บทที่ บทที่ 64 · 第64章

. After Ernest had been sentenced, he was taken back to the cells to wait

for the van which should take him to Coldbath Fields, where he was to

serve his term.

He was still too stunned and dazed by the suddenness with which events

had happened during the last twenty-four hours to be able to realise

his position. A great chasm had opened between his past and future;

nevertheless he breathed, his pulse beat, he could think and speak. It

seemed to him that he ought to be prostrated by the blow that had

fallen on him, but he was not prostrated; he had suffered from many

smaller laches far more acutely. It was not until he thought of the

pain his disgrace would inflict on his father and mother that he felt

how readily he would have given up all he had, rather than have fallen

into his present plight. It would break his mother’s heart. It must, he

knew it would—and it was he who had done this.

He had had a headache coming on all the forenoon, but as he thought of

his father and mother, his pulse quickened, and the pain in his head

suddenly became intense. He could hardly walk to the van, and he found

its motion insupportable. On reaching the prison he was too ill to walk

without assistance across the hall to the corridor or gallery where

prisoners are marshalled on their arrival. The prison warder, seeing at

once that he was a clergyman, did not suppose he was shamming, as he

might have done in the case of an old gaol-bird; he therefore sent for

the doctor. When this gentleman arrived, Ernest was declared to be

suffering from an incipient attack of brain fever, and was taken away

to the infirmary. Here he hovered for the next two months between life

and death, never in full possession of his reason and often delirious,

but at last, contrary to the expectation of both doctor and nurse, he

began slowly to recover.

It is said that those who have been nearly drowned, find the return to

consciousness much more painful than the loss of it had been, and so it

was with my hero. As he lay helpless and feeble, it seemed to him a

refinement of cruelty that he had not died once for all during his

delirium. He thought he should still most likely recover only to sink a

little later on from shame and sorrow; nevertheless from day to day he

mended, though so slowly that he could hardly realise it to himself.

One afternoon, however, about three weeks after he had regained

consciousness, the nurse who tended him, and who had been very kind to

him, made some little rallying sally which amused him; he laughed, and

as he did so, she clapped her hands and told him he would be a man

again. The spark of hope was kindled, and again he wished to live.

Almost from that moment his thoughts began to turn less to the horrors

of the past, and more to the best way of meeting the future.

His worst pain was on behalf of his father and mother, and how he

should again face them. It still seemed to him that the best thing both

for him and them would be that he should sever himself from them

completely, take whatever money he could recover from Pryer, and go to

some place in the uttermost parts of the earth, where he should never

meet anyone who had known him at school or college, and start afresh.

Or perhaps he might go to the gold fields in California or Australia,

of which such wonderful accounts were then heard; there he might even

make his fortune, and return as an old man many years hence, unknown to

everyone, and if so, he would live at Cambridge. As he built these

castles in the air, the spark of life became a flame, and he longed for

health, and for the freedom which, now that so much of his sentence had

expired, was not after all very far distant.

Then things began to shape themselves more definitely. Whatever

happened he would be a clergyman no longer. It would have been

practically impossible for him to have found another curacy, even if he

had been so minded, but he was not so minded. He hated the life he had

been leading ever since he had begun to read for orders; he could not

argue about it, but simply he loathed it and would have no more of it.

As he dwelt on the prospect of becoming a layman again, however

disgraced, he rejoiced at what had befallen him, and found a blessing

in this very imprisonment which had at first seemed such an unspeakable

misfortune.

Perhaps the shock of so great a change in his surroundings had

accelerated changes in his opinions, just as the cocoons of silkworms,

when sent in baskets by rail, hatch before their time through the

novelty of heat and jolting. But however this may be, his belief in the

stories concerning the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus

Christ, and hence his faith in all the other Christian miracles, had

dropped off him once and for ever. The investigation he had made in

consequence of Mr Shaw’s rebuke, hurried though it was, had left a deep

impression upon him, and now he was well enough to read he made the New

Testament his chief study, going through it in the spirit which Mr Shaw

had desired of him, that is to say as one who wished neither to believe

nor disbelieve, but cared only about finding out whether he ought to

believe or no. The more he read in this spirit the more the balance

seemed to lie in favour of unbelief, till, in the end, all further

doubt became impossible, and he saw plainly enough that, whatever else

might be true, the story that Christ had died, come to life again, and

been carried from earth through clouds into the heavens could not now

be accepted by unbiassed people. It was well he had found it out so

soon. In one way or another it was sure to meet him sooner or later. He

would probably have seen it years ago if he had not been hoodwinked by

people who were paid for hoodwinking him. What should he have done, he

asked himself, if he had not made his present discovery till years

later when he was more deeply committed to the life of a clergyman?

Should he have had the courage to face it, or would he not more

probably have evolved some excellent reason for continuing to think as

he had thought hitherto? Should he have had the courage to break away

even from his present curacy?

He thought not, and knew not whether to be more thankful for having

been shown his error or for having been caught up and twisted round so

that he could hardly err farther, almost at the very moment of his

having discovered it. The price he had had to pay for this boon was

light as compared with the boon itself. What is too heavy a price to

pay for having duty made at once clear and easy of fulfilment instead

of very difficult? He was sorry for his father and mother, and he was

sorry for Miss Maitland, but he was no longer sorry for himself.

It puzzled him, however, that he should not have known how much he had

hated being a clergyman till now. He knew that he did not particularly

like it, but if anyone had asked him whether he actually hated it, he

would have answered no. I suppose people almost always want something

external to themselves, to reveal to them their own likes and dislikes.

Our most assured likings have for the most part been arrived at neither

by introspection nor by any process of conscious reasoning, but by the

bounding forth of the heart to welcome the gospel proclaimed to it by

another. We hear some say that such and such a thing is thus or thus,

and in a moment the train that has been laid within us, but whose

presence we knew not, flashes into consciousness and perception.

Only a year ago he had bounded forth to welcome Mr Hawke’s sermon;

since then he had bounded after a College of Spiritual Pathology; now

he was in full cry after rationalism pure and simple; how could he be

sure that his present state of mind would be more lasting than his

previous ones? He could not be certain, but he felt as though he were

now on firmer ground than he had ever been before, and no matter how

fleeting his present opinions might prove to be, he could not but act

according to them till he saw reason to change them. How impossible, he

reflected, it would have been for him to do this, if he had remained

surrounded by people like his father and mother, or Pryer and Pryer’s

friends, and his rector. He had been observing, reflecting, and

assimilating all these months with no more consciousness of mental

growth than a school-boy has of growth of body, but should he have been

able to admit his growth to himself, and to act up to his increased

strength if he had remained in constant close connection with people

who assured him solemnly that he was under a hallucination? The

combination against him was greater than his unaided strength could

have broken through, and he felt doubtful how far any shock less severe

than the one from which he was suffering would have sufficed to free

him.