Chapter Chapter 37 · 第37章
. 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 understand 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 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 contradiction 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 therefore 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 confidence 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 for your own sake, that it is to be at
an end, nor, I am sure, will you regret it yourself in after years.
“A few words more as regards your own 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 was 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 £1000 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
supplemented 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 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
which he recognised 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 unhappy. 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 without 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 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
falling 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 ears and eyes, 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 Dürer. 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 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 portmanteau, which Theobald
stigmatised as “infamous and outrageous.” 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 portfolio, 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 follows:
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 1s. 6d. 6d. 0d. 6d. Total 2s. 6d.
Number of merit marks 2 0 1 1 0 Total 4
Number of penal marks 26 20 25 30 25 Total 126
Number of extra penals 9 6 10 12 11 Total 48
I recommend that his pocket money be made to depend upon his merit
money.
S. SKINNER, _Head-master_.