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Updated: June 16, 2025
Mason and others, I have not been able to find out where he is or anything about him. 'Odd, isn't it? said Vernon. 'He left the cottage on the day after the fire, didn't he? shut it up, and took the key to Lord Pontifex's steward, and drove off with his books and things packed in his cart, goodness knows where, after having made a free gift of his stock to the villagers.
I did think the gentleman had all the boys and the lady all the girls; but it can't be like this, or else mamma would not have asked Mrs Burne to guess; but then Mrs Burne said, 'Oh, he's Mr Pontifex's child of course, and I didn't quite know what she meant by saying 'of course': it seemed as though I was right in thinking that the husband has all the boys and the wife all the girls; I wish you would explain to me all about it."
A very successful man, moreover, has something of the hybrid in him; he is a new animal, arising from the coming together of many unfamiliar elements and it is well known that the reproduction of abnormal growths, whether animal or vegetable, is irregular and not to be depended upon, even when they are not absolutely sterile. And certainly Mr Pontifex's success was exceedingly rapid.
Now, however, my going was a necessity, and I confess I never felt more subdued than I did on arriving there with the dead playmate of my childhood. I found the village more changed than I had expected. The railway had come there, and a brand new yellow brick station was on the site of old Mr and Mrs Pontifex's cottage. Nothing but the carpenter's shop was now standing.
'Hush, there he is, smoking outside his cottage, cried the 'boy, pointing to a figure sitting on a rude bench in front of that hovel which had once sheltered Lord Pontifex's under-keeper. Ida saw a tall, broad-shouldered figure with a tawny face and a long brown beard. The face was half hidden under a slouched felt hat, the figure was clad in clumsy corduroy.
My father was not yet rector of Paleham, and did not remember George Pontifex's childhood, but I have heard neighbours tell him that the boy was looked upon as unusually quick and forward. His father and mother were naturally proud of their offspring, and his mother was determined that he should one day become one of the kings and councillors of the earth.
I tried in fact to keep my money rather than to make more of it. I had done with Ernest's money as with my own that is to say I had let it alone after investing it in Midland ordinary stock according to Miss Pontifex's instructions. No amount of trouble would have been likely to have increased my godson's estate one half so much as it had increased without my taking any trouble at all.
What a stride is made in the foregoing towards the modern standard, and what intelligence is involved in the perception of the unseemliness of the old style, when others did not perceive it! Where then was the weak place in George Pontifex's armour? I suppose in the fact that he had risen too rapidly.
All this was so alarming that we fell to screaming and made such a hullabaloo that the nurse was obliged for her own peace to reassure us. Then we wept, but more composedly, as we remembered that there would be no more tea and cakes for us now at old Mrs Pontifex's.
My father's face would always brighten when old Pontifex's name was mentioned. "I tell you, Edward," he would say to me, "old Pontifex was not only an able man, but he was one of the very ablest men that ever I knew." This was more than I as a young man was prepared to stand. "My dear father," I answered, "what did he do?
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