_ 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
pounds a year and a house. His private income did not exceed 200
pounds 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 pounds 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." _