The Way of All Flesh

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The great change in Ellen's life consequent upon her meeting Ernest and
getting married had for a time actually sobered her by shaking her out of
her old ways. Drunkenness is so much a matter of habit, and habit so
much a matter of surroundings, that if you completely change the
surroundings you will sometimes get rid of the drunkenness altogether.
Ellen had intended remaining always sober henceforward, and never having
had so long a steady fit before, believed she was now cured. So she
perhaps would have been if she had seen none of her old acquaintances.
When, however, her new life was beginning to lose its newness, and when
her old acquaintances came to see her, her present surroundings became
more like her past, and on this she herself began to get like her past
too. At first she only got a little tipsy and struggled against a
relapse; but it was no use, she soon lost the heart to fight, and now her
object was not to try and keep sober, but to get gin without her
husband's finding it out.

So the hysterics continued, and she managed to make her husband still
think that they were due to her being about to become a mother. The
worse her attacks were, the more devoted he became in his attention to
her. At last he insisted that a doctor should see her. The doctor of
course took in the situation at a glance, but said nothing to Ernest
except in such a guarded way that he did not understand the hints that
were thrown out to him. He was much too downright and matter of fact to
be quick at taking hints of this sort. He hoped that as soon as his
wife's confinement was over she would regain her health and had no
thought save how to spare her as far as possible till that happy time
should come.

In the mornings she was generally better, as long that is to say as
Ernest remained at home; but he had to go out buying, and on his return
would generally find that she had had another attack as soon as he had
left the house. At times she would laugh and cry for half an hour
together, at others she would lie in a semi-comatose state upon the bed,
and when he came back he would find that the shop had been neglected and
all the work of the household left undone. Still he took it for granted
that this was all part of the usual course when women were going to
become mothers, and when Ellen's share of the work settled down more and
more upon his own shoulders he did it all and drudged away without a
murmur. Nevertheless, he began to feel in a vague way more as he had
felt in Ashpit Place, at Roughborough, or at Battersby, and to lose the
buoyancy of spirits which had made another man of him during the first
six months of his married life.

It was not only that he had to do so much household work, for even the
cooking, cleaning up slops, bed-making and fire-lighting ere long
devolved upon him, but his business no longer prospered. He could buy as
hitherto, but Ellen seemed unable to sell as she had sold at first. The
fact was that she sold as well as ever, but kept back part of the
proceeds in order to buy gin, and she did this more and more till even
the unsuspecting Ernest ought to have seen that she was not telling the
truth. When she sold better--that is to say when she did not think it
safe to keep back more than a certain amount, she got money out of him on
the plea that she had a longing for this or that, and that it would
perhaps irreparably damage the baby if her longing was denied her. All
seemed right, reasonable, and unavoidable, nevertheless Ernest saw that
until the confinement was over he was likely to have a hard time of it.
All however would then come right again.




CHAPTER LXXV


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 overworked, 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.




CHAPTER LXXVI


The winter had been a trying one. Ernest had only paid his way by
selling his piano. With this he seemed to cut away the last link that
connected him with his earlier life, and to sink once for all into the
small shop-keeper. It seemed to him that however low he might sink his
pain could not last much longer, for he should simply die if it did.

He hated Ellen now, and the pair lived in open want of harmony with each
other. If it had not been for his children, he would have left her and
gone to America, but he could not leave the children with Ellen, and as
for taking them with him he did not know how to do it, nor what to do
with them when he had got them to America. If he had not lost energy he
would probably in the end have taken the children and gone off, but his
nerve was shaken, so day after day went by and nothing was done.

He had only got a few shillings in the world now, except the value of his
stock, which was very little; he could get perhaps 3 or 4 pounds by
selling his music and what few pictures and pieces of furniture still
belonged to him. He thought of trying to live by his pen, but his
writing had dropped off long ago; he no longer had an idea in his head.
Look which way he would he saw no hope; the end, if it had not actually
come, was within easy distance and he was almost face to face with actual
want. When he saw people going about poorly clad, or even without shoes
and stockings, he wondered whether within a few months' time he too
should not have to go about in this way. The remorseless, resistless
hand of fate had caught him in its grip and was dragging him down, down,
down. Still he staggered on, going his daily rounds, buying second-hand
clothes, and spending his evenings in cleaning and mending them.

One morning, as he was returning from a house at the West End where he
had bought some clothes from one of the servants, he was struck by a
small crowd which had gathered round a space that had been railed off on
the grass near one of the paths in the Green Park.

It was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of March, and unusually
balmy for the time of year; even Ernest's melancholy was relieved for a
while by the look of spring that pervaded earth and sky; but it soon
returned, and smiling sadly he said to himself: "It may bring hope to
others, but for me there can be no hope henceforth."

As these words were in his mind he joined the small crowd who were
gathered round the railings, and saw that they were looking at three
sheep with very small lambs only a day or two old, which had been penned
off for shelter and protection from the others that ranged the park.

They were very pretty, and Londoners so seldom get a chance of seeing
lambs that it was no wonder every one stopped to look at them. Ernest
observed that no one seemed fonder of them than a great lubberly butcher
boy, who leaned up against the railings with a tray of meat upon his
shoulder. He was looking at this boy and smiling at the grotesqueness of
his admiration, when he became aware that he was being watched intently
by a man in coachman's livery, who had also stopped to admire the lambs,
and was leaning against the opposite side of the enclosure. Ernest knew
him in a moment as John, his father's old coachman at Battersby, and went
up to him at once.

"Why, Master Ernest," said he, with his strong northern accent, "I was
thinking of you only this very morning," and the pair shook hands
heartily. John was in an excellent place at the West End. He had done
very well, he said, ever since he had left Battersby, except for the
first year or two, and that, he said, with a screw of the face, had well
nigh broke him.

Ernest asked how this was.

"Why, you see," said John, "I was always main fond of that lass Ellen,
whom you remember running after, Master Ernest, and giving your watch to.
I expect you haven't forgotten that day, have you?" And here he laughed.
"I don't know as I be the father of the child she carried away with her
from Battersby, but I very easily may have been. Anyhow, after I had
left your papa's place a few days I wrote to Ellen to an address we had
agreed upon, and told her I would do what I ought to do, and so I did,
for I married her within a month afterwards. Why, Lord love the man,
whatever is the matter with him?"--for as he had spoken the last few
words of his story Ernest had turned white as a sheet, and was leaning
against the railings.

"John," said my hero, gasping for breath, "are you sure of what you
say--are you quite sure you really married her?"

"Of course I am," said John, "I married her before the registrar at
Letchbury on the 15th of August 1851.

"Give me your arm," said Ernest, "and take me into Piccadilly, and put me
into a cab, and come with me at once, if you can spare time, to Mr
Overton's at the Temple."




CHAPTER LXXVII


I do not think Ernest himself was much more pleased at finding that he
had never been married than I was. To him, however, the shock of
pleasure was positively numbing in its intensity. As he felt his burden
removed, he reeled for the unaccustomed lightness of his movements; his
position was so shattered that his identity seemed to have been shattered
also; he was as one waking up from a horrible nightmare to find himself
safe and sound in bed, but who can hardly even yet believe that the room
is not full of armed men who are about to spring upon him.

"And it is I," he said, "who not an hour ago complained that I was
without hope. It is I, who for weeks have been railing at fortune, and
saying that though she smiled on others she never smiled at me. Why,
never was anyone half so fortunate as I am."

"Yes," said I, "you have been inoculated for marriage, and have
recovered."

"And yet," he said, "I was very fond of her till she took to drinking."

"Perhaps; but is it not Tennyson who has said: ''Tis better to have loved
and lost, than never to have lost at all'?"

"You are an inveterate bachelor," was the rejoinder.

Then we had a long talk with John, to whom I gave a 5 pound note upon the
spot. He said, "Ellen had used to drink at Battersby; the cook had
taught her; he had known it, but was so fond of her, that he had chanced
it and married her to save her from the streets and in the hope of being
able to keep her straight. She had done with him just as she had done
with Ernest--made him an excellent wife as long as she kept sober, but a
very bad one afterwards."

"There isn't," said John, "a sweeter-tempered, handier, prettier girl
than she was in all England, nor one as knows better what a man likes,
and how to make him happy, if you can keep her from drink; but you can't
keep her; she's that artful she'll get it under your very eyes, without
you knowing it. If she can't get any more of your things to pawn or
sell, she'll steal her neighbours'. That's how she got into trouble
first when I was with her. During the six months she was in prison I
should have felt happy if I had not known she would come out again. And
then she did come out, and before she had been free a fortnight, she
began shop-lifting and going on the loose again--and all to get money to
drink with. So seeing I could do nothing with her and that she was just
a-killing of me, I left her, and came up to London, and went into service
again, and I did not know what had become of her till you and Mr Ernest
here told me. I hope you'll neither of you say you've seen me."

We assured him we would keep his counsel, and then he left us, with many
protestations of affection towards Ernest, to whom he had been always
much attached.

We talked the situation over, and decided first to get the children away,
and then to come to terms with Ellen concerning their future custody; as
for herself, I proposed that we should make her an allowance of, say, a
pound a week to be paid so long as she gave no trouble. Ernest did not
see where the pound a week was to come from, so I eased his mind by
saying I would pay it myself. Before the day was two hours older we had
got the children, about whom Ellen had always appeared to be indifferent,
and had confided them to the care of my laundress, a good motherly sort
of woman, who took to them and to whom they took at once.

Then came the odious task of getting rid of their unhappy mother.
Ernest's heart smote him at the notion of the shock the break-up would be
to her. He was always thinking that people had a claim upon him for some
inestimable service they had rendered him, or for some irreparable
mischief done to them by himself; the case however was so clear, that
Ernest's scruples did not offer serious resistance.

I did not see why he should have the pain of another interview with his
wife, so I got Mr Ottery to manage the whole business. It turned out
that we need not have harrowed ourselves so much about the agony of mind
which Ellen would suffer on becoming an outcast again. Ernest saw Mrs
Richards, the neighbour who had called him down on the night when he had
first discovered his wife's drunkenness, and got from her some details of
Ellen's opinions upon the matter. She did not seem in the least
conscience-stricken; she said: "Thank goodness, at last!" And although
aware that her marriage was not a valid one, evidently regarded this as a
mere detail which it would not be worth anybody's while to go into more
particularly. As regards his breaking with her, she said it was a good
job both for him and for her.