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

to one another, but watched the fading light and naked trees, the brown fields with here and there a melancholy cottage by the road side, and the rain that fell fast upon the carriage windows. It was a kind of afternoon on which nice people for the most part like to be snug at home, and Theobald was a little snappish at reflecting how many miles he had to post before he could be at his own fireside again. However there was nothing for it, so the pair sat quietly and watched the roadside objects flit by them, and get greyer and grimmer as the light faded.

Though they spoke not to one another, there was one nearer to each of them with whom they could converse freely. “I hope,” said Theobald to himself, “I hope he’ll work⁠—or else that Skinner will make him. I don’t like Skinner, I never did like him, but he is unquestionably a man of genius, and no one turns out so many pupils who succeed at Oxford and Cambridge, and that is the best test. I have done my share towards starting him well. Skinner said he had been well grounded and was very forward. I suppose he will presume upon it now and do nothing, for his nature is an idle one. He is not fond of me, I’m sure he is not. He ought to be after all the trouble I have taken with him, but he is ungrateful and selfish. It is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be fond of his own father. If he was fond of me I should be fond of him, but I cannot like a son who, I am sure, dislikes me. He shrinks out of my way whenever he sees me coming near him. He will not stay five minutes in the same room with me if he can help it. He is deceitful. He would not want to hide himself away so much if he were not deceitful. That is a bad sign and one which makes me fear he will grow up extravagant. I am sure he will grow up extravagant. I should have given him more pocket-money if I had not known this⁠—but what is the good of giving him pocket-money? It is all gone directly. If he doesn’t buy something with it he gives it away to the first little boy or girl he sees who takes his fancy. He forgets that it’s my money he is giving away. I give him money that he may have money and learn to know its uses, not that he may go and squander it immediately. I wish he was not so fond of music, it will interfere with his Latin and Greek. I will stop it as much as I can. Why, when he was translating Livy the other day he slipped out Handel’s name in mistake for Hannibal’s, and his mother tells me he knows half the tunes in the ‘Messiah’ by heart. What should a boy of his age know about the ‘Messiah’? If I had shown half as many dangerous tendencies when I was a boy, my father would have apprenticed me to a greengrocer, of that I’m very sure,” etc., etc.

Then his thoughts turned to Egypt and the tenth plague. It seemed to him that if the little Egyptians had been anything like Ernest, the plague must have been something very like a blessing in disguise. If the Israelites were to come to England now he should be greatly tempted not to let them go.

Mrs. Theobald’s thoughts ran in a different current. “Lord Lonsford’s grandson⁠—it’s a pity his name is Figgins; however, blood is blood as much through the female line as the male, indeed, perhaps even more so if the truth were known. I wonder who Mr. Figgins was. I think Mrs. Skinner said he was dead, however, I must find out all about him. It would be delightful if young Figgins were to ask Ernest home for the holidays. Who knows but he might meet Lord Lonsford himself, or at any rate some of Lord Lonsford’s other descendants?”

Meanwhile the boy himself was still sitting moodily before the fire in Mrs. Jay’s room. “Papa and Mamma,” he was saying to himself, “are much better and cleverer than anyone else, but, I, alas! shall never be either good or clever.”

Mrs. Pontifex continued⁠—

“Perhaps it would be best to get young Figgins on a visit to ourselves first. That would be charming. Theobald would not like it, for he does not like children; I must see how I can manage it, for it would be so nice to have young Figgins⁠—or stay! Ernest shall go and stay with Figgins and meet the future Lord Lonsford, who I should think must be about Ernest’s age, and then if he and Ernest were to become friends Ernest might ask him to Battersby, and he might fall in love with Charlotte. I think we have done most wisely in sending Ernest to Dr. Skinner’s. Dr. Skinner’s piety is no less remarkable than his genius. One can tell these things at a glance, and he must have felt it about me no less strongly than I about him. I think he seemed much struck with Theobald and myself⁠—indeed, Theobald’s intellectual power must impress anyone, and I was showing, I do believe, to my best advantage. When I smiled at him and said I left my boy in his hands with the most entire confidence that he would be as well cared for as if he were at my own house, I am sure he was greatly pleased. I should not think many of the mothers who bring him boys can impress him so favourably, or say such nice things to him as I did. My smile is sweet when I desire to make it so. I never was perhaps exactly pretty, but I was always admitted to be fascinating. Dr. Skinner is a very handsome man⁠—too good on the whole