Strange that his first aspiration--towards academical

proficiency--had been checked by a woman, and that his second

aspiration--towards apostleship--had also been checked by a woman.

"Is it," he said, "that the women are to blame; or is it the

artificial system of things, under which the normal sex-impulses are

turned into devilish domestic gins and springs to noose and hold back

those who want to progress?"

It had been his standing desire to become a prophet, however humble,

to his struggling fellow-creatures, without any thought of personal

gain. Yet with a wife living away from him with another husband, and

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himself in love erratically, the loved one's revolt against her state

being possibly on his account, he had sunk to be barely respectable

according to regulation views.

It was not for him to consider further: he had only to confront the

obvious, which was that he had made himself quite an impostor as a

law-abiding religious teacher.

At dusk that evening he went into the garden and dug a shallow hole,

to which he brought out all the theological and ethical works that

he possessed, and had stored here. He knew that, in this country of

true believers, most of them were not saleable at a much higher price

than waste-paper value, and preferred to get rid of them in his own

way, even if he should sacrifice a little money to the sentiment of

thus destroying them. Lighting some loose pamphlets to begin with,

he cut the volumes into pieces as well as he could, and with a

three-pronged fork shook them over the flames. They kindled, and

lighted up the back of the house, the pigsty, and his own face, till

they were more or less consumed.

Though he was almost a stranger here now, passing cottagers talked to

him over the garden hedge.

"Burning up your awld aunt's rubbidge, I suppose? Ay; a lot gets

heaped up in nooks and corners when you've lived eighty years in one

house."

It was nearly one o'clock in the morning before the leaves, covers,

and binding of Jeremy Taylor, Butler, Doddridge, Paley, Pusey, Newman

and the rest had gone to ashes, but the night was quiet, and as he

turned and turned the paper shreds with the fork, the sense of being

no longer a hypocrite to himself afforded his mind a relief which

gave him calm. He might go on believing as before, but he professed

nothing, and no longer owned and exhibited engines of faith which,

as their proprietor, he might naturally be supposed to exercise on

himself first of all. In his passion for Sue he could not stand as

an ordinary sinner, and not as a whited sepulchre.




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