_ 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 landlady, Mrs
Jupp, "am not a very regular church-goer"--I discovered 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 afterwards; 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 like my friends to be ordained, nor did I like having to be on
my best behaviour and to look as if 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 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 splints. 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 Italian 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 opportunity to run away, but not
before I had given her five shillings and made her write down my
address, for I was a little 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 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 Chesterfield; 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 gratitude. 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 feeling 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 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 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 Pryer's advice, he insisted on selling-
-at a loss of something like 500 pounds. 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 Pryer's advice had been followed, he would
have made 500 pounds, 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 500 pounds 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 500 pounds was being lost, was now being repaid with
interest. Ernest wanted to sell and make sure of the profit, but
Pryer 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 500
pounds loss, which he thought he had recovered, slipped away by
falls of a half and one at a time, and then he lost 200 pounds 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 Pryer's
advice, so that when they went up, 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 old 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. _