_ 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 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
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 backwoods 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 suppose," she
wrote, "that Dr Skinner will approve very cordially of my attempt to
introduce organ-building into the curriculum 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
permanently 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 Allaby, 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 Theobald had always
disliked. He had observed with regret that Ernest had ere now shown
rather a hankering after low company, 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 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 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 contained 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 Roughborough, 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 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 workshop 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
different 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 unfortunately
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, however, 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 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. _