The Reverend Augustin Ambrose would gladly have given up taking pupils.
He was growing old and his sight was beginning to trouble him; he was
very weary of Thucydides, of Homer, of the works of Mr. Todhunter of
which the green bindings expressed a hope still unrealised, of conic
sections--even of his beloved Horace. He was tired of the stupidities of
the dull young men who were sent to him because they could not "keep up",
and he had long ceased to be surprised or interested by the remarks of
the clever ones who were sent to him because their education had not
prepared them for an English University. The dull ones could never be
made to understand anything, though Mr. Ambrose generally succeeded in
making them remember enough to matriculate, by dint of ceaseless
repetition and a system of _memoria technica_ which embraced most things
necessary to the salvation of dull youth. The clever ones, on the other
hand, generally lacked altogether the solid foundation of learning; they
could construe fluently but did not know a long syllable from a short
one; they had vague notions of elemental algebra and no notion at all of
arithmetic, but did very well in conic sections; they knew nothing of
prosody, but dabbled perpetually in English blank verse; altogether they
knew most of those things which they need not have known and they knew
none of those things thoroughly which they ought to have known. After
twenty years of experience Mr. Ambrose ascertained that it was easier to
teach a stupid boy than a clever one, but that he would prefer not to
teach at all.
Unfortunately the small tithes of a small country parish in Essex did not
furnish a sufficient income for his needs. He had been a Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, within a few years of taking his degree,
wherein he had obtained high honours. But he had married and had found
himself obliged to accept the first living offered to him, to wit, the
vicarage of Billingsfield, whereof his college held the rectory and
received the great tithes. The entire income he obtained from his cure
never at any time exceeded three hundred and forty-seven pounds, and in
the year when it reached that high figure there had been an unusually
large number of marriages. It was not surprising that the vicar should
desire to improve his circumstances by receiving one or two pupils. He
had married young, as has been said, and there had been children born to
him, a son and a daughter. Mrs. Ambrose was a good manager and a good
mother, and her husband had worked hard. Between them they had brought up
their children exceedingly well. The son had in his turn entered the
church, had exhibited a faculty of pushing his way which had not
characterised his father, had got a curacy in a fashionable Yorkshire
watering-place, and was thought to be on the way to obtain a first-rate
living. In the course of time, too, the daughter had lost her heart to a
young physician who had brilliant prospects and some personal fortune,
and the Reverend Augustin Ambrose had given his consent to the union. Nor
had he been disappointed. The young physician had risen rapidly in his
profession, had been elected a member of the London College, had
transferred himself to the capital and now enjoyed a rising practice in
Chelsea. So great was his success that it was thought he would before
long purchase the goodwill of an old practitioner who dwelt in the
neighbourhood of Brompton Crescent, and who, it was said, might shortly
be expected to retire.
It will be seen, therefore, that if Mr. Ambrose's life had not been very
brilliant, his efforts had on the whole been attended with success. His
children were both happy and independent and no longer needed his
assistance or support; his wife, the excellent Mrs. Ambrose, enjoyed
unfailing health and good spirits; he himself was still vigorous and
active, and as yet found no difficulty in obtaining a couple of pupils at
two hundred pounds a year each, for he had early got a reputation for
successfully preparing young gentlemen with whom no other private tutor
could do anything, and he had established the scale of his prices
accordingly. It is true that he had sacrificed other things for the sake
of imparting tuition, and more than once he had hesitated and asked
himself whether he should go on. Indeed, when he graduated, it was
thought that he would soon make himself remarkable by the publication of
some scholarly work; it was foretold that he might become a famous
preacher; it was asserted that he was a general favourite with the
Fellows of Trinity and would get a proportionately fat living--but he had
committed the unpardonable sin of allowing his chances of fortune to slip
from him. He had given up his fellowship, had married and had accepted an
insignificant country living. He asked nothing, and he got nothing. He
never attracted the notice of his bishop by doing anything extraordinary,
nor the notice of the public by appearing in print. He baptized, married
and buried the people of Billingsfield, Essex, and he took private
pupils. He wrote a sermon once a fortnight, and revised old ones for the
other three occasions out of four. His sermons were good in their way,
but were intended for simple folk and did no justice to the powers he had
certainly possessed in his youth. Indeed, as years went on, the dry
routine of his life produced its inevitable effect upon his mind, and the
productions of Mr. Ambrose grew to be exceedingly commonplace; and the
more commonplace he became, the more he regretted having done so little
with the faculties he enjoyed, and the more weary he became of the daily
task of galvanising the dull minds of his pupils into a spasmodic
activity, just sufficient to leap the ditch that separates the schoolboy
from the undergraduate. He had not only educated his children and seen
them provided for in the world; he had also saved a little money, and he
had insured his life for five hundred pounds. There was no longer any
positive necessity for continuing to teach, as there had been thirty
years ago, when he first married.
So much for the circumstances of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose.
Personally he was a man of good presence, five feet ten inches in height,
active and strong, of a ruddy complexion with smooth, thick grey hair and
a plentiful grey beard. He shaved his upper lip however, greatly to the
detriment of his appearance, for the said upper lip was very long and the
absence of the hirsute appendage showed a very large mouth with very thin
lips, generally compressed into an expression of remarkable obstinacy.
His nose was both broad and long and his grey eyes were bright and
aggressive in their glance. As a matter of fact Mr. Ambrose was combative
by nature, but his fighting instincts seem to have been generally
employed in the protection of rights he already possessed, rather than in
pushing on in search of fresh fields of activity. He was an active man,
fond of walking alone and able to walk any distance he pleased; a
charitable man with the charity peculiar to people of exceedingly
economical tendencies and possessing small fixed incomes. He would give
himself vast personal trouble to assist distress, as though aware that
since he could not give much money to the poor he was bound to give the
best of himself. The good Mrs. Ambrose seconded him in this as in all his
works; labouring hard when hard work could do any good, but giving
material assistance with a sparing hand. It sufficiently defines the two
to say that although many a surly labourer in the parish grumbled that
the vicar and his wife were "oncommon near", when money was concerned,
there was nevertheless no trouble in which their aid was not invoked and
their advice asked. But the indigent labourer not uncommonly retrieved
his position by asking a shilling of one of the young gentlemen at the
vicarage, who were generally open-handed, good-looking boys, blessed with
a great deal more money than brains.
At the time when this tale opens, however, it chanced that one of the two
young gentlemen at the vicarage was by no means in the position peculiar
to the majority of youths who sought the good offices of the Reverend
Augustin Ambrose. John Short, aged eighteen, was in all respects a
remarkable contrast to his companion the Honourable Cornelius Angleside.
John Short was apparently very poor; the Honourable Cornelius on the
other hand had plenty of money. Short was undeniably clever; Angleside
was uncommonly dull. Short was the son of a decayed literary man;
Angleside was the son of a nobleman. Short was by nature a hard worker;
Angleside was amazingly idle. Short meant to do something in the world;
Angleside had early determined to do nothing.
It would not be easy to define the reasons which induced Mr. Ambrose to
receive John Short under his roof. He had never before taken a pupil on
any but his usual terms, and at his time of life it was strange that he
should break through the rule. But here his peculiar views of charity
came into play. Short's father had been his own chum at school, and his
friend at college, but had failed to reap any substantial benefits from
his education. He had been a scholar in his way, but his way had not been
the way of other scholars, and when he had gone up for honours he had got
a bad third in classics. He would not enter the church, he could not
enter the law, he had no interest whatever, and he found himself
naturally thrust into the profession of literature. For a time he had
nearly starved; then he had met with some success and had, of course,
married without hesitation; after this he had had more misfortunes. His
wife had died leaving him an only son, whom in course of time he had sent
to school. But school was too expensive and he had reluctantly taken the
boy home again. It was in a fit of despair that he wrote to his old
friend Augustin Ambrose, asking his advice. The Reverend Augustin
considered the matter with the assistance of his wife, and being
charitable souls, they determined that they must help Short to educate
his son. Accordingly the vicar of Billingsfield wrote to his old friend
to say that if he could manage to pay a small sum for the lad's board,
he, the vicar, would complete the boy's education, so that he might at
least have a chance in the world. Short accepted the offer with boundless
gratitude and had hitherto not failed to pay the vicar the small sum
agreed upon. The result of all this was that Mr. Ambrose had grown very
fond of John, and John had derived great advantage from his position. He
possessed precisely what his father had lacked, namely a strong bent in
one direction, and there was no doubt that he would distinguish himself
if he had a chance. That chance the vicar had determined to give him. He
had made up his mind that his old friend's son should go to college and
show what he was able to do. It was not an easy thing to manage, but the
vicar had friends in Cambridge and John had brains; moreover the vicar
and John were both very obstinate people and had both determined upon the
same plan, so that there was a strong probability of their succeeding.
John Short was eighteen years of age, neither particularly good-looking
nor by any means the reverse. He had what bankers commonly call a lucky
face; that is to say he had a certain very prepossessing look of honesty
in his blue eyes, and a certain look of energetic goodwill in his
features. When he was much older and wore a beard he passed for a
handsome man, but at eighteen he could only boast the smallest of fair
whiskers, and when anybody took the trouble to look long at him, which
was not often, the verdict was that his jaw was too heavy and his mouth
too obstinate. In complexion he was fair, and healthy to look at,
generally sunburned in the summer, for he had a habit of reading out of
doors; his laugh was very pleasant, though it was rarely heard; his eyes
were honest but generally thoughtful; his frame was sturdy and already
inclined rather to strength than to graceful proportion; his head matched
his body well, being broad and well-shaped with plenty of prominence over
the brows and plenty of fulness above the temples. He had a way of
standing as though it would not be easy to move him, and a way of
expressing his opinion which seemed to challenge contradiction. But he
was not a combative boy. If any one argued with him, it soon appeared
that he was not really argumentative, but merely enthusiastic. It was not
necessary to agree with him, and there was small use in contradicting
him. The more he talked the more enthusiastic he grew as he developed his
own views; until seeing that he was not understood or that he was merely
laughed at, he would end his discourse with a merry laugh at himself, or
a shy apology for having talked so much. But the vicar assured his wife
that the boy's Greek and Latin verses were something very extraordinary
indeed, and much better than his own in his best days. For John was
passionately fond of the classics and did not propose to acquire any more
mathematical knowledge than was strictly necessary for his matriculation
and "little-go." He meant to be a famous scholar and he meant to get a
fellowship at his college in order to be perfectly independent and to
help his father.
John was a constant source of wonder to his companion the Honourable
Cornelius Angleside, who remembered to have seen fellows of that sort at
Eton but had never got near enough to them to know what they were really
like. Cornelius had a vague idea that there was some trick about
appearing to know so much and that those reading chaps were awful
humbugs. How the trick was performed he did not venture to explain, but
he was as firmly persuaded that it was managed by some species of
conjuring as that Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook performed their wonders by
sleight of hand. That one human brain should actually contain the amount
of knowledge John Short appeared to possess was not credible to the
Honourable Cornelius, and the latter spent more of his time in trying to
discover how John "did it" than in trying to "do it" himself.
Nevertheless, young Angleside liked Short after his own fashion, and
Short did not dislike Angleside. John's father had given him to
understand that as a general rule persons of wealth and good birth were a
set of overbearing, purse-proud bullies, who considered men of genius to
be little better than a set of learned monkeys, certainly not good enough
to black their boots. For John's father in his misfortunes had imbibed
sundry radical notions formerly peculiar to poor literary men, and not
yet altogether extinct, and he had accordingly warned his son that all
mammon was the mammon of unrighteousness, and that the people who
possessed it were the natural enemies of people who had to live by their
brains. But John had very soon discovered that though Cornelius Angleside
possessed the three qualifications for perdition, in the shape of birth,
wealth and ignorance, against which his poor father railed unceasingly,
he succeeded nevertheless in making himself very good company. Angleside
was not overbearing, he was not purse-proud and he was not a bully. On
the contrary he was unobtrusive and sufficiently simple in manner, and he
certainly never mentioned the subject of his family or fortune; John
rather pitied him, on the whole, until he began to discover that
Angleside looked up to him on account of his mental superiority, and then
John, being very human, began to like him.
The life at the vicarage of Billingsfield, Essex, was not remarkable for
anything but its extreme regularity. Prayers, breakfast, work, lunch, a
walk, work, dinner, work, prayers, bed. The programme never varied, save
as the seasons introduced some change in the hours of the establishment.
The vicar, who was fond of a little gardening and amused himself with a
variety of experiments in the laying of asparagus beds, found occasional
excitement in the pursuit of a stray cat which had managed to climb his
wire netting and get at the heads of his favourite vegetable, in which
thrilling chase he was usually aided by an old brown retriever answering,
when he answered at all, to the name of Carlo, and by the Honourable
Cornelius, whose skill in throwing stones was as phenomenal as his
ignorance of Latin quantities. The play was invariably opened by old
Reynolds, the ancient and bow-legged gardener, groom and man of all work
at the vicarage.
"Please sir, there's Simon Gunn's cat in the sparrergrass." The
information was accompanied by a sort of chuckle of evil satisfaction
which at once roused the sleeping passions of the Reverend Augustin
Ambrose.
"Dear me, Reynolds, then why don't you turn her out?" and without waiting
for an answer, the excellent vicar would spring from his seat and rush
down the lawn in the direction of the beds, closely followed by the
Honourable Cornelius, who picked up stones from the gravel path as he
ran, and whose long legs made short work of the iron fence at the bottom
of the garden. Meanwhile the aged Reynolds let Carlo loose from the yard
and the hunt was prosecuted with great boldness and ingenuity. The
vicar's object was to get the cat out of the asparagus bed as soon as
possible without hurting her, for he was a humane man and would not have
hurt a fly. Cornelius, on the other hand, desired the game to last as
long as possible, and endeavoured to prevent the cat's escape by always
hitting the wire netting at the precise spot where she was trying to get
over it. In this way he would often succeed in getting as much as half an
hour's respite from Horace. At last the vicar, panting with his exertions
and bathed in perspiration, would protest against the form of assault.
"Really, Angleside", he would say, "I believe I could throw straighter
myself. I'm quite sure Carlo can get her out if you leave him alone".
Whereupon Cornelius would put his hands in his pockets and look on, and
in a few minutes, when the cat had been driven out and the vicar's back
was turned, he would slip a sixpence into old Reynold's hand, and follow
his tutor reluctantly back to the study. Whether there was any connection
between the cat and the sixpence is uncertain, but during the last months
of Angleside's stay at the vicarage the ingenuity of Simon Gunn's yellow
cat in getting over the wire netting reached such a pitch that the vicar
began to prepare a letter to the Bishop Stortford _Chronicle_ on the
relations generally existing between cats and asparagus beds.
Another event in the life of the vicarage was the periodical lameness of
the vicar's strawberry mare, followed by the invariable discovery that
George Horsnell the village blacksmith had run a nail into her foot when
he shoed her last. Invariably, also, the vicar threatened that in future
the mare should be shod by Hawkins the rival blacksmith, who was a
dissenter and had consequently never been employed by the vicarage.
Moreover it was generally rumoured once every year that old Nat Barker,
the octogenarian cripple who had not been able to stand upon his feet for
twenty years, was at the point of death. He invariably recovered,
however, in time to put in an appearance by proxy at the distribution of
a certain dole of a loaf and a shilling on boxing day. It was told also
that in remote times the Puckeridge hounds had once come that way and
that the fox had got into the churchyard. A repetition of this stirring
event was anxiously looked for during many years, every time that the
said pack met within ten miles of Billingsfield, but hitherto it had been
looked for in vain. On the whole the life at the vicarage was not
eventful, and the studies of the two young men who imbibed learning at
the feet of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose were rarely interrupted.
Mrs. Ambrose herself represented the feminine element in the society of
the little place. The new doctor was a strange man, suspected of being a
free-thinker, and he was not married. The Hall, for there was a Hall at
Billingsfield, was uninhabited, and had been uninhabited for years. The
estate which belonged to it was unimportant and moreover was in Chancery
and seemed likely to stay there, for reasons no one ever mentioned at
Billingsfield, because no one knew anything about them. From time to time
a legal looking personage drove up to the Duke's Head, which was kept by
Mr. Abraham Boosey, who was also undertaker to the parish, and which was
thought to be a very good inn. The legal personage stayed a day or two,
spending most of his time at the Hall and in driving about to the
scattered farms which represented the estate, but he never came to the
vicarage, nor did the vicar ever seem to know what he was doing nor why
he came. "He came on business"--that was all that anybody knew. His
business was to collect rents, of course; but what he did with them, no
one was bold enough to surmise. The estate was in Chancery, it was said,
and the definition conveyed about as much to the mind of the average
inhabitant of Billingsfield, as if he had been informed that the moon was
in perigee or the sun in Scorpio. The practical result of its being in
Chancery was that no one lived there.
John Short liked Mrs. Ambrose and the Honourable Cornelius behaved to her
with well bred affability. She always said Cornelius had very nice
manners, as indeed he had and had need to have. Occasionally, perhaps
four or five times in the year, the Reverend Edward Pewlay, who had what
he called a tenor voice, and his wife, who played the pianoforte very
fairly, came over to assist at a Penny Reading. He lived "over Harlow
way," as the natives expressed it; he was what was called in those parts
a rabid Anglican, because he preached in his surplice and had services on
the Saints' days, and the vicar of Billingsfield did not sympathise in
his views. Nevertheless he was very useful at Penny Readings, and on one
of these occasions produced a very ingenious ghost for the delectation of
the rustics, by means of a piece of plate glass and a couple of lamps.
There had indeed been festivities at the vicarage to which as many as
three clergymen's wives had been invited, but these were rare indeed. For
months at a time Mrs. Ambrose reigned in undisputed possession of the
woman's social rights in Billingsfield. She was an excellent person in
every way. She had once been handsome and even now she was fine-looking,
of goodly stature, if also of goodly weight; rosy, even rubicund, in
complexion, and rotund of feature; looking at you rather severely out of
her large grey eyes, but able to smile very cheerfully and to show an
uncommonly good set of teeth; twisting her thick grey hair into a small
knot at the back of her head and then covering it with a neatly made cap
which she considered becoming to her time of life; dressed always with
extreme simplicity and neatness, glorying in her good sense and in her
stout shoes; speaking of things which she called "neat" with a devotional
admiration and expressing the extremest height of her disapprobation when
she said anything was "very untidy." A motherly woman, a practical woman,
a good housekeeper and a good wife, careful of small things because
generally only small things came in her way, devotedly attached to her
husband, whom she regarded with perfect justice as the best man of her
acquaintance, adding, however, with somewhat precipitous rashness that he
was the best man in the world. She took also a great interest in his
pupils and busied herself mightily with their welfare. Since the arrival
of the new doctor who was suspected of free-thinking, she had shown a
strong leaning towards homoeopathy, and prescribed small pellets of
belladonna for the Honourable Cornelius's cold and infinitesimal drops of
aconite for John Short's headaches, until she observed that John never
had a headache unless he had worked too much, and Angleside always had a
cold when he did not want to work at all. Especially in the department of
the commissariat she showed great activity, and the reputation the vicar
had acquired for feeding his pupils well had perhaps more to do with his
success than he imagined. She was never tired of repeating that
Englishmen needed plenty of good food, and she had no principles which
she did not practise. She even thought it right to lecture young
Angleside upon his idleness at stated intervals. He always replied with
great gentleness that he was awfully stupid, you know, and Mr. Ambrose
was awfully good about it and he hoped he should not be pulled when he
went up. And strange to relate he actually passed his examination and
matriculated, to his own immense astonishment and to the no small honour
and glory of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose, vicar of Billingsfield,
Essex. But when that great day arrived certain events occurred which are
worthy to be chronicled and remembered.