There was already a counter in the shop and a few fittings, so that nothing now remained but to get some stock and set them out for sale. Ernest said he could not begin better than by selling his clerical wardrobe and his books, for though the shop was intended especially for the sale of second-hand clothes, yet Ellen said there was no reason why they should not sell a few books too; so a beginning was to be made by selling the books he had had at school and college at about one shilling a volume, taking them all round, and I have heard him say that he learned more that proved of practical use to him through stocking his books on a bench in front of his shop and selling them, than he had done from all the years of study which he had bestowed upon their contents.
For the enquiries that were made of him whether he had such and such a book taught him what he could sell and what he could not; how much he could get for this, and how much for that. Having made ever such a little beginning with books, he took to attending book sales as well as clothes sales, and ere long this branch of his business became no less important than the tailoring, and would, I have no doubt, have been the one which he would have settled down to exclusively, if he had been called upon to remain a tradesman; but this is anticipating.
I made a contribution and a stipulation. Ernest wanted to sink the gentleman completely, until such time as he could work his way up again. If he had been left to himself he would have lived with Ellen in the shop back parlour and kitchen, and have let out both the upper floors according to his original programme. I did not want him, however, to cut himself adrift from music, letters and polite life, and feared that unless he had some kind of den into which he could retire he would ere long become the tradesman and nothing else. I therefore insisted on taking the first floor front and back myself, and furnishing them with the things which had been left at Mrs Jupp's. I bought these things of him for a small sum and had them moved into his present abode.
I went to Mrs Jupp's to arrange all this, as Ernest did not like going to Ashpit Place. I had half expected to find the furniture sold and Mrs Jupp gone, but it was not so; with all her faults the poor old woman was perfectly honest.
I told her that Pryer had taken all Ernest's money and run away with it. She hated Pryer. "I never knew anyone," she exclaimed, "as white-livered in the face as that Pryer; he hasn't got an upright vein in his whole body. Why, all that time when he used to come breakfasting with Mr Pontifex morning after morning, it took me to a perfect shadow the way he carried on. There was no doing anything to please him right. First I used to get them eggs and bacon, and he didn't like that; and then I got him a bit of fish, and he didn't like that, or else it was too dear, and you know fish is dearer than ever; and then I got him a bit of German, and he said it rose on him; then I tried sausages, and he said they hit him in the eye worse even than German; oh! how I used to wander my room and fret about it inwardly and cry for hours, and all about them paltry breakfasts--and it wasn't Mr Pontifex; he'd like anything that anyone chose to give him.
"And so the piano's to go," she continued. "What beautiful tunes Mr Pontifex did play upon it, to be sure; and there was one I liked better than any I ever heard. I was in the room when he played it once and when I said, 'Oh, Mr Pontifex, that's the kind of woman I am,' he said, 'No, Mrs Jupp, it isn't, for this tune is old, but no one can say you are old.' But, bless you, he meant nothing by it, it was only his mucky flattery."
Like myself, she was vexed at his getting married. She didn't like his being married, and she didn't like his not being married--but, anyhow, it was Ellen's fault, not his, and she hoped he would be happy. "But after all," she concluded, "it ain't you and it ain't me, and it ain't him and it ain't her. It's what you must call the fortunes of matterimony, for there ain't no other word for it."
In the course of the afternoon the furniture arrived at Ernest's new abode. In the first floor we placed the piano, table, pictures, bookshelves, a couple of arm-chairs, and all the little household gods which he had brought from Cambridge. The back room was furnished exactly as his bedroom at Ashpit Place had been--new things being got for the bridal apartment downstairs. These two first-floor rooms I insisted on retaining as my own, but Ernest was to use them whenever he pleased; he was never to sublet even the bedroom, but was to keep it for himself in case his wife should be ill at any time, or in case he might be ill himself.
In less than a fortnight from the time of his leaving prison all these arrangements had been completed, and Ernest felt that he had again linked himself on to the life which he had led before his imprisonment--with a few important differences, however, which were greatly to his advantage. He was no longer a clergyman; he was about to marry a woman to whom he was much attached, and he had parted company for ever with his father and mother.
