Читать книгу Wrecked in Port. A Novel онлайн

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From that time forth Andrew Joyce was a changed man. He had loved his wife in his grim, sour, puritanical way, loved her sufficiently to strive against this grimness and puritanism to the extent of his consenting to live for the most part from the ordinary fashion of the world. But when that gentle influence was once removed, when the hard-headed, narrow-minded man had no longer the soft answer to turn away his wrath, the soft face to look appealingly up against his harsh judgment, the quick intellect to combat his one-sided dogmatisms, he fell away at once, and blossomed out as the bitter bigot into which he had gradually but surely been growing. No college education for his son then; no assistance from him for a bloated hierarchy, as he remarked at a public meeting, glancing at Mr. Sifton, the curate, who had eighty pounds a year and four children; no money of his to be spent by his son in a dissolute and debauched career at the University. Mr. Stoker had not been at any university--as, indeed, he had not, having picked up most of his limited education from a travelling tinker, who combined pot-mending and knife-grinding with Bible and tract selling;--and where would you meet with a better preacher of the Gawspel, a more shining light, or a comelier vessel? Mr. Stoker was all in all to Andrew Joyce then, and when Andrew Joyce died, six months afterwards, it was found that, with the exception of the legacy of a couple of hundred pounds to his son, he had left all his money to Mr. Stoker, and to the chapel and charities represented by that erudite divine.