The Way of All Flesh Part 13

Ernest was still too young to know how unpleasant a letter he was receiving. He believed the innuendoes contained in it to be perfectly just. He knew he was sadly deficient in perseverance. He liked some things for a little while, and then found he did not like them any more--and this was as bad as anything well could be. His father's letter gave him one of his many fits of melancholy over his own worthlessness, but the thought of the organ consoled him, and he felt sure that here at any rate was something to which he could apply himself steadily without growing tired of it.

It was settled that the organ was not to be begun before the Christmas holidays were over, and that till then Ernest should do a little plain carpentering, so as to get to know how to use his tools. Miss Pontifex had a carpenter's bench set up in an outhouse upon her own premises, and made terms with the most respectable carpenter in Roughborough, by which one of his men was to come for a couple of hours twice a week and set Ernest on the right way; then she discovered she wanted this or that simple piece of work done, and gave the boy a commission to do it, paying him handsomely as well as finding him in tools and materials. She never gave him a syllable of good advice, or talked to him about everything's depending upon his own exertions, but she kissed him often, and would come into the workshop and act the part of one who took an interest in what was being done so cleverly as ere long to become really interested.

What boy would not take kindly to almost anything with such a.s.sistance?

All boys like making things; the exercise of sawing, planing and hammering, proved exactly what his aunt had wanted to find--something that should exercise, but not too much, and at the same time amuse him; when Ernest's sallow face was flushed with his work, and his eyes were sparkling with pleasure, he looked quite a different boy from the one his aunt had taken in hand only a few months earlier. His inner self never told him that this was humbug, as it did about Latin and Greek. Making stools and drawers was worth living for, and after Christmas there loomed the organ, which was scarcely ever absent from his mind.

His aunt let him invite his friends, encouraging him to bring those whom her quick sense told her were the most desirable. She smartened him up also in his personal appearance, always without preaching to him. Indeed she worked wonders during the short time that was allowed her, and if her life had been spared I cannot think that my hero would have come under the shadow of that cloud which cast so heavy a gloom over his younger manhood; but unfortunately for him his gleam of sunshine was too hot and too brilliant to last, and he had many a storm yet to weather, before he became fairly happy. For the present, however, he was supremely so, and his aunt was happy and grateful for his happiness, the improvement she saw in him, and his unrepressed affection for herself. She became fonder of him from day to day in spite of his many faults and almost incredible foolishnesses. It was perhaps on account of these very things that she saw how much he had need of her; but at any rate, from whatever cause, she became strengthened in her determination to be to him in the place of parents, and to find in him a son rather than a nephew. But still she made no will.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

All went well for the first part of the following half year. Miss Pontifex spent the greater part of her holidays in London, and I also saw her at Roughborough, where I spent a few days, staying at the "Swan." I heard all about my G.o.dson in whom, however, I took less interest than I said I did. I took more interest in the stage at that time than in anything else, and as for Ernest, I found him a nuisance for engrossing so much of his aunt's attention, and taking her so much from London. The organ was begun, and made fair progress during the first two months of the half year. Ernest was happier than he had ever been before, and was struggling upwards. The best boys took more notice of him for his aunt's sake, and he consorted less with those who led him into mischief.

But much as Miss Pontifex had done, she could not all at once undo the effect of such surroundings as the boy had had at Battersby. Much as he feared and disliked his father (though he still knew not how much this was), he had caught much from him; if Theobald had been kinder Ernest would have modelled himself upon him entirely, and ere long would probably have become as thorough a little prig as could have easily been found.

Fortunately his temper had come to him from his mother, who, when not frightened, and when there was nothing on the horizon which might cross the slightest whim of her husband, was an amiable, good-natured woman. If it was not such an awful thing to say of anyone, I should say that she meant well.

Ernest had also inherited his mother's love of building castles in the air, and--so I suppose it must be called--her vanity. He was very fond of showing off, and, provided he could attract attention, cared little from whom it came, nor what it was for. He caught up, parrot-like, whatever jargon he heard from his elders, which he thought was the correct thing, and aired it in season and out of season, as though it were his own.

Miss Pontifex was old enough and wise enough to know that this is the way in which even the greatest men as a general rule begin to develop, and was more pleased with his receptiveness and reproductiveness than alarmed at the things he caught and reproduced.

She saw that he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this rather than to anything else. She saw also that his conceit was not very profound, and that his fits of self-abas.e.m.e.nt were as extreme as his exaltation had been. His impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious about him than any other point in his character; she saw clearly that he would have to find himself rudely undeceived many a time and oft, before he would learn to distinguish friend from foe within reasonable time. It was her perception of this which led her to take the action which she was so soon called upon to take.

Her health was for the most part excellent, and she had never had a serious illness in her life. One morning, however, soon after Easter 1850, she awoke feeling seriously unwell. For some little time there had been a talk of fever in the neighbourhood, but in those days the precautions that ought to be taken against the spread of infection were not so well understood as now, and n.o.body did anything. In a day or two it became plain that Miss Pontifex had got an attack of typhoid fever and was dangerously ill. On this she sent off a messenger to town, and desired him not to return without her lawyer and myself.

We arrived on the afternoon of the day on which we had been summoned, and found her still free from delirium: indeed, the cheery way in which she received us made it difficult to think she could be in danger. She at once explained her wishes, which had reference, as I expected, to her nephew, and repeated the substance of what I have already referred to as her main source of uneasiness concerning him. Then she begged me by our long and close intimacy, by the suddenness of the danger that had fallen on her and her powerlessness to avert it, to undertake what she said she well knew, if she died, would be an unpleasant and invidious trust.

She wanted to leave the bulk of her money ostensibly to me, but in reality to her nephew, so that I should hold it in trust for him till he was twenty-eight years old, but neither he nor anyone else, except her lawyer and myself, was to know anything about it. She would leave 5000 pounds in other legacies, and 15,000 pounds to Ernest--which by the time he was twenty-eight would have acc.u.mulated to, say, 30,000 pounds. "Sell out the debentures," she said, "where the money now is--and put it into Midland Ordinary."

"Let him make his mistakes," she said, "upon the money his grandfather left him. I am no prophet, but even I can see that it will take that boy many years to see things as his neighbours see them. He will get no help from his father and mother, who would never forgive him for his good luck if I left him the money outright; I daresay I am wrong, but I think he will have to lose the greater part or all of what he has, before he will know how to keep what he will get from me."

Supposing he went bankrupt before he was twenty-eight years old, the money was to be mine absolutely, but she could trust me, she said, to hand it over to Ernest in due time.

"If," she continued, "I am mistaken, the worst that can happen is that he will come into a larger sum at twenty-eight instead of a smaller sum at, say, twenty-three, for I would never trust him with it earlier, and--if he knows nothing about it he will not be unhappy for the want of it."

She begged me to take 2000 pounds in return for the trouble I should have in taking charge of the boy's estate, and as a sign of the testatrix's hope that I would now and again look after him while he was still young.

The remaining 3000 pounds I was to pay in legacies and annuities to friends and servants.

In vain both her lawyer and myself remonstrated with her on the unusual and hazardous nature of this arrangement. We told her that sensible people will not take a more sanguine view concerning human nature than the Courts of Chancery do. We said, in fact, everything that anyone else would say. She admitted everything, but urged that her time was short, that nothing would induce her to leave her money to her nephew in the usual way. "It is an unusually foolish will," she said, "but he is an unusually foolish boy;" and she smiled quite merrily at her little sally.

Like all the rest of her family, she was very stubborn when her mind was made up. So the thing was done as she wished it.

No provision was made for either my death or Ernest's--Miss Pontifex had settled it that we were neither of us going to die, and was too ill to go into details; she was so anxious, moreover, to sign her will while still able to do so that we had practically no alternative but to do as she told us. If she recovered we could see things put on a more satisfactory footing, and further discussion would evidently impair her chances of recovery; it seemed then only too likely that it was a case of this will or no will at all.

When the will was signed I wrote a letter in duplicate, saying that I held all Miss Pontifex had left me in trust for Ernest except as regards 5000 pounds, but that he was not to come into the bequest, and was to know nothing whatever about it directly or indirectly, till he was twenty- eight years old, and if he was bankrupt before he came into it the money was to be mine absolutely. At the foot of each letter Miss Pontifex wrote, "The above was my understanding when I made my will," and then signed her name. The solicitor and his clerk witnessed; I kept one copy myself and handed the other to Miss Pontifex's solicitor.

When all this had been done she became more easy in her mind. She talked princ.i.p.ally about her nephew. "Don't scold him," she said, "if he is volatile, and continually takes things up only to throw them down again.

How can he find out his strength or weakness otherwise? A man's profession," she said, and here she gave one of her wicked little laughs, "is not like his wife, which he must take once for all, for better for worse, without proof beforehand. Let him go here and there, and learn his truest liking by finding out what, after all, he catches himself turning to most habitually--then let him stick to this; but I daresay Ernest will be forty or five and forty before he settles down. Then all his previous infidelities will work together to him for good if he is the boy I hope he is.

"Above all," she continued, "do not let him work up to his full strength, except once or twice in his lifetime; nothing is well done nor worth doing unless, take it all round, it has come pretty easily. Theobald and Christina would give him a pinch of salt and tell him to put it on the tails of the seven deadly virtues;"--here she laughed again in her old manner at once so mocking and so sweet--"I think if he likes pancakes he had perhaps better eat them on Shrove Tuesday, but this is enough." These were the last coherent words she spoke. From that time she grew continually worse, and was never free from delirium till her death--which took place less than a fortnight afterwards, to the inexpressible grief of those who knew and loved her.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

Letters had been written to Miss Pontifex's brothers and sisters, and one and all came post-haste to Roughborough. Before they arrived the poor lady was already delirious, and for the sake of her own peace at the last I am half glad she never recovered consciousness.

I had known these people all their lives, as none can know each other but those who have played together as children; I knew how they had all of them--perhaps Theobald least, but all of them more or less--made her life a burden to her until the death of her father had made her her own mistress, and I was displeased at their coming one after the other to Roughborough, and inquiring whether their sister had recovered consciousness sufficiently to be able to see them. It was known that she had sent for me on being taken ill, and that I remained at Roughborough, and I own I was angered by the mingled air of suspicion, defiance and inquisitiveness, with which they regarded me. They would all, except Theobald, I believe have cut me downright if they had not believed me to know something they wanted to know themselves, and might have some chance of learning from me--for it was plain I had been in some way concerned with the making of their sister's will. None of them suspected what the ostensible nature of this would be, but I think they feared Miss Pontifex was about to leave money for public uses. John said to me in his blandest manner that he fancied he remembered to have heard his sister say that she thought of leaving money to found a college for the relief of dramatic authors in distress; to this I made no rejoinder, and I have no doubt his suspicions were deepened.

When the end came, I got Miss Pontifex's solicitor to write and tell her brothers and sisters how she had left her money: they were not unnaturally furious, and went each to his or her separate home without attending the funeral, and without paying any attention to myself. This was perhaps the kindest thing they could have done by me, for their behaviour made me so angry that I became almost reconciled to Alethea's will out of pleasure at the anger it had aroused. But for this I should have felt the will keenly, as having been placed by it in the position which of all others I had been most anxious to avoid, and as having saddled me with a very heavy responsibility. Still it was impossible for me to escape, and I could only let things take their course.

Miss Pontifex had expressed a wish to be buried at Paleham; in the course of the next few days I therefore took the body thither. I had not been to Paleham since the death of my father some six years earlier. I had often wished to go there, but had shrunk from doing so though my sister had been two or three times. I could not bear to see the house which had been my home for so many years of my life in the hands of strangers; to ring ceremoniously at a bell which I had never yet pulled except as a boy in jest; to feel that I had nothing to do with a garden in which I had in childhood gathered so many a nosegay, and which had seemed my own for many years after I had reached man's estate; to see the rooms bereft of every familiar feature, and made so unfamiliar in spite of their familiarity. Had there been any sufficient reason, I should have taken these things as a matter of course, and should no doubt have found them much worse in antic.i.p.ation than in reality, but as there had been no special reason why I should go to Paleham I had hitherto avoided doing so. Now, however, my going was a necessity, and I confess I never felt more subdued than I did on arriving there with the dead playmate of my childhood.

I found the village more changed than I had expected. The railway had come there, and a brand new yellow brick station was on the site of old Mr and Mrs Pontifex's cottage. Nothing but the carpenter's shop was now standing. I saw many faces I knew, but even in six years they seemed to have grown wonderfully older. Some of the very old were dead, and the old were getting very old in their stead. I felt like the changeling in the fairy story who came back after a seven years' sleep. Everyone seemed glad to see me, though I had never given them particular cause to be so, and everyone who remembered old Mr and Mrs Pontifex spoke warmly of them and were pleased at their granddaughter's wishing to be laid near them. Entering the churchyard and standing in the twilight of a gusty cloudy evening on the spot close beside old Mrs Pontifex's grave which I had chosen for Alethea's, I thought of the many times that she, who would lie there henceforth, and I, who must surely lie one day in some such another place though when and where I knew not, had romped over this very spot as childish lovers together. Next morning I followed her to the grave, and in due course set up a plain upright slab to her memory as like as might be to those over the graves of her grandmother and grandfather. I gave the dates and places of her birth and death, but added nothing except that this stone was set up by one who had known and loved her. Knowing how fond she had been of music I had been half inclined at one time to inscribe a few bars of music, if I could find any which seemed suitable to her character, but I knew how much she would have disliked anything singular in connection with her tombstone and did not do it.

Before, however, I had come to this conclusion, I had thought that Ernest might be able to help me to the right thing, and had written to him upon the subject. The following is the answer I received--

"Dear G.o.dpapa,--I send you the best bit I can think of; it is the subject of the last of Handel's six grand fugues and goes thus:--

[Music score]

It would do better for a man, especially for an old man who was very sorry for things, than for a woman, but I cannot think of anything better; if you do not like it for Aunt Alethea I shall keep it for myself.--Your affectionate G.o.dson, ERNEST PONTIFEX."

Was this the little lad who could get sweeties for two-pence but not for two-pence-halfpenny? Dear, dear me, I thought to myself, how these babes and sucklings do give us the go-by surely. Choosing his own epitaph at fifteen as for a man who "had been very sorry for things," and such a strain as that--why it might have done for Leonardo da Vinci himself.

Then I set the boy down as a conceited young jackanapes, which no doubt he was,--but so are a great many other young people of Ernest's age.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

If Theobald and Christina had not been too well pleased when Miss Pontifex first took Ernest in hand, they were still less so when the connection between the two was interrupted so prematurely. They said they had made sure from what their sister had said that she was going to make Ernest her heir. I do not think she had given them so much as a hint to this effect. Theobald indeed gave Ernest to understand that she had done so in a letter which will be given shortly, but if Theobald wanted to make himself disagreeable, a trifle light as air would forthwith a.s.sume in his imagination whatever form was most convenient to him. I do not think they had even made up their minds what Alethea was to do with her money before they knew of her being at the point of death, and as I have said already, if they had thought it likely that Ernest would be made heir over their own heads without their having at any rate a life interest in the bequest, they would have soon thrown obstacles in the way of further intimacy between aunt and nephew.

This, however, did not bar their right to feeling aggrieved now that neither they nor Ernest had taken anything at all, and they could profess disappointment on their boy's behalf which they would have been too proud to admit upon their own. In fact, it was only amiable of them to be disappointed under these circ.u.mstances.

Christina said that the will was simply fraudulent, and was convinced that it could be upset if she and Theobald went the right way to work.

Theobald, she said, should go before the Lord Chancellor, not in full court but in chambers, where he could explain the whole matter; or, perhaps it would be even better if she were to go herself--and I dare not trust myself to describe the reverie to which this last idea gave rise. I believe in the end Theobald died, and the Lord Chancellor (who had become a widower a few weeks earlier) made her an offer, which, however, she firmly but not ungratefully declined; she should ever, she said, continue to think of him as a friend--at this point the cook came in, saying the butcher had called, and what would she please to order.

I think Theobald must have had an idea that there was something behind the bequest to me, but he said nothing about it to Christina. He was angry and felt wronged, because he could not get at Alethea to give her a piece of his mind any more than he had been able to get at his father.

"It is so mean of people," he exclaimed to himself, "to inflict an injury of this sort, and then shirk facing those whom they have injured; let us hope that, at any rate, they and I may meet in Heaven." But of this he was doubtful, for when people had done so great a wrong as this, it was hardly to be supposed that they would go to Heaven at all--and as for his meeting them in another place, the idea never so much as entered his mind.

One so angry and, of late, so little used to contradiction might be trusted, however, to avenge himself upon someone, and Theobald had long since developed the organ, by means of which he might vent spleen with least risk and greatest satisfaction to himself. This organ, it may be guessed, was nothing else than Ernest; to Ernest therefore he proceeded to unburden himself, not personally, but by letter.