________________________________________________
_ 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. _
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