________________________________________________
_ In the month of September 1860 a girl was born, and Ernest was proud
and happy. The birth of the child, and a rather alarming talk which
the doctor had given to Ellen sobered her for a few weeks, and it
really seemed as though his hopes were about to be fulfilled. The
expenses of his wife's confinement were heavy, and he was obliged to
trench upon his savings, but he had no doubt about soon recouping
this now that Ellen was herself again; for a time indeed his
business did revive a little, nevertheless it seemed as though the
interruption to his prosperity had in some way broken the spell of
good luck which had attended him in the outset; he was still
sanguine, however, and worked night and day with a will, but there
was no more music, or reading, or writing now. His Sunday outings
were put a stop to, and but for the first floor being let to myself,
he would have lost his citadel there too, but he seldom used it, for
Ellen had to wait more and more upon the baby, and, as a
consequence, Ernest had to wait more and more upon Ellen.
One afternoon, about a couple of months after the baby had been
born, and just as my unhappy hero was beginning to feel more hopeful
and therefore better able to bear his burdens, he returned from a
sale, and found Ellen in the same hysterical condition that he had
found her in in the spring. She said she was again with child, and
Ernest still believed her.
All the troubles of the preceding six months began again then and
there, and grew worse and worse continually. Money did not come in
quickly, for Ellen cheated him by keeping it back, and dealing
improperly with the goods he bought. When it did come in she got it
out of him as before on pretexts which it seemed inhuman to inquire
into. It was always the same story. By and by a new feature began
to show itself. Ernest had inherited his father's punctuality and
exactness as regards money; he liked to know the worst of what he
had to pay at once; he hated having expenses sprung upon him which
if not foreseen might and ought to have been so, but now bills began
to be brought to him for things ordered by Ellen without his
knowledge, or for which he had already given her the money. This
was awful, and even Ernest turned. When he remonstrated with her--
not for having bought the things, but for having said nothing to him
about the moneys being owing--Ellen met him with hysteria and there
was a scene. She had now pretty well forgotten the hard times she
had known when she had been on her own resources and reproached him
downright with having married her--on that moment the scales fell
from Ernest's eyes as they had fallen when Towneley had said, "No,
no, no." He said nothing, but he woke up once for all to the fact
that he had made a mistake in marrying. A touch had again come
which had revealed him to himself.
He went upstairs to the disused citadel, flung himself into the arm-
chair, and covered his face with his hands.
He still did not know that his wife drank, but he could no longer
trust her, and his dream of happiness was over. He had been saved
from the Church--so as by fire, but still saved--but what could now
save him from his marriage? He had made the same mistake that he
had made in wedding himself to the Church, but with a hundred times
worse results. He had learnt nothing by experience: he was an
Esau--one of those wretches whose hearts the Lord had hardened, who,
having ears, heard not, having eyes saw not, and who should find no
place for repentance though they sought it even with tears.
Yet had he not on the whole tried to find out what the ways of God
were, and to follow them in singleness of heart? To a certain
extent, yes; but he had not been thorough; he had not given up all
for God. He knew that very well he had done little as compared with
what he might and ought to have done, but still if he was being
punished for this, God was a hard taskmaster, and one, too, who was
continually pouncing out upon his unhappy creatures from ambuscades.
In marrying Ellen he had meant to avoid a life of sin, and to take
the course he believed to be moral and right. With his antecedents
and surroundings it was the most natural thing in the world for him
to have done, yet in what a frightful position had not his morality
landed him. Could any amount of immorality have placed him in a
much worse one? What was morality worth if it was not that which on
the whole brought a man peace at the last, and could anyone have
reasonable certainty that marriage would do this? It seemed to him
that in his attempt to be moral he had been following a devil which
had disguised itself as an angel of light. But if so, what ground
was there on which a man might rest the sole of his foot and tread
in reasonable safety?
He was still too young to reach the answer, "On common sense"--an
answer which he would have felt to be unworthy of anyone who had an
ideal standard.
However this might be, it was plain that he had now done for
himself. It had been thus with him all his life. If there had come
at any time a gleam of sunshine and hope, it was to be obscured
immediately--why, prison was happier than this! There, at any rate,
he had had no money anxieties, and these were beginning to weigh
upon him now with all their horrors. He was happier even now than
he had been at Battersby or at Roughborough, and he would not now go
back, even if he could, to his Cambridge life, but for all that the
outlook was so gloomy, in fact so hopeless, that he felt as if he
could have only too gladly gone to sleep and died in his arm-chair
once for all.
As he was musing thus and looking upon the wreck of his hopes--for
he saw well enough that as long as he was linked to Ellen he should
never rise as he had dreamed of doing--he heard a noise below, and
presently a neighbour ran upstairs and entered his room hurriedly -
"Good gracious, Mr Pontifex," she exclaimed, "for goodness' sake
come down quickly and help. O Mrs Pontifex is took with the
horrors--and she's orkard."
The unhappy man came down as he was bid and found his wife mad with
delirium tremens.
He knew all now. The neighbours thought he must have known that his
wife drank all along, but Ellen had been so artful, and he so
simple, that, as I have said, he had had no suspicion. "Why," said
the woman who had summoned him, "she'll drink anything she can stand
up and pay her money for." Ernest could hardly believe his ears,
but when the doctor had seen his wife and she had become more quiet,
he went over to the public house hard by and made enquiries, the
result of which rendered further doubt impossible. The publican
took the opportunity to present my hero with a bill of several
pounds for bottles of spirits supplied to his wife, and what with
his wife's confinement and the way business had fallen off, he had
not the money to pay with, for the sum exceeded the remnant of his
savings.
He came to me--not for money, but to tell me his miserable story. I
had seen for some time that there was something wrong, and had
suspected pretty shrewdly what the matter was, but of course I said
nothing. Ernest and I had been growing apart for some time. I was
vexed at his having married, and he knew I was vexed, though I did
my best to hide it.
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage--but
they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
The rift in friendship which invariably makes its appearance on the
marriage of either of the parties to it was fast widening, as it no
less invariably does, into the great gulf which is fixed between the
married and the unmarried, and I was beginning to leave my protege
to a fate with which I had neither right nor power to meddle. In
fact I had begun to feel him rather a burden; I did not so much mind
this when I could be of use, but I grudged it when I could be of
none. He had made his bed and he must lie upon it. Ernest had felt
all this and had seldom come near me till now, one evening late in
1860, he called on me, and with a very woebegone face told me his
troubles.
As soon as I found that he no longer liked his wife I forgave him at
once, and was as much interested in him as ever. There is nothing
an old bachelor likes better than to find a young married man who
wishes he had not got married--especially when the case is such an
extreme one that he need not pretend to hope that matters will come
all right again, or encourage his young friend to make the best of
it.
I was myself in favour of a separation, and said I would make Ellen
an allowance myself--of course intending that it should come out of
Ernest's money; but he would not hear of this. He had married
Ellen, he said, and he must try to reform her. He hated it, but he
must try; and finding him as usual very obstinate I was obliged to
acquiesce, though with little confidence as to the result. I was
vexed at seeing him waste himself upon such a barren task, and again
began to feel him burdensome. I am afraid I showed this, for he
again avoided me for some time, and, indeed, for many months I
hardly saw him at all.
Ellen remained very ill for some days, and then gradually recovered.
Ernest hardly left her till she was out of danger. When she had
recovered he got the doctor to tell her that if she had such another
attack she would certainly die; this so frightened her that she took
the pledge.
Then he became more hopeful again. When she was sober she was just
what she was during the first days of her married life, and so quick
was he to forget pain, that after a few days he was as fond of her
as ever. But Ellen could not forgive him for knowing what he did.
She knew that he was on the watch to shield her from temptation, and
though he did his best to make her think that he had no further
uneasiness about her, she found the burden of her union with
respectability grow more and more heavy upon her, and looked back
more and more longingly upon the lawless freedom of the life she had
led before she met her husband.
I will dwell no longer on this part of my story. During the spring
months of 1861 she kept straight--she had had her fling of
dissipation, and this, together with the impression made upon her by
her having taken the pledge, tamed her for a while. The shop went
fairly well, and enabled Ernest to make the two ends meet. In the
spring and summer of 1861 he even put by a little money again. In
the autumn his wife was confined of a boy--a very fine one, so
everyone said. She soon recovered, and Ernest was beginning to
breathe freely and be almost sanguine when, without a word of
warning, the storm broke again. He returned one afternoon about two
years after his marriage, and found his wife lying upon the floor
insensible.
From this time he became hopeless, and began to go visibly down
hill. He had been knocked about too much, and the luck had gone too
long against him. The wear and tear of the last three years had
told on him, and though not actually ill he was over-worked, below
par, and unfit for any further burden.
He struggled for a while to prevent himself from finding this out,
but facts were too strong for him. Again he called on me and told
me what had happened. I was glad the crisis had come; I was sorry
for Ellen, but a complete separation from her was the only chance
for her husband. Even after this last outbreak he was unwilling to
consent to this, and talked nonsense about dying at his post, till I
got tired of him. Each time I saw him the old gloom had settled
more and more deeply upon his face, and I had about made up my mind
to put an end to the situation by a coup de main, such as bribing
Ellen to run away with somebody else, or something of that kind,
when matters settled themselves as usual in a way which I had not
anticipated. _
Read next: CHAPTER LXXVI
Read previous: CHAPTER LXXIV
Table of content of Way of All Flesh
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
