unexpectedly married.

His bride was the daughter of a clergyman, a widower, who kept a
small private school in Devonshire. She helped her father to run
the school (an impoverished business which, begun exclusively for
the "sons of gentlemen," had slid down into paying court to tradesmen
in order to get the sons of tradesmen) and she maintained him in
the very indifferent health he suffered. Harold Aubyn, the brilliant
wrangler with the brilliant future, who had begun his brilliance by
unexpectedly entering the Church, and continued it by unexpectedly
marrying while on a holiday in the little Devonshire town where he had
gone to ponder his future (a little unbalanced by the unpremeditated
plunge into Holy Orders) further continued his brilliance by
unexpectedly finding himself the assistant master in his father-in-law's
second-rate and failing school. The daughter would not leave her
father; the suitor would not leave his darling; the brilliant young
wrangler who at Cambridge used to dream of waking to find himself
famous awoke instead to find himself six years buried in a now
third-rate and moribund school in a moribund Devonshire town. He
had a father-in-law now permanent invalid, bedridden. He had four
children and another, Robert, on the way.

It was his father-in-law's death that awoke him; and he awoke
characteristically. The old man dead! Come, that was one burden
lifted, one shackle removed! The school finally went smash at the
same time. Never mind! Another burden gone! Another shackle lifted!
Dash the school! How he hated the school! How he loathed and
detested the lumping boys! How he loathed and abominated teaching
them simple arithmetic (he the wrangler!) and history that was
a string of dates, and geography that was a string of capes and