Dr Thorne - Anthony Trollope [126]
There is no doubt but that the privilege of matrimony offers opportunities to money-loving young men which ought not to be lightly abused. Too many young men marry without giving any consideration to the matter whatever. It is not that they are indifferent to money, but that they recklessly miscalculate their own value, and omit to look around and see how much is done by those who are more careful. A man can be young but once, and, except in cases of a special interposition of Providence, can marry but once. The chance once thrown away may be said to be irrecoverable! How, in after-life, do men toil and turmoil through long years to attain some prospect of doubtful advancement! Half that trouble, half that care, a tithe of that circumspection would, in early youth, have probably secured to them the enduring comfort of a wife’s wealth.
You will see men labouring night and day to become bank directors; and even a bank direction may only be the road to ruin. Others will spend years in degrading subserviency to obtain a niche in a will; and the niche, when at last obtained and enjoyed, is but a sorry payment for all that has been endured. Others, again, struggle harder still, and go through even deeper waters: they make the wills for themselves, forge stock-shares, and fight with unremitting, painful labour to appear to be the thing that they are not. Now, in many of these cases, all this might have been spared had the men made adequate use of those opportunities which youth and youthful charms afford once – and once only. There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony; that is, of course, provided that the aspirant declines the slow course of honest work. But then, we can so seldom put old heads on young shoulders!
In the case of Mr Moffat, we may perhaps say that a specimen was produced of this bird, so rare in the land. His shoulders were certainly young, seeing that he was not yet six-and-twenty; but his head had ever been old. From the moment when he was first put forth to go alone – at the age of twenty-one – his life had been one calculation how he could make the most of himself. He had allowed himself to be betrayed into no folly by an unguarded heart; no youthful indiscretion had marred his prospects. He had made the most of himself. Without wit, or depth, or any mental gift – without honesty of purpose or industry for good work – he had been for two years sitting member for Barchester; was the guest of Lord de Courcy; was engaged to the eldest daughter of one of the best commoners’ families in England; and was, when he first began to think of Miss Dunstable, sanguine that his re-election to Parliament was secure.
When, however, at this period he began to calculate what his position in the world really was, it occurred to him that he was doing an ill-judged thing in marrying Miss Gresham. Why marry a penniless girl – for Augusta’s trifle of a fortune was not a penny in his estimation – while there was Miss Dunstable in the world to be won? His own six or seven thousand a year, quite unembarrassed as it was, was certainly a great thing; but what might he not do if to that he could add the almost fabulous wealth of the great heiress? Was she not here, put absolutely in his path? Would it not be a wilful throwing away of a chance not to avail himself of it? He must, to be sure, lose the De Courcy friendship; but if he should then have secured his Barchester seat for the usual term of a parliamentary session, he might be able to spare that. He would also, perhaps, encounter some Gresham enmity: this was a point on which he did think more than once: but what will not a man encounter for the sake of two hundred thousand pounds?
It was thus that Mr Moffat argued with himself, with much prudence, and brought himself to resolve that he would at any rate become a candidate for the great