الفصل الفصل 9 · 第9章

. Mr Allaby was rector of Crampsford, a village a few miles from

Cambridge. He, too, had taken a good degree, had got a fellowship, and

in the course of time had accepted a college living of about £400 a

year and a house. His private income did not exceed £200 a year. On

resigning his fellowship he married a woman a good deal younger than

himself who bore him eleven children, nine of whom—two sons and seven

daughters—were living. The two eldest daughters had married fairly

well, but at the time of which I am now writing there were still five

unmarried, of ages varying between thirty and twenty-two—and the sons

were neither of them yet off their father’s hands. It was plain that if

anything were to happen to Mr Allaby the family would be left poorly

off, and this made both Mr and Mrs Allaby as unhappy as it ought to

have made them.

Reader, did you ever have an income at best none too large, which died

with you all except £200 a year? Did you ever at the same time have two

sons who must be started in life somehow, and five daughters still

unmarried for whom you would only be too thankful to find husbands—if

you knew how to find them? If morality is that which, on the whole,

brings a man peace in his declining years—if, that is to say, it is not

an utter swindle, can you under these circumstances flatter yourself

that you have led a moral life?

And this, even though your wife has been so good a woman that you have

not grown tired of her, and has not fallen into such ill-health as

lowers your own health in sympathy; and though your family has grown up

vigorous, amiable, and blessed with common sense. I know many old men

and women who are reputed moral, but who are living with partners whom

they have long ceased to love, or who have ugly disagreeable maiden

daughters for whom they have never been able to find husbands—daughters

whom they loathe and by whom they are loathed in secret, or sons whose

folly or extravagance is a perpetual wear and worry to them. Is it

moral for a man to have brought such things upon himself? Someone

should do for morals what that old Pecksniff Bacon has obtained the

credit of having done for science.

But to return to Mr and Mrs Allaby. Mrs Allaby talked about having

married two of her daughters as though it had been the easiest thing in

the world. She talked in this way because she heard other mothers do

so, but in her heart of hearts she did not know how she had done it,

nor indeed, if it had been her doing at all. First there had been a

young man in connection with whom she had tried to practise certain

manoeuvres which she had rehearsed in imagination over and over again,

but which she found impossible to apply in practice. Then there had

been weeks of a _wurra wurra_ of hopes and fears and little stratagems

which as often as not proved injudicious, and then somehow or other in

the end, there lay the young man bound and with an arrow through his

heart at her daughter’s feet. It seemed to her to be all a fluke which

she could have little or no hope of repeating. She had indeed repeated

it once, and might perhaps with good luck repeat it yet once again—but

five times over! It was awful: why she would rather have three

confinements than go through the wear and tear of marrying a single

daughter.

Nevertheless it had got to be done, and poor Mrs Allaby never looked at

a young man without an eye to his being a future son-in-law. Papas and

mammas sometimes ask young men whether their intentions are honourable

towards their daughters. I think young men might occasionally ask papas

and mammas whether their intentions are honourable before they accept

invitations to houses where there are still unmarried daughters.

“I can’t afford a curate, my dear,” said Mr Allaby to his wife when the

pair were discussing what was next to be done. “It will be better to

get some young man to come and help me for a time upon a Sunday. A

guinea a Sunday will do this, and we can chop and change till we get

someone who suits.” So it was settled that Mr Allaby’s health was not

so strong as it had been, and that he stood in need of help in the

performance of his Sunday duty.

Mrs Allaby had a great friend—a certain Mrs Cowey, wife of the

celebrated Professor Cowey. She was what was called a truly spiritually

minded woman, a trifle portly, with an incipient beard, and an

extensive connection among undergraduates, more especially among those

who were inclined to take part in the great evangelical movement which

was then at its height. She gave evening parties once a fortnight at

which prayer was part of the entertainment. She was not only

spiritually minded, but, as enthusiastic Mrs Allaby used to exclaim,

she was a thorough woman of the world at the same time and had such a

fund of strong masculine good sense. She too had daughters, but, as she

used to say to Mrs Allaby, she had been less fortunate than Mrs Allaby

herself, for one by one they had married and left her so that her old

age would have been desolate indeed if her Professor had not been

spared to her.

Mrs Cowey, of course, knew the run of all the bachelor clergy in the

University, and was the very person to assist Mrs Allaby in finding an

eligible assistant for her husband, so this last named lady drove over

one morning in the November of 1825, by arrangement, to take an early

dinner with Mrs Cowey and spend the afternoon. After dinner the two

ladies retired together, and the business of the day began. How they

fenced, how they saw through one another, with what loyalty they

pretended not to see through one another, with what gentle dalliance

they prolonged the conversation discussing the spiritual fitness of

this or that deacon, and the other pros and cons connected with him

after his spiritual fitness had been disposed of, all this must be left

to the imagination of the reader. Mrs Cowey had been so accustomed to

scheming on her own account that she would scheme for anyone rather

than not scheme at all. Many mothers turned to her in their hour of

need and, provided they were spiritually minded, Mrs Cowey never failed

to do her best for them; if the marriage of a young Bachelor of Arts

was not made in Heaven, it was probably made, or at any rate attempted,

in Mrs Cowey’s drawing-room. On the present occasion all the deacons of

the University in whom there lurked any spark of promise were

exhaustively discussed, and the upshot was that our friend Theobald was

declared by Mrs Cowey to be about the best thing she could do that

afternoon.

“I don’t know that he’s a particularly fascinating young man, my dear,”

said Mrs Cowey, “and he’s only a second son, but then he’s got his

fellowship, and even the second son of such a man as Mr Pontifex the

publisher should have something very comfortable.”

“Why yes, my dear,” rejoined Mrs Allaby complacently, “that’s what one

rather feels.”