Chapter 16

Miss Carew, averse to the anomalous relations of courtship, made as
little delay as possible in getting married. Cashel's luck was not
changed by the event. Bingley Byron died three weeks after the
ceremony (which was civic and private); and Cashel had to claim
possession of the property in Dorsetshire, in spite of his expressed
wish that the lawyers would take themselves and the property to the
devil, and allow him to enjoy his honeymoon in peace. The transfer
was not, however, accomplished at once. Owing to his mother's
capricious reluctance to give the necessary information without
reserve, and to the law's delay, his first child was born some time
before his succession was fully established and the doors of his
ancestral hall opened to him. The conclusion of the business was a
great relief to his attorneys, who had been unable to shake his
conviction that the case was clear enough, but that the referee had
been squared. By this he meant that the Lord Chancellor had been
bribed to keep him out of his property.

His marriage proved an unusually happy one. To make up for the loss
of his occupation, he farmed, and lost six thousand pounds by it;
tried gardening with better success; began to meddle in commercial
enterprises, and became director of several trading companies in the
city; and was eventually invited to represent a Dorsetshire
constituency in Parliament in the Radical interest. He was returned
by a large majority; and, having a loud voice and an easy manner, he
soon acquired some reputation both in and out of the House of
Commons by the popularity of his own views, and the extent of his
wife's information, which he retailed at second hand. He made his
maiden speech in the House unabashed the first night he sat there.
Indeed, he was afraid of nothing except burglars, big dogs, doctors,
dentists, and street-crossings. Whenever any accident occurred
through any of these he preserved the newspaper in which it was
reported, read it to Lydia very seriously, and repeated his favorite
assertion that the only place in which a man was safe was the ring.
As he objected to most field sports on the ground of inhumanity,
she, fearing that he would suffer in health and appearance from want
of systematic exercise, suggested that he should resume the practice
of boxing with gloves. But he was lazy in this matter, and had a
prejudice that boxing did not become a married man. His career as a
pugilist was closed by his marriage.

His admiration for his wife survived the ardor of his first love for
her, and she employed all her forethought not to disappoint his
reliance on her judgment. She led a busy life, and wrote some
learned monographs, as well as a work in which she denounced
education as