_ 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 anyone else
unless by making a will in his favour and dying then and there?
Should not each look after his own happiness, 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, lovable, 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 Times, 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 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 Roughborough, 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 circumstances 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 Roughborough 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 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 Roughborough from the Michaelmas
then approaching, and mentioned, 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 believe 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 herself. She did not feel easy that an
alliance 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 throughout anew, taking nothing whatever
from her establishment 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 employed every other little artifice which she
thought likely to win their allegiance to herself, and through this
their countenance 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 been roosting
pheasants. Nor did she escape scathless herself, 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
forgotten. 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. _