Chương Chương 55 · 第55章

. 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. 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, 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 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 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 loss, which he thought he had

recovered, slipped away by falls of a half and one at a time, and then

he lost £200 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.