第 五十一 章 · 第51章

. 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.