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_ 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 pounds a year with a suitable house
and garden. Old Mr Pontifex then came down more handsomely than was
expected and settled 10,000 pounds 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. _
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