Chương Chương 12 · 第12章

. Theobald’s engagement was all very well as far as it went, but there

was an old gentleman with a bald head and rosy cheeks in a

counting-house in Paternoster Row who must sooner or later be told of

what his son had in view, and Theobald’s heart fluttered when he asked

himself what view this old gentleman was likely to take of the

situation. The murder, however, had to come out, and Theobald and his

intended, perhaps imprudently, resolved on making a clean breast of it

at once. He wrote what he and Christina, who helped him to draft the

letter, thought to be everything that was filial, and expressed himself

as anxious to be married with the least possible delay. He could not

help saying this, as Christina was at his shoulder, and he knew it was

safe, for his father might be trusted not to help him. He wound up by

asking his father to use any influence that might be at his command to

help him to get a living, inasmuch as it might be years before a

college living fell vacant, and he saw no other chance of being able to

marry, for neither he nor his intended had any money except Theobald’s

fellowship, which would, of course, lapse on his taking a wife.

Any step of Theobald’s was sure to be objectionable in his father’s

eyes, but that at three-and-twenty he should want to marry a penniless

girl who was four years older than himself, afforded a golden

opportunity which the old gentleman—for so I may now call him, as he

was at least sixty—embraced with characteristic eagerness.

“The ineffable folly,” he wrote, on receiving his son’s letter, “of

your fancied passion for Miss Allaby fills me with the gravest

apprehensions. Making every allowance for a lover’s blindness, I still

have no doubt that the lady herself is a well-conducted and amiable

young person, who would not disgrace our family, but were she ten times

more desirable as a daughter-in-law than I can allow myself to hope,

your joint poverty is an insuperable objection to your marriage. I have

four other children besides yourself, and my expenses do not permit me

to save money. This year they have been especially heavy, indeed I have

had to purchase two not inconsiderable pieces of land which happened to

come into the market and were necessary to complete a property which I

have long wanted to round off in this way. I gave you an education

regardless of expense, which has put you in possession of a comfortable

income, at an age when many young men are dependent. I have thus

started you fairly in life, and may claim that you should cease to be a

drag upon me further. Long engagements are proverbially unsatisfactory,

and in the present case the prospect seems interminable. What interest,

pray, do you suppose I have that I could get a living for you? Can I go

up and down the country begging people to provide for my son because he

has taken it into his head to want to get married without sufficient

means?

“I do not wish to write unkindly, nothing can be farther from my real

feelings towards you, but there is often more kindness in plain

speaking than in any amount of soft words which can end in no

substantial performance. Of course, I bear in mind that you are of age,

and can therefore please yourself, but if you choose to claim the

strict letter of the law, and act without consideration for your

father’s feelings, you must not be surprised if you one day find that I

have claimed a like liberty for myself.—Believe me, your affectionate

father,

G. PONTIFEX.”

I found this letter along with those already given and a few more which

I need not give, but throughout which the same tone prevails, and in

all of which there is the more or less obvious shake of the will near

the end of the letter. Remembering Theobald’s general dumbness

concerning his father for the many years I knew him after his father’s

death, there was an eloquence in the preservation of the letters and in

their endorsement “Letters from my father,” which seemed to have with

it some faint odour of health and nature.

Theobald did not show his father’s letter to Christina, nor, indeed, I

believe to anyone. He was by nature secretive, and had been repressed

too much and too early to be capable of railing or blowing off steam

where his father was concerned. His sense of wrong was still

inarticulate, felt as a dull dead weight ever present day by day, and

if he woke at night-time still continually present, but he hardly knew

what it was. I was about the closest friend he had, and I saw but

little of him, for I could not get on with him for long together. He

said I had no reverence; whereas I thought that I had plenty of

reverence for what deserved to be revered, but that the gods which he

deemed golden were in reality made of baser metal. He never, as I have

said, complained of his father to me, and his only other friends were,

like himself, staid and prim, of evangelical tendencies, and deeply

imbued with a sense of the sinfulness of any act of insubordination to

parents—good young men, in fact—and one cannot blow off steam to a good

young man.

When Christina was informed by her lover of his father’s opposition,

and of the time which must probably elapse before they could be

married, she offered—with how much sincerity I know not—to set him free

from his engagement; but Theobald declined to be released—“not at

least,” as he said, “at present.” Christina and Mrs Allaby knew they

could manage him, and on this not very satisfactory footing the

engagement was continued.

His engagement and his refusal to be released at once raised Theobald

in his own good opinion. Dull as he was, he had no small share of quiet

self-approbation. He admired himself for his University distinction,

for the purity of his life (I said of him once that if he had only a

better temper he would be as innocent as a new-laid egg) and for his

unimpeachable integrity in money matters. He did not despair of

advancement in the Church when he had once got a living, and of course

it was within the bounds of possibility that he might one day become a

Bishop, and Christina said she felt convinced that this would

ultimately be the case.

As was natural for the daughter and intended wife of a clergyman,

Christina’s thoughts ran much upon religion, and she was resolved that

even though an exalted position in this world were denied to her and

Theobald, their virtues should be fully appreciated in the next. Her

religious opinions coincided absolutely with Theobald’s own, and many a

conversation did she have with him about the glory of God, and the

completeness with which they would devote themselves to it, as soon as

Theobald had got his living and they were married. So certain was she

of the great results which would then ensue that she wondered at times

at the blindness shown by Providence towards its own truest interests

in not killing off the rectors who stood between Theobald and his

living a little faster.

In those days people believed with a simple downrightness which I do

not observe among educated men and women now. It had never so much as

crossed Theobald’s mind to doubt the literal accuracy of any syllable

in the Bible. He had never seen any book in which this was disputed,

nor met with anyone who doubted it. True, there was just a little scare

about geology, but there was nothing in it. If it was said that God

made the world in six days, why He did make it in six days, neither in

more nor less; if it was said that He put Adam to sleep, took out one

of his ribs and made a woman of it, why it was so as a matter of

course. He, Adam, went to sleep as it might be himself, Theobald

Pontifex, in a garden, as it might be the garden at Crampsford Rectory

during the summer months when it was so pretty, only that it was

larger, and had some tame wild animals in it. Then God came up to him,

as it might be Mr Allaby or his father, dexterously took out one of his

ribs without waking him, and miraculously healed the wound so that no

trace of the operation remained. Finally, God had taken the rib perhaps

into the greenhouse, and had turned it into just such another young

woman as Christina. That was how it was done; there was neither

difficulty nor shadow of difficulty about the matter. Could not God do

anything He liked, and had He not in His own inspired Book told us that

He had done this?

This was the average attitude of fairly educated young men and women

towards the Mosaic cosmogony fifty, forty, or even twenty years ago.

The combating of infidelity, therefore, offered little scope for

enterprising young clergymen, nor had the Church awakened to the

activity which she has since displayed among the poor in our large

towns. These were then left almost without an effort at resistance or

co-operation to the labours of those who had succeeded Wesley.

Missionary work indeed in heathen countries was being carried on with

some energy, but Theobald did not feel any call to be a missionary.

Christina suggested this to him more than once, and assured him of the

unspeakable happiness it would be to her to be the wife of a

missionary, and to share his dangers; she and Theobald might even be

martyred; of course they would be martyred simultaneously, and

martyrdom many years hence as regarded from the arbour in the Rectory

garden was not painful, it would ensure them a glorious future in the

next world, and at any rate posthumous renown in this—even if they were

not miraculously restored to life again—and such things had happened

ere now in the case of martyrs. Theobald, however, had not been kindled

by Christina’s enthusiasm, so she fell back upon the Church of Rome—an

enemy more dangerous, if possible, than paganism itself. A combat with

Romanism might even yet win for her and Theobald the crown of

martyrdom. True, the Church of Rome was tolerably quiet just then, but

it was the calm before the storm, of this she was assured, with a

conviction deeper than she could have attained by any argument founded

upon mere reason.

“We, dearest Theobald,” she exclaimed, “will be ever faithful. We will

stand firm and support one another even in the hour of death itself.

God in his mercy may spare us from being burnt alive. He may or may not

do so. Oh Lord” (and she turned her eyes prayerfully to Heaven), “spare

my Theobald, or grant that he may be beheaded.”

“My dearest,” said Theobald gravely, “do not let us agitate ourselves

unduly. If the hour of trial comes we shall be best prepared to meet it

by having led a quiet unobtrusive life of self-denial and devotion to

God’s glory. Such a life let us pray God that it may please Him to

enable us to pray that we may lead.”

“Dearest Theobald,” exclaimed Christina, drying the tears that had

gathered in her eyes, “you are always, always right. Let us be

self-denying, pure, upright, truthful in word and deed.” She clasped

her hands and looked up to Heaven as she spoke.

“Dearest,” rejoined her lover, “we have ever hitherto endeavoured to be

all of these things; we have not been worldly people; let us watch and

pray that we may so continue to the end.”

The moon had risen and the arbour was getting damp, so they adjourned

further aspirations for a more convenient season. At other times

Christina pictured herself and Theobald as braving the scorn of almost

every human being in the achievement of some mighty task which should

redound to the honour of her Redeemer. She could face anything for

this. But always towards the end of her vision there came a little

coronation scene high up in the golden regions of the Heavens, and a

diadem was set upon her head by the Son of Man Himself, amid a host of

angels and archangels who looked on with envy and admiration—and here

even Theobald himself was out of it. If there could be such a thing as

the Mammon of Righteousness Christina would have assuredly made friends

with it. Her papa and mamma were very estimable people and would in the

course of time receive Heavenly Mansions in which they would be

exceedingly comfortable; so doubtless would her sisters; so perhaps,

even might her brothers; but for herself she felt that a higher destiny

was preparing, which it was her duty never to lose sight of. The first

step towards it would be her marriage with Theobald. In spite, however,

of these flights of religious romanticism, Christina was a

good-tempered kindly-natured girl enough, who, if she had married a

sensible layman—we will say a hotel-keeper—would have developed into a

good landlady and been deservedly popular with her guests.

Such was Theobald’s engaged life. Many a little present passed between

the pair, and many a small surprise did they prepare pleasantly for one

another. They never quarrelled, and neither of them ever flirted with

anyone else. Mrs Allaby and his future sisters-in-law idolised Theobald

in spite of its being impossible to get another deacon to come and be

played for as long as Theobald was able to help Mr Allaby, which now of

course he did free gratis and for nothing; two of the sisters, however,

did manage to find husbands before Christina was actually married, and

on each occasion Theobald played the part of decoy elephant. In the end

only two out of the seven daughters remained single.

After three or four years, old Mr Pontifex became accustomed to his

son’s engagement and looked upon it as among the things which had now a

prescriptive right to toleration. In the spring of 1831, more than five

years after Theobald had first walked over to Crampsford, one of the

best livings in the gift of the College unexpectedly fell vacant, and

was for various reasons declined by the two fellows senior to Theobald,

who might each have been expected to take it. The living was then

offered to and of course accepted by Theobald, being in value not less

than £500 a year with a suitable house and garden. Old Mr Pontifex then

came down more handsomely than was expected and settled £10,000 on his

son and daughter-in-law for life with remainder to such of their issue

as they might appoint. In the month of July, 1831 Theobald and

Christina became man and wife.