Then Christina said: "My dear, do you know, I really think" (Christina always "really" thought) "that the people like the chanting very much, and that it will be a means of bringing many to church who have stayed away hitherto. I was talking about it to Mrs Goodhew and to old Miss Wright only yesterday, and they quite agreed with me, but they all said that we ought to chant the 'Glory be to the Father' at the end of each of the psalms instead of saying it."

Theobald looked black—he felt the waters of chanting rising higher and higher upon him inch by inch; but he felt also, he knew not why, that he had better yield than fight. So he ordered the "Glory be to the Father" to be chanted in future, but he did not like it.

"Really, mamma dear," said Charlotte, when the battle was won, "you should not call it the 'Glory be to the Father' you should say 'Gloria.'"

"Of course, my dear," said Christina, and she said "Gloria" for ever after. Then she thought what a wonderfully clever girl Charlotte was, and how she ought to marry no one lower than a bishop. By-and-by when Theobald went away for an unusually long holiday one summer, he could find no one but a rather high-church clergyman to take his duty. This gentleman was a man of weight in the neighbourhood, having considerable private means, but without preferment. In the summer he would often help his brother clergymen, and it was through his being willing to take the duty at Battersby for a few Sundays that Theobald had been able to get away for so long. On his return, however, he found that the whole psalms were being chanted as well as the Glorias. The influential clergyman, Christina, and Charlotte took the bull by the horns as soon as Theobald returned, and laughed it all off; and the clergyman laughed and bounced, and Christina laughed and coaxed, and Charlotte uttered unexceptionable sentiments, and the thing was done now, and could not be undone, and it was no use grieving over spilt milk; so henceforth the psalms were to be chanted, but Theobald grisled over it in his heart, and he did not like it.

During this same absence what had Mrs Goodhew and old Miss Wright taken to doing but turning towards the east while repeating the Belief? Theobald disliked this even worse than chanting. When he said something about it in a timid way at dinner after service, Charlotte said, "Really, papa dear, you must take to calling it the 'Creed' and not the 'Belief'"; and Theobald winced impatiently and snorted meek defiance, but the spirit of her aunts Jane and Eliza was strong in Charlotte, and the thing was too small to fight about, and he turned it off with a laugh. "As for Charlotte," thought Christina, "I believe she knows everything." So Mrs Goodhew and old Miss Wright continued to turn to the east during the time the Creed was said, and by-and-by others followed their example, and ere long the few who had stood out yielded and turned eastward too; and then Theobald made as though he had thought it all very right and proper from the first, but like it he did not. By- and-by Charlotte tried to make him say "Alleluia" instead of "Hallelujah," but this was going too far, and Theobald turned, and she got frightened and ran away.

And they changed the double chants for single ones, and altered them psalm by psalm, and in the middle of psalms, just where a cursory reader would see no reason why they should do so, they changed from major to minor and from minor back to major; and then they got "Hymns Ancient and Modern," and, as I have said, they robbed him of his beloved bands, and they made him preach in a surplice, and he must have celebration of the Holy Communion once a month instead of only five times in the year as heretofore, and he struggled in vain against the unseen influence which he felt to be working in season and out of season against all that he had been accustomed to consider most distinctive of his party. Where it was, or what it was, he knew not, nor exactly what it would do next, but he knew exceedingly well that go where he would it was undermining him; that it was too persistent for him; that Christina and Charlotte liked it a great deal better than he did, and that it could end in nothing but Rome. Easter decorations indeed! Christmas decorations—in reason—were proper enough, but Easter decorations! well, it might last his time.

This was the course things had taken in the Church of England during the last forty years. The set has been steadily in one direction. A few men who knew what they wanted made cats' paws of the Christmas and the Charlottes, and the Christmas and the Charlottes made cats' paws of the Mrs Goodhews and the old Miss Wrights, and Mrs Goodhews and old Miss Wrights told the Mr Goodhews and young Miss Wrights what they should do, and when the Mr Goodhews and the young Miss Wrights did it the little Goodhews and the rest of the spiritual flock did as they did, and the Theobalds went for nothing; step by step, day by day, year by year, parish by parish, diocese by diocese this was how it was done. And yet the Church of England looks with no friendly eyes upon the theory of Evolution or Descent with Modification.

My hero thought over these things, and remembered many a ruse on the part of Christina and Charlotte, and many a detail of the struggle which I cannot further interrupt my story to refer to, and he remembered his father's favourite retort that it could only end in Rome. When he was a boy he had firmly believed this, but he smiled now as he thought of another alternative clear enough to himself, but so horrible that it had not even occurred to Theobald—I mean the toppling over of the whole system. At that time he welcomed the hope that the absurdities and unrealities of the Church would end in her downfall. Since then he has come to think very differently, not as believing in the cow jumping over the moon more than he used to, or more, probably, than nine-tenths of the clergy themselves—who know as well as he does that their outward and visible symbols are out of date—but because he knows the baffling complexity of the problem when it comes to deciding what is actually to be done. Also, now that he has seen them more closely, he knows better the nature of those wolves in sheep's clothing, who are thirsting for the blood of their victim, and exulting so clamorously over its anticipated early fall into their clutches. The spirit behind the Church is true, though her letter—true once—is now true no longer. The spirit behind the High Priests of Science is as lying as its letter. The Theobalds, who do what they do because it seems to be the correct thing, but who in their hearts neither like it nor believe in it, are in reality the least dangerous of all classes to the peace and liberties of mankind. The man to fear is he who goes at things with the cocksureness of pushing vulgarity and self-conceit. These are not vices which can be justly laid to the charge of the English clergy.

Many of the farmers came up to Ernest when service was over, and shook hands with him. He found every one knew of his having come into a fortune. The fact was that Theobald had immediately told two or three of the greatest gossips in the village, and the story was not long in spreading. "It simplified matters," he had said to himself, "a good deal." Ernest was civil to Mrs Goodhew for her husband's sake, but he gave Miss Wright the cut direct, for he knew that she was only Charlotte in disguise.

A week passed slowly away. Two or three times the family took the sacrament together round Christina's death-bed. Theobald's impatience became more and more transparent daily, but fortunately Christina (who even if she had been well would have been ready to shut her eyes to it) became weaker and less coherent in mind also, so that she hardly, if at all, perceived it. After Ernest had been in the house about a week his mother fell into a comatose state which lasted a couple of days, and in the end went away so peacefully that it was like the blending of sea and sky in mid-ocean upon a soft hazy day when none can say where the earth ends and the heavens begin. Indeed she died to the realities of life with less pain than she had waked from many of its illusions.

"She has been the comfort and mainstay of my life for more than thirty years," said Theobald as soon as all was over, "but one could not wish it prolonged," and he buried his face in his handkerchief to conceal his want of emotion.

Ernest came back to town the day after his mother's death, and returned to the funeral accompanied by myself. He wanted me to see his father in order to prevent any possible misapprehension about Miss Pontifex's intentions, and I was such an old friend of the family that my presence at Christina's funeral would surprise no one. With all her faults I had always rather liked Christina. She would have chopped Ernest or any one else into little pieces of mincemeat to gratify the slightest wish of her husband, but she would not have chopped him up for any one else, and so long as he did not cross her she was very fond of him. By nature she was of an even temper, more willing to be pleased than ruffled, very ready to do a good-natured action, provided it did not cost her much exertion, nor involve expense to Theobald. Her own little purse did not matter; any one might have as much of that as he or she could get after she had reserved what was absolutely necessary for her dress. I could not hear of her end as Ernest described it to me without feeling very compassionate towards her, indeed her own son could hardly have felt more so; I at once, therefore, consented to go down to the funeral; perhaps I was also influenced by a desire to see Charlotte and Joey, in whom I felt interested on hearing what my godson had told me.

I found Theobald looking remarkably well. Every one said he was bearing it so beautifully. He did indeed once or twice shake his head and say that his wife had been the comfort and mainstay of his life for over thirty years, but there the matter ended. I stayed over the next day which was Sunday, and took my departure on the following morning after having told Theobald all that his son wished me to tell him. Theobald asked me to help him with Christina's epitaph.

"I would say," said he, "as little as possible; eulogies of the departed are in most cases both unnecessary and untrue. Christina's epitaph shall contain nothing which shall be either the one or the other. I should give her name, the dates of her birth and death, and of course say she was my wife, and then I think I should wind up with a simple text—her favourite one for example, none indeed could be more appropriate, 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.'"

I said I thought this would be very nice, and it was settled. So Ernest was sent to give the order to Mr Prosser, the stonemason in the nearest town, who said it came from "the Beetitudes."



CHAPTER LXXXIV

On our way to town Ernest broached his plans for spending the next year or two. I wanted him to try and get more into society again, but he brushed this aside at once as the very last thing he had a fancy for. For society indeed of all sorts, except of course that of a few intimate friends, he had an unconquerable aversion. "I always did hate those people," he said, "and they always have hated and always will hate me. I am an Ishmael by instinct as much as by accident of circumstances, but if I keep out of society I shall be less vulnerable than Ishmaels generally are. The moment a man goes into society, he becomes vulnerable all round."

I was very sorry to hear him talk in this way; for whatever strength a man may have he should surely be able to make more of it if he act in concert than alone. I said this.

"I don't care," he answered, "whether I make the most of my strength or not; I don't know whether I have any strength, but if I have I dare say it will find some way of exerting itself. I will live as I like living, not as other people would like me to live; thanks to my aunt and you I can afford the luxury of a quiet unobtrusive life of self-indulgence," said he laughing, "and I mean to have it. You know I like writing," he added after a pause of some minutes, "I have been a scribbler for years. If I am to come to the fore at all it must be by writing."

I had already long since come to that conclusion myself.

"Well," he continued, "there are a lot of things that want saying which no one dares to say, a lot of shams which want attacking, and yet no one attacks them. It seems to me that I can say things which not another man in England except myself will venture to say, and yet which are crying to be said."

I said: "But who will listen? If you say things which nobody else would dare to say is not this much the same as saying what everyone except yourself knows to be better left unsaid just now?"

"Perhaps," said he, "but I don't know it; I am bursting with these things, and it is my fate to say them."

I knew there would be no stopping him, so I gave in and asked what question he felt a special desire to burn his fingers with in the first instance.

"Marriage," he rejoined promptly, "and the power of disposing of his property after a man is dead. The question of Christianity is virtually settled, or if not settled there is no lack of those engaged in settling it. The question of the day now is marriage and the family system."

"That," said I drily, "is a hornet's nest indeed."

"Yes," said he no less drily, "but hornet's nests are exactly what I happen to like. Before, however, I begin to stir up this particular one I propose to travel for a few years, with the especial object of finding out what nations now existing are the best, comeliest and most lovable, and also what nations have been so in times past. I want to find out how these people live, and have lived, and what their customs are.

"I have very vague notions upon the subject as yet, but the general impression I have formed is that, putting ourselves on one side, the most vigorous and amiable of known nations are the modern Italians, the old Greeks and Romans, and the South Sea Islanders. I believe that these nice peoples have not as a general rule been purists, but I want to see those of them who can yet be seen; they are the practical authorities on the question—What is best for man? and I should like to see them and find out what they do. Let us settle the fact first and fight about the moral tendencies afterwards."

"In fact," said I laughingly, "you mean to have high old times."

"Neither higher nor lower," was the answer, "than those people whom I can find to have been the best in all ages. But let us change the subject." He put his hand into his pocket and brought out a letter. "My father," he said, "gave me this letter this morning with the seal already broken." He passed it over to me, and I found it to be the one which Christina had written before the birth of her last child, and which I have given in an earlier chapter.

"And you do not find this letter," said I, "affect the conclusion which you have just told me you have come to concerning your present plans?"

He smiled, and answered: "No. But if you do what you have sometimes talked about and turn the adventures of my unworthy self into a novel, mind you print this letter."

"Why so?" said I, feeling as though such a letter as this should have been held sacred from the public gaze.

"Because my mother would have wished it published; if she had known you were writing about me and had this letter in your possession, she would above all things have desired that you should publish it. Therefore publish it if you write at all."

This is why I have done so.

Within a month Ernest carried his intention into effect, and having made all the arrangements necessary for his children's welfare left England before Christmas.

I heard from him now and again and learnt that he was visiting almost all parts of the world, but only staying in those places where he found the inhabitants unusually good-looking and agreeable. He said he had filled an immense quantity of note-books, and I have no doubt he had. At last in the spring of 1867 he returned, his luggage stained with the variation of each hotel advertisement 'twixt here and Japan. He looked very brown and strong, and so well favoured that it almost seemed as if he must have caught some good looks from the people among whom he had been living. He came back to his old rooms in the Temple, and settled down as easily as if he had never been away a day.

One of the first things we did was to go and see the children; we took the train to Gravesend, and walked thence for a few miles along the riverside till we came to the solitary house where the good people lived with whom Ernest had placed them. It was a lovely April morning, but with a fresh air blowing from off the sea; the tide was high, and the river was alive with shipping coming up with wind and tide. Sea-gulls wheeled around us overhead, sea-weed clung everywhere to the banks which the advancing tide had not yet covered, everything was of the sea sea-ey, and the fine bracing air which blew over the water made me feel more hungry than I had done for many a day; I did not see how children could live in a better physical atmosphere than this, and applauded the selection which Ernest had made on behalf of his youngsters.

While we were still a quarter of a mile off we heard shouts and children's laughter, and could see a lot of boys and girls romping together and running after one another. We could not distinguish our own two, but when we got near they were soon made out, for the other children were blue-eyed, flaxen-pated little folks, whereas ours were dark and straight-haired.

We had written to say that we were coming, but had desired that nothing should be said to the children, so these paid no more attention to us than they would have done to any other stranger, who happened to visit a spot so unfrequented except by sea-faring folk, which we plainly were not. The interest, however, in us was much quickened when it was discovered that we had got our pockets full of oranges and sweeties, to an extent greater than it had entered into their small imaginations to conceive as possible. At first we had great difficulty in making them come near us. They were like a lot of wild young colts, very inquisitive, but very coy and not to be cajoled easily. The children were nine in all—five boys and two girls belonging to Mr and Mrs Rollings, and two to Ernest. I never saw a finer lot of children than the young Rollings, the boys were hardy, robust, fearless little fellows with eyes as clear as hawks; the elder girl was exquisitely pretty, but the younger one was a mere baby. I felt as I looked at them, that if I had had children of my own I could have wished no better home for them, nor better companions.

Georgie and Alice, Ernest's two children, were evidently quite as one family with the others, and called Mr and Mrs Rollings uncle and aunt. They had been so young when they were first brought to the house that they had been looked upon in the light of new babies who had been born into the family. They knew nothing about Mr and Mrs Rollings being paid so much a week to look after them. Ernest asked them all what they wanted to be. They had only one idea; one and all, Georgie among the rest, wanted to be bargemen. Young ducks could hardly have a more evident hankering after the water.

"And what do you want, Alice?" said Ernest.

"Oh," she said, "I'm going to marry Jack here, and be a bargeman's wife."

Jack was the eldest boy, now nearly twelve, a sturdy little fellow, the image of what Mr Rollings must have been at his age. As we looked at him, so straight and well grown and well done all round, I could see it was in Ernest's mind as much as in mine that she could hardly do much better.

"Come here, Jack, my boy," said Ernest, "here's a shilling for you." The boy blushed and could hardly be got to come in spite of our previous blandishments; he had had pennies given him before, but shillings never. His father caught him good-naturedly by the ear and lugged him to us.

"He's a good boy, Jack is," said Ernest to Mr Rollings, "I'm sure of that."

"Yes," said Mr Rollings, "he's a werry good boy, only that I can't get him to learn his reading and writing. He don't like going to school, that's the only complaint I have against him. I don't know what's the matter with all my children, and yours, Mr Pontifex, is just as bad, but they none of 'em likes book learning, though they learn anything else fast enough. Why, as for Jack here, he's almost as good a bargeman as I am." And he looked fondly and patronisingly towards his offspring.

"I think," said Ernest to Mr Rollings, "if he wants to marry Alice when he gets older he had better do so, and he shall have as many barges as he likes. In the meantime, Mr Rollings, say in what way money can be of use to you, and whatever you can make useful is at your disposal."

I need hardly say that Ernest made matters easy for this good couple; one stipulation, however, he insisted on, namely, there was to be no more smuggling, and that the young people were to be kept out of this; for a little bird had told Ernest that smuggling in a quiet way was one of the resources of the Rollings family. Mr Rollings was not sorry to assent to this, and I believe it is now many years since the coastguard people have suspected any of the Rollings family as offenders against the revenue law.

"Why should I take them from where they are," said Ernest to me in the train as we went home, "to send them to schools where they will not be one half so happy, and where their illegitimacy will very likely be a worry to them? Georgie wants to be a bargeman, let him begin as one, the sooner the better; he may as well begin with this as with anything else; then if he shows developments I can be on the look-out to encourage them and make things easy for him; while if he shows no desire to go ahead, what on earth is the good of trying to shove him forward?"

Ernest, I believe, went on with a homily upon education generally, and upon the way in which young people should go through the embryonic stages with their money as much as with their limbs, beginning life in a much lower social position than that in which their parents were, and a lot more, which he has since published; but I was getting on in years, and the walk and the bracing air had made me sleepy, so ere we had got past Greenhithe Station on our return journey I had sunk into a refreshing sleep.



CHAPTER LXXXV

Ernest being about two and thirty years old and having had his fling for the last three or four years, now settled down in London, and began to write steadily. Up to this time he had given abundant promise, but had produced nothing, nor indeed did he come before the public for another three or four years yet.

He lived as I have said very quietly, seeing hardly anyone but myself, and the three or four old friends with whom I had been intimate for years. Ernest and we formed our little set, and outside of this my godson was hardly known at all.

His main expense was travelling, which he indulged in at frequent intervals, but for short times only. Do what he would he could not get through more than about fifteen hundred a year; the rest of his income he gave away if he happened to find a case where he thought money would be well bestowed, or put by until some opportunity arose of getting rid of it with advantage.

I knew he was writing, but we had had so many little differences of opinion upon this head that by a tacit understanding the subject was seldom referred to between us, and I did not know that he was actually publishing till one day he brought me a book and told me flat it was his own. I opened it and found it to be a series of semi-theological, semi- social essays, purporting to have been written by six or seven different people, and viewing the same class of subjects from different standpoints.

People had not yet forgotten the famous "Essays and Reviews," and Ernest had wickedly given a few touches to at least two of the essays which suggested vaguely that they had been written by a bishop. The essays were all of them in support of the Church of England, and appeared both by internal suggestion, and their prima facie purport to be the work of some half-dozen men of experience and high position who had determined to face the difficult questions of the day no less boldly from within the bosom of the Church than the Church's enemies had faced them from without her pale.

There was an essay on the external evidences of the Resurrection; another on the marriage laws of the most eminent nations of the world in times past and present; another was devoted to a consideration of the many questions which must be reopened and reconsidered on their merits if the teaching of the Church of England were to cease to carry moral authority with it; another dealt with the more purely social subject of middle class destitution; another with the authenticity or rather the unauthenticity of the fourth gospel—another was headed "Irrational Rationalism," and there were two or three more.

They were all written vigorously and fearlessly as though by people used to authority; all granted that the Church professed to enjoin belief in much which no one could accept who had been accustomed to weigh evidence; but it was contended that so much valuable truth had got so closely mixed up with these mistakes, that the mistakes had better not be meddled with. To lay great stress on these was like cavilling at the Queen's right to reign, on the ground that William the Conqueror was illegitimate.

One article maintained that though it would be inconvenient to change the words of our prayer book and articles, it would not be inconvenient to change in a quiet way the meanings which we put upon those words. This, it was argued, was what was actually done in the case of law; this had been the law's mode of growth and adaptation, and had in all ages been found a righteous and convenient method of effecting change. It was suggested that the Church should adopt it.

In another essay it was boldly denied that the Church rested upon reason. It was proved incontestably that its ultimate foundation was and ought to be faith, there being indeed no other ultimate foundation than this for any of man's beliefs. If so, the writer claimed that the Church could not be upset by reason. It was founded, like everything else, on initial assumptions, that is to say on faith, and if it was to be upset it was to be upset by faith, by the faith of those who in their lives appeared more graceful, more lovable, better bred, in fact, and better able to overcome difficulties. Any sect which showed its superiority in these respects might carry all before it, but none other would make much headway for long together. Christianity was true in so far as it had fostered beauty, and it had fostered much beauty. It was false in so far as it fostered ugliness, and it had fostered much ugliness. It was therefore not a little true and not a little false; on the whole one might go farther and fare worse; the wisest course would be to live with it, and make the best and not the worst of it. The writer urged that we become persecutors as a matter of course as soon as we begin to feel very strongly upon any subject; we ought not therefore to do this; we ought not to feel very strongly—even upon that institution which was dearer to the writer than any other—the Church of England. We should be churchmen, but somewhat lukewarm churchmen, inasmuch as those who care very much about either religion or irreligion are seldom observed to be very well bred or agreeable people. The Church herself should approach as nearly to that of Laodicea as was compatible with her continuing to be a Church at all, and each individual member should only be hot in striving to be as lukewarm as possible.

The book rang with the courage alike of conviction and of an entire absence of conviction; it appeared to be the work of men who had a rule- of-thumb way of steering between iconoclasm on the one hand and credulity on the other; who cut Gordian knots as a matter of course when it suited their convenience; who shrank from no conclusion in theory, nor from any want of logic in practice so long as they were illogical of malice prepense, and for what they held to be sufficient reason. The conclusions were conservative, quietistic, comforting. The arguments by which they were reached were taken from the most advanced writers of the day. All that these people contended for was granted them, but the fruits of victory were for the most part handed over to those already in possession.

Perhaps the passage which attracted most attention in the book was one from the essay on the various marriage systems of the world. It ran:—

"If people require us to construct," exclaimed the writer, "we set good breeding as the corner-stone of our edifice. We would have it ever present consciously or unconsciously in the minds of all as the central faith in which they should live and move and have their being, as the touchstone of all things whereby they may be known as good or evil according as they make for good breeding or against it."

"That a man should have been bred well and breed others well; that his figure, head, hands, feet, voice, manner and clothes should carry conviction upon this point, so that no one can look at him without seeing that he has come of good stock and is likely to throw good stock himself, this is the desiderandum. And the same with a woman. The greatest number of these well-bred men and women, and the greatest happiness of these well-bred men and women, this is the highest good; towards this all government, all social conventions, all art, literature and science should directly or indirectly tend. Holy men and holy women are those who keep this unconsciously in view at all times whether of work or pastime."

If Ernest had published this work in his own name I should think it would have fallen stillborn from the press, but the form he had chosen was calculated at that time to arouse curiosity, and as I have said he had wickedly dropped a few hints which the reviewers did not think anyone would have been impudent enough to do if he were not a bishop, or at any rate some one in authority. A well-known judge was spoken of as being another of the writers, and the idea spread ere long that six or seven of the leading bishops and judges had laid their heads together to produce a volume, which should at once outbid "Essays and Reviews" and counteract the influence of that then still famous work.

Reviewers are men of like passions with ourselves, and with them as with everyone else omne ignotum pro magnifico. The book was really an able one and abounded with humour, just satire, and good sense. It struck a new note and the speculation which for some time was rife concerning its authorship made many turn to it who would never have looked at it otherwise. One of the most gushing weeklies had a fit over it, and declared it to be the finest thing that had been done since the "Provincial Letters" of Pascal. Once a month or so that weekly always found some picture which was the finest that had been done since the old masters, or some satire that was the finest that had appeared since Swift or some something which was incomparably the finest that had appeared since something else. If Ernest had put his name to the book, and the writer had known that it was by a nobody, he would doubtless have written in a very different strain. Reviewers like to think that for aught they know they are patting a Duke or even a Prince of the blood upon the back, and lay it on thick till they find they have been only praising Brown, Jones or Robinson. Then they are disappointed, and as a general rule will pay Brown, Jones or Robinson out.

Ernest was not so much up to the ropes of the literary world as I was, and I am afraid his head was a little turned when he woke up one morning to find himself famous. He was Christina's son, and perhaps would not have been able to do what he had done if he was not capable of occasional undue elation. Ere long, however, he found out all about it, and settled quietly down to write a series of books, in which he insisted on saying things which no one else would say even if they could, or could even if they would.

He has got himself a bad literary character. I said to him laughingly one day that he was like the man in the last century of whom it was said that nothing but such a character could keep down such parts.

He laughed and said he would rather be like that than like a modern writer or two whom he could name, whose parts were so poor that they could be kept up by nothing but by such a character.

I remember soon after one of these books was published I happened to meet Mrs Jupp to whom, by the way, Ernest made a small weekly allowance. It was at Ernest's chambers, and for some reason we were left alone for a few minutes. I said to her: "Mr Pontifex has written another book, Mrs Jupp."

"Lor' now," said she, "has he really? Dear gentleman! Is it about love?" And the old sinner threw up a wicked sheep's eye glance at me from under her aged eyelids. I forget what there was in my reply which provoked it—probably nothing—but she went rattling on at full speed to the effect that Bell had given her a ticket for the opera, "So, of course," she said, "I went. I didn't understand one word of it, for it was all French, but I saw their legs. Oh dear, oh dear! I'm afraid I shan't be here much longer, and when dear Mr Pontifex sees me in my coffin he'll say, 'Poor old Jupp, she'll never talk broad any more'; but bless you I'm not so old as all that, and I'm taking lessons in dancing."

At this moment Ernest came in and the conversation was changed. Mrs Jupp asked if he was still going on writing more books now that this one was done. "Of course I am," he answered, "I'm always writing books; here is the manuscript of my next;" and he showed her a heap of paper.

"Well now," she exclaimed, "dear, dear me, and is that manuscript? I've often heard talk about manuscripts, but I never thought I should live to see some myself. Well! well! So that is really manuscript?"

There were a few geraniums in the window and they did not look well. Ernest asked Mrs Jupp if she understood flowers. "I understand the language of flowers," she said, with one of her most bewitching leers, and on this we sent her off till she should choose to honour us with another visit, which she knows she is privileged from time to time to do, for Ernest likes her.



CHAPTER LXXXVI

And now I must bring my story to a close.

The preceding chapter was written soon after the events it records—that is to say in the spring of 1867. By that time my story had been written up to this point; but it has been altered here and there from time to time occasionally. It is now the autumn of 1882, and if I am to say more I should do so quickly, for I am eighty years old and though well in health cannot conceal from myself that I am no longer young. Ernest himself is forty-seven, though he hardly looks it.

He is richer than ever, for he has never married and his London and North- Western shares have nearly doubled themselves. Through sheer inability to spend his income he has been obliged to hoard in self-defence. He still lives in the Temple in the same rooms I took for him when he gave up his shop, for no one has been able to induce him to take a house. His house, he says, is wherever there is a good hotel. When he is in town he likes to work and to be quiet. When out of town he feels that he has left little behind him that can go wrong, and he would not like to be tied to a single locality. "I know no exception," he says, "to the rule that it is cheaper to buy milk than to keep a cow."

As I have mentioned Mrs Jupp, I may as well say here the little that remains to be said about her. She is a very old woman now, but no one now living, as she says triumphantly, can say how old, for the woman in the Old Kent Road is dead, and presumably has carried her secret to the grave. Old, however, though she is, she lives in the same house, and finds it hard work to make the two ends meet, but I do not know that she minds this very much, and it has prevented her from getting more to drink than would be good for her. It is no use trying to do anything for her beyond paying her allowance weekly, and absolutely refusing to let her anticipate it. She pawns her flat iron every Saturday for 4d., and takes it out every Monday morning for 4.5d. when she gets her allowance, and has done this for the last ten years as regularly as the week comes round. As long as she does not let the flat iron actually go we know that she can still worry out her financial problems in her own hugger- mugger way and had better be left to do so. If the flat iron were to go beyond redemption, we should know that it was time to interfere. I do not know why, but there is something about her which always reminds me of a woman who was as unlike her as one person can be to another—I mean Ernest's mother.

The last time I had a long gossip with her was about two years ago when she came to me instead of to Ernest. She said she had seen a cab drive up just as she was going to enter the staircase, and had seen Mr Pontifex's pa put his Beelzebub old head out of the window, so she had come on to me, for she hadn't greased her sides for no curtsey, not for the likes of him. She professed to be very much down on her luck. Her lodgers did use her so dreadful, going away without paying and leaving not so much as a stick behind, but to-day she was as pleased as a penny carrot. She had had such a lovely dinner—a cushion of ham and green peas. She had had a good cry over it, but then she was so silly, she was.

"And there's that Bell," she continued, though I could not detect any appearance of connection, "it's enough to give anyone the hump to see him now that he's taken to chapel-going, and his mother's prepared to meet Jesus and all that to me, and now she ain't a-going to die, and drinks half a bottle of champagne a day, and then Grigg, him as preaches, you know, asked Bell if I really was too gay, not but what when I was young I'd snap my fingers at any 'fly by night' in Holborn, and if I was togged out and had my teeth I'd do it now. I lost my poor dear Watkins, but of course that couldn't be helped, and then I lost my dear Rose. Silly faggot to go and ride on a cart and catch the bronchitics. I never thought when I kissed my dear Rose in Pullen's Passage and she gave me the chop, that I should never see her again, and her gentleman friend was fond of her too, though he was a married man. I daresay she's gone to bits by now. If she could rise and see me with my bad finger, she would cry, and I should say, 'Never mind, ducky, I'm all right.' Oh! dear, it's coming on to rain. I do hate a wet Saturday night—poor women with their nice white stockings and their living to get," etc., etc.

And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner, as people would say it ought to do. Whatever life she has led, it has agreed with her very sufficiently. At times she gives us to understand that she is still much solicited; at others she takes quite a different tone. She has not allowed even Joe King so much as to put his lips to hers this ten years. She would rather have a mutton chop any day. "But ah! you should have seen me when I was sweet seventeen. I was the very moral of my poor dear mother, and she was a pretty woman, though I say it that shouldn't. She had such a splendid mouth of teeth. It was a sin to bury her in her teeth."

I only knew of one thing at which she professes to be shocked. It is that her son Tom and his wife Topsy are teaching the baby to swear. "Oh! it's too dreadful awful," she exclaimed, "I don't know the meaning of the words, but I tell him he's a drunken sot." I believe the old woman in reality rather likes it.

"But surely, Mrs Jupp," said I, "Tom's wife used not to be Topsy. You used to speak of her as Pheeb."

"Ah! yes," she answered, "but Pheeb behaved bad, and it's Topsy now."

Ernest's daughter Alice married the boy who had been her playmate more than a year ago. Ernest gave them all they said they wanted and a good deal more. They have already presented him with a grandson, and I doubt not, will do so with many more. Georgie though only twenty-one is owner of a fine steamer which his father has bought for him. He began when about thirteen going with old Rollings and Jack in the barge from Rochester to the upper Thames with bricks; then his father bought him and Jack barges of their own, and then he bought them both ships, and then steamers. I do not exactly know how people make money by having a steamer, but he does whatever is usual, and from all I can gather makes it pay extremely well. He is a good deal like his father in the face, but without a spark—so far as I have been able to observe—any literary ability; he has a fair sense of humour and abundance of common sense, but his instinct is clearly a practical one. I am not sure that he does not put me in mind almost more of what Theobald would have been if he had been a sailor, than of Ernest. Ernest used to go down to Battersby and stay with his father for a few days twice a year until Theobald's death, and the pair continued on excellent terms, in spite of what the neighbouring clergy call "the atrocious books which Mr Ernest Pontifex" has written. Perhaps the harmony, or rather absence of discord which subsisted between the pair was due to the fact that Theobald had never looked into the inside of one of his son's works, and Ernest, of course, never alluded to them in his father's presence. The pair, as I have said, got on excellently, but it was doubtless as well that Ernest's visits were short and not too frequent. Once Theobald wanted Ernest to bring his children, but Ernest knew they would not like it, so this was not done.

Sometimes Theobald came up to town on small business matters and paid a visit to Ernest's chambers; he generally brought with him a couple of lettuces, or a cabbage, or half-a-dozen turnips done up in a piece of brown paper, and told Ernest that he knew fresh vegetables were rather hard to get in London, and he had brought him some. Ernest had often explained to him that the vegetables were of no use to him, and that he had rather he would not bring them; but Theobald persisted, I believe through sheer love of doing something which his son did not like, but which was too small to take notice of.

He lived until about twelve months ago, when he was found dead in his bed on the morning after having written the following letter to his son:—

"Dear Ernest,—I've nothing particular to write about, but your letter has been lying for some days in the limbo of unanswered letters, to wit my pocket, and it's time it was answered.

"I keep wonderfully well and am able to walk my five or six miles with comfort, but at my age there's no knowing how long it will last, and time flies quickly. I have been busy potting plants all the morning, but this afternoon is wet.

"What is this horrid Government going to do with Ireland? I don't exactly wish they'd blow up Mr Gladstone, but if a mad bull would chivy him there, and he would never come back any more, I should not be sorry. Lord Hartington is not exactly the man I should like to set in his place, but he would be immeasurably better than Gladstone.

"I miss your sister Charlotte more than I can express. She kept my household accounts, and I could pour out to her all little worries, and now that Joey is married too, I don't know what I should do if one or other of them did not come sometimes and take care of me. My only comfort is that Charlotte will make her husband happy, and that he is as nearly worthy of her as a husband can well be.—Believe me, Your affectionate father,

"THEOBALD PONTIFEX."

I may say in passing that though Theobald speaks of Charlotte's marriage as though it were recent, it had really taken place some six years previously, she being then about thirty-eight years old, and her husband about seven years younger.

There was no doubt that Theobald passed peacefully away during his sleep. Can a man who died thus be said to have died at all? He has presented the phenomena of death to other people, but in respect of himself he has not only not died, but has not even thought that he was going to die. This is not more than half dying, but then neither was his life more than half living. He presented so many of the phenomena of living that I suppose on the whole it would be less trouble to think of him as having been alive than as never having been born at all, but this is only possible because association does not stick to the strict letter of its bond.

This, however, was not the general verdict concerning him, and the general verdict is often the truest.

Ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of condolence and respect for his father's memory. "He never," said Dr Martin, the old doctor who brought Ernest into the world, "spoke an ill word against anyone. He was not only liked, he was beloved by all who had anything to do with him."

"A more perfectly just and righteously dealing man," said the family solicitor, "I have never had anything to do with—nor one more punctual in the discharge of every business obligation."

"We shall miss him sadly," the bishop wrote to Joey in the very warmest terms. The poor were in consternation. "The well's never missed," said one old woman, "till it's dry," and she only said what everyone else felt. Ernest knew that the general regret was unaffected as for a loss which could not be easily repaired. He felt that there were only three people in the world who joined insincerely in the tribute of applause, and these were the very three who could least show their want of sympathy. I mean Joey, Charlotte, and himself. He felt bitter against himself for being of a mind with either Joey or Charlotte upon any subject, and thankful that he must conceal his being so as far as possible, not because of anything his father had done to him—these grievances were too old to be remembered now—but because he would never allow him to feel towards him as he was always trying to feel. As long as communication was confined to the merest commonplace all went well, but if these were departed from ever such a little he invariably felt that his father's instincts showed themselves in immediate opposition to his own. When he was attacked his father laid whatever stress was possible on everything which his opponents said. If he met with any check his father was clearly pleased. What the old doctor had said about Theobald's speaking ill of no man was perfectly true as regards others than himself, but he knew very well that no one had injured his reputation in a quiet way, so far as he dared to do, more than his own father. This is a very common case and a very natural one. It often happens that if the son is right, the father is wrong, and the father is not going to have this if he can help it.

It was very hard, however, to say what was the true root of the mischief in the present case. It was not Ernest's having been imprisoned. Theobald forgot all about that much sooner than nine fathers out of ten would have done. Partly, no doubt, it was due to incompatibility of temperament, but I believe the main ground of complaint lay in the fact that he had been so independent and so rich while still very young, and that thus the old gentleman had been robbed of his power to tease and scratch in the way which he felt he was entitled to do. The love of teasing in a small way when he felt safe in doing so had remained part of his nature from the days when he told his nurse that he would keep her on purpose to torment her. I suppose it is so with all of us. At any rate I am sure that most fathers, especially if they are clergymen, are like Theobald.

He did not in reality, I am convinced, like Joey or Charlotte one whit better than he liked Ernest. He did not like anyone or anything, or if he liked anyone at all it was his butler, who looked after him when he was not well, and took great care of him and believed him to be the best and ablest man in the whole world. Whether this faithful and attached servant continued to think this after Theobald's will was opened and it was found what kind of legacy had been left him I know not. Of his children, the baby who had died at a day old was the only one whom he held to have treated him quite filially. As for Christina he hardly ever pretended to miss her and never mentioned her name; but this was taken as a proof that he felt her loss too keenly to be able ever to speak of her. It may have been so, but I do not think it.

Theobald's effects were sold by auction, and among them the Harmony of the Old and New Testaments which he had compiled during many years with such exquisite neatness and a huge collection of MS. sermons—being all in fact that he had ever written. These and the Harmony fetched ninepence a barrow load. I was surprised to hear that Joey had not given the three or four shillings which would have bought the whole lot, but Ernest tells me that Joey was far fiercer in his dislike of his father than ever he had been himself, and wished to get rid of everything that reminded him of him.

It has already appeared that both Joey and Charlotte are married. Joey has a family, but he and Ernest very rarely have any intercourse. Of course, Ernest took nothing under his father's will; this had long been understood, so that the other two are both well provided for.

Charlotte is as clever as ever, and sometimes asks Ernest to come and stay with her and her husband near Dover, I suppose because she knows that the invitation will not be agreeable to him. There is a de haut en bas tone in all her letters; it is rather hard to lay one's finger upon it but Ernest never gets a letter from her without feeling that he is being written to by one who has had direct communication with an angel. "What an awful creature," he once said to me, "that angel must have been if it had anything to do with making Charlotte what she is."

"Could you like," she wrote to him not long ago, "the thoughts of a little sea change here? The top of the cliffs will soon be bright with heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather I should think begun, to judge by the state of the hill at Ewell, and heather or no heather—the cliffs are always beautiful, and if you come your room shall be cosy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself. Nineteen and sixpence is the price of a return-ticket which covers a month. Would you decide just as you would yourself like, only if you come we would hope to try and make it bright for you; but you must not feel it a burden on your mind if you feel disinclined to come in this direction."

"When I have a bad nightmare," said Ernest to me, laughing as he showed me this letter, "I dream that I have got to stay with Charlotte."

Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and I believe it is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real literary power than Ernest has. Sometimes we think that she is writing at him as much as to say, "There now—don't you think you are the only one of us who can write; read this! And if you want a telling bit of descriptive writing for your next book, you can make what use of it you like." I daresay she writes very well, but she has fallen under the dominion of the words "hope," "think," "feel," "try," "bright," and "little," and can hardly write a page without introducing all these words and some of them more than once. All this has the effect of making her style monotonous.

Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late years has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire. He finds it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble through getting into the key of C sharp after beginning in the key of C and being unable to get back again.

"Getting into the key of C sharp," he said, "is like an unprotected female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding herself at Shepherd's Bush, without quite knowing where she wants to go to. How is she ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction? And Clapham Junction won't quite do either, for Clapham Junction is like the diminished seventh—susceptible of such enharmonic change, that you can resolve it into all the possible termini of music."

Talking of music reminds me of a little passage that took place between Ernest and Miss Skinner, Dr Skinner's eldest daughter, not so very long ago. Dr Skinner had long left Roughborough, and had become Dean of a Cathedral in one of our Midland counties—a position which exactly suited him. Finding himself once in the neighbourhood Ernest called, for old acquaintance sake, and was hospitably entertained at lunch.

Thirty years had whitened the Doctor's bushy eyebrows—his hair they could not whiten. I believe that but for that wig he would have been made a bishop.

His voice and manner were unchanged, and when Ernest remarking upon a plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the Quirinal, he replied with all his wonted pomp: "Yes, the QuirInal—or as I myself prefer to call it, the QuirInal." After this triumph he inhaled a long breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung it back again into the face of Heaven, as in his finest form during his head-mastership. At lunch he did indeed once say, "next to impossible to think of anything else," but he immediately corrected himself and substituted the words, "next to impossible to entertain irrelevant ideas," after which he seemed to feel a good deal more comfortable. Ernest saw the familiar volumes of Dr Skinner's works upon the bookshelves in the Deanery dining-room, but he saw no copy of "Rome or the Bible—Which?"

"And are you still as fond of music as ever, Mr Pontifex?" said Miss Skinner to Ernest during the course of lunch.

"Of some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did like modern music."

"Isn't that rather dreadful?—Don't you think you rather"—she was going to have added, "ought to?" but she left it unsaid, feeling doubtless that she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning.

"I would like modern music, if I could; I have been trying all my life to like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow."

"And pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?"

"With Sebastian Bach."

"And don't you like Beethoven?"

"No, I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now that I never really liked him."

"Ah! how can you say so? You cannot understand him, you never could say this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of Beethoven is enough. This is happiness."

Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father—a likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it were an epitaph:—

"Stay: I may presently take A simple chord of Beethoven, Or a small semiquaver From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."

After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was pleased and flattered beyond his wont. He rose and bowed. "These expressions," he said, voce sua, "are very valuable to me." "They are but a small part, Sir," rejoined Ernest, "of what anyone of your old pupils must feel towards you," and the pair danced as it were a minuet at the end of the dining-room table in front of the old bay window that looked upon the smooth shaven lawn. On this Ernest departed; but a few days afterwards, the Doctor wrote him a letter and told him that his critics were a [Greek text], and at the same time [Greek text]. Ernest remembered [Greek text], and knew that the other words were something of like nature, so it was all right. A month or two afterwards, Dr Skinner was gathered to his fathers.

"He was an old fool, Ernest," said I, "and you should not relent towards him."

"I could not help it," he replied, "he was so old that it was almost like playing with a child."

Sometimes, like all whose minds are active, Ernest overworks himself, and then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful encounters with Dr Skinner or Theobald in his sleep—but beyond this neither of these two worthies can now molest him further.

To myself he has been a son and more than a son; at times I am half afraid—as for example when I talk to him about his books—that I may have been to him more like a father than I ought; if I have, I trust he has forgiven me. His books are the only bone of contention between us. I want him to write like other people, and not to offend so many of his readers; he says he can no more change his manner of writing than the colour of his hair, and that he must write as he does or not at all.

With the public generally he is not a favourite. He is admitted to have talent, but it is considered generally to be of a queer unpractical kind, and no matter how serious he is, he is always accused of being in jest. His first book was a success for reasons which I have already explained, but none of his others have been more than creditable failures. He is one of those unfortunate men, each one of whose books is sneered at by literary critics as soon as it comes out, but becomes "excellent reading" as soon as it has been followed by a later work which may in its turn be condemned.

He never asked a reviewer to dinner in his life. I have told him over and over again that this is madness, and find that this is the only thing I can say to him which makes him angry with me.

"What can it matter to me," he says, "whether people read my books or not? It may matter to them—but I have too much money to want more, and if the books have any stuff in them it will work by-and-by. I do not know nor greatly care whether they are good or not. What opinion can any sane man form about his own work? Some people must write stupid books just as there must be junior ops and third class poll men. Why should I complain of being among the mediocrities? If a man is not absolutely below mediocrity let him be thankful—besides, the books will have to stand by themselves some day, so the sooner they begin the better."

I spoke to his publisher about him not long since. "Mr Pontifex," he said, "is a homo unius libri, but it doesn't do to tell him so."

I could see the publisher, who ought to know, had lost all faith in Ernest's literary position, and looked upon him as a man whose failure was all the more hopeless for the fact of his having once made a coup. "He is in a very solitary position, Mr Overton," continued the publisher. "He has formed no alliances, and has made enemies not only of the religious world but of the literary and scientific brotherhood as well. This will not do nowadays. If a man wishes to get on he must belong to a set, and Mr Pontifex belongs to no set—not even to a club."

I replied, "Mr Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but with a difference—he hates not wisely but too well. He would dislike the literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and they him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and if he were brought into contact with them his last state would be worse than his first. His instinct tells him this, so he keeps clear of them, and attacks them whenever he thinks they deserve it—in the hope, perhaps, that a younger generation will listen to him more willingly than the present."

"Can anything,"' said the publisher, "be conceived more impracticable and imprudent?"

To all this Ernest replies with one word only—"Wait."

Such is my friend's latest development. He would not, it is true, run much chance at present of trying to found a College of Spiritual Pathology, but I must leave the reader to determine whether there is not a strong family likeness between the Ernest of the College of Spiritual Pathology and the Ernest who will insist on addressing the next generation rather than his own. He says he trusts that there is not, and takes the sacrament duly once a year as a sop to Nemesis lest he should again feel strongly upon any subject. It rather fatigues him, but "no man's opinions," he sometimes says, "can be worth holding unless he knows how to deny them easily and gracefully upon occasion in the cause of charity." In politics he is a Conservative so far as his vote and interest are concerned. In all other respects he is an advanced Radical. His father and grandfather could probably no more understand his state of mind than they could understand Chinese, but those who know him intimately do not know that they wish him greatly different from what he actually is.

THE END