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 I- 
 
DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure "Room 
 
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The Way of all Flesh 
 
J3S tbe dame Butbor 
 
 Uni/orm with this Volume 
 
 Erewhon ; or, Over the Range 
 
 Tenth Revised Edition 
 
 Erewhon Revisited : Twenty 
 Years later 
 
 Second Edition 
 
 London: GRANT RICHARDS 
 
The Way of all Flesh 
 
 By 
 
 Samuel Butler 
 
 Author of " Erewhon " 
 
 " We know that all things work together for good to them 
 that love God." — Rom. viii. 28 
 
 London 
 
 Grant Richards 
 
 1903 
 

 Note. 
 
 Samuel Butler began to write " The Way of all Flesh " 
 about the year 1872, and was engaged upon it intermittently 
 until 1884. It is therefore, to a great extent, contem- 
 poraneous with " Life and Habit," and may be taken as a 
 practical illustration of the theory of heredity embodied in 
 that book. He did not work at it after 1884, but for various 
 reasons he postponed its publication. He was occupied in 
 other ways, and he professed himself dissatisfied with it as a 
 whole, and always intended to rewrite or at any rate to revise 
 it. His death last year prevented him from doing this, and 
 on his death-bed he gave me clearly to understand that he 
 wished it to be published in its present form. I found that 
 the MS. of the fourth and fifth chapters had disappeared, but 
 by consulting and comparing various notes and sketches, 
 which remained among his papers, I have been able to supply 
 the missing chapters in a form which I believe does not differ 
 materially from that which he finally adopted. With regard 
 to the chronology of the events recorded, the reader will do 
 well to bear in mind that the main body of the novel is sup- 
 posed to have been written in the year 1867, and the last 
 chapter added as a postscript in 1882. 
 
 R. A. Streatfeild. 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 When I was a small boy at the beginning of the century I 
 remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted 
 stockings, and who used to hobble about the street of our 
 village with the help of a stick. He must have been getting 
 on for eighty in the year 1807, earlier than which date I 
 suppose I can hardly remember him, for I was born in 1802. 
 A few white locks hung about his ears, his shoulders were 
 bent and his knees feeble, but he was still hale, and was 
 much respected in our little world of Paleham. His name 
 was Pontifex. 
 
 His wife was said to be his master ; I have been told she 
 brought him a little money, but it cannot have been much. 
 She was a tall, square-shouldered person (I have heard my 
 father call her a Gothic woman) who had insisted on being 
 married to Mr Pontifex when he was young and too good- 
 natured to say nay to any woman who wooed him. The 
 pair had lived not unhappily together, for Mr Pontifex's 
 temper was easy and he soon learned to bow before his 
 wife's more stormy moods. 
 
 Mr Pontifex was a carpenter by trade ; he was also at one 
 time parish clerk ; when I remember him, however, he had 
 so far risen in life as to be no longer compelled to work 
 with his own hands. In his earlier days he had taught 
 himself to draw. I do not say he drew well, but it was 
 surprising he should draw as well as he did. My father, 
 who took the living of Paleham about the year 1797, became 
 possessed of a good many of old Mr Pontifex's drawings, 
 which were always of local subjects, and so unaffectedly 
 painstaking that they might have passed for the work of 
 some good early master. I remember them as hanging up 
 
 A I 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 framed and glazed in the study at the Rectory, and tinted, 
 as all else in the room was tinted, with the green reflected 
 from the fringe of ivy leaves that grew around the windows. 
 I wonder how they will actually cease and come to an end 
 as drawings, and into what new phases of being they will 
 then enter. 
 
 Not content with being an artist, Mr Pontifex must needs 
 also be a musician. He built the organ in the church with 
 his own hands, and made a smaller one which he kept in his 
 own house. He could play as much as he could draw, not 
 very well according to professional standards, but much better 
 than could have been expected. I myself showed a taste for 
 music at an early age, and old Mr Pontifex on finding it out, 
 as he soon did, became partial to me in consequence. 
 
 It may he thought that with so many irons in the fire he 
 could hardly be a very thriving man, but this was not the 
 case. His father had been a day labourer, and he had him- 
 self begun life with no other capital than his good sense and 
 good constitution ; now, however, there was a goodly show 
 of timber about his yard, and a look of solid comfort over 
 his whole establishment. Towards the close of the eighteenth 
 century and not long before my father came to Paleham, 
 he had taken a farm of about ninety acres, thus making a 
 considerable rise in life. Along with the farm there went 
 an old-fashioned but comfortable house with a charming 
 garden and an orchard. The carpenter's business was now 
 carried on in one of the outhouses that had once been part 
 of some conventual buildings, the remains of which could be 
 seen in what was called the Abbey Close. The house itself, 
 embosomed in honeysuckles and creeping roses, was an orna- 
 ment to the whole village, nor were its internal arrangements 
 less exemplary than its outside was ornamental. Report said 
 that Mrs Pontifex starched the sheets for her best bed, and 
 I can well believe it. 
 
 How well do I remember her parlour half filled with the 
 organ which her husband had built, and scented with a 
 withered apple or two from the pyrus japonica that grew 
 outside the house ; the picture of the prize ox over the 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 chimney-piece, which Mr Pontifex himself had painted; the 
 transparency of the man coming to show light to a coach 
 upon a snowy night, also by Mr Pontifex ; the httle old man 
 and little old woman who told the weather ; the china shep- 
 herd and shepherdess ; the jars of feathery flowering grasses 
 with a peacock's feather or two among them to set them oflF, 
 and the china bowls full of dead rose leaves dried with bay 
 salt. All has long since vanished and become a memory, 
 faded but still fragrant to myself. 
 
 Nay, but her kitchen — and the glimpses into a cavernous 
 cellar beyond it, wherefrom came gleams from the pale sur- 
 faces of milk cans, or it may be of the arms and face of a 
 milkmaid skimming the cream ; or again her storeroom, 
 where among other treasures she kept the famous lipsalve 
 which was one of her especial glories, and of which she would 
 present a shape yearly to those whom she delighted to 
 honour. She wrote out the recipe for this and gave it to my 
 mother a year or two before she died, but we could never 
 make it as she did. When we were children she used some- 
 times to send her respects to my mother, and ask leave for 
 us to come and take tea with her. Right well she used to 
 ply us. As for her temper, we never met such a delightful 
 old lady in our lives ; whatever Mr Pontifex may have had 
 to put up with, we had no cause for complaint, and then Mr 
 Pontifex would play to us upon the organ, and we would 
 stand round him open-mouthed and think him the most 
 wonderfully clever man that ever was born, except of course 
 our papa. 
 
 Mrs Pontifex had no sense of humour, at least I can call 
 to mind no signs of this, but her husband had plenty of fun 
 in him, though few would have guessed it from his appear- 
 ance. I remember my father once sent me down to his 
 workshop to get some glue, and I happened to come when 
 old Pontifex was in the act of scolding his boy. He had 
 got the lad — a pudding-headed fellow — by the ear and was 
 saying, " What ? Lost again — smothered o' wit." (I believe 
 it was the boy who was himself supposed to be a wandering 
 soul, and who was thus addressed as lost.) " Now, look 
 
 3 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 here, my lad," he continued, " some boys are born stupid, 
 and thou art one of them ; some achieve stupidity — that's 
 thee again, Jim — thou wast both born stupid and hast 
 greatly increased thy birthright — and some " (and here came 
 a climax during which the boy's head and ear were swayed 
 from side to side) " have stupidity thrust upon them, which, 
 if it please the Lord, shall not be thy case, my lad, for I will 
 thrust stupidity from thee, though I have to box thine ears 
 in doing so," but I did not see that the old man really did 
 box Jim's ears, or do more than pretend to frighten him, for 
 the two understood one another perfectly well. Another 
 time I remember hearing him call the village rat-catcher by 
 saying, " Come hither, thou three-days-and-three-nights, thou," 
 alluding, as I afterwards learned, to the rat-catcher's periods 
 of intoxication ; but I will tell no more of such trifles. My 
 father's face would always brighten when old Pontifex's 
 name was mentioned. " I tell you, Edward," he would say 
 to me, " old Pontifex was not only an able man, but he was 
 one of the very ablest men that ever I knew." 
 
 This was more than I as a young man was prepared to 
 stand. "My dear father," I answered, "what did he do? 
 He could draw a little, but could he to save his life have 
 got a picture into the Royal Academy exhibition ? He built 
 two organs and could play the Minuet in Samson on one and 
 the March in Scipio on the other ; he was a good carpenter 
 and a bit of a wag ; he was a good old fellow enough, but 
 why make him out so much abler than he was ? " 
 
 " My boy," returned my father, " you must not judge by 
 the work, but by the work in connection with the surround- 
 ings. Could Giotto or Filippo Lippi, think you, have got a 
 picture into the Exhibition ? Would a single one of those 
 frescoes we went to see when we were at Padua have the 
 remotest chance of being hung, if it were sent in for exhibi- 
 tion now ? Why, the Academy people would be so outraged 
 that they would not even write to poor Giotto to tell him to 
 come and take his fresco away. Phew ! " continued he, 
 waxing warm, " if old Pontifex had had Cromwell's chances 
 he would have done all that Cromwell did, and have done 
 
 4 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 it better; if he had had Giotto's chances he would have 
 done all that Giotto did, and done it no worse ; as it was, 
 he was a village carpenter, and I will undertake to say he 
 never scamped a job in the whole course of his life." 
 
 " But," said I, "we cannot judge people with so many 'ifs.' 
 If old Pontifex had lived in Giotto's time he might have 
 been another Giotto, but he did not live in Giotto's time." 
 
 " I tell you, Edward," said my father with some severity, 
 "we must judge men not so much by what they do, as by 
 what they make us feel that they have it in them to do. If 
 a man has done enough either in painting, music or the 
 affairs of life, to make me feel that I might trust him in an 
 emergency he has done enough. It is not by what a man 
 has actually put upon his canvas, nor yet by the acts which 
 he has set down, so to speak, upon the canvas of his life 
 that I will judge him, but by what he makes me feel that he 
 felt and aimed at. If he has made me feel that he felt those 
 things to be loveable which I hold loveable myself I ask no 
 more ; his grammar may have been imperfect, but still I have 
 understood him; he and I are en rapport; and I say again, 
 Edward, that old Pontifex was not only an able man, but 
 one of the very ablest men I ever knew." 
 
 Against this there was no more to be said, and my sisters 
 eyed me to silence. Somehow or other my sisters always 
 did eye me to silence when I differed from my father. 
 
 "Talk of his successful son," snorted my father, whom I 
 had fairly roused. " He is not fit to black his father's boots. 
 He has his thousands of pounds a year, while his father had 
 perhaps three thousand shillings a year towards the end of 
 his life. He is a successful man ; but his father, hobbling 
 about Paleham Street in his grey worsted stockings, broad 
 brimmed hat and brown swallow-tailed coat was worth a 
 hundred of George Pontifexes, for all his carriages and horses 
 and the airs he gives himself." 
 
 "But yet," he added, "George Pontifex is no fool either." 
 And this brings us to the second generation of the Pontifex 
 family with whom we need concern ourselves. 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Old Mr Pontifex had married in the year 1750, but for 
 fifteen years his wife bore no children. At the end of that 
 time Mrs Pontifex astonished the whole village by showing 
 unmistakable signs of a disposition to present her husband 
 v/ith an heir or heiress. Hers had long ago been considered 
 a hopeless case, and when on consulting the doctor concern- 
 ing the meaning of certain symptoms she was informed of 
 their significance, she became very angry and abused the 
 doctor roundly for talking nonsense. She refused to put so 
 much as a piece of thread into a needle in anticipation of her 
 confinement and would have been absolutely unprepared, if 
 her neighbours had not been better judges of her condition 
 than she was, and got things ready without telling her any- 
 thing about it. Perhaps she feared Nemesis, though assuredly 
 she knew not who or what Nemesis was ; perhaps she feared 
 the doctor had made a mistake and she should be laughed 
 at ; from whatever cause, however, her refusal to recognise the 
 obvious arose, she certainly refused to recognise it, until one 
 snowy night in January the doctor was sent for with all 
 urgent speed across the rough country roads. When he 
 arrived he found two patients, not one, in need of his assist- 
 ance, for a boy had been born who was in due time 
 christened George, in honour of his then reigning majesty. 
 
 To the best of my belief George Pontifex got the greater 
 part of his nature from this obstinate old lady, his mother — a 
 mother who though she loved no one else in the world except 
 her husband (and him only after a fashion) was most tenderly 
 attached to the unexpected child of her old age ; nevertheless 
 she showed it little. 
 
 The boy grew up into a sturdy bright-eyed little fellow, 
 with plenty of intelligence, and perhaps a trifle too great 
 readiness at book learning. Being kindly treated at home, he 
 was as fond of his father and mother as it was in his nature 
 to be of anyone, but he was fond of no one else. He had a 
 
 6 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 good healthy sense of meiim, and as little of tuuin as he could 
 help. Brought up much in the open air in one of the best 
 situated and healthiest villages in England, his little limbs 
 had fair play, and in those days children's brains were not 
 overtasked as they now are ; perhaps it was for this very 
 reason that the boy showed an avidity to learn. At seven or 
 eight years old he could read, write and sum better than any 
 other boy of his age in the village. My father was not yet 
 rector of Paleham, and did not remember George Pontifex's 
 childhood, but I have heard neighbours tell him that the boy 
 was looked upon as unusually quick and forward. His 
 father and mother were naturally proud of their offspring, and 
 his mother was determined that he should one day become 
 one of the kings and councillors of the earth. 
 
 It is one thing however to resolve that one's son shall win 
 some of life's larger prizes, and another to square matters 
 with fortune in this respect. George Pontifex might have 
 been brought up as a carpenter and succeeded in no other 
 way than as succeeding his father as one of the minor 
 magnates of Paleham, and yet have been a more truly 
 successful man than he actually was — for I take it there is not 
 much more solid success in this world than what fell to the 
 lot of old Mr and Mrs Pontifex ; it happened, however, that 
 about the year 1780, when George was a boy of fifteen, a 
 sister of Mrs Pontifex's, who had married a Mr Fairhe, came 
 to pay a few days' visit at Paleham. Mr Fairlie was a pub- 
 lisher, chiefly of religious works, and had an establishment in 
 Paternoster Row; he had risen in hfe, and his wife had 
 risen with him. No very close relations had been main- 
 tained between the sisters for some years, and I forget 
 exactly how it came about that Mr and Mrs Fairlie were 
 guests in the quiet but exceedingly comfortable house of 
 their sister and brother-in-law ; but for some reason or other 
 the visit was paid, and little George soon succeeded in 
 making his way into his uncle and aunt's good graces. A 
 quick intelligent boy with a good address, a sound constitu- 
 tion, and coming of respectable parents, has a potential value 
 which a practised business man who has need of many 
 
 7 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 subordinates is little likely to overlook. Before his visit was 
 over Mr Fairlie proposed to the lad's father and mother that 
 he should put him into his own business, at the same time 
 promising that if the boy did well he should not want some 
 one to bring him forward. Mrs Pontifex had her son's 
 interest too much at heart to refuse such an offer, so the 
 matter was soon arranged, and about a fortnight after the 
 Fairlies had left, George was sent up by coach to London, 
 where he was met by his uncle and aunt, with whom it was 
 arranged that he should live. 
 
 This was George's great start in life. He now wore more 
 fashionable clothes than he had yet been accustomed to, and 
 any little rusticity of gait or pronunciation which he had 
 brought from Paleham, was so quickly and completely lost 
 that it was ere long impossible to detect that he had not 
 been born and bred among people of what is commonly 
 called education. The boy paid great attention to his work, 
 and more than justified the favourable opinion which Mr 
 Fairlie had formed concerning him. Sometimes Mr Fairlie 
 would send him down to Paleham for a few days' holiday, 
 and ere long his parents perceived that he had acquired an 
 air and manner of talking different from any that he had 
 taken with him from Paleham. They were proud of him, and 
 soon fell into their proper places, resigning all appearance of 
 a parental control, for which indeed there was no kind of 
 necessity. In return, George was always kindly to them, 
 and to the end of his life retained a more affectionate feeling 
 towards his father and mother than I imagine him ever to 
 have felt again for man, woman, or child. 
 
 George's visits to Paleham were never long, for the distance 
 from London was under fifty miles and there was a direct 
 coach, so that the journey was easy ; there was not time, 
 therefore, for the novelty to wear off either on the part of the 
 young man or of his parents. George liked the fresh country 
 air and green fields after the darkness to which he had been 
 so long accustomed in Paternoster Row, which then, as now, 
 was a narrow gloomy lane rather than a street. Independ- 
 ently of the pleasure of seeing the familiar faces of the farmers 
 
 8 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 and villagers, he liked also being seen and being congratu- 
 lated on growing up such a fine-looking and fortunate young 
 fellow, for he was not the youth to hide his light under a 
 bushel. His uncle had had him taught Latin and Greek of 
 an evening ; he had taken kindly to these languages and had 
 rapidly and easily mastered what many boys take years in 
 acquiring. I suppose his knowledge gave him a self-con- 
 fidence which made itself felt whether he intended it or not ; 
 at any rate, he soon began to pose as a judge of literature, 
 and from this to being a judge of art, architecture, music 
 and everything else, the path was easy. Like his father, he 
 knew the value of money, but he was at once more ostenta- 
 tious and less liberal than his father ; while yet a boy he was 
 a thorough little man of the world, and did well rather upon 
 principles which he had tested by personal experiment, and 
 recognised as principles, than from those profounder con- 
 victions which in his father were so instinctive that he could 
 give no account concerning them. 
 
 His father, as I have said, wondered at him and let him 
 alone. His son had fairly distanced him, and in an in- 
 articulate way the father knew it perfectly well. After a few 
 years he took to wearing his best clothes whenever his son 
 came to stay with him, nor would he discard them for his 
 ordinary ones till the young man had returned to London. 
 I believe old Mr Pontifex, along with his pride and affection, 
 felt also a certain fear of his son, as though of something 
 which he could not thoroughly understand, and whose ways, 
 notwithstanding outward agreement, were nevertheless not as 
 his ways. Mrs Pontifex felt nothing of this ; to her George 
 was pure and absolute perfection, and she saw, or thought 
 she saw, with pleasure, that he resembled her and her family 
 in feature as well as in disposition rather than her husband 
 and his. 
 
 When George was about twenty-five years old his uncle 
 took him into partnership on very liberal terms. He had 
 little cause to regret this step. The young man infused fresh 
 vigour into a concern that was already vigorous, and by the 
 time he was thirty found himself in the receipt of not less than 
 
 9 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 ^£^1500 a year as his share of the profits. Two years later he 
 married a lady about seven years younger than himself, who 
 brought him a handsome dowry. She died in 1805, when 
 her youngest child Alethea was born, and her husband did 
 not marry again. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 In the early years of the century five little children and a 
 couple of nurses began to make periodical visits to Paleham. 
 It is needless to say they were a rising generation of Ponti- 
 fexes, towards whom the old couple, their grandparents, were 
 as tenderly deferential as they would have been to the children 
 of the Lord Lieutenant of the County. Their names were Eliza, 
 Maria, John, Theobald (who like myself was born in 1802), 
 and Alethea. Mr Pontifex always put the prefix " master " or 
 " miss " before the names of his grandchildren, except in 
 the case of Alethea, who was his favourite. To have resisted 
 his grandchildren would have been as impossible for him as 
 to have resisted his wife ; even old Mrs Pontifex yielded 
 before her son's children, and gave them all manner of 
 licence which she would never have allowed even to my 
 sisters and myself, who stood next in her regard. Two 
 regulations only they must attend to ; they must wipe their 
 shoes well on coming into the house, and they must not 
 overfeed Mr Pontifex's organ with wind, nor take the pipes 
 out. 
 
 By us at the Rectory there was no time so much looked 
 forward to as the annual visit of the little Pontifexes to 
 Paleham. We came in for some of the prevailing licence ; 
 we went to tea with Mrs Pontifex to meet her grandchildren, 
 and then our young friends were asked to the Rectory to have 
 tea with us, and we had what we considered great times. I 
 fell desperately in love with Alethea, indeed we all fell in love 
 with each other, plurality and exchange whether of wives or 
 husbands being openly and unblushingly advocated in the 
 very presence of our nurses. We were very merry, but it is 
 
 10 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 so long ago that I have forgotten nearly everything save that 
 we were very merry. Almost the only thing that remains 
 with me as a permanent impression was the fact that Theobald 
 one day beat his nurse and teased her, and when she said she 
 should go away cried out, "You shan't go away — I'll keep 
 you on purpose to torment you." 
 
 One winter's morning, however, in the year i8i i, we heard 
 the church bell tolling while we were dressing in the back 
 nursery and were told it was for old Mrs Pontifex. Our 
 manservant John told us and added with grim levity that 
 they were ringing the bell to come and take her away. She 
 had had a fit of paralysis which had carried her off quite 
 suddenly. It was very shocking, the more so because our 
 nurse assured us that if God chose we might all have fits of 
 paralysis ourselves that very day and be taken straight off to 
 the Day of Judgement. The Day of Judgement indeed, accord- 
 ing to the opinion of those who were most likely to know, 
 would not under any circumstances be delayed more than a few 
 years longer, and then the whole world would be burned, and 
 we ourselves be consigned to an eternity of torture, unless we 
 mended our ways more than we at present seemed at all likely 
 to do. All this was so alarming that we fell to screaming and 
 made such a hullabaloo that the nurse was obliged for her 
 own peace to reassure us. Then we wept, but more com- 
 posedly, as we remembered that there would be no more tea 
 and cakes for us now at old Mrs Pontifex's. 
 
 On the day of the funeral, however, we had a great excite- 
 ment ; old Mr Pontifex sent round a penny loaf to every 
 inhabitant of the village according to a custom still not 
 uncommon at the beginning of the century ; the loaf was 
 called a dole. We had never heard of this custom before, 
 besides, though we had often heard of penny loaves, we had 
 never before seen one ; moreover, they were presents to us as 
 inhabitants of the village, and we were treated as grown up 
 people, for our father and mother and the servants had each 
 one loaf sent them, but only one. We had never yet suspected 
 that we were inhabitants at all ; finally, the little loaves were 
 new, and we were passionately fond of new bread, which we 
 
 II 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 were seldom or never allowed to have, as it was supposed 
 not to be good for us. Our affection, therefore, for our old 
 friend had to stand against the combined attacks of archaeo- 
 logical interest, the rights of citizenship and property, the 
 pleasantness to the eye and goodness for food of the little 
 loaves themselves, and the sense of importance which was 
 given us by our having been intimate with someone who had 
 actually died. It seemed upon further inquiry that there 
 was little reason to anticipate an early death for anyone of 
 ourselves, and this being so, we rather liked the idea of 
 someone else's being put away into the churchyard ; we passed, 
 therefore, in a short time from extreme depression to a no less 
 extreme exultation ; a new heaven and a new earth had been 
 revealed to us in our perception of the possibility of benefiting 
 by the death of our friends, and I fear that for some time we 
 took an interest in the health of everyone in the village whose 
 position rendered a repetition of the dole in the least likely. 
 
 Those were the days in which all great things seemed far 
 off, and we were astonished to find that Napoleon Buonaparte 
 was an actually living person. We had thought such a great 
 man could only have lived a very long time ago, and here he 
 was after all almost as it were at our own doors. This lent 
 colour to the view that the Day of Judgement might indeed 
 be nearer than we had thought, but nurse said that was all 
 right now, and she knew. In those days the snow lay longer 
 and drifted deeper in the lanes than it does now, and the 
 milk was sometimes brought in frozen in winter, and we were 
 taken down into the back kitchen to see it. I suppose there 
 are rectories up and down the country now where the milk 
 comes in frozen sometimes in winter, and the children go 
 down to wonder at it, but I never see any frozen milk in 
 London, so I suppose the winters are warmer than they used 
 to be. 
 
 About one year after his wife's death Mr Pontifex also was 
 gathered to his fathers. My father saw him the day before 
 he died. The old man had a theory about sunsets, and had 
 had two steps built up against a wall in the kitchen garden 
 on which he used to stand and watch the sun go down when- 
 
 12 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 ever it was clear. My father came on him in the afternoon, 
 just as the sun was setting, and saw him with his arms 
 resting on the top of the wall looking towards the sun over 
 a field through which there was a path on which my father 
 was. Myfather heard him say "Good-bye, sun; good-bye, sun," 
 as the sun sank, and saw by his tone and manner that he 
 was feeling very feeble. Before the next sunset he was gone. 
 
 There was no dole. Some of his grandchildren were 
 brought to the funeral and we remonstrated with them, but 
 did not take much by doing so. John Pontifex, who was a 
 year older than I was, sneered at penny loaves, and inti- 
 mated that if I wanted one it must be because my papa and 
 mamma could not afford to buy me one, whereon I believe 
 we did something like fighting, and I rather think John 
 Pontifex got the worst of it, but it may have been the other 
 way. I remember my sister's nurse, for I was just out- 
 growing nurses myself, reported the matter to higher quarters, 
 and we were all of us put to some ignominy, but we had 
 been thoroughly awakened from our dream, and it was long 
 enough before we could hear the words " penny loaf," men- 
 tioned without our ears tingling with shame. If there had 
 been a dozen doles afterwards we should not have deigned 
 to touch one of them. 
 
 George Pontifex put up a monument to his parents, a 
 plain slab in Paleham church, inscribed with the following 
 epitaph : — 
 
 Sacred to the Memory 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN PONTIFEX 
 
 WHO WAS BORN AUGUST i6tH, I727, AND DIED FEBRUARY. 8, l8l2, 
 
 IN HIS 85TH YEAR, 
 
 AND OF 
 
 RUTH PONTIFEX, his Wife, 
 
 WHO WAS BORN OCTOBER I3, 1727, AND DIED JANUARY lO, 181I, 
 IN HER 84TH YEAR. 
 
 THEY WERE UNOSTENTATIOUS BUT EXEMPLARY IN THE DISCHARGE 
 
 OF THEIR RELIGIOUS, MORAL AND SOCIAL DUTIES. 
 
 TPJS MONUMENT V7AS PLACED BY THEIR ONLY SON. 
 
 13 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 In a year or two more came Waterloo and the European 
 peace. Then Mr George Pontifex went abroad more than 
 once. I remember seeing at Battersby in after years the 
 diary which he kept on the first of these occasions. It is a 
 characteristic document. I felt as I read it that the author 
 before starting had made up his mind to admire only what 
 he thought it would oe creditable in him to admire, to look 
 at nature and art only through the spectacles that had been 
 handed down to him by generation after generation of prigs 
 and impostors. The first glimpse of Mont Blanc threw Mr 
 Pontifex into a conventional ecstasy. " My feelings I cannot 
 express. I gasped, yet hardly dared to breathe, as I viewed 
 for the first time the monarch of the mountains. I seemed 
 to fancy the genius seated on his stupendous throne far 
 above his aspiring brethren and in his solitary might defying 
 the universe. I was so overcome by my feelings that I was 
 almost bereft of my faculties, and would not for worlds have 
 spoken after my first exclamation till I found some relief in 
 a gush of tears. With pain I tore myself from contemplating 
 for the first time ' at distance dimly seen ' (though I felt 
 as if I had sent my soul and eyes after it), this sublime 
 spectacle." After a nearer view of the Alps from above 
 Geneva he walked nine out of the twelve miles of the 
 descent : " My mind and heart were too full to sit still, 
 and I found some relief by exhausting my feelings through 
 exercise." In the course of time he reached Chamonix and 
 went on a Sunday to the Montanvert to see the Mer de Glace. 
 There he wrote the following verses for the visitors' book, 
 which he considered, so he says, " suitable to the day and 
 scene " : — 
 
 Lord, while these wonders of thy hand I see, 
 My soul in holy reverence bends to thee. 
 These awful solitudes, this dread repose, 
 Yon pyramid sublime of spotless snows, 
 
 14 
 
The Way of AU Flesh 
 
 These spiry pinnacles, those smiling plains, 
 This sea where one eternal winter reigns, 
 These are thy works, and while on them I gaze 
 I hear a silent tongue that speaks thy praise. 
 
 Some poets always begin to get groggy about the knees 
 after running for seven or eight lines. Mr Pontifex's last 
 couplet gave him a lot of trouble, and nearly every word 
 has been erased and rewritten once at least. In the visitors' 
 book at the Montanvert, however, he must have been obliged to 
 commit himself definitely to one reading or another. Taking 
 the verses all round, I should say that Mr Pontifex was right 
 in considering them suitable to the day ; I don't like being 
 too hard even on the Mer de Glace, so will give no opinion 
 as to whether they are suitable to the scene also. 
 
 Mr Pontifex went on to the Great St Bernard and there 
 he wrote some more verses, this time I am afraid in Latin. 
 He also took good care to be properly impressed by the 
 Hospice and its situation. " The whole of this most extra- 
 ordinary journey seemed like a dream, its conclusion 
 especially, in gentlemanly society, with every comfort and 
 accommodation amidst the rudest rocks and in the region 
 of perpetual snow. The thought that I was sleeping in a 
 convent and occupied the bed of no less a person than 
 Napoleon, that I was in the highest inhabited spot in the 
 old world and in a place celebrated in every part of it, kept 
 me awake some time." As a contrast to this, I may quote 
 here an extract from a letter written to me last year by his 
 grandson Ernest, of whom the reader will hear more pre- 
 sently. The passage runs : " I went up to the Great St 
 Bernard and saw the dogs." In due course Mr Pontifex 
 found his way into Italy, where the pictures and other works 
 of art — those, at least, which were fashionable at that time — 
 threw him into genteel paroxysms of admiration. Of the 
 Uffizi Gallery at Florence he writes : " I have spent three 
 hours this morning in the gallery and I have made up my 
 mind that if of all the treasures I have seen in Italy T were 
 to choose one room it would be the Tribune of this gallery. 
 It contains the Venus de' Medici, the Explorator, the Pan- 
 
 15 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 cratist, the Dancing Faun and a fine Apollo. These more 
 than outweigh the Laocoon and the Belvedere Apollo at 
 Rome. It contains, besides, the St John of Raphael and 
 many other chefs-d'ceiivre of the greatest masters in the 
 world." It is interesting to compare Mr Pontifex's effusions 
 with the rhapsodies of critics in our own times. Not long 
 ago a much esteemed writer informed the world that he felt 
 " disposed to cry out with delight " before a figure by INIichael 
 Angelo. I wonder whether he would feel disposed to cry out 
 before a real Michael Angelo, if the critics had decided that 
 it was not genuine, or before a reputed Michael Angelo which 
 was really by someone else. But I suppose that a prig with 
 more money than brains was much the same sixty or seventy 
 years ago as he is now. 
 
 Look at Mendelssohn again about this same Tribune on 
 which Mr Pontifex felt so safe in staking his reputation as 
 a man of taste and culture. He feels no less safe and 
 writes, " I then went to the Tribune. This room is so 
 delightfully small you can traverse it in fifteen paces, yet it 
 contains a world of art. I again sought out my favourite 
 arm chair which stands under the statue of the ' Slave 
 whetting his knife ' (L'Arrotino), and taking possession of it 
 I enjoyed myself for a couple of hours ; for here at one 
 glance I had the 'Madonna del Cardellino,' Pope Julius II., 
 a female portrait by Raphael, and above it a lovely Holy 
 Family by Perugino ; and so close to me that I could have 
 touched it with my hand the Venus de' Medici ; beyond, that 
 of Titian. . . . The space between is occupied by other 
 pictures of Raphael's, a portrait by Titian, a Domenichino, 
 etc., etc., all these within the circumference of a small semi- 
 circle no larger than one of your own rooms. This is a spot 
 where a man feels his own insignificance and may well learn 
 to be humble." The Tribune is a slippery place for people 
 like Mendelssohn to study humility in. They generally take 
 two steps away from it for one they take towards it. I 
 wonder how many chalks Mendelssohn gave himself for 
 having sat two hours on that chair. I wonder how often he 
 looked at his watch to see if his two hours were up. I 
 
 16 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 wonder how often he told himself that he was quite as big a 
 gun, if the truth were known, as any of the men whose works 
 he saw before him, how often he wondered whether any of 
 the visitors were recognizing him and admiring him for sitting 
 such a long time in the same chair, and how often he was 
 vexed at seeing them pass him by and take no notice of him. 
 But perhaps if the truth were known his two hours was not 
 quite two hours. 
 
 Returning to Mr Pontifex, whether he liked what he believed 
 to be the masterpieces of Greek and Italian art or no he brought 
 back some copies by Italian artists, which I have no doubt he 
 satisfied himself would bear the strictest examination with the 
 originals. Two of these copies fell to Theobald's share on the 
 division of his father's furniture, and I have often seen them at 
 Battersby on my visits to Theobald and his wife. The one was 
 a Madonna by Sassoferrato with a blue hood over her head 
 which threw it half into shadow. The other was a Magdalen 
 by Carlo Dolci with a very fine head of hair and a marble vase 
 in her hands. When I was a young man I used to think 
 these pictures were beautiful, but with each successive visit to 
 Battersby I got to dislike them more and more and to see 
 " George Pontifex " written all over both of them. In the 
 end I ventured after a tentative fashion to blow on them a 
 little, but Theobald and his wife were up in arms' at once. 
 They did not like their father and father-in-law, but there 
 could be no question about his power and general ability, 
 nor about his having been a man of consummate taste both 
 in literature and art — indeed the diary he kept during his 
 foreign tour was enough to prove this. With one more short 
 extract I will leave this diary and proceed with my story. 
 During his stay in Florence Mr Pontifex wrote : " I have 
 just seen the Grand Duke and his family pass by in two 
 carriages and six, but little more notice is taken of them 
 than if I, who am utterly unknown here, were to pass by.' 
 I don't think that he half believed in his being utterly 
 unknown in Florence or anywhere else ! 
 
 17 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Fortune, we are told, is a blind and fickle foster-mother, 
 who showers her gifts at random upon her nurslings. But 
 we do her a grave injustice if we believe such an accusation. 
 Trace a man's career from his cradle to his grave and mark 
 how Fortune has treated him. You will find that when he is 
 once dead she can for the most part be vindicated from the 
 charge of any but very superficial fickleness. Her blindness 
 is the merest fable ; she can espy her favourites long before 
 they are born. We are as days and have had our parents for 
 our yesterdays, but through all the fair weather of a clear 
 parental sky the eye of Fortune can discern the coming 
 storm, and she laughs as she places her favourites it may be 
 in a London alley or those whom she is resolved to ruin in 
 kings' palaces. Seldom does she relent towards those whom 
 she has suckled unkindly and seldom does she completely 
 fail a favoured nursling. 
 
 Was George Pontifex one of Fortune's favoured nurslings 
 or not? On the whole I should say that he was not, for he 
 did not consider himself so ; he was too religious to consider 
 Fortune a deity at all ; he took whatever she gave and never 
 thanked her, being firmly convinced that whatever he got to 
 his own advantage was of his own getting. And so it was, 
 after Fortune had made him able to get it. 
 
 " Nos te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam," exclaimed the poet. 
 " It is we who make thee, Fortune, a goddess " ; and so it is, 
 after Fortune has made us able to make her. The poet says 
 nothing as to the making of the "nos." Perhaps some men 
 are independent of antecedents and surroundings and have 
 an initial force within themselves which is in no way due to 
 causation ; but this is supposed to be a difficult question and 
 it may be as well to avoid it. Let it suffice that George 
 Pontifex did not consider himself fortunate, and he who does 
 not consider himself fortunate is unfortunate. 
 
 True, he was rich, universally respected and of an excellent 
 
 i8 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 natural constitution. If he had eaten and drunk less he 
 would never have known a day's indisposition. Perhaps 
 his main strength lay in the fact that though his capacity was 
 a little above the average, it was not too much so. It is on 
 this rock that so many clever people split. The successful 
 man will see just so much more than his neighbours as they 
 will be able to see too when it is shown them, but not enough 
 to puzzle them. It is far safer to know too little than too 
 much. People will condemn the one, though they will resent 
 being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other. 
 
 The best example of Mr Pontifex's good sense in matters 
 connected with his business which I can think of at this 
 moment is the revolution which he effected in the style of 
 advertising works published by the firm. When he first 
 became a partner one of the firm's advertisements ran 
 thus : — 
 
 " Books proper to be given away at this Season. — 
 
 " The Pious Country Parishioner, being directions how a 
 Christian may manage every day in the course of his whole 
 life with safety and success ; how to spend the Sabbath Day ; 
 what books of the Holy Scripture ought to be read first ; the 
 whole method of education ; collects for the most important 
 virtues that adorn the soul ; a discourse on the Lord's 
 Supper ; rules to set the soul right in sickness ; so that in this 
 treatise are contained all the rules requisite for salvation. 
 The 8th edition with additions. Price lod. 
 
 *^* An allowance will be made to those who give them 
 away." 
 
 Before he had been many years a partner the advertise- 
 ment stood as follows : — 
 
 "The Pious Country Parishioner. A complete manual 
 of Christian Devotion. Price lod. 
 
 A reduction will be made to purchasers for gratuitous 
 distribution." 
 
 What a stride is made in the foregoing towards the modern 
 standard, and what intelligence is involved in the perception 
 of the unseemliness of the old style, when others did not per- 
 ceive it ! 
 
 19 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Where then was the weak place in George Pontifex's 
 armour ? I suppose in the fact that he had risen too rapidly. 
 It would almost seem as if a transmitted education of some 
 generations is necessary for the due enjoyment of great 
 wealth. Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is 
 more supportable with equanimity by most people than any 
 great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime. Nevertheless 
 a certain kind of good fortune generally attends self-made 
 men to the last. It is their children of the first, or first and 
 second, generation who are in greater danger, for the race can 
 no more repeat its most successful performances suddenly 
 and without its ebbings and flowings of success than the 
 individual can do so, and the more brilliant the success in 
 any one generation, the greater as a general rule the sub- 
 sequent exhaustion until time has been allowed for recovery. 
 Hence it often happens that the grandson of a successful 
 man will be more successful than the son — the spirit that 
 actuated the grandfather having lain fallow in the son and 
 being refreshed by repose so as to be ready for fresh exertion 
 in the grandson. A very successful man, moreover, has 
 something of the hybrid in him ; he is a new animal, arising 
 from the coming together of many unfamiliar elements and 
 it is well known that the reproduction of abnormal growths, 
 whether animal or vegetable, is irregular and not to be 
 depended upon, even when they are not absolutely sterile. 
 
 And certainly Mr Pontifex's success was exceedingly 
 rapid. Only a few years after he had become a partner his 
 uncle and aunt both died within a few months of one 
 another. It was then found that they had made him their 
 heir. He was thus not only sole partner in the business but 
 found himself with a fortune of some ;z{^3o,ooo into the 
 bargain, and this was a large sum in those days. Money 
 came pouring in upon him, and the faster it came the fonder 
 he became of it, though, as he frequently said, he valued it 
 not for its own sake, but only as a means of providing for his 
 dear children. 
 
 Yet when a man is very fond of his money it is not easy 
 for him at all times to be very fond of his children also. 
 
 20 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 The two are like God and Mammon. Lord Macaulay has a 
 passage in which he contrasts the pleasures which a man may 
 derive from books with the inconveniences to which he may 
 be put by his acquaintances. " Plato," he says, " is never 
 sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never 
 comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No dif- 
 ference of poHtical opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy 
 can excite the horror of Bossuet." I dare say I might 
 differ from Lord Macaulay in my estimate of some of 
 the writers he has named, but there can be no disput- 
 ing his main proposition, namely, that we need have no 
 more trouble from any of them than we have a mind to, 
 whereas our friends are not always so easily disposed of. 
 George Pontifex felt this as regards his children and his 
 money. His money was never naughty ; his money never 
 made noise or litter, and did not spill things on the table- 
 cloth at meal times, or leave the door open when it went out. 
 His dividends did not quarrel among themselves, nor was 
 he under any uneasiness lest his mortgages should become 
 extravagant on reaching manhood and run him up debts 
 which sooner or later he should have to pay. There were 
 tendencies in John which made him very uneasy, and Theo- 
 bald, his second son, was idle and at times far from truthful. 
 His children might, perhaps, have answered, had they known 
 what was in their father's mind, that he did not knock his 
 money about as he not infrequently knocked his children. He 
 never dealt hastily or pettishly with his money, and that was 
 perhaps why he and it got on so well together. 
 
 It must be remembered that at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century the relations between parents and children 
 were still far from satisfactory. The violent type of father, 
 as described by Fielding, Richardson, Smollett and Sheridan, 
 is now hardly more likely to find a place in literature than 
 the original advertisement of Messrs Fairlie & Pontifex's 
 " Pious Country Parishioner," but the type was much too 
 persistent not to have been drawn from nature closely. The 
 parents in Miss Austen's novels are less like savage wild beasts 
 than those of her predecessors, but she evidently looks upon 
 
 21 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 them with suspicion, and an uneasy feeling that lepere defamille 
 est capable de tout makes itself sufficiently apparent throughout 
 the greater part of her writings. In the Ehzabethan time the 
 relations between parents and children seem on the whole to 
 have been more kindly. The fathers and the sons are for 
 the most part friends in Shakespeare, nor does the evil appear 
 to have reached its full abomination till a long course of 
 Puritanism had familiarised men's minds with Jewish ideals 
 as those which we should endeavour to reproduce in our 
 everyday life. What precedents did not Abraham, Jephthah 
 and Jonadab the son of Rechab offer? How easy was it to 
 quote and follow them in an age when few reasonable men or 
 women doubted that every syllable of the Old Testament was 
 taken down verbatim from the mouth of God. Moreover, 
 Puritanism restricted natural pleasures ; it substituted the 
 Jeremiad for the Paean, and it forgot that the poor abuses of 
 all times want countenance. 
 
 Mr Pontifex may have been a little sterner with his children 
 than some of his neighbours, but not much. He thrashed 
 his boys two or three times a week and some weeks a good 
 deal oftener, but in those days fathers were always thrashing 
 their boys. It is easy to have juster views when everyone 
 else has them, but fortunately or unfortunately results have 
 nothing whatever to do with the moral guilt or blamelessness 
 of him who brings them about ; they depend solely upon the 
 thing done, whatever it may happen to be. The moral guilt 
 or blamelessness in like manner has nothing to do with the 
 result ; it turns upon the question whether a sufficient number 
 of reasonable people placed as the actor was placed would 
 have done as the actor has done. At that time it was univer- 
 sally admitted that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, 
 and St Paul had placed disobedience to parents in very ugly 
 company. If his children did anything which Mr Pontifex 
 disliked they were clearly disobedient to their father. In 
 this case there was obviously only one course for a sensible 
 man to take. It consisted in checking the first signs of 
 self-will while his children were too young to offer serious 
 resistance. If their wills were " well broken " in childhood, 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 to use an expression then much in vogue, they would acquire 
 habits of obedience which they would not venture to break 
 through till they were over twenty-one years old. Then they 
 might please themselves ; he should know how to protect 
 himself; till then he and his money were more at their mercy 
 than he liked. 
 
 How little do we know our thoughts — our reflex actions 
 indeed, yes ; but our reflex reflections ! Man, forsooth, 
 prides himself on his consciousness. We boast that we 
 differ from the winds and waves and falling stones and 
 plants, which grow they know not why, and from the wander- 
 ing creatures which go up and down after their prey, as we 
 are pleased to say without the help of reason. We know so 
 well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we 
 not ? I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is 
 being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious 
 thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould 
 our lives and the lives of those who spring from us. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Mr Pontifex was not the man to trouble himself much about 
 his motives. People were not so introspective then as we are 
 now ; they lived more according to a rule of thumb. Dr 
 Arnold had not yet sown that crop of earnest thinkers which 
 we are now harvesting, and men did not see why they should 
 not have their own way if no evil consequences to themselves 
 seemed likely to follow upon their doing so. Then as now, 
 however, they sometimes let themselves in for more evil 
 consequences than they had bargained for. 
 
 Like other rich men at the beginning of this century he ate 
 and drank a good deal more than was enough to keep him 
 in health. Even his excellent constitution was not proof 
 against a prolonged course of overfeeding and what we should 
 now consider overdrinking. His liver would not unfrequently 
 get out of order, and he would come down to breakfast looking 
 yellow about the eyes. Then the young people knew that 
 
 23 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 they had better look out. It is not as a general rule the 
 eating of sour grapes that causes the children's teeth to be 
 set on edge. Well-to-do parents seldom eat many sour grapes ; 
 the danger to the children lies in the parents eating too many 
 sweet ones. 
 
 I grant that at first sight it seems very unjust, that the 
 parents should have the fun and the children be punished 
 for it, but young people should remember that for many years 
 they were part and parcel of their parents and therefore had 
 a good deal of the fun in the person of their parents. If they 
 have forgotten the fun now, that is no more than people do 
 who have a headache after having been tipsy over-night. The 
 man with a headache does not pretend to be a different person 
 from the man who got drunk, and claim that it is his self of 
 the preceding night and not his self of this morning who 
 should be punished ; no more should offspring complain of 
 the headache which it has earned when in the person of its 
 parents, for the continuation of identity, though not so im- 
 mediately apparent, is just as real in one case as in the other. 
 What is really hard is when the parents have the fun after 
 the children have been born, and the children are punished 
 for this. 
 
 On these, his black days, he would take very gloomy views 
 of things and say to himself that in spite of all his goodness 
 to them his children did not love him. But who can love 
 any man whose liver is out of order ? How base, he would 
 exclaim to himself, was such ingratitude ! How especially 
 hard upon himself, who had been such a model son, and 
 always honoured and obeyed his parents though they had 
 not spent one hundredth part of the money upon him which he 
 had lavished upon his own children. " It is always the same 
 story," he would say to himself, "the more young people 
 have the more they want, and the less thanks one gets ; I 
 have made a great mistake ; I have been far too lenient with 
 my children ; never mind, I have done my duty by them, and 
 more ; if they fail in theirs to me it is a matter between God 
 and them. I, at any rate, am guiltless. Why, I might have 
 married again and become the father of a second and perhaps 
 
 24 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 more affectionate family, etc., etc." He pitied himself for the 
 expensive education which he was giving his children ; he did 
 not see that the education cost the children far more than it 
 cost him, inasmuch as it cost them the power of earning their 
 living easily rather than helped them towards it, and ensured 
 their being at the mercy of their father for years after they 
 had come to an age when they should be independent. A 
 public school education cuts off a boy's retreat ; he can no 
 longer become a labourer or a mechanic and these are the 
 only people whose tenure of independence is not precarious 
 — with the exception of course of those who are born in- 
 heritors of money or who are placed young in some safe and 
 deep groove. Mr Pontifex saw nothing of this ; all he saw 
 was that he was spending much more money upon his children 
 than the law would have compelled him to do, and what 
 more could you have ? Might he not have apprenticed both 
 his sons to greengrocers ? Might he not even yet do so to- 
 morrow morning if he were so minded ? The possibility of 
 this course being adopted was a favourite topic with him 
 when he was out of temper ; true, he never did apprentice 
 either of his sons to greengrocers, but his boys comparing 
 notes together had sometimes come to the conclusion that 
 they wished he would. 
 
 At other times when not quite well he would have them 
 in for the fun of shaking his will at them. He would in his 
 imagination cut them all out one after another and leave 
 his money to found almshouses, till at last he was obliged 
 to put them back, so that he might have the pleasure of 
 cutting them out again the next time he was in a passion. 
 
 Of course if young people allow their conduct to be in any 
 way influenced by regard to the wills of living persons they 
 are doing very wrong and must expect to be sufferers in the 
 end, nevertheless the powers of will-dangling and will-shaking 
 are so liable to abuse and are continually made so great an 
 engine of torture that I would pass a law, if I could, to incap- 
 acitate any man from making a will for three months from the 
 date of each offence in either of the above respects and let 
 the bench of magistrates or judge, before whom he has been 
 
 25 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 convicted, dispose of his property as they shall think right 
 and reasonable if he dies during the time that his will-making 
 power is suspended. 
 
 Mr Pontifex would have the boys into the dining-room. 
 " My dear John, my dear Theobald," he would say, " look 
 at me. I began life with nothing but the clothes with which 
 my father and mother sent me up to London. My father 
 gave me ten shiUings and my mother five for pocket money 
 and I thought them munificent. I never asked my father 
 for a shilling in the whole course of my life, nor took 
 aught from him beyond the small sum he used to allow 
 me monthly till I was in receipt of a salary. I made my 
 own way and I shall expect my sons to do the same. 
 Pray don't take it into your heads that I am going to wear 
 my life out making money that my sons may spend it for me. 
 If you want money you must make it for yourselves as I did, 
 for I give you my word I will not leave a penny to either of 
 you unless you show that you deserve it. Young people seem 
 nowadays to expect all kinds of luxuries and indulgences 
 which were never heard of when I was a boy. Why, my 
 father was a common carpenter, and here you are both of you 
 at public schools, costing me ever so many hundreds a year, 
 while I at your age was plodding away behind a desk in my 
 Uncle Fairlie's counting house. What should I not have 
 done if I had had one half of your advantages ? You should 
 become dukes or found new empires in undiscovered countries, 
 and even then I doubt whether you would have done propor- 
 tionately so much as I have done. No, no, I shall see you 
 through school and college and then, if you please, you will 
 make your own way in the world." 
 
 In this manner he would work himself up into such a 
 state of virtuous indignation that he would sometimes thrash 
 the boys then and there upon some pretext invented at the 
 moment. 
 
 And yet. as children went, the young Pontifexes were for- 
 tunate ; there would be ten families of young people worse 
 ofif for one better ; they ate and drank good wholesome food, 
 slept in comfortable beds, had the best doctors to attend 
 
 ?6 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 them when they were ill and the best education that could 
 be had for money. The want of fresh air does not seem 
 much to affect the happiness of children in a London alley : 
 the greater part of them sing and play as though they were 
 on a moor in Scotland. So the absence of a genial mental 
 atmosphere is not commonly recognised by children who 
 have never known it. Young people have a marvellous 
 faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circum- 
 stances. Even if they are unhappy — very unhappy — it is 
 astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding 
 it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause 
 than their own sinfulness. 
 
 To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say : 
 Tell your children that they are very naughty — much 
 naughtier than most children. Point to the young people 
 of some acquaintances as models of perfection and impress 
 your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority. 
 You carry so many more guns than they do that they cannot 
 fight you. This is called moral influence, and it will enable 
 you to bounce them as much as you please. They think 
 you know and they will not have yet caught you lying often 
 enough to suspect that you are not the unworldly and scrupu- 
 lously truthful person which yoti represent yourself to be ; 
 nor yet will they know how great a coward you are, nor how 
 soon you will run away, if they fight you with persistency 
 and judgment. You keep the dice and throw them both for 
 your children and yourself. Load them then, for you can 
 easily manage to stop your children from examining them. 
 Tell them how singularly indulgent you are ; insist on the 
 incalculable benefit you conferred upon them, firstly in bring- 
 ing them into the world at all, but more particularly in bringing 
 them into it as your own children rather than anyone else's. 
 Say that you have their highest interests at stake whenever 
 you are out of temper and wish to make yourself unpleasant 
 by way of balm to your soul. Harp much upon these highest 
 interests. Feed them spiritually upon such brimstone and 
 treacle as the late Bishop of Winchester's Sunday stories. 
 You hold all the trump cards, or if you do not you can filch 
 
 27 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 them ; if you play them with anything like judgement you 
 will find yourselves heads of happy, united, God - fearing 
 families, even as did my old friend Mr Pontifex. True, your 
 children will probably find out all about it some day, but not 
 until too late to be of much service to them or inconvenience 
 to yourself. 
 
 Some satirists have complained of life inasmuch as all the 
 pleasures belong to the fore part of it and we must see them 
 dwindle till we are left, it may be, with the miseries of a 
 decrepit old age. 
 
 To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised 
 season — delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but 
 in practice very rarely favoured and more remarkable, as 
 a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes. 
 Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers 
 we more than gain in fruits. Fontenelle at the age of ninety, 
 being asked what was the happiest time of his life, said he 
 did not know that he had ever been much happier than he 
 then was, but that perhaps his best years had been those 
 when he was between fifty-five and seventy-five, and Dr 
 Johnson placed the pleasures of old age far higher than 
 those of youth. True, in old age we live under the shadow of 
 Death, which, like a sword of Damocles, may descend at any 
 moment, but we have so long found life to be an affair of 
 being rather frightened than hurt that we have become like 
 the people who live under Vesuvius, and chance it without 
 much misgiving. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A FEW words may suffice for the greater number of the young 
 people to whom I have been alluding in the foregoing 
 chapter. Eliza and Maria, the two elder girls, were neither 
 exactly pretty nor exactly plain, and were in all respects 
 model young ladies, but Alethea was exceedingly pretty and 
 of a lively, affectionate disposition, which was in sharp contrast 
 with those of her brothers and sisters. There was a trace of 
 
 28 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 her grandfather, not only in her face, but in her love of fun, 
 of which her father had none, though not without a certain 
 boisterous and rather coarse quasi-humour which passed for 
 wit with many. 
 
 John grew up to be a good-looking, gentlemanly fellow, 
 with features a trifle too regular and finely chiselled. He 
 dressed himself so nicely, had such good address, and stuck 
 so steadily to his books that he became a favourite with his 
 masters; he had, however, an instinct for diplomacy, and 
 was less popular with the boys. His father, in spite of the 
 lectures he would at times read him, was in a way proud of 
 him as he grew older ; he saw in him, moreover, one who 
 would probably develop into a good man of business, and in 
 whose hands the prospects of his house would not be likely 
 to decline. John knew how to humour his father, and was 
 at a comparatively early age admitted to as much of his 
 confidence as it was in his nature to bestow on anyone. 
 
 His brother Theobald was no match for him, knew it, 
 and accepted his fate. He was not so good-looking as his 
 brother, nor was his address so good ; as a child he had 
 been violently passionate ; now, however, he was reserved 
 and shy, and, I should say, indolent in mind and body. He 
 was less tidy than John, less well able to assert himself, and 
 less skilful in humouring the caprices of his father. I do not 
 think he could have loved anyone heartily, but there was 
 no one in his family circle who did not repress, rather than 
 invite his affection, with the exception of his sister Alethea, 
 and she was too quick and lively for his somewhat morose 
 temper. He was always the scapegoat, and I have some- 
 times thought he had two fathers to contend against — his 
 father and his brother John ; a third and fourth also might 
 almost be added in his sisters Eliza and Maria. Perhaps if he 
 had felt his bondage very acutely he would not have put up with 
 it, but he was constitutionally timid, and the strong hand of 
 his father knitted him into the closest outward harmony with 
 his brother and sisters. 
 
 The boys were of use to their father in one respect. I 
 mean that he played them ofif against each oiher. He kept 
 
 29 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 them but poorly supplied with pocket money, and to Theo- 
 bald would urge that the claims of his elder brother were 
 naturally paramount, while he insisted to John upon the 
 fact that he had a numerous family, and would affirm 
 solemnly that his expenses were so heavy that at his death 
 there would be very little to divide. He did not care 
 whether they compared notes or no, provided they did not 
 do so in his presence. Theobald did not complain even 
 behind his father's back, I knew him as intimately as any- 
 one was likely to know him as a child, at school, and again 
 at Cambridge, but he very rarely mentioned his father's name 
 even while his father was alive, and never once in my hearing 
 afterwards. At school he was not actively disliked as his 
 brother was, but he was too dull and deficient in animal 
 spirits to be popular. 
 
 Before he was well out of his frocks it was settled that he 
 was to be a clergyman. It was seemly that Mr Pontifex, the 
 well-known publisher of religious books, should devote at 
 least one of his sons to the Church ; this might tend to bring 
 business, or at any rate to keep it in the firm ; besides, Mr 
 Pontifex had more or less interest with bishops and Church 
 dignitaries and might hope that some preferment would be 
 offered to his son through his influence. The boy's future 
 destiny was kept well before his eyes from his earliest child- 
 hood and was treated as a matter which he had already 
 virtually settled by his acquiescence. Nevertheless a certain 
 show of freedom was allowed him. Mr Pontifex would say 
 it was only right to give a boy his option, and was much too 
 equitable to grudge his son whatever benefit he could derive 
 from this. He had the greatest horror, he would exclaim, 
 of driving any young man into a profession which he did not 
 like. Far be it from him to put pressure upon a son of his 
 as regards any profession and much less when so sacred a 
 calling as the ministry was concerned. He would talk in this 
 way when there were visitors in the house and when his son 
 was in the room. He spoke so wisely and so well that his 
 listening guests considered him a paragon of right-minded- 
 ness. He spoke, too, with such emphasis and his rosy gills 
 
 30 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 and bald head looked so benevolent that it was difficult not 
 to be carried away by his discourse. I believe two or three 
 heads of families in the neighbourhood gave their sons 
 absolute liberty of choice in the matter of their professions 
 — and am not sure that they had not afterwards considerable 
 cause to regret having done so. The visitors, seeing Theo- 
 bald look shy and wholly unmoved by the exhibition of so 
 much consideration for his wishes, would remark to them- 
 selves that the boy seemed hardly likely to be equal to his 
 father and would set him down as an unenthusiastic youth, 
 who ought to have more life in him and be more sensible of 
 his advantages than he appeared to be. 
 
 No one beheved in the righteousness of the whole trans- 
 action more firmly than the boy himself; a sense of being ill 
 at ease kept him silent, but it was too profound and too 
 much without break for him to become fully alive to it, and 
 come to an understanding with himself. He feared the dark 
 scowl which would come over his father's face upon the 
 slightest opposition. His father's violent threats, or coarse 
 sneers, would not have been taken au serieux by a stronger 
 boy, but Theobald was not a strong boy, and rightly or 
 wrongly, gave his father credit for being quite ready to carry 
 his threats into execution. Opposition had never got him 
 anything he wanted yet, nor indeed had yielding, for the 
 matter of that, unless he happened to want exactly what his 
 father wanted for him. If he had ever entertained thoughts 
 of resistance, he had none now, and the power to oppose was 
 so completely lost for want of exercise that hardly did the 
 wish remain ; there was nothing left save dull acquiescence 
 as of an ass crouched between two burdens. He may have 
 had an ill-defined sense of ideals that were not his actuals ; 
 he might occasionally dream of himself as a soldier or a 
 sailor far away in foreign lands, or even as a farmer's boy 
 upon the wolds, but there was not enough in him for there 
 to be any chance of his turning his dreams into realities, and 
 he drifted on with his stream, which was a slow, and, I am 
 afraid, a muddy one. 
 
 . I think the Church Catechism has a good deal to do with 
 
 31 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the unhappy relations which commonly even now exist 
 between parents and children. That work was written too 
 exclusively from the parental point of view ; the person who 
 composed it did not get a few children to come in and help 
 him ; he was clearly not young himself, nor should I say 
 it was the work of one who liked children — in spite of 
 the words " my good child " which, if I remember rightly, 
 are once put into the mouth of the catechist and, after all, 
 carry a harsh sound with them. The general impression it 
 leaves upon the mind of the young is that their wickedness 
 at birth was but very imperfectly wiped out at baptism, and 
 that the mere fact of being young at all has something with 
 it that savours more or less distinctly of the nature of sin. 
 
 If a new edition of the work is ever required I should like 
 to introduce a few words insisting on the duty of seeking all 
 reasonable pleasure and avoiding all pain that can be honour- 
 ably avoided. I should like to see children taught that they 
 should not say they like things which they do not like, merely 
 because certain other people say they like them, and how 
 foohsh it is to say they believe this or that when they under- 
 stand nothing about it. If it be urged that these additions 
 would make the Catechism too long I would curtail the 
 remarks upon our duty towards our neighbour and upon the 
 sacraments. In the place of the paragraph beginning " I 
 desire my Lord God our Heavenly Father " I would — but 
 perhaps I had better return to Theobald, and leave the re- 
 casting of the Catechism to abler hands. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Mr Pontifex had set his heart on his son's becoming a 
 fellow of a college before he became a clergyman. This 
 would provide for him at once and would ensure his getting a 
 living if none of his father's ecclesiastical friends gave him 
 one. The boy had done just well enough at school to render 
 this possible, so he was sent to one of the smaller colleges at 
 Cambridge and was at once set to read with the best private 
 
 32 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 tutors that could be found. A system of examination had 
 been adopted a year or so before Theobald took his degree 
 which had improved his chances of a fellowship, for whatever 
 ability he had was classical rather than mathematical, and this 
 system gave more encouragement to classical studies than had 
 been given hitherto. 
 
 Theobald had the sense to see that he had a chance of 
 independence if he worked hard, and he liked the notion of 
 becoming a fellow. He therefore appHed himself, and in the 
 end took a degree which made his getting a fellowship in all 
 probability a mere question of time. For a while Mr 
 Pontifex senior was really pleased, and told his son he would 
 present him with the works of any standard writer whom he 
 might select. The young man chose the works of Bacon, 
 and Bacon accordingly made his appearance in ten nicely 
 bound volumes. A little inspection, however, showed that 
 the copy was a second hand one. 
 
 Now that he had taken his degree the next thing to look 
 forward to was ordination — about which Theobald had 
 thought little hitherto beyond acquiescing in it as something 
 that would come as a matter of course some day. Now, 
 however, it had actually come and was asserting itself as a 
 thing which should be only a few months off, and this rather 
 frightened him inasmuch as there would be no way out of it 
 when he was once in it. He did not like the near view of 
 ordination as well as the distant one, and even made some 
 feeble efforts to escape, as may be perceived by the follow- 
 ing correspondence which his son Ernest found among his 
 father's papers written on gilt-edged paper, in faded ink and tied 
 neatly round with a piece of tape, but without any note or com- 
 ment. I have altered nothing. The letters are as follows : — 
 
 " My Dear Father, — I do not like opening up a question 
 which has been considered settled, but as the time approaches 
 I begin to be very doubtful how far I am fitted to be a 
 clergyman. Not, I am thankful to say, that I have the faintest 
 doubts about the Church of England, and I could subscribe 
 cordially to every one of the thirty-nine articles which do 
 c 33 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 indeed appear to me to be the ne plus ultra of human wisdom, 
 and Paley, too, leaves no loop-hole for an opponent ; but I 
 am sure I should be running counter to your wishes if I were 
 to conceal from you that I do not feel the inward call to be 
 a minister of the gospel that I shall have to say I have felt 
 when the Bishop ordains me. I try to get this feeling, I 
 pray for it earnestly, and sometimes half think that I have 
 got it, but in a little time it wears off, and though I have 
 no absolute repugnance to being a clergyman and trust that 
 if I am one I shall endeavour to live to the Glory of God 
 and to advance His interests upon earth, yet I feel that 
 something more than this is wanted before I am fully justified 
 in going into the Church. I am aware that I have been a 
 great expense to you in spite of my scholarships, but you 
 have ever taught me that I should obey my conscience, and 
 my conscience tells me I should do wrong if I became a 
 clergyman. God may yet give me the spirit for which I 
 assure you I have been and am continually praying, but He 
 may not, and in that case would it not be better for me to 
 try and look out for something else ? I know that neither 
 you nor John wish me to go into your business, nor do I 
 understand anything about money matters, but is there 
 nothing else that I can do ? I do not like to ask you to 
 maintain me while I go in for medicine or the bar ; but when 
 I get my fellowship, which should not be long first, I will 
 endeavour to cost you nothing further, and I might make a 
 little money by writing or taking pupils. I trust you will 
 not think this letter improper ; nothing is further from my 
 wish than to cause you any uneasiness. I hope you will 
 make allowance for my present feelings which, indeed, spring 
 from nothing but from that respect for my conscience which 
 no one has so often instilled into me as yourself. Pray let 
 me have a few lines shortly. I hope your cold is better. 
 With love to EHza and Maria, I am, your affectionate son, 
 
 " Theobald Pontifex." 
 
 " Dear Theobald, — I can enter into your feelings and 
 have no wish to quarrel with your expression of them. It is 
 
 34 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 quite right and natural that you should feel as you do except 
 as regards one passage, the impropriety of which you \n\l 
 yourself doubtless feel upon reflection, and to which I will 
 not further allude than to say that it has wounded me. You 
 should not have said ' in spite of my scholarships.' It was 
 only proper that if you could do anything to assist me in 
 bearing the heavy burden of your education, the money 
 should be, as it was, made over to myself. Every line in 
 your letter convinces me that you are under the influence 
 of a morbid sensitiveness which is one of the devil's favourite 
 devices for luring people to their destruction. I have, as 
 you say, been at great expense with your education. Nothing 
 has been spared by me to give you the advantages, which, 
 as an English gentleman, I was anxious to afford my son, 
 but I am not prepared to see that expense thrown away and 
 to have to begin again from the beginning, merely because you 
 have taken some foolish scruples into your head, which you 
 should resist as no less unjust to yourself than to me. 
 
 " Don't give way to that restless desire for change which is 
 the bane of so many persons of both sexes at the present day. 
 
 " Of course you needn't be ordained : nobody will compel 
 you ; you are perfectly free ; you are twenty-three years of age, 
 and should know your own mind ; but why not have known it 
 sooner, instead of never so much as breathing a hint of oppo- 
 sition until I have had all the expense of sending you to the 
 University, which I should never have done unless I had be- 
 lieved you to have made up your mind about taking orders ? I 
 have letters from you in which you express the most perfect 
 willingness to be ordained, and your brother and sisters will bear 
 me out in saying that no pressure of any sort has been put upon 
 you. You mistake your own mind, and are suffering from a 
 nervous timidity which may be very natural but may not the 
 less be pregnant with serious consequences to yourself. I 
 am not at all well, and the anxiety occasioned by your letter 
 is naturally preying upon me. May God guide you to a better 
 judgment. — Your affectionate father, G. Pontifex." 
 
 On the receipt of this letter Theobald plucked up his spirits. 
 
 35 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " My father," he said to himself, " tells me I need not be or- 
 dained if I do not like. I do not like, and therefore I will 
 not be ordained. But what was the meaning of the words 
 ' pregnant with serious consequences to yourself ' ? Did there 
 lurk a threat under these words — though it was impossible to 
 lay hold of it or of them ? Were they not intended to produce 
 all the effect of a threat without being actually threatening ? " 
 Theobald knew his father well enough to be little likely to 
 misapprehend his meaning, but having ventured so far on the 
 path of opposition, and being really anxious to get out of 
 being ordained if he could, he determined to venture farther. 
 He accordingly wrote the following : — 
 
 " My Dear Father, — You tell me — and I heartily thank 
 you — that no one will compel me to be ordained. I knew 
 you would not press ordination upon me if my conscience 
 was seriously opposed to it ; I have therefore resolved on 
 giving up the idea, and believe that if you will continue to 
 allow me what you do at present, until I get my fellowship, 
 which should not be long, I will then cease putting you to 
 further expense. I will make up my mind as soon as possible 
 what profession I will adopt, and will let you know at once. 
 — Your affectionate son, Theobald Pontifex." 
 
 The remaining letter, written by return of post, must now 
 be given. It has the merit of brevity. 
 
 " Dear Theobald, — I have received yours. I am at a 
 loss to conceive its motive, but am very clear as to its effect. 
 You shall not receive a single sixpence from me till you come 
 to your senses. Should you persist in your folly and wicked- 
 ness, I am happy to remember that I have yet other children 
 whose conduct I can depend upon to be a source of credit 
 and happiness to me. — Your affectionate but troubled father, 
 
 G. Pontifex." 
 
 I do not know the immediate sequel to the foregoing 
 correspondence, but it all came perfectly right in the end. 
 Either Theobald's heart failed him, or he interpreted the 
 
 36 
 
««aa*B&Mi 
 
 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 outward shove which his father gave him, as the inward call 
 for which I have no doubt he prayed with great earnestness 
 — for he was a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer. And 
 so am I under certain circumstances. Tennyson has said 
 that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams 
 of, but he has wisely refrained from saying whether they are 
 good things or bad things. It might perhaps be as well if 
 the world were to dream of, or even become wide awake to, 
 some of the things that are being wrought by prayer. But 
 the question is avowedly difficult. In the end Theobald got 
 his fellowship by a stroke of luck very soon after taking his 
 degree, and was ordained in the autumn of the same year, 
 1825. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Mr Allaby was rector of Crampsford, a village a few miles 
 from Cambridge. He, too, had taken a good degree, had got 
 a fellowship, and in the course of time had accepted a college 
 living of about ;^4oo a year and a house. His private 
 income did not exceed p^2oo a year. On resigning his 
 fellowship he married a woman a good deal younger than 
 himself who bore him eleven children, nine of whom — two 
 sons and seven daughters — were living. The two eldest 
 daughters had married fairly well, but at the time of which I 
 am now writing there were still five unmarried, of ages vary- 
 ing between thirty and twenty-two — and the sons were 
 neither of them yet off their father's hands. It was plain 
 that if anything were to happen to Mr Allaby the family 
 would be left poorly off, and this made both Mr and Mrs 
 Allaby as unhappy as it ought to have made them. 
 
 Reader, did you ever have an income at best none too 
 large, which died with you all except ;^2oo a year? Did 
 you ever at the same time have two sons who must be 
 started in life somehow, and five daughters still unmarried for 
 whom you would be only too thankful to find husbands — if 
 you knew how to find them ? If morality is that which, on 
 the whole, brings a man peace in his declining years — if, 
 
 37 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that is to say, it is not an utter swindle, can you under these 
 circumstances flatter yourself that you have led a moral life? 
 
 And this, even though your wife has been so good a 
 woman that you have not grown tired of her, and has not 
 fallen into such ill-health as lowers your own health in 
 sympathy ; and though your family has grown up vigorous, 
 amiable, and blessed with common sense. I know many old 
 men and women who are reputed moral, but who are living 
 with partners whom they have long ceased to love, or who 
 have ugly disagreeable maiden daughters for whom they have 
 never been able to find husbands — daughters whom they 
 loathe and by whom they are loathed in secret, or sons whose 
 folly or extravagance is a perpetual wear and worry to them. 
 Is it moral for a man to have brought such things upon him- 
 self ? Someone should do for morals what that old Pecksniff 
 Bacon has obtained the credit of having done for science. 
 
 But to return to Mr and Mrs Allaby. Mrs Allaby talked 
 about having married two of her daughters as though it had 
 been the easiest thing in the world. She talked in this way 
 because she heard other mothers do so, but in her heart of 
 hearts she did not know how she had done it, nor indeed, if 
 it had been her doing at all. First there had been a young 
 man in connection with whom she had tried to practise 
 certain manoeuvres which she had rehearsed in imagination 
 over and over again, but which she found impossible to apply 
 in practice. Then there had been weeks of a wurra ivurra of 
 hopes and fears and little stratagems which as often as not 
 proved injudicious, and then somehow or other in the end, 
 there lay the young man bound and with an arrow through 
 his heart at her daughter's feet. It seemed to her to be all 
 a fluke which she could have little or no hope of repeating. 
 She had indeed repeated it once, and might perhaps with 
 good luck repeat it yet once again — but five times over ! It 
 was awful : why she would rather have three confinements than 
 go through the wear and tear of marrying a single daughter. 
 
 Nevertheless it had got to be done, and poor Mrs Allaby 
 never looked at a young man without an eye to his being a 
 future son-in-law. Papas and mammas sometimes ask young 
 
 38 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 men whether their intentions are honourable towards their 
 daughters. I think young men might occasionally ask papas 
 and mammas whether their intentions are honourable before 
 they accept invitations to houses where there are still 
 unmarried daughters. 
 
 " I can't afford a curate, my dear," said Mr Allaby to his 
 wife when the pair were discussing what was next to be done. 
 " It will be better to get some young man to come and help 
 me for a time upon a Sunday. A guinea a Sunday will do 
 this, and we can chop and change till we get someone who 
 suits." So it was settled that Mr Allaby's health was not so 
 strong as it had been, and that he stood in need of help in 
 the performance of his Sunday duty. 
 
 Mrs Allaby had a great friend — a certain Mrs Cowey, 
 wife of the celebrated Professor Cowey. She was what was 
 called a truly spiritually minded woman, a trifle portly, with 
 an incipient beard, and an extensive connection among under- 
 graduates, more especially among those who were inclined to 
 take part in the great evangelical movement which was then 
 at its height. She gave evening parties once a fortnight at 
 which prayer was part of the entertainment. She was not 
 only spiritually minded, but, as enthusiastic Mrs Allaby used 
 to exclaim, she was a thorough woman of the world at the 
 same time and had such a fund of strong masculine good 
 sense. She too had daughters, but, as she used to say to 
 Mrs Allaby, she had been less fortunate than Mrs Allaby 
 herself, for one by one they had married and left her so that 
 her old age would have been desolate indeed if her Professor 
 had not been spared to her. 
 
 Mrs Cowey, of course, knew the run of all the bachelor 
 clergy in the University, and was the very person to assist 
 Mrs Allaby in finding an eligible assistant for her husband, so 
 this last named lady drove over one morning in the Novem- 
 ber of 1825, by arrangement, to take an early dinner with 
 Mrs Cowey and spend the afternoon. After dinner the two 
 ladies retired together, and the business of the day began. 
 How they fenced, how they saw through one another, with 
 what loyalty they pretended not to see through one another, 
 
 39 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 with what gentle dalliance they prolonged the conversation 
 discussing the spiritual fitness of this or that deacon, and the 
 other pros and cons connected with him after his spiritual fit- 
 ness had been disposed of, all this must be left to the imagina- 
 tion of the reader. Mrs Cowey had been so accustomed to 
 scheming on her own account that she would scheme for 
 anyone rather than not scheme at all. Many mothers turned 
 to her in their hour of need and, provided they were spiritually 
 minded, Mrs Cowey never failed to do her best for them ; 
 if the marriage of a young Bachelor of Arts was not made 
 in Heaven, it was probably made, or at any rate attempted, 
 in Mrs Cowey's drawing-room. On the present occasion all 
 the deacons of the University in whom there lurked any 
 spark of promise were exhaustively discussed, and the upshot 
 was that our friend Theobald was declared by Mrs Cowey to 
 be about the best thing she could do that afternoon. 
 
 " I don't know that he's a particularly fascinating young 
 man, my dear," said Mrs Cowey, " and he's only a second 
 son, but then he's got his fellowship, and even the second son 
 of such a man as Mr Pontifex the publisher should have 
 something very comfortable." 
 
 " Why yes, my dear," rejoined Mrs Allaby complacently, 
 "that's what one rather feels." 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The interview, like all other good things had to come to 
 an end ; the days were short, and Mrs Allaby had a six miles' 
 drive to Crampsford. When she was muffled up and had 
 taken her seat, Mr AWdhy' ?> factotiim, James, could perceive no 
 change in her appearance, and little knew what a series 
 of delightful visions he was driving home along with his 
 mistress. 
 
 Professor Cowey had published works through Theobald's 
 father, and Theobald had on this account been taken in tow 
 by Mrs Cowey from the beginning of his University career. 
 She had had her eye upon him for some time past, and almost 
 
 40 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 as much felt it her duty to get him ofif her list of young men 
 for whom wives had to be provided, as poor Mrs AUaby did 
 to try and get a husband for one of her daughters. She now 
 wrote and asked him to come and see her, in terms that 
 awakened his curiosity. When he came she broached the 
 subject of Mr AUaby's failing health, and after the smoothing 
 away of such difficulties as were only Mrs Cowey's due, con- 
 sidering the interest she had taken, it was allowed to come 
 to pass that Theobald should go to Crampsford for six 
 successive Sundays and take the half of Mr Allaby's duty at 
 half a guinea a Sunday, for Mrs Cowey cut down the usual 
 stipend mercilessly, and Theobald was not strong enough to 
 resist. 
 
 Ignorant of the plots which were being prepared for his 
 peace of mind and with no idea beyond that of earning his 
 three guineas, and perhaps of astonishing the inhabitants of 
 Crampsford by his academic learning, Theobald walked over 
 to the Rectory one Sunday morning early in December — a 
 few weeks only after he had been ordained. He had taken 
 a great deal of pains with his sermon, which was on the 
 subject of geology — then coming to the fore as a theological 
 bugbear. He showed that so far as geology was worth any- 
 thing at all — and he was too liberal entirely to pooh-pooh 
 it — it confirmed the absolutely historical character of the 
 Mosaic account of the Creation as given in Genesis. Any 
 phenomena which at first sight appeared to make against 
 this view were only partial phenomena and broke down upon 
 investigation. Nothing could be in more excellent taste, 
 and when Theobald adjourned to the rectory, where he was 
 to dine between the services, Mr Allaby complimented him 
 warmly upon his debut, while the ladies of the family could 
 hardly find words with which to express their admiration. 
 
 Theobald knew nothing about women. The only women 
 he had been thrown in contact with were his sisters, two of 
 whom were always correcting him, and a few school friends 
 whom these had got their father to ask to Ehnhurst. These 
 young ladies had either been so shy that they and Theobald 
 had never amalgamated, or they had been supposed to be 
 
 41 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 clever and had said smart things to him. He did not say 
 smart things himself and did not want other people to say 
 them. Besides, they talked about music — and he hated 
 music — or pictures — and he hated pictures — or books — and 
 except the classics he hated books. And then sometimes he 
 was wanted to dance with them, and he did not know how 
 to dance, and did not want to know. 
 
 At Mrs Cowey's parties again he had seen some young ladies 
 and had been introduced to them. He had tried to make 
 himself agreeable, but was always left with the impression 
 that he had not been successful. The young ladies of Mrs 
 Cowey's set were by no means the most attractive that might 
 have been found in the University, and Theobald may be 
 excused for not losing his heart to the greater number of 
 them, while if for a minute or two he was thrown in with one 
 of the prettier and more agreeable girls he was almost im- 
 mediately cut out by someone less bashful than himself, and 
 sneaked off, feeling as far as the fair sex was concerned, like 
 the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda. 
 
 What a really nice girl might have done with him I cannot 
 tell, but fate had thrown none such in his way except his 
 youngest sister Alethea, whom he might perhaps have liked 
 if she had not been his sister. The result of his experience 
 was that women had never done him any good and he was not 
 accustomed to associate them with any pleasure ; if there 
 was a part of Hamlet in connection with them it had been so 
 completely cut out in the edition of the play in which he 
 was required to act that he had come to disbelieve in its 
 existence. As for kissing, he had never kissed a woman in 
 his life except his sister — and my own sisters when we were 
 all small children together. Over and above these kisses, he 
 had until quite lately been required to imprint a solemn flabby 
 kiss night and morning upon his father's cheek, and this, to 
 the best of my belief, was the extent of Theobald's know- 
 ledge in the matter of kissing, at the time of which I am 
 now writing. The result of the foregoing was that he had 
 come to dislike women, as mysterious beings whose ways 
 were not as his ways, nor their thoughts as his thoughts. 
 
 42 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 With these antecedents Theobald naturally felt rather 
 bashful on finding himself the admired of five strange young 
 ladies. I remember when I was a boy myself I was once 
 asked to take tea at a girls' school where one of my sisters 
 was boarding. I was then about twelve years old. Every- 
 thing went off well during tea-time, for the Lady Principal of 
 the establishment was present. But there came a time when 
 she went away and I was left alone with the girls. The 
 moment the mistress's back was turned the head girl, who 
 was about my own age, came up, pointed her finger at me, 
 made a face and said solemnly, " A na-a-sty bo-o-y ! " All 
 the girls followed her in rotation making the same gesture 
 and the same reproach upon my being a boy. It gave me 
 a great scare. I believe 1 cried, and I know it was a long 
 time before I could again face a girl without a strong desire 
 to run away. 
 
 Theobald felt at first much as I had myself done at the 
 girls' school, but the Miss Allabys did not tell him he was a 
 nasty bo-o-y. Their papa and mamma were so cordial and 
 they themselves lifted him so deftly over conversational 
 stiles that before dinner was over Theobald thought the 
 family to be a really very charming one, and felt as though 
 he were being appreciated in a way to which he had not 
 hitherto been accustomed. 
 
 With dinner his shyness wore off. He was by no means 
 plain, his academic prestige was very fair. There was noth- 
 ing about him to lay hold of as unconventional or ridiculous : 
 the impression he created upon the young ladies was quite as 
 favourable as that which they had created upon himself; for 
 they knew not much more about men than he about women. 
 
 As soon as he was gone, the harmony of the establishment 
 was broken by a storm which arose upon the question which 
 of them it should be who should become Mrs Pontifex. 
 " My dears," said their father, when he saw that they did not 
 seem likely to settle the matter among themselves, "Wait 
 till to-morrow, and then play at cards for him." Having said 
 which he retired to his study, where he took a nightly glass of 
 whisky and a pipe of tobacco. 
 
 43 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The next morning saw Theobald in his rooms coaching a 
 pupil, and the Miss Allabys in the eldest Miss Allaby's bed- 
 room playing at cards with Theobald for the stakes. 
 
 The winner was Christina, the second unmarried daughter, 
 then just twenty-seven years old and therefore four years older 
 than Theobald. The younger sisters complained that it was 
 throwing a husband away to let Christina try and catch him, 
 for she was so much older that she had no chance ; but 
 Christina showed fight in a way not usual with her, for she 
 was by nature yielding and good tempered. Her mother 
 thought it better to back her up, so the two dangerous ones 
 were packed off then and there on visits to friends some way 
 off, and those alone allowed to remain at home whose loyalty 
 could be depended upon. The brothers did not even sus- 
 pect what was going on and believed their father's getting 
 assistance was because he really wanted it. 
 
 The sisters who remained at home kept their words and 
 gave Christina all the help they could, for over and above 
 their sense of fair play they reflected that the sooner Theobald 
 was landed, the sooner another deacon might be sent for who 
 might be won by themselves. So quickly was all managed 
 that the two unreliable sisters were actually out of the house 
 before Theobald's next visit — which was on the Sunday fol- 
 lowing his first. 
 
 This time Theobald felt quite at home in the house of his 
 new friends — for so Mrs Allaby insisted that he should call 
 them. She took, she said, such a motherly interest in young 
 men, especially in clergymen. Theobald believed every word 
 she said, as he had believed his father and all his elders from 
 his youth up. Christina sat next him at dinner and played 
 her cards no less judiciously than she had played them in 
 her sister's bed-room. She smiled (and her smile was one 
 of her strong points) whenever he spoke to her ; she went 
 through all her little artlessnesses and set forth all her little 
 
 44 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 wares in what she believed to be their most taking aspect. 
 Who can blame her? Theobald was not the ideal she had 
 dreamed of when reading Byron upstairs with her sisters, 
 but he was an actual within the bounds of possibility, and 
 after all not a bad actual as actuals went. What else could 
 she do ? Run away ? She dared not. Marry beneath her 
 and be considered a disgrace to her family ? She dared not. 
 Remain at home and become an old maid and be laughed 
 at ? Not if she could help it. She did the only thing that 
 could reasonably be expected. She was drowning ; Theobald 
 might be only a straw, but she could catch at him and 
 catch at him she accordingly did. 
 
 If the course of true love never runs smooth, the course of 
 true match-making sometimes does so. The only ground for 
 complaint in the present case was that it was rather slow. 
 Theobald fell into the part assigned to him more easily than 
 Mrs Cowey and Mrs Allaby had dared to hope. He was 
 softened by Christina's winning manners : he admired the 
 high moral tone of everything she said; her sweetness 
 towards her sisters and her father and mother, her readiness 
 to undertake any small burden which no one else seemed 
 willing to undertake, her sprightly manners, all were fascinat- 
 ing to one who, though unused to woman's society, was still 
 a human being. He was flattered by her unobtrusive but 
 obviously sincere admiration for himself; she seemed to see 
 him in a more favourable light, and to understand him better 
 than anyone outside of this charming family had ever done. 
 Instead of snubbing him as his father, brother and sisters did, 
 she drew him out, listened attentively to all he chose to say, and 
 evidently wanted him to say still more. He told a college friend 
 that he knew he was in love now ; he really was, for he liked 
 Miss AUaby's society much better than that of his sisters. 
 
 Over and above the recommendations already enumerated, 
 she had another in the possession of what was supposed to be a 
 very beautiful contralto voice. Her voice was certainly con- 
 tralto, for she could not reach higher than D in the treble ; its 
 only defect was that it did not go correspondingly low in the 
 bass : in those days, however, a contralto voice was under- 
 
 45 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 stood to include even a soprano if the soprano could not reach 
 soprano notes, and it was not necessary that it should have the 
 quality which we now assign to contralto. What her voice 
 wanted in range and power was made up in the feeling with 
 which she sang. She had transposed " Angels ever bright 
 and fair " into a lower key, so as to make it suit her voice, 
 thus proving, as her mamma said, that she had a thorough 
 knowledge of the laws of harmony; not only did she 
 do this, but at every pause added an embellishment of 
 arpeggios from one end to the other of the keyboard, on a 
 principle which her governess had taught her ; she thus added 
 life and interest to an air which everyone — so she said — must 
 feel to be rather heavy in the form in which Handel left it. 
 As for her governess, she indeed had been a rarely accom- 
 plished musician : she was a pupil of the famous Dr Clarke 
 of Cambridge, and used to play the overture to Atalanta, 
 arranged by Mazzinghi. Nevertheless, it was some time 
 before Theobald could bring his courage to the sticking 
 point of actually proposing. He made it quite clear that he 
 believed himself to be much smitten, but month after month 
 went by, during which there was still so much hope in 
 Theobald that Mr AUaby dared not discover that he was 
 able to do his duty for himself, and was getting impatient at 
 the number of half-guineas he was disbursing — and yet there 
 was no proposal. Christina's mother assured him that she 
 was the best daughter in the whole world, and would be a 
 priceless treasure to the man who married her. Theobald 
 echoed Mrs AUaby's sentiments with warmth, but still, though 
 he visited the Rectory two or three times a week, besides 
 coming over on Sundays — he did not propose. "She is 
 heart-whole yet, dear Mr Pontifex," said Mrs AUaby, one 
 day, "at least I beHeve she is. It is not for want of 
 admirers — oh ! no — she has had her full share of these, but 
 she is too, too difficult to please. I think, however, she 
 would fall before a great and good man." And she looked 
 hard at Theobald, who blushed ; but the days went by and 
 still he did not propose. 
 
 Another time Theobald actually took Mrs Cowey into his 
 
 46 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 confidence, and the reader may guess what account of 
 Christina he got from her. Mrs Cowey tried the jealousy 
 manoeuvre and hinted at a possible rival. Theobald was, or 
 pretended to be, very much alarmed ; a little rudimentary 
 pang of jealousy shot across his bosom and he began to 
 believe with pride that he was not only in love, but desper- 
 ately in love or he would never feel so jealous. Nevertheless, 
 day after day still went by and he did not propose. 
 
 The AUabys behaved with great judgment. They 
 humoured him till his retreat was practically cut off, 
 though he still flattered himself that it was open. One 
 day about six months after Theobald had become an almost 
 daily visitor at the rectory the conversation happened to 
 turn upon long engagements. " I don't like long engage- 
 ments, Mr AUaby, do you?" said Theobald imprudently. 
 " No," said Mr Allaby in a pointed tone, " nor long court- 
 ships," and he gave Theobald a look which he could not 
 pretend to misunderstand. He went back to Cambridge as 
 fast as he could go, and in dread of the conversation with 
 Mr Allaby which he felt to be impending, composed the 
 following letter which he despatched that same afternoon by a 
 private messenger to Crampsford. The letter was as follows : — 
 
 " Dearest Miss Christina, — I do not know whether you 
 have guessed the feelings that I have long entertained for 
 you — feelings which I have concealed as much as I could 
 through fear of drawing you into an engagement which, if 
 you enter into it, must be prolonged for a considerable time, 
 but, however this may be, it is out of my power to conceal 
 them longer ; I love you, ardently, devotedly, and send these 
 few lines asking you to be my wife, because I dare not trust 
 my tongue to give adequate expression to the magnitude of 
 my affection for you. 
 
 " I cannot pretend to offer you a heart which has never 
 known either love or disappointment. I have loved already, 
 and my heart was years in recovering from the grief I felt at 
 seeing her become another's. That, however, is over, and 
 having seen yourself I rejoice over a disappointment which I 
 
 47 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 thought at one time would have been fatal to me. It has left 
 me a less ardent lover than I should perhaps otherwise have 
 been, but it has increased tenfold my power of appreciating 
 your many charms and my desire that you should become 
 my wife. Please let me have a few lines of answer by the 
 bearer to let me know whether or not my suit is accepted. 
 If you accept me I will at once come and talk the matter 
 over with Mr and Mrs Allaby, whom I shall hope one day to 
 be allowed to call father and mother. 
 
 " I ought to warn you that in the event of your consenting 
 to be my wife it may be years before our union can be con- 
 summated, for I cannot marry till a college living is offered 
 me. If, therefore, you see fit to reject me, I shall be grieved 
 rather than surprised. — Ever most devotedly yours, 
 
 " Theobald Pontifex," 
 
 And this was all that his public school and University 
 education had been able to do for Theobald ! Nevertheless 
 for his own part he thought his letter rather a good one, 
 and congratulated himself in particular upon his cleverness 
 in inventing the story of a previous attachment, behind 
 which he intended to shelter himself if Christina should 
 complain of any lack of fervour in his behaviour to her. 
 
 I need not give Christina's answer which of course was to 
 accept. Much as Theobald feared old Mr Allaby I do not 
 think he would have wrought up his courage to the point of 
 actually proposing but for the fact of the engagement being 
 necessarily a long one, during which a dozen things might 
 turn up to break it off. However much he may have dis- 
 approved of long engagements for other people, I doubt 
 whether he had any particular objection to them in his own 
 case. A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise : there are 
 such things every day but we very seldom see them, Theo- 
 bald posed as the most ardent lover imaginable, but, to use 
 the vulgarism for the moment in fashion, it was all " side." 
 Christina was in love, as indeed she had been twenty times 
 already. But then Christina was impressionable and could 
 not even hear the name " Missolonghi " mentioned without 
 
 48 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 bursting into tears. When Theobald accidentally left his 
 sermon case behind him one Sunday, she slept with it in her 
 bosom and was forlorn when she had as it were to disgorge 
 it on the following Sunday ; but I do not think Theobald 
 ever took so much as an old toothbrush of Christina's to bed 
 with him. Why, I knew a young man once who got hold 
 of his mistress's skates and slept with them for a fortnight 
 and cried when he had to give them up. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Theobald's engagement was all very well as far as it went, 
 but there was an old gentleman with a bald head and rosy 
 cheeks in a counting-house in Paternoster Row who must 
 sooner or later be told of what his son had in view, and 
 Theobald's heart fluttered when he asked himself what view 
 this old gentleman was likely to take of the situation. The 
 murder, however, had to come out, and Theobald and his 
 intended, perhaps imprudently, resolved on making a clean 
 breast of it at once. He wrote what he and Christina, who 
 helped him to draft the letter, thought to be everything that was 
 filial, and expressed himself as anxious to be married with 
 the least possible delay. He could not help saying this, as 
 Christina was at his shoulder, and he knew it was safe, for 
 his father might be trusted not to help him. He wound up 
 by asking his father to use any influence that might be at 
 his command to help him to get a living, inasmuch as it 
 might be years before a college living fell vacant, and he saw 
 no other chance of being able to marry, for neither he nor 
 his intended had any money except Theobald's fellowship, 
 which would, of course, lapse on his taking a wife. 
 
 Any step of Theobald's was sure to be objectionable in 
 his father's eyes, but that at three-and-twenty he should want 
 to marry a penniless girl who was four years older than him- 
 self, afforded a golden opportunity which the old gentleman 
 — for so I may now call him, as he was at least sixty — 
 embraced with characteristic eagerness. 
 D 49 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " The ineffable folly," he wrote, on receiving his son's 
 letter, " of your fancied passion for Miss AUaby fills me with 
 the gravest apprehensions. Making every allowance for a 
 lover's blindness, I still have no doubt that the lady herself 
 is a well-conducted and amiable young person, who would 
 not disgrace our family, but were she ten times more desirable 
 as a daughter-in-law than I can allow myself to hope, your 
 joint poverty is an insuperable objection to your marriage. 
 I have four other children besides yourself, and my expenses 
 do not permit me to save money. This year they have been 
 especially heavy, indeed I have had to purchase two not 
 inconsiderable pieces of land which happened to come into 
 the market and were necessary to complete a property which 
 I have long wanted to round off in this way. I gave you 
 an education regardless of expense, which has put you in 
 possession of a comfortable income, at an age when many 
 young men are dependent. I have thus started you fairly in 
 life, and may claim that you should cease to be a drag upon 
 me further. Long engagements are proverbially unsatisfactory, 
 and in the present case the prospect seems interminable. 
 What interest, pray, do you suppose I have that I could get 
 a living for you ? Can I go up and down the country 
 begging people to provide for my son because he has taken it 
 into his head to want to get married without suflScient means ? 
 " I do not wish to write unkindly, nothing can be farther 
 from my real feelings towards you, but there is often more 
 kindness in plain speaking than in any amount of soft words 
 which can end in no substantial performance. Of course, I 
 bear in mind that you are of age, and can therefore please 
 yourself, but if you choose to claim the strict letter of the 
 law, and act without consideration for your father's feelings, 
 you must not be surprised if you one day find that I have 
 claimed a like liberty for myself — BeHeve me, your affec- 
 tionate father, G. Pontifex." 
 
 I found this letter along with those already given and a 
 few more which I need not give, but throughout which the 
 same tone prevails, and in all of which there is the more or 
 
 5° 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 less obvious shake of the will near the end of the letter. 
 Remembering Theobald's general dumbness concerning his 
 father for the many years I knew him after his father's death, 
 there was an eloquence in the preservation of the letters 
 and in their endorsement " Letters from my father," which 
 seemed to have with it some faint odour of health and nature. 
 
 Theobald did not show his father's letter to Christina, 
 nor, indeed, I believe to anyone. He was by nature secretive, 
 and had been repressed too much and too early to be capable 
 of raihng or blowing off steam where his father was concerned. 
 His sense of wrong was still inarticulate, felt as a dull dead 
 weight ever present day by day, and if he woke at night-time 
 still continually present, but he hardly knew what it was. I 
 was about the closest friend he had, and I saw but little of 
 him, for I could not get on with him for long together. He 
 said I had no reverence ; whereas I thought that I had 
 plenty of reverence for what deserved to be revered, but that 
 the gods which he deemed golden were in reality made of 
 baser metal. He never, as I have said, complained of his 
 father to me, and his only other friends were, like himself, 
 staid and prim, of evangelical tendencies, and deeply imbued 
 with a sense of the sinfulness of any act of insubordination 
 to parents — good young men, in fact — and one cannot blow 
 off steam to a good young man. 
 
 When Christina was informed by her lover of his father's 
 opposition, and of the time which must probably elapse 
 before they could be married, she offered — with how much 
 sincerity I know not — to set him free from his engagement ; 
 but Theobald dechned to be released — "not at least," as 
 he said, " at present." Christina and Mrs Allaby knew they 
 could manage him, and on this not very satisfactory footing 
 the engagement was continued. 
 
 His engagement and his refusal to be released at once 
 raised Theobald in his own good opinion. Dull as he was, 
 he had no small share of quiet self-approbation. He admired 
 himself for his University distinction, for the purity of his 
 life (I said of him once that if he had only a better temper 
 he would be as innocent as a new-laid egg) and for his unim- 
 
 51 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 peachable integrity in money matters. He did not despair 
 of advancement in the Church when he had once got a 
 living, and of course it v^^as within the bounds of possibility 
 that he might one day become a Bishop, and Christina said 
 she felt convinced that this would ultimately be the case. 
 
 As was natural for the daughter and intended wife of a 
 clergyman, Christina's thoughts ran much upon religion, and 
 she was resolved that even though an exalted position in this 
 world were denied to her and Theobald, their virtues should 
 be fully appreciated in the next. Her religious opinions 
 coincided absolutely with Theobald's own, and many a con- 
 versation did she have with him about the glory of God, and 
 the completeness with which they would devote themselves 
 to it, as soon as Theobald had got his living and they were 
 married. So certain was she of the great results which would 
 then ensue that she wondered at times at the blindness shown 
 by Providence towards its own truest interests in not killing 
 off the rectors who stood between Theobald and his living 
 a little faster. 
 
 In those days people believed with a simple downrightness 
 which I do not observe among educated men and women 
 now. It had never so much as crossed Theobald's mind to 
 doubt the literal accuracy of any syllable in the Bible. He 
 had never seen any book in which this was disputed, nor 
 met with anyone who doubted it. True, there was just a 
 little scare about geology, but there was nothing in it. If it 
 was said that God made the world in six days, why He did 
 make it in six days, neither in more nor less ; if it was said 
 that He put Adam to sleep, took out one of his ribs and 
 made a woman of it, why it was so as a matter of course. 
 He, Adam, went to sleep as it might be himself, Theobald 
 Pontifex, in a garden, as it might be the garden at Cramps- 
 ford Rectory during the summer months when it was so 
 pretty, only that it was larger, and had some tame wild 
 animals in it. Then God came up to him, as it might be 
 Mr Allaby or his father, dexterously took out one of his 
 ribs without waking him, and miraculously healed the wound 
 so that no trace of the operation remained. Finally, God 
 
 52 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 had taken the rib perhaps into the greenhouse, and had 
 turned it into just such another young woman as Christina. 
 That was how it was done ; there was neither difficulty nor 
 shadow of difificulty about the matter. Could not God do 
 anything He liked, and had He not in his own inspired 
 Book told us that He had done this? 
 
 This was the average attitude of fairly educated young 
 men and women towards the Mosaic cosmogony fifty, forty, 
 or even twenty years ago. The combating of infidelity, 
 therefore, offered little scope for enterprising young clergy- 
 men, nor had the Church awakened to the activity which she 
 has since displayed among the poor in our large towns. 
 These were then left almost without an effort at resistance 
 or co-operation to the labours of those who had succeeded 
 Wesley. Missionary work indeed in heathen countries was 
 being carried on with some energy, but Theobald did not 
 feel any call to be a missionary. Christina suggested this to 
 him more than once, and assured him of the unspeakable 
 happiness it would be to her to be the wife of a missionary, 
 and to share his dangers ; she and Theobald might even be 
 martyred ; of course they would be martyred simultaneously, 
 and martyrdom many years hence as regarded from the 
 arbour in the rectory garden was not painful, it would ensure 
 them a glorious future in the next world, and at any rate 
 posthumous renown in this — even if they were not miracu- 
 lously restored to life again — and such things had happened 
 ere now in the case of martyrs. Theobald, however, had 
 not been kindled by Christina's enthusiasm, so she fell back 
 upon the Church of Rome — an enemy more dangerous, if 
 possible, than paganism itself. A combat with Romanism 
 might even yet win for her and Theobald the crown of 
 martyrdom. True, the Church of Rome was tolerably quiet 
 just then, but it was the calm before the storm, of this she 
 was assured, with a conviction deeper than she could have 
 attained by any argument founded upon mere reason. 
 
 "We, dearest Theobald," she exclaimed, "will be ever 
 faithful. We will stand firm and support one another even 
 in the hour of death itself. God in his mercy may spare us 
 
 53 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 from being burnt alive. He may or may not do so. Oh 
 Lord " (and she turned her eyes prayerfully to Heaven), 
 " spare my Theobald, or grant that he may be beheaded." 
 
 " My dearest," said Theobald gravely, " do not let us 
 agitate ourselves unduly. If the hour of trial comes we 
 shall be best prepared to meet it by having led a quiet 
 unobtrusive life of self-denial and devotion to God's glory. 
 Such a life let us pray God that it may please Him to enable 
 us to pray that we may lead." 
 
 " Dearest Theobald," exclaimed Christina, drying the tears that 
 had gathered in her eyes, " you are always, always right. Let 
 us be self-denying, pure, upright, truthful in word and deed." 
 She clasped her hands and looked up to Heaven as she spoke. 
 
 *' Dearest," rejoined her lover, " we have ever hitherto 
 endeavoured to be all of these things ; we have not been 
 worldly people ; let us watch and pray that we may so con- 
 tinue to the end." 
 
 The moon had risen and the arbour was getting damp, so 
 they adjourned further aspirations for a more convenient 
 season. At other times Christina pictured herself and 
 Theobald as braving the scorn of almost every human being 
 in the achievement of some mighty task which should 
 redound to the honour of her Redeemer. She could face 
 anything for this. But always towards the end of her vision 
 there came a little coronation scene high up in the golden 
 regions of the Heavens, and a diadem was set upon her head 
 by the Son of Man Himself, amid a host of angels and 
 archangels who looked on with envy and admiration — and 
 here even Theobald himself was out of it. If there could 
 be such a thing as the Mammon of Righteousness Christina 
 would have assuredly made friends with it. Her papa and 
 mamma were very estimable people and would in the course 
 of time receive Heavenly Mansions in which they would be 
 exceedingly comfortable ; so doubtless would her sisters ; so 
 perhaps, even might her brothers ; but for herself she felt 
 that a higher destiny was preparing, which it was her duty 
 never to lose sight of The first step towards it would be her 
 marriage with Theobald. In spite, however, of these flights of 
 
 54 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 religious romanticism, Christina was a good-tempered kindly- 
 natured girl enough, who, if she had married a sensible layman 
 — we will say a hotel-keeper — would have developed into a 
 good landlady and been deservedly popular with her guests. 
 
 Such was Theobald's engaged life. Many a little present 
 passed between the pair, and many a small surprise did they 
 prepare pleasantly for one another. They never quarrelled, 
 and neither of them ever flirted with anyone else. Mrs 
 AUaby and his future sisters-in-law idolised Theobald in 
 spite of its being impossible to get another deacon to 
 come and be played for as long as Theobald was able to 
 help Mr AUaby, which now of course he did free gratis and 
 for nothing ; two of the sisters, however, did manage to find 
 husbands before Christina was actually married, and on each 
 occasion Theobald played the part of decoy elephant. In 
 the end only two out of the seven daughters remained single. 
 
 After three or four years, old Mr Pontifex became accus- 
 tomed to his son's engagement and looked upon it as among 
 the things which had now a prescriptive right to toleration. 
 In the spring of 1831, more than five years after Theobald 
 had first walked over to Crampsford, one of the best livings 
 in the gift of the College unexpectedly fell vacant, and was 
 for various reasons declined by the two fellows senior to 
 Theobald, who might each have been expected to take it. 
 The living was then offered to and of course accepted by 
 Theobald, being in value not less than ;i^5oo a year with a 
 suitable house and garden. Old Mr Pontifex then came down 
 more handsomely than was expected and settled ;!^ 10,000 on 
 his son and daughter-in-law for life with remainder to such of 
 their issue as they might appoint. In the month of July 1831 
 Theobald and Christina became man and wife. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A DUE number of old shoes had been thrown at the carriage 
 in which the happy pair departed from the Rectory, and it 
 had turned the corner at the bottom of the village. It could 
 
 5$ 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 then be seen for two or three hundred yards creeping past a 
 fir coppice, and after this was lost to view. 
 
 " John," said Mr Allaby to his man-servant, " shut the 
 gate ; " and he went indoors with a sigh of relief which 
 seemed to say : " I have done it, and I am alive." This was 
 the reaction after a burst of enthusiastic merriment during 
 which the old gentleman had run twenty yards after the 
 carriage to fling a slipper at it — which he had duly flung. 
 
 But what were the feelings of Theobald and Christina, 
 when the village was passed and they were rolling quietly by 
 the fir plantation ? It is at this point that even the stoutest 
 heart must fail, unless it beat in the breast of one who is over 
 head and ears in love. If a young man is in a small boat on 
 a choppy sea along with his affianced bride, and both are 
 sea-sick, and if the sick swain can forget his own anguish in 
 the happiness of holding the fair one's head when she is at 
 her worst — then he is in love, and his heart will be in no 
 danger of failing him as he passes his fir plantation. Other 
 people, and unfortunately by far the greater number of those 
 who get married must be classed among the " other people," 
 will inevitably go through a quarter or half an hour of greater 
 or less badness as the case may be. Taking numbers into 
 account, I should think more mental suffering had been 
 undergone in the streets leading from St George's, Hanover 
 Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate. There is 
 no time at which what the Italians call la figlia della Morte 
 lays her cold hand upon a man more awfully than during the 
 first half hour that he is alone with a woman whom he has 
 married but never genuinely loved. 
 
 Death's daughter did not spare Theobald. He had be- 
 haved very well hitherto. When Christina had offered to 
 let him go, he had stuck to his post with a magnanimity on 
 which he had plumed himself ever since. From that time 
 forward he had said to himself: " I, at any rate, am the very 
 soul of honour ; I am not," etc., etc. True, at the moment of 
 magnanimity the actual cash payment, so to speak, was still 
 distant ; when his father gave formal consent to his marriage 
 things began to look more serious ; when the college living 
 
 56 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 had fallen vacant and been accepted they looked more serious 
 still ; but when Christina actually named the day, then Theo- 
 bald's heart fainted within him. 
 
 The engagement had gone on so long that he had got into 
 a groove, and the prospect of change was disconcerting. 
 Christina and he had got on, he thought to himself, very 
 nicely for a great number of years ; why — why — why should 
 they not continue to go on as they were doing now for the 
 rest of their lives ? But there was no more chance of escape 
 for him than for the sheep which is being driven to the 
 butcher's back premises, and like the sheep he felt that there 
 was nothing to be gained by resistance, so he made none. 
 He behaved, in fact, with decency, and was declared on all 
 hands to be one of the happiest men imaginable. 
 
 Now, however, to change the metaphor, the drop had 
 actually fallen, and the poor wretch was hanging in mid air 
 along with the creature of his affections. This creature was now 
 thirty-three years old, and looked it : she had been weeping, 
 and her eyes and nose were reddish ; if " I have done it and 
 I am alive," was written on Mr Allaby's face after he had 
 thrown the shoe, " I have done it, and I do not see how I 
 can possibly live much longer" was upon the face of 
 Theobald as he was being driven along by the fir plantation. 
 This, however, was not apparent at the rectory. All that 
 could be seen there was the bobbing up and down of the 
 postilion's head, which just over-topped the hedge by the 
 road-side as he rose in his stirrups, and the black and yellow 
 body of the carriage. 
 
 For some time the pair said nothing : what they must have 
 felt during their first half hour, the reader must guess, for it 
 is beyond my power to tell him ; at the end of that time, 
 however, Theobald had rummaged up a conclusion from 
 some odd corner of his soul to the effect that now he and 
 Christina were married the sooner they fell into their future 
 mutual relations the better. If people who are in a difficulty 
 will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can 
 clearly recognise as reasonable, they will always find the next 
 step more easy both to see and take. What, then, thought 
 
 57 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Theobald, was here at this moment the first and most ob- 
 vious matter to be considered, and what would be an equitable 
 view of his and Christina's relative positions in respect to it ? 
 Clearly their first dinner was their first joint entry into the 
 duties and pleasures of married life. No less clearly it 
 was Christina's duty to order it, and his own to eat it and pay 
 for it. 
 
 The arguments leading to this conclusion, and the con- 
 clusion itself, flashed upon Theobald about three and a half 
 miles after he had left Crampsford on the road to Newmarket. 
 He had breakfasted early, but his usual appetite had failed 
 him. They had left the vicarage at noon without staying for 
 the wedding breakfast. Theobald liked an early dinner ; it 
 dawned upon him that he was beginning to be hungry ; from 
 this to the conclusion stated in the preceding paragraph the 
 steps had been easy. After a few minutes' further reflection 
 he broached the matter to his bride, and thus the ice was 
 broken. 
 
 Mrs Theobald was not prepared for so sudden an assump- 
 tion of importance. Her nerves, never of the strongest, had 
 been strung to their highest tension by the event of the 
 morning. She wanted to escape observation ; she was con- 
 scious of looking a little older than she quite liked to look 
 as a bride who had been married that morning ; she feared 
 the landlady, the chamber-maid, the waiter — everybody and 
 everything; her heart beat so fast that she could hardly 
 speak, much less go through the ordeal of ordering dinner in 
 a strange hotel with a strange landlady. She begged and 
 prayed to be let ofl". If Theobald would only order dinner 
 this once, she would order it any day and every day in 
 future. 
 
 But the inexorable Theobald was not to be put off with 
 such absurd excuses. He was master now. Had not 
 Christina less than two hours ago promised solemnly to 
 honour and obey him, and was she turning restive over 
 such a trifle as this ? The loving smile departed from his 
 face, and was succeeded by a scowl which that old Turk, 
 his father, might have envied. " Stuff and nonsense, my 
 
 $3 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 dearest Christina," he exclaimed mildly, and stamped his 
 foot upon the floor of the carriage. " It is a wife's duty to 
 order her husband's dinner; you are my wife, and I shall 
 expect you to order mine." For Theobald was nothing if he 
 was not logical. 
 
 The bride began to cry, and said he was unkind ; whereon 
 he said nothing, but revolved unutterable things in his heart. 
 Was this, then, the end of his six years of unflagging devo- 
 tion ? Was it for this that when Christina had offered to 
 let him off, he had stuck to his engagement ? Was this the 
 outcome of her talks about duty and spiritual mindedness — 
 that now upon the very day of her marriage she should fail 
 to see that the first step in obedience to God lay in obedi- 
 ence to himself? He would drive back to Crampsford ; he 
 would complain to Mr and Mrs Allaby ; he didn't mean to 
 have married Christina ; he hadn't married her ; it was all 
 
 a hideous dream ; he would But a voice kept ringing 
 
 in his ears which said : " You can't, can't, can't." 
 
 "Can't I ?" screamed the unhappy creature to himself. 
 
 " No," said the remorseless voice, " you can't. You are 
 
 A MARRIED MAN." 
 
 He rolled back in his corner of the carriage and for the 
 first time felt how iniquitous were the marriage laws of Eng- 
 land. But he would buy Milton's prose works and read his 
 pamphlet on divorce. He might perhaps be able to get them 
 at Newmarket. 
 
 So the bride sat crying in one corner of the carriage ; and 
 the bridegroom sulked in the other, and he feared her as only 
 a bridegroom can fear. 
 
 Presently, however, a feeble voice was heard from the 
 bride's corner saying : 
 
 " Dearest Theobald — dearest Theobald, forgive me ; I 
 have been very, very wrong. Please do not be angry with me. 
 
 I will order the — the " but the word " dinner " was 
 
 checked by rising sobs. 
 
 When Theobald heard these words a load began to be 
 lifted from his heart, but he only looked towards her, and 
 that not too pleasantly. 
 
 59 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "Please tell me/' continued the voice, "what you think 
 you would like, and I will tell the landlady when we get 
 
 to Newmar " but another burst of sobs checked the 
 
 completion of the word. 
 
 The load on Theobald's heart grew lighter and lighter. 
 Was it possible that she might not be going to henpeck him 
 after all ? Besides, had she not diverted his attention from 
 herself to his approaching dinner ? 
 
 He swallowed down more of his apprehensions and said, 
 but still gloomily, " I think we might have a roast fowl with 
 bread sauce, new potatoes and green peas, and then we will 
 see if they could let us have a cherry tart and some cream." 
 
 After a few minutes more he drew her towards him, kissed 
 away her tears, and assured her that he knew she would be a 
 good wife to him. 
 
 " Dearest Theobald," she exclaimed in answer, " you are 
 an angel." 
 
 Theobald believed her, and in ten minutes more the happy 
 couple alighted at the inn at Newmarket. 
 
 Bravely did Christina go through her arduous task. Eagerly 
 did she beseech the landlady, in secret, not to keep her 
 Theobald waiting longer than was absolutely necessary. 
 
 " If you have any soup ready, you know, Mrs Barber, it 
 might save ten minutes, for we might have it while the fowl 
 was browning." 
 
 See how necessity had nerved her ! But in truth she had a 
 splitting headache, and would have given anything to have 
 been alone. 
 
 The dinner was a success. A pint of sherry had warmed 
 Theobald's heart, and he began to hope that, after all, matters 
 might still go well with him. He had conquered in the first 
 battle, and this gives great prestige. How easy it had been 
 too ! Why had he never treated his sisters in this way ? He 
 would do so next time he saw them ; he might in time be 
 able to stand up to his brother John, or even his father. 
 Thus do we build castles in air when flushed with wine and 
 conquest. 
 
 The end of the honeymoon saw Mrs Theobald the most 
 
 60 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 devotedly obsequious wife in all England. According to the 
 old saying, Theobald had killed the cat at the beginning. 
 It had been a very little cat, a mere kitten in fact, or he 
 might have been afraid to face it, but such as it had been he 
 had challenged it to mortal combat, and had held up its 
 dripping head defiantly before his wife's face. The rest had 
 been easy. 
 
 Strange that one whom I have described hitherto as so 
 timid and easily put upon should prove such a Tartar all of 
 a sudden on the day of his marriage. Perhaps I have passed 
 over his years of courtship too rapidly. During these he had 
 become a tutor of his college, and had at last been Junior 
 Dean. I never yet knew a man whose sense of his own im- 
 portance did not become adequately developed after he had 
 held a resident fellowship for five or six years. True — im- 
 mediately on arriving within a ten mile radius of his father's 
 house, an enchantment fell upon him, so that his knees 
 waxed weak, his greatness departed, and he again felt himself 
 like an overgrown baby under a perpetual cloud ; but then 
 he was not often at Elmhurst, and as soon as he left it the 
 spell was taken off again ; once more he became the fellow 
 and tutor of his college, the Junior Dean, the betrothed of 
 Christina, the idol of the Allaby womankind. From all 
 which it may be gathered that if Christina had been a 
 Barbary hen, and had ruffled her feathers in any show of 
 resistance Theobald would not have ventured to swagger 
 with her, but she was not a Barbary hen, she was only a 
 common hen, and that too with rather a smaller share of 
 personal bravery than hens generally have. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Battersby-on-the-Hill was the name of the village of 
 which Theobald was now Rector. It contained 400 or 500 
 inhabitants, scattered over a rather large area, and consisting 
 entirely of farmers and agricultural labourers. The Rectory 
 was commodious, and placed on the brow of a hill which 
 
 61 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 gave it a delightful prospect. There was a fair sprinkling of 
 neighbours within visiting range, but with one or two excep- 
 tions they were the clergymen and clergymen's families of 
 the surrounding villages. 
 
 By these the Pontifexes were welcomed as great acquisi- 
 tions to the neighbourhood. Mr Pontifex, they said was so 
 clever ; he had been senior classic and senior wrangler ; a 
 perfect genius in fact, and yet with so much sound practical 
 common sense as well. As son of such a distinguished man 
 as the great Mr Pontifex the publisher he would come into a 
 large property by-and-by. Was there not an elder brother ? 
 Yes, but there would be so much that Theobald would pro- 
 bably get something very considerable. Of course they 
 would give dinner parties. And Mrs Pontifex, what a charm- 
 ing woman she was ; she was certainly not exactly pretty 
 perhaps, but then she had such a sweet smile and her 
 manner was so bright and winning. She was so devoted too 
 to her husband and her husband to her ; they really did come 
 up to one's ideas of what lovers used to be in days of old ; it 
 was rare to meet with such a pair in these degenerate times ; 
 it was quite beautiful, etc., etc. Such were the comments of 
 the neighbours on the new arrivals. 
 
 As for Theobald's own parishioners, the farmers were civil 
 and the labourers and their wives obsequious. There was a 
 little dissent, the legacy of a careless predecessor, but as Mrs 
 Theobald said proudly, " I think Theobald may be trusted to 
 deal with that^ The church was then an interesting speci- 
 men of late Norman, with some Early EngUsh additions. It 
 was what in these days would be called in a very bad state of 
 repair, but forty or fifty years ago few churches were in good 
 repair. If there is one feature more characteristic of the 
 present generation than another it is that it has been a great 
 restorer of churches. 
 
 Horace preached church restoration in his ode : — 
 
 " Delicta majorum immeritus lues, 
 Romane, donee templa refeceris 
 Aedesque labentes deorum et 
 Foeda nigro simulacra fumo. 
 62 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Nothing went right with Rome for long together after the 
 Augustan age, but whether it was because she did restore the 
 temples or because she did not restore them I know not. 
 They certainly went all wrong after Constantine's time and 
 yet Rome is still a city of some importance. 
 
 I may say here that before Theobald had been many years 
 at Battersby he found scope for useful work in the rebuilding 
 of Battersby church, which he carried out at considerable cost, 
 towards which he subscribed liberally himself He was his 
 own architect, and this saved expense ; but architecture was 
 not very well understood about the year 1834, when Theo- 
 bald commenced operations, and the result is not as satis- 
 factory as it would have been if he had waited a few years 
 longer. 
 
 Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or 
 pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait 
 of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more 
 clearly will his character appear in spite of him. I may very 
 likely be condemning myself, all the time that I am writing 
 this book, for I know that whether I like it or no I am por- 
 traying myself more surely than I am portraying any of the 
 characters whom I set before the reader. I am sorry that it 
 is so, but I cannot help it — after which sop to Nemesis I will 
 say that Battersby church in its amended form has always 
 struck me as a better portrait of Theobald than any sculptor 
 or painter short of a great master would be able to produce. 
 
 I remember staying with Theobald some six or seven 
 months after he was married, and while the old church was 
 still standing. I went to church, and felt as Naaman must 
 have felt on certain occasions when he had to accompany his 
 master on his return after having been cured of his leprosy. 
 I have carried away a more vivid recollection of this and of 
 the people, than of Theobald's sermon. Even now I can see 
 the men in blue smock frocks reaching to their heels, and 
 more than one old woman in a scarlet cloak ; the row of 
 stolid, dull, vacant plough-boys, ungainly in build, uncomely 
 in face, lifeless, apathetic, a race a good deal more like the 
 pre-revolution French peasant as described by Carlyle than is 
 
 63 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 pleasant to reflect upon — a race now supplanted by a smarter, 
 comelier and more hopeful generation, which has discovered 
 that it too has a right to as much happiness as it can get, and 
 with clearer ideas about the best means of getting it. 
 
 They shamble in one after another, with steaming breath, for 
 it is winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots ; they beat 
 the snow from off them as they enter, and through the opened 
 door I catch a momentary glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and 
 snow-clad tombstones. Somehow or other I find the strain 
 which Handel has wedded to the words " There the plough- 
 man near at hand," has got into my head and there is no get- 
 ting it out again. How marvellously old Handel understood 
 these people ! 
 
 They bob to Theobald as they passed the reading desk 
 ("The people hereabouts are truly respectful," whispered 
 Christina to me, " they know their betters."), and take their 
 seats in a long row against the wall. The choir clamber up 
 into the gallery with their instruments — a violoncello, a clari- 
 net and a trombone. I see them and soon I hear them, for 
 there is a hymn before the service, a wild strain, a remnant, if 
 I mistake not, of some pre-Reformation litany. I have heard 
 what I believe was its remote musical progenitor in the church 
 of SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice not five years since ; and 
 again I have heard it far away in mid-Atlantic upon a grey 
 sea-Sabbath in June, when neither winds nor waves are stir- 
 ring, so that the emigrants gather on deck, and their plaintive 
 psalm goes forth upon the silver haze of the sky, and on the 
 wilderness of a sea that has sighed till it can sigh no longer. 
 Or it may be heard at some Methodist Camp Meeting upon 
 a Welsh hillside, but in the churches it is gone for ever. If 
 I were a musician I would take it as the subject for the 
 adagio in a Wesleyan symphony. 
 
 Gone now are the clarinet, the violoncello and the 
 trombone, wild minstrelsy as of the doleful creatures in 
 Ezekiel, discordant, but infinitely pathetic. Gone is that 
 scarebabe stentor, that bellowing bull of Bashan the village 
 blacksmith, gone is the melodious carpenter, gone the brawny 
 shepherd with the red hair, who roared more lustily than all, 
 
 64 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 until they came to the words, " Shepherds with your flocks 
 abiding," when modesty covered him with confusion, and 
 compelled him to be silent, as though his own health were 
 being drunk. They were doomed and had a presentiment of 
 evil, even when first I saw them, but they had still a little 
 lease of choir life remaining, and they roared out : 
 
 -• • • - — • • • G) & • • • • — 
 
 wick - ed hands have pierced and nailed him, pierced and nailed him to a tree. 
 
 but no description can give a proper idea of the effect. 
 When I was last in Battersby church there was a harmonium 
 played by a sweet-looking girl with a choir of school children 
 around her, and they chanted the canticles to the most cor- 
 rect of chants, and they sang Hymns Ancient and Modern ; 
 the high pews were gone, nay, the very gallery in which the 
 old choir had sung was removed as an accursed thing which 
 might remind the people of the high places, and Theobald 
 was old, and Christina was lying under the yew trees in the 
 churchyard. 
 
 But in the evening later on I saw three very old men come 
 chuckUng out of a dissenting chapel, and surely enough they 
 were my old friends the blacksmith, the carpenter and the 
 shepherd. There was a look of content upon their faces 
 which made me feel certain they had been singing ; not 
 doubtless with the old glory of the violoncello, the clarinet 
 and the trombone, but still songs of Sion and no new fangled 
 papistry. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The hymn had engaged my attention ; when it was over I 
 had time to take stock of the congregation. They were 
 chiefly farmers — fat, very well-to-do folk, who had come some 
 of them with their wives and children from outlying farms 
 two and three miles away ; haters of popery and of anything 
 E 65 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 which any one might choose to say was popish ; good, sensible 
 fellows who detested theory of any kind, whose ideal was the 
 maintenance of the status quo with perhaps a loving remini- 
 scence of old war times, and a sense of wrong that the 
 weather was not more completely under their control, who 
 desired higher prices and cheaper wages, but otherwise were 
 most contented when things were changing least ; tolerators, 
 if not lovers, of all that was familiar, haters of all that was 
 unfamiliar • they would have been equally horrified at hearing 
 the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practised. 
 
 "What can there be in common between Theobald and 
 his parishioners ? " said Christina to me, in the course of 
 the evening, when her husband was for a few moments 
 absent. " Of course one must not complain, but I assure 
 you it grieves me to see a man of Theobald's ability thrown 
 away upon such a place as this. If we had only been at 
 Gaysbury, where there are the A's, the B's, the C's, and Lord 
 D's place, as you know, quite close, I should not then have 
 felt that we were living in such a desert ; but I suppose it is 
 for the best," she added more cheerfully ; " and then of 
 course the Bishop will come to us whenever he is in the 
 neighbourhood, and if we were at Gaysbury he might have 
 gone to Lord D's." 
 
 Perhaps I have now said enough to indicate the kind of 
 place in which Theobald's lines were cast, and the sort of 
 woman he had married. As for his own habits, I see him 
 trudging through muddy lanes and over long sweeps of 
 plover-haunted pastures to visit a dying cottager's wife. He 
 takes her meat and wine from his own table, and that not a 
 little only but liberally. According to his lights also, he 
 administers what he is pleased to call spiritual consolation. 
 
 " I am afraid I'm going to Hell, Sir," says the sick woman 
 with a whine. " Oh, Sir, save me, save me, don't let me go 
 there. I couldn't stand it, Sir, I should die with fear, the 
 very thought of it drives me into a cold sweat all over." 
 
 "Mrs Thompson," says Theobald gravely, "you must 
 have faith in the precious blood of your Redeemer ; it is He 
 alone who can save you. 
 
 66 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " But are you sure, Sir," says she, looking wistfully at him, 
 " that He will forgive me — for I've not been a very good 
 woman, indeed I haven't — and if God would only say ' Yes ' 
 outright with His mouth when I ask whether my sins are 
 forgiven me " 
 
 " But they are forgiven you, Mrs Thompson," says Theo- 
 bald with some sternness, for the same ground has been gone 
 over a good many times already, and he has borne the un- 
 happy woman's misgivings now for a full quarter of an hour. 
 Then he puts a stop to the conversation by repeating prayers 
 taken from the " Visitation of the Sick," and overawes the 
 poor wretch from expressing further anxiety as to her 
 condition. 
 
 " Can't you tell me. Sir," she exclaims piteously, as she 
 sees that he is preparing to go away, "can't you tell me that 
 there is no Day of Judgement, and that there is no such place 
 as Hell ? I can do without the Heaven, Sir, but I cannot do 
 with the Hell." Theobald is much shocked. 
 
 " Mrs Thompson," he rejoins impressively, "let me implore 
 you to suffer no doubt concerning these two corner-stones of 
 our religion to cross your mind at a moment like the present. 
 If there is one thing more certain than another it is that we 
 shall all appear before the Judgement Seat of Christ, and that 
 the wicked will be consumed in a lake of everlasting fire. 
 Doubt this, Mrs Thompson, and you are lost." 
 
 The poor woman buries her fevered head in the coverlet in 
 a paroxysm of fear which at last finds relief in tears. 
 
 " Mrs Thompson," says Theobald, with his hand on the 
 door, " compose yourself, be calm ; you must please to take 
 my word for it that at the Day of Judgement your sins will be 
 all washed white in the blood of the Lamb, Mrs Thompson. 
 Yea," he exclaims frantically, " though they be as scarlet, yet 
 shall they be as white as wool," and he makes off as fast as he 
 can from the fetid atmosphere of the cottage to the pure air 
 outside. Oh, how thankful he is when the interview is over ! 
 
 He returns home, conscious that he has done his duty, and 
 administered the comforts of religion to a dying sinner. His 
 admiring wife awaits him at the rectory, and assures him that 
 
 67 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 never yet was clergyman so devoted to the welfare of his flock. 
 He believes her ; he has a natural tendency to believe every- 
 thing that is told him, and who should know the facts of the 
 case better than his wife ? Poor fellow ! He has done his 
 best, but what does a fish's best come to when the fish is out 
 of water ? He has left meat and wine — that he can do ; he 
 will call again and will leave more meat and wine ; day after 
 day he trudges over the same plover-haunted fields, and 
 listens at the end of his walk to the same agony of fore- 
 bodings, which day after day he silences, but does not 
 remove, till at last a merciful weakness renders the sufferer 
 careless of her future, and Theobald is satisfied that her 
 mind is now peacefully at rest in Jesus. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 He does not like this branch of his profession — indeed he 
 hates it — but will not admit it to himself. The habit of not 
 admitting things to himself has become a confirmed one with 
 him. Nevertheless there haunts him an ill defined sense that 
 life would be pleasanter if there were no sick sinners, or if 
 they would at any rate face an eternity of torture with more 
 indifference. He does not feel that he is in his element. 
 The farmers look as if they were in their element. They are 
 full-bodied, healthy and contented; but between him and 
 them there is a great gulf fixed. A hard and drawn look 
 begins to settle about the corners of his mouth, so that even 
 if he were not in a black coat and white tie a child might 
 know him for a parson. 
 
 He knows that he is doing his duty. Every day convinces 
 him of this more firmly ; but then there is not much duty for 
 him to do. He is sadly in want of occupation. He has no 
 taste for any of those field sports which were not considered 
 unbecoming for a clergyman forty years ago. He does not 
 ride, nor shoot, nor fish, nor course, nor play cricket. Study, 
 to do him justice, he had never really liked, and what induce- 
 ment was there for him to study at Battersby? He reads 
 
 68 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 neither old books nor new ones. He does not interest him- 
 self in art or science or politics, but he sets his back up 
 with some promptness if any of them show any development 
 unfamiliar to himself. True, he writes his own sermons, but 
 even his wife considers that \i\'s, forte lies rather in the example 
 of his life (which is one long act of self-devotion) than in his 
 utterances from the pulpit. After breakfast he retires to his 
 study ; he cuts little bits out of the Bible and gums them with 
 exquisite neatness by the side of other little bits ; this he calls 
 making a Harmony of the Old and New Testaments. Along- 
 side the extracts he copies in the very perfection of hand- 
 writing extracts from Mede (the only man, according to 
 Theobald, who really understood the Book of Revelation), 
 Patrick, and other old divines. He works steadily at this 
 for half an hour every morning during many years, and the 
 result is doubtless valuable. After some years have gone by 
 he hears his children their lessons, and the daily oft-repeated 
 screams that issue from the study during the lesson hours 
 tell their own horrible story over the house. He has also 
 taken to collecting a hortus siccus, and through the interest of 
 his father was once mentioned in the Saturday Magazine as 
 having been the first to find a plant, whose name I have for- 
 gotten, in the neighbourhood of Battersby. This number of 
 the Saturday Magazine has been bound in red morocco, and is 
 kept upon the drawing-room table. He potters about his 
 garden ; if he hears a hen cackling he runs and tells Christina, 
 and straightway goes hunting for the egg. 
 
 When the two Miss Allabys came, as they sometimes did, to 
 stay with Christina, they said the life led by their sister and 
 brother-in-law was an idyll. Happy indeed was Christina in 
 her choice, for that she had had a choice was a fiction which 
 soon took root among them — and happy Theobald in his 
 Christina. Somehow or other Christina was always a little 
 shy of cards when her sisters were staying with her, though at 
 other times she enjoyed a game of cribbage or a rubber of 
 whist heartily enough, but her sisters knew they would never 
 be asked to Battersby again if they were to refer to that little 
 matter, and on the whole it was worth their while to be asked 
 
 69 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 to Battersby. If Theobald's temper was rather irritable he 
 did not vent it upon them. 
 
 By nature reserved, if he could have found someone to 
 cook his dinner for him, he would rather have lived in a 
 desert island than not. In his heart of hearts he held with 
 Pope that " the greatest nuisance to mankind is man " or 
 words to that effect — only that women, with the exception 
 perhaps of Christina, were worse. Yet for all this when 
 visitors called he put a better face on it than anyone who 
 was behind the scenes would have expected. 
 
 He was quick too at introducing the names of any literary 
 celebrities whom he had met at his father's house, and soon 
 estabhshed an all-round reputation which satisfied even 
 Christina herself. 
 
 Who so integer viice scelerisque purus, it was asked, as Mr 
 Pontifex of Battersby ? Who so fit to be consulted if any 
 difficulty about parish management should arise ? Who such 
 a happy mixture of the sincere uninquiring Christian and of 
 the man of the world ? For so people actually called him. 
 They said he was such an admirable man of business. 
 Certainly if he had said he would pay a sum of money at a 
 certain time, the money would be forthcoming on the ap- 
 pointed day, and this is saying a good deal for any man. 
 His constitutional timidity rendered him incapable of an 
 attempt to overreach when there was the remotest chance of 
 opposition or publicity, and his correct bearing and some- 
 what stern expression were a great protection to him against 
 being overreached. He never talked of money, and invari- 
 ably changed the subject whenever money was introduced. 
 His expression of unutterable horror at all kinds of meanness 
 was a sufficient guarantee that he was not mean himself. 
 Besides he had no business transactions save of the most 
 ordinary butcher's book and baker's book description. His 
 tastes — if he had any — were, as we have seen, simple; he 
 had ;^9oo a year and a house ; the neighbourhood was cheap, 
 and for some time he had no children to be a drag upon him. 
 Who was not to be envied, and if envied why then respected, 
 if Theobald was not enviable ? 
 
 70 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Yet I imagine that Christina was on the whole happier 
 than her husband. She had not to go and visit sick 
 parishioners, and the management of her house and the 
 keeping of her accounts afforded as much occupation as she 
 desired. Her principal duty was, as she well said, to her 
 husband — to love him, honour him, and keep him in a good 
 temper. To do her justice she fulfilled this duty to the utter- 
 most of her power. It would have been better perhaps if she 
 had not so frequently assured her husband that he was the 
 best and wisest of mankind, for no one in his little world ever 
 dreamed of telUng him anything else, and it was not long 
 before he ceased to have any doubt upon the matter. As 
 for his temper, which had become very violent at times, she 
 took care to humour it on the slightest sign of an approach- 
 ing outbreak. She had early found that this was much the 
 easiest plan. The thunder was seldom for herself. Long before 
 her marriage even she had studied his little ways, and knew 
 how to add fuel to the fire as long as the fire seemed to want 
 it, and then to damp it judiciously down, making as little 
 smoke as possible. 
 
 In money matters she was scrupulousness itself. Theo- 
 bald made her a quarterly allowance for her dress, pocket 
 money and little charities and presents. In these last items 
 she was liberal in proportion to her income; indeed she 
 dressed with great economy and gave away whatever was 
 over in presents or charity. Oh, what a comfort it was to 
 Theobald to reflect that he had a wife on whom he could rely 
 never to cost him a sixpence of unauthorised expenditure ! 
 Letting alone her absolute submission, the perfect coincidence 
 of her opinion with his own upon every subject and her constant 
 assurances to him that he was right in everything which he 
 took it into his head to say or do, what a tower of strength to 
 him was her exactness in money matters ! As years went by he 
 became as fond of his wife as it was in his nature to be of any 
 living thing, and applauded himself for having stuck to his 
 engagement — a piece of virtue of which he was now reaping 
 the reward. Even when Christina did outrun her quarterly 
 stipend by some thirty shillings or a couple of pounds, it was 
 
 71 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 always made perfectly clear to Theobald how the deficiency 
 had arisen — there had been an unusually costly evening dress 
 bought which was to last a long time, or somebody's unex- 
 pected wedding had necessitated a more handsome present 
 than the quarter's balance would quite allow : the excess of 
 expenditure was always repaid in the following quarter or 
 quarters even though it were only ten shillings at a time. 
 
 I believe, however, that after they had been married some 
 twenty years, Christina had somewhat fallen from her original 
 perfection as regards money. She had got gradually in arrear 
 during many successive quarters, till she had contracted a 
 chronic loan, a sort of domestic national debt, amounting to 
 between seven and eight pounds. Theobald at length felt 
 that a remonstrance had become imperative, and took advan- 
 tage of his silver wedding day to inform Christina that her 
 indebtedness was cancelled, and at the same time to beg that 
 she would endeavour henceforth to equahse her expenditure 
 and her income. She burst into tears of love and gratitude, 
 assured him that he was the best and most generous of men, 
 and never during the remainder of her married life was she a 
 single shilling behind hand. 
 
 Christina hated change of all sorts no less cordially than 
 her husband. She and Theobald had nearly everything in 
 this world that they could wish for ; why, then, should people 
 desire to introduce all sorts of changes of which no one could 
 foresee the end ? Religion, she was deeply convinced, had 
 long since attained its final development, nor could it enter 
 into the heart of reasonable man to conceive any faith more 
 perfect than was inculcated by the Church of England. She 
 could imagine no position more honourable than that of a 
 clergyman's wife unless mdeed it were a bishop's. Consider- 
 ing his father's influence it was not at all impossible that 
 Theobald might be a bishop some day — and then — then 
 would occur to her that one little flaw in the practice of the 
 Church of England — a flaw not indeed in its doctrine, but 
 in its policy, which she believed on the whole to be a mis- 
 taken one in this respect. I mean the fact that a bishop's 
 wife does not take the rank of her husband. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 This had been the doing of EHzabeth, who had been a bad 
 woman, of exceedingly doubtful moral character, and at heart 
 a Papist to the last. Perhaps people ought to have been 
 above mere considerations of worldly dignity, but the world 
 was as it was, and such things carried weight with them, 
 whether they ought to do so or no. Her influence as plain 
 Mrs Pontifex, wife, we will say, of the Bishop of Winchester, 
 would no doubt be considerable. Such a character as hers 
 could not fail to carry weight if she were ever in a sufficiently 
 conspicuous sphere for its influence to be widely felt ; but as 
 Lady Winchester — or the Bishopess — which would sound 
 quite nicely — who could doubt that her power for good 
 would be enhanced ? And it would be all the nicer because 
 if she had a daughter the daughter would not be a Bishopess 
 unless indeed she were to marry a Bishop too, which would 
 not be likely. 
 
 These were her thoughts upon her good days ; at other 
 times she would, to do her justice, have doubts whether she 
 was in all respects as spiritually minded as she ought to be. 
 She must press on, press on, till every enemy to her salvation 
 was surmounted and Satan himself lay bruised under her feet. 
 It occurred to her on one of these occasions that she might 
 steal a march over some of her contemporaries if she were 
 to leave off" eating black puddings, of which whenever they had 
 killed a pig she had hitherto partaken freely ; and if she were 
 also careful that no fowls were served at her table which had 
 had their necks wrung, but only such as had had their throats 
 cut and been allowed to bleed. St Paul and the Church of 
 Jerusalem had insisted upon it as necessary that even 
 Gentile converts should abstain from things strangled and 
 from blood, and they had joined this prohibition with that of 
 a vice about the abominable nature of which there could be 
 no question ; it would be well therefore to abstain in future 
 and see whether any noteworthy spiritual result ensued. She 
 did abstain, and was certain that from the day of her resolve 
 she had felt stronger, purer in heart, and in all respects more 
 spiritually minded than she had ever felt hitherto. Theobald 
 did not lay so much stress on this as she did, but as she 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 settled what he should have at dinner she could take care 
 that he got no strangled fowls ; as for black puddings, 
 happily, he had seen them made when he was a boy, and had 
 never got over his aversion for them. She wished the matter 
 were one of more general observance than it was ; this was 
 just a case in which as Lady Winchester she might have been 
 able to do what as plain Mrs Pontifex it was hopeless even 
 to attempt. 
 
 And thus this worthy couple jogged on from month to 
 month and from year to year. The reader, if he has passed 
 middle life and has a clerical connection, will probably re- 
 member scores and scores of rectors and rectors' wives who 
 differed in no material respect from Theobald and Christina. 
 Speaking from a recollection and experience extending over 
 nearly eighty years from the time when I was myself a child 
 in the nursery of a vicarage, I should say I had drawn the 
 better rather than the worse side of the life of an English 
 country parson of some fifty years ago. I admit, however, 
 that there are no such people to be found nowadays. A 
 more united or, on the whole, happier, couple could not 
 have been found in England. One grief only overshadowed 
 the early years of their married life : I mean the fact that no 
 living children were born to them. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 In the course of time this sorrow was removed. At the 
 beginning of the fifth year of her married life Christina was 
 safely delivered of a boy. This was on the sixth of Sep- 
 tember 1835. 
 
 Word was immediately sent to old Mr Pontifex, who re- 
 ceived the news with real pleasure. His son John's wife had 
 borne daughters only, and he was seriously uneasy lest there 
 should be a failure in the male line of his descendants. The 
 good news, therefore, was doubly welcome, and caused as 
 much delight at Elmhurst as dismay in Woburn Square, 
 where the John Pontifexes were then living. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Here, indeed, this freak of fortune was felt to be all the 
 more cruel on account of the impossibiUty of resenting it 
 openly; but the delighted grandfather cared nothing for 
 what the John Pontifexes might feel or not feel ; he had 
 wanted a grandson and he had got a grandson, and this 
 should be enough for everybody; and, now that Mrs Theo- 
 bald had taken to good ways, she might bring him more 
 grandsons, which would be desirable, for he should not feel 
 safe with fewer than three. 
 
 He rang the bell for the butler. 
 
 " Gelstrap," he said solemnly, " I want to go down into 
 the cellar." 
 
 Then Gelstrap preceded him with a candle, and he went 
 into the inner vault where he kept his choicest wines. 
 
 He passed many bins: there was 1803 Port, 1792 Im- 
 perial Tokay, 1800 Claret, 18 12 Sherry, these and many 
 others were passed, but it was not for them that the head of 
 the Pontifex family had gone down into his inner cellar. A 
 bin, which had appeared empty until the full light of the 
 candle had been brought to bear upon it, was now found to 
 contain a single pint bottle. This was the object of Mr 
 Pontifex's search. 
 
 Gelstrap had often pondered over this bottle. It had 
 been placed there by Mr Pontifex himself about a dozen 
 years previously, on his return from a visit to his friend the 
 celebrated traveller Dr Jones — but there was no tablet above 
 the bin which might give a clue to the nature of its contents. 
 On more than one occasion when his master had gone out 
 and left his keys accidentally behind him, as he sometimes did, 
 Gelstrap had submitted the bottle to all the tests he could 
 venture upon, but it was so carefully sealed that wisdom re- 
 mained quite shut out from that entrance at which he would 
 have welcomed her most gladly — and indeed from all other 
 entrances, for he could make out nothing at all. 
 
 And now the mystery was to be solved. But alas ! it 
 seemed as though the last chance of securing even a sip of 
 the contents was to be removed for ever, for Mr Pontifex 
 took the bottle into his own hands and held it up to the 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 light after carefully examining the seal. He smiled and left 
 the bin with the bottle in his hands. 
 
 Then came a catastrophe. He stumbled over an empty 
 hamper ; there was the sound of a fall — a smash of broken 
 glass, and in an instant the cellar floor was covered with the 
 hquid that had been preserved so carefully for so many 
 years. 
 
 With his usual presence of mind Mr Pontifex gasped out 
 a month's warning to Gelstrap. Then he got up, and stamped 
 as Theobald had done when Christina had wanted not to 
 order his dinner. 
 
 " It's water from the Jordan," he exclaimed furiously, 
 " which I have been saving for the baptism of my eldest 
 grandson. Damn you, Gelstrap, how dare you be so in- 
 fernally careless as to leave that hamper littering about the 
 cellar ? " 
 
 I wonder the water of the sacred stream did not stand 
 upright as an heap upon the cellar floor and rebuke him. 
 Gelstrap told the other servants afterwards that his master's 
 language had made his backbone curdle. 
 
 The moment, however, that he heard the word " water," 
 he saw his way again, and flew to the pantry. Before his 
 master had well noted his absence he returned with a little 
 sponge and a basin, and had begun sopping up the waters of 
 the Jordan as though they had been a common slop. 
 
 " I'll filter it. Sir," said Gelstrap meekly. " It'll come 
 quite clean." 
 
 Mr Pontifex saw hope in this suggestion, which was 
 shortly carried out by the help of a piece of blotting 
 paper and a funnel, under his own eyes. Eventually it 
 was found that half a pint was saved, and this was held to 
 be sufficient. 
 
 Then he made preparations for a visit to Battersby. He 
 ordered goodly hampers of the choicest eatables, he selected 
 a goodly hamper of choice drinkables. I say choice and 
 not choicest, for although in his first exaltation he had 
 selected some of his very best wine, yet on reflection he 
 had felt that there was moderation in all things, and as he 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 was parting with his best water from the Jordan, he would 
 only send some of his second best wine. 
 
 Before he went to Battersby he stayed a day or two 
 in London, which he now seldom did, being over seventy 
 years old, and having practically retired from business. 
 The John Pontifexes, who kept a sharp eye on him, 
 discovered to their dismay that he had had an interview 
 with his solicitors. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 For the first time in his Ufe Theobald felt that he had 
 done something right, and could look forward to meeting 
 his father without alarm. The old gentleman, indeed, had 
 written him a most cordial letter, announcing his intention 
 of standing godfather to the boy — nay, I may as well 
 give it in full, as it shows the writer at his best. It runs : 
 
 " Dear Theobald, — Your letter gave me very sincere 
 pleasure, the more so because I had made up my mind for 
 the worst ; pray accept my most hearty congratulations for 
 my daughter-in-law and for yourself. 
 
 " I have long preserved a phial of water from the Jordan 
 for the christening of my first grandson, should it please God 
 to grant me one. It was given me by my old friend Dr 
 Jones. You will agree with me that though the efficacy 
 of the sacrament does not depend upon the source of the 
 baptismal waters, yet, ceteris paribus^ there is a sentiment 
 attaching to the waters of the Jordan which should not be 
 despised. Small matters like this sometimes influence a 
 child's whole future career. 
 
 " I shall bring my own cook, and have told him to get 
 everything ready for the christening dinner. Ask as many 
 of your best neighbours as your table will hold. By the way, 
 I have told Lesueur not to get a lobster — you had better 
 drive over yourself and get one from Saltness (for Battersby 
 was only fourteen or fifteen miles from the sea coast) ; they 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 are better there, at least I think so, than anywhere else in 
 England. 
 
 " I have put your boy down for something in the event of 
 his attaining the age of twenty-one years. If your brother 
 John continues to have nothing but girls I may do more 
 later on, but I have many claims upon me, and am not as 
 well off as you may imagine. — Your affectionate father, 
 
 G. PONTIFEX." 
 
 A few days afterwards the writer of the above letter made 
 his appearance in a fly which had brought him from Gilden- 
 ham to Battersby, a distance of fourteen miles. There was 
 Lesueur, the cook, on the box with the driver, and as many 
 hampers as the fly could carry were disposed upon the roof 
 and elsewhere. Next day the John Pontifexes had to come, 
 and Eliza and Maria, as well as Alethea, who, by her own 
 special request, was godmother to the boy, for Mr Pontifex 
 had decided that they were to form a happy family party ; 
 so come they all must, and be happy they all must, or it 
 would be the worse for them. Next day the author of all this 
 hubbub was actually christened. Theobald had proposed 
 to call him George after old Mr Pontifex, but strange to say, 
 Mr Pontifex over-ruled him in favour of the name Ernest. 
 The woid " earnest " was just beginning to come into 
 fashion, and he thought the possession of such a name 
 might, like his having been baptised in water from the 
 Jordan, have a permanent effect upon the boy's character, 
 and influence him for good during the more critical periods 
 of his life. 
 
 I was asked to be his second godfather, and was rejoiced 
 to have an opportunity of meeting Alethea, whom I had not 
 seen for some few years, but with whom I had been in 
 constant correspondence. She and I had always been 
 friends from the time we had played together as children 
 onwards. When the death of her grandfather and grand- 
 mother severed her connection with Paleham my intimacy 
 with the Pontifexes was kept up by my having been at school 
 and college with Theobald, and each time I saw her I 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 admired her more and more as the best, kindest, wittiest, 
 most lovable, and, to my mind, handsomest woman whom I 
 had ever seen. None of the Pontifexes were deficient in 
 good looks ; they were a well-grown shapely family enough, 
 but Alethea was the flower of the flock even as regards 
 good looks, while in respect of all other qualities that make 
 a woman lovable, it seemed as though the stock that had 
 been intended for the three daughters, and would have been 
 about sufficient for them, had all been allotted to herself, her 
 sisters getting none, and she all. 
 
 It is impossible for me to explain how it was that she and 
 I never married. We two knew exceedingly well, and that 
 must suffice for the reader. There was the most perfect 
 sympathy and understanding between us; we knew that 
 neither of us would marry anyone else. I had asked her to 
 marry me a dozen times over ; having said this much I will 
 say no more upon a point which is in no way necessary for 
 the development of my story. For the last few years there 
 had been difficulties in the way of our meeting, and I had 
 not seen her, though, as I have said, keeping up a close 
 correspondence with her. Naturally I was over-joyed to 
 meet her again ; she was now just thirty years old, but I 
 thought she looked handsomer than ever. 
 
 Her father, of course, was the lion of the party, but seeing 
 that we were all meek and quite willing to be eaten, he 
 roared to us rather than at us. It was a fine sight to see 
 him tucking his napkin under his rosy old gills, and letting 
 it fall over his capacious waistcoat while the high light from 
 the chandelier danced about the bump of benevolence on 
 his bald old head like a star of Bethlehem. 
 
 The soup was real turtle ; the old gentleman was evidently 
 well pleased and he was beginning to come out. Gelstrap 
 stood behind his master's chair. I sat next Mrs Theobald 
 on her left hand, and was thus just opposite her father-in-law, 
 whom I had every opportunity of observing. 
 
 During the first ten minutes or so, which were taken up 
 with the soup and the bringing in of the fish, I should pro- 
 bably have thought, if I had not long since made up my 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 mind about him, what a fine old man he was and how proud 
 his children should be of him ; but suddenly as he was 
 helping himself to lobster sauce, he flushed crimson, a look 
 of extreme vexation suffused his face, and he darted two 
 furtive but fiery glances to the two ends of the table, one for 
 Theobald and one for Christina. They, poor simple souls, of 
 course saw that something was exceedingly wrong, and so 
 did I, but I couldn't guess what it was till I heard the old man 
 hiss in Christina's ear : " It was not made with a hen lobster. 
 What's the use," he continued, " of my calling the boy Ernest, 
 and getting him christened in water from the Jordan, if his own 
 father does not know a cock from a hen lobster ? " 
 
 This cut me too, for I felt that till that moment I had not 
 so much as known that there were cocks and hens among 
 lobsters, but had vaguely thought that in the matter of matri- 
 mony they were even as the angels in heaven, and grew up 
 almost spontaneously from rocks and sea-weed. 
 
 Before the next course was over Mr Pontifex had recovered 
 his temper, and from that time to the end of the evening he 
 was at his best. He told us all about the water from the 
 Jordan ; how it had been brought by Dr Jones along 
 with some stone jars of water from the Rhine, the Rhone, 
 the Elbe and the Danube, and what trouble he had had with 
 them at the Custom Houses, and how the intention had been 
 to make punch with waters from all the greatest rivers in 
 Europe; and how he, Mr Pontifex, had saved the Jordan 
 water from going into the bowl, etc., etc. " No, no, no," he 
 continued, " it wouldn't have done at all, you know ; very 
 profane idea ; so we each took a pint bottle of it home with 
 us, and the punch was much better without it. I had a narrow 
 escape with mine, though, the other day ; I fell over a 
 hamper in the cellar, when I was getting it up to bring to 
 Battersby, and if I had not taken the greatest care the bottle 
 would certainly have been broken, but I saved it." And 
 Gelstrap was standing behind his chair all the time ! 
 
 Nothing more happened to ruffle Mr Pontifex, so we had 
 a delightful evening, which has often recurred to me while 
 watching the after career of my godson. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 I called a day or two afterward^ and found Mr Pontifex 
 still at Battersby, laid up with one of those attacks of Uver 
 and depression to which he was becoming more and more 
 subject. I stayed to luncheon. The old gentleman was cross 
 and very difficult ; he could eat nothing — had no appetite at 
 all. Christina tried to coax him with a httle bit of the fleshy 
 part of a mutton chop. " How in the name of reason can I 
 be asked to eat a mutton chop ? " he exclaimed angrily ; " you 
 forget, my dear Christina, that you have to deal with a 
 stomach that is totally disorganised," and he pushed the 
 plate from him, pouting and frowning like a naughty old 
 child. Writing as I do by the light of a later knowledge, 
 I suppose I should have seen nothing in this but the world's 
 growing pains, the disturbance inseparable from transition in 
 human things. I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow 
 in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and making 
 the parent tree very uncomfortable by long growling and 
 grumbling — but surely nature might find some less irritating 
 way of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it. 
 Why should the generations overlap one another at all ? Why 
 cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or 
 twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank 
 of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to 
 find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample 
 provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows 
 some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own 
 account ? 
 
 About a year and a half afterwards the tables were turned 
 on Battersby — for Mrs John Pontifex was safely delivered of 
 a boy. A year or so later still, George Pontifex was himself 
 struck down suddenly by a fit of paralysis, much as his 
 mother had been, but he did not see the years of his mother. 
 When his will was opened, it was found that an original 
 bequest of ;j^2 0,000 to Theobald himself (over and above 
 the sum that had been settled upon him and Christina at the 
 time of his marriage) had been cut down to ;^i 7,500 when 
 Mr Pontifex left "something" to Ernest. The "something" 
 proved to be ^1^2 500, which was to accumulate in the hands 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 of trustees. The rest of the property went to John Pontifex, 
 except that each of the daughters was left with about 
 _;^i 5,000 over and above ^5000 a piece which they in- 
 herited from their mother. 
 
 Theobald's father then had told him the truth but not the 
 whole truth. Nevertheless, what right had Theobald to com- 
 plain ? Certainly it was rather hard to make him think that 
 he and his were to be gainers, and get the honour and glory 
 of the bequest, when all the time the money was virtually 
 being taken out of Theobald's own pocket. On the other 
 hand the father doubtless argued that he had never told 
 Theobald he was to have anything at all ; he had a full right 
 to do what he liked with his own money ; if Theobald chose 
 to indulge in unwarrantable expectations that was no affair of 
 his ; as it was he was providing for him liberally ; and if he 
 did take ;^2Soo of Theobald's share he was still leaving it to 
 Theobald's son, which, of course, was much the same thing in 
 the end. 
 
 No one can deny that the testator had strict right upon his 
 side ; nevertheless the reader will agree with me that Theo- 
 bald and Christina might not have considered the christening 
 dinner so great a success if all the facts had been before 
 them. Mr Pontifex had during his own life-time set up a 
 monument in Elmhurst Church to the memory of his wife (a 
 slab with urns and cherubs like illegitimate children of King 
 George the Fourth, and all the rest of it), and had left space 
 for his own epitaph underneath that of his wife. I do not 
 know whether it was written by one of his children, or 
 whether they got some friend to write it for them. I do not 
 believe that any satire was intended. I believe that it was 
 the intention to convey that nothing short of the Day of 
 Judgement could give anyone an idea how good a man Mr 
 Pontifex had been, but at first I found it hard to think that 
 it was free from guile. 
 
 The epitaph begins by giving dates of birth and 
 death ; then sets out that the deceased was for many years 
 head of the firm of Fairlie and Pontifex, and also 
 resident in the parish of Elmhurst. There is not a 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 syllable of either praise or dispraise. The last hnes run as 
 follows : — 
 
 " HE NOW LIES AWAITING A JOYFUL RESURRECTION 
 
 AT THE LAST DAY. 
 
 WHAT MANNER OF MAN HE WAS 
 
 THAT DAY WILL DISCOVER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 This much, however, we may say in the meantime, that having 
 lived to be nearly seventy-three years old and died rich he 
 must have been in very fair harmony with his surroundings. 
 I have heard it said sometimes that such and such a person's 
 life was a lie : but no man's life can be a very bad lie ; as 
 long as it continues at all it is at worst nine-tenths of it true. 
 
 Mr Pontifex's life not only continued a long time, but was 
 prosperous right up to the end. Is not this enough ? Being 
 in this world is it not our most obvious business to make the 
 most of it — to observe what things do bona fide tend to long 
 life and comfort, and to act accordingly ? All animals, except 
 man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it — 
 and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances 
 will allow. He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most ; 
 God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is 
 good for us. If Mr Pontifex is to be blamed it is for not 
 having eaten and drunk less and thus suffered less from his 
 liver, and lived perhaps a year or two longer. 
 
 Goodness is naught unless it tends towards old age and 
 sufficiency of means. I speak broadly and exceptis excipiendis. 
 So the psalmist says, "The righteous shall not lack anything 
 that is good." Either this is mere poetical license, or it 
 follows that he who lacks anything that is good is not right- 
 eous ; there is a presumption also that he who has passed a 
 long life without lacking anything that is good has himself 
 also been good enough for practical purposes. 
 
 Mr Pontifex never lacked anything he much cared about. 
 True, he might have been happier than he was if he had cared 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 about things which he did not care for, but the gist of this 
 lies in the "if he had cared." We have all sinned and 
 come short of the glory of making ourselves as comfortable 
 as we easily might have done, but in this particular case Mr 
 Pontifex did not care, and would not have gained much by 
 getting what he did not want. 
 
 There is no casting of swine's meat before men worse than 
 that which would flatter virtue as though her true origin were 
 not good enough for her, but she must have a lineage, deduced 
 as it were by spiritual heralds, from some stock with which she 
 has nothing to do. Virtue's true lineage is older and more 
 respectable than any that can be invented for her. She 
 springs from man's experience concerning his own well-being 
 — and this, though not infallible, is still the least fallible 
 thing we have. A system which cannot stand without a 
 better foundation than this must have something so unstable 
 within itself that it will topple over on whatever pedestal we 
 place it. 
 
 The world has long ago settled that morality and virtue are 
 what bring men peace at the last. " Be virtuous," says the 
 copy-book, "and you will be happy." Surely if a reputed 
 virtue fails often in this respect it is only an insidious form of 
 vice, and if a reputed vice brings no very serious mischief on 
 a man's later years it is not so bad a vice as it is said to be. 
 Unfortunately though we are all of a mind about the main 
 opinion that virtue is what tends to happiness, and vice what 
 ends in sorrow, we are not so unanimous about details — that 
 is to say as to whether any given course, such, we will say, as 
 smoking, has a tendency to happiness or the reverse. 
 
 I submit it as the result of my own poor observation, that 
 a good deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part of 
 parents towards children is not generally followed by ill 
 consequences to the parents themselves. They may cast a 
 gloom over their children's lives for many years without hav- 
 ing to suffer anything that will hurt them. I should say, then, 
 that it shows no great moral obliquity on the part of parents 
 if within certain limits they make their children's lives a 
 burden to them. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Granted that Mr Pontifex's was not a very exalted char- 
 acter, ordinary men are not required to have very exalted 
 characters. It is enough if we are of the same moral and 
 mental stature as the " main " or " mean " part of men — that 
 is to say as the average. 
 
 It is involved in the very essence of things that rich men 
 who die old shall have been mean. The greatest and wisest of 
 mankind will be almost always found to be the meanest — the 
 ones who have kept the " mean " best between excess either 
 of virtue or vice. They hardly ever have been prosperous if 
 they have not done this, and, considering how many miscarry 
 altogether, it is no small feather in a man's cap if he has been 
 no worse than his neighbours. Homer tells us about 
 some one who made it his business a'iiv dpisri-jnv x.ai 
 vTsipo^ov sfi/ji,svai a}.Xaj\/ — always to excel and to stand higher 
 than other people. What an uncompanionable disagreeable 
 person he must have been ! Homer's heroes generally came 
 to a bad end, and I doubt not that this gentleman, whoever he 
 was, did so sooner or later. 
 
 A very high standard, again, involves the possession of rare 
 virtues, and rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things 
 that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A 
 virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some 
 commoner but more durable metal. 
 
 People divide off vice and virtue as though they were two 
 things, neither of which had with it anything of the other. 
 This is not so. There is no useful virtue which has not 
 some alloy of vice, and hardly any vice, if any, which carries 
 not with it a little dash of virtue ; virtue and vice are like 
 life and death, or mind and matter — things which cannot 
 exist without being qualified by their opposite. The most 
 absolute life contains death, and the corpse is still in many 
 respects living ; so also it has been said, " If thou. Lord, 
 wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss," which 
 shows that even the highest ideal we can conceive will yet 
 admit so much compromise with vice as shall countenance 
 the poor abuses of the time, if they are not too outrageous. 
 That vice pays homage to virtue is notorious ; we call this 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 hypocrisy ; there should be a word found for the homage 
 which virtue not unfrequently pays, or at any rate would be 
 wise in paying, to vice. 
 
 I grant that some men will find happiness in having what 
 we all feel to be a higher moral standard than others. If 
 they go in for this, however, they must be content with virtue 
 as her own reward, and not grumble if they find lofty 
 Quixotism an expensive luxury, whose rewards belong to a 
 kingdom that is not of this world. They must not wonder if 
 they cut a poor figure in trying to make the most of both 
 worlds. Disbelieve as we may the details of the accounts 
 which record the growth of the Christian religion, yet a great 
 part of Christian teaching will remain as true as though we 
 accepted the details. We cannot serve God and Mammon ; 
 strait is the way and narrow is the gate which leads to what 
 those who live by faith hold to be best worth having, and 
 there is no way of saying this better than the Bible has done. 
 It is well there should be some who think thus, as it is well 
 there should be speculators in commerce, who will often burn 
 their fingers — but it is not well that the majority should 
 leave the " mean " and beaten path. 
 
 For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure — tangible 
 material prosperity in this world — is the safest test of virtue. 
 Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than 
 through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous 
 have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism. To use a 
 commercial metaphor, competition is so keen, and the 
 margin of profits has been cut down so closely that virtue 
 cannot afford to throw any bona fide chance away, and must 
 base her action rather on the actual moneying out of 
 conduct than on a flattering prospectus. She will not there- 
 fore neglect — as some do who are prudent and economical 
 enough in other matters — the important factor of our chance 
 of escaping detection, or at any rate of our dying first. A 
 reasonable virtue will give this chance its due value, neither 
 more nor less. 
 
 Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or 
 duty. For hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, 
 
 86 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 right and duty are often still harder to distinguish and, 
 if we go wrong with them, will lead us into just as sorry a 
 plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure. When 
 men burn their fingers through following after pleasure they 
 find out their mistake and get to see where they have gone 
 wrong more easily than when they have burnt them through 
 following after a fancied duty, or a fancied idea concerning 
 right virtue. The devil, in fact, when he dresses himself in 
 angel's clothes, can only be detected by experts of exceptional 
 skill, and so often does he adopt this disguise that it is hardly 
 safe to be seen talking to an angel at all, and prudent people 
 will follow after pleasure as a more homely but more respect- 
 able and on the whole much more trustworthy guide. 
 
 Returning to Mr Pontifex, over and above his having lived 
 long and prosperously, he left numerous offspring, to all of 
 whom he communicated not only his physical and mental 
 characteristics, with no more than the usual amount of modi- 
 fication, but also no small share of characteristics which are 
 less easily transmitted — I mean his pecuniary characteristics. 
 It may be said that he acquired these by sitting still and 
 letting money run, as it were, right up against him, but 
 against how many does not money run who do not take it 
 when it does, or who, even if they hold it for a little while, 
 cannot so incorporate it with themselves that it shall descend 
 through them to their offspring ? Mr Pontifex did this. He 
 kept what he may be said to have made, and money is like 
 a reputation for ability — more easily made than kept. 
 
 Take him, then, for all in all, I am not incHned to be 
 so severe upon him as my father was. Judge him according 
 to any very lofty standard, and he is nowhere. Judge him 
 according to a fair average standard, and there is not much 
 fault to be found with him. I have said what I have said in 
 the foregoing chapter once for all, and shall not break my 
 thread to repeat it. It should go without saying in modifica- 
 tion of the verdict which the reader may be inclined to pass 
 too hastily, not only upon Mr George Pontifex, but also upon 
 Theobald and Christina. And now I will continue my story. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 The birth of his son opened Theobald's eyes to a good deal 
 which he had but faintly realised hitherto. He had had no 
 idea how great a nuisance a baby was. Babies come into the 
 world so suddenly at the end, and upset everything so terribly 
 when they do come : why cannot they steal in upon us with 
 less of a shock to the domestic system ? His wife, too, did 
 not recover rapidly from her confinement; she remained an 
 invalid for months ; here was another nuisance and an ex- 
 pensive one, which interfered with the amount which Theo- 
 bald liked to put by out of his income against, as he said, a 
 rainy day, or to make provision for his family if he should 
 have one. Now he was getting a family, so that it became 
 all the more necessary to put money by, and here was the 
 baby hindering him. Theorists may say what they like about 
 a man's children being a continuation of his own identity, but 
 it will generally be found that those who talk in this way have 
 no children of their own. Practical family men know better. 
 
 About twelve months after the birth of Ernest there came 
 a second, also a boy, who was christened Joseph, and in less 
 than twelve months afterwards, a girl, to whom was given the 
 name of Charlotte. A few months before this girl was born 
 Christina paid a visit to the John Pontifexes in London, and, 
 knowing her condition, passed a good deal of time at the 
 Royal Academy exhibition looking at the types of female 
 beauty portrayed by the Academicians, for she had made up 
 her mind that the child this time was to be a girl. Alethea 
 warned her not to do this, but she persisted, and certainly 
 the child turned out plain, but whether the pictures caused 
 this or no I cannot say. 
 
 Theobald had never liked children. He had always got 
 away from them as soon as he could, and so had they from 
 him ; oh, why, he was inclined to ask himself, could not 
 children be born into the world grown up ? If Christina 
 could have given birth to a few full-grown clergymen in 
 
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 priest's orders — of moderate views, but inclining rather to 
 Evangelicalism, with comfortable livings and in all respects 
 facsimiles of Theobald himself — why, there might have been 
 more sense in it ; or if people could buy ready-made children 
 at a shop of whatever age and sex they liked, instead of 
 always having to make them at home and to begin at the 
 beginning with them — that might do better, but as it was he 
 did not like it. He felt as he had felt when he had been 
 required to come and be married to Christina — that he had 
 been going on for a long time quite nicely, and would much 
 rather continue things on their present footing. In the matter 
 of getting married he had been obliged to pretend he liked it ; 
 but times were changed, and if he did not like a thing now, he 
 could find a hundred unexceptionable ways of making his 
 dislike apparent. 
 
 It might have been better if Theobald in his younger days 
 had kicked more against his father : the fact that he had not 
 done so encouraged him to expect the most implicit obedi- 
 ence from his own children. He could trust himself, he said 
 (and so did Christina), to be more lenient than perhaps his 
 father had been to himself; his danger, he said (and so again 
 did Christina), would be rather in the direction of being too 
 indulgent; he must be on his guard against this, for no duty 
 could be more important than that of teaching a child to 
 obey its parents in all things. 
 
 He had read not long since of an Eastern traveller, who, 
 while exploring somewhere in the more remote parts of Arabia 
 and Asia Minor, had come upon a remarkably hardy, sober, 
 industrious little Christian community — all of them in the 
 best of health — who had turned out to be the actual living 
 descendants of Jonadab, the son of Rechab ; and two men 
 in European costume, indeed, but speaking English with a 
 broken accent, and by their colour evidently Oriental, had 
 come begging to Battersby soon afterwards, and represented 
 themselves as belonging to this people ; they had said they 
 were collecting funds to promote the conversion of their 
 fellow tribesmen to the English branch of the Christian 
 religion. True, they turned out to be impostors, for when he 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 gave them a pound and Christina five shillings from her 
 private purse, they went and got drunk with it in the next 
 village but one to Battersby; still, this did not invalidate 
 the story of the Eastern traveller. Then there were the 
 Romans — whose greatness was probably due to the whole- 
 some authority exercised by the head of a family over all 
 its members. Some Romans had even killed their children ; 
 this was going too far, but then the Romans were not 
 Christians, and knew no better. 
 
 The practical outcome of the foregoing was a conviction 
 in Theobald's mind, and if in his, then in Christina's, that it 
 was their duty to begin training up their children in the way 
 they should go, even from their earliest infancy. The first 
 signs of self-will must be carefully looked for, and plucked up 
 by the roots at once before they had time to grow. Theobald 
 picked up this numb serpent of a metaphor and cherished it 
 in his bosom. 
 
 Before Ernest could well crawl he v/as taught to kneel ; 
 before he could well speak he was taught to lisp the Lord's 
 prayer, and the general confession. How was it possible that 
 these things could be taught too early? If his attention 
 flagged or his memory failed him, here was an ill weed which 
 would grow apace, unless it were plucked out immediately, 
 and the only way to pluck it out was to whip him, or shut 
 him up in a cupboard, or dock him of some of the small 
 pleasures of childhood. Before he was three years old he 
 could read and, after a fashion, write. Before he was four 
 he was learning Latin, and could do rule of three sums. 
 
 As for the child himself, he was naturally of an even 
 temper, he doted upon his nurse, on kittens and puppies, 
 and on all things that would do him the kindness of allowing 
 him to be fond of them. He was fond of his mother, too, 
 but as regards his father, he has told me in later life he 
 could remember no feeling but fear and shrinking. Christina 
 did not remonstrate with Theobald concerning the severity 
 of the tasks imposed upon their boy, nor yet as to the 
 continual whippings that were found necessary at lesson 
 times. Indeed, when during any absence of Theobald's the 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 lessons were entrusted to her, she found to her sorrow that 
 it was the only thing to do, and she did it no less effectually 
 than Theobald himself, nevertheless she was fond of her boy, 
 which Theobald never was, and it was long before she could 
 destroy all affection for herself in the mind of her first-born. 
 But she persevered. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Strange ! for she believed she doted upon him, and 
 certainly she loved him better than either of her other 
 children. Her version of the matter was that there had 
 never yet been two parents so self-denying and devoted to 
 the highest welfare of their children as Theobald and herself. 
 For Ernest, a very great future — she was certain of it — was 
 in store. This made severity all the more necessary, so that 
 from the first he might have been kept pure from every taint 
 of evil. She could not allow herself the scope for castle 
 building which, we read, was indulged in by every Jewish 
 matron before the appearance of the Messiah, for the Messiah 
 had now come, but there was to be a millennium shortly, 
 certainly not later than 1866, when Ernest would be just 
 about the right age for it, and a modern Elias would be 
 wanted to herald its approach. Heaven would bear her 
 witness that she had never shrunk from the idea of martyr- 
 dom for herself and Theobald, nor would she avoid it for 
 her boy, if his life was required of her in her Redeemer's 
 service. Oh, no ! If God told her to offer up her first-born, 
 as He had told Abraham, she would take him up to Pigbury 
 Beacon and plunge the — no, that she could not do, but it 
 would be unnecessary — some one else might do that. It was 
 not for nothing that Ernest had been baptised in water from 
 the Jordan. It had not been her doing, nor yet Theobald's. 
 They had not sought it. When water from the sacred stream 
 was wanted for a sacred infant, the channel had been found 
 through which it was to flow from far Palestine over land and 
 sea to the door of the house where the child was lying. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Why, it was a miracle ! It was ! It was ! She saw it all 
 now. The Jordan had left its bed and flowed into her own 
 house. It was idle to say that this was not a miracle. No 
 miracle was effected without means of some kind ; the 
 difference between the faithful and the unbeliever consisted 
 in the very fact that the former could see a miracle where 
 the latter could not. The Jews could see no miracle even 
 in the raising of Lazarus and the feeding of the five thousand. 
 The John Pontifexes would see no miracle in this matter of 
 the water from the Jordan. The essence of a miracle lay 
 not in the fact that means had been dispensed with, but in 
 the adoption of means to a great end that had not been 
 available without interference ; and no one would suppose 
 that Dr Jones would have brought the water unless he 
 had been directed. She would tell this to Theobald, 
 and get him to see it in the . . . and yet perhaps 
 it would be better not. The insight of women upon 
 matters of this sort was deeper and more unerring than 
 that of men. It was a woman and not a man who had 
 been filled most completely with the whole fulness of the 
 Deity. But why had they not treasured up the water after it 
 was used ? It ought never, never to have been thrown away, 
 but it had been. Perhaps, however, this was for the best too 
 — they might have been tempted to set too much store by it, 
 and it might have become a source of spiritual danger to 
 them — perhaps even of spiritual pride, the very sin of all 
 others which she most abhorred. As for the channel through 
 which the Jordan had flowed to Battersby, that mattered not 
 more than the earth through which the river ran in Palestine 
 itself. Dr Jones was certainly worldly — very worldly; so, 
 she regretted to feel, had been her father-in-law, though in a 
 less degree ; spiritual, at heart, doubtless, and becoming more 
 and more spiritual continually as he grew older, still he was 
 tainted with the world, till a very few hours, probably, before 
 his death, whereas she and Theobald had given up all for 
 Christ's sake. They were not worldly. At least Theobald 
 was not. She had been, but she was sure she had grown in 
 grace since she had left off eating things strangled and blood 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 — this was as the washing in Jordan as against Abana and 
 Pharpar, rivers of Damascus. Her boy should never touch 
 a strangled fowl nor a black pudding — that, at any rate, she 
 could see to. He should have a coral from the neighbour- 
 hood of Joppa — there were coral insects on those coasts, so 
 that the thing could easily be done with a little energy ; she 
 would write to Dr Jones about it, etc. And so on for hours 
 together day after day for years. Truly, Mrs Theobald loved 
 her child according to her lights with an exceeding great 
 fondness, but the dreams she had dreamed in sleep were 
 sober realities in comparison with those she indulged in while 
 awake. 
 
 When Ernest was in his second year, Theobald, as I have 
 already said, began to teach him to read. He began to whip 
 him two days after he had begun to teach him. 
 
 " It was painful," as he said to Christina, but it was the 
 only thing to do and it was done. The child was puny, 
 white and sickly, so they sent continually for the doctor who 
 dosed him with calomel and James's powder. All was done 
 in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity and impatience. They 
 were stupid in little things ; and he that is stupid in little will 
 be stupid also in much. 
 
 Presently old Mr Pontifex died, and then came the revela- 
 tion of the little alteration he had made in his will 
 simultaneously with his bequest to Ernest. It was rather 
 hard to bear, especially as there was no way of conveying a 
 bit of their minds to the testator now that he could no longer 
 hurt them. As regards the boy himself anyone must see 
 that the bequest would be an unmitigated misfortune to him. 
 To leave him a small independence was perhaps the greatest 
 injury which one could inflict upon a young man. It would 
 cripple his energies, and deaden his desire for active employ- 
 ment. Many a youth was led into evil courses by the 
 knowledge that on arriving at majority he would come into a 
 few thousands. They might surely have been trusted to have 
 their boy's interests at heart, and must be better judges of 
 those interests than he, at twenty-one, could be expected to 
 be: besides if Jonadab, the son of Rechab's father — or per- 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 haps it might be simpler under the circumstances to say 
 Rechab at once — if Rechab, then, had left handsome 
 legacies to his grandchildren — why Jonadab might not have 
 found those children so easy to deal with, etc. " My dear," 
 said Theobald, after having discussed the matter with Chris- 
 tina for the twentieth time, " my dear, the only thing to 
 guide and console us under misfortunes of this kind is to 
 take refuge in practical work. I will go and pay a visit to 
 Mrs Thompson." 
 
 On those days Mrs Thompson would be told that her sins 
 were all washed white, etc., a little sooner and a little more 
 peremptorily than on others. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 I USED to stay at Battersby for a day or two sometimes, while 
 my godson and his brother and sister were children. I hardly 
 know why I went, for Theobald and I grew more and more 
 apart, but one gets into grooves sometimes, and the supposed 
 friendship between myself and the Pontifexes continued to 
 exist, though it was now little more than rudimentary. My 
 godson pleased me more than either of the other children, 
 but he had not much of the buoyancy of childhood, and was 
 more like a puny, sallow little old man than I liked. The 
 young people, however, were very ready to be friendly. 
 
 I remember Ernest and his brother hovered round me on 
 the first day of one of these visits with their hands full of 
 fading flowers, which they at length proferred me. On this 
 I did what I suppose was expected : I inquired if there 
 was a shop near where they could buy sweeties. They said 
 there was, so I felt in my pockets, but only succeeded in 
 finding two pence halfpenny in small money. This I gave 
 them, and the youngsters, aged four and three, toddled off 
 alone. Ere long they returned, and Ernest said, ** We can't 
 get sweeties for all this money" (I felt rebuked, but no 
 rebuke was intended) ; " we can get sweeties for this " (show- 
 ing a penny), " and for this" (showing another penny), "but 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 we cannot get them for all this," and he added the halfpenny 
 to the twopence. I suppose they had wanted a twopenny 
 cake, or something like that. I was amused, and left them 
 to solve the difficulty their own way, being anxious to see 
 what they would do. 
 
 Presently Ernest said, " May we give you back this " 
 (showing the halfpenny) " and not give you back this and 
 this ? " (showing the pence). I assented, and they gave a 
 sigh of relief and went on their way rejoicing. A few more 
 presents of pence and small toys completed the conquest, 
 and they then began to take me into their confidence. 
 
 They told me a good deal which I am afraid I ought not 
 to have listened to. They said that if grandpapa had lived 
 longer he would most hkely have been made a Lord, and that 
 then papa would have been the Honourable and Reverend, but 
 that grandpapa was now in heaven singing beautiful hymns 
 with grandmamma Allaby to Jesus Christ, who was very fond 
 of them ; and that when Ernest was ill, his mamma had told 
 him he need not be afraid of dying, for he would go straight 
 to Heaven, if he would only be sorry for having done his 
 lessons so badly and vexed his dear papa, and if he would 
 promise never, never to vex him any more; and that when 
 he got to heaven grandpapa and grandmamma Allaby would 
 meet him, and he would be always with them, and they 
 would be very good to him and teach him to sing ever such 
 beautiful hymns, more beautiful by far than those which he 
 was now so fond of, etc., etc. ; but he did not wish to die, 
 and was glad when he got better, for there were no kittens 
 in heaven, and he did not think there were cowslips to make 
 cowslip tea with. 
 
 Their mother was plainly disappointed in them. " My 
 children are none of them geniuses, Mr Overton," she 
 said to me at breakfast one morning. " They have fair 
 abilities, and, thanks to Theobald's tuition, they are for- 
 ward for their years, but they have nothing like genius : 
 genius is a thing apart from this, is it not?" 
 
 Of course I said it was "a thing quite apart from this," but 
 if my thoughts had been laid bare, they would have appeared 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 as " Give me my coffee immediately, ma'am, and don't talk 
 nonsense." I have no idea what genius is, but so far as I 
 can form any conception about it, I should say it was a 
 stupid word which cannot be too soon abandoned to 
 scientific and literary claqueurs. 
 
 I do not know exactly what Christina expected, but I 
 should imagine it was something like this : " My children 
 ought to be all geniuses, because they are mine and Theo- 
 bald's, and it is naughty of them not to be ; but, of course, 
 they cannot be so good and clever as Theobald and I were, 
 and if they show signs of being so it will be naughty of them. 
 Happily, however, they are not this, and yet it is very dread- 
 ful that they are not. As for genius — hoity-toity, indeed — 
 why, a genius should turn intellectual summersaults as soon 
 as it is born, and none of my children have yet been able to 
 get into the newspapers. I will not have children of mine 
 give themselves airs — it is enough for them that Theobald 
 and I should do so." 
 
 She did not know, poor woman, that the true greatness 
 wears an invisible cloak, under cover of which it goes in and 
 out among men without being suspected ; if its cloak does 
 not conceal it from itself always, and from all others for 
 many years, its greatness will ere long shrink to very ordinary 
 dimensions. What, then, it may be asked, is the good of 
 being great ? The answer is that you may understand great- 
 ness better in others, whether alive or dead, and choose 
 better company from these and enjoy and understand that 
 company better when you have chosen it — also that you may 
 be able to give pleasure to the best people and live in the 
 lives of those who are yet unborn. This, one would think, 
 was substantial gain enough for greatness without its wanting 
 to ride rough-shod over us, even when disguised as humility. 
 
 I was there on a Sunday, and observed the rigour with 
 which the young people were taught to observe the Sabbath ; 
 they might not cut out things, nor use their paint-box on a 
 Sunday, and this they thought rather hard, because their 
 cousins the John Pontifexes might do these things. Their 
 cousins might play with their toy train on Sunday, but though 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 they had promised that they would run none but Sunday 
 trains, all traffic had been prohibited. One treat only was 
 allowed them — on Sunday evenings they might choose their 
 own hymns. 
 
 In the course of the evening they came into the drawing- 
 room, and, as an especial treat, were to sing some of their 
 hymns to me, instead of saying them, so that I might hear 
 how nicely they sang. Ernest was to choose the first hymn, 
 and he chose one about some people who were to come to 
 the sunset tree. I am no botanist, and do not know what 
 kind of a tree a sunset tree is, but the words began, " Come, 
 come, come ; come to the sunset tree for the day is past and 
 gone." The tune was rather pretty and had taken Ernest's 
 fancy, for he was unusually fond of music and had a sweet 
 little child's voice which he liked using. 
 
 He was, however, very late in being able to sound a hard 
 " c " or " k," and, instead of saying " Come," he said " Tum, 
 turn, tum." 
 
 " Ernest," said Theobald, from the arm-chair in front of 
 the fire, where he was sitting with his hands folded before 
 him, " don't you think it would be very nice if you were to 
 say ' come ' like other people, instead of ' tum ' ? " 
 
 " I do say tum," repHed Ernest, meaning that he had said 
 " come." 
 
 Theobald was always in a bad temper on Sunday evening. 
 Whether it is that they are as much bored with the day as 
 their neighbours, or whether they are tired, or whatever the 
 cause may be, clergymen are seldom at their best on Sunday 
 evening ; I had already seen signs that evening that my host 
 was cross, and was a little nervous at hearing Ernest say so 
 promptly " I do say tum," when his papa had said he did 
 not say it as he should. 
 
 Theobald noticed the fact that he was being contradicted 
 in a moment. He got up from his arm-chair and went to 
 the piano. 
 
 " No, Ernest, you don't," he said, " you say nothing of 
 the kind, you say ' tum,' not ' come.' Now say ' come ' after 
 me, as I do." 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " Turn," said Ernest, at once ; " is that better ? " I have 
 no doubt he thought it was, but it was not. 
 
 " Now, Ernest, you are not taking pains : you are not trying 
 as you ought to do. It is high time you learned to say 
 * come ' ; why, Joey can say ' come,' can't you, Joey? " 
 
 " Yeth, I can," repHed Joey, and he said something which 
 was not far off " come." 
 
 "There, Ernest, do you hear that? There's no difficulty 
 about it, nor shadow of difficulty. Now, take your own time, 
 think about it, and say ' come ' after me." 
 
 The boy remained silent a few seconds and then said 
 " turn " again. 
 
 I laughed, but Theobald turned to me impatiently and 
 said, " Please do not laugh, Overton ; it will make the boy 
 think it does not matter, and it matters a great deal ; " then 
 turning to Ernest he said, " Now, Ernest, I will give you one 
 more chance, and if you don't say ' come,' I shall know that 
 you are self-willed and naughty." 
 
 He looked very angry, and a shade came over Ernest's 
 face, like that which comes upon the face of a puppy when it 
 is being scolded without understanding why. The child saw 
 well what was coming now, was frightened, and, of course, 
 said " tum " once more. 
 
 " Very well, Ernest," said his father, catching him angrily 
 by the shoulder. " I have done my best to save you, but if 
 you will have it so, you will," and he lugged the little wretch, 
 crying by anticipation, out of the room. A few minutes 
 more and we could hear screams coming from the dining- 
 room, across the hall which separated the drawing-room 
 from the dining-room, and knew that poor Ernest was being 
 beaten. 
 
 " I have sent him up to bed," said Theobald, as he 
 returned to the drawing-room, " and now, Christina, I think 
 we will have the servants in to prayers,'' and he rang the bell 
 for them, red-handed as he was. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The man-servant William came and set the chairs for the 
 maids, and presently they filed in. First Christina's maid, 
 then the cook, then the housemaid, then William, and then 
 the coachman. I sat opposite them, and watched their faces 
 as Theobald read a chapter from the Bible. They were nice 
 people, but more absolute vacancy I never saw upon the 
 countenances of human beings. 
 
 Theobald began by reading a few verses from the Old 
 Testament, according to some system of his own. On this 
 occasion the passage came from the fifteenth chapter of 
 Numbers : it had no particular bearing that I could see upon 
 anything which was going on just then, but the spirit which 
 breathed throughout the whole seemed to me to be so like 
 that of Theobald himself, that I could understand better 
 after hearing it, how he came to think as he thought, and act 
 as he acted. 
 
 The verses are as follows — 
 
 " But the soul that doeth aught presumptuously, whether he be bom in 
 the land or a stranger, the same reproacheth the Lord ; and that soul shall 
 be cut off from among his people. 
 
 " Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken 
 His commandments, that soul shall be utterly cut off ; his iniquity shall 
 be upon him. 
 
 ' ' And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness they found a 
 man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. 
 
 " And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses 
 and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. 
 
 " And they put him in ward because it was not declared what should 
 be done to him. 
 
 " And the Lord said unto Moses, the man shall be surely put to death ; 
 all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. 
 
 " And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned 
 him with stones, and he died ; as the Lord commanded Moses. 
 
 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 
 
 " Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them 
 
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 fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, 
 and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue. 
 
 "And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it and 
 remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them, and that ye 
 seek not after your own heart and your own eyes. 
 
 " That ye may remember and do all my commandments and be holy 
 unto your God. 
 
 " I am the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt, 
 to be your God : I am the Lord your God." 
 
 My thoughts wandered while Theobald was reading the 
 above, and reverted to a little matter which I had observed 
 in the course of the afternoon. 
 
 It happened that some years previously, a swarm of bees 
 had taken up their abode in the roof of the house under the 
 slates, and had multiplied so that the drawing-room was a 
 good deal frequented by these bees during the summer, 
 when the windows were open. The drawing-room paper was 
 of a pattern which consisted of bunches of red and white 
 roses, and I saw several bees at different times fly up to 
 these bunches and try them, under the impression that they 
 were real flowers ; having tried one bunch, they tried the 
 next, and the next, and the next, till they reached the one 
 that was nearest the ceiling, then they went down bunch by 
 bunch as they had ascended, till they were stopped by the 
 back of the sofa ; on this they ascended bunch by bunch to 
 the ceiling again ; and so on, and so on till I was tired of 
 watching them. As I thought of the family prayers being 
 repeated night and morning, week by week, month by month, 
 and year by year, I could not help thinking how like it was 
 to the way in which the bees went up the wall and down the 
 wall, bunch by bunch, without ever suspecting that so many 
 of the associated ideas could be present, and yet the main 
 idea be wanting hopelessly, and for ever. 
 
 When Theobald had finished reading we all knelt down 
 and the Carlo Dolci and the Sassoferrato looked down upon 
 a sea of upturned backs, as we buried our faces in our 
 chairs. I noted that Theobald prayed that we might be 
 made " truly honest and conscientious " in all our dealings, 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 and smiled at the introduction of the "truly." Then my 
 thoughts ran back to the bees and I reflected that after all it 
 was perhaps as well at any rate for Theobald that our prayers 
 were seldom marked by any very encouraging degree of 
 response, for if I had thought there was the slightest chance 
 of my being heard I should have prayed that some one might 
 ere long treat him as he had treated Ernest. 
 
 Then my thoughts wandered on to those calculations which 
 people make about waste of time and how much one can get 
 done if one gives ten minutes a day to it, and I was thinking 
 what improper suggestion I could make in connection with 
 this and the time spent on family prayers which should at the 
 same time be just tolerable, when I heard Theobald begin- 
 ning " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ " and in a few 
 seconds the ceremony was over, and the servants filed out 
 again as they had filed in. 
 
 As soon as they had left the drawing-room, Christina, who 
 was a little ashamed of the transaction to which I had been 
 a witness, imprudently returned to it, and began to justify it, 
 saying that it cut her to the heart, and that it cut Theobald 
 to the heart and a good deal more, but that ** it was the only 
 thing to be done." 
 
 I received this as coldly as I decently could, and by my 
 silence during the rest of the evening showed that I dis- 
 approved of what I had seen. 
 
 Next day I was to go back to London, but before I went I 
 said I should like to take some new-laid eggs back with me, 
 so Theobald took me to the house of a labourer in the village 
 who lived a stone's throw from the rectory as being likely to 
 supply me with them. Ernest, for some reason or other, was 
 allowed to come too. I think the hens had begun to sit, but 
 at any rate eggs were scarce, and the cottager's wife could 
 not find me more than seven or eight, which we proceeded 
 to wrap up in separate pieces of paper so that I might take 
 them to town safely. 
 
 This operation was carried on upon the ground in front 
 of the cottage door, and while we were in the midst of 
 it the cottager's little boy, a lad much about Ernest's age 
 
 lOI 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 trod upon one of the eggs that was wrapped up in paper and 
 broke it. 
 
 "There now, Jack," said his mother, "see what you've 
 done, you've broken a nice egg and cost me a penny — Here, 
 Emma," she added, calling her daughter, "take the child 
 away, there's a dear." 
 
 Emma came at once, and walked off with the youngster, 
 taking him out of harm's way. 
 
 " Papa," said Ernest, after we had left the house, " Why 
 didn't Mrs Heaton whip Jack when he trod on the egg ? " 
 
 I was spiteful enough to give Theobald a grim smile which 
 said as plainly as words could have done that I thought 
 Ernest had hit him rather hard. 
 
 Theobald coloured and looked angry. " I dare say," he 
 said quickly, "that his mother will whip him now that we 
 are gone." 
 
 I was not going to have this and said I did not believe 
 it, and so the matter dropped, but Theobald did not forget 
 it and my visits to Battersby were henceforth less frequent. 
 
 On our return to the house we found the postman had 
 arrived and had brought a letter appointing Theobald to a 
 rural deanery which had lately fallen vacant by the death 
 of one of the neighbouring clergy who had held the office 
 for many years. The bishop wrote to Theobald most 
 warmly, and assured him that he valued him as among the 
 most hard-working and devoted of his parochial clergy. 
 Christina of course was delighted, and gave me to under- 
 stand that it was only an instalment of the much higher 
 dignities which were in store for Theobald when his merits 
 were more widely known. 
 
 I did not then foresee how closely my godson's life and 
 mine were in after years to be bound up together; if I 
 had, I should doubtless have looked upon him with 
 different eyes and noted much to which I paid no attention 
 at the time. As it was, I was glad to get away from him, 
 for I could do nothing for him, or chose to say that I 
 could not, and the sight of so much suffering was painful 
 to me. A man should not only have his own way as far 
 
 I02 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 as possible, but he should only consort with things that 
 are getting their own way so far that they are at any rate 
 comfortable. Unless for short times under exceptional 
 circumstances, he should not even see things that have 
 been stunted or starved, much less should he eat meat 
 that has been vexed by having been over-driven or under- 
 fed, or afflicted with any disease ; nor should he touch 
 vegetables that have not been well grown. For all these 
 things cross a man ; whatever a man comes in contact 
 with in any way forms a cross with him which will leave 
 him better or worse, and the better things he is crossed 
 with the more likely he is to live long and happily. All 
 things must be crossed a little or they would cease to live 
 — but holy things, such for example as Giovanni Bellini's 
 saints, have been crossed with nothing but what is good 
 of its kind. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 The storm which I have described in the previous chapter 
 was a sample of those that occurred daily for many years. 
 No matter how clear the sky, it was always liable to cloud 
 over now in one quarter now in another, and the thunder 
 and lightning were upon the young people before they knew 
 where they were. 
 
 "And then, you know," said Ernest to me, when I asked 
 him not long since to give me more of his childish 
 reminiscences for the benefit of my story, " we used to learn 
 Mrs Barbauld's hymns ; they were in prose, and there was 
 one about the lion which began, ' Come, and I will show you 
 what is strong. The lion is strong ; when he raiseth himself 
 from his lair, when he shaketh his mane, when the voice of 
 his roaring is heard the cattle of the field fly, and the beasts 
 of the desert hide themselves, for he is very terrible.' I used 
 to say this to Joey and Charlotte about my father himself 
 when I got a little older, but they were always didactic, and 
 said it was naughty of me. 
 
 103 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " One great reason why clergymen's households are gener- 
 ally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or 
 close about the house. The doctor is out visiting patients 
 half his time : the lawyer and the merchant have offices away 
 from home, but the clergyman has no official place of business 
 which shall ensure his being away from home for many hours 
 together at stated times. Our great days were when my 
 father went for a day's shopping to Gildenham. We were 
 some miles from this place, and commissions used to accumu- 
 late on my father's list till he would make a day of it and 
 go and do the lot. As soon as his back was turned the air 
 felt lighter ; as soon as the hall door opened to let him in 
 again, the law with its all-reaching ' touch not, taste not, 
 handle not ' was upon us again. The worst of it was that I 
 could never trust Joey and Charlotte ; they would go a good 
 way with me and then turn back, or even the whole way and 
 then their consciences would compel them to tell papa and 
 mamma. They liked running with the hare up to a certain 
 point, but their instinct was towards the hounds. 
 
 " It seems to me," he continued, " that the family is a sur- 
 vival of the principle which is more logically embodied in the 
 compound animal — and the compound animal is a form of life 
 which has been found incompatible with high development. 
 I would do with the family among mankind what nature has 
 done with the compound animal, and confine it to the lower 
 and less progressive races. Certainly there is no inherent 
 love for the family system on the part of nature herself. Poll 
 the forms of life and you will find it in a ridiculously small 
 minority. The fishes know it not, and they get along quite 
 nicely. The ants and the bees, who far outnumber man, sting 
 their fathers to death as a matter of course, and are given to 
 the atrocious mutilation of nine-tenths of the offspring com- 
 mitted to their charge, yet where shall we find communities 
 more universally respected? Take the cuckoo again — is 
 there any bird which we like better?" 
 
 I saw he was running off from his own reminiscences and 
 tried to bring him back to them, but it was no use. 
 
 "What a fool," he said, "a man is to remember anything 
 104 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that happened more than a week ago unless it was pleasant, or 
 unless he wants to make some use of it." 
 
 " Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done 
 during their own lifetime. A man at five and thirty should 
 no more regret not having had a happier childhood than he 
 should regret not having been born a prince of the blood. 
 He might be happier if he had been more fortunate in child- 
 hood, but, for aught he knows, if he had, something else 
 might have happened which might have killed him long ago. 
 If I had to be born again I would be born at Battersby of the 
 same father and mother as before, and I would not alter any- 
 thing that has ever happened to me." 
 
 The most amusing incident that I can remember about 
 his childhood was that when he was about seven years old he 
 told me he was going to have a natural child. I asked him 
 his reasons for thinking this, and he explained that papa and 
 mamma had always told him that nobody had children till 
 they were married, and as long as he had believed this of 
 course he had had no idea of having a child, till he was 
 grown up ; but not long since he had been reading Mrs 
 Markham's history of England and had come upon the words 
 " John of Gaunt had several natural children " he had there- 
 fore asked his governess what a natural child was — were not 
 all children natural ? 
 
 " Oh, my dear," said she, " a natural child is a child a 
 person has before he is married." On this it seemed to fol- 
 low logically that if John of Gaunt had had children before 
 he was married, he, Ernest Pontifex, might have them also, 
 and he would be obliged to me if I would tell him what he 
 had better do under the circumstances. 
 
 I enquired how long ago he had made this discovery. He 
 said about a fortnight, and he did not know where to look for 
 the child, for it might come at any moment. " You know," 
 he said, " babies come so suddenly ; one goes to bed one 
 night and next morning there is a baby. Why, it might die 
 of cold if we are not on the look-out for it. I hope it will be 
 a boy." 
 
 " And you have told your governess about this ? " 
 105 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " Yes, but she puts me off and does not help me : 
 she says it will not come for many years, and she hopes not 
 then." 
 
 " Are you quite sure that you have not made any mistake 
 in all this ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ; because Mrs Burne, you know, called here a 
 few days ago, and I was sent for to be looked at. And 
 mamma held me out at arm's length and said, ' Is he Mr 
 Pontifex's child, Mrs Burne, or is he mine ? ' Of course, she 
 couldn't have said this if papa had not had some of the chil- 
 dren himself. I did think the gentleman had all the boys 
 and the lady all the girls, but it can't be like this, or else 
 mamma would not have asked Mrs Burne to guess ; but then 
 Mrs Burne said, ' Oh, he's Mr Pontifex's child of course,' 
 and I didn't quite know what she meant by saying * of 
 course': it seemed as though I was right in thinking that 
 the husband has all the boys and the wife all the girls ; I 
 wish you would explain to me all about it." 
 
 This I could hardly do, so I changed the conversation, 
 after reassuring him as best I could. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Three or four years after the birth of her daughter, Chris- 
 tina had had one more child. She had never been strong 
 since she married, and had a presentiment that she should 
 not survive this last confinement. She accordingly wrote 
 the following letter, which was to be given, as she endorsed 
 upon it, to her sons when Ernest was sixteen years old. It 
 reached him on his mother's death many years later, for 
 it was the baby who died now, and not Christina. It was 
 found among papers which she had repeatedly and carefully 
 arranged, with the seal already broken. This, I am afraid, 
 shows that Christina had read it and thought it too creditable 
 to be destroyed when the occasion that had called it forth had 
 gone by. It is as follows — 
 
 io6 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "Battersby, March ie,th, 1841. 
 " My two dear boys, — When this is put into your hands 
 will you try to bring to mind the mother whom you lost in 
 your childhood, and whom, I fear, you will almost have for- 
 gotten? You, Ernest, will remember her best, for you are past 
 five years old, and the many, many times that she has taught 
 you your prayers and hymns and sums and told you stories, 
 and our happy Sunday evenings will not quite have passed 
 from your mind, and you, Joey, though only four, will per- 
 haps recollect some of these things. My dear, dear boys, for 
 the sake of that mother who loved you very dearly — and for 
 the sake of your own happiness for ever and ever — attend to 
 and try to remember, and from time to time read over again 
 the last words she can ever speak to you. When I think 
 about leaving you all, two things press heavily upon me : 
 one, your father's sorrow (for you, my darUngs, after missing 
 me a little while, will soon forget your loss), the other, the 
 everlasting welfare of my children. I know how long and 
 deep the former will be, and I know that he will look to his 
 children to be almost his only earthly comfort. You know 
 (for I am certain that it will have been so), how he has devoted 
 his life to you and taught you and laboured to lead you to 
 all that is right and good. Oh, then, be sure that you are 
 his comforts. Let him find you obedient, affectionate and 
 attentive to his wishes, upright, self-denying and diligent ; 
 let him never blush for or grieve over the sins and follies of 
 those who owe him such a debt of gratitude, and whose first 
 duty it is to study his happiness. You have both of you a 
 name which must not be disgraced, a father and a grandfather 
 of whom to show yourselves worthy ; your respectability and 
 well-doing in life rest mainly with yourselves, but far, far 
 beyond earthly respectability and well-doing, and compared 
 with which they are as nothing, your eternal happiness rests 
 with yourselves. You know your duty, but snares and 
 temptations from without beset you, and the nearer you 
 approach to manhood the more strongly will you feel this. 
 With God's help, with God's word, and with humble hearts 
 you will stand in spite of everything, but should you leave off 
 
 107 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 seeking in earnest for the first, and applying to the second, 
 should you learn to trust in yourselves, or to the advice and 
 example of too many around you, you will, you must fall. 
 Oh, ' let God be true and every man a liar.' He says you 
 cannot serve Him and Mammon. He says that strait is the 
 gate that leads to eternal life. Many there are who seek to 
 widen it ; they will tell you that such and such self-indul- 
 gences are but venial offences — that this and that worldly 
 compliance is excusable and even necessary. The thing 
 catmot be; for in a hundred and a hundred places He tells 
 you so — look to your Bibles and seek there whether such 
 counsel is true — and if not, oh, ' halt not between two 
 opinions,' if God is the Lord follow Him; only be strong 
 and of a good courage, and He will never leave you nor 
 forsake you. Remember, there is not in the Bible one law 
 for the rich, and one for the poor — one for the educated and 
 one for the ignorant. To all there is but one thing needful. 
 All are to be living to God and their fellow-creatures, and 
 not to themselves. All must seek first the Kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness — must deny themselves^ be pure and 
 chaste and charitable in the fullest and widest sense — 
 all, ' forgetting those things that are behind,' must ' press 
 forward towards the mark, for the prize of the high calling 
 of God.' 
 
 " And now I will add but two things more. Be true 
 through life to each other, love as only brothers should do, 
 strengthen, warn, encourage one another, and let who will be 
 against you, let each feel that in his brother he has a firm 
 and faithful friend who will be so to the end ; and, oh ! be 
 kind and watchful over your dear sister ; without mother or 
 sisters she will doubly need her brothers' love and tenderness 
 and confidence. I am certain she will seek them, and will 
 love you and try to make you happy ; be sure then that you 
 do not fail her, and remember, that were she to lose her father 
 and remain unmarried, she would doubly need protectors. 
 To you, then, I especially commend her. Oh ! my three 
 darling children, be true to each other, your Father, and your 
 God. May He guide and bless you, and grant that in a 
 
 io8 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 better and happier world I and mine may meet again. — Your 
 most affectionate mother, Christina Pontifex." 
 
 From enquiries I have made, I have satisfied myself that 
 most mothers write letters like this shortly before their 
 confinements, and that fifty per cent, keep them afterwards, 
 as Christina did. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 The foregoing letter shows how much greater was Christina's 
 anxiety for the eternal than for the temporal welfare of her 
 sons. One would have thought she had sowed enough of 
 such religious wild oats by this time, but she had plenty still 
 to sow. To me it seems that those who are happy in this 
 world are better and more lovable people than those who 
 are not, and that thus in the event of a Resurrection and 
 Day of Judgement, they will be the most likely to be deemed 
 worthy of a heavenly mansion. Perhaps a dim unconscious 
 perception of this was the reason why Christina was so 
 anxious for Theobald's earthly happiness, or was it merely 
 due to a conviction that his eternal welfare was so much a 
 matter of course, that it only remained to secure his earthly 
 happiness ? He was to " find his sons obedient, affectionate, 
 attentive to his wishes, self-denying and diligent," a goodly 
 string forsooth of all the virtues most convenient to parents ; 
 he was never to have to blush for the follies of those " who 
 owed him such a debt of gratitude," and " whose first duty it 
 was to study his happiness." How like maternal solicitude 
 is this ! Solicitude for the most part lest the offspring should 
 come to have wishes and feelings of its own, which may 
 occasion many difficulties, fancied or real. It is this that is 
 at the bottom of the whole mischief; but whether this last 
 proposition is granted or no, at any rate we observe that 
 Christina had a sufficiently keen appreciation of the duties of 
 children towards their parents, and felt the task of fulfilling 
 them adequately to be so difficult that she was very doubtful 
 
 109 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 how far Ernest and Joey would succeed in mastering it. It is 
 plain in fact that her supposed parting glance upon them was 
 one of suspicion. But there was no suspicion of Theobald ; 
 that he should have devoted his life to his children — why this 
 was such a mere platitude, as almost to go without saying. 
 
 How, let me ask, was it possible that a child only a little 
 past five years old, trained in such an atmosphere of prayers 
 and hymns and sums and happy Sunday evenings — to say 
 nothing of daily repeated beatings over the said prayers and 
 hymns, etc., about which our authoress is silent — how was it 
 possible that a lad so trained should grow up in any healthy 
 or vigorous development, even though in her own way his 
 mother was undoubtedly very fond of him, and sometimes 
 told him stories ? Can the eye of any reader fail to detect 
 the coming wrath of God as about to descend upon the head 
 of him who should be nurtured under the shadow of such a 
 letter as the foregoing ? 
 
 I have often thought that the Church of Rome does wisely 
 in not allowing her priests to marry. Certainly it is a matter 
 of common observation in England that the sons of clergy- 
 men are frequently unsatisfactory. The explanation is very 
 simple, but is so often lost sight of that I may perhaps be 
 pardoned for giving it here. 
 
 The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday. 
 Things must not be done in him which are venial in the 
 week-day classes. He is paid for this business of leading a 
 stricter life than other people. It is his raison d'etre. If 
 his parishioners feel that he does this, they approve of him, 
 for they look upon him as their own contribution towards 
 what they deem a holy life. This is why the clergyman is 
 so often called a vicar — he being the person whose vicarious 
 goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge. 
 But his home is his castle as much as that of any other 
 Englishman, and with him, as with others, unnatural tension 
 in public is followed by exhaustion when tension is no 
 longer necessary. His children are the most defenceless 
 things he can reach, and it is on them in nine cases out of 
 ten that he will relieve his mind. 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 A clergyman, again, can hardly ever allow himself to look 
 facts fairly in the face. It is his profession to support one 
 side; it is impossible, therefore, for him to make an unbiassed 
 examination of the other. 
 
 We forget that every clergyman with a living or curacy, is 
 as much a paid advocate as the barrister who is trying to 
 persuade a jury to acquit a prisoner. We should listen to 
 him with the same suspense of judgement, the same full 
 consideration of the arguments of the opposing counsel, as 
 a judge does when he is trying a case. Unless we know 
 these, and can state them in a way that our opponents 
 would admit to be a fair representation of their views, we 
 have no right to claim that we have formed an opinion at 
 all. The misfortune is that by the law of the land one side 
 only can be heard. 
 
 Theobald and Christina were no exceptions to the general 
 rule. When they came to Battersby they had every desire 
 to fulfil the duties of their position, and to devote themselves 
 to the honour and glory of God. But it was Theobald's duty 
 to see the honour and glory of God through the eyes of a 
 Church which had lived three hundred years without finding 
 reason to change a single one of its opinions. 
 
 I should doubt whether he ever got as far as doubting the 
 wisdom of his Church upon any single matter. His scent 
 for possible mischief was tolerably keen ; so was Christina's, 
 and it is likely that if either of them detected in him or 
 herself the first faint symptoms of a want of faith they were 
 nipped no less peremptorily in the bud, than signs of self- 
 will in Ernest were — and I should imagine more successfully. 
 Yet Theobald considered himself, and was generally con- 
 sidered to be, and indeed perhaps was, an exceptionally 
 truthful person ; indeed he was generally looked upon as an 
 embodiment of all those virtues which make the poor 
 respectable and the rich respected. In the course of time 
 he and his wife became persuaded even to unconsciousness, 
 that no one could even dwell under their roof without deep 
 cause for thankfulness. Their children, their servants, their 
 parishioners must be fortunate ipso facto that they were 
 
 III 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 theirs. There was no road to happiness here or hereafter, 
 but the road that they had themselves travelled, no good 
 people who did not think as they did upon every subject, 
 and no reasonable person who had wants the gratification 
 of which would be inconvenient to them — Theobald and 
 Christina. 
 
 This was how it came to pass that their children were 
 white and puny ; they were suffering from hot?ie-sickness. 
 They were starving, through being over-crammed with the 
 wrong things. Nature came down upon them, but she did 
 not come down on Theobald and Christina. Why should 
 she? They were not leading a starved existence. There 
 are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and 
 those who are sinned against ; if a man must belong to 
 either, he had better belong to the first than to the second. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 I WILL give no more of the details of my hero's earlier 
 years. Enough that he struggled through them, and at 
 twelve years old knew every page of his Latin and Greek 
 Grammars by heart. He had read the greater part of 
 Virgil, Horace and Livy, and I do not know how many 
 Greek plays : he was proficient in arithmetic, knew the first 
 four books of Euclid thoroughly, and had a fair knowledge 
 of French. It was now time he went to school, and to 
 school he was accordingly to go, under the famous Dr 
 Skinner of Roughborough. 
 
 Theobald had known Dr Skinner slightly at Cambridge. 
 He had been a burning and a shining light in every position 
 he had filled from his boyhood upwards. He was a very 
 great genius. Everyone knew this ; they said, indeed, that 
 he was one of the few people to whom the word genius could 
 be applied without exaggeration. Had he not taken I don't 
 know how many University Scholarships in his freshman's 
 year? Had he not been afterwards Senior Wrangler, First 
 Chancellor's MedaUist and I do not know how many more 
 
 112 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 things besides ? And then, he was such a wonderful speaker ; 
 at the Union Debating Club he had been without a rival, and 
 had, of course, been president ; his moral character, — a point 
 on which so many geniuses were weak — was absolutely irre- 
 proachable ; foremost of all, however, among his many great 
 qualities, and perhaps more remarkable even than his genius 
 was what biographers have called "the simple-minded and 
 child-like earnestness of his character," an earnestness which 
 might be perceived by the solemnity with which he spoke 
 even about trifles. It is hardly necessary to say he was on 
 the Liberal side in politics. 
 
 His personal appearance was not particularly prepossess- 
 ing. He was about the middle height, portly, and had a 
 couple of fierce grey eyes, that flashed fire from beneath a 
 pair of great bushy beetling eyebrows and overawed all who 
 came near him. It was in respect of his personal appearance, 
 however, that, if he was vulnerable at all, his weak place was 
 to be found. His hair when he was a young man w^as red, 
 but after he had taken his degree he had a brain fever which 
 caused him to have his head shaved ; when he reappeared he 
 did so wearing a wig, and one which was a good deal further 
 oflF red than his own hair had been. He not only had never 
 discarded his wig, but year by year it had edged itself a little 
 more and a little more off red, till by the time he was forty, 
 there was not a trace of red remaining, and his wig was 
 brown. 
 
 When Dr Skinner was a very young man, hardly more 
 than five-and-twenty, the head-mastership of Roughborough 
 Grammar School had fallen vacant, and he had been unhesi- 
 tatingly appointed. The result justified the selection. Dr 
 Skinner's pupils distinguished themselves at whichever 
 University they went to. He moulded their minds after 
 the model of his own, and stamped an impression upon them 
 which was indelible in after-life; whatever else a Rough- 
 borough man might be, he was sure to make everyone feel 
 that he was a God-fearing earnest Christian and a Liberal, 
 if not a Radical, in pohtics. Some boys, of course, were 
 incapable of appreciating the beauty and loftiness of Dr 
 
 H 113 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Skinner's nature. Some such boys, alas ! there will be in 
 every school ; upon them Dr Skinner's hand was very pro- 
 perly a heavy one. His hand was against them, and theirs 
 against him during the whole time of the connection between 
 them. They not only disliked him, but they hated all that 
 he more especially embodied, and throughout their lives dis- 
 liked all that reminded them of him. Such boys, however, 
 were in a minority, the spirit of the place being decidedly 
 Skinnerian. 
 
 I once had the honour of playing a game of chess with 
 this great man. It was during the Christmas holidays, and I 
 had come down to Roughborough for a few days to see 
 Alethea Pontifex (who was then living there) on business. 
 It was very gracious of him to take notice of me, for if I was 
 a light of literature at all it was of the very lightest kind. 
 
 It is true that in the intervals of business I had written a 
 good deal, but my works had been almost exclusively for the 
 stage, and for those theatres that devoted themselves to ex- 
 travaganza and burlesque. I had written many pieces of 
 this description, full of puns and comic songs, and they had 
 had a fair success, but my best piece had been a treatment 
 of English history during the Reformation period, in the 
 course of which I had introduced Cranmer, Sir Thomas 
 More, Henry the Eighth, Catherine of Arragon, and Thomas 
 Cromwell (in his 'youth bettei Known as the Malleus Monach- 
 orum), and had made them dance a break-down. I had 
 also dramatised "The Pilgrim's Progress" for a Christmas 
 Pantomime, and made an important scene of Vanity Fair, 
 with Mr Greatheart, Apollyon, Christiana, Mercy, and Hope- 
 ful as the principal characters. The orchestra played music 
 taken from Handel's best known works, but the time was a 
 good deal altered, and altogether the tunes were not exactly as 
 Handel left them. Mr Greatheart was very stout and he had 
 a red nose ; he wore a capacious waistcoat, and a shirt with 
 a huge frill down the middle of the front. Hopeful was 
 up to as much mischief as I could give him ; he wore the 
 costume of a young swell of the period, and had a cigar in 
 his mouth which was continually going out. 
 
 114 
 
 J 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Christiana did not wear much of anything : indeed it was 
 said that the dress which the Stage Manager had originally 
 proposed for her had been considered inadequate even by 
 the Lord Chamberlain, but this is not the case. With all 
 these delinquencies upon my mind it was natural that I 
 should feel convinced of sin while playing chess (which I 
 hate) with the great Dr Skinner of Roughborough — the 
 historian of Athens and editor of Demosthenes. Dr 
 Skinner, moreover, was one of those who pride themselves 
 on being able to set people at their ease at once, and I had 
 been sitting on the edge of my chair all the evening. But I 
 have always been very easily overawed by a schoolmaster. 
 
 The game had been a long one, and at half-past nine, 
 when supper came in, we had each of us a few pieces re- 
 maining. " What will you take for supper, Dr Skinner ? " 
 said Mrs Skinner in a silvery voice. 
 
 He made no answer for some time, but at last in a tone of 
 almost superhuman solemnity, he said, first, " Nothing," and 
 then " Nothing whatever." 
 
 By and by, however, I had a sense come over me as 
 though I were nearer the consummation of all things than I 
 had ever yet been. The room seemed to grow dark, as an 
 expression came over Dr Skinner's face, which showed that 
 he was about to speak. The expression gathered force, the 
 room grew darker and darker. "Stay," heat length added, 
 and I felt that here at any rate was an end to a suspense 
 which was rapidly becoming unbearable. "Stay — I may 
 presently take a glass of cold water — and a small piece of 
 bread and butter." 
 
 As he said the word " butter" his voice sank to a hardly 
 audible whisper; then there was a sigh as though of relief 
 when the sentence was concluded, and the universe this 
 time was safe. 
 
 Another ten minutes of solemn silence finished the game. 
 The Doctor rose briskly from his seat and placed himself 
 at the supper table. " Mrs Skinner," he exclaimed jauntily, 
 " what are those mysterious-looking objects surrounded 
 by potatoes ? " 
 
 115 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "Those are oysters, Dr Skinner." 
 
 " Give me some, and give Overton some." 
 
 And so on till he had eaten a good plate of oysters, a 
 scallop shell of minced veal nicely browned, some apple 
 tart, and a hunk of bread and cheese. This was the small 
 piece of bread and butter. 
 
 The cloth was now removed and tumblers with teaspoons 
 in them, a lemon or two and a jug of boiling water were 
 placed upon the table. Then the great man unbent. His 
 face beamed. 
 
 " And what shall it be to drink ? " he exclaimed per- 
 suasively. " Shall it be brandy and water ? No. It shall 
 be gin and water. Gin is the more wholesome liquor." 
 
 So gin it was, hot and stiff too. 
 
 Who can wonder at him or do anything but pity him ? 
 Was he not headmaster of Roughborough School? To 
 whom had he owed money at any time ? Whose ox had he 
 taken, whose ass had he taken, or whom had he de- 
 frauded ? What whisper had ever been breathed against his 
 moral character ? If he had become rich it was by the most 
 honourable of all means — his literary attainments ; over and 
 above his great works of scholarship, his *' Meditations upon 
 the Epistle and Character of St Jude " had placed him among 
 the most popular of English theologians ; it was so exhaustive 
 that no one who bought it need ever meditate upon the subject 
 again — indeed it exhausted all who had anything to do with 
 it. He had made ^^5000 by this work alone, and would 
 very likely make another ;^Sooo before he died. A man 
 who had done all this and wanted a piece of bread and 
 butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp and 
 circumstance. Nor should his words be taken without search- 
 ing for what he used to call a " deeper and more hidden 
 meaning." Those who searched for this even in his lightest 
 utterances would not be without their reward. They would 
 find that "bread and butter" was Skinnerese for oyster- 
 patties and apple tart, and " gin hot " the true translation 
 of water. 
 
 But independently of their money value, his works had 
 n6 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 made him a lasting name in literature. So probably Gallio 
 was under the impression that his fame would rest upon the 
 treatises on natural history which we gather from Seneca that 
 he compiled, and which for aught we know may have con- 
 tained a complete theory of evolution ; but the treatises are all 
 gone and Gallio has become immortal for the very last reason 
 in the world that he expected, and for the very last reason 
 that would have flattered his vanity. He has become im- 
 mortal because he cared nothing about the most important 
 movement with which he was ever brought into connection 
 (I wish people who are in search of immortality would lay 
 the lesson to heart and not make so much noise about im- 
 portant movements), and so, if Dr Skinner becomes immortal, 
 it will probably be for some reason very different from the 
 one which he so fondly imagined. 
 
 Could it be expected to enter into the head of such a man 
 as this that in reality he was making his money by corrupting 
 youth ; that it was his paid profession to make the worse 
 appear the better reason in the eyes of those who were too 
 young and inexperienced to be able to find him out ; that 
 he kept out of the sight of those whom he professed to teach 
 material points of the argument, for the production of which 
 they had a right to rely upon the honour of anyone who 
 made professions of sincerity ; that he was a passionate half- 
 turkey-cock half-gander of a man whose sallow, bilious face 
 and hobble-gobble voice could scare the timid, but who 
 would take to his heels readily enough if he were met firmly; 
 that his "Meditations on St Jude," such as they were, were 
 cribbed without acknowledgement, and would have been 
 beneath contempt if so many people did not believe them to 
 have been written honestly? Mrs Skinner might have per- 
 haps kept him a little more in his proper place if she had 
 thought it worth while to try, but she had enough to attend 
 to in looking after her household and seeing that the boys 
 were well fed and, if they were ill, properly looked after — which 
 she took good care they were. 
 
 117 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Ernest had heard awful accounts of Dr Skinner's temper, 
 and of the bullying which the younger boys at Roughborough 
 had to put up with at the hands of the bigger ones. He had 
 now got about as much as he could stand, and felt as though 
 it must go hard with him if his burdens of whatever kind were 
 to be increased. He did not cry on leaving home, but I am 
 afraid he did on being told that he was getting near Rough- 
 borough. His father and mother were with him, having posted 
 from home in their own carriage ; Roughborough had as yet 
 no railway, and as it was only some forty miles from Bat- 
 tersby, this was the easiest way of getting there. 
 
 On seeing him cry, his mother felt flattered and caressed 
 him. She said she knew he must feel very sad at leaving 
 such a happy home, and going among people who, though 
 they would be very good to him, could never, never be as 
 good as his dear papa and she had been ; still, she was her- 
 self, if he only knew it, much more deserving of pity than he 
 was, for the parting was more painful to her than it could 
 possibly be to him, etc., and Ernest, on being told that his 
 tears were for grief at leaving home, took it all on trust, 
 and did not trouble to investigate the real cause of his 
 tears. As they approached Roughborough he pulled him- 
 self together, and was fairly calm by the time he reached 
 Dr Skinner's. 
 
 On their arrival they had luncheon with the Doctor and 
 his wife, and then Mrs Skinner took Christina over the bed- 
 rooms, and showed her where her dear little boy was to 
 sleep. 
 
 Whatever men may think about the study of man, women 
 do really believe the noblest study for womankind to 
 be woman, and Christina was too much engrossed with 
 Mrs Skinner to pay much attention to anything else ; I 
 daresay Mrs Skinner, too, was taking pretty accurate stock 
 of Christina. Christina was charmed, as indeed she gen- 
 
 ii8 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 erally was with any new acquaintance, for she found in them 
 (and so must we ah) something of the nature of a cross ; as for 
 Mrs Skinner, I imagine she had seen too many Christinas to 
 find much regeneration in the sample now before her ; I 
 believe her private opinion echoed the dictum of a well- 
 known head-master who declared that all parents were fools, 
 but more especially mothers ; she was, however, all smiles 
 and sweetness, and Christina devoured these graciously as 
 tributes paid more particularly to herself, and such as no 
 other mother would have been at all likely to have won. 
 
 In the meantime Theobald and Ernest were with Dr 
 Skinner in his library — the room where new boys were 
 examined and old ones had up for rebuke or chastise- 
 ment. If the walls of that room could speak, what an 
 amount of blundering and capricious cruelty would they not 
 bear witness to ! 
 
 Like all houses, Dr Skinner's had its peculiar smell. In 
 this case the prevaiUng odour was one of Russia leather, 
 but along with it there was a subordinate savour as of a 
 chemist's shop. This came from a small laboratory in one 
 corner of the room — the possession of which, together 
 with the free chattery and smattery use of such words as 
 "carbonate," "hyposulphite," "phosphate," and "affinity," 
 were enough to convince even the most sceptical that 
 Dr Skinner had a profound knowledge of chemistry. 
 
 I may say in passing that Dr Skinner had dabbled in a 
 great many other things as well as chemistry. He was a 
 man of many small knowledges, and each of them dangerous. 
 I remember Alethea Pontifex once said in her wicked way 
 to me, that Dr Skinner put her in mind of the Bourbon 
 princes on their return from exile after the battle of Waterloo, 
 only that he was their exact converse ; for whereas they had 
 learned nothing and forgotten nothing, Dr Skinner had 
 learned everything and forgotten everything. And this puts 
 me in mind of another of her wicked sayings about Dr 
 Skinner. She told me one day that he had the harmlessness 
 of the serpent and the wisdom of the dove. 
 
 But to return to Dr Skinner's library; over the chimney- 
 119 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 piece there was a Bishop's half length portrait of Dr Skinner 
 himself, painted by the elder Pickersgill, whose merit Dr 
 Skinner had been among the first to discern and foster. 
 There were no other pictures in the library, but in the 
 dining-room there was a fine collection, which the doctor 
 had got together with his usual consummate taste. He 
 added to it largely in later life, and when it came to the 
 hammer at Christie's, as it did not long since, it was found to 
 comprise many of the latest and most matured works of 
 Solomon Hart, O'Neil, Charles Landseer, and more of our 
 recent Academicians than I can at the moment remember. 
 There were thus brought together and exhibited at one view 
 many works which had attracted attention at the Academy 
 Exhibitions, and as to whose ultimate destiny there had 
 been some curiosity. The prices realised were disappoint- 
 ing to the executors, but, then, these things are so much 
 a matter of chance. An unscrupulous writer in a well- 
 known weekly paper had written the collection down. 
 Moreover there had been one or two large sales a short 
 time before Dr Skinner's, so that at this last there was 
 rather a panic, and a reaction against the high prices 
 that had ruled lately. 
 
 The table of the library was loaded with books many deep ; 
 MSS. of all kinds were confusedly mixed up with them, — 
 boys' exercises, probably, and examination papers — but all 
 littering untidily about. The room in fact was as depressing 
 from its slatternliness as from its atmosphere of erudition. 
 Theobald and Ernest as they entered it, stumbled over a 
 large hole in the Turkey carpet, and the dust that rose showed 
 how long it was since it had been taken up and beaten. 
 This, I should say, was no fault of Mrs Skinner's but was 
 due to the Doctor himself, who declared that if his papers 
 were once disturbed it would be the death of him. Near the 
 window was a green cage containing a pair of turtle doves, 
 whose plaintive cooing added to the melancholy of the place. 
 The walls were covered with book shelves from floor to 
 ceiling, and on every shelf the books stood in double rows. 
 It was horrible. Prominent among the most prominent upon 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the most prominent shelf were a series of splendidly bound 
 volumes entitled " Skinner's Works," 
 
 Boys are sadly apt to rush to conclusions, and Ernest 
 believed that Dr Skinner knew all the books in this terrible 
 library, and that he, if he were to be any good, should have 
 to learn them too. His heart fainted within him. 
 
 He was told to sit on a chair against the wall and did so, 
 while Dr Skinner talked to Theobald upon the topics of the 
 day. He talked about the Hampden Controversy then 
 raging, and discoursed learnedly about " Praemunire " ; then 
 he talked about the revolution which had just broken out in 
 Sicily, and rejoiced that the Pope had refused to allow foreign 
 troops to pass through his dominions in order to crush it. 
 Dr Skinner and the other masters took in the Times among 
 them, and Dr Skinner echoed the Times' leaders. In those 
 days there were no penny papers and Theobald only took in 
 the Spectator — for he was at that time on the Whig side in 
 politics ; besides this he used to receive the Ecclesiastical 
 Gazette once a month, but he saw no other papers, and was 
 amazed at the ease and fluency with which Dr Skinner ran 
 from subject to subject. 
 
 The Pope's action in the matter of the Sicilian revolution 
 naturally led the Doctor to the reforms which his Holiness 
 had introduced into his dominions, and he laughed con- 
 sumedly over the joke which had not long since appeared in 
 Punch, to the effect that Pio " No, No," should rather have 
 been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, as the doctor explained, 
 he granted everything his subjects asked for. Anything like 
 a pun went straight to Dr Skinner's heart. 
 
 Then he went on to the matter of these reforms them- 
 selves. They opened up a new era in the history of Christen- 
 dom, and would have such momentous and far-reaching 
 consequences, that they might even lead to a reconciliation 
 between the Churches of England and Rome. Dr Skinner 
 had lately published a pamphlet upon this subject, which had 
 shown great learning, and had attacked the Church of Rome 
 in a way which did not promise much hope of reconcihation. 
 He had grounded his attack upon the letters A.M.D.G., 
 
 121 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 which he had seen outside a Roman Cathohc chapel, and 
 which of course stood for Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem. 
 Could anything be more idolatrous ? 
 
 I am told, by the way, that I must have let my memory play 
 me one of the tricks it often does play me, when I said the 
 Doctor proposed Ad Mariam Dei Getietriceni as the full har- 
 monies, so to speak, which should be constructed upon the 
 bass A.M.D.G., for that this is bad Latin, and that the doctor 
 really harmonised the letters thus : Ave Maria Dei Genetrix. 
 No doubt the doctor did what was right in the matter of 
 Latinity — I have forgotten the little Latin I ever knew, and 
 am not going to look the matter up, but I believe the doctor 
 said Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem, and if so we may be sure 
 that Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem, is good enough Latin at 
 any rate for ecclesiastical purposes. 
 
 The reply of the local priest had not yet appeared, and 
 Dr Skinner was jubilant, but when the answer appeared, and 
 it was solemnly declared that A.M.D.G. stood for nothing 
 more dangerous than Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, it was felt 
 that though this subterfuge would not succeed with any 
 intelligent Englishman, still it was a pity Dr Skinner had 
 selected this particular point for his attack, for he had to 
 leave his enemy in possession of the field. When people are 
 left in possession of the field, spectators have an awkward 
 habit of thinking that their adversary does not dare to come 
 to the scratch. 
 
 Dr Skinner was telling Theobald all about his pamphlet, 
 and I doubt whether this gentleman was much more 
 comfortable than Ernest himself. He was bored, for in his 
 heart he hated Liberalism, though he was ashamed to say so, 
 and, as I have said, professed to be on the Whig side. He 
 did not want to be reconciled to the Church of Rome ; he 
 wanted to make all Roman Catholics turn Protestants, and 
 could never understand why they would not do so ; but the 
 doctor talked in such a truly liberal spirit, and shut him up 
 so sharply when he tried to edge in a word or two, that he 
 had to let him have it all his own way, and this was not 
 what he was accustomed to. He was wondering how he 
 
 T22 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 could bring it to an end, when a diversion was created by 
 the discovery that Ernest had begun to cry — doubtless 
 through an intense but inarticulate sense of a boredom 
 greater than he could bear. He was evidently in a highly 
 nervous state, and a good deal upset by the excitement of 
 the morning, Mrs Skinner therefore, who came in with 
 Christina at this juncture, proposed that he should spend 
 the afternoon with Mrs Jay, the matron, and not be intro- 
 duced to his young companions until the following morning. 
 His father and mother now bade him an affectionate farewell, 
 and the lad was handed over to Mrs Jay. 
 
 O schoolmasters — if any of you read this book — bear 
 in mind when any particularly timid drivelling urchin is 
 brought by his papa into your study, and you treat him with 
 the contempt which he deserves, and afterwards make his 
 life a burden to him for years — bear in mind that it is 
 exactly in the disguise of such a boy as this that your future 
 chronicler will appear. Never see a wretched little heavy- 
 eyed mite sitting on the edge of a chair against your study 
 wall without saying to yourselves, " perhaps this boy is he who, 
 if I am not careful, will one day tell the world what manner 
 of man I was." If even two or three schoolmasters learn 
 this lesson and remember it, the preceding chapters will not 
 have been written in vain. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 Soon after his father and mother had left him Ernest dropped 
 asleep over a book which Mrs Jay had given him, and he did 
 not awake till dusk. Then he sat down on a stool in front 
 of the fire, which showed pleasantly in the late January 
 twilight, and began to muse. He felt weak, feeble, ill at 
 ease and unable to see his way out of the innumerable 
 troubles that were before him. Perhaps, he said to himself, 
 he might even die, but this, far from being an end of his 
 troubles, would prove the beginning of new ones ; for at the 
 best he would only go to Grandpapa Pontifex and Grand- 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 mamma Allaby, and though they would perhaps be more easy 
 to get on with than Papa and Mamma, yet they were 
 undoubtedly not so really good, and were more worldly; 
 moreover they were grown-up people — especially Grandpapa 
 Pontifex, who so far as he could understand had been very 
 much grown-up, and he did not know why, but there was 
 always something that kept him from loving any grown-up 
 people very much — except one or two of the servants, who 
 had indeed been as nice as anything that he could imagine. 
 Besides even if he were to die and go to Heaven he supposed 
 he should have to complete his education somewhere. 
 
 In the meantime his father and mother were rolling along 
 the muddy roads, each in his or her own corner of the car- 
 riage, and each revolving many things which were and were 
 not to come to pass. Times have changed since I last 
 showed them to the reader as sitting together silently in a 
 carriage, but except as regards their mutual relations, they 
 have altered singularly httle. When I was younger I used to 
 think the Prayer Book was wrong in requiring us to say the 
 General Confession twice a week from childhood to old age, 
 without making provision for our not being quite such great 
 sinners at seventy as we had been at seven ; granted that we 
 should go to the wash like table-cloths at least once a week, 
 still I used to think a day ought to come when we should 
 want rather less rubbing and scrubbing at. Now that I have 
 grown older myself I have seen that the Church has estimated 
 probabilities better than I had done. 
 
 The pair said not a word to one another, but watched 
 the fading light and naked trees, the brown fields with here 
 and there a melancholy cottage by the road side, and the rain 
 that fell fast upon the carriage windows. It was a kind of 
 afternoon, on which nice people for the most part like to be 
 snug at home, and Theobald was a little snappish at reflect- 
 mg how many miles he had to post before he could be at his 
 own fireside again. However there was nothing for it, so the 
 pair sat quietly and watched the road-side objects flit by 
 them, and get greyer and grimmer as the light faded. 
 
 Though they spoke not to one another, there was one 
 124 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 nearer to each of them with whom they could converse 
 freely. " I hope," said Theobald to himself, " I hope he'll 
 work — or else that Skinner will make him. I don't like 
 Skinner, I never did like him, but he is unquestionably a 
 man of genius, and no one turns out so many pupils who 
 succeed at Oxford and Cambridge, and that is the best test. 
 I have done my share towards starting him well. Skinner 
 said he had been well grounded and was very forward. I 
 suppose he will presume upon it now and do nothing, for 
 his nature is an idle one. He is not fond of me, I'm sure 
 he is not. He ought to be after all the trouble I have taken 
 with him, but he is ungrateful and selfish. It is an un- 
 natural thing for a boy not to be fond of his own father. If 
 he was fond of me I should be fond of him, but I cannot 
 like a son who, I am sure, dislikes me. He shrinks out of 
 my way whenever he sees me coming near him. He will not 
 stay five minutes in the same room with me if he can help it. 
 He is deceitful. He would not want to hide himself away so 
 much if he were not deceitful. That is a bad sign and one 
 which makes me fear he will grow up extravagant. I am 
 sure he will grow up extravagant. I should have given him 
 more pocket-money if I had not known this — but what is 
 the good of giving him pocket-money? It is all gone 
 directly. If he doesn't buy something with it he gives it 
 away to the first little boy or girl he sees who takes his fancy. 
 He forgets that it's my money he is giving away. I give 
 him money that he may have money and learn to know its 
 uses, not that he may go and squander it immediately. I 
 wish he was not so fond of music, it will interfere with his 
 Latin and Greek. I will stop it as much as I can. Why, 
 when he was translating Livy the other day he slipped out 
 Handel's name in mistake for Hannibal's, and his mother 
 tells me he knows half the tunes in the ' Messiah ' by heart. 
 What should a boy of his age know about the ' Messiah ' ? 
 If I had shown half as many dangerous tendencies when I 
 was a boy, my father would have apprenticed me to a green- 
 grocer, of that I'm very sure," etc., etc. 
 
 Then his thoughts turned to Egypt and the tenth plague. 
 125 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 It seemed to him that if the little Egyptians had been any- 
 thing like Ernest, the plague must have been something very 
 like a blessing in disguise. If the Israelites were to come to 
 England now he should be greatly tempted not to let them go. 
 
 Mrs Theobald's thoughts ran in a different current. " Lord 
 Lonsford's grandson — it's a pity his name is Figgins ; how- 
 ever, blood is blood as much through the female line as the 
 male, indeed, perhaps even more so if the truth were known. 
 I wonder who Mr Figgins was. I think Mrs Skinner said he 
 was dead, however, I must find out all about him. It would 
 be delightful if young Figgins were to ask Ernest home for 
 the holidays. Who knows but he might meet Lord Lonsford 
 himself, or at any rate some of Lord Lonsford's other de- 
 scendants ? " 
 
 Meanwhile the boy himself was still sitting moodily before 
 the fire in Mrs Jay's room. " Papa and Mamma," he was 
 saying to himself "are much better and cleverer than anyone 
 else, but, I, alas ! shall never be either good or clever." 
 
 Mrs Pontifex continued — 
 
 *' Perhaps it would be best to get young Figgins on a visit 
 to ourselves first. That would be charming. Theobald 
 would not like it, for he does not like children ; I must see 
 how I can manage it, for it would be so nice to have young 
 Figgins — or stay ! Ernest shall go and stay with Figgins 
 and meet the future Lord Lonsford, who I should think must 
 be about Ernest's age, and then if he and Ernest were to 
 become friends Ernest might ask him to Battersby, and he 
 might fall in love with Charlotte. I think we have done 
 most ivisely in sending Ernest to Dr Skinner's. Dr Skinner's 
 piety is no less remarkable than his genius. One can tell 
 these things at a glance, and he must have felt it about me 
 no less strongly than I about him. I think he seemed much 
 struck with Theobald and myself — indeed, Theobald's intel- 
 lectual power must impress any one, and I was showing, I do 
 believe, to my best advantage. When I smiled at him and 
 said I left my boy in his hands with the most entire confi- 
 dence that he would be as well cared for as if he were at my 
 own house, I am sure he was greatly pleased. I should not 
 
 126 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 think many of the mothers who bring him boys can impress 
 him so favourably, or say such nice things to him as I did. 
 My smile is sweet when I desire to make it so. I never was 
 perhaps exactly pretty, but I was always admitted to be 
 fascinating. Dr Skinner is a very handsome man — too good 
 on the whole I should say for Mrs Skinner. Theobald says 
 he is not handsome, but men are no judges, and he has such 
 a pleasant bright face. I think my bonnet became me. As 
 soon as I get home I will tell Chambers to trim my blue and 
 yellow merino with " etc., etc. 
 
 All this time the letter which has been given above was 
 lying in Christina's private little Japanese cabinet, read and 
 re-read and approved of many times over, not to say, if the 
 truth were known, rewritten more than once, though dated as 
 in the first instance — and this, too, though Christina was fond 
 enough of a joke in a small way. 
 
 Ernest, still in Mrs Jay's room mused onward. " Grown- 
 up people," he said to himself, " when they were ladies and 
 gentlemen, never did naughty things, but he was always doing 
 them. He had heard that some grown-up people were 
 worldly, which of course was wrong, still this was quite dis- 
 tinct from being naughty, and did not get them punished or 
 scolded. His own Papa and Mamma were not even worldly; 
 they had often explained to him that they were exceptionally 
 unworldly ; he well knew that they had never done anything 
 naughty since they had been children, and that even as 
 children they had been nearly faultless. Oh ! how different 
 from himself ! When should he learn to love his Papa and 
 Mamma as they had loved theirs ? How could he hope ever 
 to grow up to be as good and wise as they, or even tolerably 
 good and wise ? Alas ! never. It could not be. He did 
 not love his Papa and Mamma, in spite of all their goodness 
 both in themselves and to him. He hated Papa, and did 
 not like Mamma, and this was what none but a bad and 
 ungrateful boy would do after all that had been done for 
 him. Besides he did not hke Sunday ; he did not like any- 
 thing that was really good ; his tastes were low and such as 
 he was ashamed of. He Uked people best if they sometimes 
 
 127 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 swore a little, so long as it was not at him. As for his 
 Catechism and Bible readings he had no heart in them. He 
 had never attended to a sermon in his life. Even when he 
 had been taken to hear Mr Vaughan at Brighton, who, as 
 everyone knew, preached such beautiful sermons for children, 
 he had been very glad when it was all over, nor did he be- 
 lieve he could get through church at all if it was not for the 
 voluntary upon the organ and the hymns and chanting. 
 The Catechism was awful. He had never been able to 
 understand what it was that he desired of his Lord God and 
 Heavenly Father, nor had he yet got hold of a single idea in 
 connection with the word Sacrament. His duty towards 
 his neighbour was another bugbear. It seemed to him that 
 he had duties towards everybody, lying in wait for him upon 
 every side, but that nobody had any duties towards him. 
 Then there was that awful and mysterious word ' business.' 
 What did it all mean ? What was ' business ' ? His Papa 
 was a wonderfully good man of business, his Mamma had 
 often told him so — but he should never be one. It was 
 hopeless, and very awful, for people were continually telling 
 him that he would have to earn his own living. No doubt, 
 but how — considering how stupid, idle, ignorant, self-indul- 
 gent, and physically puny he was? All grown-up people 
 were clever, except servants — and even these were cleverer 
 than ever he should be. Oh, why, why, why, could not 
 people be born into the world as grown-up persons ? Then 
 he thought of Casablanca. He had been examined in that 
 poem by his father not long before. ' When only would he 
 leave his position ? To whom did he call ? Did he get an 
 answer? Why? How many times did he call upon his 
 father ? What happened to him ? What was the noblest 
 life that perished there ? Do you think so ? Why do you 
 think so ? ' And all the rest of it. Of course he thought 
 Casablanca's was the noblest life that perished there ; there 
 could be no two opinions about that ; it never occurred to 
 him that the moral of the poem was that young people can- 
 not begin too soon to exercise discretion in the obedience 
 they pay to their Papa and Mamma. Oh, no ! the only 
 
 128 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 thought in his mind was that he should never, never have 
 been like Casabianca, and that Casabianca would have de- 
 spised him so much, if he could have known him, that he 
 would not have condescended to speak to him. There was 
 nobody else in the ship worth reckoning at all : it did not 
 matter how much they were blown up, Mrs Hemans knew 
 them all and they were a very indifferent lot. Besides Casa- 
 bianca was so good-looking and came of such a good family." 
 And thus his small mind kept wandering on till he could 
 follow it no longer, and again went off into a doze. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 Next morning Theobald and Christina arose feeling a little 
 tired from their journey, but happy in that best of all happi- 
 ness, the approbation of their consciences. It would be their 
 boy's fault henceforth if he were not good, and as prosperous 
 as it was at all desirable that he should be. What more 
 could parents do than they had done ? The answer " Nothing" 
 will rise as readily to the lips of the reader as to those of 
 Theobald and Christina themselves. 
 
 A few days later the parents were gratified at receiving 
 the following letter from their son — 
 
 "My Dear Mamma, — I am very well. Dr Skinner made 
 me do about the horse free and exulting roaming in the wide 
 fields in Latin verse, but as I had done it with Papa I knew 
 how to do it, and it was nearly all right, and he put me in 
 the fourth form under Mr Templer, and I have to begin a new 
 Latin grammar not like the old, but much harder. I know 
 you wish me to work, and I will try very hard. With best 
 love to Joey and Charlotte, and to Papa, I remain, your 
 affectionate son, Ernest." 
 
 Nothing could be nicer or more proper. It really did 
 seem as though he were incHned to turn over a new leaf. 
 The boys had all come back, the examinations were over, 
 I 129 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 and the routine of the half year began ; Ernest found that 
 his fears about being kicked about and bullied were exag- 
 gerated. Nobody did anything very dreadful to him. He 
 had to run errands between certain hours for the elder boys, 
 and to take his turn at greasing the footballs, and so forth, 
 but there was an excellent spirit in the school as regards 
 bullying. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was far from happy. Dr Skinner was 
 much too like his father. True, Ernest was not thrown in 
 with him much yet, but he was always there ; there was no 
 knowing at what moment he might not put in an appearance, 
 and whenever he did show, it was to storm about something. 
 He was like the lion in the Bishop of Oxford's Sunday story 
 — always liable to rush out from behind some bush and 
 devour some one when he was least expected. He called Ernest 
 "an audacious reptile" and said he wondered the earth did not 
 open and swallow him up because he pronounced Thalia 
 with a short i. " And this to me," he thundered, " who never 
 made a false quantity in my life." Surely he would have 
 been a much nicer person if he had made false quantities in 
 his youth like other people. Ernest could not imagine how 
 the boys in Dr Skinner's form continued to live; but yet 
 they did, and even throve, and, strange as it may seem, 
 idolised him, or professed to do so in after life. To Ernest 
 it seemed like living on the crater of Vesuvius. 
 
 He was himself, as has been said, in Mr Templer's form, 
 who was snappish, but not downright wicked, and was very 
 easy to crib under. Ernest used to wonder how Mr Templer 
 could be so blind, for he supposed Mr Templer must have 
 cribbed when he was at school, and would ask himself 
 whether he should forget his youth when he got old, as Mr 
 Templer had forgotten his. He used to think he never could 
 possibly forget any part of it. 
 
 Then there was Mrs Jay, who was sometimes very alarm- 
 ing, A few days after the half year had commenced, there 
 being some little extra noise in the hall, she rushed in with 
 her spectacles on her forehead and her cap strings flying, 
 and called the boy whom Ernest had selected as his hero the 
 
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 1 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " rampingest - scampingest- rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest 
 boy in the whole school." But she used to say things that 
 Ernest liked. If the Doctor went out to dinner, and there 
 were no prayers, she would come in and say, " Young 
 gentlemen, prayers are excused this evening " ; and, take her 
 for all in all, she was a kindly old soul enough. 
 
 Most boys soon discover the difference between noise and 
 actual danger, but to others it is so unnatural to menace, 
 unless they mean mischief, that they are long before they 
 leave off taking turkey-cocks and ganders mi serieux. Ernest 
 was one of the latter sort, and found the atmosphere of 
 Roughborough so gusty that he was glad to shrink out of 
 sight and out of mind whenever he could. He disliked the 
 games worse even than the squalls of the class-room and 
 hall, for he was still feeble, not filling out and attaining his 
 full strength till a much later age than most boys. This was 
 perhaps due to the closeness with which his father had kept 
 him to his books in childhood, but I think in part also to a 
 tendency towards lateness in attaining maturity, hereditary 
 in the Pontifex family, which was one also of unusual 
 longevity. At thirteen or fourteen he was a mere bag of 
 bones, with upper arms about as thick as the wrists of other 
 boys of his age ; his little chest was pigeon-breasted ; he 
 appeared to have no strength or stamina whatever, and 
 finding he always went to the wall in physical encounters, 
 whether undertaken in jest or earnest, even with boys shorter 
 than himself, the timidity natural to childhood increased 
 upon him to an extent that I am afraid amounted to 
 cowardice. This rendered him even less capable than he 
 might otherwise have been, for as confidence increases 
 power, so want of confidence increases impotence. After he 
 had had the breath knocked out of him and been well 
 shinned half a dozen times in scrimmages at football — 
 scrimmages in which he had become involved sorely against 
 his will — he ceased to see any further fun in football, and 
 shirked that noble game in a way that got him into trouble 
 with the elder boys, who would stand no shirking on the 
 part of the younger ones. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 He was as useless and ill at ease with cricket as with 
 football, nor in spite of all his efforts could he ever throw a 
 ball or a stone. It soon became plain, therefore, to every- 
 one that Pontifex was a young muff, a molly-coddle, not to 
 be tortured, but still not to be rated highly. He was not 
 however, actively unpopular, for it was seen that he was 
 quite square inter pares ^ not at all vindictive, easily pleased, 
 perfectly free with whatever little money he had, no greater 
 lover of his school work than of the games, and generally 
 more inclinable to moderate vice than to immoderate 
 virtue. 
 
 These qualities will prevent any boy from sinking very 
 low in the opinion of his school-fellows ; but Ernest thought 
 he had fallen lower than he probably had, and hated and 
 despised himself for what he, as much as anyone else, 
 believed to be his cowardice. He did not hke the boys 
 whom he thought like himself. His heroes were strong and 
 vigorous, and the less they inclined towards him the more 
 he worshipped them. All this made him very unhappy, for 
 it never occurred to him that the instinct which made him 
 keep out of games for which he was ill adapted, was more 
 reasonable than the reason which would have driven 
 him into them. Nevertheless he followed his instinct 
 for the most part, rather than his reason. Sapiens suam si 
 sapientiam norit. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 With the masters Ernest was ere long in absolute disgrace. 
 He had more liberty now than he had known heretofore. 
 The heavy hand and watchful eye of Theobald were no 
 longer about his path and about his bed and spying out all 
 his ways ; and punishment by way of copying out lines of 
 Virgil was a very different thing from the savage beatings 
 of his father. The copying out in fact was often less 
 trouble than the lesson. Latin and Greek had nothing in 
 them which commended them to his instinct as likely to 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 bring him peace even at the last ; still less did they hold 
 out any hope of doing so within some more reasonable 
 time. The deadness inherent in these defunct languages 
 themselves had never been artificially counteracted by a 
 system of bona fide rewards for application. There had been 
 any amount of punishments for want of application, but no 
 good comfortable bribes had baited the hook which was to 
 allure him to his good. 
 
 Indeed, the more pleasant side of learning to do this or 
 that had always been treated as something with which Ernest 
 had no concern. We had no business with pleasant things 
 at all, at any rate very little business, at any rate not he, 
 Ernest. We were put into this world not for pleasure but 
 duty, and pleasure had in it something more or less sinful in 
 its very essence. If we were doing anything we liked, we, 
 or at any rate he, Ernest, should apologise and think he was 
 being very mercifully dealt with, if not at once told to go 
 and do something else. With what he did not like, however, 
 it was different ; the more he disliked a thing the greater the 
 presumption that it was right. It never occurred to him 
 that the presumption was in favour of the rightness of what 
 was most pleasant, and that the onus of proving that it was 
 not right lay with those who disputed its being so. I have 
 said more than once that he believed in his own depravity ; 
 never was there a little mortal more ready to accept without 
 cavil whatever he was told by those who were in authority 
 over him ; he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet 
 he knew nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him, 
 and was so much stronger and more real than the Ernest of 
 which he was conscious. The dumb Ernest persuaded with 
 inarticulate feelings too swift and sure to be translated into 
 such debateable things as words, but practically insisted as 
 follows — 
 
 " Growing is not the easy plain sailing business that it is 
 commonly supposed to be : it is hard work — harder than 
 any but a growing boy can understand ; it requires attention, 
 and you are not strong enough to attend to your bodily 
 growth, and to your lessons too. Besides, Latin and 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Greek are great humbug ; the more people know of them the 
 more odious they generally are ; the nice people whom you 
 delight in either never knew any at all or forgot what they 
 had learned as soon as they could ; they never turned to the 
 classics after they were no longer forced to read them ; there- 
 fore they are nonsense, all very well in their own time and 
 country, but out of place here. Never learn anything until 
 you find you have been made uncomfortable for a good long 
 while by not knowing it ; when you find that you have 
 occasion for this or that knowledge, or foresee that you will 
 have occasion for it shortly, the sooner you learn it the 
 better, but till then spend your time in growing bone and 
 muscle ; these will be much more useful to you than Latin 
 and Greek, nor will you ever be able to make them if you do 
 not do so now, whereas Latin and Greek can be acquired at 
 any time by those who want them. 
 
 " You are surrounded on every side by lies which would 
 deceive even the elect, if the elect were not generally so un- 
 commonly wide awake ; the self of which you are conscious, 
 your reasoning and reflecting self, will believe these lies and 
 bid you act in accordance with them. This conscious self of 
 yours, Ernest, is a prig begotten of prigs and trained in prig- 
 gishness ; I will not allow it to shape your actions, though it 
 will doubtless shape your words for many a year to come. 
 Your papa is not here to beat you now ; this is a change in 
 the conditions of your existence, and should be followed by 
 changed actions. Obey me, your true self, and things will 
 go tolerably well with you, but only listen to that outward 
 and visible old husk of yours which is called your father, and 
 I will rend you in pieces even unto the third and fourth 
 generation as one who has hated God ; for I, Ernest, am the 
 God who made you." 
 
 How shocked Ernest would have been if he could have 
 heard the advice he was receiving ; what consternation too 
 there would have been at Battersby ; but the matter did not 
 end here, for this same wicked inner self gave him bad advice 
 about his pocket money, the choice of his companions, and 
 on the whole Ernest was attentive and obedient to its 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 behests, more so than Theobald had been. The consequence 
 was that he learned little, his mind growing more slowly and 
 his body rather faster than heretofore : and when by and 
 by his inner self urged him in directions where he met 
 obstacles beyond his strength to combat, he took — though 
 with passionate compunctions of conscience — the nearest 
 course to the one from which he was debarred which circum- 
 stances would allow. 
 
 It may be guessed that Ernest was not the chosen friend 
 of the more sedate and well-conducted youths then studying 
 at Roughborough. Some of the less desirable boys used to 
 go to public-houses and drink more beer than was good for 
 them ; Ernest's inner self can hardly have told him to ally him- 
 self to these young gentlemen, but he did so at an early age, 
 and was sometimes made pitiably sick by an amount of beer 
 which would have produced no effect upon a stronger boy. 
 Ernest's inner self must have interposed at this point and 
 told him that there was not much fun in this, for he dropped 
 the habit ere it had taken firm hold of him, and never 
 resumed it; but he contracted another at the disgrace- 
 fully early age of between thirteen and fourteen which he 
 did not relinquish, though to the present day his conscious 
 self keeps dinging it into him that the less he smokes the 
 better. 
 
 And so matters went on till my hero was nearly fourteen 
 years old. If by that time he was not actually a young 
 blackguard, he belonged to a debateable class between the 
 sub-reputable and the upper disreputable, with perhaps rather 
 more leaning to the latter except so far as vices of mean- 
 ness were concerned, from which he was fairly free. I 
 gather this partly from what Ernest has told me, and partly 
 from his school bills which I remember Theobald showed me 
 with much complaining. There was an institution at Rough- 
 borough called the monthly merit money ; the maximum sum 
 which a boy of Ernest's age could get was four shillings and 
 sixpence ; several boys got four shillings and few less than 
 sixpence, but Ernest never got more than half-a-crown and 
 seldom more than eighteen pence; his average would, I 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 should think, be about one and nine pence, which was just 
 too much for him to rank among the downright bad boys, but 
 too little to put him among the good ones. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 I MUST now return to Miss Alethea Pontifex, of whom I have 
 said perhaps too little hitherto, considering how great her 
 influence upon my hero's destiny proved to be. 
 
 On the death of her father, which happened when she was 
 about thirty-two years old, she parted company with her 
 sisters, between whom and herself there had been little 
 sympathy, and came up to London. She was determined, so 
 she said, to make the rest of her life as happy as she could, 
 and she had clearer ideas about the best way of setting to work 
 to do this than women, or indeed men, generally have. 
 
 Her fortune consisted, as I have said, of ;^5ooo, which 
 had come to her by her mother's marriage settlements, and 
 ;^i 5,000 left her by her father, over both which sums she 
 had now absolute control. These brought her in about 
 ;^9oo a year, and the money being invested in none but the 
 soundest securities, she had no anxiety about her income. 
 She meant to be rich, so she formed a scheme of expenditure 
 which involved an annual outlay of about ;!^5oo, and de- 
 termined to put the rest by. " If I do this," she said laugh- 
 ingly, " I shall probably just succeed in living comfortably 
 within my income." In accordance with this scheme she 
 took unfurnished apartments in a house in Gower Street, of 
 which the lower floors were let out as offices. John Pontifex 
 tried to get her to take a house to herself, but Alethea told 
 him to mind his own business so plainly that he had to beat 
 a retreat. She had never liked him, and from that time 
 dropped him almost entirely. 
 
 Without going much into society she yet became ac- 
 quainted with most of the men and women who had attained 
 a position in the literary, artistic and scientific worlds, and it 
 was singular how highly her opinion was valued in spite of 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 her never having attempted in any way to distinguish herself. 
 She could have written if she had chosen, but she enjoyed 
 seeing others write and encouraging them better than taking 
 a more active part herself. Perhaps literary people liked her 
 all the better because she did not write. 
 
 I, as she very well knew, had always been devoted to her, 
 and she might have had a score of other admirers if she 
 had liked, but she had discouraged them all, and railed at 
 matrimony as women seldom do unless they have a com- 
 fortable income of their own. She by no means, however, 
 railed at man as she railed at matrimony, and though living 
 after a fashion in which even the most censorious could find 
 nothing to complain of, as far as she properly could she 
 defended those of her own sex whom the world condemned 
 most severely. 
 
 In religion she was, I should think, as nearly a freethinker 
 as anyone could be whose mind seldom turned upon the 
 subject. She went to church, but disliked equally those who 
 aired either religion or irreligion. I remember once hearing 
 her press a late well-known philosopher to write a novel 
 instead of pursuing his attacks upon religion. The philosopher 
 did not much like this, and dilated upon the importance of 
 showing people the folly of much that they pretended to 
 believe. She smiled and said demurely, " Have they not 
 Moses and the prophets? Let them hear them!' But she 
 would say a wicked thing quietly on her own account some- 
 times, and called my attention once to a note in her 
 prayer-book which gave an account of the walk to Emmaus 
 with the two disciples, and how Christ had said to them " O 
 fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have 
 spoken them " — the " all " being printed in small capitals. 
 
 Though scarcely on terms with her brother John, she had 
 kept up closer relations with Theobald and his family, and 
 had paid a few days' visit to Battersby once in every two 
 years or so. Alethea had always tried to like Theobald and 
 join forces with him as much as she could (for they two were 
 the hares of the family, the rest being all hounds), but it was 
 no use. I believe her chief reason for maintaining relations 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 with her brother was that she might keep an eye on his 
 children and give them a Uft if they proved nice. 
 
 When Miss Pontifex had come down to Battersby in old 
 times the children had not been beaten, and their lessons 
 had been made lighter. She easily saw that they were over- 
 worked and unhappy, but she could hardly guess how all- 
 reaching was the regime under which they lived. She 
 knew she could not interfere effectually then, and wisely 
 forbore to make too many enquiries. Her time, if ever it 
 was to come, would be when the children were no longer 
 living under the same roof as their parents. It ended in her 
 making up her mind to have nothing to do with either Joey 
 or Charlotte, but to see so much of Ernest as should enable 
 her to form an opinion about his disposition and abilities. 
 
 He had now been a year and a half at Roughborough and 
 was nearly fourteen years old, so that his character had begun 
 to shape. His aunt had not seen him for some little time and, 
 thinking that if she was to exploit him she could do so now 
 perhaps better than at any other time, she resolved to go 
 down to Roughborough on some pretext which should be 
 good enough for Theobald, and to take stock of her nephew 
 under circumstances in which she could get him for some few 
 hours to herself. Accordingly in August 1849, when Ernest 
 was just entering on his fourth half year a cab drove up to Dr 
 Skinner's door with Miss Pontifex, who asked and obtained 
 leave for Ernest to come and dine with her at the Swan Hotel. 
 She had written to Ernest to say she was coming and he was 
 of course on the look-out for her. He had not seen her for so 
 long that he was rather shy at first, but her good nature soon 
 set him at his ease. She was so strongly biassed in favour of 
 anything young that her heart warmed towards him at once, 
 though his appearance was less prepossessing than she had 
 hoped. She took him to a cake shop and gave him whatever 
 he Hked as soon as she had got him off the school premises ; 
 and Ernest felt at once that she contrasted favourably even 
 with his aunts the Misses Allaby, who were so very sweet and 
 good. The Misses Allaby were very poor ; sixpence was to 
 them what five shillings was to Alethea. What chance had 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 they against one who, if she had a mind, could put by out of 
 her income twice as much as they, poor women, could spend? 
 
 The boy had plenty of prattle in him when he was not 
 snubbed, and Alethea encouraged him to chatter about what- 
 ever came uppermost. He was always ready to trust anyone 
 who was kind to him ; it took many years to make him 
 reasonably wary in this respect — if indeed, as I sometimes 
 doubt, he ever will be as wary as he ought to be — and in a 
 short time he had quite dissociated his aunt from his papa 
 and mamma and the rest, with whom his instinct told him he 
 should be on his guard. Little did he know how great, as 
 far as he was concerned, were the issues that depended upon 
 his behaviour. If he had known, he would perhaps have 
 played his part less successfully. 
 
 His aunt drew from him more details of his home and 
 school life than his papa and mamma would have approved 
 of, but he had no idea that he was being pumped. She got 
 out of him all about the happy Sunday evenings, and how he 
 and Joey and Charlotte quarrelled sometimes, but she took no 
 side and treated everj'thing as though it were a matter of 
 course. Like all the boys, he could mimic Dr Skinner, and 
 when warmed with dinner, and two glasses of sherry which 
 made him nearly tipsy, he favoured his aunt with samples of 
 the Doctor's manner and spoke of him familiarly as "Sam." 
 
 " Sam," he said, " is an awful old humbug." It was the 
 sherry that brought out this piece of swagger, for whatever 
 else he was Dr Skinner was a reality to Master Ernest, before 
 which, indeed, he sank into his boots in no time. Alethea 
 smiled and said, " I must not say anything to that, must I ? " 
 Ernest said, " I suppose not," and was checked. By-and-by 
 he vented a number of small secondhand priggishnesses 
 which he had caught up believing them to be the correct 
 thing, and made it plain that even at that early age Ernest 
 believed in Ernest with a belief which was amusing from its 
 absurdity. His aunt judged him charitably as she was sure 
 to do ; she knew very well where the priggishnesses came 
 from, and seeing that the string of his tongue had been 
 loosened sufficiently gave him no more sherry. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 It was after dinner, however, that he completed the 
 conquest of his aunt. She then discovered that, like herself, 
 he was passionately fond of music, and that, too, of the 
 highest class. He knew, and hummed or whistled to her all 
 sorts of pieces out of the works of the great masters, which a 
 boy of his age could hardly be expected to know, and it was 
 evident that this was purely instinctive, inasmuch as music 
 received no kind of encouragement at Roughborough. 
 There was no boy in the school as fond of music as he was, 
 He picked up his knowledge, he said, from the organist of 
 St Michael's Church who used to practise sometimes on a 
 week-day afternoon. Ernest had heard the organ booming 
 away as he was passing outside the church and had sneaked 
 inside and up into the organ loft. In the course of time the 
 organist became accustomed to him as a familiar visitant, and 
 the pair became friends. 
 
 It was this which decided Alethea that the boy was worth 
 taking pains with. " He likes the best music," she thought, 
 " and he hates Dr Skinner. This is a very fair beginning." 
 When she sent him away at night with a sovereign in his 
 pocket (and he had only hoped to get five shillings) she felt 
 as though she had had a good deal more than her money's 
 worth for her money. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 Next day Miss Pontifex returned to town, with her thoughts 
 full of her nephew and how she could best be of use to him. 
 It appeared to her that to do him any real service she 
 must devote herself almost entirely to him ; she must in fact 
 give up living in London, at any rate for a long time, and 
 live at Roughborough where she could see him continually. 
 This was a serious undertaking ; she had lived in London 
 for the last twelve years, and naturally disliked the prospect 
 of a small country town such as Roughborough. Was it 
 a prudent thing to attempt so much ? Must not people take 
 their chances in this world ? Can anyone do much for any- 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 one else unless by making a will in his favour and dying 
 then and there ? Should not each look after his own happi- 
 ness, and will not the world be best carried on if everyone 
 minds his own business and leaves other people to mind 
 theirs ? Life is not a donkey race in which everyone is to 
 ride his neighbour's donkey and the last is to win, and the 
 psalmist long since formulated a common experience when 
 he declared that no man may deliver his brother nor make 
 agreement unto God for him, for it cost more to redeem 
 their souls, so that he must let that alone for ever. 
 
 All these excellent reasons for letting her nephew alone 
 occurred to her, and many more, but against them there 
 pleaded a woman's love for children, and her desire to find 
 someone among the younger branches of her own family to 
 whom she could become warmly attached, and whom she 
 could attach warmly to herself. 
 
 Over and above this she wanted someone to leave her 
 money to ; she was not going to leave it to people about 
 whom she knew very little, merely because they happened to 
 be sons and daughters of brothers and sisters whom she had 
 never liked. She knew the power and value of money 
 exceedingly well, and how many lovable people suffer and 
 die yearly for the want of it ; she was little likely to leave it 
 without being satisfied that her legatees were square, lov- 
 able, and more or less hard up. She wanted those to have 
 it who would be most likely to use it genially and sensibly, 
 and whom it would thus be likely to make most happy; 
 if she could find one such among her nephews and nieces, so 
 much the better ; it was worth taking a great deal of pains 
 to see whether she could or could not ; but if she failed, she 
 must find an heir who was not related to her by blood. 
 
 "Of course," she had said to me, more than once, "I 
 shall make a mess of it. I shall choose some nice-looking, 
 well-dressed screw, with gentlemanly manners which will take 
 me in, and he will go and paint Academy pictures, or write 
 for the TinieSy or do something just as horrid the moment 
 the breath is out of my body." 
 
 As yet, however, she had made no will at all, and this 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 was one of the few things that troubled her. I believe she 
 would have left most of her money to me if I had not stopped 
 her. My father left me abundantly well off, and my mode of 
 life has been always simple, so that I have never known 
 uneasiness about money ; moreover I was especially anxious 
 that there should be no occasion given for ill-natured talk ; 
 she knew well, therefore, that her leaving her money to me 
 would be of all things the most likely to weaken the ties that 
 existed between us, provided that I was aware of it, but I 
 did not mind her talking about whom she should make her 
 heir, so long as it was well understood that I was not to be 
 the person. 
 
 Ernest had satisfied her as having enough in him to tempt 
 her strongly to take him up, but it was not till after many 
 days' reflection that she gravitated towards actually doing so, 
 with all the break in her daily ways that this would entail. 
 At least, she said it took her some days, and certainly it 
 appeared to do so, but from the moment she had begun 
 to broach the subject, I had guessed how things were going 
 to end. 
 
 It was now arranged she should take a house at Rough- 
 borough, and go and live there for a couple of years. As a 
 compromise, however, to meet some of my objections, it was 
 also arranged that she should keep her rooms in Gower 
 Street, and come to town for a week once in each month ; of 
 course, also, she would leave Roughborough for the greater 
 part of the holidays. After two years, the thing was to 
 come to an end, unless it proved a great success. She 
 should by that time, at any rate, have made up her mind 
 what the boy's character was, and would then act as circum- 
 stances might determine. 
 
 The pretext she put forward ostensibly was that her doctor 
 said she ought to be a year or two in the country after so 
 many years of London life, and had recommended Rough- 
 borough on account of the purity of its air, and its easy 
 access to and from London — for by this time the railway 
 had reached it. She was anxious not to give her brother 
 and sister any right to complain, if on seeing more of her 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 nephew she found she could not get on with him, and she 
 was also anxious not to raise false hopes of any kind in the 
 boy's own mind. 
 
 Having settled how everything was to be, she wrote to 
 Theobald and said she meant to take a house in Rough- 
 borough from the Michaelmas then approaching, and men- 
 tioned, as though casually, that one of the attractions of the 
 place would be that her nephew was at school there and she 
 should hope to see more of him than she had done hitherto. 
 Theobald and Christina knew how dearly Alethea loved 
 London, and thought it very odd that she should want to 
 go and live at Roughborough, but they did not suspect that 
 she was going there solely on her nephew's account, much 
 less that she had thought of making Ernest her heir. If 
 they had guessed this, they would have been so jealous 
 that I half beheve they would have asked her to go and 
 live somewhere else. Alethea however, was two or three 
 years younger than Theobald ; she was still some years short 
 of fifty, and might very well live to eighty-five or ninety ; her 
 money, therefore, was not worth taking much trouble about, 
 and her brother and sister-in-law had dismissed it, so to 
 speak, from their minds with costs, assuming, however, that 
 if anything did happen to her while they were still alive, 
 the money would, as a matter of course, come to them. 
 
 The prospect of Alethea seeing much of Ernest was a 
 serious matter. Christina smelt mischief from afar, as indeed 
 she often did. Alethea was worldly — as worldly, that is to 
 say, as a sister of Theobald's could be. In her letter to 
 Theobald she had said she knew how much of his and 
 Christina's thoughts were taken up with anxiety for the boy's 
 welfare. Alethea had thought this handsome enough, but 
 Christina had wanted something better and stronger. " How 
 can she know how much we think of our darling ? " she had 
 exclaimed, when Theobald showed her his sister's letter. 
 " I think, my dear, Alethea would understand these things 
 better if she had children of her own." The least that would 
 have satisfied Christina was to have been told that there 
 never yet had been any parents comparable to Theobald and 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 herself. She did not feel easy that an aUiance of some kind 
 would not grow up between aunt and nephew, and neither 
 she nor Theobald wanted Ernest to have any allies. Joey 
 and Charlotte were quite as many allies as were good for 
 him. After all, however, if Alethea chose to go and live at 
 Roughborough, they could not well stop her, and must make 
 the best of it. 
 
 In a few weeks' time Alethea did choose to go and live at 
 Roughborough. A house was found with a field and a nice 
 little garden which suited her very well. " At any rate," she 
 said to herself, " I will have fresh eggs and flowers." She 
 even considered the question of keeping a cow, but in the 
 end decided not to do so. She furnished her house through- 
 out anew, taking nothing whatever from her estabhshment in 
 Gower Street, and by Michaelmas — for the house was empty 
 when she took it — she was settled comfortably, and had 
 begun to make herself at home. 
 
 One of Miss Pontifex's first moves was to ask a dozen of 
 the smartest and most gentlemanly boys to breakfast with 
 her. From her seat in church she could see the faces of 
 the upper-form boys, and soon made up her mind which of 
 them it would be best to cultivate. Miss Pontifex, sitting 
 opposite the boys in church, and reckoning them up with her 
 keen eyes from under her veil by all a woman's criteria, came 
 to a truer conclusion about the greater number of those she 
 scrutinized than even Dr Skinner had done. She fell in love 
 with one boy from seeing him put on his gloves. 
 
 Miss Pontifex, as I have said, got hold of some of these 
 youngsters through Ernest, and fed them well. No boy can 
 resist being fed well by a good-natured and still handsome 
 woman. Boys are very like nice dogs in this respect — give 
 them a bone and they will like you at once. Alethea em- 
 ployed every other little artifice which she thought likely to 
 win their allegiance to herself, and through this their counte- 
 nance for her nephew. She found the football club in a slight 
 money difficulty and at once gave half a sovereign towards 
 its removal. The boys had no chance against her, she shot 
 them down one after another as easily as though they had 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 been roosting pheasants. Nor did she escape scathless her- 
 self, for, as she wrote to me, she quite lost her heart to half a 
 dozen of them. " How much nicer they are," she said, 
 " and how much more they know than those who profess to 
 teach them ! " 
 
 I believe it has been lately maintained that it is the young 
 and fair who are the truly old and truly experienced, inasmuch 
 as it is they who alone have a living memory to guide them; 
 " the whole charm," it has been said, " of youth lies in its 
 advantage over age in respect of experience, and when this 
 has for some reason failed or been misapplied, the charm is 
 broken. When we say that we are getting old, we should 
 say rather that we are getting new or young, and are suffering 
 from inexperience ; trying to do things which we have never 
 done before, and failing worse and worse, till in the end we 
 are landed in the utter impotence of death." 
 
 Miss Pontifex died many a long year before the above 
 passage was written, but she had arrived independently at 
 much the same conclusion. 
 
 She first, therefore, squared the boys. Dr Skinner was 
 even more easily dealt with. He and Mrs Skinner called, as 
 a matter of course, as soon as Miss Pontifex was settled. 
 She fooled him to the top of his bent, and obtained the 
 promise of a MS. copy of one of his minor poems (for Dr 
 Skinner had the reputation of being quite one of our most 
 facile and elegant minor poets) on the occasion of his first 
 visit. The other masters and masters' wives were not for- 
 gotten. Alethea laid herself out to please, as indeed she did 
 wherever she went, and if any woman lays herself out to do 
 this, she generally succeeds. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 Miss Pontifex soon found out that Ernest did not like 
 games, but she saw also that he could hardly be expected 
 to like them. He was perfectly well shaped but unusually 
 devoid of physical strength. He got a fair share of this in 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 after life, but it came much later with him than with other 
 boys, and at the time of which I am writing he was a mere 
 little skeleton. He wanted something to develop his arms 
 and chest without knocking him about as much as the school 
 games did. To supply this want by some means which 
 should add also to his pleasure was Alethea's first anxiety. 
 Rowing would have answered every purpose, but unfortunately 
 there was no river at Roughborough. 
 
 Whatever it was to be, it must be something which he 
 should like as much as other boys liked cricket or football, 
 and he must think the wish for it to have come originally 
 from himself; it was not very easy to find anything that 
 would do, but ere long it occurred to her that she might 
 enlist his love of music on her side, and asked him one day 
 when he was spending a half-holiday at her house whether he 
 would like her to buy an organ for him to play on. Of 
 course, the boy said yes ; then she told him about her 
 grandfather and the organs he had built. It had never 
 entered into his head that he could make one, but when he 
 gathered from what his aunt had said that this was not out 
 of the question, he rose as eagerly to the bait as she could 
 have desired, and wanted to begin learning to saw and plane 
 so that he might make the wooden pipes at once. 
 
 Miss Pontifex did not see how she could have hit upon 
 anything more suitable, and she liked the idea that he would 
 incidentally get a knowledge of carpentering, for she was 
 impressed, perhaps foolishly, with the wisdom of the German 
 custom which gives every boy a handicraft of some sort. 
 
 Writing to me on this matter she said, " Professions are all 
 very well for those who have connection and interest as well 
 as capital, but otherwise they are white elephants. How many 
 men do not you and I know who have talent, assiduity, 
 excellent good sense, straightforwardness, every quality in 
 fact which should command success, and who yet go on from 
 year to year waiting and hoping against hope for the work 
 which never comes ? How, indeed, is it likely to come unless 
 to those who either are born with interest, or who marry 
 in order to get it ? Ernest's father and mother have no 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 interest, and if they had they would not use it. I suppose 
 they will make him a clergyman, or try to do so — perhaps it 
 is the best thing to do with him, for he could buy a living 
 with the money his grandfather left him, but there is no 
 knowing what the boy will think of it when the time comes, 
 and for aught we know he may insist on going to the back- 
 woods of America, as so many other young men are doing 
 now." . . . But, anyway, he would like making an organ, 
 and this could do him no harm, so the sooner he began the 
 better. 
 
 Alethea thought it would save trouble in the end if she told 
 her brother and sister-in-law of this scheme. " I do not sup- 
 pose," she wrote, " that Dr Skinner will approve very cordially 
 of my attempt to introduce organ-building into the curriculmn 
 of Roughborough, but I will see what I can do with him, for 
 I have set my heart on owning an organ built by Ernest's 
 own hands, which he may play on as much as he likes while 
 it remains in my house and which I will lend him per- 
 manently as soon as he gets one of his own, but which is 
 to be my property for the present, inasmuch as I mean to 
 pay for it." This was put in to make it plain to Theobald 
 and Christina that they should not be out of pocket in the 
 matter. 
 
 If Alethea had been as poor as the Misses AUaby, the 
 reader may guess what Ernest's papa and mamma would 
 have said to this proposal ; but then, if she had been as poor 
 as they, she would never have made it. They did not like 
 Ernest's getting more and more into his aunt's good books, 
 still it was perhaps better that he should do so than that she 
 should be driven back upon the John Pontifexes. The only 
 thing, said Theobald, which made him hesitate, was that the 
 boy might be thrown with low associates later on if he were 
 to be encouraged in his taste for music — a taste which Theo- 
 bald had always disliked. He had observed with regret that 
 Ernest had ere now shown rather a hankering after low com- 
 pany, and he might make acquaintance with those who would 
 corrupt his innocence. Christina shuddered at this, but when 
 they had aired their scruples sufficiently they felt (and when 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 people begin to " feel," they are invariably going to 
 take what they believe to be the more worldly course) that 
 to oppose Alethea's proposal would be injuring their son's 
 prospects more than was right, so they consented, but not 
 too graciously. 
 
 After a time, however, Christina got used to the idea, and 
 then considerations occurred to her which made her throw 
 herself into it with characteristic ardour. If Miss Pontifex 
 had been a railway stock she might have been said to have 
 been buoyant in the Battersby market for some few days ; 
 buoyant for long together she could never be, still for a time 
 there really was an upward movement. Christina's mind 
 wandered to the organ itself; she seemed to have made it 
 with her own hands; there would be no other in England 
 to compare with it for combined sweetness and power. 
 She already heard the famous Dr Walmisley of Cambridge 
 mistaking it for a Father Smith. It would come, no 
 doubt, in reality to Battersby Church, which wanted an 
 organ, for it must be all nonsense about Alethea's wishing 
 to keep it, and Ernest would not have a house of his own 
 for ever so many years, and they could never have it at the 
 Rectory. Oh, no ! Battersby Church was the only proper 
 place for it. 
 
 Of course, they would have a grand opening, and the 
 Bishop would come down, and perhaps young Figgins might 
 be on a visit to them — she must ask Ernest if young Figgins 
 had yet left Roughborough — he might even persuade his 
 grandfather Lord Lonsford to be present. Lord Lonsford 
 and the Bishop and everyone else would then compliment 
 her, and Dr Wesley or Dr Walmisley, who should preside 
 (it did not much matter which), would say to her, " My dear 
 Mrs Pontifex, I never yet played upon so remarkable an 
 instrument." Then she would give him one of her very 
 sweetest smiles and say she feared he was flattering her, on 
 which he would rejoin with some pleasant little trifle about 
 remarkable men (the remarkable man being for the moment 
 Ernest) having invariably had remarkable women for their 
 mothers — and so on and so on. The advantage of doing 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick 
 and exactly in the right places. 
 
 Theobald wrote Ernest a short and surly letter a propos 
 of his aunt's intentions in this matter. 
 
 *' I will not commit myself," he said, " to an opinion 
 whether anything will come of it; this will depend entirely 
 upon your own exertions ; you have had singular advantages 
 hitherto, and your kind aunt is showing every desire to 
 befriend you, but you must give greater proof of stability 
 and steadiness of character than you have given yet if this 
 organ matter is not to prove in the end to be only one 
 disappointment the more. 
 
 " I must insist on two things : firstly that this new iron in 
 the fire does not distract your attention from your Latin and 
 Greek" — ("They aren't mine," thought Ernest, "and never 
 have been ") — " and secondly, that you bring no smell of glue 
 or shavings into the house here, if you make any part of the 
 organ during your holidays." 
 
 Ernest was still too young to know how unpleasant a 
 letter he was receiving. He believed the innuendoes con- 
 tained in it to be perfectly just. He knew he was sadly 
 deficient in perseverance. He liked some things for a little 
 while, and then found he did not like them any more — and 
 this was as bad as anything well could be. His father's 
 letter gave him one of his many fits of melancholy over his 
 own worthlessness, but the thought of the organ consoled 
 him, and he felt sure that here at any rate was something 
 to which he could apply himself steadily without growing 
 tired of it. 
 
 It was settled that the organ was not to be begun before 
 the Christmas holidays were over, and that till then Ernest 
 should do a little plain carpentering, so as to get to know 
 how to use his tools. Miss Pontifex had a carpenter's 
 bench set up in an outhouse upon her own premises, and 
 made terms with the most respectable carpenter in Rough- 
 borough, by which one of his men was to come for a couple 
 of hours twice a week and set Ernest on the right way ; then 
 she discovered she wanted this or that simple piece of work 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 done, and gave the boy a commission to do it. paying him 
 handsomely as well as finding him in tools and materials. 
 She never gave him a syllable of good advice, or talked 
 to him about everything's depending upon his own exertions, 
 but she kissed him often, and would come into the work- 
 shop and act the part of one who took an interest in what 
 was being done so cleverly as ere long to become really 
 interested. 
 
 What boy would not take kindly to almost anything with 
 such assistance ? All boys like making things ; the exercise 
 of sawing, planing and hammering, proved exactly what his 
 aunt had wanted to find — something that should exercise, 
 but not too much, and at the same time amuse him ; when 
 Ernest's sallow face was flushed with his work, and his eyes 
 were sparkling with pleasure, he looked quite a difi'erent boy 
 from the one his aunt had taken in hand only a few months 
 earlier. His inner self never told him that this was humbug, 
 as it did about Latin and Greek. Making stools and 
 drawers was worth living for, and after Christmas there 
 loomed the organ, which was scarcely ever absent from his 
 mind. 
 
 His aunt let him invite his friends, encouraging him to 
 bring those whom her quick sense told her were the most 
 desirable. She smartened him up also in his personal 
 appearance, always without preaching to him. Indeed she 
 worked wonders during the short time that was allowed her, 
 and if her life had been spared I cannot think that my hero 
 would have come under the shadow of that cloud which cast 
 so heavy a gloom over his younger manhood ; but unfortu- 
 nately for him his gleam of sunshine was too hot and too 
 brilliant to last, and he had many a storm yet to weather, 
 before he became fairly happy. For the present, how- 
 ever, he was supremely so, and his aunt was happy and 
 grateful for his happiness, the improvement she saw in him, 
 and his unrepressed affection for herself. She became fonder 
 of him from day to day in spite of his many faults and 
 almost incredible foolishnesses. It was perhaps on account 
 of these very things that she saw how much he had need of 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 her ; but at any rate, from whatever cause, she became 
 strengthened in her determination to be to him in the place 
 of parents, and to find in him a son rather than a nephew. 
 But still she made no will. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 All went well for the first part of the following half year. 
 Miss Pontifex spent the greater part of the holidays in 
 London, and I also saw her at Roughborough, where I spent 
 a few days, staying at the " Swan." I heard all about my 
 godson in whom, however, I took less interest than I said I 
 did. I took more interest in the stage at that time than in 
 anything else, and as for Ernest, I found him a nuisance for 
 engrossing so much of his aunt's attention, and taking her so 
 much from London. The organ was begun, and made fair 
 progress during the first two months of the half year. Ernest 
 was happier than he had ever been before, and was struggling 
 upwards. The best boys took more notice of him for his 
 aunt's sake, and he consorted less with those who led him 
 into mischief. 
 
 But much as Miss Pontifex had done, she could not all at 
 once undo the effect of such surroundings as the boy had 
 had at Battersby. Much as he feared and disliked his father 
 (though he still knew not how much this was), he had caught 
 much from him ; if Theobald had been kinder Ernest would 
 have modelled himself upon him entirely, and ere long 
 would probably have become as thorough a little prig as 
 could have easily been found. 
 
 Fortunately his temper had come to him from his mother, 
 who, when not frightened, and when there was nothing on 
 the horizon which might cross the slightest whim of her 
 husband, was an amiable, good-natured woman. If it was 
 not such an awful thing to say of anyone, I should say that 
 she meant well. 
 
 Ernest had also inherited his mother's love of building 
 castles in the air, and — so I suppose it must be called — her 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 vanity. He was very fond of showing off, and, provided he 
 could attract attention, cared Httle from whom it came, nor 
 what it was for. He caught up, parrot-Uke, whatever jargon 
 he heard from his elders, which he thought was the correct 
 thing, and aired it in season and out of season, as though it 
 were his own. 
 
 Miss Pontifex was old enough and wise enough to know 
 that this is the way in which even the greatest men as a 
 general rule begin to develop, and was more pleased with 
 his receptiveness and reproductiveness than alarmed at the 
 things he caught and reproduced. 
 
 She saw that he was much attached to herself, and trusted 
 to this rather than to anything else. She saw also that his 
 conceit was not very profound, and that his fits of self- 
 abasement were as extreme as his exaltation had been. His 
 impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in anyone who smiled 
 pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind to 
 him, made her more anxious about him than any other 
 point in his character ; she saw clearly that he would have 
 to find himself rudely undeceived many a time and oft, 
 before he would learn to distinguish friend from foe within 
 reasonable time. It was her perception of this which led 
 her to take the action which she was so soon called upon 
 to take. 
 
 Her health was for the most part excellent, and she had 
 never had a serious illness in her Hfe. One morning, how- 
 ever, soon after Easter 1850, she awoke feeling seriously unwell. 
 For some little time there had been a talk of fever in the 
 neighbourhood, but in those days the precautions that ought 
 to be taken against the spread of infection were not so well 
 understood as now, and nobody did anything. In a day or 
 two it became plain that Miss Pontifex had got an attack of 
 typhoid fever and was dangerously ill. On this she sent off 
 a. messenger to town, and desired him not to return without 
 her lawyer and myself. 
 
 We arrived on the afternoon of the day on which we had 
 been summoned, and found her still free from delirium : indeed, 
 the cheery way in which she received us made it difficult to 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 think she could be in danger. She at once explained her 
 wishes, which had reference, as I expected, to her nephew, 
 and repeated the substance of what I have already referred 
 to as her main source of uneasiness concerning him. Then 
 she begged me by our long and close intimacy, by the 
 suddenness of the danger that had fallen on her and 
 her powerlessness to avert it, to undertake what she said 
 she well knew, if she died, would be an unpleasant and 
 invidious trust. 
 
 She wanted to leave the bulk of her money ostensibly to 
 me, but in reality to her nephew, so that I should hold it in 
 trust for him till he was twenty-eight years old, but neither he 
 nor anyone else, except her lawyer and myself, was to know 
 anything about it. She would leave ;^5ooo in other legacies, 
 and ;^i 5,000 to Ernest — which by the time he was twenty- 
 eight would have accumulated to, say, ;;^3o,ooo. "Sell out 
 the debentures," she said, "where the money now is — and 
 put it into Midland Ordinary." 
 
 " Let him make his mistakes," she said, " upon the money 
 his grandfather left him. I am no prophet, but even I can 
 see that it will take that boy many years to see things as his 
 neighbours see them. He will get no help from his father 
 and mother, who would never forgive him for his good luck 
 if I left him the money outright ; I daresay I am wrong, but 
 I think he will have to lose the greater part or all of what 
 he has, before he will know how to keep what he will get 
 from me." 
 
 Supposing he went bankrupt before he was twenty-eight 
 years old, the money was to be mine absolutely, but she 
 could trust me, she said, to hand it over to Ernest in due 
 time. 
 
 " If," she continued, " I am mistaken, the worst that can 
 happen is that he will come into a larger sum at twenty- 
 eight instead of a smaller sum at, say, twenty-three, for I 
 would never trust him with it earlier, and if he knows 
 nothing about it he will not be unhappy for the want of it." 
 
 She begged me to take ;^2ooo in return for the trouble 
 I should have in taking charge of the boy's estate, and as a 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 sign of the testatrix's hope that I would now and again look 
 after him while he was still young. The remaining _;,r3ooo 
 I was to pay in legacies and annuities to friends and servants. 
 
 In vain both her lawyer and myself remonstrated with her 
 on the unusual and hazardous nature of this arrangement. 
 We told her that sensible people will not take a more 
 sanguine view concerning human nature than the Courts of 
 Chancery do. We said, in fact, everything that anyone else 
 would say. She admitted everything, but urged that her 
 time was short, that nothing would induce her to leave her 
 money to her nephew in the usual way. " It is an unusually 
 foolish will," she said, " but he is an unusually foolish boy ; " 
 and she smiled quite merrily at her little sally. Like all the 
 rest of her family, she was very stubborn when her mind was 
 made up. So the thing was done as she wished it. 
 
 No provision was made for either my death or Ernest's — 
 Miss Pontifex had settled it that we were neither of us going 
 to die, and was too ill to go into details ; she was so anxious, 
 moreover, to sign her will while still able to do so that we 
 had practically no alternative but to do as she told us. If 
 she recovered we could see things put on a more satisfactory 
 footing, and further discussion would evidently impair her 
 chances of recovery ; it seemed then only too likely that it 
 was a case of this will or no will at all. 
 
 When the will was signed I wrote a letter in duplicate, 
 saying that I held all Miss Pontifex had left me in trust for 
 Ernest except as regards ^^5000, but that he was not to 
 come into the bequest, and was to know nothing what- 
 ever about it directly or indirectly, till he was twenty-eight 
 years old, and if he was bankrupt before he came into it the 
 money was to be mine absolutely. At the foot of each letter 
 Miss Pontifex wrote, "The above was my understanding 
 when I made my will," and then signed her name. The 
 solicitor and his clerk witnessed ; I kept one copy myself and 
 handed the other to Miss Pontifex's solicitor. 
 
 When all this had been done she became more easy in her 
 mind. She talked principally about her nephew. " Don't 
 scold him," she said, " if he is volatile, and continually takes 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 things up only to throw them down again. How can he find 
 out his strength or weakness otherwise ? A man's profession," 
 she said, and here she gave one of her wicked little laughs, 
 " is not like his wife, which he must take once for all, for 
 better for worse, without proof beforehand. Let him go here 
 and there, and learn his truest liking by finding out what, 
 after all, he catches himself turning to most habitually — then 
 let him stick to this ; but I daresay Ernest will be forty or 
 five and forty before he settles down. Then all his previous 
 infidelities will work together to him for good if he is the boy 
 I hope he is. 
 
 "Above all," she continued, "do not let him work up to 
 his full strength, except once or twice in his lifetime ; nothing 
 is well done nor worth doing unless, take it all round, it has 
 come pretty easily. Theobald and Christina would give him 
 a pinch of salt and tell him to put it on the tails of the seven 
 deadly virtues ; " — here she laughed again in her old manner 
 at once so mocking and so sweet — " I think if he likes pan- 
 cakes he had perhaps better eat them on Shrove Tuesday, 
 but this is enough." These were the last coherent words she 
 spoke. From that time she grew continually worse, and was 
 never free from delirium till her death — which took place less 
 than a fortnight afterwards, to the inexpressible grief of those 
 who knew and loved her. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 Letters had been written to Miss Pontifex's brothers and 
 sisters, and one and all came post-haste to Roughborough. 
 Before they arrived the poor lady was already delirious, and 
 for the sake of her own peace at the last I am half glad she 
 never recovered consciousness. 
 
 I had known these people all their lives, as none can 
 know each other but those who have played together as 
 children ; I knew how they had all of them — perhaps 
 Theobald least, but all of them more or less — made her life a 
 burden to her until the death of her father had made her 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 her own mistress, and I was displeased at their coming one 
 after the other to Roughborough, and inquiring whether their 
 sister had recovered consciousness sufficiently to be able to 
 see them. It was known that she had sent for me on being 
 taken ill, and that I remained at Roughborough, and I own I 
 was angered by the mingled air of suspicion, defiance and 
 inquisitiveness, with which they regarded me. They would 
 all, except Theobald, I believe have cut me downright if they 
 had not believed me to know something they wanted to know 
 themselves, and might have some chance of learning from me 
 — for it was plain I had been in some way concerned with 
 the making of their sister's will. None of them suspected 
 what the ostensible nature of this would be, but I think they 
 feared Miss Pontifex was about to leave money for public 
 uses. John said to me in his blandest manner that he 
 fancied he remembered to have heard his sister say that she 
 thought of leaving money to found a college for the relief of 
 dramatic authors in distress; to this I made no rejoinder, 
 and I have no doubt his suspicions were deepened. 
 
 When the end came, I got Miss Pontifex's solicitor to write 
 and tell her brothers and sisters how she had left her money : 
 they were not unnaturally furious, and went each to his or her 
 separate home without attending the funeral, and without 
 paying any attention to myself. This was perhaps the 
 kindest thing they could have done by me, for their 
 behaviour made me so angry that I became almost reconciled 
 to Alethea's will out of pleasure at the anger it had aroused. 
 But for this I should have felt the will keenly, as having been 
 placed by it in the position which of all others I had been 
 most anxious to avoid, and as having saddled me with a very 
 heavy responsibility. Still it was impossible for me to escape, 
 and I could only let things take their course. 
 
 Miss Pontifex had expressed a wish to be buried at 
 Paleham ; in the course of the next few days I therefore 
 took the body thither. I had not been to Paleham since 
 the death of my father some six years earlier. I had often 
 wished to go there, but had shrunk from doing so though my 
 sister had been two or three times. I could not bear to see 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the house which had been my home for so many years of my 
 life in the hands of strangers ; to ring ceremoniously at a 
 bell which I had never yet pulled except as a boy in jest ; to 
 feel that I had nothing to do with a garden in which I had 
 in childhood gathered so many a nosegay, and which had 
 seemed my own for many years after I had reached man's 
 estate ; to see the rooms bereft of every familiar feature, 
 and made so unfamiliar in spite of their familiarity. Had 
 there been any sufficient reason, I should have taken these 
 things as a matter of course, and should no doubt have 
 found them much worse in anticipation than in reality, but as 
 there had been no special reason why I should go to Paleham 
 I had hitherto avoided doing so. Now, however, my going 
 was a necessity, and I confess I never felt more subdued than I 
 did on arriving there with the dead playmate of my childhood. 
 
 I found the village more changed than I had expected. 
 The railway had come there, and a brand new yellow brick 
 station was on the site of old Mr and Mrs Pontifex's cottage. 
 Nothing but the carpenter's shop was now standing. I saw 
 many faces I knew, but even in six years they seemed to 
 have grown wonderfully older. Some of the very old were 
 dead, and the old were getting very old in their stead. I felt 
 like the changeling in the fairy story who came back after a 
 seven years' sleep. Everyone seemed glad to see me, though I 
 had never given them particular cause to be so, and everyone 
 who remembered old Mr and Mrs Pontifex spoke warmly of 
 them and were pleased at their grand-daughter's wishing to 
 be laid near them. Entering the churchyard and standing in 
 the twilight of a gusty cloudy evening on the spot close 
 beside old Mrs Pontifex's grave which I had chosen for 
 Alethea's, I thought of the many times that she, who would lie 
 there henceforth, and I, who must surely lie one day in some 
 such another place though when and where I knew not, had 
 romped over this very spot as childish lovers together. 
 
 Next morning I followed her to the grave, and in due 
 course set up a plain upright slab to her memory as like as 
 might be to those over the graves of her grandmother and 
 grandfather. I gave the dates and places of her birth and 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 death, hut added nothing except that this stone was set up by 
 one who had known and loved her. Knowing how fond she 
 had been of music I had been half inclined at one time to 
 inscribe a few bars of music, if I could find any which 
 seemed suitable to her character, but I knew how much she 
 would have disliked anything singular in connection with her 
 tombstone and did not do it. 
 
 Before, however, I had come to this conclusion, I had 
 thought that Ernest might be able to help me to the right 
 thing, and had written to him upon the subject. The follow- 
 ing is the answer I received — 
 
 " Dear Godpapa, — I send you the best bit I can think 
 of; it is the subject of the last of Handel's six grand fugues 
 and goes thus : — 
 
 Grave 
 
 I 
 
 ^E^^^S 
 
 3^,^^: 
 
 It would do better for a man, especially for an old man who 
 was very sorry for things, than for a woman, but I cannot 
 think of anything better; if you do not like it for Aunt 
 Alethea I shall keep it for myself. — Your affectionate 
 Godson, Ernest Pontifex." 
 
 Was this the little lad who could get sweeties for two- 
 pence but not for two-pence-halfpenny? Dear, dear me, I 
 thought to myself, how these babes and suckUngs do give us 
 the go-by surely. Choosing his own epitaph at fifteen as for 
 a man who " had been very sorry for things," and such a 
 strain as that — why it might have done for Leonardo da 
 Vinci himself. Then I set the boy down as a conceited 
 young jackanapes, which no doubt he was, — but so are a 
 great many other young people of Ernest's age. 
 
 158 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 If Theobald and Christina had not been too well pleased 
 when Miss Pontifex first took Ernest in hand, they were still 
 less so when the connection between the two was interrupted 
 so prematurely. They said they had made sure from what 
 their sister had said that she was going to make Ernest her 
 heir. I do not think she had given them so much as a 
 hint to this effect. Theobald indeed gave Ernest to under- 
 stand that she had done so in a letter which will be given 
 shortly, but if Theobald wanted to make himself disagreeable, 
 a trifle light as air would forthwith assume in his imagination 
 whatever form was most convenient to him. I do not think 
 they had even made up their minds what Alethea was to do 
 with her money before they knew of her being at the point of 
 death, and as I have said already, if they had thought it 
 likely that Ernest would be made heir over their own heads 
 without their having at any rate a life interest in the bequest, 
 they would have soon thrown obstacles in the way of further 
 intimacy between aunt and nephew. 
 
 This, however, did not bar their right to feeling aggrieved 
 now that neither they nor Ernest had taken anything at all, 
 and they could profess disappointment on their boy's behalf 
 which they would have been too proud to admit upon their 
 own. In fact, it was only amiable of them to be disappointed 
 under these circumstances. 
 
 Christina said that the will was simply fraudulent, and was 
 convinced that it could be upset if she and Theobald went 
 the right way to work. Theobald, she said, should go 
 before the Lord Chancellor, not in full court but in 
 chambers, where he could explain the whole matter; or, 
 perhaps it would be even better if she were to go herself — 
 and I dare not trust myself to describe the reverie to which 
 this last idea gave rise. I believe in the end Theobald died, 
 and the Lord Chancellor (who had become a widower a few 
 weeks earlier) made her an offer, which, however, she firmly 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 but not ungratefully declined ; she should ever, she said, 
 continue to think of him as a friend — at this point the cook 
 came in, saying the butcher had called, and what would she 
 please to order, 
 
 I think Theobald must have had an idea that there was 
 something behind the bequest to me, but he said nothing 
 about it to Christina. He was angry and felt wronged, 
 because he could not get at Alethea to give her a piece of 
 his mind any more than he had been able to get at his 
 father. " It is so mean of people," he exclaimed to himself, 
 " to inflict an injury of this sort, and then shirk facing those 
 whom they have injured ; let us hope that, at any rate, they 
 and I may meet in Heaven." But of this he was doubtful, 
 for when people had done so great a wrong as this, it was 
 hardly to be supposed that they would go to Heaven at all — 
 and as for his meeting them in another place, the idea never 
 so much as entered his mind. 
 
 One so angry and, of late, so little used to contra- 
 diction might be trusted, however, to avenge himself upon 
 someone, and Theobald had long since developed the organ, 
 by means of which he might vent spleen with least risk 
 and greatest satisfaction to himself. This organ, it may 
 be guessed, was nothing else than Ernest ; to Ernest there- 
 fore he proceeded to unburden himself, not personally, but 
 by letter. 
 
 "You ought to know," he wrote, "that your Aunt Alethea 
 had given your mother and me to understand that it was her 
 wish to make you her heir — in the event, of course, of your 
 conducting yourself in such a manner as to give her con- 
 fidence in you ; as a matter of fact, however, she has left 
 you nothing, and the whole of her property has gone to your 
 godfather, Mr Overton. Your mother and I are willing to 
 hope that if she had lived longer you would yet have 
 succeeded in winning her good opinion, but it is too late to 
 think of this now. 
 
 *' The carpentering and organ-building must at once be 
 discontinued, I never believed in the project, and have 
 seen no reason to alter my original opinion. I am not sorry 
 
 i6o 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 for your own sake, that it is to be an end, nor, I am sure, 
 will you regret it yourself in after years. 
 
 "A few words more as regards your o^vn prospects. 
 You have, as I believe you know, a small inheritance, which 
 is yours legally under your grandfather's will. This bequest 
 was made inadvertently, and, I believe, entirely through a 
 misunderstanding on the lawyer's part. The bequest v.as 
 probably intended not to take effect till after the death of 
 your mother and myself; nevertheless, as the will is actually 
 worded, it will now be at your command if you live to be 
 twenty-one years old. From this, however, large deductions 
 must be made. There will be legacy duty, and I do not 
 know whether I am not entitled to deduct the expenses of 
 your education and maintenance from birth to your coming 
 of age ; I shall not in all likelihood insist on this right to 
 the full, if you conduct yourself properly, but a considerable 
 sum should certainly be deducted, there will therefore remain 
 very little — say ;^iooo or ^2000 at the outside, as what 
 will be actually yours — but the strictest account shall be 
 rendered you in due time. 
 
 " This, let me warn you most seriously, is all that you 
 must expect from me " (even Ernest saw that it was not 
 from Theobald at all) "at any rate till after my death, 
 which for aught any of us know may be yet many years 
 distant. It is not a large sum, but it is sufficient if supple- 
 mented by steadiness and earnestness of purpose. Your 
 mother and I gave you the name Ernest, hoping that it 
 
 would remind you continually of " but I really cannot 
 
 copy more of this effusion. It was all the same old 
 will-shaking game and came practically to this, that 
 Ernest was no good, and that if he went on as he was 
 going on now, he would probably have to go about the 
 streets begging without any shoes or stockings soon after 
 he had left school, or at any rate, college; and that 
 he, Theobald, and Christina were almost too good for 
 this world altogether. 
 
 After he had written this Theobald felt quite good- 
 natured, and sent to the Mrs Thompson of the moment 
 L i6i 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 even more soup and wine than her usual not illiberal 
 allowance. 
 
 Ernest was deeply, passionately upset by his father's 
 letter ; to think that even his dear aunt, the one person 
 of his relations whom he really loved, should have turned 
 against him and thought badly of him after all. This was 
 the unkindest cut of all. In the hurry of her illness Miss 
 Pontifex, while thinking only of his welfare, had omitted to 
 make such small present mention of him as would have 
 made his father's innuendoes stingless ; and her illness being 
 infectious, she had not seen him after its nature was known. 
 I myself did not know of Theobald's letter, nor think enough 
 about my godson to guess what might easily be his state. It 
 was not till many years afterwards that I found Theobald's 
 letter in the pocket of an old portfolio which Ernest had 
 used at school, and in which other old letters and school 
 documents were collected which I have used in this book. 
 He had forgotten that he had it, but told me when he saw it 
 that he remembered it as the first thing that made him begin 
 to rise against his father in a rebellion vv'hich he recog- 
 nised as righteous, though he dared not openly avow it. 
 Not the least serious thing was that it would, he feared, 
 be his duty to give up the legacy his grandfather had 
 left him ; for if it was his only through a mistake, how 
 could he keep it? 
 
 During the rest of the half year Ernest was listless and un- 
 happy. He was very fond of some of his schoolfellows, but 
 afraid of those whom he believed to be better than himself, 
 and prone to idealise everyone into being his superior 
 except those who were obviously a good deal beneath him. 
 He held himself much too cheap, and because he was with- 
 out that physical strength and vigour which he so much 
 coveted, and also because he knew he shirked his lessons, 
 he believed that he was without anything which could 
 deserve the name of a good quality ; he was naturally bad, 
 and one of those for whom there was no place for repentance, 
 though he sought it even with tears. So he shrank out of 
 sight of those whom in his boyish way he idolised, never for 
 
 162 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 a moment suspecting that he might have capacities to the 
 full as high as theirs though of a different kind, and fell in 
 more with those who were reputed of the baser sort, 
 with whom he could at any rate be upon equal terms. 
 Before the end of the half year he had dropped from the 
 estate to which he had been raised during his aunt's stay 
 at Roughborough, and his old dejection, varied, however, 
 with bursts of conceit rivalling those of his mother, resumed 
 its sway over him. " Pontifex," said Dr Skinner, who had 
 fallen upon him in hall one day like a moral landslip, 
 before he had time to escape, " do you never laugh ? 
 Do you always look so preternaturally grave ? " The 
 doctor had not meant to be unkind, but the boy turned 
 crimson, and escaped. 
 
 There was one place only where he was happy, and that 
 was in the old church of St Michael, when his friend the 
 organist was practising. About this time cheap editions 
 of the great oratorios began to appear, and Ernest got them 
 all as soon as they were published ; he would sometimes sell 
 a school-book to a second-hand dealer, and buy a number or 
 two of the " Messiah," or the " Creation," or " Elijah," with the 
 proceeds. This was simply cheating his papa and mamma, 
 but Ernest was faUing low again — or thought he was — and 
 he wanted the music much, and the Sallust, or whatever it 
 was, little. Sometimes the organist would go home, leaving 
 his keys with Ernest, so that he could play by himself and 
 lock up the organ and the church in time to get back for 
 calling over. At other times, while his friend was playing, he 
 would wander round the church, looking at the monuments 
 and the old stained glass windows, enchanted as regards 
 both eyes and ears, at once. Once the old rector got hold 
 of him as he was watching a new window being put in, which 
 the rector had bought in Germany — the work, it was 
 supposed, of Albert Diirer. He questioned Ernest, and 
 finding that he was fond of music, he said in his old 
 trembling voice (for he was over eighty), " Then you should 
 have known Dr Burney who wrote the history of music. I 
 knew him exceedingly well when I was a young man." That 
 
 163 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 made Ernest's heart beat, for he knew that Dr Burney, when 
 a boy at school at Chester, used to break bounds that he 
 might watch Handel smoking his pipe in the Exchange 
 coffee house — and now he was in the presence of one who, 
 if he had not seen Handel himself, had at least seen those 
 who had seen him. 
 
 These were oases in his desert, but, as a general rule, the 
 boy looked thin and pale, and as though he had a secret 
 which depressed him, which no doubt he had, but for which 
 I cannot blame him. He rose, in spite of himself, higher in 
 the school, but fell ever into deeper and deeper disgrace with 
 the masters, and did not gain in the opinion of those boys 
 about whom he was persuaded that they could assuredly 
 never know what it was to have a secret weighing upon their 
 minds. This was what Ernest felt so keenly ; he did not 
 much care about the boys who liked him, and idolised some 
 who kept him as far as possible at a distance, but this is 
 pretty much the case with all boys everywhere. 
 
 At last things reached a crisis, below which they could not 
 very well go, for at the end of the half year but one after his 
 aunt's death, Ernest brought back a document in his port- 
 manteau, which Theobald stigmatised as " infamous and out- 
 rageous." I need hardly say I am alluding to his school bill. 
 
 This document was always a source of anxiety to Ernest, 
 for it was gone into with scrupulous care, and he was a good 
 deal cross-examined about it. He would sometimes "write 
 in " for articles necessary for his education, such as a port- 
 folio, or a dictionary, and sell the same, as I have explained, 
 in order to eke out his pocket money, probably to buy either 
 music or tobacco. These frauds were sometimes, as Ernest 
 thought, in imminent danger of being discovered, and it was a 
 load off his breast when the cross-examination was safely 
 over. This time Theobald had made a great fuss about the 
 extras, but had grudgingly passed them ; it was another 
 matter, however, with the character and the moral statistics, 
 with which the bill concluded. 
 
 The page on which these details were to be found was 
 as foUovv^s : 
 
 164 
 
 I 
 
6d. 
 
 Total 2s. 
 
 6d. 
 
 o 
 
 Total 
 
 4 
 
 2,S 
 
 Total 
 
 126 
 
 II 
 
 Total 
 
 48 
 
 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Report of the Conduct and Progress of Ernest Pontifex. 
 Upper Fifth Form, half year ending Midsummer 1851. 
 
 Classics — Idle, listless and unimproving. 
 
 Mathematics ,, ,, 
 
 Divinity ,, ,, 
 
 Conduct in house — Orderly. 
 
 General Conduct — Not satisfactory, on account of his great unpunctuality 
 
 and inattention to duties. 
 Monthly merit money is. 6d. 6d. od. 
 
 Number of merit marks 2 o i i 
 
 Number of penal marks 26 20 25 30 
 Number of extra penals 9 6 10 12 
 
 I recommend that his pocket money be made to depend upon his merit 
 money. 
 
 S. Skinner, Headmaster. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 Ernest was thus in disgrace from the beginning of the 
 hohdays, but an incident soon occurred which led him into 
 dehnquencies compared with which all his previous sins were 
 venial. 
 
 Among the servants at the Rectory was a remarkably 
 pretty girl named Ellen. She came from Devonshire, and 
 was the daughter of a fisherman who had been drowned 
 when she was a child. Her mother set up a small shop in 
 the village where her husband had lived, and just managed 
 to make a living. Ellen remained with her till she was four- 
 teen, when she first went out to service. Four years later, 
 when she was about eighteen, but so well grown that she 
 might have passed for twenty, she had been strongly recom- 
 mended to Christina, who was then in want of a housemaid, 
 and had now been at Battersby about twelve months. 
 
 As I have said the girl was remarkably pretty ; she looked 
 the perfection of health and good temper, indeed there was a 
 serene expression upon her face which captivated almost all 
 who saw her ; she looked as if matters had always gone well 
 
 165 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 with her and were ahvays going to do so, and as if no con- 
 ceivable combination of circumstances could put her for long 
 together out of temper either with herself or with anyone else. 
 Her complexion was clear, but high ; her eyes were grey and 
 beautifully shaped ; her lips were full and restful, with some- 
 thing of an Egyptian Sphinx-like character about them. 
 When I learned that she came from Devonshire I fancied I 
 saw a strain of far away Egyptian blood in her, for I had 
 heard, though I know not what foundation there was for the 
 story, that the Egyptians made settlements on the coast of 
 Devonshire and Cornwall long before the Romans conquered 
 Britain. Her hair was a rich brown, and her figure — of 
 about the middle height — perfect, but erring if at all on the 
 side of robustness. Altogether she was one of those girls 
 about whom one is inclined to wonder how they can remain 
 unmarried a week or a day longer. 
 
 Her face (as indeed faces generally are, though I grant 
 they lie sometimes) was a fair index to her disposition. She 
 was good nature itself, and everyone in the house, not exclud- 
 ing I believe even Theobald himself after a fashion, was fond 
 of her. As for Christina she took the very warmest interest 
 in her, and used to have her into the dining-room twice a 
 week, and prepare her for confirmation (for by some accident 
 she had never been confirmed) by explaining to her the 
 geography of Palestine and the routes taken by St Paul on 
 his various journeys in Asia Minor. 
 
 When Bishop Treadwell did actually come down to Bat- 
 tersby and hold a confirmation there (Christina had her wish, 
 he slept at Battersby, and she had a grand dinner party for 
 him, and called him " My lord " several times), he was so 
 much struck with her pretty face and modest demeanour 
 when he laid his hands upon her that he asked Christina 
 about her. When she replied that Ellen was one of her own 
 servants, the bishop seemed, so she thought or chose to 
 think, quite pleased that so pretty a girl should have found 
 so exceptionally good a situation. 
 
 Ernest used to get up early during the hoHdays so that he 
 might play the piano before breakfast without disturbing his 
 
 i66 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 papa and mamma — or rather, perhaps, without being dis- 
 turbed by them. Ellen would generally be there sweeping 
 the drawing-room floor and dusting while he was playing, 
 and the boy, who was ready to make friends with most 
 people, soon became very fond of her. He was not as a 
 general rule sensitive to the charms of the fair sex, indeed he 
 had hardly been thrown in with any women except his Aunts 
 AUaby, and his Aunt Alethea, his mother, his sister Char- 
 lotte and Mrs Jay ; sometimes also he had had to take off his 
 hat to the Miss Skinners, and had felt as if he should sink 
 into the earth on doing so, but his shyness had worn off with 
 Ellen, and the pair had become fast friends. 
 
 Perhaps it was well that Ernest was not at home for very 
 long together, but as yet his affection though hearty was 
 quite Platonic. He was not only innocent, but deplorably 
 — I might even say guiltily — innocent. His preference was 
 based upon the fact that Ellen never scolded him, but was 
 always smiling and good tempered ; besides she used to like 
 to hear him play, and this gave him additional zest in playing. 
 The morning access to the piano was indeed the one distinct 
 advantage which the holidays had in Ernest's eyes, for at 
 school he could not get at a piano except quasi-surrepti- 
 tiously at the shop of Mr Pearsall, the music-seller. 
 
 On returning this midsummer he was shocked to find his 
 favourite looking pale and ill. All her good spirits had left 
 her, the roses had fled from her cheek, and she seemed on 
 the point of going into a decHne. She said she was unhappy 
 about her mother, whose health was failing, and was afraid 
 she was herself not long for this world. Christina, of course, 
 noticed the change. " I have often remarked," she said, 
 " that those very fresh-coloured, healthy-looking girls are the 
 first to break up. I have given her calomel and James's 
 powders repeatedly, and though she does not like it, I think 
 I must show her to Dr Martin when he next comes here." 
 
 "Very well, my dear," said Theobald, and so next time Dr 
 Martin came Ellen was sent for. Dr Martin soon discovered 
 what would probably have been apparent to Christina herself 
 if she had been able to conceive of such an ailment in con- 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 nection with a servant who lived under the same roof as 
 Theobald and herself — the purity of whose married life 
 should have preserved all unmarried people who came near 
 them from any taint of mischief. 
 
 When it was discovered that in three or four months more 
 Ellen would become a mother, Christina's natural good nature 
 would have prompted her to deal as leniently with the case 
 as she could, if she had not been panic-stricken lest any 
 mercy on her and Theobald's part should be construed into 
 toleration, however partial, of so great a sin ; hereon she 
 dashed off into the conviction that the only thing to do was 
 to pay Ellen her wages, and pack her off on the instant bag 
 and baggage out of the house which purity had more 
 especially and particularly singled out for its abiding city. 
 When she thought of the fearful contamination which Ellen's 
 continued presence even for a week would occasion, she 
 could not hesitate. 
 
 Then came the question — horrid thought ! — as to who was 
 the partner of Ellen's guilt ? Was it, could it be, her own 
 son, her darling Ernest ? Ernest was getting a big boy now. 
 She could excuse any young woman for taking a fancy to 
 him ; as for himself, why she was sure he was behind no 
 young man of his age in appreciation of the charms of a 
 nice-looking young woman. So long as he was innocent she 
 did not mind this, but oh, if he were guilty ! 
 
 She could not bear to think of it, and yet it would be 
 mere cowardice not to look such a matter in the face — her 
 hope was in the Lord, and she was ready to bear cheerfully 
 and make the best of any suffering He might think fit to lay 
 upon her. That the baby must be either a boy or girl — this 
 much, at any rate, was clear. No less clear was it that the 
 child, if a boy, would resemble Theobald, and if a girl, 
 herself. Resemblance, whether of body or mind, generally 
 leaped over a generation. The guilt of the parents must not 
 be shared by the innocent offspring of shame — oh ! no — and 
 such a child as this would be . . . She was off in one of her 
 reveries at once. 
 
 The child was in the act of being consecrated Archbishop 
 i68 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 of Canterbury when Theobald came in from a visit in the 
 parish, and was told of the shocking discovery. 
 
 Christina said nothing about Ernest, and I believe was 
 more than half angry when the blame was laid upon other 
 shoulders. She was easily consoled, however, and fell back 
 on the double reflection, firstly, that her son was pure, 
 and secondly, that she was quite sure he would not have 
 been so had it not been for his religious convictions which 
 had held him back — as, of course, it was only to be expected 
 they would. 
 
 Theobald agreed that no time must be lost in paying 
 Ellen her wages and packing her off. So this was done, and 
 less than two hours after Dr Martin had entered the house 
 Ellen was sitting beside John the coachman, with her face 
 muffled up so that it could not be seen, weeping bitterly as 
 she was being driven to the station. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 Ernest had been out all the morning, but came in to the 
 yard of the Rectory from the spinney 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 the 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 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 case, but when he understood them he leaned against the 
 pump, which stood near the back-kitchen window, and 
 mingled his tears with the cook's. 
 
 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 precipitate, 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. 
 
 Ernest could only see what he gathered from the cook, 
 namely, that his favourite, 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 imphcitly 
 believed she would. 
 
 With greater promptitude than he had shown yet, he 
 reckoned up his money and found he had two shillings 
 and threepence 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 short cuts 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 Roughborough 
 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 
 
 170 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 any one else, so 
 when his carpentering was stopped he had naturally taken to 
 " the hounds " as his favourite 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 short cuts of over- 
 taking 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 short cuts he did not catch up the 
 carriage, and would probably not have done so had not John 
 happened to turn his head and seen 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 canst get whiles thou canst get it ; as for 
 Master Ernest here — he has run well after thee ; therefore 
 let him give thee what he is 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 should, 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 
 
 171 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 station and pick him up, for he was dead beat. Thoughts 
 which had aheady 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 offences 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 possessed 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." 
 
 172 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 sun 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 then 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 ; in 
 carrying them over his arm his watch, his money, and his 
 knife had dropped out of them. He had got 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 in the 
 parish ; his mother had certainly not come across him, and 
 his brother and sister had also been out with the governess. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 XL 
 
 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 Stalk, 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 at 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 — everything was always clear with Theobald — 
 that Ernest had not been in the house all the morning, and 
 could therefore have known nothing of 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. 
 
 174 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 had already so many causes of anxiety that he 
 could stand little more, and in spite of all his endeavours to 
 look cheerful, even his mother could see that something was 
 preying upon 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. Once safely penned 
 into one of its deep corners, it was Uke 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 in the sofa cushion 
 and abandon herself to an agony of grief which seldom failed 
 of its effect. None of her favourite manoeuvres were so easily 
 adopted in her usual seat, the arm-chair on the right hand 
 side of the fire-place, 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. 
 
 175 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " My dearest boy," began his mother, taking hold of his 
 hand and placing it within her own, " promise me never to 
 be afraid either of 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 Uttle joys and troubles as we are ; but my 
 dearest boy, it grieves me to think sometimes that 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 develop- 
 ment 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 forget- 
 fulness 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 that fulness and unreserve which would prompt you to 
 
 176 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 one who is so good and noble- 
 hearted by conduct which I can call by no other name than 
 ingratitude." 
 
 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 had she wheedled from him all she wanted to know, and 
 afterwards got him into 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 mamma's conscience has not left off 
 speaking," said Ernest to one of his chums at Roughborough ; 
 " 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 
 
 M 177 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 ? " 
 
 Ernest's 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 
 neighbours, 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 vahant 
 St Michael himself tried hard to shirk his famous combat 
 with the dragon ; he pretended not to see all sorts of mis- 
 conduct 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 it no 
 longer he shilly-shallied and temporised an unconscionable 
 time before he would fix the day and hour for the encounter. 
 As for the actual combat it was much such another wurra- 
 wurra as Mrs AUaby 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 him- 
 self alive and not very seriously hurt after all. 
 
 " I do not know what you mean, mamma," exclaimed 
 178 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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," etc. 
 
 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 mamma's embrace 
 and showing a clean pair of heels. As he got near the 
 purlieus 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," 
 it cried, " and he is going to tell mamma — this time I am 
 done for." But there was nothing in it ; his father only 
 wanted the key of the cellaret. Then Ernest slunk off into 
 a coppice or spinney behind the Rectory paddock, and con- 
 soled himself with a pipe of tobacco. Here in the wood 
 with the summer sun streaming through the trees and a 
 book and his pipe the boy forgot his cares and had an 
 interval of that 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 purse on 
 Battersby piewipes 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 neighbourhood, so that after a week or ten days the 
 
 179 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 
 instalments extending over two, or even it might be three 
 years. In Ernest's own interests, then, as well as those of 
 his father and mother, it would be well that the watch should 
 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. Alto- 
 gether the day had proved an unusually tranquil one, but, 
 alas ! it was not to close as it had begun ; the fickle atmos- 
 phere 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 heard of 
 some serious money loss ; he did not, however, at once 
 unbosom himself, but rang the bell and said to the servant, 
 " Tell Master Ernest I wish to speak to him in the dining- 
 room." 
 
 1 80 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 Long before Ernest reached the dining-room his ill-divining 
 soul had told him that his sin had found him out. What 
 head of a 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 ante-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 par- 
 ticular 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 Salvator 
 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 in 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 clambered 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. 
 
 i8i 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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," said he, in an off-hand, 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 him- 
 self quite relieved), " and I have been to-day to look out for 
 a second-hand one which should answer every purpose so 
 long as you are at school." 
 
 Theobald spoke as if watches had half-a-dozen purposes 
 besides time-keeping, but he could hardly open his mouth 
 without using one or other of his tags, and " answering every 
 purpose " was one of them. 
 
 Ernest was breaking out into the usual expressions 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 I at once 
 recognised as the one which had been given you by your 
 Aunt Alethea. Even if I had failed to recognise it, as per- 
 haps I might have done, I should have identified it directly 
 it reached my hands, inasmuch as it had ' E. P., a present 
 from A. P.' engraved upon the inside. I need say no more 
 to show that this was the very watch which you told your 
 mother and me that you 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 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 mamma 
 " 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 at once assumed that some tramp 
 had picked the watch up 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's heart hardened a little, and he 
 felt as near an approach to an instinct to turn as one so 
 defenceless 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 purloined 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 
 
 183 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 trans- 
 action. 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 manner was quiet and respectful. He took his dis- 
 missal 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 awe-struck 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." 
 
 "Prnest," said Theobald, "leave the room." 
 184 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " No, Master Ernest, you shan't," said John, planting him- 
 self 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 '11 hear on't and let me 
 know ; and if I do hear on't 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 of an ashen colour — 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 to-morrow 
 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 v.retch 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 as a whole was immoral, yet there were doubtless some 
 
 185 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 plays which were improving spectacles. She could fancy the 
 whole house hushed with excitement at hearing John's 
 menace, and hardly breathing by reason of their interest and 
 expectation of the coming answer. Then the actor — pro- 
 bably the great and good Mr Macready — 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 house- 
 hold of the Revd. Theobald Pontifex, who had married a 
 Miss Allaby, etc., etc. 
 
 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 concern- 
 ing 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 pos- 
 session of such a son, there was an end of it ; the son 
 himself was naught. 
 
 No doubt if John had not interfered, Ernest would have 
 had to expiate his offence with ache, penury and imprison- 
 ment. 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 to 
 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. 
 
 i86 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 
 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 
 Roughborough this half year with only five shillings' pocket 
 money. 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 fifteen weeks, therefore I may 
 spend exactly one shilling and fourpence in each week " — 
 and spend exactly one and fourpence in each week accord- 
 ingly. 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. Immedi- 
 ately he got any money he would pay his debts ; if there was 
 any over he would spend it ; if there was not — and there 
 seldom was — he would begin to go on tick again. 
 
 His finance was always based upon the supposition that 
 he should go back to school with ;Q\ in his pocket — 
 of which he owed say a matter of fifteen shillings. There 
 would be five shillings for sundry school subscriptions — but 
 when these were paid the weekly allowance of sixpence 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/- 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 
 
 187 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 once, and this titne without days and days of falsehood " 
 before he reached it. The melancholy fact was not long in 
 coming out, namely, that the wretched Ernest 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 6d. If she made a farthing out 
 of the sixpence 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 wanches, git 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 his blackest 
 scowl, " I am going to put a stop to this nonsense once 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 dis- 
 tinctly that I shall take the whole story to Dr Skinner, 
 who, I imagine, will take much sterner measures than I 
 should." 
 
 " Oh, Ernest, Ernest," sobbed Christina, " be wise in time, 
 and trust those who have already shown you that they know 
 but too well how to be forbearing." 
 
 i88 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 wrung 
 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 a 
 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 mamma had, and that probably 
 it was better he should tell his father, than that his father 
 should insist on Dr Skinner's making an inquiry. His 
 papa's conscience " jabbered " a good deal, but not as much 
 as his mamma'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 Cross's, and 
 this to Mrs Jones, and this at the " Swan and Bottle " public 
 house, to say nothing of another shilling or sixpence 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 hotbed of iniquity without getting 
 to know more than they knew at present, were there not 
 other papas and mammas with darlings whom also they were 
 bound to rescue if it were yet possible ? What boys, then, 
 owed money to these harpies as well as Ernest ? 
 
 Here, again, there was a feeble show of resistance, but the 
 thumbscrews were instantly applied, and Ernest, demoralised 
 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 
 
 189 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 seriatim 
 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 oflF 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 can find 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 
 Roughborough, now that he had been there three years ; 
 it would be difficult to find another school for him, and to 
 explain why he had left Roughborough. 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. 
 
 190 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 
 offence; two stood for frequent, and three for habitual 
 delinquency. 
 
 
 Smoking. 
 
 Drinking 
 
 beer at the 
 
 " Swan and 
 
 Bottle." 
 
 Swearing 
 
 and 
 
 Obscene 
 
 Language. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Smith 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 X X 
 
 Will smoke 
 next half. 
 
 Brown 
 
 XXX 
 
 o 
 
 X 
 
 
 Jones 
 
 X 
 
 X X 
 
 XXX 
 
 
 Robinson . 
 
 X X 
 
 X 
 
 X 
 
 
 And thus through the whole school. 
 
 Of course, in justice 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 So important did Theobald consider this matter that he 
 made a special journey to Roughborough before the half 
 year began. It was a reUef to have him out of the house, 
 
 191 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 laches of his life — one which 
 he can 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 sixteen 
 cannot stand against the moral pressure of a father and 
 mother who have always oppressed him any more than he 
 can 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 re-assembling of the 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 
 evil-doers. He was placed on the idle list 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 offence. It required no great penetration there- 
 
 192 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 fore, on the part of the boys to connect Ernest with the 
 putting Mrs Cross's and Mrs Jones's shops out of bounds. 
 
 Great indeed was the indignation about Mrs Cross who, 
 it was known, remembered 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, pedant and more than pedant though he was, had 
 still just sense enough to turn on Theobald in the matter 
 of the school Hst. 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 ex- 
 pended 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 offence, heinous though it was, had 
 been committed under extenuating circumstances ; the frank- 
 ness with which the "culprit had confessed all, his evidently 
 unfeigned remorse, and the fury with which Dr Skinner was 
 pursuing him tended to bring about a reaction in his favour, 
 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 com- 
 N 193 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 mon not far from Roughborough 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 
 aloof 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. VVhen 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 fife, 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 amuse- 
 ment 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 Rev. Theobald Pontifex, and he had a 
 revulsion of feeling as he saw it being carried towards 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 cere- 
 mony which, after all, was prompted by a boyish love of 
 mischief rather than by rancour. 
 
 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 
 
 194 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 Roughborough. He therefore 
 replied that he must either remove Ernest from Rough- 
 borough altogether, which would for many reasons be un- 
 desirable, or trust to the discretion of the head-master as 
 regards the treatment he might think best for any of his 
 pupils. Ernest said no more ; he still felt that it was so dis 
 creditable to him to have allowed any confession to be wrung 
 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 Roughborough. I mean that of the head boys 
 under certain conditions doing errands for their juniors. 
 The head boys had no bounds and could go to Mrs Cross's 
 whenever they liked ; they actually, therefore, made them- 
 selves 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 a 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 in bounds again, were tacitly 
 allowed to be so. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 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 praepostors, 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 exer- 
 cises or not, pretty much as he liked. His tacit, unconscious 
 
 195 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 obstinacy had in time effected more even than a few bold 
 sallies in the first instance would have done. To the end of 
 his career his' position inter pares 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. 
 
 Once only 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 Alcaics on 
 " The dogs of the monks of St Bernard," and when the exer- 
 cise was returned to him he found the Doctor had written on 
 it : " In this copy of Alcaics — 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 Alcaics 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 Alcaics about the dogs of the monks of 
 St Bernard as my neighbours, 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 round their necks is the cordial gin 
 
 Tied with a little bit of bob-bin. 
 
 I should like to have written that, and I did try, but I 
 
 196 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 Ernest's manner, and said some- 
 thing to this effect. 
 
 " Oh, no," he repHed, still laughing, " no more than 
 St Anthony felt towards the devils who had tempted 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 hked these devils better than most 
 others, and for old acquaintance 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 the more to be 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 rows sank slowly down upon the horizon, and 
 even at home he had quieter times now that he had become 
 a praepostor. 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 often an 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 benefice for a month if he could not do this ; 
 besides he had allowed himself for so many years to say 
 
 197 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 things he ought not to have said, and not to say the things 
 he ought to have said, that he was Httle 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 fuemis 
 plaisirs. . . . 
 
 " 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 un- 
 reservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the 
 world a hundred years hence." 
 
 To return, however, to Roughborough. 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 especial 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 round, 
 more seriously amiss than other people. Dr Skinner re- 
 ceived 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 good-bye 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 ^iX/a? koi evvola'? X^^V"*'' which 
 I believe means " with all kind wishes from the donor." The 
 book was one written in Latin by a German — Schomann : 
 "De comitiis Atheniensibus " — not exactly light and cheerful 
 reading, but Ernest felt it was high time he got to understand 
 
 198 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 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 than 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 loathed 
 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 em- 
 bankment 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 shewn 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 got 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 and protecting 
 
 199 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 Ernest, 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 of a tired 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-traveller opposite to him, an 
 elderly gentleman with a large head and iron-grey 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 
 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 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 can 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 com- 
 pelled to turn out of the most comfortable place as soon as 
 he has ensconced himself in it because papa or mamma 
 happen to come into the room, and he should give it up to 
 them. The most cosy 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 on to 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 Emmanuel — at 
 which college he had entered Ernest — was able to obtain 
 from the present tutor a certain preference in the choice of 
 rooms ; Ernest's, therefore, were very pleasant ones, looking 
 out upon the grassy court that is bounded by the Fellows' 
 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 in having a full-blown 
 son at the University. Some of the reflected rays of this 
 splendour were allowed to fall upon Ernest himself. Theo- 
 bald 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 by-gones be by-gones. 
 
 Ernest, not yet having his name on the books, was able to 
 
 20I 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 dine with his father at the fellows' 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 
 Emmanuel, 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 schoolfellows 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 schoolfellows were only a year or two his 
 seniors ; these called on him, and he thus made a sufficiently 
 favourable entree into college life. A straightforwardness of 
 character that was stamped upon his face, a love of humour, 
 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 ; great- 
 ness, 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 en 
 rapport, 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 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 mastership 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 Uving, 
 the rector of which was now old, and live on his mastership 
 or tutorship till the living fell in. He could buy a very 
 good living for the sum 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 ;!^6oo or ;^7oo 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 at 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 connec- 
 tions — besides he did not know what business meant ; he had 
 no interest, again, at the Bar; medicine was a profession 
 which subjected its students to ordeals and temptations which 
 these fond parents shrank from on behalf of their boy ; he 
 would be thrown among companions and familiarised with 
 details which might sully him, and though he might stand, it 
 
 203 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 was " only too possible " that he would fall. Besides ordina- 
 tion 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 him- 
 self, 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 scholar- 
 ship, 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 like 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 
 tutor's and cook's bills were paid for him ; his father sent him 
 his wine ; over and above this he had ^^50 a year with which 
 to keep himself in clothes and all other expenses ; this was 
 about the usual thing at Emmanuel 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 
 ;^5ooo and became independent of his father, ;^iS or ;^20 
 served to cover the whole of his unauthorised expenditure. 
 
 He joined the boat club, and was constant in his attend- 
 ance 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 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 consequences unpleasant, and soon learned how to keep 
 within safe limits. He attended chapel as often as he was com- 
 pelled 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 in 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 
 look-out for cants 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 cant 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 XLVI 
 
 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 has 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— 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " 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 tragedians, ^schylus, 
 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 can easily 
 admire in Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, Demosthenes, 
 Aristophanes, Theocritus, parts of Lucretius, Horace's satires 
 and epistles, to say nothing of other ancient writers, and yet 
 find myself at once repelled by even those works of JEschylus, 
 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 in fault in this matter, or 
 whether part of the blame may not rest with the tragedians 
 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 affectation ? How far, in fact, did 
 admiration for the orthodox tragedians 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 two thousand 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 tragedians them- 
 selves, I mean by Aristophanes. 
 
 " Numbers, weight of authority, and time, have conspired 
 to place Aristophanes on as high a literary pinnacle as any 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 ^schylus that he may 
 run down the other two with greater impunity. For after all 
 there is no such difference between ^schylus and his suc- 
 cessors as will render the former very good and the latter 
 very bad ; and the thrusts at ^schylus 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 
 ^schylus of being ' pomp-bundle-worded,' which I suppose 
 means bombastic and given to rodomontade, ^schylus 
 retorts on Euripides that he is * a gossip gleaner, 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 ^schylus 
 was. It happens, however, that a faithful rendering of con- 
 temporary life is the very quality which gives its most per- 
 manent interest to any work of fiction, whether in literature 
 or painting, and it is a not unnatural consequence that while 
 only seven plays by ^schylus, and the same number by 
 Sophocles, have come down to us, we have no fewer than 
 nineteen by Euripides. 
 
 " This, however, is a digression ; the question before us is 
 whether Aristophanes really liked ^schylus or only pre- 
 tended to do so. It must be remembered that the claims 
 of ^schylus, Sophocles and Euripides, to the foremost place 
 amongst tragedians were held to be as incontrovertible as 
 those of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto to be the 
 greatest of Italian poets, are held among the Itahans of 
 to-day. 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 idealise more easily, inasmuch as he was more 
 remote; m order to carry his countrymen the farther with 
 him, he would endeavour to meet them more than was con- 
 sistent with his own instincts. Without some such paUiation 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 as admiration for one, at any rate, of the tragedians, 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 
 Struldbrugs ? 
 
 " I conclude upon the whole that Aristophanes did not 
 like any of the tragedians ; yet no one will deny that this 
 keen, witty, outspoken writer was as good a judge of literary 
 value, and as 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 tragedians 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 perhaps of some of the 
 Psalms of David I know no writings which seem so little to 
 deserve their reputation, I do not know that I should par- 
 ticularly 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 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the end of his tether ; this was his one idea (I feel 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 may be 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 some day, 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 some- 
 thing of which one is fond, and to note down whatever 
 crosses one's mind in reference to it, either during study or 
 relaxation, in a little note-book kept always in the waistcoat 
 pocket. Ernest has 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 begotten 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 an 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 
 in genius, of which he well knew that he had none, if it was 
 the fine frenzied thing he thought it was. 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Not very long before this he had come of age, and 
 Theobald had handed him over his money, which amounted 
 now to ;^5,ooo ; it was invested to bring in ^^5 per cent 
 and gave him therefore an income of ;^2 5o a year. He 
 did not, however, realise the fact (he could realise nothing 
 so foreign to 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 gainsay. 
 
 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 poll 
 degree except that his father laid such stress upon his 
 taking honours. 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 found to be placed higher than either he or anyone else 
 expected, being among the first three or four senior optimes, 
 and a few weeks later, in the lower half of the second class 
 of the Classical Tripos. Ill as he was when he got home, 
 Theobald made him go over all the examination papers with 
 him, and in fact reproduce 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVn 
 
 Ernest returned to Cambridge for the May term of 1858, 
 on the plea of reading for ordination, with which he was now 
 face to face, and much nearer than he liked. Up to this 
 time, though not religiously inclined, he had never doubted 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the truth of anything that had been told him about Chris- 
 tianity, He had never seen anyone who doubted, nor read 
 anything that raised a suspicion in his mind as to the his- 
 torical character of the miracles recorded in the Old and 
 New Testaments. 
 
 It must be remembered that the year 1858 was the last 
 of a term during which the peace of the Church of 
 England was singularly unbroken. Between 1844, when 
 "Vestiges of Creation" appeared, and 1859, when "Essays 
 and Reviews" marked the commencement of that storm 
 which raged until many years afterwards, there was not 
 a single book published in England that caused serious 
 commotion within the bosom of the Church. Perhaps 
 Buckle's " History of Civilisation " and Mill's " Liberty " 
 were the most alarming, but they neither of them reached 
 the substratum of the reading public, and Ernest and his 
 friends were ignorant of their very existence. The Evan- 
 gelical movement, with the exception to which I shall 
 revert presently, had become almost a matter of ancient 
 history. Tractarianism had subsided into a tenth day's 
 wonder ; it was at work, but it was not noisy. The "Vestiges" 
 were forgotten before Ernest went up to Cambridge ; the 
 Catholic aggression scare had lost its terrors ; Ritualism 
 was still unknown by the general provincial public, and the 
 Gorham and Hampden controversies were defunct some 
 years since ; Dissent was not spreading ; the Crimean war 
 was the one engrossing subject, to be followed by the 
 Indian Mutiny and the Franco-Austrian war. These great 
 events turned men's minds from speculative subjects, and 
 there was no enemy to the faith which could arouse even 
 a languid interest. At no time probably since the beginning 
 of the century could an ordinary observer have detected less 
 sign of coming disturbance than at that of which I am 
 writing. 
 
 I need hardly say that the calm was only on the surface. 
 Older men, who kqew more than undergraduates were likely 
 to do, must have seen that the wave of scepticism which had 
 already broken over Germany was setting towards our own 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 shores, nor was it long, indeed, before it reached them. 
 Ernest had hardly been ordained before three works in quick 
 succession arrested the attention even of those who paid least 
 heed to theological controversy. I mean " Essays and Re- 
 views," Charles Darwin's " Origin of Species," and Bishop 
 Colenso's " Criticisms on the Pentateuch." 
 
 This, however, is a digression ; I must revert to the one 
 phase of spiritual activity which had any life in it during the 
 time Ernest was at Cambridge, that is to say, to the remains 
 of the Evangelical awakening of more than a generation 
 earlier, which was connected with the name of Simeon. 
 
 There were still a good many Simeonites, or as they were 
 more briefly called " Sims," in Ernest's time. Every college 
 contained some of them, but their headquarters were at 
 Caius, whither they were attracted by Mr Clayton who was 
 at that time senior tutor, and among the sizars of St John's. 
 
 Behind the then chapel of this last-named college, there 
 was a "labyrinth" (this was the name it bore) of dingy, 
 tumble-down rooms, tenanted exclusively by the poorest 
 undergraduates, who were dependent upon sizarships and 
 scholarships for the means of taking their degrees. To many, 
 even at St John's, the existence and whereabouts of the 
 labyrinth in which the sizars chiefly lived was unknown ; 
 some men in Ernest's time, who had rooms in the first court, 
 had never found their way through the sinuous passage 
 which led to it. 
 
 In the labyrinth there dwelt men of all ages, from mere 
 lads to grey-haired old men who had entered late in life. 
 They were rarely seen except in hall or chapel or at lecture, 
 where their manners of feeding, praying and studying, were 
 considered alike objectionable ; no one knew whence they 
 came, whither they went, nor what they did, for they never 
 showed at cricket or the boats ; they were a gloomy, seedy- 
 looking cofifrerie, who had as little to glory in in clothes and 
 manners as in the flesh itself. 
 
 Ernest and his friends used to consider themselves marvels 
 of economy for getting on with so little money, but the 
 greater number of dwellers in the labyrinth would have con- 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 sidered one-half of their expenditure to be an exceeding 
 measure of affluence, and so doubtless any domestic tyranny 
 which had been experienced by Ernest was a small thing to 
 what the average Johnian sizar had had to put up with. 
 
 A few would at once emerge on its being found after their 
 first examination that they were likely to be ornaments to 
 the college; these would win valuable scholarships that 
 enabled them to live in some degree of comfort, and would 
 amalgamate with the more studious of those who were in a 
 better social position, but even these, with few exceptions, 
 were long in shaking off the uncouthness they brought with 
 them to the University, nor would their origin cease to be 
 easily recognisable till they had become dons and tutors, 
 I have seen some of these men attain high position in the 
 world of politics or science, and yet still retain a look of 
 labyrinth and Johnian sizarship. 
 
 Unprepossessing then, in feature, gait and manners, un- 
 kempt and ill-dressed beyond what can be easily described, 
 these poor fellows formed a class apart, whose thoughts and 
 ways were not as the thoughts and ways of Ernest and his 
 friends, and it was among them that Simeonism chiefly 
 flourished. 
 
 Destined most of them for the Church (for in those days 
 " holy orders " were seldom heard of), the Simeonites held 
 themselves to have received a very loud call to the ministry, 
 and were ready to pinch themselves for years so as to prepare 
 for it by the necessary theological courses. To most of them 
 the fact of becoming clergymen would be the entree into a 
 social position from which they were at present kept out 
 by barriers they well knew to be impassable; ordination, 
 therefore, opened fields for ambition which made it the 
 central point in their thoughts, rather than as with Ernest, 
 something which he supposed would have to be done some 
 day, but about which, as about dying, he hoped there was 
 no need to trouble himself as yet. 
 
 By way of preparing themselves more completely they 
 would have meetings in one another's rooms for tea and 
 prayer and other spiritual exercises. Placing themselves 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 under the guidance of a few well-known tutors they would 
 teach in Sunday Schools, and be instant, in season and out 
 of season, in imparting spiritual instruction to all whom they 
 could persuade to listen to them. 
 
 But the soil of the more prosperous undergraduates was 
 not suitable for the seed they tried to sow. The small 
 pieties with which they larded their discourse, if chance 
 threw them into the company of one whom they considered 
 worldly, caused nothing but aversion in the minds of those 
 for whom they were intended. When they distributed tracts, 
 dropping them by night into good men's letter boxes while 
 they were asleep, their tracts got burnt, or met with even 
 worse contumely ; they were themselves also treated with the 
 ridicule which they reflected proudly had been the lot of true 
 followers of Christ in all ages. Often at their prayer meetings 
 was the passage of St Paul referred to in which he bids his 
 Corinthian converts note concerning themselves that they 
 were for the most part neither well-bred nor intellectual 
 people. They reflected with pride that they too had nothing 
 to be proud of in these respects, and like St Paul, gloried in 
 the fact that in the flesh they had not much to glory. 
 
 Ernest had several Johnian friends, and came thus to hear 
 about the Simeonites and to see some of them, who were 
 pointed out to him as they passed through the courts. They 
 had a repellent attraction for him ; he disHked them, but 
 he could not bring himself to leave them alone. On one 
 occasion he had gone so far as to parody one of the tracts 
 they had sent round in the night, and to get a copy dropped 
 into each of the leading Simeonites' boxes. The subject he 
 had taken was "Personal Cleanliness." Cleanliness, he said, 
 was next to godliness ; he wished to know on which side it 
 was to stand, and concluded by exhorting Simeonites to a 
 freer use of the tub. I cannot commend my hero's humour 
 in this matter ; his tract was not brilliant, but I mention the 
 fact as showing that at this time he was something of a Saul 
 and took pleasure in persecuting the elect, not, as I have 
 said, that he had any hankering after scepticism, but because, 
 like the farmers in his father's village, though he would not 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 stand seeing the Christian rehgion made Hght of, he was not 
 going to see it taken seriously. Ernest's friends thought his 
 dislike for Simeonites was due to his being the son of a 
 clergyman who, it was known, bullied him ; it is more likely, 
 however, that it rose from an unconscious sympathy with 
 them, which, as in St Paul's case, in the end drew him into 
 the ranks of those whom he had most despised and hated. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII 
 
 Once, recently, when he was down at home after taking his 
 degree, his mother had had a short conversation with him 
 about his becoming a clergyman, set on thereto by Theobald, 
 who shrank from the subject himself. This time it was 
 during a turn taken in the garden, and not on the sofa — 
 which was reserved for supreme occasions. 
 
 "You know, my dearest boy," she said to him, "that 
 papa " (she always called Theobald " papa " when talking to 
 Ernest) "is so anxious you should not go into the Church 
 blindly, and without fully realising the difficulties of a clergy- 
 man's position. He has considered all of them himself, and 
 has been shown how small they are, when they are faced 
 boldly, but he wishes you, too, to feel them as strongly and 
 completely as possible before committing yourself to irre- 
 vocable vows, so that you may never, never have to regret 
 the step you will have taken." 
 
 This was the first time Ernest had heard that there were 
 any difficulties, and he not unnaturally enquired in a vague 
 way after their nature. 
 
 " That, my dear boy," rejoined Christina, " is a question 
 which I am not fitted to enter upon either by nature or 
 education. I might easily unsettle your mind without being 
 able to settle it again. Oh, no ! Such questions are far 
 better avoided by women, and, I should have thought, by 
 men, but papa wished me to speak to you upon the subject, 
 so that there might be no mistake hereafter, and I have done 
 so. Now, therefore, you know all." 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 The conversation ended here, so far as this subject was 
 concerned, and Ernest thought he did know all. His mother 
 would not have told him he knew all — not about a matter of 
 that sort — unless he actually did know it ; well, it did not 
 come to very much ; he supposed there were some difficulties, 
 but his father, who at any rate was an excellent scholar and 
 a learned man, was probably quite right here, and he need 
 not trouble himself more about them. So little impression 
 did the conversation make on him, that it was not till long 
 afterwards that, happening to remember it, he saw what a 
 piece of sleight of hand had been practised upon him. 
 Theobald and Christina, however, were satisfied that they 
 had done their duty by opening their son's eyes to the 
 difficulties of assenting to all a clergyman must assent to. 
 This was enough ; it was a matter for rejoicing that, though 
 they had been put so fully and candidly before him, he did 
 not find them serious. It was not in vain that they had 
 prayed for so many years to be made " truly honest and 
 conscientious." 
 
 "And now, my dear," resumed Christina, after having dis- 
 posed of all the difficulties that might stand in the way of 
 Ernest's becoming a clergyman, " there is another matter on 
 which I should like to have a talk with you. It is about 
 your sister Charlotte. You know how clever she is, and what 
 a dear, kind sister she has been and always will be to yourself 
 and Joey. I wish, my dearest Ernest, that I saw more chance 
 of her finding a suitable husband than I do at Battersby, 
 and I sometimes think you might do more than you do to 
 help her." 
 
 Ernest began to chafe at this, for he had heard it so often, 
 but he said nothing. 
 
 " You know, my dear, a brother can do so much for his 
 sister if he lays himself out to do it. A mother can do very 
 little — indeed, it is hardly a mother's place to seek out 
 young men ; it is a brother's place to find a suitable 
 partner for his sister ; all that I can do is to try to make 
 Battersby as attractive as possible to any of your friends 
 whom you may invite. And in that," she added, with 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 a little toss of her head, " I do not think I have been 
 deficient hitherto." 
 
 Ernest said he had already at different times asked several 
 of his friends. 
 
 " Yes, my dear, but you must admit that they were none 
 of them exactly the kind of young man whom Charlotte 
 could be expected to take a fancy to. Indeed, I must own 
 to having been a little disappointed that you should have 
 yourself chosen any of these as your intimate friends." 
 
 Ernest winced again. 
 
 " You never brought down Figgins when you were at 
 Roughborough ; now I should have thought Figgins would 
 have been just the kind of boy whom you might have asked 
 to come and see us." 
 
 Figgins had been gone through times out of number 
 already. Ernest had hardly known him, and Figgins, being 
 nearly three years older than Ernest, had left long before he 
 did. Besides he had not been a nice boy, and had made 
 himself unpleasant to Ernest in many ways. 
 
 " Now," continued his mother, " there's Towneley. I have 
 heard you speak of Towneley as having rowed with you in a 
 boat at Cambridge. I wish, my dear, you would cultivate 
 your acquaintance with Towneley, and ask him to pay us a 
 visit. The name has an aristocratic sound, and I think 
 I have heard you say he is an eldest son." 
 
 Ernest flushed at the sound of Towneley's name. 
 
 What had really happened in respect of Ernest's friends 
 was briefly this. His mother liked to get hold of the names 
 of the boys and especially of any who were at all intimate 
 with her son ; the more she heard, the more she wanted to 
 know ; there was no gorging her to satiety ; she was like a 
 ravenous young cuckoo being fed upon a grass plot by a 
 water wag-tail, she would swallow all that Ernest could bring 
 her, and yet be as hungry as before. And she always went 
 to Ernest for her meals rather than to Joey, for Joey was 
 either more stupid or more impenetrable — at any rate she 
 could pump Ernest much the better of the two. 
 
 From time to time an actual live boy had been thrown to 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 her, either by being caught and brought to Battersby, or by 
 being asked to meet her if at any time she came to Rough- 
 borough. She had generally made herself agreeable, or 
 fairly agreeable, as long as the boy was present, but as soon 
 as she got Ernest to herself again she changed her note. 
 Into whatever form she might throw her criticisms it came 
 always in the end to this, that his friend was no good, that 
 Ernest was not much better, and that he should have brought 
 her someone else, for this one would not do at all. 
 
 The more intimate the boy had been or was supposed to 
 be with Ernest the more he was declared to be naught, till 
 in the end he had hit upon the plan of saying, concerning 
 any boy whom he particularly liked, that he was not one of 
 his especial chums, and that indeed he hardly knew why he 
 had asked him ; but he found he only fell on Scylla in trying 
 to avoid Charybdis, for though the boy was declared to be 
 more successful it was Ernest who was naught for not 
 thinking more highly of him. 
 
 When she had once got hold of a name she never forgot 
 it. " And how is So-and-so ? " she would exclaim, mentioning 
 some former friend of Ernest's with whom he had either now 
 quarrelled, or who had long since proved to be a mere comet 
 and no fixed star at all. How Ernest wished he had 
 never mentioned So-and-so's name, and vowed to himself 
 that he would never talk about his friends in future, but in 
 a few hours he would forget and would prattle away as 
 imprudently as ever ; then his mother would pounce noise- 
 lessly on his remarks as a barn-owl pounces upon a mouse, 
 and would bring them up in a pellet six months after- 
 wards when they were no longer in harmony with their 
 surroundings. 
 
 Then there was Theobald, If a boy or college friend had 
 been invited to Battersby, Theobald would lay himself out 
 at first to be agreeable. He could do this well enough when 
 he liked, and as regards the outside world he generally did 
 like. His clerical neighbours, and indeed all his neighbours, 
 respected him yearly more and more, and would have given 
 Ernest sufificient cause to regret his imprudence if he had 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 dared to hint that he had anything, however Httle, to com- 
 plain of. Theobald's mind worked in this way, " Now, I 
 know Ernest has told this boy what a disagreeable person 
 I am, and I will just show him that I am not disagreeable 
 at all, but a good old fellow, a jolly old boy, in fact a regular 
 old brick, and that it is Ernest who is in fault all through." 
 
 So he would behave very nicely to the boy at first, and the 
 boy would be delighted with him, and side with him against 
 Ernest. Of course if Ernest had got the boy to come to 
 Battersby he wanted him to enjoy his visit, and was therefore 
 pleased that Theobald should behave so well, but at the 
 same time he stood so much in need of moral support that 
 it was painful to him to see one of his own familiar friends 
 go over to the enemy's camp. For no matter how well we 
 may know a thing — how clearly we may see a certain patch of 
 colour, for example, as red, it shakes us and knocks us about 
 to find another see it, or be more than half inclined to see it, 
 as green. 
 
 Theobald had generally begun to get a little impatient 
 before the end of the visit, but the impression formed during 
 the earlier part was the one which the visitor had carried 
 away with him. Theobald never discussed any of the boys 
 with Ernest. It was Christina who did this. Theobald 
 let them come, because Christina in a quiet, persistent way 
 insisted on it ; when they did come he behaved, as I have 
 said, civilly, but he did not like it, whereas Christina did like 
 it very much ; she would have had half Roughborough and 
 half Cambridge to come and stay at Battersby if she could 
 have managed it, and if it would not have cost so much 
 money : she liked their coming, so that she might make a 
 new acquaintance, and she liked tearing them to pieces and 
 flinging the bits over Ernest as soon as she had had enough 
 of them. 
 
 The worst of it was that she had so often proved to be 
 right. Boys and young men are violent in their affections, 
 but they are seldom very constant ; it is not till they get 
 older that they really know the kind of friend they want ; in 
 their earlier essays young men are simply learning to judge 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 character. Ernest had been no exception to the general 
 rule. His swans had one after the other proved to be more 
 or less geese even in his own estimation, and he was begin- 
 ning almost to think that his mother was a better judge of 
 character than he was ; but I think it may be assumed with 
 some certainty that if Ernest had brought her a real young 
 swan she would have declared it to be the ugliest and worst 
 goose of all that she had yet seen. 
 
 At first he had not suspected that his friends were wanted 
 with a view to Charlotte ; it was understood that Charlotte 
 and they might perhaps take a fancy for one another ; and 
 that would be so very nice, would it not? But he did 
 not see that there was any deliberate malice in the 
 arrangement. Now, however, that he had awoke to what it 
 all meant, he was less inclined to bring any friend of his to 
 Battersby. It seemed to his silly young mind almost dis- 
 honest to ask your friend to come and see you when all you 
 really meant was " Please, marry my sister." It was like trying 
 to obtain money under false pretences. If he had been fond 
 of Charlotte it might have been another matter, but he 
 thought her one of the most disagreeable young women in 
 the whole circle of his acquaintance. 
 
 She was supposed to be very clever. All young ladies are 
 either very pretty or very clever or very sweet ; they may 
 take their choice as to which category they will go in for, but 
 go in for one of the three they must. It was hopeless to try 
 and pass Charlotte off as either pretty or sweet. So she 
 became clever as the only remaining alternative. Ernest 
 never knew what particular branch of study it was in which 
 she showed her talent, for she could neither play nor sing 
 nor draw, but so astute are women that his mother and 
 Charlotte really did persuade him into thinking that she, 
 Charlotte, had something more akin to true genius than any 
 other member of the family. Not one, however, of all the 
 friends whom Ernest had been inveigled into trying to in- 
 veigle had shown the least sign of being so far struck 
 with Charlotte's commanding powers, as to wish to make 
 them his own, and this may have had something to do with 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the rapidity and completeness with which Christina had 
 dismissed them one after another and had wanted a new 
 one. 
 
 And now she wanted Towneley. Ernest had seen this 
 coming and had tried to avoid it, for he knew how impossible 
 it was for him to ask Towneley, even if he had wished 
 to do so. 
 
 Towneley belonged to one of the most exclusive sets in 
 Cambridge, and was perhaps the most popular man among 
 the whole number of undergraduates. He was big and very 
 handsome — as it seemed to Ernest the handsomest man 
 whom he ever had seen or ever could see, for it was im- 
 possible to imagine a more lively and agreeable countenance. 
 He was good at cricket and boating, very good-natured, 
 singularly free from conceit, not clever but very sensible, and, 
 lastly, his father and mother had been drowned by the over- 
 turning of a boat when he was only two years old and had 
 left him as their only child and heir to one of the finest estates 
 in the South of England. Fortune every now and then does 
 things handsomely by a man all round ; Towneley was one 
 of those to whom she had taken a fancy, and the universal 
 verdict in this case was that she had chosen wisely. 
 
 Ernest had seen Towneley as every one else in the Univer- 
 sity (except, of course, dons) had seen him, for he was a man 
 of mark, and being very susceptible he had liked Towneley 
 even more than most people did, but at the same time it 
 never so much as entered his head that he should come to 
 know him. He liked looking at him if he got a chance, and 
 was very much ashamed of himself for doing so, but there 
 the matter ended. 
 
 By a strange accident, however, during Ernest's last year, 
 when the names of the crews for the scratch fours were 
 drawn he had found himself coxswain of a crew, among whom 
 was none other than his especial hero Towneley; the three 
 others were ordinary mortals, but they could row fairly well, 
 and the crew on the whole was rather a good one. 
 
 Ernest was frightened out of his wits. When, however, 
 the two met, he found Towneley no less remarkable for his 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 entire want of anything lilce "side," and for his power of 
 setting those whom he came across at their ease, than 
 he was for outward accompHshments ; the only difference he 
 found between Towneley and other people was that he 
 was so very much easier to get on with. Of course Ernest 
 worshipped him more and more. 
 
 The scratch fours being ended the connection between 
 the two came to an end, but Towneley never passed Ernest 
 thenceforward without a nod and a few good-natured words. 
 In an evil moment he had mentioned Towneley's name at 
 Battersby, and now what was the result? Here was his 
 mother plaguing him to ask Towneley to come down to 
 Battersby and marry Charlotte. Why, if he had thought there 
 was the remotest chance of Towneley's marrying Charlotte 
 he would have gone down on his knees to him and told him 
 what an odious young woman she was, and implored him to 
 save himself while there was yet time. 
 
 But Ernest had not prayed to be made " truly honest and 
 conscientious " for as many years as Christina had. He tried 
 to conceal what he felt and thought as well as he could, and 
 led the conversation back to the difficulties which a clergy- 
 man might feel to stand in the way of his being ordained — 
 not because he had any misgivings, but as a diversion. His 
 mother, however, thought she had settled all that, and he 
 got no more out of her. Soon afterwards he found the 
 means of escaping, and was not slow to avail himself of 
 them. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 On his return to Cambridge in the May term of 1858, 
 Ernest and a few other friends who were also intended for 
 orders came to the conclusion that they must now take a 
 more serious view of their position. They therefore attended 
 chapel more regularly than hitherto, and held evening meet- 
 ings of a somewhat furtive character, at which they would 
 study the New Testament. They even began to commit the 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Epistles of St Paul to memory in the original Greek. They 
 got up Beveridge on the Thirty-nine Articles, and Pearson on 
 the Creed ; in their hours of recreation they read More's 
 " Mystery of Godhness," which Ernest thought was charming, 
 and Taylor's " Holy Living and Dying," which also impressed 
 him deeply, through what he thought was the splendour of 
 its language. They handed themselves over to the guidance 
 of Dean Alford's notes on the Greek Testament, which made 
 Ernest better understand what was meant by " difficulties," 
 but also made him feel how shallow and impotent were the 
 conclusions arrived at by German neologians, with whose 
 works, being innocent of German, he was not otherwise 
 acquainted. Some of the friends who joined him in these 
 pursuits were Johnians, and the meetings were often held 
 within the walls of St John's. 
 
 I do not know how tidings of these furtive gatherings had 
 reached the Simeonites, but they must have come round to 
 them in some way, for they had not been continued many 
 weeks before a circular w^as sent to each of the young 
 men who attended them, informing them that the Rev, 
 Gideon Haw^ke, a well-known London Evangelical preacher, 
 whose sermons were then much talked of, was about to visit 
 his young friend Badccck of St John's, and would be glad to 
 say a few words to any who might wish to hear them, in 
 Badcock's rooms on a certain evening in May. 
 
 Badcock was one of the most notorious of all the Simeon- 
 ites. Not only was he ugly, dirty, ill-dressed, bumptious, 
 and in every way objectionable, but he was deformed and 
 waddled when he walked so that he had won a nick-name 
 which I can only reproduce by calling it " Here's my back, 
 and there's my back," because the lower parts of his back 
 emphasised themselves demonstratively as though about to 
 fly off" in different directions like the two extreme notes in 
 the chord of the augmented sixth, with every step he took. 
 It may be guessed, therefore, that the receipt of the circular 
 had for a moment an almost paralysing effect on those to 
 whom it was addressed, owing to the astonishment which it 
 occasioned them. It certainly was a daring surprise, but 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 like so many deformed people, Badcock was forward and 
 hard to check ; he was a pushing fellow to whom the present 
 was just the opportunity he wanted for carrying war into the 
 enemy's quarters. 
 
 Ernest and his friends consulted. Moved by the feeling 
 that as they were now preparing to be clergymen they ought 
 not to stand so stiffly on social dignity as heretofore, and 
 also perhaps by the desire to have a good private view of a 
 preacher who was then much upon the lips of men, they 
 decided to accept the invitation. When the appointed time 
 came they went with some confusion and self-abasement to 
 the rooms of this man, on whom they had looked down 
 hitherto as from an immeasurable height, and with whom 
 nothing would have made them believe a few weeks earlier 
 that they could ever come to be on speaking terms. 
 
 Mr Hawke was a very different - looking person from 
 Badcock. He was remarkably handsome, or rather would 
 have been but for the thinness of his lips, and a look of too 
 great firmness and inflexibility. His features were a good 
 deal like those of Leonardo da Vinci ; moreover he was 
 kempt, looked in vigorous health, and was of a ruddy coun- 
 tenance. He was extremely courteous in his manner, and 
 paid a good deal of attention to Badcock, of whom he 
 seemed to think highly. Altogether our young friends were 
 taken aback, and inclined to think smaller beer of them- 
 selves and larger of Badcock than was agreeable to the old 
 Adam who was still alive within them. A few well-known 
 " Sims " from St John's and other colleges were present, but 
 not enough to swamp the Ernest set, as for the sake of 
 brevity, I will call them. 
 
 After a preliminary conversation in which there was noth- 
 ing to offend, the business of the evening began by Mr 
 Hawke's standing up at one end of the table, and saying 
 " Let us pray." The Ernest set did not like this, but they 
 could not help themselves, so they knelt down and repeated 
 the Lord's Prayer and a few others after Mr Hawke, who 
 delivered them remarkably well. Then, when all had sat 
 down, Mr Hawke addressed them, speaking without notes 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 and taking for his text the words, "Saul, Saul, why per- 
 secutest thou me ? " Whether owing to Mr Hawke's 
 manner, which was impressive, or to his well-known reputa- 
 tion for ability, or whether from the fact that each one of the 
 Ernest set knew that he had been more or less a persecutor of 
 the "Sims" and yet felt instinctively that the "Sims" were after 
 all much more like the early Christians than he was himself 
 — at any rate the text, familiar though it was, went home to 
 the consciences of Ernest and his friends as it had never yet 
 done. If Mr Hawke had stopped here he would have 
 almost said enough ; as he scanned the faces turned towards 
 him, and saw the impression he had made, he was perhaps 
 minded to bring his sermon to an end before beginning it, 
 but if so, he reconsidered himself and proceeded as follows. 
 I give the sermon in full, for it is a typical one, and will 
 explain a state of mind which in another generation or two 
 will seem to stand sadly in need of explanation. 
 
 " My young friends," said Mr Hawke, " I am persuaded 
 there is not one of you here who doubts the existence of a 
 Personal God. If there were, it is to him assuredly that I 
 should first address myself. Should I be mistaken in my 
 belief that all here assembled accept the existence of a 
 God who is present amongst us though we see him not, 
 and whose eye is upon our most secret thoughts, let me 
 implore the doubter to confer with me in private before 
 we part ; I will then put before him considerations through 
 which God has been mercifully pleased to reveal himself 
 to me, so far as man can understand him, and which I 
 have found bring peace to the minds of others who have 
 doubted. 
 
 " I assume also that there is none who doubts but that 
 this God, after whose likeness we have been made, did in the 
 course of time have pity upon man's blindness, and assume 
 our nature, taking flesh and coming down and dwelling 
 among us as a man indistinguishable physically from our- 
 selves. He who made the sun, moon and stars, the world 
 and all that therein is, came down from Heaven in the 
 person of his Son, with the express purpose of leading a 
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The Way of Ail Flesh 
 
 scorned life, and dying the most cruel, shameful death which 
 fiendish ingenuity has invented. 
 
 " While on earth he worked many miracles. He gave 
 sight to the blind, raised the dead to life, fed thousands with 
 a few loaves and fishes, and was seen to walk upon the 
 waves, but at the end of his appointed time he died, as was 
 foredetermined, upon the cross, and was buried by a few 
 faithful friends. Those, however, who had put him to death 
 set a jealous watch over his tomb. 
 
 " There is no one, I feel sure, in this room who doubts any 
 part of the foregoing, but if there is, let me again pray him 
 to confer with me in private, and I doubt not that by the 
 blessing of God his doubts will cease. 
 
 " The next day but one after our Lord was buried, the tomb 
 being still jealously guarded by enemies, an angel was seen 
 descending from Heaven with glittering raiment and a coun- 
 tenance that shone like fire. This glorious being rolled away 
 the stone from the grave, and our Lord himself came forth, 
 risen from the dead. 
 
 " My young friends, this is no fanciful story like those of 
 the ancient deities, but a matter of plain history as certain 
 as that you and I are now here together. If there is one 
 fact better vouched for than another in the whole range of 
 certainties it is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ ; nor is it 
 less well assured that a few weeks after he had risen from 
 the dead, our Lord was seen by many hundreds of men and 
 women to rise amid a host of angels into the air upon a 
 heavenward journey till the clouds covered him and concealed 
 him from the sight of men. 
 
 " It may be said that the truth of these statements has 
 been denied, but what, let me ask you, has become of the 
 questioners ? Where are they now ? Do we see them or 
 hear of them ? Have they been able to hold what little 
 ground they made during the supineness of the last century ? 
 Is there one of your fathers or mothers or friends who does 
 not see through them ? Is there a single teacher or preacher 
 in this great University who has not examined what these men 
 had to say, and found it naught ? Did you ever meet one of 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 them, or do you find any of their books securing the respect- 
 ful attention of those competent to judge concerning them ? 
 I think not ; and I think also you know as well as I do why 
 it is that they have sunk back into the abyss from which they 
 for a time emerged : it is because after the most careful and 
 patient examination by the ablest and most judicial minds of 
 many countries, their arguments were found so untenable 
 that they themselves renounced them. They fled from the 
 field routed, dismayed, and suing for peace ; nor have they 
 again come to the front in any civilised country. 
 
 " You know these things. Why then, do I insist upon 
 them ? My dear young friends, your own consciousness will 
 have made the answer to each one of you already ; it is 
 because, though you know so well that these things did verily 
 and indeed happen, you know also that you have not realised 
 them to yourselves as it was your duty to do, nor heeded 
 their momentous, awful import. 
 
 " And now let me go further. You all know that you will 
 one day come to die, or if not to die — for there are not wanting 
 signs which make me hope that the Lord may come again, 
 while some of us now present are alive — yet to be changed ; 
 for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incor- 
 ruptible, for this corruption must put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal put on immortality, and the saying shall be brought 
 to pass that is written, ' Death is swallowed up in victory.' 
 
 "Do you, or do you not believe that you will one day 
 stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ ? Do you, or do 
 you not believe that you will have to give an account for 
 every idle word that you have ever spoken ? Do you, or 
 do you not believe that you are called to live, not according 
 to the will of man, but according to the will of that Christ who 
 came down from Heaven out of love for you, who suffered 
 and died for you, who calls you to him, and yearns towards 
 you that you may take heed even in this your day — but who, 
 if you heed not, will also one day judge you, and with whom 
 there is no variableness nor shadow of turning? 
 
 " My dear young friends, strait is the gate, and narrow is 
 the way which leadeth to Eternal Life, and few there be that 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 find it. Few, few, few, for he who will not give up ALL for 
 Christ's sake, has given up nothing. 
 
 " If you would live in the friendship of this world, if 
 indeed you are not prepared to give up everything you most 
 fondly cherish, should the Lord require it of you, then, I say, 
 put the idea of Christ deliberately on one side at once. Spit 
 upon him, buffet him, crucify him anew, do anything you 
 like so long as you secure the friendship of this world while 
 it is still in your power to do so ; the pleasures of this brief 
 life may not be worth paying for by the torments of eternity, 
 but they are something while they last. If, on the other 
 hand, you would live in the friendship of God, and be among 
 the number of those for whom Christ has not died in vain ; 
 if, in a word, you value your eternal welfare, then give up the 
 friendship of this world ; of a surety you must make your 
 choice between God and Mammon, for you cannot serve 
 both. 
 
 *' I put these considerations before you, if so homely a 
 term may be pardoned, as a plain matter of business. There 
 is nothing low or unworthy in this, as some lately have pre- 
 tended, for all nature shows us that there is nothing more 
 acceptable to God than an enlightened view of our own 
 self-interest ; never let anyone delude you here ; it is a 
 simple question of fact ; did certain things happen or did 
 they not ? If they did happen, is it reasonable to suppose 
 that you will make yourselves and others more happy by one 
 course of conduct or by another? 
 
 "And now let me ask you what answer you have made to 
 this question hitherto ? Whose friendship have you chosen ? 
 If, knowing what you know, you have not yet begun to act 
 according to the immensity of the knowledge that is in you, 
 then he who builds his house and lays up his treasure on 
 the edge of a crater of molten lava is a sane, sensible person 
 in comparison with yourselves. I say this as no figure of 
 speech or bugbear with which to frighten you, but as an 
 unvarnished unexaggerated statement which will be no more 
 disputed by yourselves than by me." 
 
 And now Mr Hawke, who up to this time had spoken with 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 singular quietness, changed his manner to one of greater 
 warmth and continued — 
 
 " Oh ! my young friends turn, turn, turn, now while it is 
 called to-day — now from this hour, from this instant ; stay 
 not even to gird up your loins ; look not behind you for a 
 second, but fly into the bosom of that Christ who is to be 
 found of all who seek him, and from that fearful wrath of 
 God which lieth in wait for those who know not the things 
 belonging to their peace. For the Son of Man cometh as a 
 thief in the night, and there is not one of us can tell but 
 what this day his soul may be required of him. If there is 
 even one here who has heeded me," — and he let his eye fall 
 for an instant upon almost all his hearers, but especially on 
 the Ernest set — " I shall know that it was not for nothing 
 that I felt the call of the Lord, and heard as I thought a 
 voice by night that bade me come hither quickly, for there 
 was a chosen vessel who had need of me." 
 
 Here Mr Hawke ended rather abruptly ; his earnest 
 manner, striking countenance and excellent delivery had 
 produced an effect greater than the actual words I have 
 given can convey to the reader; the virtue lay in the man 
 more than in what he said ; as for the last few mysterious 
 words about his having heard a voice by night, their effect 
 was magical ; there was not one who did not look down to 
 the ground, nor who in his heart did not half believe that he 
 was the chosen vessel on whose especial behalf God had sent 
 Mr Hawke to Cambridge. Even if this were not so, each 
 one of them felt that he was now for the first time in the 
 actual presence of one who had had a direct communication 
 from the Almighty, and they were thus suddenly brought a 
 hundredfold nearer to the New Testament miracles. They 
 were amazed, not to say scared, and as though by tacit con- 
 sent they gathered together, thanked Mr Hawke for his 
 sermon, said good-night in a humble deferential manner to 
 Badcock and the other Simeonites, and left the room to- 
 gether. They had heard nothing but what they had been 
 hearing all their lives ; how was it, then, that they were so 
 dumbfoundered by it? I suppose partly because they had 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 lately begun to think more seriously, and were in a fit state 
 to be impressed, partly from the greater directness with 
 which each felt himself addressed, through the sermon 
 being delivered in a room, and partly to the logical con- 
 sistency, freedom from exaggeration, and profound air of 
 conviction with which Mr Hawke had spoken. His sim- 
 plicity and obvious earnestness had impressed them even 
 before he had alluded to his special mission, but this 
 clenched everything, and the words " Lord, is it I ? " were 
 upon the hearts of each as they walked pensively home 
 through moonlit courts and cloisters. 
 
 I do not know what passed among the Simeonites after 
 the Ernest set had left them, but they would have been more 
 than mortal if they had not been a good deal elated with 
 the results of the evening. Why, one of Ernest's friends 
 was in the University eleven, and he had actually been in 
 Badcock's rooms and had slunk off on saying good-night as 
 meekly as any of them. It was no small thing to have 
 scored a success like this. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 Ernest felt now that the turning point of his life had come. 
 He would give up all for Christ — even his tobacco. 
 
 So he gathered together his pipes and pouches, and locked 
 them up in his portmanteau under his bed where they should 
 be out of sight, and as much out of mind as possible. He 
 did not burn them, because someone might come in who 
 wanted to smoke, and though he might abridge his own 
 liberty, yet, as smoking was not a sin, there was no reason 
 why he should be hard on other people. 
 
 After breakfast he left his rooms to call on a man named 
 Dawson, who had been one of Mr Hawke's hearers on the 
 preceding evening, and who was reading for ordination at 
 the forthcoming Ember Weeks, now only four months dis- 
 tant. This man had been always of a rather serious turn of 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 mind — a little too much so for Ernest's taste ; but times had 
 changed, and Dawson's undoubted sincerity seemed to render 
 him a fitting counsellor for Ernest at the present time. As 
 he was going through the first court of John's on his way to 
 Dawson's rooms he met Badcock, and greeted him with some 
 deference. His advance was received with one of those 
 ecstatic gleams which shone occasionally upon the face of 
 Badcock, and which, if Ernest had known more, would have 
 reminded him of Robespierre. As it was, he saw it and un- 
 consciously recognised the unrest and self-seekingness of the 
 man, but could not yet formulate them ; he disliked Badcock 
 more than ever, but as he was going to profit by the spiritual 
 benefits which he had put in his way, he was bound to be 
 civil to him, and civil he therefore was. 
 
 Badcock told him that Mr Hawke had returned to town 
 immediately his discourse was over, but that before doing so 
 he had enquired particularly who Ernest and two or three 
 others were. I believe each one of Ernest's friends was 
 given to understand that he had been more or less particu- 
 larly enquired after. Ernest's vanity — for he was his 
 mother's son — was tickled at this ; the idea again presented 
 itself to him that he might be the one for whose benefit 
 Mr Hawke had been sent. There was something, too, 
 in Badcock's manner which conveyed the idea that he 
 could say more if he chose, but had been enjoined to 
 silence. 
 
 On reachmg Dawson's rooms, he found his friend in 
 raptures over the discourse of the preceding evening. Hardly 
 less delighted was he with the effect it had produced on 
 Ernest. He had always known, he said, that Ernest would 
 come round; he had been sure of it, but he had hardly 
 expected the conversion to be so sudden. Ernest said no 
 more had he, but now that he saw his duty so clearly he 
 would get ordained as soon as possible, and take a curacy, 
 even though the doing so would make him have to go down 
 from Cambridge earlier, which would be a great grief to him. 
 Dawson applauded this determination, and it was arranged 
 that as Ernest was still more or less of a weak brother, Daw- 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 son should take him, so to speak, in spiritual tow for a while, 
 and strengthen and confirm his faith. 
 
 An offensive and defensive alliance therefore was struck 
 up between this pair (who were in reality singularly ill 
 assorted), and Ernest set to work to master the books on 
 which the Bishop would examine him. Others gradually 
 joined them till they formed a small set or church (for these 
 are the same things), and the effect of Mr Hawke's sermon 
 instead of wearing off in a few days, as might have been 
 expected, became more and more marked, so much so that 
 it was necessary for Ernest's friends to hold him back 
 rather than urge him on, for he seemed likely to develop — 
 as indeed he did for a time — into a religious enthusiast. 
 
 In one matter only, did he openly backslide. He had, as 
 I said above, locked up his pipes and tobacco, so that he 
 might not be tempted to use them. All day long on the day 
 after Mr Hawke's sermon he let them lie in his portmanteau 
 bravely ; but this was not very difficult, as he had for some 
 time given up smoking till after hall. After hall this day 
 he did not smoke till chapel time, and then went to chapel 
 in self-defence. When he returned he determined to look 
 at the matter from a common sense point of view. On this 
 he saw that, provided tobacco did not injure his health — and 
 he really could not see that it did — it stood much on the 
 same footing as tea or coffee. 
 
 Tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the Bible, but 
 then it had not yet been discovered, and had probably only 
 escaped proscription for this reason. We can conceive of 
 St Paul or even our Lord Himself as drinking a cup of tea, 
 but we cannot imagine either of them as smoking a cigarette 
 or a churchwarden. Ernest could not deny this, and 
 admitted that Paul would almost certainly have condemned 
 tobacco in good round terms if he had known of its exist- 
 ence. Was it not then taking rather a mean advantage of 
 the Apostle to stand on his not having actually forbidden it ? 
 On the other hand, it was possible that God knew Paul 
 would have forbidden smoking, and had purposely arranged 
 the discovery of tobacco for a period at which Paul should 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 be no longer living. This might seem rather hard on Paul, 
 considering all he had done for Christianity, but it would be 
 made up to him in other ways. 
 
 These reflections satisfied Ernest that on the whole he had 
 better smoke, so he sneaked to his portmanteau and brought 
 out his pipes and tobacco again. There should be modera- 
 tion he felt in all things, even in virtue ; so for that night he 
 smoked immoderately. It was a pity, however, that he had 
 bragged to Dawson about giving up smoking. The pipes had 
 better be kept in a cupboard for a week or two, till in other 
 and easier respects Ernest should have proved his steadfast- 
 ness. Then they might steal out again little by little — and 
 so they did. 
 
 Ernest now wrote home a letter couched in a vein different 
 from his ordinary ones. His letters were usually all common 
 form and padding, for as I have already explained, if he 
 wrote about anything that really interested him, his mother 
 always wanted to know more and more about it — every fresh 
 answer being as the lopping off of a hydra's head and giving 
 birth to half a dozen or more new questions — but in the end 
 it came invariably to the same result, namely, that he ought 
 to have done something else, or ought not to go on doing as 
 he proposed. Now, however, there was a new departure, 
 and for the thousandth time he concluded that he was about 
 to take a course of which his father and mother would 
 approve, and in which they would be interested, so that at 
 last he and they might get on more sympathetically than 
 heretofore. He therefore wrote a gushing impulsive letter, 
 which afforded much amusement to myself as I read it, but 
 which is too long for reproduction. One passage ran : " I 
 am now going towards Christ ; the greater number of my 
 college friends are, I fear, going away from Him ; we must 
 pray for them that they may find the peace that is in Christ 
 even as I have myself found it." Ernest covered his face 
 with his hands for shame as he read this extract from the 
 bundle of letters he had put into my hands — they had been 
 returned to him by his father on his mother's death, his 
 mother having carefully preserved them. 
 
 233 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " Shall I cut it out ? " said I, " I will if you like." 
 " Certainly not," he answered, "and if good-natured friends 
 have kept more records of my follies, pick out any plums 
 that may amuse the reader, and let him have his laugh over 
 them." But fancy what effect a letter like this — so unled up 
 to — must have produced at Battersby ! Even Christina 
 refrained from ecstasy over her son's having discovered the 
 power of Christ's word, while Theobald was frightened out of 
 his wits. It was well his son was not going to have any 
 doubts or difficulties, and that he would be ordained without 
 making a fuss over it, but he smelt mischief in this sudden 
 conversion of one who had never yet shown any inclination 
 towards religion. He hated people who did not know where 
 to stop. Ernest was always so outre and strange ; there was 
 never any knowing what he would do next, except that it 
 would be something unusual and silly. If he was to get the 
 bit between his teeth after he had got ordained and bought 
 his living, he would play more pranks than ever he, Theobald, 
 had done. The fact, doubtless, of his being ordained and 
 having bought a living would go a long way to steady him, 
 and if he married, his wife must see to the rest ; this was his 
 only chance and, to do justice to his sagacity, Theobald in 
 his heart did not think very highly of it. 
 
 When Ernest came down to Battersby in June, he impru- 
 dently tried to open up a more unreserved communication 
 with his father than was his wont. The first of Ernest's snipe- 
 like flights on being flushed by Mr Hawke's sermon was 
 in the direction of ultra-Evangelicalism. Theobald himself 
 had been much more Low than High Church. This was 
 the normal development of the country clergyman during 
 the first years of his clerical life, between, we will say, the 
 years 1825 to 1850 ; but he was not prepared for the almost 
 contempt with which Ernest now regarded the doctrines of 
 baptismal regeneration and priestly absolution (Hoity toity, 
 indeed, what business had he with such questions ?), nor for 
 his desire to find some means of reconciling Methodism 
 and the Church. Theobald hated the Church of Rome, 
 but he hated dissenters too, for he found them as a general 
 
 234 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 rule troublesome people to deal with ; he always found 
 people who did not agree with him troublesome to deal 
 with : besides, they set up for knowing as much as he 
 did ; nevertheless if he had been let alone he would have 
 leaned towards them rather that towards the High Church 
 party. The neighbouring clergy, however, would not let 
 him alone. One by one they had come under the influence, 
 directly or indirectly, of the Oxford movement which had 
 begun twenty years earlier. It was surprising how many 
 practices he now tolerated which in his youth he would 
 have considered Popish ; he knew very well therefore 
 which way things were going in Church matters, and saw 
 that as usual Ernest was setting himself the other way. 
 The opportunity for telling his son that he was a fool was 
 too favourable not to be embraced, and Theobald was not 
 slow to embrace it. Ernest was annoyed and surprised, 
 for had not his father and mother been wanting him to 
 be more religious all his life? Now that he had become 
 so they were still not satisfied. He said to himself that 
 a prophet was not without honour save in his own country, 
 but he had been lately — or rather until lately — getting into 
 an odious habit of turning proverbs upside down, and it 
 occurred to him that a country is sometimes not without 
 honour save for its own prophet. Then he laughed, and 
 for the rest of the day felt more as he used to feel before 
 he had heard Mr Hawke's sermon. 
 
 He returned to Cambridge for the Long Vacation of 1858 
 — none too soon, for he had to go in for the Voluntary Theo- 
 logical Examination, which bishops were now beginning to 
 insist upon. He imagined all the time he was reading that 
 he was storing himself with the knowledge that would best fit 
 him for the work he had taken in hand. In truth, he was 
 cramming for a pass. In due time he did pass — creditably, 
 and was ordained Deacon with half-a-dozen others of his 
 friends in the autumn of 1858. He was then just twenty- 
 three years old. 
 
 235 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LI 
 
 Ernest had been ordained to a curacy in one of the central 
 parts of London. He hardly knew anything of London yet, 
 but his instincts drew him thither. The day after he was 
 ordained he entered upon his duties — feeling much as his 
 father had done when he found himself boxed up in the 
 carriage with Christina on the morning of his marriage. 
 Before the first three days were over, he became aware 
 that the light of the happiness which he had known during 
 his four years at Cambridge had been extinguished, and he 
 was appalled by the irrevocable nature of the step which 
 he now felt that he had taken much too hurriedly. 
 
 The most charitable excuse that I can make for the 
 vagaries which it will now be my duty to chronicle is 
 that the shock of change consequent upon his becoming 
 suddenly religious, being ordained and leaving Cambridge, 
 had been too much for my hero, and had for the time 
 thrown him off an equilibrium which was yet little supported 
 by experience, and therefore as a matter of course unstable. 
 
 Everyone has a mass of bad work in him which he will 
 have to work off and get rid of before he can do better — and 
 indeed, the more lasting a man's ultimate good work is, the 
 more sure he is to pass through a time, and perhaps a very 
 long one, in which there seems very little hope for him at all. 
 We must all sow our spiritual wild oats. The fault I feel 
 personally disposed to find with my godson is not that he 
 had wild oats to sow, but that they were such an exceedingly 
 tame and uninteresting crop. The sense of humour and 
 tendency to think for himself, of which till a few months 
 previously he had been showing fair promise, were nipped as 
 though by a late frost, while his earlier habit of taking on trust 
 everything that was told him by those in authority, and follow- 
 ing everything out to the bitter end, no matter how preposter- 
 ous, returned with redoubled strength. I suppose this was what 
 might have been expected from anyone placed as Ernest now 
 
 236 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 was, especially when his antecedents are remembered, but it 
 surprised and disappointed some of his cooler-headed Cam- 
 bridge friends who had begun to think well of his ability. 
 To himself it seemed that religion was incompatible with half 
 measures, or even with compromise. Circumstances had led 
 to his being ordained ; for the moment he was sorry they 
 had, but he had done it and must go through with it. He 
 therefore set himself to find out what was expected of him, 
 and to act accordingly. 
 
 His rector was a moderate High Churchman of no very 
 pronounced views — an elderly man who had had too many 
 curates not to have long since found out that the connection 
 between rector and curate, like that between employer and 
 employed in every other walk of life, was a mere matter of 
 business. He had now two curates, of whom Ernest was the 
 junior; the senior curate was named Pryer, and when this 
 gentleman made advances, as he presently did, Ernest in his 
 forlorn state was delighted to meet them. 
 
 Pryer was about twenty-eight years old. He had been at 
 Eton and at Oxford. He was tall, and passed generally for 
 good-looking ; I only saw him once for about five minutes, 
 and then thought him odious both in manners and appear- 
 ance. Perhaps it was because he caught me up in a way I 
 did not like. I had quoted Shakespeare for lack of some- 
 thing better to fill up a sentence — and had said that one 
 touch of nature made the whole world kin. "Ah," said 
 Pryer, in a bold, brazen way which displeased me, " but one 
 touch of the unnatural makes it more kindred still," and he 
 gave me a look as though he thought me an old bore and 
 did not care two straws whether I was shocked or not. 
 Naturally enough, after this I did not like him. 
 
 This, however, is anticipating, for it was not till Ernest had 
 been three or four months in London that I happened to 
 meet his fellow-curate, and I must deal here rather with the 
 effect he produced upon my godson than upon myself. 
 Besides being what was generally considered good-looking, 
 he was faultless in his get-up, and altogether the kind of man 
 whom Ernest was sure to be afraid of and yet be taken in by. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 The style of his dress was very High Church, and his acquaint- 
 ances were exclusively of the extreme High Church party, but 
 he kept his views a good deal in the background in his 
 rector's presence, and that gentleman, though he looked 
 askance on some of Fryer's friends, had no such ground of 
 complaint against him as to make him sever the connection. 
 Pryer, too, was popular in the pulpit, and, take him all round, 
 it was probable that many worse curates would be found for 
 one better. When Pryer called on my hero, as soon as the two 
 were alone together, he eyed him all over with a quick pene- 
 trating glance and seemed not dissatisfied with the result — 
 for I must say here that Ernest had improved in personal 
 appearance under the more genial treatment he had received 
 at Cambridge. Pryer, in fact, approved of him sufficiently 
 to treat him civilly, and Ernest was immediately won by any- 
 one who did this. It was not long before he discovered that 
 the High Church party, and even Rome itself, had more to 
 say for themselves than he had thought. This was his first 
 snipe-like change of flight. 
 
 Pryer introduced him to several of his friends. They 
 were all of them young clergymen, belonging as I have said 
 to the highest of the High Church school, but Ernest was 
 surprised to find how much they resembled other people 
 when among themselves. This was a shock to him; it was 
 ere long a still greater one to find that certain thoughts which 
 he had warred against as fatal to his soul, and which he had 
 imagined he should lose once for all on ordination, were still 
 as troublesome to him as they had been ; he also saw plainly 
 enough that the young gentlemen who formed the circle of 
 Fryer's friends were in much the same unhappy predica- 
 ment as himself. 
 
 This was deplorable. The only way out of it that Ernest 
 could see was that he should get married at once. But then 
 he did not know any one whom he wanted to marry. He did 
 not know any vvoman, in fact, whom he would not rather die 
 than marry. It had been one of Theobald's and Christina's 
 main objects to keep him out of the way of women, and they 
 had so far succeeded that women had become to him mys- 
 
 238 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 terious, inscrutable objects to be tolerated when it was 
 impossible to avoid them, but never to be sought out or 
 encouraged. As for any man loving, or even being at all 
 fond of any woman, he supposed it was so, but he believed 
 the greater number of those who professed such sentiments 
 were liars. Now, however, it was clear that he had hoped 
 against hope too long, and that the only thing to do was to 
 go and ask the first woman who would listen to him to come 
 and be married to him as soon as possible. 
 
 He broached this to Pryer, and was surprised to find that 
 this gentleman, though attentive to such members of his flock 
 as were young and good-looking, was strongly in favour of 
 the celibacy of the clergy, as indeed were the other demure 
 young clerics to whom Pryer had introduced Ernest. 
 
 CHAPTER LH 
 
 " You know, my dear Pontifex," said Pryer to him, some few 
 weeks after Ernest had become acquainted with him, when 
 the two were taking a constitutional one day in Kensington 
 Gardens, " You know, my dear Pontifex, it is all very well to 
 quarrel with Rome, but Rome has reduced the treatment of 
 the human soul to a science, while our own Church, though 
 so much purer in many respects, has no organised system 
 either of diagnosis or pathology — I mean, of course, spiritual 
 diagnosis and spiritual pathology. Our Church does not 
 prescribe remedies upon any settled system, and, what is still 
 worse, even when her physicians have according to their 
 lights ascertained the disease and pointed out the remedy, 
 she has no discipline which will ensure its being actually 
 applied. If our patients do not choose to do as we tell them, 
 we cannot make them. Perhaps really under all the circum- 
 stances this is as well, for we are spiritually mere horse 
 doctors as compared with the Roman priesthood, nor can we 
 hope to make much headway against the sin and misery that 
 surround us, till we return in some respects to the practice of 
 our forefathers and of the greater part of Christendom." 
 
 239 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ernest asked in what respects it was that his friend desired 
 a return to the practice of our forefathers. 
 
 " Why, my dear fellow, can you really be ignorant ? It is 
 just this, either the priest is indeed a spiritual guide, as being 
 able to show people how they ought to live better than they 
 can find out for themselves, or he is nothing at all — he has 
 no raison d'etre. If the priest is not as much a healer and 
 director of men's souls as a physician is of their bodies, 
 what is he ? The history of all ages has shown — and surely 
 you must know this as well as I do — that as men cannot 
 cure the bodies of their patients if they have not been 
 properly trained in hospitals under skilled teachers, so neither 
 can souls be cured of their more hidden ailments without the 
 help of men who are skilled in soul-craft — or in other words, 
 of priests. What do one half of our formularies and rubrics 
 mean if not this ? Hovv^ in the name of all that is reasonable 
 can we find out the exact nature of a spiritual malady, unless 
 we have had experience of other similar cases ? How can 
 we get this without express training ? At present we have to 
 begin all experiments for ourselves, without profiting by the 
 organised experience of our predecessors, inasmuch as that 
 experience is never organised and co-ordinated at all. At the 
 outset, therefore, each one of us must ruin many souls which 
 could be saved by knowledge of a few elementary principles." 
 
 Ernest was very much impressed. 
 
 ** As for men curing themselves," continued Pryer, " they 
 can no more cure their own souls than they can cure their 
 own bodies, or manage their own law affairs. In these two 
 last cases they see the folly of meddhng with their own cases 
 clearly enough, and go to a professional adviser as a matter 
 of course ; surely a man's soul is at once a more difficult and 
 intricate matter to treat, and at the same time it is more 
 important to him that it should be treated rightly than that 
 either his body or his money should be so. What are we 
 to think of the practice of a Church which encourages people 
 to rely on unprofessional advice in matters affecting their 
 eternal welfare, when they would not think of jeopardising 
 their worldly affairs by such insane conduct ? " 
 
 240 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ernest could see no weak place in this. These ideas had 
 crossed his own mind vaguely before now, but he had never 
 laid hold of them or set them in an orderly manner before 
 himself. Nor was he quick at detecting false analogies and 
 the misuse of metaphors ; in fact he was a mere child in the 
 hands of his fellow curate. 
 
 " And what," resumed Pryer, " does all this point to ? 
 Firstly, to the duty of confession — the outcry against which 
 is absurd as an outcry would be against dissection as part of 
 the training of medical students. Granted these young men 
 must see and do a great deal we do not ourselves like even 
 to think of, but they should adopt some other profession 
 unless they are prepared for this ; they may even get inocu- 
 lated with poison from a dead body and lose their lives, but 
 they must stand their chance. So if we aspire to be priests 
 in deed as well as name, we must familiarise ourselves with 
 the minutest and most repulsive details of all kinds of sin, so 
 that we may recognise it in all its stages. Some of us must 
 doubtlessly perish spiritually in such investigations. We 
 cannot help it ; all science must have its martyrs, and none 
 of these will deserve better of humanity than those who have 
 fallen in the pursuit of spiritual pathology.'' 
 
 Ernest grew more and more interested, but in the meek- 
 ness of his soul said nothing. 
 
 " I do not desire this martyrdom for myself," continued 
 the other, "on the contrary I will avoid it to the very 
 utmost of my power, but if it be God's will that I should fall 
 while studying what I believe most calculated to advance his 
 glory — then, I say, not my will, oh Lord, but thine be done." 
 
 This was too much even for Ernest, " I heard of an Irish- 
 woman once," he said, with a smile, " who said she was a 
 martyr to the drink." 
 
 " And so she was," rejoined Pryer with warmth ; and he 
 went on to show that this good woman was an experiment- 
 alist whose experiment, though disastrous in its effects upon 
 herself, was pregnant with instruction to other people. She 
 was thus a true martyr or witness to the frightful conse- 
 quences of intemperance, to the saving, doubtless, of many 
 Q 241 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 who but for her martyrdom would have taken to drinking. 
 She was one of a forlorn hope whose failure to take a certain 
 position went to the proving it to be impregnable and there- 
 fore to the abandonment of all attempt to atake it. This was 
 almost as great a gain to mankind as the actual taking of the 
 position would have been. 
 
 "Besides," he added more hurriedly, "the limits of vice 
 and virtue are wretchedly ill-defined. Half the vices which 
 the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them 
 and require moderate use rather than total abstinence." 
 
 Ernest asked timidly for an instance. 
 
 " No, no," said Pryer, " I will give you no instance, but I 
 will give you a formula that shall embrace all instances. It 
 is this, that no practice is entirely vicious which has not 
 been extinguished among the comehest, most vigorous, and 
 most cultivated races of mankind in spite of centuries of 
 endeavour to extirpate it. If a vice in spite of such efforts 
 can still hold its own among the most polished nations, it must 
 be founded on some immutable truth or fact in human nature, 
 and must have some compensatory advantage which we can- 
 not afford altogether to dispense with." 
 
 "But," said Ernest timidly, "is not this virtually doing 
 away with all distinction between right and wrong, and 
 leaving people without any moral guide whatever ? " 
 
 " Not the people," was the answer : " it must be our care 
 to be guides to these, for they are and always will be incap- 
 able of guiding themselves sufficiently. We should tell them 
 what they must do, and in an ideal state of things should be 
 able to enforce their doing it : perhaps when we are better 
 instructed the ideal state may come about ; nothing will so 
 advance it as greater knowledge of spiritual pathology on our 
 own part. For this, three things are necessary; firstly, 
 absolute freedom in experiment for us the clergy ; secondly, 
 absolute knowledge of what the laity think and do, and of 
 what thoughts and actions result in what spiritual conditions ; 
 and thirdly, a compacter organisation among ourselves. 
 
 " If we are to do any good we must be a closely united 
 body, and must be sharply divided from the laity. Also we 
 
 242 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 must be free from those ties which a wife and children 
 involve. I can hardly express the horror with which I am 
 filled by seeing English priests living in what I can only 
 designate as 'open matrimony.' It is deplorable. The 
 priest must be absolutely sexless — if not in practice, yet at 
 any rate in theory, absolutely — and that too, by a theory so 
 universally accepted that none shall venture to dispute it." 
 
 " But," said Ernest, " has not the Bible already told 
 people what they ought and ought not to do, and is it not 
 enough for us to insist on what can be found here, and let 
 the rest alone ? " 
 
 " If you begin with the Bible," was the rejoinder, " you 
 are three parts gone on the road to infidelity, and will go the 
 other part before you know where you are. The Bible is not 
 without its value to us the clergy, but for the laity it is a 
 stumbling-block which cannot be taken out of their way too 
 soon or too completely. Of course, I mean on the supposi- 
 tion that they read it, which, happily, they seldom do. If 
 people read the Bible as the ordinary British churchman or 
 churchwoman reads it, it is harmless enough ; but if they 
 read it with any care — which we should assume they will if 
 we give it them at all — it is fatal to them." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said Ernest, more and more 
 astonished, but more and more feeling that he was at least in 
 the hands of a man who had definite ideas. 
 
 "Your question shows me that you have never read your 
 Bible. A more unreliable book was never put upon paper. 
 Take my advice and don't read it, not till you are a few years 
 older, and may do so safely." 
 
 " But surely you believe the Bible when it tells you of such 
 things as that Christ died and rose from the dead ? Surely 
 you believe this?" said Ernest, quite prepared to be told 
 that Pryer believed nothing of the kind. 
 
 " I do not beheve it, I know it." 
 
 " But how — if the testimony of the Bible fails ? " 
 
 " On that of the living voice of the Church, which I know 
 to be infallible and to be informed of Christ himself." 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LIII 
 
 The foregoing conversation and others like it made a deep 
 impression upon my hero. If next day he had taken a walk 
 with Mr Hawke, and heard what he had to say on the other 
 side, he would have been just as much struck, and as ready to 
 fling off what Pryer had told him, as he now was to throw aside 
 all he had ever heard from anyone except Pryer; but there was 
 no Mr Hawke at hand, so Pryer had everything his own way. 
 Embryo minds, like embryo bodies, pass through a 
 number of strange metamorphoses before they adopt their 
 final shape. It is no more to be wondered at that one who 
 is going to turn out a Roman Catholic, should have passed 
 through the stages of being first a Methodist, and then a free 
 thinker, than that a man should at some former time have 
 been a mere cell, and later on an invertebrate animal. Ernest, 
 however, could not be expected to know this ; embryos never 
 do. Embryos think with each stage of their development 
 that they have now reached the only condition which really 
 suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, in- 
 asmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can 
 survive it. Every change is a shock ; every shock is a pro 
 tafito death. What we call death is only a shock great enough 
 to destroy our power to recognise a past and a present as 
 resembling one another. It is the making us consider the 
 points of difference between our present and our past greater 
 than the points of resemblance, so that we can no longer call 
 the former of these two in any proper sense a continuation of 
 the second, but find it less trouble to think of it as something 
 that we choose to call new. 
 
 But, to let this pass, it was clear that spiritual pathology 
 (I confess that I do not know myself what spiritual patho- 
 logy means — but Pryer and Ernest doubtless did) was 
 the great desideratum of the age. It seemed to Ernest that 
 he had made this discovery himself and been familiar with it 
 all his life, that he had never known, in fact, of anything else. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 He wrote long letters to his college friends expounding his 
 views as though he had been one of the Apostolic fathers. 
 As for the Old Testament writers, he had no patience with 
 them. " Do oblige me," I find him writing to one friend, 
 " by reading the prophet Zechariah, and giving me your 
 candid opinion upon him. He is poor stufl^, full of Yankee 
 bounce ; it is sickening to live in an age when such balder- 
 dash can be gravely admired whether as poetry or prophecy." 
 This was because Pryer had set him against Zechariah. I do 
 not know what Zechariah had done ; I should think myself 
 that Zechariah was a very good prophet ; perhaps it was 
 because he was a Bible writer, and not a very prominent one, 
 that Pryer selected him as one through whom to disparage 
 the Bible in comparison with the Church. 
 
 To his friend Dawson I find him saying a little later on : 
 " Pryer and I continue our walks, working out each other's 
 thoughts. At first he used to do all the thinking, but I 
 think I am pretty well abreast of him now, and rather chuckle 
 at seeing that he is already beginning to modify some of the 
 views he held most strongly when I first knew him, 
 
 " Then I think he was on the high road to Rome ; now, 
 however, he seems to be a good deal struck with a suggestion 
 of mine in which you, too, perhaps may be interested. You 
 see we must infuse new life into the Church somehow; we 
 are not holding our own against either Rome or infidelity." 
 (I may say in passing that I do not believe Ernest had as yet 
 ever seen an infidel — not to speak to.) " I proposed, there- 
 fore, a few days back to Pryer — and he fell in eagerly with 
 the proposal as soon as he saw that I had the means of carrying 
 it out — that we should set on foot a spiritual movement some- 
 what analogous to the Young England movement of twenty 
 years ago, the aim of which shall be at once to outbid Rome 
 on the one hand, and scepticism on the other. For this 
 purpose I see nothing better than the foundation of an insti- 
 tution or college for placing the nature and treatment of sin 
 on a more scientific basis than it rests at present. We want 
 — to borrow a useful term of Pryer's — a College of Spiritual 
 Pathology where young men" (I suppose Ernest thought he 
 
 245 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 was no longer young by this time) " may study the nature and 
 treatment of the sins of the soul as medical students study 
 those of the bodies of their patients. Such a college, as you 
 will probably admit, will approach both Rome on the one 
 hand, and science on the other — Rome, as giving the priest- 
 hood more skill, and therefore as paving the way for their 
 obtaining greater power, and science, by recognising that 
 even free thought has a certain kind of value in spiritual 
 enquiries. To this purpose Pryer and I have resolved to 
 devote ourselves henceforth heart and soul. 
 
 " Of course, my ideas are still unshaped, and all will de- 
 pend upon the men by whom the college is first worked. I 
 am not yet a priest, but Pryer is, and if I were to start the 
 college, Pryer might take charge of it for a time and I work 
 under him nominally as his subordinate. Pryer himself sug- 
 gested this. Is it not generous of him ? 
 
 " The worst of it is that we have not enough money ; I 
 have, it is true, ;2^Sooo, but we want at least _p^i 0,000, so 
 Pryer says, before we can start ; when we are fairly under 
 weigh I might live at the college and draw a salary from 
 the foundation, so that it is all one, or nearly so, whether 
 I invest my money in this way or in buying a living ; besides 
 I want very little ; it is certain that I shall never marry ; no 
 clergyman should think of this, and an unmarried man can 
 live on next to nothing. Still I do not see my way to as 
 much money as I want, and Pryer suggests that as we can 
 hardly earn more now we must get it by a judicious series of 
 investments. Pryer knows several people who make quite a 
 handsome income out of very little or, indeed, I may say, 
 nothing at all, by buying things at a place they call the Stock 
 Exchange ; I don't know much about it yet, but Pryer says 
 I should soon learn ; he thinks, indeed, that I have shown 
 rather a talent in this direction, and under proper auspices 
 should make a very good man of business. Others, of course, 
 and not I, must decide this ; but a man can do anything if 
 he gives his mind to it, and though I should not care about 
 having more money for my own sake, I care about it very 
 much when I think of the good I could do with it by saving 
 
 246 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 souls from such horrible torture hereafter. Why, if the thing 
 succeeds, and I really cannot see what is to hinder it, it is 
 hardly possible to exaggerate its importance, nor the pro- 
 portions which it may ultimately assume," etc., etc. 
 
 Again I asked Ernest whether he minded my printing this. 
 He winced, but said " No, not if it helps you to tell your 
 story ; but don't you think it is too long ? " 
 
 I said it would let the reader see for himself how things 
 were going in half the time that it would take me to explain 
 them to him. 
 
 " Very well then, keep it by all means." 
 
 I continue turning over my file of Ernest's letters and find 
 as follows — 
 
 " Thanks for your last, in answer to which I send you a 
 rough copy of a letter I sent to the Titnes a day or two back. 
 They did not insert it, but it embodies pretty fully my ideas 
 on the parochial visitation question, and Pryer fully approves 
 of the letter. Think it carefully over and send it back to me 
 when read, for it is so exactly my present creed that I cannot 
 afford to lose it. 
 
 " I should very much like to have a viva voce discussion 
 on these matters : I can only see for certain that we have 
 suffered a dreadful loss in being no longer able to excom- 
 municate. We should excommunicate rich and poor alike, 
 and pretty freely too. If this power were restored to us we 
 could, I think, soon put a stop to by far the greater part of 
 the sin and misery with which we are surrounded." 
 
 These letters were written only a few weeks after Ernest 
 had been ordained, but they are nothing to others that he 
 wrote a little later on. 
 
 In his eagerness to regenerate the Church of England (and 
 through this the universe) by the means which Pryer had 
 suggested to him, it occurred to him to try to familiarise 
 himself with the habits and thoughts of the poor by going 
 and living among them. I think he got this notion from 
 Kingsley's " Alton Locke," which, High Churchman though 
 he for the nonce was, he had devoured as he had devoured 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Stanley's Life of Arnold, Dickens's novels, and whatever other 
 literary garbage of the day was most likely to do him harm ; 
 at any rate he actually put his scheme into practice, and took 
 lodgings in Ashpit Place, a small street in the neighbourhood 
 of Drury Lane Theatre, in a house of which the landlady was 
 the widow of a cabman. 
 
 This lady occupied the whole ground floor. In the front 
 kitchen there was a tinker. The back kitchen was let to a 
 bellows-mender. On the first floor came Ernest, with his 
 two rooms which he furnished comfortably, for one must 
 draw the line somewhere. The two upper floors were 
 parcelled out among four different sets of lodgers : there was 
 a tailor named Holt, a drunken fellow who used to beat his 
 wife at night till her screams woke the house ; above him 
 there was another tailor with a wife but no children ; these 
 people were Wesleyans, given to drink but not noisy. The 
 two back rooms were held by single ladies, who it seemed 
 to Ernest must be respectably connected, for well-dressed 
 gentlemanly-looking young men used to go up and down 
 stairs past Ernest's rooms to call at any rate on Miss Snow — 
 Ernest had heard her door slam after they had passed. He 
 thought, too, that some of them went up to Miss Maitland's. 
 Mrs Jupp, the landlady, told Ernest that these were brothers 
 and cousins of Miss Snow's, and that she was herself looking 
 out for a situation as a governess, but at present had an 
 engagement as an actress at the Drury Lane Theatre. 
 Ernest asked whether Miss Maitland in the top back was 
 also looking out for a situation, and was told she was wanting 
 an engagement as a milliner. He believed whatever Mrs 
 Jupp told him. 
 
 CHAPTER LIV 
 
 This move on Ernest's part was variously commented upon 
 by his friends, the general opinion being that it was just hke 
 Pontifex, who was sure to do something unusual wherever he 
 went, but that on the whole the idea was commendable. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Christina could not restrain herself when on sounding her 
 clerical neighbours she found them inclined to applaud her 
 son for conduct which they idealised into something much 
 more self-denying than it really was. She did not quite like 
 his living in such an unaristocratic neighbourhood ; but what 
 he was doing would probably get into the newspapers, and 
 then great people would take notice of him. Besides, it 
 would be very cheap ; down among these poor people he 
 could live for next to nothing, and might put by a great deal of 
 his income. As for temptations, there could be few or none 
 in such a place as that. This argument about cheapness 
 was the one with which she most successfully met Theobald, 
 who grumbled jnore sito that he had no sympathy with his 
 son's extravagance and conceit. When Christina pointed out 
 to him that it would be cheap he replied that there was 
 something in that. 
 
 On Ernest himself the effect was to confirm the good 
 opinion of himself which had been growing upon him ever 
 since he had begun to read for orders, and to make him 
 flatter himself that he was among the few who were ready to 
 give up all for Christ. Ere long he began to conceive of 
 himself as a man with a mission and a great future. His 
 lightest and most hastily formed opinions began to be of 
 momentous importance to him, and he inflicted them, as I 
 have already shown, on his old friends, week by week 
 becoming more and more eniete with himself and his own 
 crotchets. I should like well enough to draw a veil over this 
 part of my hero's career, but cannot do so without marring 
 my story. 
 
 In the spring of 1859 I find him writing — 
 
 " I cannot call the visible Church Christian till its fruits 
 are Christian, that is until the fruits of the members of the 
 Church of England are in conformity, or something like 
 conformity, with her teaching. I cordially agree with the 
 teaching of the Church of England in most respects, but she 
 says one thing and does another, and until excommunication 
 — yes, and wholesale excommunication — be resorted to, I 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 cannot call her a Christian institution. I should begin with 
 our Rector, and if I found it necessary to follow him up by 
 excommunicating the Bishop, I should not flinch even from 
 this. 
 
 " The present London Rectors are hopeless people to deal 
 with. My own is one of the best of them, but the moment 
 Pryer and I show signs of wanting to attack an evil in a way 
 not recognised by routine, or of remedying anything about 
 which no outcry has been made, we are met with, ' I cannot 
 think what you mean by all this disturbance ; nobody else 
 among the clergy sees these things, and I have no wish to be 
 the first to begin turning everything topsy-turvy.' And then 
 people call him a sensible man. I have no patience with 
 them. However, we know what we want, and, as I wrote to 
 Dawson the other day, have a scheme on foot which will, 
 I think, fairly meet the requirements of the case. But we 
 want more money, and my first move towards getting this has 
 not turned out quite so satisfactorily as Pryer and I had 
 hoped ; we shall, however, I doubt not, retrieve it shortly." 
 
 When Ernest came to London he intended doing a good 
 deal of house-to-house visiting, but Pryer had talked him out 
 of this even before he settled down in his new and strangely- 
 chosen apartments. The line he now took was that if 
 people wanted Christ, they must prove their want by taking 
 some little trouble, and the trouble required of them was that 
 they should come and seek him, Ernest, out ; there he was 
 in the midst of them ready to teach ; if people did not choose 
 to come to him it was no fault of his. 
 
 " My great business here," he writes again to Dawson, " is 
 to observe. I am not doing much in parish work beyond my 
 share of the daily services. I have a man's Bible Class, and 
 a boy's Bible Class, and a good many young men and boys to 
 whom I give instruction one way or another ; then there are 
 the Sunday School children, with whom I fill my room on a 
 Sunday evening as full as it will hold, and let them sing 
 hymns and chants. They like this. I do a great deal of 
 reading — chiefly of books which Pryer and I think most 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 likely to help ; we find nothing comparable to the Jesuits. 
 Pryer is a thorough gentleman, and an admirable man of 
 business — no less observant of the things of this world, in 
 fact, than of the things above ; by a brilliant coup he has 
 retrieved, or nearly so, a rather serious loss which threatened 
 to delay indefinitely the execution of our great scheme. 
 He and I daily gather fresh principles. I believe great 
 things are before me, and am strong in the hope of being 
 able by and by to effect much. 
 
 " As for you I bid you God speed. Be bold but logical, 
 speculative but cautious, daringly courageous, but properly 
 circumspect withal," etc., etc. 
 
 I think this may do for the present. 
 
 CHAPTER LV 
 
 I HAD called on Ernest as a matter of course when he first 
 came to London, but had not seen him. I had been out 
 when he returned my call, so that he had been in town for 
 some weeks before I actually saw him, which I did not very 
 long after he had taken possession of his new rooms. I liked 
 his face, but except for the common bond of music, in respect 
 of which our tastes were singularly alike, I should hardly have 
 known how to get on with him. To do him justice he did 
 not air any of his schemes to me until I had drawn him out 
 concerning them. I, to borrow the words of Ernest's land- 
 lady, Mrs Jupp, " am not a very regular church-goer " — I dis- 
 covered upon cross-examination that Mrs Jupp had been to 
 church once when she was churched for her son Tom some 
 five and twenty years since, but never either before or after- 
 wards ; not even, I fear, to be married, for though she called 
 herself " Mrs " she wore no wedding ring, and spoke of the 
 person who should have been Mr Jupp as " my poor dear 
 boy's father," not as " my husband." But to return. I was 
 vexed at Ernest's having been ordained. I was not ordained 
 myself and I did not hke my friends to be ordained, nor did 
 I like having to be on my best behaviour and to look as if 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 butter would not melt in my mouth, and all for a boy whom 
 I remembered when he knew yesterday and to-morrow 
 and Tuesday, but not a day of the week more — not even 
 Sunday itself — and when he said he did not like the kitten 
 because it had pins in its toes. 
 
 I looked at him and thought of his aunt Alethea, and 
 how fast the money she had left him was accumulating ; 
 and it was all to go to this young man, who would use it 
 probably in the very last ways with which Miss Pontifex 
 would have sympathised. I was annoyed. "She always 
 said," I thought to myself, " that she should make a mess 
 of it, but I did not think she would have made as great 
 a mess of it as this." Then I thought that perhaps if his 
 aunt had lived he would not have been like this. 
 
 Ernest behaved quite nicely to me and I own that the 
 fault was mine if the conversation drew towards dangerous 
 subjects. I was the aggressor, presuming I suppose upon 
 my age and long acquaintance with him, as giving me a 
 right to make myself unpleasant in a quiet way. 
 
 Then he came out, and the exasperating part of it was 
 that up to a certain point he was so very right. Grant him 
 his premises and his conclusions were sound enough, nor 
 could I, seeing that he was already ordained, join issue 
 with him about his premises as I should certainly have 
 done if I had had a chance of doing so before he had 
 taken orders. The result was that I had to beat a 
 retreat and went away not in the best of humours. I 
 believe the truth was that I liked Ernest, and was vexed 
 at his being a clergyman, and at a clergyman having so 
 much money coming to him. 
 
 I talked a little with Mrs Jupp on my way out. She and I 
 had reckoned one another up at first sight as being neither of 
 us " very regular church-goers," and the strings of her tongue 
 had been loosened. She said Ernest would die. He was 
 much too good for the world and he looked so sad "just 
 like young Watkins of the " Crown " over the way who died 
 a month ago, and his poor dear skin was white as alablaster ; 
 least-ways they say he shot hisself. They took him from 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the Mortimer, I met them just as I was going with my Rose 
 to get a pint o' four ale, and she had her arm in sphnts. 
 She told her sister she wanted to go to Perry's to get some 
 wool, instead o' which it was only a stall to get me a pint o' 
 ale, bless her heart ; there's nobody else would do that much 
 for poor old Jupp, and it's a horrid lie to say she is gay ; not 
 but what I like a gay woman, I do : I'd rather give a gay 
 woman half-a-crown than stand a modest woman a pot o' 
 beer, but I don't want to go associating with bad girls for all 
 that. So they took him from the Mortimer ; they wouldn't 
 let him go home no more ; and he done it that artful you 
 know. His wife was in the country living with her mother, 
 and she always spoke respectful o' my Rose. Poor dear, I 
 hope his soul is in Heaven. Well Sir, would you believe it, 
 there's that in Mr Pontifex's face which is just like young 
 Watkins ; he looks that worrited and scrunched up at times, 
 but it's never for the same reason, for he don't know nothing 
 at all, no more than a unborn babe, no he don't ; why 
 there's not a monkey going about London with an Itahan 
 organ grinder but knows more than Mr Pontifex do. He 
 don't know — well I suppose " 
 
 Here a child came in on an errand from some neighbour 
 and interrupted her, or I can form no idea where or when 
 she would have ended her discourse. I seized the oppor- 
 tunity to run away, but not before I had given her five 
 shillings and made her write down my address, for I was a 
 Httle frightened by what she said. I told her if she thought 
 her lodger grew worse, she was to come and let me know. 
 
 Weeks went by and I did not see her again. Having 
 done as much as I had, I felt absolved from doing more, 
 and let Ernest alone as thinking that he and I should only 
 bore one another. 
 
 He had now been ordained a little over four months, but 
 these months had not brought happiness or satisfaction with 
 them. He had lived in a clergyman's house all his life, and 
 might have been expected perhaps to have known pretty 
 much what being a clergyman was like, and so he did — a 
 country clergyman ; he had formed an ideal, however, as 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 regards what a town clergyman could do, and was trying 
 in a feeble tentative way to realise it, but somehow or other 
 it always managed to escape him. 
 
 He lived among the poor, but he did not find that he got to 
 know them. The idea that they would come to him proved 
 to be a mistaken one. He did indeed visit a few tame pets 
 whom his rector desired him to look after. There was an 
 old man and his wife who lived next door but one to Ernest 
 himself; then there was a plumber of the name of Chester- 
 field ; an aged lady of the name of Gover, blind and bed- 
 ridden, who munched and munched her feeble old toothless 
 jaws as Ernest spoke or read to her, but who could do little 
 more ; a Mr Brookes, a rag and bottle merchant in Birdsey's 
 Rents in the last stage of dropsy, and perhaps half a dozen 
 or so others. What did it all come to, when he did go to see 
 them ? The plumber wanted to be flattered, and liked 
 fooling a gentleman into wasting his time by scratching his 
 ears for him. Mrs Gover, poor old woman, wanted money ; 
 she was very good and meek, and when Ernest got her a 
 shilling from Lady Anne Jones's bequest, she said it was 
 "small but seasonable," and munched and munched in grati- 
 tude. Ernest sometimes gave her a little money himself, 
 but not, as he says now, half what he ought to have given. 
 
 What could he do else that would have been of the smallest 
 use to her ? Nothing indeed ; but giving occasional half- 
 crowns to Mrs Gover was not regenerating the universe, and 
 Ernest wanted nothing short of this. The world was all out 
 of joint, and instead of feehng it to be a cursed spite that 
 he was born to set it right, he thought he was just the kind 
 of person that was wanted for the job, and was eager to 
 set to work, only he did not exactly know how to begin, for 
 the beginning he had made with Mr Chesterfield and Mrs 
 Gover did not promise great developments. 
 
 Then poor Mr Brookes — he suffered very much, terribly 
 indeed ; he was not in want of money ; he wanted to die and 
 couldn't, just as we sometimes want to go to sleep and 
 cannot. He had been a serious-minded man, and death 
 frightened him as it must frighten anyone who believes that 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 all his most secret thoughts will be shortly exposed in public. 
 When I read Ernest the description of how his father used 
 to visit Mrs Thompson at Battersby, he coloured and said — 
 "that's just what I used to say to Mr Brookes." Ernest felt 
 that his visits, so far from comforting Mr Brookes, made 
 him fear death more and more, but how could he help it ? 
 
 Even Pryer, who had been curate a couple of years, did 
 not know personally more than a couple of hundred people 
 in the parish at the outside, and it was only at the houses 
 of very few of these that he ever visited, but then Pryer had 
 such a strong objection on principle to house visitations. 
 What a drop in the sea were those with whom he and Pryer 
 were brought into direct communication in comparison with 
 those whom he must reach and move if he were to produce 
 much effect of any kind, one way or the other. Why there 
 were between fifteen and twenty thousand poor in the parish, 
 of whom but the merest fraction ever attended a place of 
 worship. Some few went to dissenting chapels, a few were 
 Roman Catholics ; by far the greater number, however, were 
 practically infidels, if not actively hostile, at any rate 
 indifferent to religion, while many were avowed Atheists — 
 admirers of Tom Paine, of whom he now heard for the 
 first time ; but he never met and conversed with any of 
 these. 
 
 Was he really doing everything that could be expected of 
 him ? It was all very well to say that he was doing as much as 
 other young clergymen did ; that was not the kind of answer 
 which Jesus Christ was likely to accept ; why, the Pharisees 
 themselves in all probability did as much as the other 
 Pharisees did. What he should do was to go into the 
 highways and byways, and compel people to come in. Was 
 he doing this ? Or were not they rather compelling him to 
 keep out — outside their doors at any rate? He began 
 to have an uneasy feeling as though ere long, unless 
 he kept a sharp look out, he should drift into being a 
 sham. 
 
 True, all would be changed as soon as he could endow 
 the College for Spiritual Pathology ; matters, however, had 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 not gone too well with " the things that people bought in the 
 place that was called the Stock Exchange." In order to get 
 on faster, it had been arranged that Ernest should buy more 
 of these things than he could pay for, with the idea that in 
 a few weeks, or even days, they would be much higher in 
 value, and he could sell them at a tremendous profit ; but, 
 unfortunately, instead of getting higher, they had fallen 
 immediately after Ernest had bought, and obstinately refused 
 to get up again ; so, after a few settlements, he had got 
 frightened, for he read an article in some newspaper, which 
 said they would go ever so much lower, and, contrary 
 to Fryer's advice, he insisted on selling — at a loss of 
 something like ^500. He had hardly sold when up 
 went the shares again, and he saw how foolish he 
 had been, and how wise Pryer was, for if Fryer's 
 advice had been followed, he would have made ^{^500, 
 instead of losing it. However, he told himself he must live 
 and learn. 
 
 Then Pryer made a mistake. They had bought some 
 shares, and the shares went up delightfully for about a 
 fortnight. This was a happy time indeed, for by the end of 
 a fortnight, the lost ;^5oo had been recovered, and three or 
 four hundred pounds had been cleared into the bargain. All 
 the feverish anxiety of that miserable six weeks, when the 
 ;^5oo was being lost, was now being repaid with interest. 
 Ernest wanted to sell and make sure of the profit, but Fryer 
 would not hear of it ; they would go ever so much higher 
 yet, and he showed Ernest an article in some newspaper 
 which proved that what he said was reasonable, and they did 
 go up a little — but only a very little, for then they went down, 
 down, and Ernest saw first his clear profit of three or four 
 hundred pounds go, and then the ;^5oo loss, Avhich he 
 thought he had recovered, shpped away by falls of a half 
 and one at a time, and then he lost ;^2oo more. Then a 
 newspaper said that these shares were the greatest rubbish 
 that had ever been imposed upon the English public, and 
 Ernest could stand it no longer, so he sold out, again this 
 time against Fryer's advice, so that when they went up, 
 
 256 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 as they shortly did, Pryer scored off Ernest a second 
 time. 
 
 Ernest was not used to vicissitudes of this kind, and they 
 made him so anxious that his health was affected. It was 
 arranged therefore that he had better know nothing of what 
 was being done. Pryer was a much better man of business 
 than he was, and would see to it all. This relieved Ernest 
 of a good deal of trouble, and was better after all for the 
 investments themselves ; for, as Pryer justly said, a man must 
 not have a faint heart if he hopes to succeed in buying and 
 selling upon the Stock Exchange, and seeing Ernest nervous 
 made Pryer nervous too — at least, he said it did. So the 
 money drifted more and more into Pryer's hands. As for 
 Pryer himself, he had nothing but his curacy and a small 
 allowance from his father. 
 
 Some of Ernest's older friends got an inkling from his 
 letters of what he was doing, and did their utmost to dissuade 
 him, but he was as infatuated as a young lover of two and 
 twenty. Finding that these friends disapproved, he dropped 
 away from them, and they, being bored with his egotism and 
 high-flown ideas, were not sorry to let him do so. Of course, 
 he said nothing about his speculations — indeed, he hardly 
 knew that anything done in so good a cause could be called 
 speculation. At Battersby, when his father urged him to 
 look out for a next presentation, and even brought one or 
 two promising ones under his notice, he made objections and 
 excuses, though always promising to do as his father desired 
 very shortly. 
 
 CHAPTER LVI 
 
 By and by a subtle, indefinable malaise began to take 
 possession of him. I once saw a very young foal trying to 
 eat some most objectionable refuse, and unable to make up 
 its mind whether it was good or no. Clearly it wanted to 
 be told. If its mother had seen what it was doing she would 
 have set it right in a moment, and as soon as ever it had 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 been told that what it was eating was filth, the foal would 
 have recognised it and never have wanted to be told again ; 
 but the foal could not settle the matter for itself, or make 
 up its mind whether it liked what it was trying to eat or 
 no, without assistance from without. I suppose it would 
 have come to do so by and by, but it was wasting time and 
 trouble, which a single look from its mother would have 
 saved, just as wort will in time ferment of itself, but will 
 ferment much more quickly if a little yeast be added to it. 
 In the matter of knowing what gives us pleasure we are all 
 like wort, and if unaided from without can only ferment 
 slowly and toilsomely. 
 
 My unhappy hero about this time was very much like the 
 foal, or rather he felt much what the foal would have felt if 
 its mother and all the other grown-up horses in the field had 
 vowed that what it was eating was the most excellent and 
 nutritious food to be found anywhere. He was so anxious 
 to do what was right, and so ready to believe that every one 
 knew better than himself, that he never ventured to admit to 
 himself that he might be all the v/hile on a hopelessly wrong 
 tack. It did not occur to him that there might be a blunder 
 anywhere, much less did it occur to him to try and find out 
 where the blunder was. Nevertheless he became daily more 
 full of malaise^ and daily, only he knew it not, more ripe for 
 an explosion should a spark fall upon him. 
 
 One thing, however, did begin to loom out of the general 
 vagueness, and to this he instinctively turned as trying to 
 seize it — I mean, the fact that he was saving very few souls, 
 whereas there were thousands and thousands being lost 
 hourly all around him which a little energy such as Mr 
 Hawke's might save. Day after day went by, and what was 
 he doing? Standing on professional etiquette^ and praying 
 that his shares might go up and down as he wanted them, so 
 that they might give him money enough to enable him to 
 regenerate the universe. But in the meantime the people 
 were dying. How many souls would not be doomed to 
 endless ages of the most frightful torments that the mind 
 could think of, before he could bring his spiritual pathology 
 
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I'he Way of All Flesh 
 
 engine to bear upon them ? Why might he not stand and 
 preach as he saw the Dissenters doing sometimes in Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields and other thoroughfares ? He could say all that 
 Mr Hawke had said. Mr Ha\Yke was a very poor creature 
 in Ernest's eyes now, for he was a Low Churchman, but we 
 should not be above learning from any one, and surely he 
 could affect his hearers as powerfully as Mr Hawke had 
 affected him if he only had the courage to set to work. The 
 people whom he saw preaching in the squares sometimes drew 
 large audiences. He could at any rate preach better than they. 
 
 Ernest broached this to Pryer, v.ho treated it as something 
 too outrageous to be even thought of. Nothing, he said, 
 could more tend to lower the dignity of the clergy, and bring 
 the Church into contempt. His manner was brusque, and 
 even rude. 
 
 Ernest ventured a little mild dissent ; he admitted it was 
 not usual, but something at any rate must be done, and 
 that quickly. This v>-as how Wesley and Whitfield had begun 
 that great movement which had kindled religious life in the 
 minds of hundreds of thousands. This was no time to be 
 standing on dignity. It was just because Wesley and White- 
 field had done what the Church would not that they had won 
 men to foUov; them whom the Church had now lost. 
 
 Pryer eyed Ernest searchingly, and after a pause said, " I 
 don't know v.hat to make of you, Pontifex ; you are at once 
 so very right and so very wrong. I agree with you heartily 
 that something should be done, but it must not be done in 
 a way which experience has shown leads to nothing but 
 fanaticism and dissent. Do you approve of these Wesleyans ? 
 Do you hold your ordination vows so cheaply as to think that 
 it does not matter whether the services of the Church are 
 performed in her churches and with all due ceremony or not ? 
 If you do — then, frankly, you had no business to be ordained ; 
 if you do not, then remember that one of the first duties of a 
 young deacon is obedience to authoriiy. Neither the Cathohc 
 Church, nor yet the Church of England allows her clergy 
 to preach in the streets of cities where there is no lack of 
 churches." 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ernest felt the force of this, and Pryer saw that he wavered. 
 
 " We are living," he continued more genially, " in an age 
 of transition, and in a country which, though it has gained 
 much by the Reformation, does not perceive how much it 
 has also lost. You cannot and must not hawk Christ about 
 in the streets as though you were in a heathen country whose 
 inhabitants had never heard of him. The people here in 
 London have had ample warning. Every church they pass 
 is a protest to them against their lives, and a call to them 
 to repent. Every church-bell they hear is a witness against 
 them, everyone of those whom they meet on Sundays going to 
 or coming from church is a warning voice from God. If these 
 countless influences produce no effect upon them, neither will 
 the few transient words which they would hear from you. You 
 are like Dives, and think that if one rose from the dead they 
 would hear him. Perhaps they might ; but then you cannot 
 pretend that you have risen from the dead." 
 
 Though the last few words were spoken laughingly, there 
 was a sub-sneer about them which made Ernest wince ; but 
 he was quite subdued, and so the conversation ended. It 
 left Ernest, however, not for the first time, consciously dis- 
 satisfied with Pryer, and inclined to set his friend's opinion 
 on one side — not openly, but quietly, and without telling Pryer 
 anything about it. 
 
 CHAPTER LVII 
 
 He had hardly parted from Pryer before there occurred 
 another incident which strengthened his discontent. He 
 had fallen, as I have shown, among a gang 'of spiritual 
 thieves or coiners, who passed the basest metal upon him 
 without his finding it out, so childish and inexperienced was 
 he in the ways of anything but those back eddies of the 
 world, schools and universities. Among the bad threepenny 
 pieces which had been passed off upon him, and which he 
 kept for small hourly disbursement, was a remark that poor 
 people were much nicer than the richer and better educated. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ernest now said that he always travelled third class not 
 because it was cheaper, but because the people whom he 
 met in third class carriages were so much pleasanter and 
 better behaved. As for the young men who attended Ernest's 
 evening classes, they were pronounced to be more intelligent 
 and better ordered generally than the average run of Oxford 
 and Cambridge men. Our foolish young friend having heard 
 Pryer talk to this effect, caught up all he said and reproduced 
 it more suo. 
 
 One evening, however, about this time, whom should he 
 see coming along a small street not far from his own but, of 
 all people in the world, Towneley, looking as full of life and 
 good spirits as ever, and if possible even handsomer than he 
 had been at Cambridge. Much as Ernest liked him he 
 found himself shrinking from speaking to him, and was 
 endeavouring to pass him without doing so when Towneley 
 saw him and stopped him at once, being pleased to see an 
 old Cambridge face. He seemed for the moment a little 
 confused at being seen in such a neighbourhood, but re- 
 covered himself so soon that Ernest hardly noticed it, and 
 then plunged into a few kindly remarks about old times. Ernest 
 felt that he quailed as he sawTowneley's eye wander to his white 
 necktie and saw that he was being reckoned up, and rather 
 disapprovingly reckoned up, as a parson. It was the merest 
 passing shade upon Towneley's face, but Ernest had felt it. 
 
 Towneley said a few words of common form to Ernest 
 about his profession as being what he thought would be most 
 likely to interest him, and Ernest, still confused and shy, 
 gave him for lack of something better to say his little three- 
 penny-bit about poor people being so very nice. Towneley 
 took this for what it was worth and nodded assent, whereon 
 Ernest imprudently went further and said " Don't you like 
 poor people very much yourself ? " 
 
 Towneley gave his face a comical but good-natured screw, 
 and said quietly, but slowly and decidedly, " No, no, no," and 
 escaped. 
 
 It was all over with Ernest from that moment. As usual 
 he did not know it, but he had entered none the less upon 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 another reaction. Towneley had just taken Ernest's three- 
 penny-bit into his hands, looked at it and returned it to him 
 as a bad one. AVhy did he see in a moment that it was a 
 bad one now, though he had been unable to see it when he 
 had taken it from Pryer ? Of course some poor people were 
 very nice, and always would be so, but as though scales had 
 fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that no one was nicer 
 for being poor, and that between the upper and lower classes 
 there was a gulf which amounted practically to an impassable 
 barrier. 
 
 That evening he reflected a good deal. If Towneley was 
 right, and Ernest felt that the " No " had applied not to the 
 remark about poor people only, but to the whole scheme and 
 scope of his own recently adopted ideas, he and Pryer must 
 surely be on a wrong track. Towneley had not argued v.ith 
 him ; he had said one word only, and that one of the 
 shortest in the language, but Ernest was in a fit state for 
 inoculation, and the minute particle of virus set about 
 working immediately. 
 
 Which did he nov/ think was most likely to have taken 
 the luster view of life and things, and whom would it be best 
 to imitate, Towneley or Pryer ? His heart returned answer to 
 itself without a moment's hesitation. The faces of men like 
 Towneley were open and kindly ; they looked as if at ease 
 themselves, and as though they would set all who had to do 
 with them at ease as far as might be. The faces of Pryer 
 and his friends were not like this. Why had he felt tacitly 
 rebuked as soon as he had met Towneley ? Was he not a 
 Christian ? Certainly ; he believed in the Church of England 
 as a matter of course. Then how could he be himself wrong 
 in trying to act up to the faith that he and Towneley held in 
 common ? He was trying to lead a quiet, unobtrusive life of 
 self-devotion, whereas Towneley was not, so far as he could 
 see, trying to do anything of the kind ; he was only trying 
 to get on comfortably in the world, and to look and be as 
 nice as possible. And he was nice, and Ernest knew that 
 such men as himself and Pryer were not nice, and his old 
 dejection came over him. 
 
 262 
 
The Way of AU Flesh 
 
 Then came an even worse reflection ; how if he had fallen 
 among material thieves as well as spiritual ones ? He knew 
 very little of how his money was going on ; he had put it all 
 now into Fryer's hands, and though Pryer gave him cash to 
 spend whenever he wanted it, he seemed impatient of being 
 questioned as to what was being done with the principal. It 
 vv-as part of the understanding, he said, that that was to be 
 left to him, and Ernest had better stick to this, or he, Pryer, 
 would throv,- up the College of Spiritual Pathology altogether ; 
 and so Ernest was cowed into acquiescence, or cajoled, 
 according to the humour in which Pryer saw him to be. 
 Ernest thought that further questions would look as if he 
 doubted Pryer's word, and also that he had gone too far to 
 be able to recede in decency or honour. This, however, he 
 felt was riding out to meet trouble unnecessarily. Pryer had 
 been a little impatient, but he was a gentleman and an 
 admirable man of business, so his money would doubtless 
 come back to him all right some day. 
 
 Ernest comforted himself as regards this last source of 
 anxiety, but as regards the other, he began to feel as though, 
 if he was to be saved, a good Samaritan must hurry up from 
 somewhere — he knew not whence. 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII 
 
 Next day he felt stronger again. He had been listening to 
 the voice of the evil one on the night before, and would 
 parley no more with such thoughts. He had chosen his 
 profession, and his duty was to persevere with it. If he was 
 unhappy it was probably because he was not giving up all 
 for Christ. Let him see whether he could not do more than 
 he was doing now, and then perhaps a light would be shed 
 upon his path. 
 
 It was all very well to have made the discovery that he 
 didn't very much like poor people, but he had got to put up 
 with them, for it was among them that his work must lie. Such 
 men as Towneley were very kind and considerate, but he knew 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 well enough it was only on condition that he did not preach 
 to them. He could manage the poor better, and, let Pryer 
 sneer as he liked, he was resolved to go more among them, 
 and try the effect of bringing Christ to them if they would 
 not come and seek Christ of themselves. He would begin 
 with his own house. 
 
 Who then should he take first ? Surely he could not do 
 better than begin with the tailor who lived immediately over 
 his head. This would be desirable, not only because he was 
 the one who seemed to stand most in need of conversion, but 
 also because, if he were once converted, he would no longer 
 beat his wife at two o'clock in the morning, and the house 
 would be much pleasanter in consequence. He would there- 
 fore go upstairs at once, and have a quiet talk with this man. 
 
 Before doing so, he thought it would be well if he were to 
 draw up something like a plan of a campaign ; he therefore 
 reflected over some pretty conversations which would do very 
 nicely if Mr Holt would be kind enough to make the answers 
 proposed for him in their proper places. But the man was 
 a great hulking fellow, of a savage temper, and Ernest was 
 forced to admit that unforeseen developments might arise to 
 disconcert him. They say it takes nine tailors to make a 
 man, but Ernest felt that it would take at least nine Ernests 
 to make a Mr Holt. How if, as soon as Ernest came in, the 
 tailor were to become violent and abusive ? What could he 
 do ? Mr Holt was in his own lodgings, and had a right to 
 be undisturbed. A legal right, yes, but had he a moral right ? 
 Ernest thought not, considering his mode of life. But put 
 this on one side ; if the man were to be violent, what should 
 he do ? Paul had fought with wild beasts at Ephesus — that 
 must indeed have been awful — but perhaps they were not 
 very wild wild beasts; a rabbit and a canary are wild beasts ; 
 but, formidable or not as wild beasts go, they would, never- 
 theless stand no chance against St Paul, for he was inspired ; 
 the miracle would have been if the wild beasts escaped, not 
 that St Paul should have done so ; but, however all this 
 might be, Ernest felt that he dared not begin to convert Mr 
 Holt by fighting him. Why, when he had heard Mrs Holt 
 
 264 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 screaming " murder," he had cowered under the bed clothes 
 and waited, expecting to hear the blood dripping through the 
 ceiling on to his own floor. His imagination translated 
 every sound into a pat, pat, pat, and once or tw^ice he 
 thought he had felt it dropping on to his counterpane, but 
 he had never gone upstairs to try and rescue poor Mrs Holt. 
 Happily it had proved next morning that Mrs Holt was in 
 her usual health. 
 
 Ernest was in despair about hitting on any good way of 
 opening up spiritual communication with his neighbour, when 
 it occurred to him that he had better perhaps begin by going 
 upstairs, and knocking very gently at Mr Holt's door. He 
 would then resign himself to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
 and act as the occasion, which, I suppose, was another name 
 for the Holy Spirit, suggested. Triply armed with this 
 reflection, he mounted the stairs quite jauntily, and was 
 about to knock when he heard Holt's voice inside swearing 
 savagely at his wife. This made him pause to think whether 
 after all the moment was an auspicious one, and while he was 
 thus pausing, Mr Holt, who had heard that someone was on 
 the stairs, opened the door and put his head out. When he 
 saw Ernest, he made an unpleasant, not to say offensive 
 movement, which might or might not have been directed at 
 Ernest, and looked altogether so ugly that my hero had an 
 instantaneous and unequivocal revelation from the Holy 
 Spirit to the effect that he should continue his journey 
 upstairs at once, as though he had never intended arresting 
 it at Mr Holt's room, and begin by converting Mr and Mrs 
 Baxter, the Methodists in the top floor front. So this was 
 what he did. 
 
 These good people received him with open arms, and were 
 quite ready to talk. He was beginning to convert them from 
 Methodism to the Church of England, when all at once he 
 found himself embarrassed by discovering that he did not 
 know what he was to convert them from. He knew the 
 Church of England, or thought he did, but he knew nothing 
 of Methodism beyond its name. When he found that, 
 according to Mr Baxter, the Wesleyans had a vigorous 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 system of Church discipline (which worked admirably in 
 practice) it appeared to him that John Wesley had anticipated 
 the spiritual engine which he and Pryer were preparing, and 
 when he left the room he was aware that he had caught more 
 of a spiritual Tartar than he had expected. But he must 
 certainly explain to Pryer that the Wesleyans had a system 
 of Church discipline. This was very important. 
 
 Mr Baxter advised Ernest on no account to meddle with 
 Mr Holt, and Ernest was much relieved at the advice. If 
 an opportunity arose of touching the man's heart, he would 
 take it ; he would pat the children on the head when he saw 
 them on the stairs, and ingratiate himself with them as far 
 as he dared; they were sturdy youngsters, and Ernest was 
 afraid even of them, for they were ready with their tongues, 
 and knew much for their ages. Ernest felt that it would 
 indeed be almost better for him that a millstone should be 
 hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than 
 that he should offend one of the little Holts, However, 
 he would try not to offend them ; perhaps an occasional 
 penny or two might square them. This was as much as he 
 could do, for he saw that the attempt to be instant out of 
 season, as well as in season, would, St Paul's injunction not- 
 withstanding, end in failure. 
 
 Mrs Baxter gave a very bad account of Miss Emily Snow, 
 who lodged in the second floor back next to Mr Holt. Her 
 story was quite different from that of Mrs Jupp the landlady. 
 She would doubtless be only too glad to receive Ernest's 
 ministrations or those of any other gentleman, but she was 
 no governess, she was in the ballet at Drury Lane, and, 
 besides this, she was a very bad young woman, and if Mrs 
 Baxter was landlady would not be allowed to stay in the 
 house a single hour, not she indeed. 
 
 Miss Maitland in the next room to Mrs Baxter's own was 
 a quiet and respectable young woman to all appearance ; 
 Mrs Baxter had never known of any goings on in that 
 quarter, but, bless you, still waters run deep, and these girls 
 were all alike, one as bad as the other. She was out at all 
 kinds of hours, and when you knew that you knew all. 
 
 266 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ernest did not pay much heed to these aspersions of Mrs 
 Baxter's. Mrs Jupp had got round the greater number of 
 his many bhnd sides, and had warned him not to beUeve 
 Mrs Baxter, whose hp she said was something awful. 
 
 Ernest had heard that women were ahvays jealous of one 
 another, and certainly these young women were more attrac- 
 tive than Mrs Baxter was, so jealousy was probably at the 
 bottom of it. If they were maligned there could be no 
 objection to his making their acquaintance ; if not maligned 
 they had all the more need of his ministrations. He would 
 reclaim them at once. 
 
 He told Mrs Jupp of his intention. Mrs Jupp at first tried 
 to dissuade him, but seeing him resolute, suggested that she 
 should herself see Miss Snow first, so as to prepare her and 
 prevent her from being alarmed by his visit. She was not at 
 home now, but in the course of the next day, it should be 
 arranged. In the meantime he had better try Mr Shaw, the 
 tinker, in the front kitchen. Mrs Baxter had told Ernest that 
 Mr Shaw was from the North Country, and an avowed free- 
 thinker ; he would probably, she said, rather like a visit, but 
 she did not think Ernest would stand much chance of making 
 a convert of him. 
 
 CHAPTER LIX 
 
 Before going down into the kitchen to convert the tinker 
 Ernest ran hurriedly over his analysis of Paley's evidences, 
 and put into his pocket a copy of Archbishop Whateley's 
 " Historic Doubts." Then he descended the dark rotten old 
 stairs and knocked at the tinker's door. Mr Shaw was very 
 civil ; he said he was rather throng just now, but if Ernest did 
 not mind the sound of hammering he should be very glad of 
 a talk with him. Our hero, assenting to this, ere long led 
 the conversation to Whateley's " Historic Doubts " — a work 
 which, as the reader may know, pretends to show that there 
 never was any such person as Napoleon Buonaparte, and thus 
 satirises the arguments of those who have attacked the 
 Christian miracles. 
 
 267 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Mr Shaw said he knew " Historic Doubts " very well. 
 
 " And what do you think of it ? " said Ernest, who re- 
 garded the pamphlet as a masterpiece of wit and cogency. 
 
 " If you really want to know," said Mr Shaw, with a sly 
 twinkle, •' I think that he who was so willing and able to 
 prove that what was was not, would be equally able and 
 willing to make a case for thinking that what was not was, 
 if it suited his purpose." Ernest was very much taken aback. 
 How was it that all the clever people of Cambridge had never 
 put him up to this simple rejoinder? The answer is easy: 
 they did not develop it for the same reason that a hen had 
 never developed webbed feet — that is to say, because they 
 did not want to do so ; but this was before the days of 
 Evolution, and Ernest could not as yet know anything of 
 the great principle that underlies it. 
 
 " You see," continued Mr Shaw, " these writers all get 
 their Hving by writing in a certain way, and the more they 
 write in that way, the more they are likely to get on. You 
 should not call them dishonest for this any more than a 
 judge should call a barrister dishonest for earning his living 
 by defending one in whose innocence he does not seriously 
 beheve ; but you should hear the barrister on the other side 
 before you decide upon the case." 
 
 This was another facer. Ernest could only stammer that 
 he had endeavoured to examine these questions as carefully 
 as he could. 
 
 " You think you have," said Mr Shaw ; " you Oxford and 
 Cambridge gentlemen think you have examined everything. 
 I have examined very little myself except the bottoms of old 
 kettles and saucepans, but if you will answer me a few 
 questions, I will tell you whether or no you have examined 
 much more than I have." 
 
 Ernest expressed his readiness to be questioned. 
 
 " Then," said the tinker, " give me the story of the Resur- 
 rection of Jesus Christ as told in St John's gospel." 
 
 I am sorry to say that Ernest mixed up the four accounts 
 in a deplorable manner : he even made the angel come down 
 and roll away the stone and sit upon it. He was covered 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 with confusion when the tinker first told him without the 
 book of some of his many inaccuracies, and then verified 
 his criticisms by referring to the New Testament itself. 
 
 " Now," said Mr Shaw good naturedly, " I am an old man 
 and you are a young one, so perhaps you'll not mind my 
 giving you a piece of advice. I like you, for I believe you 
 mean well, but you've been real bad brought up, and I don't 
 think you have ever had so much as a chance yet. You 
 know nothing of our side of the question, and I have just 
 shown you that you do not know much more of your own, 
 but I think you will make a kind of Carlyle sort of a man 
 some day. Now go upstairs and read the accounts of the 
 Resurrection, not as wanting to find the story true but as 
 wanting to find out whether it is true or not. When you can 
 say the four accounts of the Resurrection correctly without 
 mixing them up, and have got a clear idea of what it is that 
 each writer tells us, then if you feel inclined to pay me 
 another visit I shall be glad to see you, for I shall know you 
 have made a good beginning and mean business. Till then, 
 sir, I must wish you a very good morning.'' 
 
 Ernest retreated abashed. An hour sufficed him to per- 
 form the task enjoined upon him by Mr Shaw ; and at the 
 end of that hour the " No, no, no," which still sounded in 
 his ears as he heard it from Towneley, came ringing up more 
 loudly still from the very pages of the Bible itself, and in 
 respect of the most important of all the events which are 
 recorded in it. Surely Ernest's first day's attempt at more 
 promiscuous visiting, and at carrying out his principles more 
 thoroughly, had not been unfruitful. But he must go and 
 have a talk with Pryer. He therefore got his lunch and went 
 to Fryer's lodgings. Pryer not being at home, he lounged to 
 the British Museum Reading Room, then recently opened, sent 
 for the "Vestiges of Creation," which he had never yet seen, and 
 spent the rest of the afternoon in reading it. 
 
 Ernest did not see Pryer on the day of his conversation 
 with Mr Shaw, but he did so next morning and found him in 
 a good temper, which of late he had rarely been. Some- 
 times, indeed, he had behaved to Ernest in a way which did 
 
 269 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 not bode well for the harmony v/ith which the College of 
 Spiritual Pathology would work when it had once been 
 founded. It almost seemed as though he were trying to get 
 a complete moral ascendency over him, so as to make him a 
 creature of his own. 
 
 He did not think it possible that he could go too far, and 
 indeed, when I reflect upon my hero's folly and inexperience, 
 there is much to be said in excuse for the conclusion which 
 Pryer came to. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, it was not so. Ernest's 
 faith in Pryer had been too great to be shaken down all in a 
 moment, but it had been weakened lately more than once. 
 Ernest had fought hard against allowing himself to see this, 
 nevertheless any third person who knew the pair would have 
 been able to see that the connection between the tv/o might 
 end at any moment, for when the time for one of Ernest's 
 snipe-like changes of flight came, he was quick in making it ; 
 the time, however, was not yet quite come, and the intimacy 
 between the two was apparently all that it had ever been. It 
 was only that horrid money business (so said Ernest to him- 
 self) that caused any unpleasantness between them, and no 
 doubt Pryer was right, and he, Ernest, much too nervous. 
 However, that might stand over for the present. 
 
 In like manner, though he had received a shock by reason 
 of his conversation with Mr Shaw, and by looking at the 
 " Vestiges," he was as yet too much stunned to realise the 
 change which was coming over him. In each case the 
 momentum of old habits carried him forward in the old 
 direction. He therefore called on Pryer, and spent an hour 
 and more with him. 
 
 He did not say that he had been visiting among his neigh- 
 bours ; this to Pryer would have been like a red rag to a bull. 
 He only talked in much his usual vein about the proposed 
 College, the lamentable want of interest in spiritual things 
 which was characteristic of modern society, and other kindred 
 matters ; he concluded by saying that for the present he feared 
 Pryer was indeed right, and that nothing could be done. 
 " As regards the laity," said Pryer, " nothing ; not until 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 we have a discipline which we can enforce with pains and 
 penalties. How can a sheep dog work a flock of sheep 
 unless he can bite occasionally as well as bark ? But as 
 regards ourselves we can do much." 
 
 Fryer's manner was strange throughout the conversation, 
 as though he were thinking all the time of something else. 
 His eyes wandered curiously over Ernest, as Ernest had 
 often noticed them wander before : the words were about 
 Church discipline, but somehow or other the discipline part 
 of the story had a knack of dropping out after having been 
 again and again emphatically declared to apply to the laity 
 and not to the clergy : once indeed Pryer had pettishly 
 exclaimed : " Oh, bother the College of Spiritual Pathology," 
 As regards the clergy, glimpses of a pretty large cloven hoof 
 kept peeping out from under the saintly robe of Pryer's 
 conversation, to the effect that, so long as they were theoreti- 
 cally perfect, practical peccadilloes — ^or even peccadaccios, 
 if there is such a word, were of less importance. He was 
 restless, as though wanting to approach a subject which he 
 did not quite venture to touch upon, and kept harping (he 
 did this about every third day) on the wretched lack of 
 definition concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and the 
 way in which half the vices wanted regulating rather than 
 prohibiting. He dwelt also on the advantages of complete 
 unreserve, and hinted that there were mysteries into which 
 Ernest had not yet been initiated, but which would enlighten 
 him when he got to know them, as he would be allowed to 
 do when his friends saw that he was strong enough. 
 
 Pryer had often been like this before, but never so nearly, 
 as it seemed to Ernest, coming to a point — though what the 
 point was he could not fully understand. His inquietude 
 was communicating itself to Ernest, who would probably 
 ere long have come to know as much as Pryer could tell 
 him, but the conversation was abruptly interrupted by the 
 appearance of a visitor. We shall never know how it would 
 have ended, for this was the very last time that Ernest ever 
 saw Pryer, Perhaps Pryer was going to break to him some 
 bad news about his speculations. 
 
 271 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LX 
 
 Ernest now went home and occupied himself till luncheon 
 with studying Dean Alford's notes upon the various Evange- 
 listic records of the Resurrection, doing as Mr Shaw had told 
 him, and trying to find out not that they were all accurate, 
 but whether they were all accurate or no. He did not care 
 which result he should arrive at, but he was resolved that he 
 would reach one or the other. When he had finished Dean 
 Alford's notes he found them come to this, namely, that no 
 one yet had succeeded in bringing the four accounts into 
 tolerable harmony with each other, and that the Dean, seeing 
 no chance of succeeding better than his predecessors had 
 done, recommended that the whole story should be taken 
 on trust — and this Ernest was not prepared to do. 
 
 He got his luncheon, went out for a long walk, and 
 returned to dinner at half past six. While Mrs Jupp was 
 getting him his dinner — a steak and a pint of stout — she 
 told him that Miss Snow would be very happy to see him 
 in about an hour's time. This disconcerted him, for his 
 mind was too unsettled for him to wish to convert anyone 
 just then. He reflected a little, and found that, in spite 
 of the sudden shock to his opinions, he was being irresistibly 
 drawn to pay the visit as though nothing had happened. It 
 would not look well for him not to go, for he was known to 
 be in the house. He ought not to be in too great a hurry to 
 change his opinions on such a matter as the evidence for 
 Christ's Resurrection all of a sudden — besides he need not 
 talk to Miss Snow about this subject to-day — there were 
 other things he might talk about. What other things? 
 Ernest felt his heart beat fast and fiercely, and an inward 
 monitor warned him that he was thinking of anything 
 rather than of Miss Snow's soul. 
 
 What should he do ? Fly, fly, fly — it was the only safety. 
 But would Christ have fled? Even though Christ had not 
 died and risen from the dead there could be no question 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that He was the model whose example we were bound to 
 follow. Christ would not have fled from Miss Snow ; he 
 was sure of that, for He went about more especially with 
 prostitutes and disreputable people. Now, as then, it was 
 the business of the true Christian to call not the righteous 
 but sinners to repentance. It would be inconvenient to him 
 to change his lodgings, and he could not ask Mrs Jupp to 
 turn Miss Snow and Miss Maitland out of the house. 
 Where was he to draw the line ? Who would be just good 
 enough to live in the same house with him, and who just 
 not good enough? 
 
 Besides, where were these poor girls to go ? Was he to 
 drive them from house to house till they had no place to lie 
 in ? It was absurd ; his duty was clear : he would go and 
 see Miss Snow at once, and try if he could not induce her 
 to change her present mode of life ; if he found temptation 
 becoming too strong for him he would fly then — so he went 
 upstairs with his Bible under his arm, and a consuming fire 
 in his heart. 
 
 He found Miss Snow looking very pretty in a neatly, not 
 to say demurely, furnished room. I think she had bought 
 an illuminated text or two, and pinned it up over her fire- 
 place that morning. Ernest was very much pleased with her, 
 and mechanically placed his Bible upon the table. He had 
 just opened a timid conversation and was deep in blushes, 
 when a hurried step came bounding up the stairs as though 
 of one over whom the force of gravity had little power, and a 
 man burst into the room saying, " I'm come before my time." 
 It was Towneley. 
 
 His face dropped as he caught sight of Ernest. " What, 
 you here, Pontifex ! Well, upon my word ! " 
 
 I cannot describe the hurried explanations that passed 
 quickly between the three — enough that in less than a minute 
 Ernest, blushing more scarlet than ever, slunk off, Bible and 
 all, deeply humiliated as he contrasted himself and Towneley. 
 Before he had reached the bottom of the staircase leading to 
 his own room he heard Towneley's hearty laugh through 
 Miss Snow's door, and cursed the hour that he was born, 
 s 273 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Then it flashed upon him that if he could not see Miss 
 Snow he could at any rate see Miss Maitland. He knew 
 well enough what he wanted now, and as for the Bible, he 
 pushed it from him to the other end of his table. It fell 
 over on to the floor, and he kicked it into a corner. It was 
 the Bible given him at his christening by his affectionate 
 godmother and aunt, Ehzabeth Allaby. True, he knew very 
 little of Miss Maitland, but ignorant young fools in Ernest's 
 state do not reflect or reason closely. Mrs Baxter had said 
 that Miss Maitland and Miss Snow were birds of a feather, 
 and Mrs Baxter probably knew better than that old liar, 
 Mrs Jupp. Shakespeare says : 
 
 O Opportunity, thy guilt is great 
 'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason : 
 Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get ; 
 Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season ; 
 'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason ; 
 And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, 
 Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him. 
 
 If the guilt of opportunity is great, how much greater is 
 the guilt of that which is believed to be opportunity, but in 
 reality is no opportunity at all. If the better part of valour 
 is discretion, how much more is not discretion the better 
 part of vice ? 
 
 About ten minutes after we last saw Ernest, a scared, 
 insulted girl, flushed and trembhng, was seen hurrying from 
 Mrs Jupp's house as fast as her agitated state would let her, 
 and in another ten minutes two policemen were seen also 
 coming out of Mrs Jupp's, between whom there shambled 
 rather than walked our unhappy friend Ernest, with staring 
 eyes, ghastly pale, and with despair branded upon every line 
 of his face. 
 
 CHAPTER LXI 
 
 Pryer had done well to warn Ernest against promiscuous 
 house to house visitation. He had not gone outside Mrs 
 Jupp's street door, and yet what had been the result? 
 
 274 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Mr Holt had put him in bodily fear ; Mr and Mrs Baxter 
 had nearly made a Methodist of him ; Mr Shaw had under- 
 mined his faith in the Resurrection ; Miss Snow's charms 
 had ruined — or would have done so but for an accident — his 
 moral character. As for Miss Maitland, he had done his 
 best to ruin hers, and had damaged himself gravely and 
 irretrievably in consequence. The only lodger who had done 
 him no harm was the bellows' mender, whom he had not 
 visited. 
 
 Other young clergymen, much greater fools in many 
 respects than he, would not have got into these scrapes. He 
 seemed to have developed an aptitude for mischief almost 
 from the day of his having been ordained. He could hardly 
 preach without making some horrid faux pas. He preached 
 one Sunday morning when the Bishop was at his Rector's 
 church, and made his sermon turn upon the question what 
 kind of little cake it was that the widow of Zarephath had 
 intended making when Elijah found her gathering a few 
 sticks. He demonstrated that it was a seed cake. The 
 sermon was really very amusing, and more than once he saw 
 a smile pass over the sea of faces underneath him. The 
 Bishop was very angry, and gave my hero a severe reprimand 
 in the vestry after service was over ; the only excuse he 
 could make was that he was preaching ex tempore, had not 
 thought of this particular point till he was actually in the 
 pulpit, and had then been carried away by it. 
 
 Another time he preached upon the barren fig-tree, and 
 described the hopes of the owner as he watched the delicate 
 blossom unfold, and give promise of such beautiful fruit in 
 autumn. Next day he received a letter from a botanical 
 member of his congregation who explained to him that this 
 could hardly have been, inasmuch as the fig produces its fruit 
 first and blossoms inside the fruit, or so nearly so that no 
 flower is perceptible to an ordinary observer. This last, 
 however, was an accident which might have happened to 
 any one but a scientist or an inspired writer. 
 
 The only excuse I can make for him is that he was very 
 young — not yet four and twenty — and that in mind as in 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 body, like most of those who in the end come to think for 
 themselves, he was a slow grower. By far the greater part, 
 moreover, of his education had been an attempt, not so 
 much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes out 
 altogether. 
 
 But to return to my story. It transpired afterwards that 
 Miss Maitland had had no intention of giving Ernest in 
 charge when she ran out of Mrs Jupp's house. She was 
 running away because she was frightened, but almost the 
 first person whom she ran against had happened to be a 
 policeman of a serious turn of mind, who wished to gain a 
 reputation for activity. He stopped her, questioned her, 
 frightened her still more, and it was he rather than Miss 
 Maitland, who insisted on giving my hero in charge to 
 himself and another constable. 
 
 Towneley was still in Mrs Jupp's house when the police- 
 man came. He had heard a disturbance, and going down 
 to Ernest's room while Miss Maitland was out of doors, had 
 found him lying, as it were, stunned at the foot of the moral 
 precipice over which he had that moment fallen. He saw 
 the whole thing at a glance, but before he could take action, 
 the policeman came in and action became impossible. 
 
 He asked Ernest who were his friends in London. Ernest 
 at first wanted not to say, but Towneley soon gave him to 
 understand that he must do as he was bid, and selected 
 myself from the few whom he had named. " Writes for the 
 stage, does he ? " said Towneley. " Does he write comedy ? " 
 Ernest thought Towneley meant that I ought to write 
 tragedy, and said he was afraid I wrote burlesque. " Oh, 
 come, come," said Towneley, " that will do famously. I will 
 go and see him at once." But on second thoughts he 
 determined to stay with Ernest and go with him to the 
 police court. So he sent Mrs Jupp for me. Mrs Jupp 
 hurried so fast to fetch me, that in spite of the weather's 
 being still cold she was " giving out," as she expressed it, in 
 streams. The poor old wretch would have taken a cab, but 
 she had no money and did not like to ask Towneley to give 
 her some. I saw that something very serious had happened, 
 
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 I 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 but was not prepared for anything so deplorable as what Mrs 
 Jupp actually told me. As for Mrs Jupp, she said her heart 
 had been jumping out of its socket and back again ever 
 since. 
 
 I got her into a cab with me, and we went off to the police 
 station. She talked without ceasing. 
 
 " And if the neighbours do say cruel things about me, I'm 
 sure it ain't no thanks to him if they're true. Mr Pontifex 
 never took a bit o' notice of me no more than if I had 
 been his sister. Oh, it's enough to make anyone's back 
 bone curdle. Then I thought perhaps my Rose might 
 get on better with him, so I set her to dust him and 
 clean him as though I were busy, and gave her such a 
 beautiful clean new pinny, but he never took no notice of her 
 no more than he did of me, and she didn't want no com- 
 pliment neither, she wouldn't have taken not a shilling 
 from him, though he had offered it, but he didn't seem to 
 know anything at all. I can't make out what the young 
 men are a-coming to ; I wish the horn may blow for me 
 and the worms take me this very night, if it's not enough 
 to make a woman stand before God and strike the one 
 half on 'em silly to see the way they goes on, and many 
 an honest girl has to go home night after night without 
 so much as a fourpenny bit and paying three and sixpence 
 a week rent, and not a shelf nor cupboard in the place and 
 a dead wall in front of the window. 
 
 " It's not Mr Pontifex," she continued, " that's so bad, 
 he's good at heart. He never say nothing unkind. And 
 then there's his dear eyes — but when I speak about that to 
 my Rose she calls me an old fool and says I ought to be 
 poleaxed. It's that Pryer as I can't abide. Oh he ! He 
 likes to wound a woman's feelings he do, and to chuck any- 
 thing in her face, he do — he likes to wind a woman up and 
 to wound her down." (Mrs Jupp pronounced " wound " as 
 though it rhymed to " sound.") " It's a gentleman's place 
 to soothe a woman, but he, he'd like to tear her hair out by 
 handfuls. Why, he told me to my face that I was a-getting 
 old ; old indeed ! there's not a woman in London knows my 
 
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 age except Mrs Davis down in the Old Kent Road, and be- 
 yond a haricot vein in one of my legs I'm as young as ever I 
 was. Old indeed ! There's many a good tune played on an 
 old fiddle. I hate his nasty insinuendos." 
 
 Even if I had wanted to stop her, I could not have done 
 so. She said a great deal more than I have given above. 
 I have left out much because I could not remember it, but 
 still more because it was really impossible for me to print it. 
 
 When we got to the police station I found Towneley and 
 Ernest already there. The charge was one of assault, but 
 not aggravated by serious violence. Even so, however, it 
 was lamentable enough, and we both saw that our young 
 friend would have to pay dearly for his inexperience. We 
 tried to bail him out for the night, but the Inspector would 
 not accept bail, so we were forced to leave him. 
 
 Towneley then went back to Mrs Jupp's to see if he could 
 find Miss Maitland and arrange matters with her. She was 
 not there, but he traced her to the house of her father, who 
 lived at Camberwell. The father was furious and would not 
 hear of any intercession on Towneley's part. He was a 
 Dissenter, and glad to make the most of any scandal against 
 a clergyman ; Towneley, therefore, was obliged to return 
 unsuccessful. 
 
 Next morning, Towneley — who regarded Ernest as a 
 drowning man, who must be picked out of the water somehow 
 or other if possible, irrespective of the way in which he got 
 into it — called on me, and we put the matter into the hands 
 of one of the best known attorneys of the day. I was greatly 
 pleased with Towneley, and thought it due to him to tell him 
 what I had told no one else. I mean that Ernest would 
 come into his aunt's money in a few years' time, and would 
 therefore then be rich. 
 
 Towneley was doing all he could before this, but I knew 
 that the knowledge I had imparted to him would make him 
 feel as though Ernest was more one of his own class, and 
 had therefore a greater claim upon his good offices. As for 
 Ernest himself, his gratitude was greater than could be 
 expressed in words. I have heard him say that he can call 
 
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 to mind many moments, each one of which might well pass 
 for the happiest of his life, but that this night stands clearly 
 out as the most painful that he ever passed , yet so kind and 
 considerate was Towneley that it was quite bearable. 
 
 But with all the best wishes in the world neither Towneley 
 nor I could do much to help beyond giving our moral sup- 
 port. Our attorney told us that the magistrate before whom 
 Ernest would appear was very severe on cases of this descrip- 
 tion, and that the fact of his being a clergyman would tell 
 against him. " Ask for no remand," he said, " and make no 
 defence. We will call Mr Pontifex's rector and you two 
 gentlemen as witnesses for previous good character. These 
 will be enough. Let us then make a profound apology and 
 beg the magistrate to deal with the case summarily instead of 
 sending it for trial. If you can get this, believe me, your 
 young friend will be better out of it than he has any right to 
 expect." 
 
 CHAPTER LXII 
 
 This advice, besides being obviously sensible, would end in 
 saving Ernest both time and suspense of mind, so we had 
 no hesitation in adopting it. The case was called on about 
 eleven o'clock, but we got it adjourned till three, so as to 
 give time for Ernest to set his affairs as straight as he could, 
 and to execute a power of attorney enabling me to act for 
 him as I should think fit while he was in prison. 
 
 Then all came out about Pryer and the College of Spiritual 
 Pathology. Ernest had even greater difficulty in making a 
 clean breast of this than he had had in telling us about Miss 
 Maitland, but he told us all, and the upshot was that he had 
 actually handed over to Pryer every half-penny that he then 
 possessed with no other security than Pryer's I.O.U.'s for the 
 amount. Ernest, though still declining to believe that Pryer 
 could be guilty of dishonourable conduct, was becoming alive 
 to the folly of what he had been doing ; he still made sure, 
 however, of recovering, at any rate, the greater part of his 
 property as soon as Pryer should have had time to sell. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Towneley and I were of a different opinion, but we did not 
 say what we thought. 
 
 It was dreary work waiting all the morning amid such 
 unfamiliar and depressing surroundings. I thought how the 
 Psalmist had exclaimed with quiet irony, " One day in thy 
 courts is better than a thousand," and I thought that I could 
 utter a very similar sentiment in respect of the Courts in 
 which Towneley and I were compelled to loiter. At last, 
 about three o'clock the case was called on, and we went 
 round to the part of the court which is reserved for the 
 general public, while Ernest was taken into the prisoner's 
 dock. As soon as he had collected himself sufficiently he 
 recognised the magistrate as the old gentleman who had 
 spoken to him in the train on the day he was leaving school, 
 and saw, or thought he saw, to his great grief, that he too 
 was recognised. 
 
 Mr Ottery, for this was our attorney's name, took the line 
 he had proposed. He called no other witnesses than the 
 rector, Towneley and myself, and threw himself on the mercy 
 of the magistrate. When he had concluded, the magistrate 
 spoke as follows : " Ernest Pontifex, yours is one of the most 
 painful cases that I have ever had to deal with. You have 
 been singularly favoured in your parentage and education. 
 You have had before you the example of blameless parents, 
 who doubtless instilled into you from childhood the enormity 
 of the offence which by your own confession you have com- 
 mitted. You were sent to one of the best public schools in 
 England. It is not likely that in the healthy atmosphere 
 of such a school as Roughborough you can have come across 
 contaminating influences ; you were probably, I may say 
 certainly, impressed at school with the heinousness of any 
 attempt to depart from the strictest chastity until such time 
 as you had entered into a state of matrimony. At Cambridge 
 you were shielded from impurity by every obstacle which 
 virtuous and vigilant authorities could devise, and even had 
 the obstacles been fewer, your parents probably took care 
 that your means should not admit of your throwing money 
 away upon abandoned characters. At night proctors patrolled 
 
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 the street and dogged your steps if you tried to go into any 
 haunt where the presence of vice was suspected. By day the 
 females who were admitted within the college walls were 
 selected mainly on the score of age and ugliness. It is hard 
 to see what more can be done for any young man than this. 
 For the last four or five months you have been a clergyman, 
 and if a single impure thought had still remained within your 
 mind, ordination should have removed it : nevertheless, not 
 only does it appear that your mind is as impure as though 
 none of the influences to which I have referred had been 
 brought to bear upon it, but it seems as though their only 
 result had been this — that you have not even the common 
 sense to be able to distinguish between a respectable girl and 
 a prostitute. 
 
 " If I were to take a strict view of my duty I should 
 commit you for trial, but in consideration of this being your 
 first offence, I shall deal leniently with you and sentence you 
 to imprisonment with hard labour for six calendar months." 
 
 Towneley and I both thought there was a touch of irony 
 in the magistrate's speech, and that he would have given a 
 lighter sentence if he could, but that was neither here nor 
 there. We obtained leave to see Ernest for a few minutes 
 before he was removed to Coldbath Fields, where he was to 
 serve his term, and found him so thankful to have been 
 summarily dealt with that he hardly seemed to care about 
 the miserable plight in which he was to pass the next six 
 months. When he came out, he said, he would take what 
 remained of his money, go off to America or Australia and 
 never be heard of more. 
 
 We left him full of this resolve, I, to write to Theobald, 
 and also to instruct my solicitor to get Ernest's money out of 
 Fryer's hands, and Towneley to see the reporters and keep 
 the case out of the newspapers. He was successful as 
 regards all the higher-class papers. There was only one 
 journal, and that of the lowest class, which was incorruptible. 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LXIII 
 
 I SAW my solicitor at once, but when I tried to write to 
 Theobald, I found it better to say I would run down and see 
 him. I therefore proposed this, asking him to meet me at 
 the station, and hinting that I must bring bad news about his 
 son. I knew he would not get my letter more than a couple of 
 hours before I should see him, and thought the short interval 
 of suspense might break the shock of what I had to say. 
 
 Never do I remember to have halted more between two 
 opinions than on my journey to Battersby upon this unhappy 
 errand. When I thought of the little sallow-faced lad whom 
 I had remembered years before, of the long and savage 
 cruelty with which he had been treated in childhood — cruelty 
 none the less real for having been due to ignorance and 
 stupidity rather than to deliberate malice ; of the atmosphere 
 of lying and self-laudatory hallucination in which he had been 
 brought up ; of the readiness the boy had shown to love 
 anything that would be good enough to let him, and of how 
 affection for his parents, unless I am much mistaken, had 
 only died in him because it had been killed anew, again and 
 again and again, each time that it had tried to spring. When 
 I thought of all this I felt as though, if the matter had rested 
 with me, I would have sentenced Theobald and Christina to 
 mental suffering even more severe than that which was about 
 to fall upon them. But on the other hand, when I thought 
 of Theobald's own childhood, of that dreadful old George 
 Pontifex his father, of John and Mrs John, and of his two 
 sisters, when again I thought of Christina's long years of the hope 
 deferred that maketh the heart sick, before she was married, 
 of the life she must have led at Crampsford, and of the sur- 
 roundings in the midst of which she and her husband both 
 lived at Battersby, I felt as though the wonder was that mis- 
 fortunes so persistent had not been followed by even graver 
 retribution. 
 
 Poor people ! They had tried to keep their ignorance of 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the world from themselves by calling it the pursuit of heavenly 
 things, and then shutting their eyes to anything that might 
 give them trouble. A son having been born to them they 
 had shut his eyes also as far as was practicable. Who could 
 blame them ? They had chapter and verse for everything 
 they had either done or left undone; there is no better 
 thumbed precedent than that for being a clergyman and a 
 clergyman's wife. In what respect had they differed from 
 their neighbours ? How did their household differ from 
 that of any other clergyman of the better sort from one end 
 of England to the other ? Why then should it have been 
 upon them, of all people in the world, that this tower of 
 Siloam had fallen? 
 
 Surely it was the tower of Siloam that was naught rather 
 than those who stood under it ; it was the system rather than 
 the people that was at fault. If Theobald and his wife had 
 but known more of the world and of the things that are therein, 
 they would have done Httle harm to any one. Selfish they 
 would have always been, but not more so than may very 
 well be pardoned, and not more than other people would be. 
 As it was, the case was hopeless ; it would be no use their 
 even entering into their mothers' wombs and being born 
 again. They must not only be born again but they must be 
 born again each one of them of a new father and of a new 
 mother and of a different line of ancestry for many genera- 
 tions before their minds could become supple enough to 
 learn anew. The only thing to do with them was to humour 
 them and make the best of them till they died — and be 
 thankful when they did so. 
 
 Theobald got my letter as I had expected, and met me at 
 the station nearest to Battersby. As I walked back with him 
 towards his own house I broke the news to him as gently 
 as I could. I pretended that the whole thing was in great 
 measure a mistake, and that though Ernest no doubt had 
 had intentions which he ought to have resisted, he had not 
 meant going anything like the length which Miss Maitland 
 supposed. I said we had felt how much appearances were 
 against him, and had not dared to set up this defence before 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the magistrate, though we had no doubt about its being the 
 true one. 
 
 Theobald acted with a readier and acuter moral sense than 
 I had given him credit for. 
 
 " I will have nothing more to do with him," he exclaimed 
 promptly, " I will never see his face again ; do not let him 
 write either to me or to his mother ; we know of no such 
 person. Tell him you have seen me, and that from this day 
 forward I shall put him out of my mind as though he had 
 never been born. I have been a good father to him, and his 
 mother idolised him ; selfishness and ingratitude have been 
 the only return we have ever had from him ; my hope hence- 
 forth must be in my remaining children." 
 
 I told him how Ernest's fellow curate had got hold of his 
 money, and hinted that he might very likely be penniless, or 
 nearly so, on leaving prison. Theobald did not seem dis- 
 pleased at this, but added soon afterwards : "If this proves 
 to be the case, tell him from me that I will give him a 
 hundred pounds if he will tell me through you when he will 
 have it paid, but tell him not to write and thank me, and say 
 that if he attempts to open up direct communication either 
 with his mother or myself, he shall not have a penny of the 
 money." 
 
 Knowing what I knew, and having determined on violating 
 Miss Pontifex's instructions should the occasion arise, I did 
 not think Ernest would be any the worse for a complete 
 estrangement from his family, so I acquiesced more readily 
 in what Theobald had proposed than that gentleman may 
 have expected. 
 
 Thinking it better that I should not see Christina, I left 
 Theobald near Battersby and walked back to the station. 
 On my way I was pleased to reflect that Ernest's father was 
 less of a fool than I had taken him to be, and had the 
 greater hopes, therefore, that his son's blunders might be due 
 to postnatal, rather than congenital misfortunes. Accidents 
 which happen to a man before he is born, in the persons of 
 his ancestors, will, if he remembers them at all, leave an 
 indelible impression on him ; they will have moulded his 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 character so that, do what he will, it is hardly possible for 
 him to escape their consequences. If a man is to enter into 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, he must do so, not only as a 
 httle child, but as a little embryo, or rather as a little 
 zoosperm — and not only this, but as one that has come of 
 zoosperms which have entered into the Kingdom of Heaven 
 before him for many generations. Accidents which occur 
 for the first time, and belong to the period since a man's last 
 birth, are not, as a general rule, so permanent in their effects, 
 though of course they may sometimes be so. At any rate, I 
 was not displeased at the view which Ernest's father took of 
 the situation. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIV 
 
 After Ernest had been sentenced, he was taken back to the 
 cells to wait for the van which should take him to Coldbath 
 Fields, where he was to serve his term. 
 
 He was still too stunned and dazed by the suddenness 
 with which events had happened during the last twenty-four 
 hours to be able to realise his position. A great chasm had 
 opened between his past and future ; nevertheless he 
 breathed, his pulse beat, he could think and speak. It 
 seemed to him that he ought to be prostrated by the blow 
 that had fallen on him, but he was not prostrated ; he had 
 suffered from many smaller laches far more acutely. It 
 was not until he thought of the pain his disgrace would 
 inflict on his father and mother that he felt how readily he 
 would have given up all he had, rather than have fallen 
 into his present plight. It would break his mother's 
 heart. It must, he knew it would — and it was he who had 
 done this. 
 
 He had had a headache coming on all the forenoon, but 
 as he thought of his father and mother, his pulse quickened, 
 and the pain in his head suddenly became intense. He 
 could hardly walk to the van, and he found its motion 
 insupportable. On reaching the prison he was too ill to walk 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 without assistance across the hall to the corridor or gallery 
 where prisoners are marshalled on their arrival. The prison 
 warder, seeing at once that he was a clergyman, did not 
 suppose he was shamming, as he might have done in the 
 case of an old gaol-bird ; he therefore sent for the doctor. 
 When this gentleman arrived, Ernest was declared to be 
 suffering from an incipient attack of brain fever, and was 
 taken away to the infirmary. Here he hovered for the next 
 two months between Hfe and death, never in full possession 
 of his reason and often delirious, but at last, contrary to the 
 expectation of both doctor and nurse, he began slowly to 
 recover. 
 
 It is said that those who have been nearly drowned, find 
 the return to consciousness much more painful than the loss 
 of it had been, and so it was with my hero. As he lay 
 helpless and feeble, it seemed to him a refinement of cruelty 
 that he had not died once for all during his delirium. He 
 thought he should still most likely recover only to sink a 
 little later on from shame and sorrow ; nevertheless from 
 day to day he mended, though so slowly that he could hardly 
 realise it to himself. One afternoon, however, about three 
 weeks after he had regained consciousness, the nurse who 
 tended him, and who had been very kind to him, made some 
 little rallying sally which amused him ; he laughed, and as 
 he did so, she clapped her hands and told him he would be 
 a man again. The spark of hope was kindled, and again he 
 wished to live. Almost from that moment his thoughts 
 began to turn less to the horrors of the past, and more to the 
 best way of meeting the future. 
 
 His worst pain was on behalf of his father and mother, 
 and how he should again face them. It still seemed to him 
 that the best thing both for him and them would be that he 
 should sever himself from them completely, take whatever 
 money he could recover from Pryer, and go to some place in 
 the uttermost parts of the earth, where he should never meet 
 anyone who had known him at school or college, and start 
 afresh. Or perhaps he might go to the gold fields in 
 Cahfornia or Australia, of which such wonderful accounts 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 were then heard ; there he might even make his fortune, and 
 return as an old man many years hence, unknown to every- 
 one, and if so, he would live at Cambridge. As he built 
 these castles in the air, the spark of life became a flame, and 
 he longed for health, and for the freedom which, now that so 
 much of his sentence had expired, was not after all very far 
 distant. 
 
 Then things began to shape themselves more definitely. 
 Whatever happened he would be a clergyman no longer. It 
 would have been practically impossible for him to have found 
 another curacy, even if he had been so minded, but he was 
 not so minded. He hated the life he had been leading ever 
 since he had begun to read for orders ; he could not argue 
 about it, but simply he loathed it and would have no more of 
 it. As he dwelt on the prospect of becoming a layman again, 
 however disgraced, he rejoiced at what had befallen him, and 
 found a blessing in this very imprisonment which had at first 
 seemed such an unspeakable misfortune. 
 
 Perhaps the shock of so great a change in his surroundings 
 had accelerated changes in his opinions, just as the cocoons 
 of silkworms, when sent in baskets by rail, hatch before their 
 time through the novelty of heat and jolting. But however 
 this may be, his belief in the stories concerning the Death, 
 Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and hence his 
 faith in all the other Christian miracles, had dropped off him 
 once and for ever. The investigation he had made in conse- 
 quence of Mr. Shaw's rebuke, hurried though it was, had left 
 a deep impression upon him, and now he was well enough to 
 read he made the New Testament his chief study, going 
 through it in the spirit which Mr. Shaw had desired of him, 
 that is to say as one who wished neither to believe nor dis- 
 believe, but cared only about finding out whether he ought 
 to believe or no. The more he read in this spirit the more 
 the balance seemed to lie in favour of unbelief, till, in the 
 end, all further doubt became impossible, and he saw plainly 
 enough that, whatever else might be true, the story that Christ 
 had died, come to life again, and been carried from earth 
 through clouds into the heavens could not now be accepted 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 by unbiassed people. It was well he had found it out so 
 soon. In one way or another it was sure to meet him sooner 
 or later. He would probably have seen it years ago if he 
 had not been hoodwinked by people who were paid for hood- 
 winking him. What should he have done, he asked himself, 
 if he had not made his present discovery till years later, when 
 he was more deeply committed to the life of a clergyman ? 
 Should he have had the courage to face it, or would he not 
 more probably have evolved some excellent reason for con- 
 tinuing to think as he had thought hitherto ? Should he 
 have had the courage to break away even from his present 
 curacy ? 
 
 He thought not, and knew not whether to be more thank- 
 ful for having been shown his error or for having been caught 
 up and twisted round so that he could hardly err farther, 
 almost at the very moment of his having discovered it. The 
 price he had had to pay for this boon was light as compared 
 with the boon itself. What is too heavy a price to pay for 
 having duty made at once clear and easy of fulfilment instead 
 of very difficult ? He was sorry for his father and mother, 
 and he was sorry for Miss Maitland, but he was no longer 
 sorry for himself. 
 
 It puzzled him, however, that he should not have known 
 how much he had hated being a clergyman till now. He 
 knew that he did not particularly like it, but if anyone had 
 asked him whether he actually hated it, he would have 
 answered no. I suppose people almost always want some- 
 thing external to themselves, to reveal to them their own 
 likes and dislikes. Our most assured likings have for the 
 most part been arrived at neither by introspection nor by any 
 process of conscious reasoning, but by the bounding forth of 
 the heart to welcome the gospel proclaimed to it by another. 
 We hear some say that such and such a thing is thus or thus, 
 and in a moment the train that has been laid within us, but 
 whose presence we knew not, flashes into consciousness and 
 perception. 
 
 Only a year ago he had bounded forth to welcome Mr 
 Hawke's sermon ; since then he had bounded after a College 
 
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The Way of AU Flesh 
 
 of Spiritual Pathology ; now he was in full cry after rational- 
 ism pure and simple ; how could he be sure that his present 
 state of mind would be more lasting than his previous ones ? 
 He could not be certain, but he felt as though he were now 
 on firmer ground than he had ever betn before, and no 
 matter how fleeting his present opinions might prove to be, 
 he could not but act according to them till he saw reason to 
 change them. How impossible, he reflected, it would have 
 been for him to do this, if he had remained surrounded by 
 people like his father and mother, or Pryer and Pryer's 
 friends, and his rector. He had been observing, reflecting, 
 and assimilating all these months with no more consciousness 
 of mental growth than a school-boy has of growth of body, 
 but should he have been able to admit his growth to him- 
 self, and to act up to his increased strength if he had 
 remained in constant close connection with people who 
 assured him solemnly that he was under a hallucination ? 
 The combination against him was greater than his unaided 
 strength could have broken through, and he felt doubtful 
 how far any shock less severe than the one from which he 
 was suffering would have sufficed to free him. 
 
 CHAPTER LXV 
 
 As he lay on his bed day after day slowly recovering he 
 woke up to the fact which most men arrive at sooner or 
 later, I mean that very few care two straws about truth, or 
 have any confidence that it is righter and better to believe 
 what is true than what is untrue, even though belief in the 
 untruth may seem at first sight most expedient. Yet it is 
 only these few who can be said to beheve anything at all ; 
 the rest are simply unbelievers in disguise. Perhaps, after 
 all, these last are right. They have numbers and prosperity 
 on their side. They have all which the rationafist appeals to 
 as his tests of right and wrong. Right, according to him, is 
 what seems right to the majority of sensible, well-to-do 
 people ; we know of no safer criterion than this, but what 
 T 289 
 
 a 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 does the decision thus arrived at involve? Simply this, 
 that a conspiracy of silence about things whose truth would 
 be immediately apparent to disinterested enquirers is not 
 only tolerable but righteous on the part of those who 
 profess to be and take money for being par excelle?ice 
 guardians and teachers of truth. 
 
 Ernest saw no logical escape from this conclusion. He 
 saw that belief on the part of the early Christians in the 
 miraculous nature of Christ's Resurrection was explicable, 
 without any supposition of miracle. The explanation lay 
 under the eyes of anyone who chose to take a moderate 
 degree of trouble ; it had been put before the world again 
 and again, and there had been no serious attempt to refute 
 it. How was it that Dean Alford for example who had made 
 the New Testament his speciality, could not or would not 
 see what was so obvious to Ernest himself? Could it 
 be for any other reason than that he did not want to see 
 it, and if so was he not a traitor to the cause of truth ? Yes, 
 but was he not also a respectable and successful man, and 
 were not the vast majority of respectable and successful men, 
 such for example, as all the bishops and archbishops, doing 
 exactly as Dean Alford did, and did not this make their 
 action right, no matter though it had been cannibalism or 
 infanticide, or even habitual untruthfulness of mind? 
 
 Monstrous, odious falsehood ! Ernest's feeble pulse quick- 
 ened and his pale face flushed as this hateful view of Hfe 
 presented itself to him in all its logical consistency. It was not 
 the fact of most men being liars that shocked him — that was 
 all right enough ; but even the momentary doubt whether the 
 few who were not liars ought not to become liars too. There 
 was no hope left if this were so ; if this were so, let him die, 
 the sooner the better. "Lord," he exclaimed inwardly, "I 
 don't believe one word of it. Strengthen Thou and confirm 
 my disbelief." It seemed to him that he could never hence- 
 forth see a bishop going to consecration without saying to 
 himself: "There, but for the grace of God, went Ernest 
 Pontifex." It was no doing of his. He could not boast ; if he 
 had lived in the time of Christ he might himself have been 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 an early Christian, or even an Apostle for aught he knew. 
 On the whole he felt that he had much to be thankful for. 
 
 The conclusion, then, that it might be better to believe 
 error than truth, should be ordered out of court at once, no 
 matter by how clear a logic it had been arrived at; but 
 what was the alternative ? It was this, that our criterion of 
 truth — i.e. that truth is what commends itself to the great 
 majority of sensible and successful people — is not infallible. 
 The rule is sound, and covers by far the greater number of 
 cases, but it has its exceptions. 
 
 He asked himself, what were they ? Ah ! that was a 
 difficult matter ; there were so many, and the rules which 
 governed them were sometimes so subtle, that mistakes 
 always had and always would be made; it was just this 
 that made it impossible to reduce life to an exact science. 
 There was a rough and ready rule-of-thumb test of truth, 
 and a number of rules as regards exceptions which could 
 be mastered without much trouble, yet there was a residue of 
 cases in which decision was difficult — so difficult that a man 
 had better follow his instinct than attempt to decide them by 
 any process of reasoning. 
 
 Instinct then is the ultimate court of appeal. And what 
 is instinct ? It is a mode of faith in the evidence of things 
 not actually seen. And so my hero returned almost to 
 the point from which he had started originally, namely that 
 the just shall live by faith. 
 
 And this is what the just — that is to say reasonable people 
 — -do as regards those daily affairs of life which most 
 concern them. They settle smaller matters by the exercise 
 of their own deliberation. More important ones, such as the 
 cure of their own bodies and the bodies of those whom they 
 love, the investment of their money, the extrication of their 
 affairs from any serious mess — these things they generally 
 entrust to others of whose capacity they know little save 
 from general report ; they act therefore on the strength of 
 faith, not of knowledge. So the English nation entrusts the 
 welfare of its fleet and naval defences to a First Lord of the 
 Admiralty, who, not being a sailor can know nothing about 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 these matters except by acts of faith. There can be no 
 doubt about faith and not reason being the ultima ratio. 
 
 Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the 
 charge of credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get 
 beyond this. He has no demonstrable first premise. He 
 requires postulates and axioms which transcend demonstra- 
 tion, and without which he can do nothing. His superstruc- 
 ture indeed is demonstration, but his ground is faith. Nor 
 again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool if he 
 persists in differing from him. He says " which is absurd," 
 and declines to discuss the matter further. Faith and 
 authority, therefore, prove to be as necessary for him as for 
 anyone else. " By faith in what, then," asked Ernest of 
 himself, " shall a just man endeavour to live at this present 
 time ? " He answered to himself, " At any rate not by faith 
 in the supernatural element of the Christian religion." 
 
 And how should he best persuade his fellow-country- 
 men to leave off beheving in this supernatural element? 
 Looking at the matter from a practical point of view he 
 thought the Archbishop of Canterbury afforded the most 
 promising key to the situation. It lay between him and the 
 Pope. The Pope was perhaps best in theory, but in practice 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury would do sufficiently well. 
 If he could only manage to sprinkle a pinch of salt, as it 
 were, on the Archbishop's tail, he might convert the whole 
 Church of England to free thought by a coup de main. There 
 must be an amount of cogency which even an Archbishop 
 — an Archbishop whose perceptions had never been 
 quickened by imprisonment for assault — would not be able 
 to withstand. When brought face to face with the facts, as 
 he, Ernest, could arrange them, his Grace would have no re- 
 source but to admit them ; being an honourable man he 
 would at once resign his Archbishopric, and Christianity 
 would become extinct in England within a few months' 
 time. This, at any rate, was how things ought to be. But 
 all the time Ernest had no confidence in the Archbishop's 
 not hopping off just as the pinch was about to fall on him, 
 and this seemed so unfair that his blood boiled at the 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 thought of it. If this was to be so, he must try if he could 
 not fix him by the judicious use of bird-lime or a snare, or 
 throw the salt on his tail from an ambuscade. 
 
 To do him justice it was not himself that he greatly cared 
 about. He knew he had been humbugged, and he knew 
 also that the greater part of the ills which had afflicted him 
 were due, indirectly, in chief measure to the influence of 
 Christian teaching ; still, if the mischief had ended with 
 himself, he should have thought little about it, but there 
 was his sister, and his brother Joey, and the hundreds and 
 thousands of young people throughout England whose lives 
 were being blighted through the lies told them by people 
 whose business it was to know better, but who scamped 
 their work and shirked difificulties instead of facing them. 
 It was this which made him think it worth while to be angry, 
 and to consider whether he could not at least do something 
 towards saving others from such years of waste and misery 
 as he had had to pass himself. If there was no truth in the 
 miraculous accounts of Christ's Death and Resurrection, the 
 whole of the religion founded upon the historic truth of 
 those events tumbled to the ground. "Why," he exclaimed, 
 with all the arrogance of youth, " they put a gipsy or fortune- 
 teller into prison for getting money out of silly people who 
 think they have supernatural power; why should they not 
 put a clergyman in prison for pretending that he can absolve 
 sins, or turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of One 
 who died two thousand years ago ? What," he asked himself, 
 " could be more pure ' hanky-panky ' than that a bishop 
 should lay his hands upon a young man and pretend to 
 convey to him the spiritual power to work this miracle ? It 
 was all very well to talk about toleration ; toleration, like 
 everything else, had its limits ; besides, if it was to include 
 the bishop let it include the fortune-teller too. He would 
 explain all this to the Archbishop of Canterbury by and by, 
 but as he could not get hold of him just now, it occurred to 
 him that he might experimentalise advantageously upon the 
 viler soul of the prison chaplain. It was only those who 
 took the first and most obvious step in their power who ever 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 did great things in the end, so one day, when Mr Hughes — 
 for this was the chaplain's name — was talking with him, 
 Ernest introduced the question of Christian evidences, and 
 tried to raise a discussion upon them. Mr Hughes had been 
 very kind to him, but he was more than twice my hero's age, 
 and had long taken the measure of such objections as Ernest 
 tried to put before him. I do not suppose he believed in 
 the actual objective truth of the stories about Christ's Re- 
 surrection and Ascension any more than Ernest did, but he 
 knew that this was a small matter, and that the real issue lay 
 much deeper than this. 
 
 Mr Hughes was a man who had been in authority for many 
 years, and he brushed Ernest on one side as if he had been 
 a fly. He did it so well that my hero never ventured to 
 tackle him again, and confined his conversation with him 
 for the future to such matters as what he had better do when 
 he got out of prison ; and here Mr Hughes was ever ready 
 to listen to him with sympathy and kindness. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVI 
 
 Ernest was now so far convalescent as to be able to sit up 
 for the greater part of the day. He had been three months in 
 prison, and, though not strong enough to leave the infirmary, 
 was beyond all fear of a relapse. He was talking one day with 
 Mr Hughes about his future, and again expressed his intention 
 of emigrating to Australia or New Zealand with the money he 
 should recover from Pryer. Whenever he spoke of this he 
 noticed that Mr Hughes looked grave and was silent : he had 
 thought that perhaps the chaplain wanted him to return to 
 his profession, and disapproved of his evident anxiety to turn 
 to something else ; now, however, he asked Mr Hughes point 
 blank why it was that he disapproved of his idea of emi- 
 grating. 
 
 Mr Hughes endeavoured to evade him, but Ernest was not 
 to be put off. There was something in the chaplain's manner 
 which suggested that he knew more than Ernest did, but 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 did not like to say it. This alarmed him so much that he 
 begged him not to keep him in suspense ; after a little hesita- 
 tion Mr Hughes, thinking him now strong enough to stand 
 it, broke the news as gently as he could that the whole of 
 Ernest's money had disappeared. 
 
 The day after my return from Battersby I called on my 
 solicitor, and was told that he had ^^Titten to Pryer, requiring 
 him to refund the monies for which he had given his I.O.U.'s. 
 Pryer replied that he had given orders to his broker to close 
 his operations, which unfortunately had resulted so far in 
 heavy loss, and that the balance should be paid to my solicitor 
 on the following settling day, then about a week distant. 
 When the time came, we heard nothing from Pryer, and 
 going to his lodgings found that he had left with his few 
 effects on the very day after he had heard from us, and had 
 not been seen since. 
 
 I had heard from Ernest the name of the broker who had 
 been employed, and went at once to see him. He told me 
 Pryer had closed all his accounts for cash on the day that 
 Ernest had been sentenced, and had received ;^2 3i5, which 
 was all that remained of Ernest's original ;^5ooo. With this 
 he had decamped, nor had we enough clue as to his where- 
 abouts to be able to take any steps to recover the money. 
 There was in fact nothing to be done but to consider the 
 whole as lost. I may say here that neither I nor Ernest ever 
 heard of Pryer again, nor have any idea what became of him. 
 
 This placed me in a difficult position. I knew, of course, 
 that in a few years Ernest would have many times over as 
 much money as he had lost, but I knew also that he did not 
 know this, and feared that the supposed loss of all he had in 
 the world might be more than he could stand when coupled 
 with his other misfortunes. 
 
 The prison authorities had found Theobald's address from 
 a letter in Ernest's pocket, and had communicated with him 
 more than once concerning his son's illness, but Theobald had 
 not written to me, and I supposed my godson to be in good 
 health. He would be just twenty-four years old when he left 
 prison, and, if I followed out his aunt's instructions, would 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 have to battle with fortune for another four years as well as 
 he could. The question before me was whether it was right 
 to let him run so much risk, or whether I should not to some 
 extent transgress my instructions — which there was nothing 
 to prevent my doing if I thought Miss Pontifex would have 
 wished it — and let him have the same sum that he would 
 have recovered from Pryer. 
 
 If my godson had been an older man, and more fixed in 
 any definite groove, this is what I should have done, but he was 
 still very young, and more than commonly unformed for his 
 age. If, again, I had known of his illness I should not have 
 dared to lay any heavier burden on his back than he had 
 to bear already; but not being uneasy about his health, I 
 thought a few years of roughing it and of experience con- 
 cerning the importance of not playing tricks with money 
 would do him no harm. So I decided to keep a sharp eye 
 upon him as soon as he came out of prison, and to let him 
 splash about in deep water as best he could till I saw whether 
 he was able to swim, or was about to sink. In the first case 
 I would let him go on swimming till he was nearly eight-and- 
 twenty, when I would prepare him gradually for the good 
 fortune that awaited him ; in the second I would hurry up to 
 the rescue. So I wrote to say that Pryer had absconded, 
 and that he could have ;^ioo from his father when he came 
 out of prison. I then waited to see what effect these tidings 
 would have, not expecting to receive an answer for three 
 months, for I had been told on enquiry that no letter could 
 be received by a prisoner till after he had been three months 
 in gaol. I also wrote to Theobald and told him of Pryer's 
 disappearance. 
 
 As a matter of fact, when my letter arrived the governor 
 of the gaol read it, and in a case of such importance would 
 have relaxed the rules if Ernest's state had allowed it ; his 
 illness prevented this, and the governor left it to the chaplain 
 and the doctor to break the news to him when they thought 
 him strong enough to bear it, which was now the case. In 
 the meantime I received a formal official document saying 
 that my letter had been received and would be communicated 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 to the prisoner in due course ; I beUeve it was simply through 
 a mistake on the part of a clerk that I was not informed of 
 Ernest's illness, but I heard nothing of it till I saw him by 
 his ow'n desire a few days after the chaplain had broken to 
 him the substance of what I had written. 
 
 Ernest was terribly shocked when he heard of the loss 
 of his money, but his ignorance of the world prevented him 
 from seeing the full extent of the mischief. He had never 
 been in serious want of money yet, and did not know what it 
 meant. In reality, money losses are the hardest to bear of 
 any by those who are old enough to comprehend them. 
 
 A man can stand being told that he must submit to a 
 severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which 
 will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for 
 the rest of his life ; dreadful as such tidings must be, ^ve do 
 not find that they unnerve the greater number of mankind ; 
 most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but 
 the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men 
 they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their 
 prostration. Suicide is a common consequence of money 
 losses ; it is rarely sought as a means of escape from bodily 
 suffering. If we feel that \ve have a competence at our 
 backs, so that we can die warm and quietly in our beds, with 
 no need to worry about expense, we live our lives out to the 
 dregs, no matter how excruciating our torments. Job 
 probably felt the loss of his flocks and herds more than that 
 of his wife and family, for he could enjoy his flocks and 
 herds without his family, but not his family — not for long — 
 if he had lost all his money. Loss of money indeed is not 
 only the worst pain in itself, but it is the parent of all others. 
 Let a man have been brought up to a moderate competence, 
 and have no specialty ; then let his money be suddenly taken 
 from him, and how long is his health likely to survive the 
 change in all his little ways which loss of money wall entail ? 
 How long again is the esteem and sympathy of friends likely 
 to survive ruin ? People may be very sorry for us, but their 
 attitude towards us hitherto has been based upon the 
 supposition that we were situated thus or thus in money 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 matters ; when this breaks down there must be a restatement 
 of the social problem so far as we are concerned ; we have 
 been obtaining esteem under false pretences. Granted, then, 
 that the three most serious losses which a man can suffer are 
 those affecting money, health and reputation. Loss of 
 money is far the worst, then comes ill-health, and then loss 
 of reputation ; loss of reputation is a bad third, for, if a man 
 keeps health and money unimpaired, it will be generally 
 found that his loss of reputation is due to breaches of 
 parvenu conventions only, and not to violations of those 
 older, better established canons whose authority is unques- 
 tionable. In this case a man may grow a new reputation as 
 easily as a lobster grows a new claw, or, if he have health and 
 money, may thrive in great peace of mind without any 
 reputation at all. The only chance for a man who has 
 lost his money is that he shall still be young enough to 
 stand uprooting and transplanting wnthout more than 
 temporary derangement, and this I believed my godson 
 still to be. 
 
 By the prison rules he might receive and send a letter 
 after he had been in gaol three months, and might also 
 receive one visit from a friend. When he received my letter, 
 he at once asked me to come and see him, w^hich of course 
 I did. I found him very much changed, and still so feeble, 
 that the exertion of coming from the infirmary to the cell in 
 which I w^as allowed to see him, and the agitation of seeing 
 me were too much for him. At first he quite broke down, 
 and I was so pained at the state in which I found him, that 
 I was on the point of breaking my instructions then and 
 there. I contented myself, however, for the time, with 
 assuring him that I would help him as soon as he came out 
 of prison, and that, w^hen he had made up his mind what he 
 would do, he was to come to me for what money might be 
 necessary, if he could not get it from his father. To make 
 it easier for him I told him that his aunt, on her deathbed, 
 had desired me to do something of this sort should an 
 emergency arise, so that he would only be taking what his 
 aunt had left him. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "Then," said he, "I will not take the ^loo from my 
 father, and I will never see him or my mother again." 
 
 I said: "Take the p^ioo, Ernest, and as much more 
 as you can get, and then do not see them again if you 
 do not like." 
 
 This Ernest would not do. If he took money from them, 
 he could not cut them, and he wanted to cut them. I 
 thought my godson would get on a great deal better if he 
 would only have the firmness to do as he proposed, as 
 regards breaking completely with his father and mother, and 
 said so. " Then don't you like them ? " said he, with a look 
 of surprise. 
 
 " Like them ! " said I, " 1 think they're horrid." 
 
 " Oh, that's the kindest thing of all you have done for 
 me," he exclaimed, " I thought all — all middle-aged people 
 liked my father and mother." 
 
 He had been about to call me old, but I was only fifty- 
 seven, and was not going to have this, so I made a face 
 when I saw him hesitating, which drove him into " middle- 
 aged." 
 
 " If you like it," said I, " I will say all your family are 
 horrid except yourself and your aunt Alethea. The greater 
 part of every family is always odious ; if there are one or two 
 good ones in a very large family, it is as much as can be 
 expected." 
 
 " Thank you," he replied, gratefully, " I think I can now 
 stand almost anything. I will come and see you as soon 
 as I come out of gaol. Goodbye." For the warder had 
 told us that the time allowed for our interview was at an 
 end. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVII 
 
 As soon as Ernest found that he had no money to look to 
 upon leaving prison he saw that his dreams about emigrating 
 and farming must come to an end, for he knew that he was 
 incapable of working at the plough or with the axe for long 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 together himself. And now it seemed he should have no 
 money to pay any one else for doing so. It was this that 
 resolved him to part once and for all with his parents. If he 
 had been going abroad he could have kept up relations with 
 them, for they would have been too far off to interfere 
 with him. 
 
 He knew his father and mother would object to being cut ; 
 they would wish to appear kind and forgiving ; they would 
 also dislike having no further power to plague him ; but he 
 knew also very well that so long as he and they ran in 
 harness together they would be always pulling one way and 
 he another. He wanted to drop the gentleman and go down 
 into the ranks, beginning on the lowest rung of the ladder, 
 where no one would know of his disgrace or mind it if he 
 did know ; his father and mother on the other hand would 
 wish him to clutch on to the fag-end of gentility at a starva- 
 tion salary and with no prospect of advancement. Ernest 
 had seen enough in Ashpit Place to know that a tailor, if he 
 did not drink and attended to his business, could earn more 
 money than a clerk or a curate, while much less expense by 
 way of show was required of him. The tailor also had 
 more liberty, and a better chance of rising. Ernest resolved 
 at once, as he had fallen so far, to fall still lower — promptly, 
 gracefully and with the idea of rising again, rather than 
 cHng to the skirts of a respectability which would permit him 
 to exist on sufferance only, and make him pay an utterly 
 extortionate price for an article which he could do better 
 without. 
 
 He arrived at this result more quickly than he might 
 otherwise have done through remembering something he had 
 once heard his aunt say about " kissing the soil." This had 
 impressed him and stuck by him perhaps by reason of its 
 brevity ; when later on he came to know the story of Her- 
 cules and Antaeus, he found it one of the very few ancient 
 fables which had a hold over him — his chiefest debt to 
 classical literature. His aunt had wanted him to learn car- 
 pentering, as a means of kissing the soil should his Hercules 
 ever throw him. It was too late for this now — or he thought 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 it was — but the mode of carrying out his aunt's idea was a 
 detail ; there were a hundred ways of kissing the soil besides 
 becoming a carpenter. 
 
 He had told me this during our interview, and I had 
 encouraged him to the utmost of my power. He showed so 
 much more good sense than I had given him credit for, that 
 I became comparatively easy about him, and determined to 
 let him play his own game, being always, however, ready to 
 hand in case things went too far wrong. It was not simply 
 because he disliked his father and mother that he wanted to 
 have no more to do with them ; if it had been only this he 
 would have put up with them ; but a warning voice within 
 told him distinctly enough that if he was clean cut away from 
 them he might still have a chance of success, whereas if they 
 had anything whatever to do with him, or even knew where 
 he was, they would hamper him and in the end ruin him. 
 Absolute independence he believed to be his only chance of 
 very life itself. 
 
 Over and above this — if this were not enough — Ernest had 
 a faith in his own destiny such as most young men, I suppose, 
 feel, but the grounds of which were not apparent to any one 
 but himself. Rightly or wrongly, in a quiet way he believed 
 he possessed a strength which, if he were only free to use it 
 in his own way, might do great things some day. He did 
 not know when, nor where, nor how his opportunity was to 
 come, but he never doubted that it would come in spite of 
 all that had happened, and above all else he cherished the 
 hope that he might know how to seize it if it came, for 
 whatever it was it would be something that no one else could 
 do so well as he could. People said there were no dragons 
 and giants for adventurous men to fight with nowadays ; it 
 was beginning to dawn upon him that there were just as 
 many now as at any past time. 
 
 Monstrous as such a faith may seem in one who was 
 qualifying himself for a high mission by a term of imprison- 
 ment, he could no more help it than he could help breathing ; 
 it was innate in him, and it was even more with a view to 
 this than for other reasons that he wished to sever the con- 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 nection between himself and his parents ; for he knew that 
 if ever the day came in which it should appear that before 
 him too there was a race set in which it might be an honour 
 to have run among the foremost, his father and mother would 
 be the first to let him and hinder him in running it. They 
 had been the first to say that he ought to run such a race ; 
 they would also be the first to trip him up if he took them at 
 their word, and then afterwards upbraid him for not having 
 won. Achievement of any kind would be impossible for 
 him unless he was free from those who would be for ever 
 dragging him back into the conventional. The conventional 
 had been tried already and had been found wanting. 
 
 He had an opportunity now, if he chose to take it, of 
 escaping once for all from those who at once tormented him 
 and would hold him earthward should a chance of soaring 
 open before him. He should never have had it but for his 
 imprisonment ; but for this the force of habit and routine 
 would have been too strong for him ; he should hardly have 
 had it if he had not lost all his money ; the gap would not 
 have been so wide but that he might have been inclined to 
 throw a plank across it. He rejoiced now, therefore, over his 
 loss of money as well as over his imprisonment, which had 
 made it more easy for him to follow his truest and most 
 lasting interests. 
 
 At times he wavered, when he thought of how his mother, 
 who in her way, as he thought, had loved him, would weep 
 and think sadly over him, or how perhaps she might even fall 
 ill and die, and how the blame would rest with him. At 
 these times his resolution was near breaking, but when he 
 found I applauded his design, the voice within, which bade 
 him see his father's and mother's faces no more, grew louder 
 and more persistent. If he could not cut himself adrift from 
 those who he knew would hamper him, when so small an 
 effort was wanted, his dream of a destiny was idle ; what was 
 the prospect of a hundred pounds from his father in com- 
 parison with jeopardy to this ? He still felt deeply the pain 
 his disgrace had inflicted upon his father and mother, but he 
 was getting stronger, and reflected that as he had run his 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 chance with them for parents, so they must run theirs with 
 him for a son. 
 
 He had nearly settled down to this conclusion when he 
 received a letter from his father which made his decision 
 final. If the prison rules had been interpreted strictly, he 
 would not have been allowed to have this letter for another 
 three months, as he had already heard from me, but the 
 governor took a lenient view, and considered the letter from 
 me to be a business communication hardly coming under the 
 category of a letter from friends. Theobald's letter therefore 
 was given to his son. It ran as follows : — 
 
 " My dear Ernest, My object in writing is not to upbraid 
 you with the disgrace and shame you have inflicted upon 
 your mother and myself, to say nothing of your brother Joey, 
 and your sister. Suffer of course we must, but we know to 
 whom to look in our affliction, and are filled with anxiety 
 rather on your behalf than our own. Your mother is wonder- 
 ful. She is pretty well in health, and desires me to send you 
 her love. 
 
 " Have you considered your prospects on leaving prison ? 
 I understand from Mr Overton that you have lost the legacy 
 which your grandfather left you, together with all the interest 
 that accrued during your minority, in the course of specula- 
 tion upon the Stock Exchange ! If you have indeed been 
 guilty of such appalling folly it is difficult to see what you 
 can turn your hand to, and I suppose you will try to find a 
 clerkship in an office. Your salary will doubtless be low at 
 first, but you have made your bed and must not complain if 
 you have to lie upon it. If you take pains to please your 
 employers they will not be backward in promoting you. 
 
 " When I first heard from Mr Overton of the unspeakable 
 calamity which had befallen your mother and myself, I had 
 resolved not to see you again. I am unwilling, however, to 
 have recourse to a measure which would deprive you of your 
 last connecting link with respectable people. Your mother 
 and I will see you as soon as you come out of prison ; not 
 at Battersby — we do not wish you to come down here at 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 present — but somewhere else, probably in London. You 
 need not shrink from seeing us ; we shall not reproach you. 
 We will then decide about your future. 
 
 " At present our impression is that you will find a fairer 
 start probably in Australia or New Zealand than here, and I 
 am prepared to find you ;^75 or even if necessary so far as 
 p^ioo to pay your passage money. Once in the colony you 
 must be dependent upon your own exertions. 
 
 " May Heaven prosper them and you, and restore you to 
 us years hence a respected member of society. — Your 
 affectionate father, T. Pontifex." 
 
 Then there was a postscript in Christina's writing. 
 
 " My darling, darling boy, pray with me daily and hourly 
 that we may yet again become a happy, united, God-fearing 
 family as we were before this horrible pain fell upon us. — 
 Your sorrowing but ever loving mother, C.P." 
 
 This letter did not produce the effect on Ernest that it 
 would have done before his imprisonment began. His father 
 and mother thought they could take him up as they had 
 left him off. They forgot the rapidity with which develop- 
 ment follows misfortune, if the sufferer is young and of a 
 sound temperament. Ernest made no reply to his father's 
 letter, but his desire for a total break developed into some- 
 thing like a passion. " There are orphanages," he exclaimed 
 to himself, " for children who have lost their parents — oh ! 
 why, why, why, are there no harbours of refuge for grown 
 men who have not yet lost them ? " And he brooded over 
 the bliss of Melchisedek who had been born an orphan, 
 without father, without mother, and without descent. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVni 
 
 When I think over all that Ernest told me about his prison 
 meditations, and the conclusions he was drawn to, it occurs 
 to me that in reality he was wanting to do the very last 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 thing which it would have entered into his head to think of 
 wanting. I mean that he was trying to give up father and 
 mother for Christ's sake. He would have said he was giving 
 them up because he thought they hindered him in the pur- 
 suit of his truest and most lasting happiness. Granted, but 
 what is this if it is not Christ ? What is Christ if He is not 
 this? He who takes the highest and most self-respecting 
 view of his own welfare which it is in his power to conceive, 
 and adheres to it in spite of conventionality, is a Christian 
 whether he knows it and calls himself one, or whether he 
 does not. A rose is not the less a rose because it does not 
 know its own name. 
 
 What if circumstances had made his duty more easy for 
 him than it would be to most men ? That was his luck, as 
 much as it is other people's luck to have other duties made 
 easy for them by accident of birth. Surely if people are 
 born rich or handsome they have a right to their good 
 fortune. Some I know, will say that one man has no right 
 to be born with a better constitution than another ; others 
 again will say that luck is the only righteous object of human 
 veneration. Both, I daresay, can make out a very good case, 
 but whichever may be right surely Ernest had as much right 
 to the good luck of finding a duty made easier as he had 
 had to the bad fortune of falling into the scrape which had 
 got him into prison. A man is not to be sneered at for 
 having a trump card in his hand ; he is only to be sneered 
 at if he plays his trump card badly. 
 
 Indeed, I question whether it is ever much harder for any- 
 one to give up father and mother for Christ's sake than it 
 was for Ernest. The relations between the parties will have 
 almost always been severely strained before it comes to this. 
 I doubt whether anyone was ever yet required to give up 
 those to whom he was tenderly attached for a mere matter 
 of conscience: he will have ceased to be tenderly attached to 
 thern long before he is called upon to break with them ; for 
 differences of opinion concerning any matter of vital impor- 
 tance spring from differences of constitution, and these will 
 already hare led to so much other disagreement that the 
 U 305 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " giving up " when it comes, is like giving up an aching but 
 very loose and hollow tooth. It is the loss of those whom 
 we are not required to give up for Christ's sake which is 
 really painful to us. Then there is a wrench in earnest. 
 Happily, no matter how light the task that is demanded from 
 us, it is enough if we do it ; we reap our reward, much as 
 though it were a Herculean labour. 
 
 But to return, the conclusion Ernest came to was that he 
 would be a tailor. He talked the matter over with the 
 chaplain, who told him there was no reason why he should 
 not be able to earn his six or seven shilhngs a day by the 
 time he came out of prison, if he chose to learn the trade 
 during the remainder of his term — not quite three months ; 
 the doctor said he was strong enough for this, and that it was 
 about the only thing he was as yet fit for ; so he left the 
 infirmary sooner than he would otherwise have done and 
 entered the tailor's shop, overjoyed at the thoughts of seeing 
 his way again, and confident of rising some day if he could 
 only get a firm foothold to start from. 
 
 Everyone whom he had to do with saw that he did not 
 belong to what are called the criminal classes, and finding 
 him eager to learn and to save trouble always treated him 
 kindly and almost respectfully. He did not find the work 
 irksome : it was far more pleasant than making Latin and 
 Greek verses at Roughborough ; he felt that he would rather 
 be here in prison than at Roughborough again — yes, or even 
 at Cambridge itself. The only trouble he was ever in dan- 
 ger of getting into was through exchanging words or looks 
 with the more decent-looking of his fellow-prisoners. This 
 was forbidden, but he never missed a chance of breaking the 
 rules in this respect. 
 
 Any man of his ability who was at the same time anxious 
 to learn would of course make rapid progress, and before he 
 left prison the warder said he was as good a tailor with his 
 three months' apprenticeship as many a man was with twelve. 
 Ernest had never before been so much praised by any of his 
 teachers. Each day as he grew stronger in health and more 
 accustomed to his surroundings he saw some fresh advantage 
 
 3°6 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 in his position, an advantage which he had not aimed at, 
 but which had come almost in spite of himself, and he mar- 
 velled at his own good fortune, which had ordered things so 
 greatly better for him than he could have ordered them for 
 himself. 
 
 His having lived six months in Ashpit Place was a case in 
 point. Things were possible to him which to others like 
 him would be impossible. If such a man as Towneley 
 were told he must live henceforth in a house like those in 
 Ashpit Place it would be more than he could stand. Ernest 
 could not have stood it himself if he had gone to live there 
 of compulsion through want of money. It was only because 
 he had felt himself able to run away at any minute that he 
 had not wanted to do so ; now, however, that he had become 
 familiar with life in Ashpit Place he no longer minded it, 
 and could live gladly in lower parts of London than that so 
 long as he could pay his way. It was from no prudence or 
 forethought that he had served this apprenticeship to life 
 among the poor. He had been trying in a feeble way to be 
 thorough in his work : he had not been thorough, the whole 
 thing had been z. fiasco ; but he had made a little puny efifort 
 in the direction of being genuine, and behold, in his hour of 
 need it had been returned to him with a reward far richer 
 than he had deserved. He could not have faced becoming 
 one of the very poor unless he had had such a bridge to 
 conduct him over to them as he had found unwittingly in 
 Ashpit Place. True, there had been drawbacks in the par- 
 ticular house he had chosen, but he need not live in a house 
 where there was a Mr. Holt and he should no longer be tied 
 to the profession which he so much hated ; if there were neither 
 screams nor scripture readings he could be happy in a garret 
 at three shiUings a week, such as Miss Maitland lived in. 
 
 As he thought further he remembered that all things work 
 together for good to them that love God ; was it possible, he 
 asked himself, that he too, however imperfectly, had been 
 trying to love Him? He dared not answer Yes, but he 
 would try hard that it should be so. Then there came into 
 his mind that noble air of Handel's : " Great God, who yet 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 but darkly known," and he felt it as he had never felt it 
 before. He had lost his faith in Christianity, but his faith in 
 something — he knew not what, but that there was a some- 
 thing as yet but darkly known, which made right right and 
 wrong wrong — his faith in this grew stronger and stronger 
 daily. 
 
 Again there crossed his mind thoughts of the power which 
 he felt to be in him, and of how and where it was to find its 
 vent. The same instinct which had led him to live among 
 the poor because it was the nearest thing to him which he 
 could lay hold of with any clearness came to his assistance 
 here too. He thought of the Austrahan gold and how those 
 who lived among it had never seen it though it abounded all 
 around them : " There is gold everywhere," he exclaimed 
 inwardly, "to those who look for it." Might not his oppor- 
 tunity be close upon him if he looked carefully enough at his 
 immediate surroundings ? What was his position ? He had 
 lost all. Could he not turn his having lost all into an oppor- 
 tunity ? Might he not, if he too sought the strength of the 
 Lord, find, like St Paul, that it was perfected in weakness ? 
 
 He had nothing more to lose ; money, friends, character, 
 all were gone for a very long time if not for ever ; but there 
 was something else also that had taken its flight along with 
 these. I mean the fear of that which man could do unto 
 him. Cantabit vacuus. Who could hurt him more than he 
 had been hurt already? Let him but be able to earn his 
 bread, and he knew of nothing which he dared not venture 
 if it would make the world a happier place for those who 
 were young and loveable. Herein he found so much com- 
 fort that he almost wished he had lost his reputation even 
 more completely — for he saw that it was like a man's life 
 which may be found of them that lose it and lost of them 
 that would find it. He should not have had the courage 
 to give up all for Christ's sake, but now Christ had merci- 
 fully taken all, and lo ! it seemed as though all were found. 
 
 As the days went slowly by he came to see that Chris- 
 tianity and the denial of Christianity after all met as much 
 as any other extremes do; it was a fight about names — 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 not about things ; practically the Church of Rome, the 
 Church of England, and the freethinker have the same ideal 
 standard and meet in the gentleman ; for he is the most 
 perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. Then he 
 saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of re- 
 ligion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows 
 it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on 
 it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with 
 which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma 
 that the danger lies. This was the crowning point of the 
 edifice ; when he had got here he no longer wished to molest 
 even the Pope. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have 
 hopped about all round him and even picked crumbs out of 
 his hand without running risk of getting a sly sprinkle of salt. 
 That wary prelate himself might perhaps have been of a 
 different opinion, but the robins and thrushes that hop about 
 our lawns are not more needlessly distrustful of the hand 
 that throws them out crumbs of bread in winter, than the 
 Archbishop would have been of my hero. 
 
 Perhaps he was helped to arrive at the foregoing con- 
 clusions by an event which almost thrust inconsistency 
 upon him. A few days after he had left the infirmary the 
 chaplain came to his cell and told him that the prisoner who 
 played the organ in chapel had just finished his sentence 
 and was leaving the prison ; he therefore offered the post to 
 Ernest, who he already knew played the organ. Ernest was at 
 first in doubt whether it would be right for him to assist at 
 religious services more than he was actually compelled to do, 
 but the pleasure of playing the organ, and the privileges 
 which the post involved, made him see excellent reasons for 
 not riding consistency to death. Having, then, once intro- 
 duced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was 
 far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he 
 lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to out- 
 ward appearance differed but little from the indifferentism 
 from which Mr Hawke had aroused him. 
 
 By becoming organist he was saved from the treadmill, 
 for which the doctor had said he was unfit as yet, but which 
 
 309 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 he would probably have been put to in due course as soon 
 as he was stronger. He might have escaped the tailor's 
 shop altogether and done only the comparatively light work 
 of attending to the chaplain's rooms if he had liked, but he 
 wanted to learn as much tailoring as he could, and did not 
 therefore take advantage of this offer ; he was allowed, how- 
 ever, two hours a day in the afternoon for practice. From 
 that moment his prison life ceased to be monotonous, and 
 the remaining two months of his sentence slipped by almost 
 as rapidly as they would have done if he had been free. 
 What with music, books, learning his trade, and conversation 
 with the chaplain, who was just the kindly, sensible person 
 that Ernest wanted in order to steady him a little, the days 
 went by so pleasantly that when the time came for him to 
 leave prison, he did so, or thought he did so, not without 
 regret. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIX 
 
 In coming to the conclusion that he would sever the connec- 
 tion between himself and his family once for all Ernest had 
 reckoned without his family. Theobald wanted to be rid of 
 his son, it is true, in so far as he wished him to be no nearer 
 at any rate than the Antipodes ; but he had no idea of entirely 
 breaking with him. He knew his son well enough to have a 
 pretty shrewd idea that this was what Ernest would wish 
 himself, and perhaps as much for this reason as for any 
 other he was determined to keep up the connection, provided 
 it did not involve Ernest's coming to Battersby nor any 
 recurring outlay. 
 
 When the time approached for him to leave prison, his 
 father and mother consulted as to what course they should 
 adopt. 
 
 " We must never leave him to himself," said Theobald 
 impressively ; " we can neither of us wish that." 
 
 " Oh, no ! no ! dearest Theobald," exclaimed Christina. 
 " Whoever else deserts him, and however distant he may 
 
 310 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 be from us, he must still feel that he has parents whose 
 hearts beat with affection for him no matter how cruelly he 
 has pained them." 
 
 " He has been his own worst enemy," said Theobald. " He 
 has never loved us as we deserved, and now he will be with- 
 held by false shame from wishing to see us. He will avoid 
 us if he can." 
 
 " Then we must go to him ourselves," said Christina, 
 " whether he likes it or not we must be at his side to support 
 him as he enters again upon the world." 
 
 " If we do not want him to give us the slip we must catch 
 him as he leaves prison." 
 
 " We will, we will ; our faces shall be the first to gladden 
 his eyes as he comes out, and our voices the first to exhort 
 him to return to the paths of virtue." 
 
 " I think," said Theobald, " if he sees us in the street 
 he will turn round and run away from us. He is intensely 
 selfish." 
 
 " Then we must get leave to go inside the prison, and see 
 him before he gets outside." 
 
 After a good deal of discussion this was the plan they 
 decided on adopting, and having so decided, Theobald 
 wrote to the governor of the gaol asking whether he could 
 be admitted inside the gaol to receive Ernest when his sen- 
 tence had expired. He received answer in the affirmative, 
 and the pair left Battersby the day before Ernest was to 
 come out of prison. 
 
 Ernest had not reckoned on this, and was rather surprised 
 on being told a few minutes before nine that he was to go 
 into the receiving room before he left the prison as there 
 were visitors waiting to see him. His heart fell, for he 
 guessed who they vN^ere, but he screwed up his courage and 
 hastened to the receiving room. There, sure enough, stand- 
 ing at the end of the table nearest the door were the two 
 people whom he regarded as the most dangerous enemies 
 he had in all the world — his father and mother. 
 
 He could not fly, but he knew that if he wavered he was 
 lost. 
 
 311 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 His mother was crying, but she sprang forward to meet 
 him and clasped him in her arms. " Oh, my boy, my boy," 
 she sobbed, and she could say no more. 
 
 Ernest was as white as a sheet. His heart beat so that he 
 could hardly breathe. He let his mother embrace him, and 
 then withdrawing himself stood silently before her with the 
 tears falling from his eyes. 
 
 At first he could not speak. For a minute or so the silence 
 on all sides was complete. Then, gathering strength, he said 
 in a low voice : 
 
 " Mother," (it was the first time he had called her any- 
 thing but " mamma ") " we must part." On this, turning to 
 the warder, he said : " I believe I am free to leave the prison 
 if I wish to do so. You cannot compel me to remain here 
 longer. Please take me to the gates." 
 
 Theobald stepped forward. " Ernest, you must not, shall 
 not, leave us in this way." 
 
 " Do not speak to me," said Ernest, his eyes flashing with 
 a fire that was unwonted in them. Another warder then 
 came up and took Theobald aside, while the first conducted 
 Ernest to the gates. 
 
 " Tell them," said Ernest, " from me that they must think 
 of me as one dead, for I am dead to them. Say that my 
 greatest pain is the thought of the disgrace I have inflicted 
 upon them, and that above all things else I will study to avoid 
 paining them hereafter; but say also that if they write to 
 me I will return their letters unopened, and that if they 
 come and see me I will protect myself in whatever way 
 I can." 
 
 By this time he was at the prison gate, and in another 
 moment was at liberty. After he had got a few steps out he 
 turned his face to the prison wall, leant against it for support, 
 and wept as though his heart would break. 
 
 Giving up father and mother for Christ's sake was not such 
 an easy matter after all. If a man has been possessed by 
 devils for long enough they will rend him as they leave him, 
 however imperatively they may have been cast out. Ernest 
 did not stay long where he was, for he feared each moment 
 
 312 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that his father and mother would come out. He pulled 
 himself together and turned into the labyrinth of small streets 
 which opened out in front of him. 
 
 He had crossed his Rubicon — not perhaps very heroically 
 or dramatically, but then it is only in dramas that people act 
 dramatically. At any rate, by hook or by crook, he had 
 scrambled over, and was out upon the other side. Already 
 he thought of much which he would gladly have said, and 
 blamed his want of presence of mind ; but, after all, it 
 mattered very little. Inclined though he was to make very 
 great allowances for his father and mother, he was indignant 
 at their having thrust themselves upon him without warning, 
 at a moment when the excitement of leaving prison was 
 already as much as he was fit for. It was a mean advantage 
 to have taken over him, but he was glad they had taken it, 
 for it made him realise more fully than ever that his one 
 chance lay in separating himself completely from them. 
 
 The morning was grey, and the first signs of winter fog 
 were beginning to show themselves, for it was now the 30th 
 of September. Ernest wore the clothes in which he had 
 entered prison, and was therefore dressed as a clergyman. 
 No one who looked at him would have seen any difference 
 between his present appearance and his appearance six 
 months previously ; indeed, as he walked slowly through the 
 dingy crowded lane called Eyre Street Hill (which he well 
 knew, for he had clerical friends in that neighbourhood), the 
 months he had passed in prison seemed to drop out of his 
 life, and so powerfully did association carry him away that, 
 finding himself in his old dress and in his old surroundings, 
 he felt dragged back into his old self — as though his six 
 months of prison life had been a dream from which he was 
 now waking to take things up as he had left them. This 
 was the effect of unchanged surroundings upon the unchanged 
 part of him. But there was a changed part, and the effect 
 of unchanged surroundings upon this was to make everything 
 seem almost as strange as though he had never had any life 
 but his prison one, and was now born into a new world. 
 
 All our lives long, every day and every hour, we are en- 
 313 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 gaged in the process of accommodating our changed and 
 unchanged selves to changed and unchanged surroundings ; 
 living, in fact, in nothing else than this process of accom- 
 modation ; when we fail in it a little we are stupid, when we 
 fail flagrantly we are mad, when we suspend it temporarily 
 we sleep, when we give up the attempt altogether we die. In 
 quiet, uneventful lives the changes internal and external are 
 so small that there is little or no strain in the process of 
 fusion and accommodation ; in other lives there is great 
 strain, but there is also great fusing and accommodating 
 power ; in others great strain with little accommodating 
 power. A life will be successful or not according as the 
 power of accommodation is equal to or unequal to the strain 
 of fusing and adjusting internal and external changes. 
 
 The trouble is that in the end we shall be driven to admit 
 the unity of the universe so completely as to be compelled 
 to deny that there is either an external or an internal, but 
 must see everything both as external and internal at one and 
 the same time, subject and object — external and internal — 
 being unified as much as everything else. This will knock 
 our whole system over, but then every system has got to be 
 knocked over by something. 
 
 Much the best way out of this difficulty is to go in for 
 separation between internal and external — subject and object 
 — when we find this convenient, and unity between the same 
 when we find unity convenient. This is illogical, but ex- 
 tremes are alone logical, and they are always absurd, the 
 mean is alone practicable and it is always illogical. It is faith 
 and not logic which is the supreme arbiter. They say all 
 roads lead to Rome, and all philosophies that I have ever 
 seen lead ultimately either to some gross absurdity, or else 
 to the conclusion already more than once insisted on in these 
 pages, that the just shall live by faith, that is to say that 
 sensible people will get through life by rule of thumb as they 
 may interpret it most conveniently without asking too many 
 questions for conscience sake. Take any fact, and reason 
 upon it to the bitter end, and it will ere long lead to this as 
 the only refuge from some palpable folly. 
 
 314 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 But to return to my story. When Ernest got to the top of 
 the street and looked back, he saw the grimy, sullen walls of 
 his prison filling up the end of it. He paused for a minute 
 or two. " There," he said to himself, " I was hemmed in by 
 bolts which I could see and touch ; here I am barred by 
 others which are none the less real — poverty and ignorance of 
 the world. It was no part of my business to try to break the 
 material bolts of iron and escape from prison, but now that 
 I am free I must surely seek to break these others." 
 
 He had read somewhere of a prisoner who had made his 
 escape by cutting up his bedstead with an iron spoon. He 
 admired and marvelled at the man's mind, but could not even 
 try to imitate him ; in the presence of immaterial barriers, 
 however, he was not so easily daunted, and felt as though, 
 even if the bed were iron and the spoon a wooden one, 
 he could find some means of making the wood cut the iron 
 sooner or later. 
 
 He turned his back upon Eyre Street Hill and walked 
 down Leather Lane into Holborn. Each step he took, each 
 face or object that he knew, helped at once to link him on to 
 the life he had led before his imprisonment, and at the same 
 time to make him feel how completely that imprisonment 
 had cut his life into two parts, the one of which could bear 
 no resemblance to the other. 
 
 He passed down Fetter Lane into Fleet Street and so to 
 the Temple, to which I had just returned from my summer 
 holiday. It was about half past nine, and I was having my 
 breakfast, when I heard a timid knock at the door and 
 opened it to find Ernest. 
 
 CHAPTER LXX 
 
 I HAD begun to Hke him on the night Towneley had sent for 
 me, and on the following day I thought he had shaped well. 
 I had liked him also during our interview in prison, and 
 wanted to see more of him, so that I might make up my 
 mind about him. I had lived long enough to know that 
 
 315 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 some men who do great things in the end are not very wise 
 when they are young ; knowing that he would leave prison 
 on the 30th, I had expected him, and, as I had a spare bed- 
 room, pressed him to stay with me, till he could make up his 
 mind what he would do. 
 
 Being so much older than he was, I anticipated no trouble 
 in getting my own way, but he would not hear of it. The 
 utmost he would assent to was that he should be my guest 
 till he could find a room for himself, which he would set 
 about doing at once. 
 
 He was still much agitated, but grew better as he ate a 
 breakfast, not of prison fare and in a comfortable room. It 
 pleased me to see the dehght he took in all about him ; the 
 fireplace with a fire in it ; the easy chairs, the TimeSy my cat, 
 the red geraniums in the window, to say nothing of coffee, 
 bread and butter, sausages, marmalade, etc. Everything was 
 pregnant with the most exquisite pleasure to him. The 
 plane trees were full of leaf still ; he kept rising from the 
 breakfast table to admire them ; never till now, he said, had 
 he known what the enjoyment of these things really was. 
 He ate, looked, laughed and cried by turns, with an emotion 
 which I can neither forget nor describe. 
 
 He told me how his father and mother had lain in 
 wait for him, as he was about to leave prison. I was 
 furious, and applauded him heartily for what he had 
 done. He was very grateful to me for this. Other 
 people, he said, would tell him he ought to think 
 of his father and mother rather than of himself, and 
 it was such a comfort to find someone who saw things 
 as he saw them himself. Even if I had dififered from 
 him I should not have said so, but I was of his own opinion, 
 and was almost as much obliged to him for seeing things as 
 I saw them, as he to me for doing the same kind office by 
 himself. Cordially as I disliked Theobald and Christina, I 
 was in such a hopeless minority in the opinion I had formed 
 concerning them that it was pleasant to find someone who 
 agreed with me. 
 
 Then there came an awful moment for both of us. 
 316 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 A knock, as of a visitor and not a postman, was heard at 
 my door. 
 
 " Goodness gracious," I exclaimed, " why didn't we sport 
 the oak? Perhaps it is your father. But surely he would 
 hardly come at this time of day ! Go at once into my bed- 
 room." 
 
 I went to the door, and, sure enough, there were both 
 Theobald and Christina. I could not refuse to let them in 
 and was obliged to listen to their version of the story, which 
 agreed substantially with Ernest's. Christina cried bitterly — 
 Theobald stormed. After about ten minutes, during which I 
 assured them that I had not the faintest conception where 
 their son was, I dismissed them both. I saw they looked 
 suspiciously upon the manifest signs that someone was 
 breakfasting with me, and parted from me more or less 
 defiantly, but I got rid of them, and poor Ernest came out 
 again, looking white, frightened and upset. He had heard 
 voices, but no more, and did not feel sure that the enemy 
 might not be gaining me over. We sported the oak now, 
 and before long he began to recover. 
 
 After breakfast, we discussed the situation. I had taken 
 away his wardrobe and books from Mrs Jupp's, but had left 
 his furniture, pictures and piano, giving Mrs Jupp the use of 
 these, so that she might let her room furnished, in lieu of 
 charge for taking care of the furniture. As soon as Ernest 
 heard that his wardrobe was at hand, he got out a suit of 
 clothes he had had before he had been ordained, and put it 
 on at once, much, as I thought, to the improvement of his 
 personal appearance 
 
 Then we went into the subject of his finances. He had 
 had ten pounds from Pryer only a day or two before he was 
 apprehended, of which between seven and eight were in his 
 purse when he entered the prison. This money was restored 
 to him on leaving. He had always paid cash for whatever 
 he bought, so that there was nothing to be deducted for 
 debts. Besides this, he had his clothes, books and furniture. 
 He could, as I have said, have had ;^ioo from his father if 
 he had chosen to emigrate, but this both Ernest and I (for he 
 
 317 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 brought me round to his opinion) agreed it would be better 
 to decline. This was all he knew of as belonging to him. 
 
 He said he proposed at once taking an unfurnished top 
 back attic in as quiet a house as he could find, say at three 
 or four shiUings a week, and looking out for work as a 
 tailor. I did not think it much mattered what he began 
 with, for I felt pretty sure he would ere long find his way to 
 something that suited him, if he could get a start with any- 
 thing at all. The difticulty was how to get him started. It 
 was not enough that he should be able to cut out and make 
 clothes — that he should have the organs, so to speak, of a 
 tailor ; he must be put into a tailor's shop and guided for a 
 little while by someone who knew how and where to help 
 him. 
 
 The rest of the day he spent in looking for a room, which 
 he soon found, and in familiarising himself with liberty. In 
 the evening I took him to the Olympic, where Robson was 
 then acting in a burlesque on Macbeth, Mrs Keeley, if I 
 remember rightly, taking the part of Lady Macbeth. In the 
 scene before the murder, Macbeth had said he could not 
 kill Duncan when he saw his boots upon the landing. Lady 
 Macbeth put a stop to her husband's hesitation by whipping 
 him up under her arm, and carrying him off the stage, 
 kicking and screaming. Ernest laughed till he cried. 
 " What rot Shakespeare is after this," he exclaimed, in- 
 voluntarily. I remembered his essay on the Greek tragedians, 
 and was more epris with him than ever. 
 
 Next day he set about looking for employment, and I did 
 not see him till about five o'clock, when he came and said 
 that he had had no success. The same thing happened the 
 next day and the day after that. Wherever he went he was 
 invariably refused and often ordered point blank out of the 
 shop ; I could see by the expression on his face, though he 
 said nothing, that he was getting frightened, and began to 
 think I should have to come to the rescue. He said he had 
 made a great many enquiries and had always been told the 
 same story. He found that it was easy to keep on in an old 
 line, but very hard to strike out into a new one. 
 
 318 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 He talked to the fishmonger in Leather Lane, where he 
 went to buy a bloater for his tea, casually as though from 
 curiosity and without any interested motive. " Sell," said 
 the master of the shop, " Why nobody wouldn't believe what 
 can be sold by penn'orths and twopenn'orths if you go the 
 right way to work. Look at whelks, for instance. Last 
 Saturday night me and my little Emma here, we sold ;£i 
 worth of whelks between eight and half past eleven o'clock — 
 and almost all in penn'orths and twopenn'orths — a few 
 hap'orths, but not many. It was the steam that did it. We 
 kept a-boiling of 'em hot and hot, and whenever the steam 
 came strong up from the cellar on to the pavement, the 
 people bought, but whenever the steam went down they left 
 off buying; so we boiled them over and over again till they 
 was all sold. That's just where it is; if you know your 
 business you can sell, if you don't, you'll soon make a mess 
 of it. Why, but for the steam, I should not have sold los. 
 worth of whelks all the night through." 
 
 This, and many another yarn of kindred substance which 
 he heard from other people determined Ernest more than 
 ever to stake on tailoring as the one trade about which he 
 knew anything at all, nevertheless, here were three or four 
 days gone by and employment seemed as far off as ever. 
 
 I now did what I ought to have done before, that is to 
 say, I called on my own tailor whom I had dealt with for over 
 a quarter of a century and asked his advice. He declared 
 Ernest's plan to be hopeless. " If," said Mr Larkins, for this 
 was my tailor's name, " he had begun at fourteen, it might 
 have done, but no man of twenty-four could stand being 
 turned to work into a workshop full of tailors ; he would not 
 get on with the men, nor the men with him ; you could not 
 expect him to be ' hail fellow, well met ' with them, and you 
 could not expect his fellow-workmen to like him if he was 
 not. A man must have sunk low through drink or natural 
 taste for low company, before he could get on with those who 
 have had such a different training from his own." 
 
 Mr Larkins said a great deal more and wound up by 
 taking me to see the place where his own men worked. 
 
 319 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " This is a paradise," he said, " compared to most work- 
 shops. What gentleman could stand this air, think you, for 
 a fortnight ? " 
 
 I was glad enough to get out of the hot, fetid atmosphere 
 in five minutes, and saw that there was no brick of Ernest's 
 prison to be loosened by going and working among tailors in 
 a workshop. 
 
 Mr Larkins wound up by saying that even if my protege 
 were a much better workman than he probably was, no 
 master would give him employment, for fear of creating a 
 bother among the men. 
 
 I left, feeling that I ought to have thought of all this 
 myself, and was more that ever perplexed as to whether I had 
 not better let my young friend have a few thousand pounds 
 and send him out to the colonies, when, on my return home 
 at about five o'clock, I found him waiting for me, radiant, and 
 declaring that he had found all he wanted. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXI 
 
 It seems he had been patrolling the streets for the last three 
 or four nights — I suppose in search of something to do — at 
 any rate knowing better what he wanted to get than how to 
 get it. Nevertheless, what he wanted was in reality so easily 
 to be found that it took a highly educated scholar like him- 
 self to be unable to find it. But, however, this may be, he 
 had been scared, and now saw lions where there were none, 
 and was shocked and frightened, and night after night his 
 courage had failed him and he had returned to his lodgings 
 in Laystall Street without accomphshing his errand. He had 
 not taken me into his confidence upon this matter, and I had 
 not enquired what he did with himself in the evenings. At 
 last he had concluded that, however painful it might be to him, 
 he would call on Mrs Jupp, who he thought would be able to 
 help him if anyone could. He had been walking moodily from 
 seven till about nine, and now resolved to go straight to Ashpit 
 
 320 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Place and make a mother confessor of Mrs Jupp without 
 more delay. 
 
 Of all tasks that could be performed by mortal woman there 
 was none which Mrs Jupp would have liked better than the 
 one Ernest was thinking of imposing upon her ; nor do I 
 know that in his scared and broken-down state he could have 
 done much better than he now proposed. Mrs Jupp would 
 have made it very easy for him to open his grief to her ; in- 
 deed, she would have coaxed it all out of him before he 
 knew where he was ; but the fates were against Mrs Jupp, 
 and the meeting between my hero and his former landlady 
 was postponed sme die, for his determination had hardly 
 been formed and he had not gone more than a hundred 
 yards in the direction of Mrs Jupp's house, when a woman 
 accosted him. 
 
 He was turning from her, as he had turned from so many 
 others, when she started back with a movement that aroused 
 his curiosity. He had hardly seen her face, but being deter- 
 mined to catch sight of it, followed her as she hurried away, 
 and passed her; then turning round he saw that she was 
 none other than Ellen, the housemaid who had been dis- 
 missed by his mother eight years previously. 
 
 He ought to have assigned Ellen's unwillingness to see 
 him to its true cause, but a guilty conscience made him think 
 she had heard of his disgrace and was turning away from 
 him in contempt. Brave as had been his resolutions 
 about facing the world, this was more than he was prepared 
 for ; " What ! you too shun me, Ellen ? " he exclaimed. 
 
 The girl was crying bitterly and did not understand him. 
 " Oh, Master Ernest," she sobbed, " let me go ; you are too 
 good for the likes of me to speak to now." 
 
 " Why, Ellen," said he, " what nonsense you talk ; you 
 haven't been in prison, have you ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no, no, not so bad as that," she exclaimed pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 " Well, I have," said Ernest, with a forced laugh, " I 
 came out three or four days ago after six months with hard 
 labour." 
 
 X 321 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ellen did not believe him, but she looked at him with a 
 " Lor' ! Master Ernest," and dried her eyes at once. The ice 
 was broken between them, for as a matter of fact Ellen had 
 been in prison several times, and though she did not believe 
 Ernest, his merely saying he had been in prison made her 
 feel more at ease with him. For her there were two classes 
 of people, those who had been in prison and those who had 
 not. The first she looked upon as fellow-creatures and more 
 or less Christians, the second, with few exceptions, she 
 regarded with suspicion, not wholly unmingled with con- 
 tempt. 
 
 Then Ernest told her what had happened to him during 
 the last six months, and by-and-by she believed him. 
 
 " Master Ernest," said she, after they had talked for a 
 quarter of an hour or so, "There's a place over the way 
 where they sell tripe and onions. I know you was always 
 very fond of tripe and onions, let's go over and have some, 
 and we can talk better there." 
 
 So the pair crossed the street and entered the tripe shop ; 
 Ernest ordered supper. 
 
 "And how is your pore dear mamma, and your dear papa, 
 Master Ernest," said Ellen, who had now recovered herself 
 and was quite at home with my hero. " Oh, dear, dear me," 
 she said, " I did love your pa ; he was a good gentleman, 
 he was, and your ma too ; it would do anyone good to live 
 with her, I'm sure." 
 
 Ernest was surprised and hardly knew what to say. He 
 had expected to find Ellen indignant at the way she had been 
 treated, and inclined to lay the blame of her having fallen to 
 her present state at his father's and mother's door. It was 
 not so. Her only recollection of Battersby was as of a place 
 where she had had plenty to eat and drink, not too much 
 hard work, and where she had not been scolded. When she 
 heard that Ernest had quarrelled with his father and mother 
 she assumed as a matter of course that the fault must lie 
 entirely with Ernest. 
 
 " Oh, your pore, pore ma ! " said Ellen, " She was always 
 so very fond of you, Master Ernest : you was always her 
 
 322 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 favourite ; I can't abear to think of anything between you 
 and her. To think now of the way she used to have me 
 into the dining-room and teach me my catechism, that she 
 did ! Oh, Master Ernest, you really must go and make it all 
 up with her; indeed you must." 
 
 Ernest felt rueful, but he had resisted so valiantly already 
 that the devil might have saved himself the trouble of trying 
 to get at him through Ellen in the matter of his father and 
 mother. He changed the subject, and the pair warmed to 
 one another as they had their tripe and pots of beer. Of all 
 people in the world Ellen was perhaps the one to whom 
 Ernest could have spoken most freely at this juncture. He 
 told her what he thought he could have told to no one else. 
 "You know, Ellen," he concluded, "I had learnt as a boy 
 things that I ought not to have learnt, and had never had a 
 chance of that which would have set me straight." 
 " Gentlefolks is always like that," said Ellen musingly. 
 " I believe you are right, but I am no longer a gentleman, 
 Ellen, and I don't see why I should be ' like that ' any 
 longer, my dear. I want you to help me to be like some- 
 thing else as soon as possible." 
 
 " Lor' ! Master Ernest, whatever can you be meaning?" 
 The pair soon afterwards left the eating-house and walked 
 up Fetter Lane together. 
 
 Ellen had had hard times since she had left Battersby, but 
 they had left little trace upon her. 
 
 Ernest saw only the fresh-looking smiling face, the dimpled 
 cheek, the clear blue eyes and lovely sphinx-like lips which 
 he had remembered as a boy. At nineteen she had looked 
 older than she was, now she looked much younger ; indeed 
 she looked hardly older than when Ernest had last seen her, 
 and it would have taken a man of much greater experience 
 than he possessed to suspect how completely she had fallen 
 from her first estate. It never occurred to him that the poor 
 condition of her wardrobe was due to her passion for ardent 
 spirits, and that first and last she had served five or six times 
 as much time in gaol as he had. He ascribed the poverty 
 of her attire to the attempts to keep herself respectable, which 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ellen during supper had more than once alluded to. He 
 had been charmed with the way in which she had declared 
 that a pint of beer would make her tipsy, and had only 
 allowed herself to be forced into drinking the whole after a 
 good deal of remonstrance. To him she appeared a very 
 angel dropped from the sky, and all the more easy to get on 
 with for being a fallen one. 
 
 As he walked up Fetter Lane with her towards Laystall 
 Street, he thought of the wonderful goodness of God towards 
 him in throwing in his way the very person of all others whom 
 he was most glad to see, and whom, of all others, in spite of 
 her living so near him, he might have never fallen in with 
 but for a happy accident. 
 
 When people get it into their heads that they are being 
 specially favoured by the Almighty, they had better as a 
 general rule mind their p's and q's, and when they think 
 they see the devil's drift with more special clearness, let them 
 remember that he has had much more experience than they 
 have, and is probably meditating mischief. 
 
 Already during supper the thought that in Ellen at last he 
 had found a woman whom he could love well enough to wish 
 to live with and marry had flitted across his mind, and the 
 more they had chatted the more reasons kept suggesting 
 themselves for thinking that what might be folly in ordinary 
 cases would not be folly in his. 
 
 He must marry someone ; that was already settled. He 
 could not marry a lady ; that was absurd. He must marry 
 a poor '.woman. Yes, but a fallen one ? Was he not fallen 
 himself? Ellen would fall no more. He had only to look 
 at her to be sure of this. He could not live with her in sin, 
 not for more than the shortest time that could elapse before 
 their marriage; he no longer believed in the supernatural 
 element of Christianity, but the Christian morality at any 
 rate was indisputable. Besides, they might have children, 
 and a stigma would rest upon them. Whom had he to con- 
 sult but himself now? His father and mother need never 
 know, and even if they did, they should be thankful to see 
 him married to any woman who would make him happy as 
 
 324 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ellen would. As for not being able to afford marriage, how 
 did poor people do ? Did not a good wife rather help 
 matters than not ? Where one could live two could do so, 
 and if Ellen was three or four years older than he was — well, 
 what was that ? 
 
 Have you, gentle reader, ever loved at first sight ? 
 When you fell in love at first sight, how long, let me ask, 
 did it take you to become ready to fiing every other con- 
 sideration to the winds except that of obtaining possession of 
 the loved one? Or rather, how long would it have taken 
 you if you had had no father or mother, nothing to lose in 
 the way of money, position, friends, professional advancement, 
 or what not, and if the object of your affections was as free 
 from all these impedimenta as you were yourself? 
 
 If you were a young John Stuart Mill, perhaps it would 
 have taken you some time, but suppose your nature was 
 Quixotic, impulsive, altruistic, guileless; suppose you were 
 a hungry man starving for something to love and lean upon, 
 for one whose burdens you might bear, and who might help 
 you to bear yours. Suppose you were down on your luck, still 
 stunned by a horrible shock, and this bright vista of a happy 
 future floated suddenly before you, how long under these 
 circumstances do you think you would reflect before you would 
 decide on embracing what chance had thrown in your way ? 
 
 It did not take my hero long, for before he got past the 
 ham and beef shop near the top of Fetter Lane, he had told 
 Ellen that she must come home with him and live with him 
 till they could get married, which they would do upon the 
 first day that the law allowed. 
 
 I think the devil must have chuckled and made tolerably 
 sure of his game this time. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXII 
 
 Ernest told Ellen of his difficulty about finding employment. 
 " But what do you think of going into a shop for, my 
 dear," said Ellen. "Why not take a httle shop yourself?" 
 
 325 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ernest asked how much this would cost. Ellen told him 
 that he might take a house in some small street, say near 
 the "Elephant and Castle," for 17s. or i8s. a week, and let 
 off the two top floors for los., keeping the back parlour 
 and shop for themselves. If he could raise five or six 
 pounds to buy some second-hand clothes to stock the shop 
 with, they could mend them and clean them, and she could 
 look after the women's clothes while he did the men's. 
 Then he could mend and make, if he could get the orders. 
 
 They could soon make a business of ;^'2 a week in this 
 way ; she had a friend who began like that and had now 
 moved to a better shop, where she made ^^5 or jQb a 
 week at least — and she, Ellen, had done the greater part 
 of the buying and selling herself. 
 
 Here was a new light indeed. It was as though he had 
 got his ;^5,ooo back again all of a sudden, and perhaps ever 
 so much more later on into the bargain. Ellen seemed more 
 than ever to be his good genius. 
 
 She went out and got a few rashers of bacon for his and 
 her breakfast. She cooked them much more nicely than he 
 had been able to do, and laid breakfast for him and made 
 coffee, and some nice brown toast. Ernest had been his own 
 cook and housemaid for the last few days and had not given 
 himself satisfaction. Here he suddenly found himself with 
 someone to wait on him again. Not only had Ellen pointed 
 out to him how he could earn a living when no one except 
 himself had known how to advise him, but here she was so 
 pretty and smiling, looking after even his comforts, and 
 restoring him practically in all respects that he much 
 cared about to the position which he had lost — or rather 
 putting him in one that he already liked much better. 
 No wonder he was radiant when he came to explain his 
 plans to me. 
 
 He had some difficulty in telling all that had happened. 
 He hesitated, blushed, hummed and hawed. Misgivings 
 began to cross his mind when he found himself obliged to 
 tell his story to someone else. He felt inclined to slur 
 things over, but I wanted to get at the facts, so I helped him 
 
 326 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 over the bad places, and questioned him till I had got out 
 pretty nearly the whole story as I have given it above. 
 
 I hope I did not show it, but I was very angry. I had 
 begun to like Ernest. I don't know why, but I never yet 
 heard that any young man to whom I had become attached 
 was going to get married without hating his intended in- 
 stinctively, though I had never seen her ; I have observed 
 that most bachelors feel the same thing, though we are 
 generally at some pains to hide the fact. Perhaps it is 
 because we know we ought to have got married ourselves. 
 Ordinarily we say we are dehghted — in the present case I 
 did not feel obliged to do this, though I made an effort to 
 conceal my vexation. That a young man of much promise 
 who was heir also to what was now a handsome fortune, 
 should fling himself away upon such a person as Ellen was 
 quite too provoking, and the more so because of the un- 
 expectedness of the whole affair. 
 
 I begged him not to marry Ellen yet — not at least until 
 he had known her for a longer time. He would not hear 
 of it : he had given his word, and if he had not given it he 
 should go and give it at once. I had hitherto found him 
 upon most matters singularly docile and easy to manage, but 
 on this point I could do nothing with him. His recent 
 victory over his father and mother had increased his strength, 
 and I was nowhere. I would have told him of his true 
 position, but I knew very well that this would only make him 
 more bent on having his own way — for with so much money 
 why should he not please himself? I said nothing, therefore, 
 on this head, and yet all that I could urge went for very little 
 with one who believed himself to be an artisan or nothing. 
 
 Really from his own standpoint there was nothing very 
 outrageous in what he was doing. He had known and been 
 very fond of Ellen years before. He knew her to come of 
 respectable people, and to have borne a good character, and 
 to have been universally liked at Battersby. She was then a 
 quick, smart, hard-working girl — and a very pretty one. When 
 at last they met again she was on her best behaviour, in fact, 
 she was modesty and demureness itself. What wonder, then, 
 
 327 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that his imagination should fail to realise the changes that 
 eight years must have worked ? He knew too much against 
 himself, and was too bankrupt in love to be squeamish ; if 
 Ellen had been only what he thought her, and if his prospects 
 had been in reality no better than he believed they were, I 
 do not know that there is anything much more imprudent in 
 what Ernest proposed than there is in half the marriages that 
 take place every day. 
 
 There was nothing for it, however, but to make the best 
 of the inevitable, so I wished my young friend good fortune, 
 and told him he could have whatever money he wanted to 
 start his shop with, if what he had in hand was not suffi- 
 cient. He thanked me, asked me to be kind enough to 
 let him do all my mending and repairing, and to get him 
 any other like orders that I could, and left me to my own 
 reflections. 
 
 I was even more angry when he was gone than I had been 
 while he was with me. His frank, boyish face had beamed 
 with a happiness that had rarely visited it. Except at Cam- 
 bridge he had hardly known what happiness meant, and even 
 there his life had been clouded as of a man for whom 
 wisdom at the greatest of its entrances was quite shut out. 
 I had seen enough of the world and of him to have observed 
 this, but it was impossible, or I thought it had been impos- 
 sible, for me to have helped him. 
 
 Whether I ought to have tried to help him or not I do not 
 know, but I am sure that the young of all animals often do 
 want help upon matters about which anyone would say 
 a priori that there should be no difficulty. One would 
 think that a young seal would want no teaching how to 
 swim, nor yet a bird to fly, but in practice a young seal 
 drowns if put out of its depth before its parents have taught 
 it to swim ; and so again, even the young hawk must be 
 taught to fly before it can do so. 
 
 I grant that the tendency of the times is to exaggerate 
 the good which teaching can do, but in trying to teach too 
 much, in most matters, we have neglected others in respect 
 of which a little sensible teaching would do no harm. 
 
 328 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 I know it is the fashion to say that young people must 
 find out these things for themselves, and so they probably 
 would if they had fair play to the extent of not having 
 obstacles put in their way. But they seldom have fair play ; 
 as a general rule they meet with foul play, and foul play 
 from those who live by selling them stones made into a great 
 variety of shapes and sizes so as to form a tolerable imitation 
 of bread. 
 
 Some are lucky enough to meet with few obstacles, some 
 are plucky enough to over-ride them, but in the greater 
 number of cases, if people are saved at all they are saved 
 so as by fire. 
 
 While Ernest was with me Ellen was looking out for a 
 shop on the south side of the Thames near the " Elephant 
 and Castle," which was then almost a new and a very rising 
 neighbourhood. By one o'clock she had found several 
 from which a selection was to be made, and before night the 
 pair had made their choice. 
 
 Ernest brought Ellen to me. I did not want to see her, 
 but could not well refuse. He had laid out a few of his 
 shillings upon her wardrobe, so that she was neatly dressed 
 and, indeed, she looked so pretty and so good that I could 
 hardly be surprised at Ernest's infatuation when the other 
 circumstances of the case were taken into consideration. Of 
 course we hated one another instinctively from the first 
 moment we set eyes on one another, but we each told Ernest 
 that we had been most favourably impressed. 
 
 Then I was taken to see the shop. An empty house is 
 like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed. 
 Decay sets in at once in every part of it, and what mould 
 and wind and weather would spare, street boys commonly 
 destroy. Ernest's shop in its untenanted state was a dirty 
 unsavoury place enough. The house was not old, but it had 
 been run up by a jerry-builder and its constitution had 
 no stamina whatever. It was only by being kept warm and 
 quiet that it would remain in health for many months 
 together. Now it had been empty for some weeks and 
 the cats had got in by night, while the boys had broken the 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 windows by day. The parlour floor was covered with stones 
 and dirt, and in the area was a dead dog which had been 
 killed in the street and been thrown down into the first 
 unprotected place that could be found. There was a strong 
 smell throughout the house, but whether it was bugs, or rats, 
 or cats, or drains, or a compound of all four, I could not 
 determine. The sashes did not fit, the flimsy doors hung 
 badly ; the skirting was gone in several places, and there 
 were not a few holes in the floor; the locks were loose, and 
 paper was torn and dirty; the stairs were weak and one felt 
 the treads give as one went up them. 
 
 Over and above these drawbacks the house had an ill 
 name, by reason of the fact that the wife of the last occupant 
 had hanged herself in it not very many weeks previously. 
 She had set down a bloater before the fire for her husband's 
 tea, and had made him a round of toast. She then left the 
 room as though about to return to it shortly, but instead of 
 doing so she went into the back kitchen and hanged herself 
 without a word. It was this which had kept the house 
 empty so long in spite of its excellent position as a corner 
 shop. The last tenant had left immediately after the 
 inquest, and if the owner had had it done up then people 
 would have got over the tragedy that had been enacted in it, 
 but the combination of bad condition and bad fame had 
 hindered many from taking it, who like Ellen, could see that 
 it had great business capabilities. Almost anything would 
 have sold there, but it happened also that there was no 
 second-hand clothes shop in close proximity so that every- 
 thing combined in its favour, except its filthy state and its 
 reputation. 
 
 When I saw it, I thought I would rather die than live in 
 such an awful place — but then I had been living in the 
 Temple for the last five and twenty years. Ernest was lodg- 
 ing in Laystall Street and had just come out of prison ; 
 before this he had lived in Ashpit Place so that this house 
 had no terrors for him provided he could get it done up. 
 The difficulty was that the landlord was hard to move in 
 this respect. It ended in my finding the money to do 
 
 33° 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 everything that was wanted, and taking a lease of the house 
 for five years at the same rental as that paid by the last 
 occupant. I then sublet it to Ernest, of course taking care 
 that it was put more efficiently into repair than his landlord 
 was at all likely to have put it. 
 
 A week later I called and found everything so completely 
 transformed that I should hardly have recognised the house. 
 All the ceilings had been whitewashed, all the rooms papered, 
 the broken glass hacked out and reinstated, the defective 
 wood-work renewed, all the sashes, cupboards and doors had 
 been painted. The drains had been thoroughly overhauled, 
 everything in fact, that could be done had been done, and the 
 rooms now looked as cheerful as they had been forbidding 
 when I had last seen them. The people who had done the 
 repairs were supposed to have cleaned the house down before 
 leaving, but Ellen had given it another scrub from top to 
 bottom herself after they were gone, and it was as clean as a 
 new pin. I almost felt as though I could have lived in it 
 myself, and as for Ernest, he was in the seventh heaven. He 
 said it was all my doing and Ellen's. 
 
 There was already a counter in the shop and a few fittings, 
 so that nothing now remained but to get some stock and set 
 them out for sale. Ernest said he could not begin better 
 than by selling his clerical wardrobe and his books, for 
 though the shop was intended especially for the sale of 
 second-hand clothes, yet Ellen said there was no reason 
 why they should not sell a few books too ; so a beginning 
 was to be made by selling the books he had had at school 
 and college at about one shilling a volume, taking them all 
 round, and I have heard him say that he learned more 
 that proved of practical use to him through stocking his 
 books on a bench in front of his shop and selling them, 
 than he had done from all the years of study which he 
 had bestowed upon their contents. 
 
 For the enquiries that were made of him whether he had 
 such and such a book taught him what he could sell and 
 what he could not ; how much he could get for this, and 
 how much for that. Having made ever such a little begin- 
 
 33^ 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 ning with books, he took to attending book sales as well as 
 clothes sales, and ere long this branch of his business became 
 no less important than the tailoring, and would, I have no 
 doubt, have been the one which he would have settled down 
 to exclusively, if he had been called upon to remain a trades- 
 man ; but this is anticipating. 
 
 I made a contribution and a stipulation. Ernest wanted 
 to sink the gentleman completely, until such time as he could 
 work his way up again. If he had been left to himself he 
 would have lived with Ellen in the shop back parlour and 
 kitchen, and have let out both the upper floors according to 
 his original programme. I did not want him, however, to 
 cut himself adrift from music, letters and polite life, and 
 feared that unless he had some kind of den into which he 
 could retire he would ere long become the tradesman and 
 nothing else. I therefore insisted on taking the first floor 
 front and back myself, and furnishing them with the things 
 which had been left at Mrs Jupp's. I bought these things of 
 him for a small sum and had them moved into his present 
 abode. 
 
 I went to Mrs Jupp's to arrange all this, as Ernest did not 
 like going to Ashpit Place. I had half expected to find the 
 furniture sold and Mrs Jupp gone, but it was not so ; with all 
 her faults the poor old woman was perfectly honest. 
 
 I told her that Pryer had taken all Ernest's money and run 
 away with it. She hated Pryer. " I never knew anyone," 
 she exclaimed, " as white-livered in the face as that Pryer ; 
 he hasn't got an upright vein in his whole body. Why, all that 
 time when he used to come breakfasting with Mr Pontifex 
 morning after morning, it took me to a perfect shadow the 
 way he carried on. There was no doing anything to please 
 him right. First I used to get them eggs and bacon, and he 
 didn't like that • and then I got them a bit of fish, and he 
 didn't like that, or else it was too dear, and you know fish is 
 dearer than ever ; and then I got him a bit of German, and 
 he said it rose on him ; then I tried sausages, and he said 
 they hit him in the eye worse even than German ; oh ! how 
 I used to wander my room and fret about it inwardly and 
 
 332 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 cry for hours, and all about them paltry breakfasts — and it 
 wasn't Mr Pontifex ; he'd like anything that anyone chose to 
 give him. 
 
 "And so the piano's to go," she continued. "What beauti- 
 ful tunes Mr Pontifex did play upon it, to be sure ; and 
 there was one I liked better than any I ever heard. I was 
 in the room when he played it once and when I said, ' Oh, 
 Mr Pontifex, that's the kind of woman I am,' he said, ' No, 
 Mrs Jupp, it isn't, for this tune is old, but no one can say 
 you are old.' But, bless you, he meant nothing by it, it was 
 only his mucky flattery." 
 
 Like myself, she was vexed at his getting married. She 
 didn't like his being married and she didn't like his not 
 being married — but, anyhow, it was Ellen's fault, not his, 
 and she hoped he would be happy. " But after all," she 
 concluded, " it ain't you and it ain't me, and it ain't him 
 and it ain't her. It's what you must call the fortunes of 
 matterimony, for there ain't no other word for it." 
 
 In the course of the afternoon the furniture arrived at 
 Ernest's new abode. In the first floor we placed the piano, 
 table, pictures, bookshelves, a couple of arm-chairs, and all 
 the little household gods which he had brought from Cam- 
 bridge. The back room was furnished exactly as his bedroom 
 at Ashpit Place had been — new things being got for the 
 bridal apartment downstairs. These two first-floor rooms I 
 insisted on retaining as my own, but Ernest was to use them 
 whenever he pleased ; he was never to sublet even the bed- 
 room, but was to keep it for himself in case his wife should 
 be ill at any time, or in case he might be ill himself. 
 
 In less than a fortnight from the time of his leaving prison 
 all these arrangements had been completed, and Ernest felt 
 that he had again linked himself on to the life which he had 
 led before his imprisonment — with a few important dif- 
 ferences, however, which were greatly to his advantage. He 
 was no longer a clergyman ; he was about to marry a woman 
 to whom he was much attached, and he had parted company 
 for ever with his father and mother. 
 
 True, he had lost all his money, his reputation, and his 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 position as a gentleman ; he had, in fact, had to burn his 
 house down, in order to get his roast sucking pig ; but if 
 asked whether he would rather be as he was now or as he 
 was on the day before his arrest, he would not have had a 
 moment's hesitation in preferring his present to his past. 
 If his present could only have been purchased at the expense 
 of all that he had gone through, it was still worth purchasing 
 at the price, and he would go through it all again if necessary. 
 The loss of the money was the worst, but Ellen said she was 
 sure they would get on, and she knew all about it. As for 
 the loss of reputation — considering that he had Ellen and 
 me left, it did not come to much. 
 
 I saw the house on the afternoon of the day on which all 
 was finished, and there remained nothing but to buy some 
 stock and begin selling. When I was gone, after he had had 
 his tea, he stole up to his castle — the first floor front. He 
 lit his pipe and sat down to the piano. He played Handel 
 for an hour or so, and then set himself to the table to read 
 and write. He took all his sermons and all the theological 
 works he had begun to compose during the time he had been 
 a clergyman and put them in the fire ; as he saw them con- 
 sume he felt as though he had got rid of another incubus. 
 Then he took up some of the little pieces he had begun to 
 write during the latter part of his undergraduate life at Cam- 
 bridge, and began to cut them about and re-write them. As 
 he worked quietly at these till he heard the clock strike ten 
 and it was time to go to bed, he felt that he was now not 
 only happy but supremely happy. 
 
 Next day Ellen took him to Debenham's auction rooms, 
 and they surveyed the lots of clothes which were hung up all 
 round the auction room to be viewed. Ellen had had suf- 
 ficient experience to know about how much each lot ought 
 to fetch ; she overhauled lot after lot, and valued it ; in a 
 very short time Ernest himself began to have a pretty fair 
 idea what each lot should go for, and before the morning 
 was over valued a dozen lots running at prices about which 
 Ellen said he would not hurt if he could get them for that. 
 
 So far from dishking this work or finding it tedious, he 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 liked it very much, indeed he would have liked anything 
 which did not overtax his physical strength, and which held 
 out a prospect of bringing him in money. Ellen would not let 
 him buy anything on the occasion of this sale ; she said he had 
 better see one sale first and watch how prices actually went. 
 So at twelve o'clock when the sale began, he saw the lots sold 
 which he and Ellen had marked, and by the time the sale was 
 over he knew enough to be able to bid with safety whenever 
 he should actually want to buy. Knowledge of this sort is very 
 easily acquired by anyone who is in bona fide want of it. 
 
 But Ellen did not want him to buy at auctions — not much 
 at least at present. Private dealing, she said, was best. If I, 
 for example, had any cast-off clothes, he was to buy them from 
 my laundress, and get a connection with other laundresses, 
 to whom he might give a trifle more than they got at present 
 for whatever clothes their masters might give them, and yet 
 make a good profit. If gentlemen sold their things, he was 
 to try and get them to sell to him. He flinched at nothing ; 
 perhaps he would have flinched if he had had any idea how 
 outre his proceedings were, but the very ignorance of the 
 world which had ruined him up till now, by a happy irony 
 began to work its own cure. If some malignant fairy had 
 meant to curse him in this respect, she had overdone her 
 malice. He did not know he was doing anything strange. 
 He only knew that he had no money, and must provide for 
 himself, a wife, and a possible family. More than this, he 
 wanted to have some leisure in an evening, so that he might 
 read and write and keep up his music. If anyone would 
 show him how he could do better than he was doing, he 
 should be much obliged to them, but to himself it seemed 
 that he was doing suflSciently well ; for at the end of the 
 first week the pair found they had made a clear profit of ;^3. 
 In a few weeks this had increased to ^d^, and by the New 
 Year they had made a profit of ;z^5 in one week. 
 
 Ernest had by this time been married some two months, 
 for he had stuck to this original plan of marrying Ellen on 
 the first day he could legally do so. This date was a little 
 delayed by the change of abode from Laystall Street to 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Blackfriars, but on the first day that it could be done it was 
 done. He had never had more than ^250 a year, even in 
 the times of his affluence, so that a profit of ^^5 a week, if it 
 could be maintained steadily, would place him where he had 
 been as far as income went, and, though he should have to 
 feed two mouths instead of one, yet his expenses in other 
 ways were so much curtailed by his changed social position, 
 that, take it all round, his income was practically what it had 
 been a twelvemonth before. The next thing to do was to 
 increase it, and put by money. 
 
 Prosperity depends, as we all know, in great measure upon 
 energy and good sense, but it also depends not a little upon 
 pure luck — that is to say, upon connections which are in 
 such a tangle that it is more easy to say that they do not 
 exist, than to try to trace them. A neighbourhood may 
 have an excellent reputation as being likely to be a rising 
 one, and yet may become suddenly eclipsed by another, 
 which no one would have thought so promising. A fever 
 hospital may divert the stream of business, or a new station 
 attract it ; so Httle, indeed, can be certainly known, that it 
 is better not to try to know more than is in everybody's 
 mouth, and to leave the rest to chance. 
 
 Luck, which certainly had not been too kind to my hero 
 hitherto, now seemed to have taken him under her protec- 
 tion. The neighbourhood prospered, and he with it. It 
 seemed as though he no sooner bought a thing and put it 
 into his shop, than it sold with a profit of from thirty to fifty 
 per cent. He learned book-keeping, and watched his 
 accounts carefully, following up any success immediately ; 
 he began to buy other things besides clothes — such as books, 
 music, odds and ends of furniture, etc. Whether it was 
 luck or business aptitude, or energy, or the politeness with 
 which he treated all his customers, I cannot say — but to the 
 surprise of no one more than himself, he went ahead faster 
 than he had anticipated, even in his wildest dreams, and by 
 Easter was estabhshed in a strong position as the owner of 
 a business which was bringing him in between four and five 
 hundred a year, and which he understood how to extend. 
 
 33^ 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIII 
 
 Ellen and he got on capitally, all the better, perhaps, 
 because the disparity between them was so great, that neither 
 did Ellen want to be elevated, nor did Ernest want to 
 elevate her. He was very fond of her, and very kind to her ; 
 they had interests which they could serve in common ; they 
 had antecedents with a good part of which each was 
 familiar ; they had each of them excellent tempers, and this 
 was enough. Ellen did not seem jealous at Ernest's 
 preferring to sit the greater part of his time after the day's 
 work was done in the first floor front, where I occasionally 
 visited him. She might have come and sat with him if she 
 had liked, but, somehow or other, she generally found 
 enough to occupy her down below. She had the tact also 
 to encourage him to go out of an evening whenever he had 
 a mind, without in the least caring that he should take her 
 too — and this suited Ernest very well. He was, I should 
 say, much happier in his married life than people generally 
 are. 
 
 At first it had been very painful to him to meet any of 
 his old friends, as he sometimes accidentally did, but this 
 soon passed ; either they cut him, or he cut them ; it was not 
 nice being cut for the first time or two, but after that, it 
 became rather pleasant than not, and when he began to see 
 that he was going ahead, he cared very little what people 
 might say about his antecedents. The ordeal is a painful 
 one, but if a man's moral and intellectual constitution are 
 naturally sound, there is nothing which will give him so much 
 strength of character as having been well cut. 
 
 It was easy for him to keep his expenditure down, for his 
 tastes were not luxurious. He liked theatres, outings into 
 the country on a Sunday, and tobacco, but he did not care 
 for much else, except writing and music. As for the usual 
 run of concerts, he hated them. He worshipped Handel ; 
 he liked Offenbach, and the airs that went about the 
 Y 337 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 streets, but he cared for nothing between these two extremes. 
 Music, therefore, cost him httle. As for theatres, I got 
 him and Ellen as many orders as they liked, so these cost 
 them nothing. The Sunday outings were a small item ; for a 
 shilling or two he could get a return ticket to some place far 
 enough out of town to give him a good walk and a thorough 
 change for the day. Ellen went with him the first few 
 times, but she said she found it too much for her, there 
 were a few of her old friends whom she should sometimes 
 like to see, and they and he, she said, would not hit it off 
 perhaps too well, so it would be better for him to go alone. 
 This seemed so sensible, and suited Ernest so exactly that 
 he readily fell into it, nor did he suspect dangers which were 
 apparent enough to me when I heard how she had treated 
 the matter. I kept silence, however, and for a time all 
 continued to go well. As I have said, one of his chief 
 pleasures was in writing. If a man carries with him a little 
 sketch book and is continually jotting down sketches, he has 
 the artistic instinct ; a hundred things may hinder his due 
 development, but the instinct is there. The literary instinct 
 may be known by a man's keeping a small note-book in his 
 waistcoat pocket, into which he jots down anything that 
 strikes him, or any good thing that he hears said, or a refer- 
 ence to any passage which he thinks will come in useful to 
 him. Ernest had such a note-book always with him. Even 
 when he was at Cambridge he had begun the practice with- 
 out anyone's having suggested it to him. These notes he 
 copied out from time to time into a book, which as they ac- 
 cumulated, he was driven into indexing approximately, as he 
 went along. When I found out this, I knew that he had the 
 literary instinct, and when I saw his notes I began to hope 
 great things of him. 
 
 For a long time I was disappointed. He was kept back 
 by the nature of the subjects he chose — which were generally 
 metaphysical. In vain I tried to get him away from these to 
 matters which had a greater interest for the general public. 
 When I begged him to try his hand at some pretty, graceful, 
 little story which should be full of whatever people knew and 
 
 338 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 liked best, he would immediately set to work upon a treatise 
 to show the grounds on which all belief rested. 
 
 " You are stirring mud," said I, " or poking at a sleeping 
 dog. You are trying to make people resume consciousness 
 about things, which, with sensible men, have already passed 
 into the unconscious stage. The men whom you would 
 disturb are in front of you, and not, as you fancy, behind 
 you ; it is you who are the lagger, not they." 
 
 He could not see it. He said he was engaged on an essay 
 upon the famous quod seinper, quod ubique, quod ab omni- 
 bus of St Vincent de Lerins. This was the more provok- 
 ing because he showed himself able to do better things if he 
 had liked. 
 
 I was then at work upon my burlesque " The Impatient 
 Griselda," and was sometimes at my wit's end for a piece of 
 business or a situation ; he gave me many suggestions all of 
 which were marked by excellent good sense. Nevertheless 
 I could not prevail with him to put philosophy on one side, 
 and was obliged to leave him to himself. 
 
 For a long time, as I have said, his choice of subjects 
 continued to be such as I could not approve. He was con- 
 tinually studying scientific and metaphysical writers, in the 
 hope of either finding or making for himself a philosopher's 
 stone in the shape of a system which should go on all fours 
 under all circumstances, instead of being liable to be upset 
 at every touch and turn, as every system yet promulgated 
 has turned out to be. 
 
 He kept to the pursuit of this will-o'-the-wisp so long 
 that I gave up hope, and set him down as another fly that 
 had been caught, as it were, by a piece of paper daubed 
 over with some sticky stuff that had not even the merit of 
 being sweet, but to my surprise he at last declared that he 
 was satisfied, and had found what he wanted. 
 
 I supposed that he had only hit upon some new " Lo, 
 here ! " when to my relief, he told me that he had con- 
 cluded that no system which should go perfectly upon all 
 fours was possible, inasmuch as no one could get behind 
 Bishop Berkeley, and therefore no absolutely incontrover- 
 
 339 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 tible first premise could ever be laid. Having found this 
 he was just as well pleased as if he had found the most 
 perfect system imaginable. All he wanted he said, was to 
 know which way it was to be — that is to say whether a 
 system was possible or not, and if possible then what the 
 system was to be. Having found out that no system based 
 on absolute certainty was possible he was contented. 
 
 I had only a very vague idea who Bishop Berkeley was, 
 but was thankful to him for having defended us from an 
 incontrovertible first premise. I am afraid I said a few 
 words implying that after a great deal of trouble he had 
 arrived at the conclusion which sensible people reach without 
 bothering their brains so much. 
 
 He said : " Yes, but I was not born sensible. A child 
 of ordinary power learns to walk at a year or two old without 
 knowing much about it ; failing ordinary powers he had 
 better learn laboriously than never learn at all. I am sorry 
 I was not stronger, but to do as I did was my only chance." 
 He looked so meek that I was vexed with myself for 
 having said what I had, more especially when I remembered 
 his bringing-up, which had doubtless done much to impair 
 his power of taking a commonsense view of things. He 
 continued — 
 
 " I see it all now. The people like Towneley are the only 
 ones who know anything that is worth knowing, and like 
 that of course I can never be. But to make Towneleys 
 possible there must be hewers of wood and drawers of water 
 — men in fact through whom conscious knowledge must 
 pass before it can reach those who can apply it gracefully 
 and instinctively as the Towneleys can. I am a hewer of 
 wood, but if I accept the position frankly and do not set up 
 to be a Towneley, it does not matter." 
 
 He still, therefore, stuck to science instead of turning to 
 literature proper as I hoped he would have done, but he 
 confined himself henceforth to enquiries on specific subjects 
 concerning which an increase of our knowledge — as he said 
 — was possible. Having in fact, after infinite vexation of 
 spirit, arrived at a conclusion which cut at the roots of all 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 knowledge, he settled contentedly down to the pursuit of 
 knowledge, and has pursued it ever since in spite of occa- 
 sional excursions into the regions of literature proper. 
 
 But this is anticipating, and may perhaps also convey a 
 wrong impression, for from the outset he did occasionally 
 turn his attention to work which must be more properly 
 called literary than either scientific or metaphysical. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIV 
 
 About six months after he had set up his shop his prosperity 
 had reached its climax. It seemed even then as though he 
 were likely to go ahead no less fast than heretofore, and I 
 doubt not that he would have done so, if success or non- 
 success had depended upon himself alone. Unfortunately 
 he was not the only person to be reckoned with. 
 
 One morning he had gone out to attend some sales, leaving 
 his wife perfectly well, as usual in good spirits, and looking 
 very pretty. When he came back he found her sitting on a 
 chair in the back parlour, with her hair over her face, sobbing 
 and crying as though her heart would break. She said she had 
 been frightened in the morning by a man who had pretended 
 to be a customer, and had threatened her unless she gave 
 him some things, and she had had to give them to him in 
 order to save herself from violence ; she had been in hysterics 
 ever since the man had gone. This was her story, but her 
 speech was so incoherent that it was not easy to make out 
 what she said. Ernest knew she was with child, and think- 
 ing this might have something to do with the matter, would 
 have sent for a doctor if Ellen had not begged him not to 
 do so. 
 
 Anyone who had had experience of drunken people would 
 have seen at a glance what the matter was, but my hero 
 knew nothing about them — nothing, that is to say, about 
 the drunkenness of the habitual drunkard, which shows itself 
 very differently from that of one who gets drunk only once in 
 a way. The idea that his wife could drink had never even 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 crossed his mind, indeed she always made a fuss about taking 
 more than a very little beer, and never touched spirits. He 
 did not know much more about hysterics than he did about 
 drunkenness, but he had always heard that women who were 
 about to become mothers were liable to be easily upset and 
 were often rather flighty, so he was not greatly surprised, and 
 thought he had settled the matter by registering the discovery 
 that being about to become a father has its troublesome as 
 well as its pleasant side. 
 
 The great change in Ellen's life consequent upon her 
 meeting Ernest and getting married had for a time actually 
 sobered her by shaking her out of her old ways. Drunken- 
 ness is so much a matter of habit, and habit so much a 
 matter of surroundings, that if you completely change the 
 surroundings you will sometimes get rid of the drunkenness 
 altogether. Ellen had intended remaining always sober 
 henceforward, and never having had so long a steady fit 
 before, believed she was now cured. So she perhaps would 
 have been if she had seen none of her old acquaintances. 
 When, however, her new life was beginning to lose its new- 
 ness, and when her old acquaintances came to see her, her 
 present surroundings became more like her past, and on this 
 she herself began to get like her past too. At first she only 
 got a little tipsy and struggled against a relapse ; but it was 
 no use, she soon lost the heart to fight, and now her object 
 was not to try and keep sober, but to get gin without her 
 husband's finding it out. 
 
 So the hysterics continued, and she managed to make her 
 husband still think that they were due to her being about to 
 become a mother. The worse her attacks were, the more 
 devoted he became in his attention to her. At last he 
 insisted that a doctor should see her. The doctor of course 
 took in the situation at a glance, but said nothing to Ernest 
 except in such a guarded way that he did not understand the 
 hints that were thrown out to him. He was much too down- 
 right and matter of fact to be quick at taking hints of this 
 sort. He hoped that as soon as his wife's confinement was 
 over she would regain her health and had no thought save 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 how to spare her as far as possible till that happy time 
 should come. 
 
 In the mornings she was generally better, as long that is 
 to say as Ernest remained at home ; but he had to go out 
 buying, and on his return would generally find that she had 
 had another attack as soon as he had left the house. At 
 times she would laugh and cry for half an hour together, at 
 others she would lie in a semi-comatose state upon the bed, 
 and when he came back he would find that the shop had 
 been neglected and all the work of the household left un- 
 done. Still he took it for granted that this was all part of 
 the usual course when women were going to become mothers, 
 and when Ellen's share of the work settled down more and 
 more upon his own shoulders he did it all and drudged 
 away without a murmur. Nevertheless, he began to feel in 
 a vague way more as he had felt in Ashpit Place, at Rough- 
 borough, or at Battersby, and to lose the buoyancy of spirits 
 which had made another man of him during the first six 
 months of his married life. 
 
 It was not only that he had to do so much household 
 work, for even the cooking, cleaning up slops, bed-making 
 and fire-lighting ere long devolved upon him, but his 
 business no longer prospered. He could buy as hitherto, 
 but Ellen seemed unable to sell as she had sold at first. 
 The fact was that she sold as well as ever, but kept back 
 part of the proceeds in order to buy gin, and she did this 
 more and more till even the unsuspecting Ernest ought to 
 have seen that she was not telling the truth. When she sold 
 better — that is to say when she did not think it safe to keep 
 back more than a certain amount, she got money out of him 
 on the plea that she had a longing for this or that, and that 
 it would perhaps irreparably damage the baby if her longing 
 was denied her. All seemed right, reasonable, and unavoid- 
 able, nevertheless Ernest saw that until the confinement was 
 over he was likely to have a hard time of it. All however 
 would then come right again. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LXXV 
 
 In the month of September i860 a girl was born, and Ernest 
 was proud and happy. The birth of the child, and a rather 
 alarming talk which the doctor had given to Ellen sobered 
 her for a few weeks, and it really seemed as though his 
 hopes were about to be fulfilled. The expenses of his wife's 
 confinement were heavy, and he was obliged to trench upon 
 his savings, but he had no doubt about soon recouping this 
 now that Ellen was herself again ; for a time indeed his 
 business did revive a little, nevertheless it seemed as though 
 the interruption to his prosperity had in some way broken 
 the spell of good luck which had attended him in the outset ; 
 he was still sanguine, however, and worked night and day 
 with a will, but there was no more music, or reading, or 
 writing now. His Sunday outings were put a stop to, and 
 but for the first floor's being let to myself, he would have 
 lost his citadel there too, but he seldom used it, for Ellen 
 had to wait more and more upon the baby, and, as a conse- 
 quence, Ernest had to wait more and more upon Ellen. 
 
 One afternoon, about a couple of months after the baby 
 had been born, and just as my unhappy hero was beginning 
 to feel more hopeful and therefore better able to bear his 
 burdens, he returned from a sale, and found Ellen in the 
 same hysterical condition that he had found her in in the 
 spring. She said she was again with child, and Ernest still 
 believed her. 
 
 All the troubles of the preceding six months began again 
 then and there, and grew worse and worse continually. 
 Money did not come in quickly, for Ellen cheated him by 
 keeping it back, and dealing improperly with the goods he 
 bought. When it did come in she got it out of him as 
 before on pretexts which it seemed inhuman to inquire into. 
 It was always the same story. By and by a new feature 
 began to show itself. Ernest had inherited his father's 
 punctuahty and exactness as regards money ; he liked to 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 know the worst of what he had to pay at once ; he hated 
 having expenses sprung upon him which if not foreseen 
 might and ought to have been so, but now bills began to be 
 brought to him for things ordered by Ellen without his 
 knowledge, or for which he had already given her the money. 
 This was awful, and even Ernest turned. When he remon- 
 strated with her — not for having bought the tilings, but for 
 having said nothing to him about the moneys being owing — 
 Ellen met him with hysteria and there was a scene. She 
 had now pretty well forgotten the hard times she had 
 known when she had been on her own resources and re- 
 proached him downright with having married her — on that 
 moment the scales fell from Ernest's eyes as they had fallen 
 when Towneley had said, " No, no, no." He said nothing, 
 but he woke up once for all to the fact that he had made a 
 mistake in marrying. A touch had again come which had 
 revealed him to himself. 
 
 He went upstairs to the disused citadel, flung himself into 
 the arm-chair, and covered his face with his hands. 
 
 He still did not know that his wife drank, but he could no 
 longer trust her, and his dream of happiness was over. He 
 had been saved from the Church — so as by fire, but still 
 saved — but what could now save him from his marriage? 
 He had made the same mistake that he had made in wedding 
 himself to the Church, but with a hundred times worse 
 results. He had learnt nothing by experience : he was an 
 Esau — one of those wretches whose hearts the Lord had 
 hardened, who, having ears, heard not, having eyes saw not, 
 and who should find no place for repentance though they 
 sought it even with tears. 
 
 Yet had he not on the whole tried to find out what the 
 ways of God were, and to follow them in singleness of heart ? 
 To a certain extent, yes ; but he had not been thorough ; he 
 had not given up all for God. He knew that very well ; he 
 had done little as compared with what he might and ought 
 to have done, but still if he was being punished for this, God 
 was a hard taskmaster, and one, too, who was continually 
 pouncing out upon his unhappy creatures from ambuscades. 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 In marrying Ellen he had meant to avoid a life of sin, and 
 to take the course he believed to be moral and right. With his 
 antecedents and surroundings it was the most natural thing 
 in the world for him to have done, yet in what a frightful 
 position had not his morality landed him. Could any amount 
 of immorality have placed him in a much worse one ? What 
 was morality worth if it was not that which on the whole 
 brought a man peace at the last, and could anyone have reason- 
 able certainty that marriage would do this ? It seemed to 
 him that in his attempt to be moral he had been following a 
 devil which had disguised itself as an angel of light. But if 
 so, what ground was there on which a man might rest the 
 sole of his foot and tread in reasonable safety ? 
 
 He was still too young to reach the answer, " On common 
 sense " — an answer which he would have felt to be unworthy 
 of anyone who had an ideal standard. 
 
 However this might be, it was plain that he had now done 
 for himself. It had been thus with him all his life. If there 
 had come at any time a gleam of sunshine and hope, it was 
 to be obscured immediately — why, prison was happier than 
 this ! There, at any rate, he had had no money anxieties, 
 and these were beginning to weigh upon him now with all 
 their horrors. He was happier even now than he had been 
 at Battersby or at Roughborough, and he would not now go 
 back, even if he could, to his Cambridge life, but for all that 
 the outlook was so gloomy, in fact so hopeless, that he felt as 
 if he could have only too gladly gone to sleep and died in 
 his arm-chair once for all. 
 
 As he was musing thus and looking upon the wreck of his 
 hopes — for he saw well enough that as long as he was linked 
 to Ellen he should never rise as he had dreamed of doing — 
 he heard a noise below, and presently a neighbour ran 
 upstairs and entered his room hurriedly — 
 
 " Good gracious, Mr Pontifex," she exclaimed, " for good- 
 ness' sake come down quickly and help. Mrs Pontifex is 
 took with the horrors — and she's orkard." 
 
 The unhappy man came down as he was bid and found 
 his wife mad with delirium tremens. 
 
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 I 
 
The Way of AU Flesh 
 
 He knew all now. The neighbours thought he must have 
 known that his wife drank all along, but Ellen had been so 
 artful, and he so simple, that, as I have said, he had had no 
 suspicion. " Why," said the woman who had summoned 
 him, " she'll drink anything she can stand up and pay her 
 money for." Ernest could hardly believe his ears, but when 
 the doctor had seen his wife and she had become more quiet, 
 he went over to the public house hard by and made enquiries, 
 the result of which rendered further doubt impossible. The 
 publican took the opportunity to present my hero with a bill 
 of several pounds for bottles of spirits supplied to his wife, 
 and what with his wife's confinement and the way business 
 had fallen off, he had not the money to pay with, for the sum 
 exceeded the remnant of his savings. 
 
 He came to me — not for money, but to tell me his miser- 
 able story. I had seen for some time that there was some- 
 thing wrong, and had suspected pretty shrewdly what the 
 matter was, but of course I said nothing. Ernest and I had 
 been growing apart for some time. I was vexed at his having 
 married, and he knew I was vexed, though I did my best to 
 hide it. 
 
 A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by mar- 
 riage — but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage 
 of his friends. The rift in friendship which invariably makes 
 its appearance on the marriage of either of the parties to it 
 was fast widening, as it no less invariably does, into the great 
 gulf which is fixed between the married and the unmarried, 
 and I was beginning to leave vny protege to a fate with which 
 I had neither right nor power to meddle. In fact I had 
 begun to feel him rather a burden ; I did not so much mind 
 this when I could be of use, but I grudged it when I could 
 be of none. He had made his bed and he must lie upon it. 
 Ernest had felt all this and had seldom come near me till now, 
 one evening late in i860, he called on me, and with a very 
 woe-begone face told me his troubles. 
 
 As soon as I found that he no longer liked his wife I for- 
 gave him at once, and was as much interested in him as ever. 
 There is nothing an old bachelor likes better than to find a 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 young married man who wishes he had not got married — 
 especially when the case is such an extreme one that he need 
 not pretend to hope that matters will come all right again, or 
 encourage his young friend to make the best of it. 
 
 I was myself in favour of a separation, and said I would 
 make Ellen an allowance myself — of course intending that it 
 should come out of Ernest's money ; but he would not hear 
 of this. He had married Ellen, he said, and he must try to 
 reform her. He hated it, but he must try ; and finding him 
 as usual very obstinate I was obliged to acquiesce, though 
 with little confidence as to the result. I was vexed at seeing 
 him waste himself upon such a barren task, and again began 
 to feel him burdensome, I am afraid I showed thiS;, for he 
 again avoided me for some time, and, indeed, for many 
 months I hardly saw him at all. 
 
 Ellen remained very ill for some days, and then gradually 
 recovered. Ernest hardly left her till she was out of danger. 
 When she had recovered he got the doctor to tell her that if 
 she had such another attack she would certainly die ; this so 
 frightened her that she took the pledge. 
 
 Then he became more hopeful again. When she was 
 sober she was just what she was during the first days of her 
 married life, and so quick was he to forget pain, that after a 
 few days he was as fond of her as ever. But Ellen could 
 not forgive him for knowing what he did. She knew that he 
 was on the watch to shield her from temptation, and though 
 he did his best to make her think that he had no further 
 uneasiness about her, she found the burden of her union 
 with respectability grow more and more heavy upon her, 
 and looked back more and more longingly upon the law- 
 less freedom of the life she had led before she met her 
 husband. 
 
 I will dwell no longer on this part of my story. During 
 the spring months of 1861 she kept straight — she had had 
 her fling of dissipation, and this, together with the impression 
 made upon her by her having taken the pledge, tamed her 
 for a while. The shop went fairly well, and enabled Ernest 
 to make the two ends meet. In the spring and summer of 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 1 86 1 he even put by a little money again. In the autumn 
 his wife was confined of a boy — a very fine one, so everyone 
 said. She soon recovered, and Ernest was beginning to 
 breathe freely and be almost sanguine when, without a word 
 of warning, the storm broke again. He returned one after- 
 noon about two years after his marriage, and found his wife 
 lying upon the floor insensible. 
 
 From this time he became hopeless, and began to go 
 visibly down hill. He had been knocked about too much, 
 and the luck had gone too long against him. The wear and 
 tear of the last three years had told on him, and though not 
 actually ill he was over-worked, below par, and unfit for any 
 further burden. 
 
 He struggled for a while to prevent himself from finding 
 this out, but facts were too strong for him. Again he called 
 on me and told me what had happened. I was glad the 
 crisis had come ; I was sorry for Ellen, but a complete separ- 
 ation from her was the only chance for her husband. Even 
 after this last outbreak he was unwilling to consent to this, 
 and talked nonsense about dying at his post, till I got tired 
 of him. Each time I saw him the old gloom had settled 
 more and more deeply upon his face, and I had about made 
 up my mind to put an end to the situation by a coup de main, 
 such as bribing Ellen to run away with somebody else, or 
 something of that kind, when matters settled themselves as 
 usual in a way which I had not anticipated. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVI 
 
 The winter had been a trying one. Ernest had only paid 
 his way by selling his piano. With this he seemed to cut 
 away the last link that connected him with his earlier life, 
 and to sink once for all into the small shop-keeper. It 
 seemed to him that however low he might sink his pain 
 could not last much longer, for he should simply die if 
 it did. 
 
 He hated Ellen now, and the pair lived in open want of 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 harmony with each other. If it had not been for his children, 
 he would have left her and gone to America, but he could not 
 leave the children with Ellen, and as for taking them with 
 him he did not know how to do it, nor what to do with them 
 when he had got them to America. If he had not lost 
 energy he would probably in the end have taken the children 
 and gone off, but his nerve was shaken, so day after day went 
 by and nothing was done. 
 
 He had only got a few shillings in the world now, except 
 the value of his stock, which was very little ; he could get 
 perhaps ;^3 or ;^4 by selling his music and what few pictures 
 and pieces of furniture still belonged to him. He thought of 
 trying to live by his pen, but his writing had dropped off 
 long ago ; he no longer had an idea in his head. Look 
 which way he would he saw no hope ; the end, if it had not 
 actually come, was within easy distance and he was almost 
 face to face with actual want. When he saw people going 
 about poorly clad, or even without shoes and stockings, he 
 wondered whether within a few months' time he too should 
 not have to go about in this way. The remorseless, resistless 
 hand of fate had caught him in its grip and was dragging 
 him down, down, down. Still he staggered on, going his 
 daily rounds, buying second-hand clothes, and spending his 
 evenings in cleaning and mending them. 
 
 One morning, as he was returning from a house at the 
 West End where he had bought some clothes from one of 
 the servants, he was struck by a small crowd which had 
 gathered round a space that had been railed off on the grass 
 near one of the paths in the Green Park. 
 
 It was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of March, 
 and unusually balmy for the time of year; even Ernest's 
 melancholy was relieved for a while by the look of spring 
 that pervaded earth and sky; but it soon returned, and 
 smiUng sadly he said to himself: "It may bring hope to 
 others, but for me there can be no hope henceforth." 
 
 As these words were in his mind he joined the small 
 crowd who were gathered round the railings, and saw that 
 they were looking at three sheep with very small lambs only 
 
 350 
 
 1 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 a day or two old, which had been penned off for shelter and 
 protection from the others that ranged the park. 
 
 They were very pretty, and Londoners so seldom get a 
 chance of seeing lambs that it was no wonder every one 
 stopped to look at them. Ernest observed that no one 
 seemed fonder of them than a great lubberly butcher boy, 
 who leaned up against the railings with a tray of meat upon 
 his shoulder. He was looking at this boy and smiling at the 
 grotesqueness of his admiration, when he became aware that 
 he was being watched intently by a man in coachman's 
 livery, who had also stopped to admire the lambs, and was 
 leaning against the opposite side of the enclosure. Ernest 
 knew him in a moment as John, his father's old coachman at 
 Battersby, and went up to him at once. 
 
 " Why, Master Ernest," said he, with his strong northern 
 accent, " I was thinking of you only this very morning," and 
 the pair shook hands heartily. John was in an excellent place 
 at the West End. He had done very well, he said, ever since 
 he had left Battersby, except for the first year or two, and that, 
 he said, with a screw of the face, had well nigh broke him. 
 
 Ernest asked how this was. 
 
 "Why, you see," said John, "I was always main fond of 
 that lass Ellen, whom you remember running after. Master 
 Ernest, and giving your watch to. I expect you haven't 
 forgotten that day, have you ? " And here he laughed. " I 
 don't know as I be the father of the child she carried away 
 with her from Battersby, but I very easily may have been. 
 Anyhow, after I had left your papa's place a few days I wrote 
 to Ellen to an address we had agreed upon, and told her 
 I would do what I ought to do, and so I did, for I married 
 her within a month afterwards. Why, Lord love the man, 
 whatever is the matter with him ? " — for as he had spoken 
 the few last words of his story Ernest had turned white as a 
 sheet, and was leaning against the railings. 
 
 "John," said my hero, gasping for breath, "are you sure 
 of what you say — are you quite sure you really married her ? " 
 
 " Of course I am," said John, " I married her before the 
 registrar at Letchbury on the 15 th of August 1851. 
 
 351 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " Give me your arm," said Ernest, " and take me into 
 Piccadilly, and put me into a cab, and come with me at 
 once, if you can spare time, to Mr Overton's at the Temple." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVII 
 
 I DO not think Ernest himself was much more pleased at 
 finding that he had never been married than I was. To 
 him, however, the shock of pleasure was positively numbing 
 in its intensity. As he felt his burden removed, he reeled 
 for the unaccustomed lightness of his movements ; his 
 position was so shattered that his identity seemed to have 
 been shattered also ; he was as one waking up from a 
 horrible nightmare to find himself safe and sound in bed, 
 but who can hardly even yet believe that the room is not full 
 of armed men who are about to spring upon him. 
 
 " And it is I," he said, " who not an hour ago complained 
 that I was without hope. It is I, who for weeks have been 
 raiUng at fortune, and saying that though she smiled on 
 others she never smiled at me. Why, never was anyone 
 half so fortunate as I am." 
 
 "Yes," said I, "you have been inoculated for marriage, 
 and have recovered." 
 
 " And yet," he said, " I was very fond of her till she took 
 to drinking." 
 
 "Perhaps; but is it not Tennyson who has said: "Tis 
 better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all'?" 
 
 "You are an inveterate bachelor," was the rejoinder. 
 
 Then we had a long talk with John, to whom I gave a ^5 
 note upon the spot. He said, " Ellen had used to drink at 
 Battersby ; the cook had taught her ; he had known it, but 
 was so fond of her, that he had chanced it and married her 
 to save her from the streets and in the hope of being able to 
 keep her straight. She had done with him just as she had 
 done with Ernest — made him an excellent wife as long as 
 she kept sober, but a very bad one afterwards." 
 
 " There isn't," said John, " a sweeter-tempered, handier, 
 352 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 prettier girl than she was in all England, nor one as knows 
 better what a man likes, and how to make him happy, if you 
 can keep her from drink ; but you can't keep her ; she's that 
 artful she'll get it under your very eyes, without you knowing 
 it. If she can't get any more of your things to pawn or sell, 
 she'll steal her neighbours'. That's how she got into trouble 
 first when I was with her. During the six months she was in 
 prison I should have felt happy if I had not known she 
 would come out again. And then she did come out, and 
 before she had been free a fortnight, she began shop-lifting 
 and going on the loose again — and all to get money to drink 
 with. So seeing I could do nothing with her and that she 
 was just a-kiUing of me, I left her, and came up to London, 
 and went into service again, and I did not know what had 
 become of her till you and Mr Ernest here told me. I hope 
 you'll neither of you say you've seen me." 
 
 We assured him we would keep his counsel, and then he 
 left us, with many protestations of affection towards Ernest, 
 to whom he had been always much attached. 
 
 We talked the situation over, and decided first to get the 
 children away, and then to come to terms with Ellen con- 
 cerning their future custody ; as for herself, I proposed that 
 we should make her an allowance of, say, a pound a week to 
 be paid so long as she gave no trouble. Ernest did not see 
 where the pound a week was to come from, so I eased his mind 
 by saying I would pay it myself. Before the day was two 
 hours older we had got the children, about whom Ellen had 
 always appeared to be indifferent, and had confided them to 
 the care of my laundress, a good motherly sort of woman, 
 who took to them and to whom they took at once. 
 
 Then came the odious task of getting rid of their unhappy 
 mother. Ernest's heart smote him at the notion of the 
 shock the break-up would be to her. He was always think- 
 ing that people had a claim upon him for some inestimable 
 service they had rendered him, or for some irreparable mis- 
 chief done to them by himself; the case however was so clear, 
 that Ernest's scruples did not offer serious resistance. 
 
 I did not see why he should have the pain of another 
 z 353 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 interview with his wife, so I got Mr Ottery to manage the 
 whole business. It turned out that we need not have har- 
 rowed ourselves so much about the agony of mind which 
 Ellen would suffer on becoming an outcast again. Ernest 
 saw Mrs Richards, the neighbour who had called him down 
 on the night when he had first discovered his wife's drunken- 
 ness, and got from her some details of Ellen's opinions upon 
 the matter. She did not seem in the least conscience- 
 stricken ; she said : " Thank goodness, at last ! " And 
 although aware that her marriage was not a valid one, 
 evidently regarded this as a mere detail which it would not 
 be worth anybody's while to go into more particularly. As 
 regards his breaking with her, she said it was a good job both 
 for him and for her. 
 
 " This life," she continued, " don't suit me. Ernest is too 
 good for me ; he wants a woman as shall be a bit better than 
 me, and I want a man that shall be a bit worse than him. 
 We should have got on all very well if we had not lived 
 together as married folks, but I've been used to have a 
 little place of my own, however small, for a many years, and 
 I don't want Ernest, or any other man, always hanging about 
 it. Besides he is too steady : his being in prison hasn't done 
 him a bit of good — he's just as grave as those as have never 
 been in prison at all, and he never swears nor curses, come 
 what may; it makes me afeared of him, and therefore I drink 
 the worse. What us poor girls wants is not to be jumped up 
 all of a sudden and made honest women of ; this is too much 
 for us and throws us off our perch ; what we wants is a 
 regular friend or two, who'll just keep us from starving, and 
 force us to be good for a bit together now and again. That's 
 about as much as we can stand. He may have the children; 
 he can do better for them than I can ; and as for his money, 
 he may give it or keep it as he likes, he's never done me any 
 harm, and I shall let him alone; but if he means me to have 
 it, I suppose I'd better have it." — And have it she did. 
 
 " And I," thought Ernest to himself again when the 
 arrangement was concluded, "am the man who thought 
 himself unlucky ! " 
 
 354 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 I may as well say here all that need be said further about 
 Ellen. For the next three years she used to call regularly at 
 Mr Ottery's every Monday morning for her pound. She was 
 always neatly dressed, and looked so quiet and pretty that no 
 one would have suspected her antecedents. At first she 
 wanted sometimes to anticipate, but after three or four in- 
 effectual attempts — on each of which occasions she told a 
 most pitiful story — she gave it up and took her money regu- 
 larly without a word. Once she came with a bad black eye, 
 " which a boy had throwed a stone and hit her by mistake " ; 
 but on the whole she looked pretty much the same at the end 
 of the three years as she had done at the beginning. Then 
 she explained that she was going to be married again. Mr 
 Ottery saw her on this, and pointed out to her that she would 
 very likely be again committing bigamy by doing so. " You 
 may call it what you like," she replied, " but I am going off 
 to America with Bill the butcher's man, and we hope Mr 
 Pontifex won't be too hard on us and stop the allowance." 
 Ernest was little likely to do this, so the pair went in peace. 
 I believe it was Bill who had blacked her eye, and she liked 
 him all the better for it. 
 
 From one or two little things I have been able to gather 
 that the couple get on very well together, and that in Bill she 
 has found a partner better suited to her than either John or 
 Ernest. On his birthday Ernest generally receives an envelope 
 with an American post-mark containing a book-marker with 
 a flaunting text upon it, or a moral kettle-holder, or some 
 other similar small token of recognition, but no letter. Of 
 the children she has taken no notice. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVni 
 
 Ernest was now well turned twenty-six years old, and in little 
 more than another year and a half would come into posses- 
 sion of his money. I saw no reason for letting him have it 
 earlier than the date fixed by Miss Pontifex herself; at the 
 same time I did not like his continuing the shop at Black- 
 
 355 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 friars after the present crisis. It was not till now that I 
 fully understood how much he had suffered, nor how nearly 
 his supposed wife's habits had brought him to actual want. 
 
 I had indeed noted the old wan worn look settHng upon 
 his face, but was either too indolent or too hopeless of being 
 able to sustain a protracted and successful warfare with Ellen 
 to extend the sympathy and make the inquiries which I sup- 
 pose I ought to have made. And yet I hardly know what 
 I could have done, for nothing short of his finding out 
 what he had found out would have detached him from his 
 wife, and nothing could do him much good as long as he 
 continued to live with her. 
 
 After all I suppose I was right ; I suppose things did turn 
 out all the better in the end for having been left to settle 
 themselves — at any rate whether they did or did not, the 
 whole thing was in too great a muddle for me to venture to 
 tackle it so long as Ellen was upon the scene ; now, however, 
 that she was removed, all my interest in my godson revived, 
 and I turned over many times in my mind what I had better 
 do with him. 
 
 It was now three and a half years since he had come up to 
 London and begun to live, so to speak, upon his own account. 
 Of these years, six months had been spent as a clergyman, 
 six months in gaol, and for two and a half years he had been 
 acquiring twofold experience in the ways of business and of 
 marriage. He had failed, I may say, in everything that he 
 had undertaken, even as a prisoner ; yet his defeats had been 
 always, as it seemed to me, something so like victories, that I 
 was satisfied of his being worth all the pains I could bestow 
 upon him ; my only fear was lest I should meddle with him 
 when it might be better for him to be let alone. On the 
 whole I concluded that a three and a half years' apprentice- 
 ship to a rough life was enough ; the shop had done much 
 for him ; it had kept him going after a fashion, when he was 
 in great need ; it had thrown him upon his own resources, 
 and taught him to see profitable openings all around him, 
 where a few months before he would have seen nothing but 
 insuperable difficulties ; it had enlarged his sympathies by 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 making him understand the lower classes, and not confining 
 his view of life to that taken by gentlemen only. When he 
 went about the streets and saw the books outside the second- 
 hand book-stalls, the bric-a-brac in the curiosity shops, and 
 the infinite commercial activity which is omnipresent around 
 us, he understood it and sympathised with it as he could 
 never have done if he had not kept a shop himself. 
 
 He has often told me that when he used to travel on a 
 railway that overlooked populous suburbs, and looked down 
 upon street after street of dingy houses, he used to wonder 
 what kind of people lived in them, what they did and felt, 
 and how far it was like what he did and felt himself. Now, 
 he said, he knew all about it. I am not very familiar with 
 the writer of the Odyssey (who, by the way, I suspect strongly 
 of having been a clergyman), but he assuredly hit the right 
 nail on the head when he epitomised his typical wise man as 
 knowing " the ways and farings of many men." What culture 
 is comparable to this ? What a lie, what a sickly debilitating 
 debauch did not Ernest's school and university career now 
 seem to him, in comparison with his life in prison and as a 
 tailor in Blackfriars. I have heard him say he would have 
 gone through all he had suffered if it were only for the 
 deeper insight it gave him into the spirit of the Grecian and 
 the Surrey pantomimes. What confidence again in his own 
 power to swim if thrown into deep waters had not he won 
 through his experiences during the last three years ! 
 
 But, as I have said, I thought my godson had now seen as 
 much of the under currents of life as was likely to be of use 
 to him, and that it was time he began to live in a style more 
 suitable to his prospects. His aunt had wished him to kiss 
 the soil, and he had kissed it with a vengeance ; but I did 
 not like the notion of his coming suddenly from the position 
 of a small shopkeeper to that of a man with an income of 
 between three and four thousand a year. Too sudden a jump 
 from bad fortune to good is just as dangerous as one from 
 good to bad ; besides, poverty is very wearing ; it is a quasi- 
 embryonic condition, through which a man had better pass 
 if he is to hold his later developments securely, but like 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 measles or scarlet fever he had better have it mildly and get 
 it over early. 
 
 No man is safe from losing every penny he has in the 
 world, unless he has had his facer. How often do I not hear 
 middle-aged women and quiet family men say that they have 
 no speculative tendency ; they never had touched, and never 
 would touch, any but the very soundest, best reputed invest- 
 ments, and as for unlimited liability, oh dear ! dear ! and they 
 throw up their hands and eyes. 
 
 Whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recog- 
 nised as the easy prey of the first adventurer who comes 
 across him ; he will commonly, indeed, wind up his discourse 
 by saying that in spite of all his natural caution, and his 
 well knowing how foolish speculation is, yet there are some 
 investments which are called speculative but in reality are not 
 so, and he will pull out of his pocket the prospectus of a 
 Cornish gold mine. It is only on having actually lost money 
 that one realises what an awful thing the loss of it is, and 
 finds out how easily it is lost by those who venture out of 
 the middle of the most beaten path. Ernest had had his 
 facer, as he had had his attack of poverty, young, and 
 sufficiently badly for a sensible man to be little likely to for- 
 get it. I can fancy few pieces of good fortune greater than 
 this as happening to any man, provided, of course, that he is 
 not damaged irretrievably. 
 
 So strongly do I feel on this subject that if I had my way 
 I would have a speculation master attached to every school. 
 The boys should be encouraged to read the Money Market 
 Review, the Railway News, and all the best financial papers, 
 and should establish a stock exchange amongst themselves in 
 which pence should stand as pounds. Then let them see 
 how this making haste to get rich moneys out in actual prac- 
 tice. There might be a prize awarded by the head-master to 
 the most prudent dealer, and boys who lost their money time 
 after time should be dismissed. Of course if any boy proved 
 to have a genius for speculation and made money — well and 
 good, let him speculate by all means. 
 
 If Universities were not the worst teachers in the world I 
 358 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 should like to see professorships of speculation established 
 at Oxford and Cambridge. When I reflect, however, that the 
 only things worth doing which Oxford and Cambridge can 
 do well are cooking, cricket, rowing and games, of which 
 there is no professorship, I fear that the estabUshment of a 
 professional chair would end in teaching young men neither 
 how to speculate, nor how not to speculate, but would simply 
 turn them out as bad speculators. 
 
 I heard of one case in which a father actually carried my 
 idea into practice. He wanted his son to learn how little con- 
 fidence was to be placed in glowing prospectuses and flaming 
 articles, and found him five hundred pounds which he was to in- 
 vest according to his hghts. The father expected he would lose 
 the money ; but it did not turn out so in practice, for the boy 
 took so much pains and played so cautiously that the money 
 kept growing and growing till the father took it away again, 
 increment and all — as he was pleased to say, in self defence. 
 
 I had made my own mistakes with money about the year 
 1846, when everyone else was making them. For a few years 
 I had been so scared and had suffered so severely, that when 
 (owing to the good advice of the broker who had advised my 
 father and grandfather before me) I came out in the end a 
 winner and not a loser, I played no more pranks, but kept 
 henceforward as nearly in the middle of the middle rut as 
 I could. I tried in fact to keep my money rather than to 
 make more of it. I had done with Ernest's money as with 
 my own — that is to say I had let it alone after investing it in 
 Midland ordinary stock according to Miss Pontifex's instruc- 
 tions. No amount of trouble would have been likely to have 
 increased my godson's estate one half so much as it had 
 increased without my taking any trouble at all. 
 
 Midland stock at the end of August 1850, when I sold out 
 Miss Pontifex's debentures, stood at ;^32 per ;^ioo. I in- 
 vested the whole of Ernest's ;^i 5,000 at this price, and did 
 not change the investment till a few months before the time 
 of which I have been writing lately — that is to say until 
 September 1861. I then sold at ^^129 per share and 
 invested in London and North- Western ordinary stock, which 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 I was advised was more likely to rise than Midlands now 
 were. I bought the London and North-Western stock at 
 j£93 psr ;^ioo, and my godson now in 1882 still holds it. 
 
 The original ;^i 5,000 had increased in eleven years to 
 over ;^6o,ooo ; the accumulated interest, which, of course, 
 I had re-invested, had come to about ^{^ 10,000 more, so that 
 Ernest was then worth over jQ']o,ooo. At present he is 
 worth nearly double that sum, and all as the result of leaving 
 well alone. 
 
 Large as his property now was, it ought to be increased 
 still further during the year and a half that remained of his 
 minority, so that on coming of age he ought to have an 
 income of at least ;^3,5oo a year. 
 
 I wished him to understand book-keeping by double entry. 
 I had myself as a young man been compelled to master this 
 not very difificult art ; having acquired it, I have become 
 enamoured of it, and consider it the most necessary branch 
 of any young man's education after reading and writing. I was 
 determined, therefore, that Ernest should master it, and pro- 
 posed that he should become my steward, book-keeper, and 
 the manager of my hoardings, for so I called the sum which 
 my ledger showed to have accumulated from ^15,000 to 
 ;^7o,ooo. I told him I was going to begin to spend the 
 income as soon as it had mounted up to ;!^8o,ooo. 
 
 A few days after Ernest's discovery that he was still a 
 bachelor, while he was still at the very beginning of the 
 honeymoon, as it were, of his renewed unmarried life, I 
 broached my scheme, desired him to give up his shop, and 
 offered him ;^3oo a year for managing (so far indeed as it 
 required any managing) his own property. This ^300 a 
 year, I need hardly say, I made him charge to the estate. 
 
 If anything had been wanting to complete his happiness it 
 was this. Here, within three or four days he found himself 
 freed from one of the most hideous, hopeless liaisons imagin- 
 able, and at the same time raised from a life of almost squalor 
 to the enjoyment of what would to him be a handsome income. 
 
 " A pound a week," he thought, " for Ellen, and the rest 
 for myself." 
 
 360 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " No," said I, " we will charge Ellen's pound a week to the 
 estate also. You must have a clear ^^300 for yourself." 
 
 I fixed upon this sum, because it was the one which Mr 
 Disraeli gave Coningsby when Coningsby was at the lowest 
 ebb of his fortunes. Mr Disraeli evidently thought ;;^300 
 a year the smallest sum on which Coningsby could be 
 expected to live, and make the two ends meet; with this, 
 however, he thought his hero could manage to get along for 
 a year or two. In 1862, of which I am now writing, prices 
 had risen, though not so much as they have since done ; on 
 the other hand Ernest had had less expensive antecedents 
 than Coningsby, so on the whole I thought ;:^3oo a year 
 would be about the right thing for him. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIX 
 
 The question now arose what was to be done with the 
 children. I explained to Ernest that their expenses must 
 be charged to the estate, and showed him how small a hole 
 all the various items I proposed to charge would make in 
 the income at my disposal. He was beginning to make 
 difficulties, when I quieted him by pointing out that the 
 money had all come to me from his aunt, over his own 
 head, and reminded him there had been an understanding 
 between her and me that I should do much as I was doing, 
 if occasion should arise. 
 
 He wanted his children to be brought up in the fresh 
 pure air, and among other children who were happy and 
 contented ; but being still ignorant of the fortune that 
 awaited him, he insisted that they should pass their earlier 
 years among the poor rather than the rich, I remonstrated, 
 but he was very decided about it ; and when I reflected that 
 they were illegitimate, I was not sure but that what Ernest 
 proposed might be as well for everyone in the end. They 
 were still so young that it did not much matter where they 
 were, so long as they were with kindly decent people, and in a 
 healthy neighbourhood. 
 
 361 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " I shall be just as unkind to my children," he said, " as 
 my grandfather was to my father, or my father to me. If 
 they did not succeed in making their children love them, 
 neither shall I. I say to myself that I should like to do so, 
 but so did they. I can make sure that they shall not know- 
 how much they would have hated me if they had had much 
 to do with me, but this is all I can do. If I must ruin 
 their prospects, let me do so at a reasonable time before they 
 are old enough to feel it." 
 
 He mused a little and added with a laugh : — 
 
 " A man first quarrels with his father about three-quarters 
 of a year before he is born. It is then he insists on setting 
 up a separate establishment ; when this has been once agreed 
 to, the more complete the separation for ever after the better 
 for both." Then he said more seriously : " I want to put 
 the children where they will be well and happy, and where they 
 will not be betrayed into the misery of false expectations." 
 
 In the end he remembered that on his Sunday walks he 
 had more than once seen a couple who lived on the water- 
 side a few miles below Gravesend, just where the sea was 
 beginning, and who he thought would do. They had a 
 family of their own fast coming on and the children seemed 
 to thrive ; both father and mother indeed were comfortable 
 well grown folks, in whose hands young people would be 
 likely to have as fair a chance of coming to a good develop- 
 ment as in those of any whom he knew. 
 
 We went down to see this couple, and as I thought no 
 less well of them than Ernest did, we offered them a pound 
 a week to take the children and bring them up as though 
 they were their own. They jumped at the offer, and in 
 another day or two we brought the children down and left 
 them, feehng that we had done as well as we could by them, 
 at any rate for the present. Then Ernest sent his small 
 stock of goods to Debenham's, gave up the house he had 
 taken two and half years previously, and returned to civilisa- 
 tion. 
 
 I had expected that he would now rapidly recover, and 
 was disappointed to see him get as I thought decidedly 
 
 -.62 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 worse. Indeed, before long I thought him looking so ill 
 that I insisted on his going with me to consult one of the 
 most eminent doctors in London. This gentleman said 
 there was no acute disease but that my young friend was 
 suffering from nervous prostration, the result of long and 
 severe mental suffering, from which there was no remedy 
 except time, prosperity and rest. 
 
 He said that Ernest must have broken down later on, but 
 that he might have gone on for some months yet. It was 
 the suddenness of the relief from tension which had knocked 
 him over now. 
 
 " Cross him," said the doctor, " at once. Crossing is the 
 great medical discovery of the age. Shake him out of him- 
 self by shaking something else into him." 
 
 I had not told him that money was no object to us and I 
 think he had reckoned me up as not over rich. He con- 
 tinued : — 
 
 "Seeing is a mode of touching, touching is a mode of 
 feeding, feeding is a mode of assimilation, assimilation is a 
 mode of re-creation and reproduction, and this is crossing — 
 shaking yourself into something else and something else into 
 you." 
 
 He spoke laughingly, but it was plain he was serious. He 
 continued : — 
 
 " People are always coming to me who want crossing, or 
 change, if you prefer it, and who I know have not money 
 enough to let them get away from London. This has set 
 me thinking how I can best cross them even if they cannot 
 leave home, and I have made a list of cheap London amuse- 
 ments which I recommend to my patients ; none of them cost 
 more than a few shillings or take more than half a day or a 
 day." 
 
 I explained that there was no occasion to consider money 
 in this case. 
 
 " I am glad of it," he said, still laughing. " The homceo- 
 pathists use aurion as a medicine, but they do not give it 
 in large doses enough ; if you can dose your young friend 
 with this pretty freely you will soon bring him round. How- 
 
 363 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 ever, Mr Pontifex is not well enough to stand so great a 
 change as going abroad yet ; from what you tell me I should 
 think he had had as much change lately as is good for him. 
 If he were to go abroad now he w^ould probably be taken 
 seriously ill within a week. We must wait till he has re- 
 covered tone a little more. I will begin by ringing my 
 London changes on him." 
 
 He thought a little and then said : — 
 
 " I have found the Zoological Gardens of service to many 
 of my patients. I should prescribe for Mr Pontifex a course 
 of the larger mammals. Don't let him think he is taking 
 them medicinally, but let him go to their house twice a week 
 for a fortnight, and stay with the hippopotamus, the rhino- 
 ceros, and the elephants, till they begin to bore him. I find 
 these beasts do my patients more good than any others. 
 The monkeys are not a wide enough cross; they do not 
 stimulate sufficiently. The larger carnivora are unsympathetic. 
 The reptiles are worse than useless, and the marsupials are 
 not much better. Birds again, except parrots, are not very 
 beneficial ; he may look at them now and again, but with the 
 elephants and the pig tribe generally he should mix just now 
 as freely as possible. 
 
 " Then, you know, to prevent monotony I should send 
 him, say, to morning service at the Abbey before he goes. 
 He need not stay longer than the Te Deutn. I don't know 
 why, hvi\. Jubilates are seldom satisfactory. Just let him look 
 in at the Abbey, and sit quietly in Poets' Corner till the main 
 part of the music is over. Let him do this two or three 
 times, not more, before he goes to the Zoo. 
 
 "Then next day send him down to Gravesend by boat. 
 By all means let him go to the theatres in the evenings — and 
 then let him come to me again in a fortnight." 
 
 Had the doctor been less eminent in his profession I 
 should have doubted whether he was in earnest, but I knew 
 him to be a man of business who would neither waste his 
 own time nor that of his patients. As soon as we were out 
 of the house we took a cab to Regent's Park, and spent a 
 couple of hours in sauntering round the different houses. 
 
 364 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Perhaps it was on account of what the doctor had told me, 
 but I certainly became aware of a feeling I had never ex- 
 perienced before. I mean that I was receiving an influx of 
 new life, or deriving new ways of looking at life — which is 
 the same thing — by the process. I found the doctor quite 
 right in his estimate of the larger mammals as the ones which 
 on the whole were most beneficial, and observed that Ernest, 
 who had heard nothing of what the doctor had said to me, 
 lingered instinctively in front of them. As for the elephants, 
 especially the baby elephant, he seemed to be drinking in 
 large draughts of their lives to the re-creation and regenera- 
 tion of his own. 
 
 We dined in the gardens, and I noticed with pleasure that 
 Ernest's appetite was already improved. Since this time, 
 whenever I have been a little out of sorts myself I have at 
 once gone up to Regent's Park, and have invariably been 
 benefited. I mention this here in the hope that some one 
 or other of my readers may find the hint a useful one. 
 
 At the end of his fortnight my hero was much better, more 
 so even than our friend the doctor had expected. " Now," 
 he said, " Mr Pontifex may go abroad, and the sooner the 
 better. Let him stay a couple of months." 
 
 This was the first Ernest had heard about his going 
 abroad, and he talked about my not being able to spare him 
 for so long. I soon made this all right. 
 
 "It is now the beginning of April," said I, "go down to 
 Marseilles at once, and take steamer to Nice. Then saunter 
 down the Riviera to Genoa — from Genoa go to Florence, 
 Rome and Naples, and come home by way of Venice and 
 the Itahan lakes." 
 
 " And won't you come too ? " said he, eagerly. 
 
 I said I did not mind if I did, so we began to make our 
 arrangements next morning, and completed them within a 
 very few days. 
 
 365 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LXXX 
 
 We left by the night mail, crossing from Dover. The night 
 was soft, and there was a bright moon upon the sea. " Don't 
 you love the smell of grease about the engine of a Channel 
 §teamer ? Isn't there a lot of hope in it ? " said Ernest to 
 me, for he had been to Normandy one summer as a boy 
 with his father and mother, and the smell carried him back 
 to days before those in which he had begun to bruise himself 
 against the great outside world. " I always think one of the 
 best parts of going abroad is the first thud of the piston, and 
 the first gurgling of the water when the paddle begins to 
 strike it." 
 
 It was very dreamy getting out at Calais, and trudging 
 about with luggage in a foreign town at an hour when we 
 were generally both of us in bed and fast asleep, but we 
 settled down to sleep as soon as we got into the railway 
 carriage, and dozed till we had passed Amiens. Then 
 waking when the first signs of morning crispness were begin- 
 ning to show themselves, I saw that Ernest was already 
 devouring every object we passed with quick sympathetic 
 curiousness. There was not a peasant in a blouse driving 
 his cart betimes along the road to market, not a signalman's 
 wife in her husband's hat and coat waving a green flag, not a 
 shepherd taking out his sheep to the dewy pastures, not a 
 bank of opening cowslips as we passed through the railway 
 cuttings, but he was drinking it all in with an enjoyment too 
 deep for words. The name of the engine that drew us 
 was Mozart, and Ernest liked this too. 
 
 We reached Paris by six, and had just time to get across 
 the town and take a morning express train to Marseilles, but 
 before noon my young friend was tired out and had resigned 
 himself to a series of sleeps which were seldom intermitted 
 for more than an hour or so together. He fought against 
 this for a time, but in the end consoled himself by saying it 
 was so nice to have so much pleasure that he could afford to 
 
 366 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 throw a lot of it away. Having found a theory on which to 
 justify himself, he slept in peace. 
 
 At Marseilles we rested, and there the excitement of the 
 change proved, as I had half feared it would, too much for 
 my godson's still enfeebled state. For a few days he was 
 really ill, but after this he righted. For my own part I 
 reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided 
 one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. 
 I remember being ill once in a foreign hotel myself and how 
 much I enjoyed it. To lie there careless of everything, quiet 
 and warm, and with no weight upon the mind, to hear the 
 clinking of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the scullion 
 rinsed them and put them by ; to watch the soft shadows 
 come and go upon the ceihng as the sun came out or went 
 behind a cloud ; to listen to the pleasant murmuring of the 
 fountain in the court below, and the shaking of the bells on 
 the horses' collars and the clink of their hoofs upon the 
 ground as the flies plagued them ; not only to be a lotus- 
 eater but to know that it was one's duty to be a lotus-eater. 
 " Oh," I thought to myself, " if I could only now, having so 
 forgotten care, drop off to sleep for ever, would not this be a 
 better piece of fortune than any I can ever hope for ? " 
 
 Of course it would, but we would not take it though it 
 were offered us. No matter what evil may befall us, we will 
 mostly abide by it and see it out. 
 
 I could see that Ernest felt much as I had felt myself. He 
 said Htde, but noted everything. Once only did he frighten 
 me. He called me to his bedside just as it was getting dusk 
 and said in a grave, quiet manner that he should like to speak 
 to me. 
 
 " I have been thinking," he said, " that I may perhaps 
 never recover from this illness, and in case I do not I should 
 like you to know that there is only one thing which weighs 
 upon me. I refer," he continued after a slight pause, "to 
 my conduct towards my father and mother. I have been 
 much too good to them. I treated them much too consider- 
 ately," on which he broke into a smile which assured me that 
 there v/as nothing seriously amiss with him. 
 
 367 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 On the walls of his bedroom were a series of French Revo- 
 lution prints representing events in the life of Lycurgus. 
 There was " Grandeur d'ame de Lycurgue," and " Lycurgue 
 consulte Toracle," and then there was " Calciope a la Cour." 
 Under this was written in French and Spanish : " ModMe de 
 grace et de beaute, la jeune Calciope non moins sage que 
 belle avait merite I'estime et Tattachement du vertueux 
 Lycurgue. Vivement epris de tant de charmes, I'illustre 
 philosophe la conduisait dans le temple de Junon, ou ils 
 s'unirent par un serment sacre. Apres cette auguste cere- 
 monie, Lycurgue s'empressa de conduire sa jeune epouse au 
 palais de son fr^re Polydecte, Roi de Lacedemon. Seigneur, 
 lui dit-il, la vertueuse Calciope vient de recevoir mes voeux 
 aux pieds des autels, j'ose vous prier d'approuver cette union. 
 Le Roi temoigna d'abord quelque surprise, mais I'estime qu'il 
 avait pour son frere lui inspira une reponse pleine de bien- 
 veillance. II s'approcha aussitot de Calciope qu'il embrassa 
 tendrement, combla ensuite Lycurgue de prevenances et parut 
 trbs satisfait." 
 
 He called my attention to this and then said somewhat 
 timidly that he would rather have married Ellen than Calciope. 
 I saw he was hardening and made no hesitation about pro- 
 posing that in another day or two we should proceed upon 
 our journey. 
 
 I will not weary the reader by taking him with us over 
 beaten ground. We stopped at Siena, Cortona, Orvieto, 
 Perugia and many other cities, and then after a fortnight 
 passed between Rome and Naples went to the Venetian 
 provinces and visited all those wondrous towns that He be- 
 tween the southern slopes of the Alps and the northern ones 
 of the Apennines, coming back at last by the S. Gothard. 
 I doubt whether he had enjoyed the trip more than I did 
 myself, but it was not till we were on the point of returning 
 that Ernest had recovered strength enough to be called fairly 
 well, and it was not for many months that he so completely 
 lost all sense of the wounds which the last four years had 
 inflicted on him as to feel as though there were a scar and a 
 scar only remaining. 
 
 368 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 They say that when people have lost an arm or a foot they 
 feel pains in it now and again for a long while after they have 
 lost it. One pain which he had almost forgotten came upon 
 him on his return to England, I mean the sting of his having 
 been imprisoned. As long as he was only a small shop- 
 keeper his imprisonment mattered nothing; nobody knew 
 of it, and if they had known they would not have cared ; 
 now, however, though he was returning to his old position 
 he was returning to it disgraced, and the pain from which he 
 had been saved in the first instance by surroundings so new 
 that he had hardly recognised his own identity in the middle 
 of them, came on him as from a wound inflicted yesterday. 
 
 He thought of the high resolves which he had made in 
 prison about using his disgrace as a vantage ground of 
 strength rather than trying to make people forget it. " That 
 was all very well then," he thought to himself, "when the 
 grapes were beyond my reach, but now it is different." 
 Besides, who but a prig would set himself high aims, or 
 make high resolves at all? 
 
 Some of his old friends, on learning that he had got rid 
 of his supposed wife and was now comfortably off again, 
 wanted to renew their acquaintance ; he was grateful to 
 them and sometimes tried to meet their advances half way, 
 but it did not do, and ere long he shrank back into himself, 
 pretending not to know them. An infernal demon of honesty 
 haunted him which made him say to himself: "These men 
 know a great deal, but do not know all — if they did they 
 would cut me — and therefore I have no right to their 
 acquaintance." 
 
 He thought that everyone except himself was sans peur 
 et sans reproche. Of course they must be, for if they had 
 not been, would they not have been bound to warn all 
 who had anything to do with them of their deficiencies ? 
 Well, he could not do this, and he would not have people's 
 acquaintance under false pretences, so he gave up even 
 hankering after rehabihtation and fell back upon his old 
 tastes for music and literature. 
 
 Of course he has long since found out how silly all this 
 2 A 369 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 was, how silly I mean in theory, for in practice it worked 
 better than it ought to have done, by keeping him free from 
 liaisons which would have tied his tongue and made him see 
 success elsewhere than where he came in time to see it. 
 He did what he did instinctively and for no other reason 
 than because it was most natural to him. So far as he 
 thought at all, he thought wrong, but what he did was right. 
 I said something of this kind to him once not so very long 
 ago, and told him he had always aimed high. " I never 
 aimed at all," he replied a little indignantly, "and you may 
 be sure I should have aimed low enough if I had thought I 
 had got the chance." 
 
 I suppose after all that no one whose mind was not, to put 
 it mildly, abnormal, ever yet aimed very high out of pure 
 malice aforethought. I once saw a fly alight on a cup of hot 
 coffee on which the milk had formed a thin skin ; he per- 
 ceived his extreme danger, and I noted with what ample 
 strides and almost supermuscan effort he struck across the 
 treacherous surface and made for the edge of the cup — for 
 the ground was not solid enough to let him raise himself 
 from it by his wings. As I watched him I fancied that so 
 supreme a moment of difficulty and danger might leave him 
 with an increase of moral and physical power which might 
 even descend in some measure to his offspring. But surely 
 he would not have got the increased moral power if he could 
 have helped it, and he will not knowingly alight upon another 
 cup of hot coffee. The more I see the more sure I am that 
 it does not matter why people do the right thing so long 
 only as they do it, nor why they may have done the wrong 
 if they have done it. The result depends upon the thing 
 done and the motive goes for nothing. I have read some- 
 where, but cannot remember where, that in some country 
 district there was once a great scarcity of food, during which 
 the poor suffered acutely; many indeed actually died of 
 starvation, and all were hard put to it. In one village, how- 
 ever, there was a poor widow with a family of young children, 
 who, though she had small visible means of subsistence, still 
 looked well-fed and comfortable, as also did all her little 
 
 370 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 ones. "How," everyone asked, " did they manage to live?" 
 It was plain they had a secret, and it was equally plain that 
 it could be no good one ; for there came a hurried, hunted 
 look over the poor woman's face if anyone alluded to the 
 way in which she and hers throve when others starved ; the 
 family, moreover, were sometimes seen out at unusual hours 
 of the night, and evidently brought things home, which could 
 hardly have been honestly come by. They knew they were 
 under suspicion, and, being hitherto of excellent name, it 
 made them very unhappy, for it must be confessed that they 
 believed what they did to be uncanny if not absolutely 
 wicked ; nevertheless, in spite of this they throve, and kept 
 their strength when all their neighbours were pinched. 
 
 At length matters came to a head and the clergyman of the 
 parish cross-questioned the poor woman so closely that with 
 many tears and a bitter sense of degradation she confessed 
 the truth; she and her children went into the hedges and 
 gathered snails, which they made into broth and ate — could 
 she ever be forgiven ? Was there any hope of salvation for 
 her either in this world or the next after such unnatural 
 conduct ? 
 
 So again I have heard of an old dowager countess whose 
 money was all in Consols ; she had had many sons, and in 
 her anxiety to give the younger ones a good start, wanted a 
 larger income than Consols would give her. She consulted 
 her solicitor and was advised to sell her Consols and invest 
 in the London and North-Western Railway, then at about 
 85. This was to her what eating snails was to the poor 
 widow whose story I have told above. With shame and 
 grief, as of one doing an unclean thing — but her boys must 
 have their start — she did as she was advised. Then for a 
 long while she could not sleep at night and was haunted 
 by a presage of disaster. Yet what happened ? She started 
 her boys, and in a few years found her capital doubled into 
 the bargain, on which she sold out and went back again to 
 Consols and died in the full blessedness of fund-holding. 
 
 She thought, indeed, that she was doing a wrong and 
 dangerous thing, but this had absolutely nothing to do with 
 
 371 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 it. Suppose she had invested in the full confidence of a 
 recommendation by some eminent London banker whose 
 advice was bad, and so had lost all her money, and suppose 
 she had done this with a light heart and with no conviction 
 of sin — would her innocence of evil purpose and the excel- 
 lence of her motive have stood her in any stead? Not they. 
 But to return to my story. Towneley gave my hero most 
 trouble. Towneley, as I have said, knew that Ernest would 
 have money soon, but Ernest did not of course know that he 
 knew it. Towneley was rich himself, and was married now ; 
 Ernest would be rich soon, had bona fide intended to be 
 married already, and would doubtless marry a lawful wife 
 later on. Such a man was worth taking pains with, and 
 when Towneley one day met Ernest in the street, and Ernest 
 tried to avoid him, Towneley would not have it, but with his 
 usual quick good nature read his thoughts, caught him, 
 morally speaking, by the scruff of his neck, and turned him 
 laughingly inside out, telling him he would have no such 
 nonsense. 
 
 Towneley was just as much Ernest's idol now as he had ever 
 been, and Ernest, who was very easily touched, felt more 
 gratefully and warmly than ever towards him, but there was 
 an unconscious something which was stronger than Towneley, 
 and made my hero determine to break with him more 
 determinedly perhaps than with any other living person ; he 
 thanked him in a low hurried voice and pressed his hand, while 
 tears came into his eyes in spite of all his efforts to repress them. 
 " If we meet again," he said, " do not look at me, but if here- 
 after you hear of me writing things you do not like, think of 
 me as charitably as you can," and so they parted. 
 
 "Towneley is a good fellow," said I, gravely, "and you 
 should not have cut him." 
 
 " Towneley," he answered, " is not only a good fellow, but 
 he is without exception the very best man I ever saw in my 
 life — except," he paid me the compliment of saying, " your- 
 self; Towneley is my notion of everything which I should 
 most like to be — but there is no real solidarity between us. 
 I should be in perpetual fear of losing his good opinion if I 
 
 372 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 said things he did not like, and I mean to say a great many 
 things," he continued more merrily, " which Towneley will 
 not like." 
 
 A man, as I have said already, can give up father and 
 mother for Christ's sake tolerably easily for the most part, 
 but it is not so easy to give up people like Towneley. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXI 
 
 So he fell away from all old friends except myself and three 
 or four old intimates of my own, who were as sure to take to 
 him as he to them, and who like myself enjoyed getting hold 
 of a young fresh mind. Ernest attended to the keeping of 
 my account books whenever there was anything which could 
 possibly be attended to, which there seldom was, and spent 
 the greater part of the rest of his time in adding to the many 
 notes and tentative essays which had already accumulated in 
 his portfolios. Anyone who was used to writing could see at 
 a glance that literature was his natural development, and I 
 was pleased at seeing him settle down to it so spontaneously. 
 I was less pleased, however, to observe that he would still 
 occupy himself with none but the most serious, I had almost 
 said solemn, subjects, just as he never cared about any but 
 the most serious kind of music. 
 
 I said to him one day that the very slender reward which 
 God had attached to the pursuit of serious inquiry was a 
 sufficient proof that He disapproved of it, or at any rate that 
 He did not set much store by it nor wish to encourage it. 
 
 He said : " Oh, don't talk about rewards. Look at Milton, 
 who only got ^5 for ' Paradise Lost.' " 
 
 " And a great deal too much," I rejoined promptly. " I 
 would have given him twice as much myself not to have 
 written it at all." 
 
 Ernest was a little shocked. "At any rate," he said 
 laughingly, " I don't write poetry." 
 
 This was a cut at me, for my burlesques were, of course, 
 written in rhyme. So I dropped the matter. 
 
 373 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 After a time he took it into his head to re-open the ques- 
 tion of his getting ;^3oo a year for doing, as he said, 
 absolutely nothing, and said he would try to find some 
 employment which should bring him in enough to Hve upon. 
 
 I laughed at this but let him alone. He tried and tried 
 very hard for a long while, but I need hardly say was unsuc- 
 cessful. The older I grow, the more convinced I become of 
 the folly and credulity of the public ; but at the same time 
 the harder do I see it is to impose oneself upon that folly 
 and credulity. 
 
 He tried editor after editor with article after article. 
 Sometimes an editor Hstened to him and told him to leave 
 his articles ; he almost invariably, however, had them returned 
 to him in the end with a polite note saying that they were 
 not suited for the particular paper to which he had sent them. 
 And yet many of these very articles appeared in his later 
 works, and no one complained of them, not at least on the 
 score of bad literary workmanship. " I see," he said to me 
 one day, " that demand is very imperious, and supply must 
 be very suppliant." 
 
 Once, indeed, the editor of an important monthly magazine 
 accepted an article from him, and he thought he had now got 
 a footing in the literary world. The article was to appear in 
 the next issue but one, and he was to receive proof from the 
 printers in about ten days or a fortnight ; but week after 
 week passed and there was no proof; month after month 
 went by and there was still no room for Ernest's article ; at 
 length after about six months the editor one morning told 
 him that he had filled every number of his review for the 
 next ten months, but that his article should definitely appear. 
 On this he insisted on having his MS. returned to him. 
 
 Sometimes his articles were actually published, and he 
 found the editor had edited them according to his own fancy, 
 putting in jokes which he thought were funny, or cutting out 
 the very passage which Ernest had considered the point of the 
 whole thing, and then, though the articles appeared, when it 
 came to paying for them it was another matter, and he never 
 saw his money. " Editors," he said to me one day about this 
 
 374 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 time, "are like the people who bought and sold in the book 
 of Revelation ; there is not one but has the mark of the 
 beast upon him," 
 
 At last after months of disappointment and many a tedious 
 hour wasted in dingy ante-rooms (and of all ante-rooms those 
 of editors appear to me to be the dreariest), he got a botiafide 
 offer of employment from one of the first-class weekly papers 
 through an introduction I was able to get for him from one 
 who had powerful influence with the paper in question. The 
 editor sent him a dozen long books upon varied and difficult 
 subjects, and told him to review them in a single article 
 within a week. In one book there was an editorial note to 
 the effect that the writer was to be condemned. Ernest par- 
 ticularly admired the book he was desired to condemn, and 
 feeling how hopeless it was for him to do anything like 
 justice to the books submitted to him, returned them to the 
 editor. 
 
 At last one paper did actually take a dozen or so of 
 articles from him, and gave him cash down a couple of 
 guineas apiece for them, but having done this it expired 
 within a fortnight after the last of Ernest's articles had ap- 
 peared. It certainly looked very much as if the other editors 
 knew their business in declining to have anything to do with 
 my unlucky godson. 
 
 I was not sorry that he failed with periodical literature, for 
 writing for reviews or newspapers is bad training for one who 
 may aspire to write works of more permanent interest. A 
 young writer should have more time for reflection than he 
 can get as a contributor to the daily or even weekly press. 
 Ernest himself, however, was chagrined at finding how un- 
 marketable he was. " Why," he said to me, " If I was a 
 well-bred horse, or sheep, or a pure-bred pigeon or lop- 
 eared rabbit I should be more saleable. If I was even a 
 cathedral in a colonial town people would give me some- 
 thing, but as it is they do not want me " ; and now that he 
 was well and rested he wanted to set up a shop again, but 
 this, of course, I would not hear of. 
 
 " What care I," said he to me one day, " about being 
 375 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 what they call a gentleman ? " And his manner was almost 
 fierce. 
 
 " What has being a gentleman ever done for me except 
 make me less able to prey and more easy to be preyed 
 upon? It has changed the manner of my being swindled, 
 that is all. But for your kindness to me I should be 
 penniless. Thank heaven I have placed my children where 
 I have." 
 
 I begged him to keep quiet a little longer and not talk 
 about taking a shop. 
 
 " Will being a gentleman," he said, " bring me money at 
 the last, and will anything bring me as much peace at the 
 last as money will? They say that those who have riches 
 enter hardly into the kingdom of Heaven. By Jove, they 
 do ; they are like Struldbrugs ; they live and live and live 
 and are happy for many a long year after they would have 
 entered into the kingdom of Heaven if they had been poor. 
 I want to live long and to raise my children, if I see they 
 would be happier for the raising ; that is what I want, and it 
 is not what I am doing now that will help me. Being a 
 gentleman is a luxury which I cannot afford, therefore I do 
 not want it. Let me go back to my shop again, and do 
 things for people which they want done and will pay me for 
 doing for them. They know what they want and what is 
 good for them better than I can tell them." 
 
 It was hard to deny the soundness of this, and if he had 
 been dependent only on the ^300 a year which he was get- 
 ting from me I should have advised him to open his shop 
 again next morning. As it was, I temporised and raised 
 obstacles, and quieted him from time to time as best I 
 could. 
 
 Of course he read Mr Darwin's books as fast as they came 
 out and adopted evolution as an article of faith. " It seems 
 to me," he said once, " that I am like one of those cater- 
 pillars which, if they have been interrupted in making their 
 hammock, must begin again from the beginning. So long as 
 I went back a long way down in the social scale I got on all 
 right, and should have made money but for Ellen ; when I 
 
 376 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 try to take up the work at a higher stage I fail completely." 
 I do not know whether the analogy holds good or not, but I 
 am sure Ernest's instinct was right in telling him that after a 
 heavy fall he had better begin life again at a very low stage, 
 and as I have just said, I would have let him go back to his 
 shop if I had not known what I did. 
 
 As the time fixed upon by his aunt drew nearer I prepared 
 him more and more for what was coming, and at last, on his 
 twenty-eighth birthday, I was able to tell him all and to 
 show him the letter signed by his aunt upon her death-bed 
 to the effect that I was to hold the money in trust for him. 
 His birthday happened that year (1863) to be on a Sunday, 
 but on the following day I transferred his shares into his own 
 name, and presented him with the account books which he 
 had been keeping for the last year and a half. 
 
 In spite of all that I had done to prepare him, it was a 
 long while before I could get him actually to believe that the 
 money was his own. He did not say much — no more did I, for 
 I am not sure that I did not feel as much moved at having 
 brought my long trusteeship to a satisfactory conclusion as 
 Ernest did at finding himself owner of more than ^70,000, 
 When he did speak it was to jerk out a sentence or two of 
 reflection at a time. " If I were rendering this moment in 
 music," he said, " I should allow myself free use of the aug- 
 mented sixth." A little later I remember his saying with a 
 laugh that had something of a family likeness to his aunt's : 
 " It is not the pleasure it causes me which I enjoy so, it is 
 the pain it will cause to all my friends except yourself and 
 Towneley." 
 
 I said : " You cannot tell your father and mother — it 
 would drive them mad." 
 
 "No, no, no," said he, "it would be too cruel ; it would be 
 like Isaac offering up Abraham and no thicket with a ram in 
 it near at hand. Besides why should I ? We have cut each 
 other these four years." 
 
 377 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXII 
 
 It almost seemed as though our casual mention of Theobald 
 and Christina had in some way excited them from a dormant 
 to an active state. During the years that had elapsed since 
 they last appeared upon the scene they had remained at 
 Battersby, and had concentrated their affection upon their 
 other children. 
 
 It had been a bitter pill to Theobald to lose his power of 
 plaguing his first-born ; if the truth were known I believe he 
 had felt this more acutely than any disgrace which might 
 have been shed upon him by Ernest's imprisonment. He 
 had made one or two attempts to reopen negotiations through 
 me, but I never said anything about them to Ernest, for 
 I knew it would upset him. I wrote, however, to Theobald 
 that I had found his son inexorable, and recommended him 
 for the present, at any rate, to desist from returning to the 
 subject. This I thought would be at once what Ernest 
 would like best and Theobald least. 
 
 A few days, however, after Ernest had come into his 
 property, I received a letter from Theobald enclosing one for 
 Ernest which I could not withhold. 
 
 The letter ran thus : — 
 
 To MY SON Ernest, — Although you have more than once 
 rejected my overtures I appeal yet again to your better 
 nature. Your mother, who has long been ailing, is, I believe, 
 near her end ; she is unable to keep anything on her stomach, 
 and Dr Martin holds out but little hopes of her recovery. 
 She has expressed a wish to see you, and says she knows you 
 will not refuse to come to her, which, considering her con- 
 dition, I am unwilHng to suppose you will. 
 
 I remit you a Post Office order for your fare, and will pay 
 your return journey. 
 
 If you want clothes to come in, order what you consider 
 suitable, and desire that the bill be sent to me ; I will pay it 
 
 37S 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 immediately, to an amount not exceeding eight or nine 
 pounds, and if you will let me know what train you will 
 come by, I will send the carriage to meet you. Believe me. 
 Your affectionate father, T. Pontifex. 
 
 Of course there could be no hesitation on Ernest's part. 
 He could afford to smile now at his father's offering to pay 
 for his clothes, and his sending him a Post Office order for 
 the exact price of a second-class ticket, and he was of course 
 shocked at learning the state his mother was said to be in, 
 and touched at her desire to see him. He telegraphed that 
 he would come down at once. I saw him a little before he 
 started, and was pleased to see how well his tailor had done 
 by him. Towneley himself could not have been appointed 
 more becomingly. His portmanteau, his railway wrapper, 
 everything he had about him, was in keeping. I thought he 
 had grown much better-looking than he had been at two or 
 three and twenty. His year and a half of peace had effaced 
 all the ill effects of his previous suffering, and now that he 
 had become actually rich there was an air of insouciance and 
 good humour upon his face, as of a man with whom every- 
 thing was going perfectly right, which would have made a 
 much plainer man good-looking. I was proud of him and 
 delighted with him. " I am sure," I said to myself, " that 
 whatever else he may do, he will never marry again." 
 
 The journey was a painful one. As he drew near to the 
 station and caught sight of each familiar feature, so strong 
 was the force of association that he felt as though his coming 
 into his aunt's money had been a dream, and he were again 
 returning to his father's house as he had returned to it from 
 Cambridge for the vacations. Do what he would, the old 
 dull weight of home-sickness began to oppress him, his heart 
 beat fast as he thought of his approaching meeting with his 
 father and mother, "and I shall have," he said to himself, 
 "to kiss Charlotte." 
 
 Would his father meet him at the station? Would he 
 greet him as though nothing had happened, or would he be 
 cold and distant ? How, again, would he take the news of 
 
 379 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 his son's good fortune ? As the train drew up to the plat- 
 form, Ernest's eye ran hurriedly over the few people who 
 were in the station. His father's well-known form was not 
 among them, but on the other side of the palings which 
 divided the station yard from the platform, he saw the pony 
 carriage, looking, as he thought, rather shabby, and recog- 
 nised his father's coachman. In a few minutes more he was 
 in the carriage driving towards Battersby. He could not 
 help smiling as he saw the coachman give a look of surprise 
 at finding him so much changed in personal appearance. 
 The coachman was the more surprised because when Ernest 
 had last been at home he had been dressed as a clergyman, 
 and now he was not only a layman, but a layman who was 
 got up regardless of expense. The change was so great that 
 it was not till Ernest actually spoke to him that the coachman 
 knew him. 
 
 " How are my father and mother ? " he asked hurriedly, as 
 he got into the carriage. " The Master's well, sir," was the 
 answer, " but the Missis is very sadly." The horse knew that 
 he was going home and pulled hard at the reins. The 
 weather was cold and raw — the very ideal of a November 
 day ; in one part of the road the floods were out, and near 
 here they had to pass through a number of horsemen and 
 dogs, for the hounds had met that morning at a place near 
 Battersby. Ernest saw several people whom he knew, but 
 they either, as is most likely, did not recognise him, or did 
 not know of his good luck. When Battersby church tower 
 drew near, and he saw the Rectory on the top of the hill, its 
 chimneys just showing above the leafless trees with which it 
 was surrounded, he threw himself back in the carriage and 
 covered his face with his hands. 
 
 It came to an end, as even the worst quarters of an hour 
 do, and in a few minutes more he was on the steps in front 
 of his father's house. His father, hearing the carriage arrive, 
 came a little way down the steps to meet him. Like the 
 coachman he saw at a glance that Ernest was appointed as 
 though money were abundant with him, and that he was 
 looking robust and full of health and vigour. 
 
 380 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 This was not what he had bargained for. He wanted 
 Ernest to return, but he was to return as any respectable, 
 well-regulated prodigal ought to return — abject, broken- 
 hearted, asking forgiveness from the tenderest and most 
 long-suffering father in the whole world. If he should 
 have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all, it should 
 be only because absolute rags and tatters had been graciously 
 dispensed with, whereas here he was swaggering in a grey 
 ulster and a blue and white neck-tie, and looking better than 
 Theobald had ever seen him in his life. It was unprincipled. 
 Was it for this that he had been generous enough to offer to 
 provide Ernest with decent clothes in which to come and 
 visit his mother's death-bed? Could any advantage be 
 meaner than the one which Ernest had taken ? Well, he 
 would not go a penny beyond the eight or nine pounds 
 which he had promised. It was fortunate he had given a 
 limit. Why he, Theobald, had never been able to afford 
 such a portmanteau in his life. He was still using an old 
 one which his father had turned over to him when he went 
 up to Cambridge. Besides, he had said clothes, not a port- 
 manteau. 
 
 Ernest saw what was passing through his father's mind, 
 and felt that he ought to have prepared him in some way for 
 what he now saw ; but he had sent his telegram so immediately 
 on receiving his father's letter, and had followed it so promptly 
 that it would not have been easy to do so even if he had 
 thought of it. He put out his hand and said laughingly, 
 " Oh, it's all paid for — I am afraid you do not know that 
 Mr Overton has handed over to me Aunt Alethea's money." 
 
 Theobald flushed scarlet. " But why," he said, and these 
 were the first words that actually crossed his lips — " if the 
 money was not his to keep, did he not hand it over to my 
 brother John and me ? " He stammered a good deal and 
 looked sheepish, but he got the words out. 
 
 " Because, my dear father," said Ernest still laughing, " my 
 aunt left it to him in trust for me, not in trust either for you 
 or for my Uncle John — and it has accumulated till it is now 
 over ;^7 0,000. But tell me how is my mother ?" 
 
 381 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " No, Ernest," said Theobald excitedly, " the matter can- 
 not rest here, I must know that this is all open and above 
 board." 
 
 This had the true Theobald ring and instantly brought 
 the whole train of ideas which in Ernest's mind were con- 
 nected with his father. The surroundings were the old 
 familiar ones, but the surrounded were changed almost 
 beyond power of recognition. He turned sharply on Theo- 
 bald in a moment. I will not repeat the words he used, 
 for they came out before he had time to consider them, and 
 they might strike some of my readers as disrespectful ; there 
 were not many of them, but they were effectual. Theobald 
 said nothing, but turned almost of an ashen colour ; he never 
 again spoke to his son in such a way as to make it necessary 
 for him to repeat what he had said on this occasion. Ernest 
 quickly recovered his temper and again asked after his mother. 
 Theobald was glad enough to take this opening now, and re- 
 plied at once in the tone he would have assumed towards 
 one he most particularly desired to conciliate, that she was 
 getting rapidly worse in spite of all he had been able to do 
 for her, and concluded by saying she had been the comfort 
 and mainstay of his life for more than thirty years, but that 
 he could not wish it prolonged. 
 
 The pair then went upstairs to Christina's room, the one 
 in which Ernest had been born. His father went before him 
 and prepared her for her son's approach. The poor woman 
 raised herself in bed as he came towards her, and weeping as 
 she flung her arms around him, cried : " Oh, I knew he 
 would come, I knew, I knew he would come." 
 
 Ernest broke down and wept as he had not done for 
 years. 
 
 " Oh, my boy, my boy," she said as soon as she could 
 recover her voice. " Have you never really been near us 
 for all these years ? Ah, you do not know how we have 
 loved you and mourned over you, papa just as much as I 
 have. You know he shows his feelings less, but I can 
 never tell you how very, very deeply he has felt for you. 
 Sometimes at night I have thought I have heard foot- 
 
 382 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 steps in the garden, and have got quietly out of bed lest I 
 should wake him, and gone to the window to look out, but 
 there has been only dark or the greyness of the morning, and 
 I have gone crying back to bed again. Still I think you 
 have been near us though you were too proud to let us 
 know — and now at last I have you in my arms once more, 
 my dearest, dearest boy." 
 
 How cruel, how infamously unfeeling Ernest thought he 
 had been. 
 
 "Mother," he said, "forgive me — the fault was mine, I 
 ought not to have been so hard ; I was wrong, very wrong " ; 
 the poor blubbering fellow meant what he said, and his heart 
 yearned to his mother as he had never thought that it could 
 yearn again. " But have you never," she continued, " come 
 although it was in the dark and we did not know it — oh, let 
 me think that you have not been so cruel as we have thought 
 you. Tell me that you came, if only to comfort me and make 
 me happier." 
 
 Ernest was ready. " I had no money to come with, 
 mother, till just lately." 
 
 This was an excuse Christina could understand and make 
 allowance for ; " Oh, then you would have come, and I will 
 take the will for the deed — and now that I have you safe 
 again, say that you will never, never leave me — not till — not 
 till — oh, my boy, have they told you I am dying ? " She 
 wept bitterly, and buried her head in her pillow. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXni 
 
 Joey and Charlotte were in the room. Joey was now or- 
 dained, and was curate to Theobald. He and Ernest had 
 never been sympathetic, and Ernest saw at a glance that 
 there was no chance of a rapprochement between them. He 
 was a little startled at seeing Joey dressed as a clergyman, 
 and looking so like what he had looked himself a few years 
 earlier, for there was a good deal of family likeness between 
 
 383 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the pair ; but Joey's face was cold and was illumined with 
 no spark of Bohemianism ; he was a clergyman and was 
 going to do as other clergymen did, neither better nor worse. 
 He greeted Ernest rather de haut en bas, that is to say he began 
 by trying to do so, but the affair tailed off unsatisfactorily. 
 
 His sister presented her cheek to him to be kissed. How 
 he hated it ; he had been dreading it for the last three hours. 
 She, too, was distant and reproachful in her manner, as such 
 a superior person was sure to be. She had a grievance 
 against him inasmuch as she was still unmarried. She laic 
 the blame of this at Ernest's door ; it was his misconduct 
 she maintained in secret, which had prevented young men 
 from making offers to her, and she ran him up a heavy bill 
 for consequential damages. She and Joey had from the first 
 developed an instinct for hunting with the hounds, and now 
 these two had fairly identified themselves with the older 
 generation — that is to say as against Ernest. On this head 
 there was an offensive and defensive alliance between them, 
 but between themselves there was subdued but internecine 
 warfare. 
 
 This at least was what Ernest gathered, partly from his 
 recollections of the parties concerned, and partly from his 
 observation of their little ways during the first half-hour after 
 his arrival, while they were all together in his mother's bed- 
 room — for as yet of course they did not know that he had 
 money. He could see that they eyed him from time to 
 time with a surprise not unmixed with indignation, and knew 
 very well what they were thinking. 
 
 Christina saw the change which had come over him — how 
 much firmer and more vigorous both in mind and body he 
 seemed than when she had last seen him. She saw too how 
 well he was dressed, and, like the others, in spite of the 
 return of all her affection for her first-born, was a little 
 alarmed about Theobald's pocket, which she supposed would 
 have to be mulcted for all this magnificence. Perceiving 
 this, Ernest relieved her mind and told her all about his 
 aunt's bequest, and how I had husbanded it, in the presence 
 of his brother and sisters — who, however, pretended not to 
 
 384 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 notice, or at any rate to notice as a matter in which they 
 could hardly be expected to take an interest. 
 
 His mother kicked a little at first against the money's 
 having gone to him as she said "over his papa's head." 
 "Why, my dear," she said in a deprecating tone, "this 
 is more than ever your papa has had " ; but Ernest calmed 
 her by suggesting that if Miss Pontifex had known how large 
 the sum would become she would have left the greater part 
 of it to Theobald. This compromise was accepted by 
 Christina who forthwith, ill as she was, entered with ardour 
 into the new position, and taking it as a fresh point of 
 departure, began spending Ernest's money for him. 
 
 I may say in passing that Christina was right in saying 
 that Theobald had never had so much money as his son was 
 now possessed of. In the first place he had not had a four- 
 teen years' minority with no outgoings to prevent the accumu- 
 lation of the money, and in the second he, like myself and 
 almost everyone else, had suffered somewhat in the 1846 
 times — not enough to cripple him or even seriously to hurt 
 him, but enough to give him a scare and make him stick 
 to debentures for the rest of his life. It was the fact of his 
 son's being the richer man of the two, and of his being rich 
 so young, which rankled with Theobald even more than the 
 fact of his having money at all. If he had had to wait till 
 he was sixty or sixty-five, and become broken down from 
 long failure in the meantime, why then perhaps he might 
 have been allowed to have whatever sum should suffice to 
 keep him out of the workhouse and pay his death-bed 
 expenses; but that he should come in to ;^7o,ooo at eight 
 and twenty, and have no wife and only two children — it was 
 intolerable. Christina was too ill and in too great a hurry 
 to spend the money to care much about such details as the 
 foregoing, and she was naturally much more good-natured 
 than Theobald. 
 
 "This piece of good fortune" — she saw it at a glance — 
 
 " quite wiped out the disgrace of his having been imprisoned. 
 
 There should be no more nonsense about that. The whole 
 
 thing was a mistake, an unfortunate mistake, true, but the 
 
 'b 38s 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 less said about it now the better. Of course Ernest would 
 come back and live at Battersby until he was married, and he 
 would pay his father handsomely for board and lodging. In 
 fact it would be only right that Theobald should make a 
 profit, nor would Ernest himself v.ish it to be other than 
 a handsome one ; this was far the best and simplest arrange- 
 ment ; and he could take his sister out more than Theobald 
 or Joey cared to do, and would also doubtless entertain very 
 handsomely at Battersby. 
 
 " Of course he would buy Joey a living, and make large 
 presents yearly to his sister — was there anything else ? Oh ! 
 yes — he would become a county magnate now ; a man with 
 nearly ;^4ooo a year should certainly become a county 
 magnate. He might even go into Parliament. He had 
 very fair abilities, nothing indeed approaching such genius 
 as Dr Skinner's, nor even as Theobald's, still he was not 
 deficient and if he got into Parliament — so young too — there 
 was nothing to hinder his being Prime Minister before he 
 died, and if so, of course, he would become a peer. Oh ! 
 why did he not set about it all at once, so that she might 
 live to hear people call her son ' my lord ' — Lord Battersby 
 she thought would do very nicely, and if she was v,ell enough 
 to sit he must certainly have her portrait painted at full 
 length for one end of his large dining-hall. It should be 
 exhibited at the Royal Academy : ' Portrait of Lord 
 Battersby's mother,' she said to herself, and her heart 
 fluttered with all its v>onted vivacity. If she could not sit, 
 happily, she had been photographed not so very long ago, 
 and the portrait had been as successful as any photograph 
 could be of a face which depended so entirely upon its 
 expression as her own. Perhaps the painter could take 
 the portrait sufficiently from this. It was better after all 
 that Ernest had given up the Church — how far more wisely 
 God arranges matters for us than ever we can do for our- 
 selves ! She saw it all now — it was Joey who would become 
 iVrchbishop of Canterbury and Ernest would remain a layman 
 and become Prime Minister" . . . and so on till her daughter 
 told her it was time to take her medicine. 
 
 386 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 I suppose this reverie, which is a mere fragment of what 
 actually ran through Christina's brain, occupied about a 
 minute and a half, but it, or the presence of her son, seemed 
 to revive her spirits wonderfully. Ill, dying indeed, and 
 suffering as she was, she brightened up so as to laugh 
 once or twice quite merrily during the course of the after- 
 noon. Next day Dr Martin said she was so much better 
 that he almost began to have hopes of her recovery again. 
 Theobald, N.henever this was touched upon as possible, 
 would shake his head and say : " We can't wish it pro- 
 longed," and then Charlotte caught Ernest unawares and said : 
 "You know, dear Ernest, that these ups and downs of talk 
 are terribly agitating to papa ; he could stand w hatever 
 comes, but it is quite too wearing to him to think half-a- 
 dozen different things backwards and forwards, up and down 
 in the same twenty-four hours, and it would be kinder of you 
 not to do it — I mean not to say anything to him even though 
 Dr Martin does hold out hopes." 
 
 Charlotte had meant to imply that it was Ernest who was 
 at the bottom of all the inconvenience felt by Theobald, her- 
 self, Joey and everyone else, and she had actually got words 
 out which should convey this ; true, she had not dared to 
 stick to them and had turned them off, but she had made 
 them hers at any rate for one brief moment, and this was 
 better than nothing. Ernest noticed throughout his mother's 
 illness, that Charlotte found immediate occasion to make 
 herself disagreeable to him whenever either doctor or nurse 
 pronounced her mother to be a little better. When she 
 wrote to Crampsford to desire the prayers of the congre- 
 gation (she Avas sure her mother v.ould v, ish it, and that the 
 Crampsford people would be pleased at her remembrance of 
 them), she was sending another letter on some quite different 
 subject at the same time, and put the two letters into the 
 v/rong envelopes. Ernest v/as asked to take these letters 
 to the village post-office, and imprudently did so; when the 
 error came to be discovered Christina happened to have 
 rallied a little. Charlotte flew at Ernest immediately, and 
 laid all the blame of the blunder upon his shoulders. 
 
 387 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Except that Joey and Charlotte were more fully developed, 
 the house and its inmates, organic and inorganic, were little 
 changed since Ernest had last seen them. The furniture 
 and the ornaments on the chimney-piece were just as they 
 had been ever since he could remember anything at all. In 
 the drawing-room, on either side of the fireplace there hung the 
 Carlo Dolci and the Sassoferrato as in old times : there was 
 the water colour of a scene on the Lago Maggiore, copied by 
 Charlotte from an original lent her by her drawing master, 
 and finished under his direction. This was the picture of 
 which one of the servants had said that it must be good, for 
 Mr Pontifex had given ten shillings for the frame. The 
 paper on the walls was unchanged ; the roses were still 
 waiting for the bees ; and the whole family still prayed night 
 and morning to be made "truly honest and conscientious." 
 
 One picture only was removed — a photograph of himself 
 which had hung under one of his father and between those 
 of his brother and sister. Ernest noticed this at prayer time, 
 while his father was reading about Noah's ark and how they 
 daubed it with slime, which, as it happened, had been Ernest's 
 favourite text when he was a boy. Next morning, however, 
 the photograph had found its way back again, a little dusty 
 and with a bit of the gilding chipped off from one corner of 
 the frame, but there sure enough it was. I suppose they put 
 it back when they found how rich he had become. 
 
 In the dining-room the ravens were still trying to feed 
 Elijah over the fireplace ; what a crowd of reminiscences did 
 not this picture bring back ! Looking out of the window, 
 there were the flower beds in the front garden exactly as they 
 had been, and Ernest found himself looking hard against the 
 blue door at the bottom of the garden to see if there was 
 rain falling, as he had been used to look when he was a 
 child doing lessons with his father. 
 
 After their early dinner, when Joey and Ernest and their 
 father were left alone, Theobald rose and stood in the middle 
 of the hearthrug under the Elijah picture, and began to 
 whistle in his old absent way. He had two tunes only, one 
 was "In my Cottage near a Wood," and the other was the 
 
 388 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Easter Hymn ; he had been trying to whistle them all his 
 life, but had never succeeded ; he whistled them as a clever 
 bullfinch might whistle them — he had got them, but he had 
 not got them right; he would be a semitone out in every 
 third note as though reverting to some remote musical pro- 
 genitor, who had known none but the Lydian or the Phrygian 
 mode, or whatever would enable him to go most wrong 
 while still keeping the tune near enough to be recognised. 
 Theobald stood before the middle of the fire and whistled 
 his two tunes softly in his own old way till Ernest left the 
 room ; the unchangedness of the external and changedness 
 of the internal he felt were likely to throw him completely off 
 his balance. 
 
 He strolled out of doors into the sodden spinney behind 
 the house, and solaced himself with a pipe. Ere long he 
 found himself at the door of the cottage of his father's 
 coachman, who had married an old lady's maid of his 
 mother's, to whom Ernest had been always much attached as 
 she also to him, for she had known him ever since he had 
 been five or six years old. Her name was Susan. He sat 
 down in the rocking-chair before her fire, and Susan went on 
 ironing at the table in front of the window, and a smell of 
 hot flannel pervaded the kitchen. 
 
 Susan had been retained too securely by Christina to be 
 likely to side with Ernest all in a moment. He knew this 
 very well, and did not call on her for the sake of support, 
 moral or otherwise. He had called because he liked her, 
 and also because he knew that he should gather much in a 
 chat with her that he should not be able to arrive at in any 
 other way. 
 
 " Oh, Master Ernest," said Susan, " why did you not come 
 back when your poor papa and mamma wanted you ? I'm 
 sure your ma has said to me a hundred times over if she 
 has said it once that all should be exactly as it had been 
 before." 
 
 Ernest smiled to himself. It was no use explaining to 
 Susan why he smiled, so he said nothing. 
 
 " For the first day or two I thought she never would get 
 389 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 over it ; she said it was a judgement upon her, and went on 
 about things as she had said and done many years ago, 
 before your pa knew her, and I don't kno'.v what she didn't 
 say or wouldn't have said only I stopped her ; she seemed 
 out of her mind like, and said that none of the neighbours 
 would ever speak to her again, but the next day Mrs Bushby 
 (her that was Miss Cowey, you know) called, and your ma 
 always was so fond of her, and it seemed to do her a power 
 o' good, for the next day she went through all her dresses, 
 and we settled ho'.v she should have them altered ; and 
 then all the neighbours called for miles and miles round, 
 and your ma came in here, and said she had been going 
 through the waters of misery, and the Lord had turned them 
 to a well. 
 
 " ' Oh yes, Susan,' said she, * be sure it is so. Whom the 
 Lord loveth he chasteneth, Susan,' and here she began to 
 cry again. 'As for him,' she went on, 'he has made his 
 bed, and he must lie on it ; when he comes out of prison 
 his pa will knov.- what is best to be done, and Master Ernest 
 may be thankful that he has a pa so good and so long- 
 suffering.' 
 
 "Then when you would not see them, that was a cruel 
 blow to your ma. Your pa did not say anything ; you know 
 your pa never does say very much unless he's downright 
 waxy for the time ; but your ma took on dreadful for a few 
 days, and I never saw the master look so black ; but, bless 
 you, it all went off in a few days, and I don't know that 
 there's been much difference in either of them since then, 
 not till your ma was took ill." 
 
 On the night of his arrival he had behaved well at family 
 prayers, as also on the following morning; his father read 
 about David's dying injunctions to Solomon in the matter of 
 Shimei, but he did not mind it. In the course of the day, 
 however, his corns had been trodden on so many times that 
 he was in a misbehaving humour, on this the second night 
 after his arrival. He knelt next Charlotte and said the 
 responses perfunctorily, not so perfunctorily that she should 
 know for certain that he was doing it maliciously, but so 
 
 390 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 perfunctorily as to make her uncertain whether he might be 
 malicious or not, and when he had to pray to be made 
 truly honest and conscientious he emphasised the "truly." 
 I do not knovi' whether Charlotte noticed anything, but she 
 knelt at some distance from him during the rest of his stay. 
 He assures me that this was the only spiteful thing he did 
 during the whole time he was at Battersby. 
 
 When he went up to his bedroom, in v.hich, to do them 
 justice, they had given him a fire, he noticed what indeed 
 he had noticed as soon as he was shown into it on his 
 arrival, that there was an illuminated card framed and glazed 
 over his bed with the words, " Be the day weary or be the 
 day long, at last it ringeth to evensong." He wondered to 
 himself how such people could leave such a card in a room 
 in which their visitors would have to spend the last hours of 
 their evening, but he let it alone. " There's not enough 
 difference between ' \veary ' and ' long ' to warrant an ' or,' " 
 he said, " but I suppose it is all right." I believe Christina 
 had bought the card at a bazaar in aid of the restoration of a 
 neighbouring church, and having been bought it had got to 
 be used — besides, the sentiment was so touching and the 
 illumination v.as really lovely. Anyhow, no irony could be 
 more complete than leaving it in my hero's bedroom, though 
 assuredly no irony had been intended. 
 
 On the third day after Ernest's arrival Christina relapsed 
 again. For the last two days she had been in no pain and 
 had slept a good deal ; her son's presence still seemed to 
 cheer her, and she often said how thankful she was to be 
 surrounded on her death-bed by a family so happy, so God- 
 fearing, so united, but now she began to wander, and, being 
 more sensible of the approach of death, seemed also more 
 alarmed at the thoughts of the Day of Judgement. 
 
 She ventured more than once or twice to return to the 
 subject of her sins, and implored Theobald to make quite 
 sure that they were forgiven her. She hinted that she con- 
 sidered his professional reputation was at stake; it would 
 never do for his own wife to fail in securing at any rate a 
 pass. This was touching Theobald on a tender spot; he 
 
 391 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 winced and rejoined with an impatient toss of the head, 
 " But, Christina, they are forgiven you " ; and then he en- 
 trenched himself in a firm but dignified manner behind the 
 Lord's prayer. When he rose he left the room, but called 
 Ernest out to say that he could not wish it prolonged. 
 
 Joey was no more use in quieting his mother's anxiety 
 than Theobald had been — indeed he was only Theobald and 
 water ; at last Ernest, who had not liked interfering, took the 
 matter in hand, and, sitting beside her, let her pour out her 
 grief to him without let or hindrance. 
 
 She said she knew she had not given up all for Christ's 
 sake ; it was this that weighed upon her. She had given up 
 much, and had always tried to give up more year by year, 
 still she knew very well that she had not been so spiritually 
 minded as she ought to have been. If she had, she should 
 probably have been favoured with some direct vision or 
 communication ; whereas, though God had vouchsafed such 
 direct and visible angelic visits to one of her dear children, 
 yet she had had none such herself — nor even had Theobald. 
 
 She was talking rather to herself than to Ernest as she 
 said these words, but they made him open his ears. He 
 wanted to know whether the angel had appeared to Joey 
 or to Charlotte. He asked his mother, but she seemed 
 surprised, as though she expected him to know all about it, 
 then, as if she remembered, she checked herself and said, 
 " Ah ! yes — you know nothing of all this, and perhaps it is 
 as well." Ernest could not of course press the subject, so 
 he never found out which of his near relations it was who 
 had had direct communication with an immortal. The 
 others never said anything to him about it, though whether 
 this was because they were ashamed, or because they feared 
 he would not believe the story and thus increase his own 
 damnation, he could not determine. 
 
 Ernest has often thought about this since. He tried to 
 get the facts out of Susan, who he was sure would know, 
 but Charlotte had been beforehand with him. " No, Master 
 Ernest," said Susan, when he began to question her, " your 
 ma has sent a message to me by Miss Charlotte as I am not 
 
 392 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 to say nothing at all about it, and I never will." Of course no 
 further questioning was possible. It had more than once 
 occurred to Ernest that Charlotte did not in reality believe 
 more than he did himself, and this incident went far to 
 strengthen his surmises, but he wavered when he remembered 
 how she had misdirected the letter asking for the prayers of 
 the congregation. " I suppose," he said to himself gloomily, 
 " she does believe in it after all." 
 
 Then Christina returned to the subject of her own want of 
 spiritual-mindedness, she even harped upon the old grievance 
 of her having eaten black puddings — true, she had given 
 them up years ago, but for how many years had she not 
 persevered in eating them after she had had misgivings about 
 their having been forbidden ! Then there was something 
 that weighed on her mind that had taken place before her 
 marriage, and she should like 
 
 Ernest interrupted : " My dear mother," he said, " you are 
 ill and your mind is unstrung; others can now judge better 
 about you than you can ; I assure you that to me you seem 
 to have been the most devotedly unselfish wife and mother 
 that ever lived. Even if you have not literally given up all 
 for Christ's sake, you have done so practically as far as it was 
 in your power, and more than this is not required of anyone. 
 I believe you will not only be a saint, but a very distinguished 
 one." 
 
 At these words Christina brightened. " You give me hope, 
 you give me hope," she cried, and dried her eyes. She made 
 him assure her over and over again that this was his solemn 
 conviction; she did not care about being a distinguished 
 saint now ; she would be quite content to be among the 
 meanest who actually got into heaven, provided she could 
 make sure of escaping that awful Hell. The fear of this 
 evidently was omnipresent with her, and in spite of all Ernest 
 could say he did not quite dispel it. She was rather un- 
 grateful, I must confess, for after more than an hour's con- 
 solation from Ernest she prayed for him that he might have 
 every blessing in this world, inasmuch as she always feared 
 that he was the only one of her children whom she should 
 
 393 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 never meet in heaven ; but she was then wandering, and was 
 hardly aware of his presence; her mind in fact was reverting 
 to states in which it had been before her illness. 
 
 On Sunday Ernest went to church as a matter of course, 
 and noted that the ever receding tide of Evangelicalism had 
 ebbed many a stage lower, even during the few years of his 
 absence. His father used to v.alk to the church through the 
 Rectory garden, and across a small intervening field. He had 
 been used to walk in a tall hat, his Master's gown, and wear- 
 ing a pair of Geneva bands. Ernest noticed that the bands 
 were worn no longer, and lo ! greater marvel still, Theobald 
 did not preach in his Master's gown, but in a surplice. The 
 '.vhole character of the service vras changed ; you could not say 
 it was high even now, for high-church Theobald could never 
 under any circumstances become, but the old easy-going 
 slovenliness, if I may say so, was gone for ever. The orches- 
 tral accompaniments to the hymns had disappeared while my 
 hero was yet a boy, but there had been no chanting for some 
 years after the harmonium had been introduced. While 
 Ernest was at Cambridge, Charlotte and Christina had pre- 
 vailed on Theobald to allow the canticles to be sung ; and 
 sung they were to old-fashioned double chants by Lord 
 Mornington and Dr Dupuis and others. Theobald did not 
 like it, but he did it, or allowed it to be done. 
 
 Then Christina said : " My dear, do you know, I really 
 think" (Christina always "really" thought) "that the people 
 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 
 394 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 v/hen 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 v.as a man of vreight 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 nov,-, 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 7;ius/ 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 everythhigr So Mrs Good- 
 hew 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 fev; who had stood 
 out yielded and turned eastward too ; and then Theobald 
 
 395 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 sur- 
 plice, 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 Christinas and the Charlottes, 
 and the Christinas and the Charlottes made cats' paws of the 
 Mrs Goodhews and the old Miss Wrights, and the 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 W^rights 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 
 
 396 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 wel- 
 comed 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. 
 
 397 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "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 knev/ 
 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 vrent a\vay so peace- 
 fully 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 reaUties 
 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 Chris- 
 tina'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 
 
 398 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 vvife had been the 
 comfort and mainstay of his hfe for over thirty years, but 
 there the matter ended. I stayed over the next day \vhich 
 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 appro- 
 priate, ' 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 fe-v intimate friends, he 
 
 399 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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-indul- 
 gence," 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 
 
 400 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 our- 
 selves 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 tenden- 
 cies afterwards." 
 
 " In fact," said I laughing, " 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 
 ^c 401 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 pubUshed ; 
 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 pubUsh 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 every- 
 where to the banks which the advancing tide had not yet 
 covered, everything was of the sea sea-ey, and the fine brac- 
 ing air which blew over the water made me feel more hungry 
 than I had done for many a day ; I did not see how chil- 
 dren could live in a better physical atmosphere than this, 
 
 402 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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, w'hereas 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 
 RoUings, 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 Hght 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 
 
 403 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 v/e looked at him, so straight and well grown and 
 well done all round, I could see ic 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 patronis- 
 ingly 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 httle 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 
 
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The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 ? 
 Georgia wants to be a bargeman, let him begin as one, the 
 sooner the belter ; he may as \vell 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, \vhat 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 \vhich young people should 
 go through the embryonic stages Avith their money as much 
 as with their limbs, beginning life in a much lower social 
 position than that in \vhich their parents were, and a lot 
 more, \\hich he has since published ; but 1 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, novr 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 '.\hom 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 
 405 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 under- 
 standing 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 that 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 Re- 
 views," 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 
 implied 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 
 
 406 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 professed to enjoin belief in n^uch 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 hke 
 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 incon- 
 venient 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 must 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 fos- 
 tered 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 
 
 407 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 which was dearer to the writer than any other — the Church 
 of England. We should be churchmen, but somewhat luke- 
 warm 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 com- 
 patible 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, quiet- 
 istic, 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 slock himself, this is the 
 
 408 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 uncon- 
 sciously 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 still-born 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 coun- 
 teract the influence of that then still famous work. 
 
 Reviewers are men of like passions with ourselves, and 
 v.'ith them as with everyone else omne ignotum pro magni- 
 fico. 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 
 
 409 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 — pro- 
 bably 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 
 410 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 them- 
 selves. 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 
 
 41X 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 town he feels that he has left little behind him that can go 
 v/rong, 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 v.'oman now, but no one now living, as she says trium- 
 phantly, can say how old, for the woman in the Old Kent 
 Road is dead, and presumably has carried her secret to the 
 grave. Old, ho\vever, 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 fiat iron every Saturday for 
 4d., and takes it out every Monday morning for 4|-d. 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 v,hy, but there is some- 
 thing 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 
 
 412 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 PuUen'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," 
 
 413 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 — of 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 
 
 414 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 it 
 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 my 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, 
 
 4^5 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 v/as 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 will 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 
 
 416 
 
 1 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 shov,- their want of sympathy. I mean Joey, 
 Charlotte, and himself. He felt bitter against himself for 
 being of a mind '.vath 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 communica- 
 tion was confined to the merest commonplaces 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 incom- 
 patibility of temperament, but I believe the main ground 
 of complaint lay in the fact that he had been so inde- 
 pendent 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 vray 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 
 2d 417 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 
 
 418 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 your- 
 self 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 con- 
 stant trouble through getting into the key of C sharp after 
 beginning in the key of C and being unable to get back again. 
 
 419 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 " 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 know- 
 ing 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 book-shelves 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 
 420 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 compli- 
 ments that the old gentleman was pleased and flattered 
 beyond his wont. He rose and bowed. "These expres- 
 sions," 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 
 
 421 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that his critics were a-KXrjpo] koi avriTVTroi, and at the same 
 time aveKTrXriKTOi. Ernest remembered (TK\r]po\, and knew 
 that the other words were something of hke 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 over- 
 works himself, and then occasionally he has fierce and re- 
 proachful 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 ad- 
 mitted 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 
 422 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 /ibrt, 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 
 
 423 
 
The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 pro- 
 bably 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. 
 
 TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
 
From Mr. Grant Richards's List 
 
 Jane Austen 
 
 NOVELS. Winchester Edition. Ten Volumes. Small 
 demy 8vo. Printed on antique paper, bound in 
 Irish linen with design in gold. The set, 50s. 
 net ; or, each novel separately, 5s. a volume, net 
 
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 Vols. I. and II. With Portrait 
 
 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE 
 
 Vols. III. and IV. 
 
 MANSFIELD PARK 
 
 Vols. V. and VI. 
 
 EMMA 
 
 Vols. VII. and VIII. 
 
 NORTHANGER ABBEY 
 
 Vol. IX. 
 
 PERSUASION 
 
 Vol. X. 
 
Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
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Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
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 3 
 
Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 A. Conan Doyle 
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Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 Hamlin Qarland 
 
 THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY- 
 HORSE TROOP 68 
 
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 5 
 
Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne 
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 6 
 
Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 Frank Norris — continued 
 
 A MAN'S WOMAN 6s. 
 
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 McTEAGUE 6s. 
 
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Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 Barry Pain 
 
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Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 M. P. Shiel— continued 
 
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 9 
 
Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 M. P. 5hiel — continued 
 
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 10 
 
Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 Leo Tolstoy 
 
 THE REVISED EDITION OF THE WORKS 
 OF LEO TOLSTOY 
 
 Edited by Aylmer Maude. Crown 8vo. Cloth 
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 Vol. I. SEVASTOPOL and other 
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 Vol. XXIV. RESURRECTION 
 
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 II 
 
Mr. Grant Richards's Recent Novels 
 
 Leo Tolstoy — continued 
 
 Vol. XX. THE PLAYS OF LEO 
 TOLSTOY 
 
 THE POWER OF DARKNESS 
 
 THE FIRST DISTILLER 
 
 FRUITS OF CULTURE 
 
 Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. 
 
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 12 
 
 KJ 
 
i