The Way of All Flesh. Samuel Butler
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Theobald would only order dinner this once, she would order it any day and every day in future.
But the inexorable Theobald was not to be put off with such absurd excuses. He was master now. Had not Christina less than two hours ago promised solemnly to honour and obey him, and was she turning restive over such a trifle as this? The loving smile departed from his face, and was succeeded by a scowl which that old Turk, his father, might have envied. “Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Christina,” he exclaimed mildly, and stamped his foot upon the floor of the carriage. “It is a wife’s duty to order her husband’s dinner; you are my wife, and I shall expect you to order mine.” For Theobald was nothing if he was not logical.
The bride began to cry, and said he was unkind; whereon he said nothing, but revolved unutterable things in his heart. Was this, then, the end of his six years of unflagging devotion? Was it for this that when Christina had offered to let him off, he had stuck to his engagement? Was this the outcome of her talks about duty and spiritual mindedness—that now upon the very day of her marriage she should fail to see that the first step in obedience to God lay in obedience to himself? He would drive back to Crampsford; he would complain to Mr. and Mrs. Allaby; he didn’t mean to have married Christina; he hadn’t married her; it was all a hideous dream; he would—But a voice kept ringing in his ears which said: “YOU CAN’T, CAN’T, CAN’T.”
“CAN’T I?” screamed the unhappy creature to himself.
“No,” said the remorseless voice, “YOU CAN’T. YOU ARE A MARRIED MAN.”
He rolled back in his corner of the carriage and for the first time felt how iniquitous were the marriage laws of England. But he would buy Milton’s prose works and read his pamphlet on divorce. He might perhaps be able to get them at Newmarket.
So the bride sat crying in one corner of the carriage; and the bridegroom sulked in the other, and he feared her as only a bridegroom can fear.
Presently, however, a feeble voice was heard from the bride’s corner saying:
“Dearest Theobald—dearest Theobald, forgive me; I have been very, very wrong. Please do not be angry with me. I will order the—the—” but the word “dinner” was checked by rising sobs.
When Theobald heard these words a load began to be lifted from his heart, but he only looked towards her, and that not too pleasantly.
“Please tell me,” continued the voice, “what you think you would like, and I will tell the landlady when we get to Newmar—” but another burst of sobs checked the completion of the word.
The load on Theobald’s heart grew lighter and lighter. Was it possible that she might not be going to henpeck him after all? Besides, had she not diverted his attention from herself to his approaching dinner?
He swallowed down more of his apprehensions and said, but still gloomily, “I think we might have a roast fowl with bread sauce, new potatoes and green peas, and then we will see if they could let us have a cherry tart and some cream.”
After a few minutes more he drew her towards him, kissed away her tears, and assured her that he knew she would be a good wife to him.
“Dearest Theobald,” she exclaimed in answer, “you are an angel.”
Theobald believed her, and in ten minutes more the happy couple alighted at the inn at Newmarket.
Bravely did Christina go through her arduous task. Eagerly did she beseech the landlady, in secret, not to keep her Theobald waiting longer than was absolutely necessary.
“If you have any soup ready, you know, Mrs. Barber, it might save ten minutes, for we might have it while the fowl was browning.”
See how necessity had nerved her! But in truth she had a splitting headache, and would have given anything to have been alone.
The dinner was a success. A pint of sherry had warmed Theobald’s heart, and he began to hope that, after all, matters might still go well with him. He had conquered in the first battle, and this gives great prestige. How easy it had been too! Why had he never treated his sisters in this way? He would do so next time he saw them; he might in time be able to stand up to his brother John, or even his father. Thus do we build castles in air when flushed with wine and conquest.
The end of the honeymoon saw Mrs. Theobald the most devotedly obsequious wife in all England. According to the old saying, Theobald had killed the cat at the beginning. It had been a very little cat, a mere kitten in fact, or he might have been afraid to face it, but such as it had been he had challenged it to mortal combat, and had held up its dripping head defiantly before his wife’s face. The rest had been easy.
Strange that one whom I have described hitherto as so timid and easily put upon should prove such a Tartar all of a sudden on the day of his marriage. Perhaps I have passed over his years of courtship too rapidly. During these he had become a tutor of his college, and had at last been Junior Dean. I never yet knew a man whose sense of his own importance did not become adequately developed after he had held a resident fellowship for five or six years. True—immediately on arriving within a ten mile radius of his father’s house, an enchantment fell upon him, so that his knees waxed weak, his greatness departed, and he again felt himself like an overgrown baby under a perpetual cloud; but then he was not often at Elmhurst, and as soon as he left it the spell was taken off again; once more he became the fellow and tutor of his college, the Junior Dean, the betrothed of Christina, the idol of the Allaby womankind. From all which it may be gathered that if Christina had been a Barbary hen, and had ruffled her feathers in any show of resistance Theobald would not have ventured to swagger with her, but she was not a Barbary hen, she was only a common hen, and that too with rather a smaller share of personal bravery than hens generally have.
CHAPTER XIV
Battersby-On-The-Hill was the name of the village of which Theobald was now Rector. It contained 400 or 500 inhabitants, scattered over a rather large area, and consisting entirely of farmers and agricultural labourers. The Rectory was commodious, and placed on the brow of a hill which gave it a delightful prospect. There was a fair sprinkling of neighbours within visiting range, but with one or two exceptions they were the clergymen and clergymen’s families of the surrounding villages.
By these the Pontifexes were welcomed as great acquisitions to the neighbourhood. Mr. Pontifex, they said was so clever; he had been senior classic and senior wrangler; a perfect genius in fact, and yet with so much sound practical common sense as well. As son of such a distinguished man as the great Mr. Pontifex the publisher he would come into a large property by-and-by. Was there not an elder brother? Yes, but there would be so much that Theobald would probably get something very considerable. Of course they would give dinner parties. And Mrs. Pontifex, what a charming woman she was; she was certainly not exactly pretty perhaps, but then she had such a sweet smile and her manner was so bright and winning. She was so devoted too to her husband and her husband to her; they really did come up to one’s ideas of what lovers used to be in days of old; it was rare to meet with such a pair in these degenerate times; it was quite beautiful, etc., etc. Such were the comments of the neighbours on the new arrivals.
As for Theobald’s own parishioners, the farmers were civil and the labourers and their wives obsequious. There was a little dissent, the legacy of a careless predecessor, but as Mrs. Theobald said proudly, “I think Theobald may be trusted to deal with that.” The church was then an interesting specimen of late Norman, with some early English additions. It was what in these days would be called in a very bad state of repair, but forty or fifty years ago few churches were in good repair. If there is one feature more characteristic of the present generation than another it is that it has been a great restorer of churches.
Horace preached church restoration in his ode:—
Delicta majorum immeritus lues,
Romane, donec templa refeceris