_ 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 following everything out to
the bitter end, no matter how preposterous, returned with redoubled
strength. I suppose this was what might have been expected from
anyone placed as Ernest now was, especially when his antecedents are
remembered, but it surprised and disappointed some of his cooler-
headed Cambridge 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 appearance. Perhaps it was because he caught me
up in a way I did not like. I had quoted Shakespeare for lack of
something 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. The style of his dress was very High Church,
and his acquaintances 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 Pryer'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 penetrating 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 anyone 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 Pryer's
friends were in much the same unhappy predicament 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 woman, 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
mysterious, 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. _