rate of ourselves. He had moreover the advantage of thoroughly understanding the standpoint from which the Tragedeans expected their work to be judged. And what was his conclusion? Briefly, it was little else than this, that they were a fraud or something very like it. For my own part, I cordially agree with him. I am free to confess that with the exception of perhaps some of the Psalms of David, I know no writings which seems so little to deserve their reputation. I do not know that I should particularly mind my sisters reading them, but I will take good care never to read them myself. This last bit about the Psalms was awful, and there was a great fight with the editor as to whether or no it should be allowed to stand. Ernest himself was frightened at it, but he had once heard someone say that the Psalms were many of them very poor, and on looking at them more closely, after he had been told this, he found that there could hardly be two opinions on the subject. So he caught up the remark and reproduced it as his own, concluding that these Psalms had probably never been written by David at all, but had got in among the others by mistake. The essay, perhaps on account of the passage about the Psalms, created quite a sensation, and on the whole was well received. Ernest's friends praised it more highly than it deserved, and he was himself very proud of it, but he dared not show it at Battersby. He knew also that he was now at the end of his tether. This was his one idea. I felt sure he had caught more than half of it from other people, and now he had not another thing left to write about. He found himself cursed with a small reputation which seemed to him much bigger than it was, and a consciousness that he could never keep it up. Before many days were over, he felt his unfortunate essay to be a white elephant to him, which he must feed by hurrying into all sorts of frantic attempts to cap his triumph, and, as maybe imagined, these attempts were failures. He did not understand that if he waited and listened and observed, another idea of some kind would probably occur to him someday, and that the development of this would in its turn suggest still further ones. He did not yet know that the very worst way of getting hold of ideas is to go hunting expressly after them. The way to get them is to study something of which one has fond, and to note down whatever crosses one's mind in reference to it, either during study or relaxation, in a little notebook kept always in the waistcoat pocket. Ernest had come to know all about this now, but it took him a long time to find it out, for this is not the kind of thing that is taught at schools and universities. Nor yet did he know that ideas, no less than the living beings in whose minds they arise, must be be gotten by parents not very unlike themselves. The most original still differing, but slightly from the parents that have given rise to them. Life is like a fugue. Everything must grow out of the subject and there must be nothing new. Nor again did he see how hard it is to say where one idea ends and another begins. Nor yet how closely this is paralleled in the difficulty of saying where a life begins or ends, or an action or indeed anything. There being a unity in spite of infinite multitude and an infinite multitude in spite of unity. He thought that ideas came into clever people's heads by a kind of spontaneous germination without parentage in the thoughts of others or the course of observation. For as yet he believed ingenious, of which he well knew that he had none. If it was the fine frenzied thing, he thought it was. Not very long before this he had come of age and Theobald had handed him over his money, which amounted now to 5,000 pounds. It was invested to bring in 5 pounds per cent and gave him therefore an income of 250 pounds per year. He did not, however, realize the fact, he could realize nothing so far into his experience, that he was independent of his father till a long time afterwards. Nor did Theobald make any difference in his manner towards him. So strong was the hold which habit and association held over both father and son, that the one considered he had as good a right as ever to dictate, and the other that he had as little right as ever to gain say. During his last year at Cambridge, he overworked himself through this very blind deference to his father's wishes, for there was no reason why he should take more than a pole degree except that his father laid such stress upon his taking honors. He became so ill, indeed, that it was doubtful how far he would be able to go in for his degree at all. But he managed to do so, and when the list came out, was bound to be placed higher than either he or anyone else expected. Being among the first three or four senior opteams, and a few weeks later in the lower half of the second class of the classical trippos. Ill as he was when he got home, Theobald made him go over all the examination papers with him, and in fact reproduced as nearly as possible the replies that he had sent in. So little kick had he in him, and so deep was the groove into which he had got that while at home he spent several hours a day in continuing his classical and mathematical studies as though he had not yet taken his degree. End of chapter 46, recording by Rhonda Fetterman.