CHAPTER XXI

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_ Strange! for she believed she doted upon him, and certainly she
loved him better than either of her other children. Her version of
the matter was that there had never yet been two parents so self-
denying and devoted to the highest welfare of their children as
Theobald and herself. For Ernest, a very great future--she was
certain of it--was in store. This made severity all the more
necessary, so that from the first he might have been kept pure from
every taint of evil. She could not allow herself the scope for
castle building which, we read, was indulged in by every Jewish
matron before the appearance of the Messiah, for the Messiah had now
come, but there was to be a millennium shortly, certainly not later
than 1866, when Ernest would be just about the right age for it, and
a modern Elias would be wanted to herald its approach. Heaven would
bear her witness that she had never shrunk from the idea of
martyrdom for herself and Theobald, nor would she avoid it for her
boy, if his life was required of her in her Redeemer's service. Oh,
no! If God told her to offer up her first-born, as He had told
Abraham, she would take him up to Pigbury Beacon and plunge the--no,
that she could not do, but it would be unnecessary--some one else
might do that. It was not for nothing that Ernest had been baptised
in water from the Jordan. It had not been her doing, nor yet
Theobald's. They had not sought it. When water from the sacred
stream was wanted for a sacred infant, the channel had been found
through which it was to flow from far Palestine over land and sea to
the door of the house where the child was lying. Why, it was a
miracle! It was! It was! She saw it all now. The Jordan had left
its bed and flowed into her own house. It was idle to say that this
was not a miracle. No miracle was effected without means of some
kind; the difference between the faithful and the unbeliever
consisted in the very fact that the former could see a miracle where
the latter could not. The Jews could see no miracle even in the
raising of Lazarus and the feeding of the five thousand. The John
Pontifexes would see no miracle in this matter of the water from the
Jordan. The essence of a miracle lay not in the fact that means had
been dispensed with, but in the adoption of means to a great end
that had not been available without interference; and no one would
suppose that Dr Jones would have brought the water unless he had
been directed. She would tell this to Theobald, and get him to see
it in the . . . and yet perhaps it would be better not. The insight
of women upon matters of this sort was deeper and more unerring than
that of men. It was a woman and not a man who had been filled most
completely with the whole fulness of the Deity. But why had they
not treasured up the water after it was used? It ought never, never
to have been thrown away, but it had been. Perhaps, however, this
was for the best too--they might have been tempted to set too much
store by it, and it might have become a source of spiritual danger
to them--perhaps even of spiritual pride, the very sin of all others
which she most abhorred. As for the channel through which the
Jordan had flowed to Battersby, that mattered not more than the
earth through which the river ran in Palestine itself. Dr Jones was
certainly worldly--very worldly; so, she regretted to feel, had been
her father-in-law, though in a less degree; spiritual, at heart,
doubtless, and becoming more and more spiritual continually as he
grew older, still he was tainted with the world, till a very few
hours, probably, before his death, whereas she and Theobald had
given up all for Christ's sake. THEY were not worldly. At least
Theobald was not. She had been, but she was sure she had grown in
grace since she had left off eating things strangled and blood--this
was as the washing in Jordan as against Abana and Pharpar, rivers of
Damascus. Her boy should never touch a strangled fowl nor a black
pudding--that, at any rate, she could see to. He should have a
coral from the neighbourhood of Joppa--there were coral insects on
those coasts, so that the thing could easily be done with a little
energy; she would write to Dr Jones about it, etc. And so on for
hours together day after day for years. Truly, Mrs Theobald loved
her child according to her lights with an exceeding great fondness,
but the dreams she had dreamed in sleep were sober realities in
comparison with those she indulged in while awake.

When Ernest was in his second year, Theobald, as I have already
said, began to teach him to read. He began to whip him two days
after he had begun to teach him.

"It was painful," as he said to Christina, but it was the only thing
to do and it was done. The child was puny, white and sickly, so
they sent continually for the doctor who dosed him with calomel and
James's powder. All was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity,
and impatience. They were stupid in little things; and he that is
stupid in little will be stupid also in much.

Presently old Mr Pontifex died, and then came the revelation of the
little alteration he had made in his will simultaneously with his
bequest to Ernest. It was rather hard to bear, especially as there
was no way of conveying a bit of their minds to the testator now
that he could no longer hurt them. As regards the boy himself
anyone must see that the bequest would be an unmitigated misfortune
to him. To leave him a small independence was perhaps the greatest
injury which one could inflict upon a young man. It would cripple
his energies, and deaden his desire for active employment. Many a
youth was led into evil courses by the knowledge that on arriving at
majority he would come into a few thousands. They might surely have
been trusted to have their boy's interests at heart, and must be
better judges of those interests than he, at twenty-one, could be
expected to be: besides if Jonadab, the son of Rechab's father--or
perhaps it might be simpler under the circumstances to say Rechab at
once--if Rechab, then, had left handsome legacies to his
grandchildren--why Jonadab might not have found those children so
easy to deal with, etc. "My dear," said Theobald, after having
discussed the matter with Christina for the twentieth time, "my
dear, the only thing to guide and console us under misfortunes of
this kind is to take refuge in practical work. I will go and pay a
visit to Mrs Thompson."

On those days Mrs Thompson would be told that her sins were all
washed white, etc., a little sooner and a little more peremptorily
than on others. _

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