“Jenny! Jenny Beauchamp, they’re not men, they’re Churchmen. My experience of the priest in our country is, that he has abandoned—he’s dead against the only cause that can justify and keep up a Church: the cause of the poor—the people. He is a creature of the moneyed class. I look on him as a pretender. I go through his forms, to save my wife from annoyance, but there’s the end of it: and if ever I’m helpless, unable to resist him, I rely on your word not to let him intrude; he’s to have nothing to do with the burial of me. He’s against the cause of the people. Very well: I make my protest to the death against him. When he’s a Christian instead of a Churchman, then may my example not be followed. It’s little use looking for that.”
Jenny dropped some tears on her bridal day. She sighed her submission. “So long as you do not change,” said she.
“Change!” cried Nevil. “That’s for the parson. Now it’s over: we start fair. My darling! I have you. I don’t mean to bother you. I’m sure you’ll see that the enemies of Reason are the enemies of the human race; you will see that. I can wait.”
“If we can be sure that we ourselves are using reason rightly, Nevil!—not prejudice.”
“Of course. But don’t you see, my Jenny, we have no interest in opposing reason?”
“But have we not all grown up together? And is it just or wise to direct our efforts to overthrow a solid structure that is a part...?”
He put his legal right in force to shut her mouth, telling her presently she might Lydiardize as much as she liked. While practising this mastery, he assured her he would always listen to her: yes, whether she Lydiardized, or what Dr. Shrapnel called Jenny-prated.
“That is to say, dear Nevil, that you have quite made up your mind to a toddling chattering little nursery wife?”
Very much the contrary to anything of the sort, he declared; and he proved his honesty by announcing an immediate reflection that had come to him: “How oddly things are settled! Cecilia Halkett and Tuckham; you and I! Now, I know for certain that I have brought Cecilia Halkett out of her woman’s Toryism, and given her at least liberal views, and she goes and marries an arrant Tory; while you, a bit of a Tory at heart, more than anything else, have married an ultra.”
“Perhaps we may hope that the conflict will be seasonable on both sides?—if you give me fair play, Nevil!”