________________________________________________
_ Joey and Charlotte were in the room. Joey was now ordained, and was
curate to Theobald. He and Ernest had never been sympathetic, and
Ernest saw at a glance that there was no chance of a rapprochement
between them. He was a little startled at seeing Joey dressed as a
clergyman, and looking so like what he had looked himself a few
years earlier, for there was a good deal of family likeness between
the pair; but Joey's face was cold and was illumined with no spark
of Bohemianism; he was a clergyman and was going to do as other
clergymen did, neither better nor worse. He greeted Ernest rather
de haut en bas, that is to say he began by trying to do so, but the
affair tailed off unsatisfactorily.
His sister presented her cheek to him to be kissed. How he hated
it; he had been dreading it for the last three hours. She, too, was
distant and reproachful in her manner, as such a superior person was
sure to be. She had a grievance against him inasmuch as she was
still unmarried. She laid the blame of this at Ernest's door; it
was his misconduct she maintained in secret, which had prevented
young men from making offers to her, and she ran him up a heavy bill
for consequential damages. She and Joey had from the first
developed an instinct for hunting with the hounds, and now these two
had fairly identified themselves with the older generation--that is
to say as against Ernest. On this head there was an offensive and
defensive alliance between them, but between themselves there was
subdued but internecine warfare.
This at least was what Ernest gathered, partly from his
recollections of the parties concerned, and partly from his
observation of their little ways during the first half-hour after
his arrival, while they were all together in his mother's bedroom--
for as yet of course they did not know that he had money. He could
see that they eyed him from time to time with a surprise not unmixed
with indignation, and knew very well what they were thinking.
Christina saw the change which had come over him--how much firmer
and more vigorous both in mind and body he seemed than when she had
last seen him. She saw too how well he was dressed, and, like the
others, in spite of the return of all her affection for her first-
born, was a little alarmed about Theobald's pocket, which she
supposed would have to be mulcted for all this magnificence.
Perceiving this, Ernest relieved her mind and told her all about his
aunt's bequest, and how I had husbanded it, in the presence of his
brother and sister--who, however, pretended not to notice, or at any
rate to notice as a matter in which they could hardly be expected to
take an interest.
His mother kicked a little at first against the money's having gone
to him as she said "over his papa's head." "Why, my dear," she said
in a deprecating tone, "this is more than ever your papa has had";
but Ernest calmed her by suggesting that if Miss Pontifex had known
how large the sum would become she would have left the greater part
of it to Theobald. This compromise was accepted by Christina who
forthwith, ill as she was, entered with ardour into the new
position, and taking it as a fresh point of departure, began
spending Ernest's money for him.
I may say in passing that Christina was right in saying that
Theobald had never had so much money as his son was now possessed
of. In the first place he had not had a fourteen years' minority
with no outgoings to prevent the accumulation of the money, and in
the second he, like myself and almost everyone else, had suffered
somewhat in the 1846 times--not enough to cripple him or even
seriously to hurt him, but enough to give him a scare and make him
stick to debentures for the rest of his life. It was the fact of
his son's being the richer man of the two, and of his being rich so
young, which rankled with Theobald even more than the fact of his
having money at all. If he had had to wait till he was sixty or
sixty-five, and become broken down from long failure in the
meantime, why then perhaps he might have been allowed to have
whatever sum should suffice to keep him out of the workhouse and pay
his death-bed expenses; but that he should come in to 70,000 pounds
at eight and twenty, and have no wife and only two children--it was
intolerable. Christina was too ill and in too great a hurry to
spend the money to care much about such details as the foregoing,
and she was naturally much more good-natured than Theobald.
"This piece of good fortune"--she saw it at a glance--"quite wiped
out the disgrace of his having been imprisoned. There should be no
more nonsense about that. The whole thing was a mistake, an
unfortunate mistake, true, but the less said about it now the
better. Of course Ernest would come back and live at Battersby
until he was married, and he would pay his father handsomely for
board and lodging. In fact it would be only right that Theobald
should make a profit, nor would Ernest himself wish it to be other
than a handsome one; this was far the best and simplest arrangement;
and he could take his sister out more than Theobald or Joey cared to
do, and would also doubtless entertain very handsomely at Battersby.
"Of course he would buy Joey a living, and make large presents
yearly to his sister--was there anything else? Oh! yes--he would
become a county magnate now; a man with nearly 4000 pounds a year
should certainly become a county magnate. He might even go into
Parliament. He had very fair abilities, nothing indeed approaching
such genius as Dr Skinner's, nor even as Theobald's, still he was
not deficient and if he got into Parliament--so young too--there was
nothing to hinder his being Prime Minister before he died, and if
so, of course, he would become a peer. Oh! why did he not set about
it all at once, so that she might live to hear people call her son
'my lord'--Lord Battersby she thought would do very nicely, and if
she was well enough to sit he must certainly have her portrait
painted at full length for one end of his large dining-hall. It
should be exhibited at the Royal Academy: 'Portrait of Lord
Battersby's mother,' she said to herself, and her heart fluttered
with all its wonted vivacity. If she could not sit, happily, she
had been photographed not so very long ago, and the portrait had
been as successful as any photograph could be of a face which
depended so entirely upon its expression as her own. Perhaps the
painter could take the portrait sufficiently from this. It was
better after all that Ernest had given up the Church--how far more
wisely God arranges matters for us than ever we can do for
ourselves! She saw it all now--it was Joey who would become
Archbishop of Canterbury and Ernest would remain a layman and become
Prime Minister" . . . and so on till her daughter told her it was
time to take her medicine.
I suppose this reverie, which is a mere fragment of what actually
ran through Christina's brain, occupied about a minute and a half,
but it, or the presence of her son, seemed to revive her spirits
wonderfully. Ill, dying indeed, and suffering as she was, she
brightened up so as to laugh once or twice quite merrily during the
course of the afternoon. Next day Dr Martin said she was so much
better that he almost began to have hopes of her recovery again.
Theobald, whenever this was touched upon as possible, would shake
his head and say: "We can't wish it prolonged," and then Charlotte
caught Ernest unawares and said: "You know, dear Ernest, that these
ups and downs of talk are terribly agitating to papa; he could stand
whatever comes, but it is quite too wearing to him to think half-a-
dozen different things backwards and forwards, up and down in the
same twenty-four hours, and it would be kinder of you not to do it--
I mean not to say anything to him even though Dr Martin does hold
out hopes."
Charlotte had meant to imply that it was Ernest who was at the
bottom of all the inconvenience felt by Theobald, herself, Joey and
everyone else, and she had actually got words out which should
convey this; true, she had not dared to stick to them and had turned
them off, but she had made them hers at any rate for one brief
moment, and this was better than nothing. Ernest noticed throughout
his mother's illness, that Charlotte found immediate occasion to
make herself disagreeable to him whenever either doctor or nurse
pronounced her mother to be a little better. When she wrote to
Crampsford to desire the prayers of the congregation (she was sure
her mother would wish it, and that the Crampsford people would be
pleased at her remembrance of them), she was sending another letter
on some quite different subject at the same time, and put the two
letters into the wrong envelopes. Ernest was asked to take these
letters to the village post-office, and imprudently did so; when the
error came to be discovered Christina happened to have rallied a
little. Charlotte flew at Ernest immediately, and laid all the
blame of the blunder upon his shoulders.
Except that Joey and Charlotte were more fully developed, the house
and its inmates, organic and inorganic, were little changed since
Ernest had last seen them. The furniture and the ornaments on the
chimney-piece were just as they had been ever since he could
remember anything at all. In the drawing-room, on either side of
the fireplace there hung the Carlo Dolci and the Sassoferrato as in
old times; there was the water colour of a scene on the Lago
Maggiore, copied by Charlotte from an original lent her by her
drawing master, and finished under his direction. This was the
picture of which one of the servants had said that it must be good,
for Mr Pontifex had given ten shillings for the frame. The paper on
the walls was unchanged; the roses were still waiting for the bees;
and the whole family still prayed night and morning to be made
"truly honest and conscientious."
One picture only was removed--a photograph of himself which had hung
under one of his father and between those of his brother and sister.
Ernest noticed this at prayer time, while his father was reading
about Noah's ark and how they daubed it with slime, which, as it
happened, had been Ernest's favourite text when he was a boy. Next
morning, however, the photograph had found its way back again, a
little dusty and with a bit of the gilding chipped off from one
corner of the frame, but there sure enough it was. I suppose they
put it back when they found how rich he had become.
In the dining-room the ravens were still trying to feed Elijah over
the fireplace; what a crowd of reminiscences did not this picture
bring back! Looking out of the window, there were the flower beds
in the front garden exactly as they had been, and Ernest found
himself looking hard against the blue door at the bottom of the
garden to see if there was rain falling, as he had been used to look
when he was a child doing lessons with his father.
After their early dinner, when Joey and Ernest and their father were
left alone, Theobald rose and stood in the middle of the hearthrug
under the Elijah picture, and began to whistle in his old absent
way. He had two tunes only, one was "In my Cottage near a Wood,"
and the other was the Easter Hymn; he had been trying to whistle
them all his life, but had never succeeded; he whistled them as a
clever bullfinch might whistle them--he had got them, but he had not
got them right; he would be a semitone out in every third note as
though reverting to some remote musical progenitor, who had known
none but the Lydian or the Phrygian mode, or whatever would enable
him to go most wrong while still keeping the tune near enough to be
recognised. Theobald stood before the middle of the fire and
whistled his two tunes softly in his own old way till Ernest left
the room; the unchangedness of the external and changedness of the
internal he felt were likely to throw him completely off his
balance.
He strolled out of doors into the sodden spinney behind the house,
and solaced himself with a pipe. Ere long he found himself at the
door of the cottage of his father's coachman, who had married an old
lady's maid of his mother's, to whom Ernest had been always much
attached as she also to him, for she had known him ever since he had
been five or six years old. Her name was Susan. He sat down in the
rocking-chair before her fire, and Susan went on ironing at the
table in front of the window, and a smell of hot flannel pervaded
the kitchen.
Susan had been retained too securely by Christina to be likely to
side with Ernest all in a moment. He knew this very well, and did
not call on her for the sake of support, moral or otherwise. He had
called because he liked her, and also because he knew that he should
gather much in a chat with her that he should not be able to arrive
at in any other way.
"Oh, Master Ernest," said Susan, "why did you not come back when
your poor papa and mamma wanted you? I'm sure your ma has said to
me a hundred times over if she has said it once that all should be
exactly as it had been before."
Ernest smiled to himself. It was no use explaining to Susan why he
smiled, so he said nothing.
"For the first day or two I thought she never would get over it; she
said it was a judgement upon her, and went on about things as she
had said and done many years ago, before your pa knew her, and I
don't know what she didn't say or wouldn't have said only I stopped
her; she seemed out of her mind like, and said that none of the
neighbours would ever speak to her again, but the next day Mrs
Bushby (her that was Miss Cowey, you know) called, and your ma
always was so fond of her, and it seemed to do her a power o' good,
for the next day she went through all her dresses, and we settled
how she should have them altered; and then all the neighbours called
for miles and miles round, and your ma came in here, and said she
had been going through the waters of misery, and the Lord had turned
them to a well.
"'Oh yes, Susan,' said she, 'be sure it is so. Whom the Lord loveth
he chasteneth, Susan,' and here she began to cry again. 'As for
him,' she went on, 'he has made his bed, and he must lie on it; when
he comes out of prison his pa will know what is best to be done, and
Master Ernest may be thankful that he has a pa so good and so long-
suffering.'
"Then when you would not see them, that was a cruel blow to your ma.
Your pa did not say anything; you know your pa never does say very
much unless he's downright waxy for the time; but your ma took on
dreadful for a few days, and I never saw the master look so black;
but, bless you, it all went off in a few days, and I don't know that
there's been much difference in either of them since then, not till
your ma was took ill."
On the night of his arrival he had behaved well at family prayers,
as also on the following morning; his father read about David's
dying injunctions to Solomon in the matter of Shimei, but he did not
mind it. In the course of the day, however, his corns had been
trodden on so many times that he was in a misbehaving humour, on
this the second night after his arrival. He knelt next Charlotte
and said the responses perfunctorily, not so perfunctorily that she
should know for certain that he was doing it maliciously, but so
perfunctorily as to make her uncertain whether he might be malicious
or not, and when he had to pray to be made truly honest and
conscientious he emphasised the "truly." I do not know whether
Charlotte noticed anything, but she knelt at some distance from him
during the rest of his stay. He assures me that this was the only
spiteful thing he did during the whole time he was at Battersby.
When he went up to his bedroom, in which, to do them justice, they
had given him a fire, he noticed what indeed he had noticed as soon
as he was shown into it on his arrival, that there was an
illuminated card framed and glazed over his bed with the words, "Be
the day weary or be the day long, at last it ringeth to evensong."
He wondered to himself how such people could leave such a card in a
room in which their visitors would have to spend the last hours of
their evening, but he let it alone. "There's not enough difference
between 'weary' and 'long' to warrant an 'or,'" he said, "but I
suppose it is all right." I believe Christina had bought the card
at a bazaar in aid of the restoration of a neighbouring church, and
having been bought it had got to be used--besides, the sentiment was
so touching and the illumination was really lovely. Anyhow, no
irony could be more complete than leaving it in my hero's bedroom,
though assuredly no irony had been intended.
On the third day after Ernest's arrival Christina relapsed again.
For the last two days she had been in no pain and had slept a good
deal; her son's presence still seemed to cheer her, and she often
said how thankful she was to be surrounded on her death-bed by a
family so happy, so God-fearing, so united, but now she began to
wander, and, being more sensible of the approach of death, seemed
also more alarmed at the thoughts of the Day of Judgment.
She ventured more than once or twice to return to the subject of her
sins, and implored Theobald to make quite sure that they were
forgiven her. She hinted that she considered his professional
reputation was at stake; it would never do for his own wife to fail
in securing at any rate a pass. This was touching Theobald on a
tender spot; he winced and rejoined with an impatient toss of the
head, "But, Christina, they ARE forgiven you"; and then he
entrenched himself in a firm but dignified manner behind the Lord's
prayer. When he rose he left the room, but called Ernest out to say
that he could not wish it prolonged.
Joey was no more use in quieting his mother's anxiety than Theobald
had been--indeed he was only Theobald and water; at last Ernest, who
had not liked interfering, took the matter in hand, and, sitting
beside her, let her pour out her grief to him without let or
hindrance.
She said she knew she had not given up all for Christ's sake; it was
this that weighed upon her. She had given up much, and had always
tried to give up more year by year, still she knew very well that
she had not been so spiritually minded as she ought to have been.
If she had, she should probably have been favoured with some direct
vision or communication; whereas, though God had vouchsafed such
direct and visible angelic visits to one of her dear children, yet
she had had none such herself--nor even had Theobald.
She was talking rather to herself than to Ernest as she said these
words, but they made him open his ears. He wanted to know whether
the angel had appeared to Joey or to Charlotte. He asked his
mother, but she seemed surprised, as though she expected him to know
all about it, then, as if she remembered, she checked herself and
said, "Ah! yes--you know nothing of all this, and perhaps it is as
well." Ernest could not of course press the subject, so he never
found out which of his near relations it was who had had direct
communication with an immortal. The others never said anything to
him about it, though whether this was because they were ashamed, or
because they feared he would not believe the story and thus increase
his own damnation, he could not determine.
Ernest has often thought about this since. He tried to get the
facts out of Susan, who he was sure would know, but Charlotte had
been beforehand with him. "No, Master Ernest," said Susan, when he
began to question her, "your ma has sent a message to me by Miss
Charlotte as I am not to say nothing at all about it, and I never
will." Of course no further questioning was possible. It had more
than once occurred to Ernest that Charlotte did not in reality
believe more than he did himself, and this incident went far to
strengthen his surmises, but he wavered when he remembered how she
had misdirected the letter asking for the prayers of the
congregation. I suppose," he said to himself gloomily, "she does
believe in it after all."
Then Christina returned to the subject of her own want of spiritual-
mindedness, she even harped upon the old grievance of her having
eaten black puddings--true, she had given them up years ago, but for
how many years had she not persevered in eating them after she had
had misgivings about their having been forbidden! Then there was
something that weighed on her mind that had taken place before her
marriage, and she should like -
Ernest interrupted: "My dear mother," he said, "you are ill and
your mind is unstrung; others can now judge better about you than
you can; I assure you that to me you seem to have been the most
devotedly unselfish wife and mother that ever lived. Even if you
have not literally given up all for Christ's sake, you have done so
practically as far as it was in your power, and more than this is
not required of anyone. I believe you will not only be a saint, but
a very distinguished one."
At these words Christina brightened. "You give me hope, you give me
hope," she cried, and dried her eyes. She made him assure her over
and over again that this was his solemn conviction; she did not care
about being a distinguished saint now; she would be quite content to
be among the meanest who actually got into heaven, provided she
could make sure of escaping that awful Hell. The fear of this
evidently was omnipresent with her, and in spite of all Ernest could
say he did not quite dispel it. She was rather ungrateful, I must
confess, for after more than an hour's consolation from Ernest she
prayed for him that he might have every blessing in this world,
inasmuch as she always feared that he was the only one of her
children whom she should never meet in heaven; but she was then
wandering, and was hardly aware of his presence; her mind in fact
was reverting to states in which it had been before her illness.
On Sunday Ernest went to church as a matter of course, and noted
that the ever receding tide of Evangelicalism had ebbed many a stage
lower, even during the few years of his absence. His father used to
walk to the church through the Rectory garden, and across a small
intervening field. He had been used to walk in a tall hat, his
Master's gown, and wearing a pair of Geneva bands. Ernest noticed
that the bands were worn no longer, and lo! greater marvel still,
Theobald did not preach in his Master's gown, but in a surplice.
The whole character of the service was changed; you could not say it
was high even now, for high-church Theobald could never under any
circumstances become, but the old easy-going slovenliness, if I may
say so, was gone for ever. The orchestral accompaniments to the
hymns had disappeared while my hero was yet a boy, but there had
been no chanting for some years after the harmonium had been
introduced. While Ernest was at Cambridge, Charlotte and Christina
had prevailed on Theobald to allow the canticles to be sung; and
sung they were to old-fashioned double chants by Lord Mornington and
Dr Dupuis and others. Theobald did not like it, but he did it, or
allowed it to be done.
Then Christina said: "My dear, do you know, I really think"
(Christina always "really" thought) "that the people like the
chanting very much, and that it will be a means of bringing many to
church who have stayed away hitherto. I was talking about it to Mrs
Goodhew and to old Miss Wright only yesterday, and they QUITE agreed
with me, but they all said that we ought to chant the 'Glory be to
the Father' at the end of each of the psalms instead of saying it."
Theobald looked black--he felt the waters of chanting rising higher
and higher upon him inch by inch; but he felt also, he knew not why,
that he had better yield than fight. So he ordered the "Glory be to
the Father" to be chanted in future, but he did not like it.
"Really, mamma dear," said Charlotte, when the battle was won, "you
should not call it the 'Glory be to the Father' you should say
'Gloria.'"
"Of course, my dear," said Christina, and she said "Gloria" for ever
after. Then she thought what a wonderfully clever girl Charlotte
was, and how she ought to marry no one lower than a bishop. By-and-
by when Theobald went away for an unusually long holiday one summer,
he could find no one but a rather high-church clergyman to take his
duty. This gentleman was a man of weight in the neighbourhood,
having considerable private means, but without preferment. In the
summer he would often help his brother clergymen, and it was through
his being willing to take the duty at Battersby for a few Sundays
that Theobald had been able to get away for so long. On his return,
however, he found that the whole psalms were being chanted as well
as the Glorias. The influential clergyman, Christina, and Charlotte
took the bull by the horns as soon as Theobald returned, and laughed
it all off; and the clergyman laughed and bounced, and Christina
laughed and coaxed, and Charlotte uttered unexceptionable
sentiments, and the thing was done now, and could not be undone, and
it was no use grieving over spilt milk; so henceforth the psalms
were to be chanted, but Theobald grisled over it in his heart, and
he did not like it.
During this same absence what had Mrs Goodhew and old Miss Wright
taken to doing but turning towards the east while repeating the
Belief? Theobald disliked this even worse than chanting. When he
said something about it in a timid way at dinner after service,
Charlotte said, "Really, papa dear, you MUST take to calling it the
'Creed' and not the 'Belief'"; and Theobald winced impatiently and
snorted meek defiance, but the spirit of her aunts Jane and Eliza
was strong in Charlotte, and the thing was too small to fight about,
and he turned it off with a laugh. "As for Charlotte," thought
Christina, "I believe she knows EVERYTHING." So Mrs Goodhew and old
Miss Wright continued to turn to the east during the time the Creed
was said, and by-and-by others followed their example, and ere long
the few who had stood out yielded and turned eastward too; and then
Theobald made as though he had thought it all very right and proper
from the first, but like it he did not. By-and-by Charlotte tried
to make him say "Alleluia" instead of "Hallelujah," but this was
going too far, and Theobald turned, and she got frightened and ran
away.
And they changed the double chants for single ones, and altered them
psalm by psalm, and in the middle of psalms, just where a cursory
reader would see no reason why they should do so, they changed from
major to minor and from minor back to major; and then they got
"Hymns Ancient and Modern," and, as I have said, they robbed him of
his beloved bands, and they made him preach in a surplice, and he
must have celebration of the Holy Communion once a month instead of
only five times in the year as heretofore, and he struggled in vain
against the unseen influence which he felt to be working in season
and out of season against all that he had been accustomed to
consider most distinctive of his party. Where it was, or what it
was, he knew not, nor exactly what it would do next, but he knew
exceedingly well that go where he would it was undermining him; that
it was too persistent for him; that Christina and Charlotte liked it
a great deal better than he did, and that it could end in nothing
but Rome. Easter decorations indeed! Christmas decorations--in
reason--were proper enough, but Easter decorations! well, it might
last his time.
This was the course things had taken in the Church of England during
the last forty years. The set has been steadily in one direction.
A few men who knew what they wanted made cats' paws of the Christmas
and the Charlottes, and the Christmas and the Charlottes made cats'
paws of the Mrs Goodhews and the old Miss Wrights, and Mrs Goodhews
and old Miss Wrights told the Mr Goodhews and young Miss Wrights
what they should do, and when the Mr Goodhews and the young Miss
Wrights did it the little Goodhews and the rest of the spiritual
flock did as they did, and the Theobalds went for nothing; step by
step, day by day, year by year, parish by parish, diocese by diocese
this was how it was done. And yet the Church of England looks with
no friendly eyes upon the theory of Evolution or Descent with
Modification.
My hero thought over these things, and remembered many a ruse on the
part of Christina and Charlotte, and many a detail of the struggle
which I cannot further interrupt my story to refer to, and he
remembered his father's favourite retort that it could only end in
Rome. When he was a boy he had firmly believed this, but he smiled
now as he thought of another alternative clear enough to himself,
but so horrible that it had not even occurred to Theobald--I mean
the toppling over of the whole system. At that time he welcomed the
hope that the absurdities and unrealities of the Church would end in
her downfall. Since then he has come to think very differently, not
as believing in the cow jumping over the moon more than he used to,
or more, probably, than nine-tenths of the clergy themselves--who
know as well as he does that their outward and visible symbols are
out of date--but because he knows the baffling complexity of the
problem when it comes to deciding what is actually to be done.
Also, now that he has seen them more closely, he knows better the
nature of those wolves in sheep's clothing, who are thirsting for
the blood of their victim, and exulting so clamorously over its
anticipated early fall into their clutches. The spirit behind the
Church is true, though her letter--true once--is now true no longer.
The spirit behind the High Priests of Science is as lying as its
letter. The Theobalds, who do what they do because it seems to be
the correct thing, but who in their hearts neither like it nor
believe in it, are in reality the least dangerous of all classes to
the peace and liberties of mankind. The man to fear is he who goes
at things with the cocksureness of pushing vulgarity and self-
conceit. These are not vices which can be justly laid to the charge
of the English clergy.
Many of the farmers came up to Ernest when service was over, and
shook hands with him. He found every one knew of his having come
into a fortune. The fact was that Theobald had immediately told two
or three of the greatest gossips in the village, and the story was
not long in spreading. "It simplified matters," he had said to
himself, "a good deal." Ernest was civil to Mrs Goodhew for her
husband's sake, but he gave Miss Wright the cut direct, for he knew
that she was only Charlotte in disguise.
A week passed slowly away. Two or three times the family took the
sacrament together round Christina's death-bed. Theobald's
impatience became more and more transparent daily, but fortunately
Christina (who even if she had been well would have been ready to
shut her eyes to it) became weaker and less coherent in mind also,
so that she hardly, if at all, perceived it. After Ernest had been
in the house about a week his mother fell into a comatose state
which lasted a couple of days, and in the end went away so
peacefully that it was like the blending of sea and sky in mid-ocean
upon a soft hazy day when none can say where the earth ends and the
heavens begin. Indeed she died to the realities of life with less
pain than she had waked from many of its illusions.
"She has been the comfort and mainstay of my life for more than
thirty years," said Theobald as soon as all was over, "but one could
not wish it prolonged," and he buried his face in his handkerchief
to conceal his want of emotion.
Ernest came back to town the day after his mother's death, and
returned to the funeral accompanied by myself. He wanted me to see
his father in order to prevent any possible misapprehension about
Miss Pontifex's intentions, and I was such an old friend of the
family that my presence at Christina's funeral would surprise no
one. With all her faults I had always rather liked Christina. She
would have chopped Ernest or any one else into little pieces of
mincemeat to gratify the slightest wish of her husband, but she
would not have chopped him up for any one else, and so long as he
did not cross her she was very fond of him. By nature she was of an
even temper, more willing to be pleased than ruffled, very ready to
do a good-natured action, provided it did not cost her much
exertion, nor involve expense to Theobald. Her own little purse did
not matter; any one might have as much of that as he or she could
get after she had reserved what was absolutely necessary for her
dress. I could not hear of her end as Ernest described it to me
without feeling very compassionate towards her, indeed her own son
could hardly have felt more so; I at once, therefore, consented to
go down to the funeral; perhaps I was also influenced by a desire to
see Charlotte and Joey, in whom I felt interested on hearing what my
godson had told me.
I found Theobald looking remarkably well. Every one said he was
bearing it so beautifully. He did indeed once or twice shake his
head and say that his wife had been the comfort and mainstay of his
life for over thirty years, but there the matter ended. I stayed
over the next day which was Sunday, and took my departure on the
following morning after having told Theobald all that his son wished
me to tell him. Theobald asked me to help him with Christina's
epitaph.
"I would say," said he, "as little as possible; eulogies of the
departed are in most cases both unnecessary and untrue. Christina's
epitaph shall contain nothing which shall be either the one or the
other. I should give her name, the dates of her birth and death,
and of course say she was my wife, and then I think I should wind up
with a simple text--her favourite one for example, none indeed could
be more appropriate, 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall
see God.'"
I said I thought this would be very nice, and it was settled. So
Ernest was sent to give the order to Mr Prosser, the stonemason in
the nearest town, who said it came from "the Beetitudes." _
Read next: CHAPTER LXXXIV
Read previous: CHAPTER LXXXII
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
