The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler (book club recommendations .TXT) 📖

and see Miss Snow at once, and try if he could not induce her to change her present mode of life; if he found temptation becoming too strong for him he would fly then⁠—so he went upstairs with his Bible under his arm, and a consuming fire in his heart.

He found Miss Snow looking very pretty in a neatly, not to say demurely, furnished room. I think she had bought an illuminated text or two, and pinned it up over her fireplace that morning. Ernest was very much pleased with her, and mechanically placed his Bible upon the table. He had just opened a timid conversation and was deep in blushes, when a hurried step came bounding up the stairs as though of one over whom the force of gravity had little power, and a man burst into the room saying, “I’m come before my time.” It was Towneley.

His face dropped as he caught sight of Ernest. “What, you here, Pontifex! Well, upon my word!”

I cannot describe the hurried explanations that passed quickly between the three⁠—enough that in less than a minute Ernest, blushing more scarlet than ever, slunk off, Bible and all, deeply humiliated as he contrasted himself and Towneley. Before he had reached the bottom of the staircase leading to his own room he heard Towneley’s hearty laugh through Miss Snow’s door, and cursed the hour that he was born.

Then it flashed upon him that if he could not see Miss Snow he could at any rate see Miss Maitland. He knew well enough what he wanted now, and as for the Bible, he pushed it from him to the other end of his table. It fell over on to the floor, and he kicked it into a corner. It was the Bible given him at his christening by his affectionate aunt, Elizabeth Allaby. True, he knew very little of Miss Maitland, but ignorant young fools in Ernest’s state do not reflect or reason closely. Mrs. Baxter had said that Miss Maitland and Miss Snow were birds of a feather, and Mrs. Baxter probably knew better than that old liar, Mrs. Jupp. Shakespeare says:

“O Opportunity, thy guilt is great
’Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason:
Thou set’st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
Whoever plots the sin, thou ’point’st the season;
’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason;
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.”

If the guilt of opportunity is great, how much greater is the guilt of that which is believed to be opportunity, but in reality is no opportunity at all. If the better part of valour is discretion, how much more is not discretion the better part of vice.

About ten minutes after we last saw Ernest, a scared, insulted girl, flushed and trembling, was seen hurrying from Mrs. Jupp’s house as fast as her agitated state would let her, and in another ten minutes two policemen were seen also coming out of Mrs. Jupp’s, between whom there shambled rather than walked our unhappy friend Ernest, with staring eyes, ghastly pale, and with despair branded upon every line of his face.

LXI

Pryer had done well to warn Ernest against promiscuous house to house visitation. He had not gone outside Mrs. Jupp’s street door, and yet what had been the result?

Mr. Holt had put him in bodily fear; Mr. and Mrs. Baxter had nearly made a Methodist of him; Mr. Shaw had undermined his faith in the Resurrection; Miss Snow’s charms had ruined⁠—or would have done so but for an accident⁠—his moral character. As for Miss Maitland, he had done his best to ruin hers, and had damaged himself gravely and irretrievably in consequence. The only lodger who had done him no harm was the bellows’ mender, whom he had not visited.

Other young clergymen, much greater fools in many respects than he, would not have got into these scrapes. He seemed to have developed an aptitude for mischief almost from the day of his having been ordained. He could hardly preach without making some horrid faux pas. He preached one Sunday morning when the Bishop was at his Rector’s church, and made his sermon turn upon the question what kind of little cake it was that the widow of Zarephath had intended making when Elijah found her gathering a few sticks. He demonstrated that it was a seed cake. The sermon was really very amusing, and more than once he saw a smile pass over the sea of faces underneath him. The Bishop was very angry, and gave my hero a severe reprimand in the vestry after service was over; the only excuse he could make was that he was preaching ex tempore, had not thought of this particular point till he was actually in the pulpit, and had then been carried away by it.

Another time he preached upon the barren fig-tree, and described the hopes of the owner as he watched the delicate blossom unfold, and give promise of such beautiful fruit in autumn. Next day he received a letter from a botanical member of his congregation who explained to him that this could hardly have been, inasmuch as the fig produces its fruit first and blossoms inside the fruit, or so nearly so that no flower is perceptible to an ordinary observer. This last, however, was an accident which might have happened to anyone but a scientist or an inspired writer.

The only excuse I can make for him is that he was very young⁠—not yet four and twenty⁠—and that in mind as in body, like most of those who in the end come to think for themselves, he was a slow grower. By far the greater part, moreover, of his education had been an attempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes out altogether.

But to return to my story. It transpired afterwards that Miss Maitland had had no intention of giving Ernest in charge when she ran out