e-artnow

“Bishop of Barchester, I presume?” said Bertie Stanhope, putting out his hand frankly; “I am delighted to make your acquaintance. We are in rather close quarters here, a’nt we?”

In truth they were. They had been crowded up behind the head of the sofa—the bishop in waiting to receive his guest, and the other in carrying her—and they now had hardly room to move themselves.

The bishop gave his hand quickly, made his little studied bow, and was delighted to make—He couldn’t go on, for he did not know whether his friend was a signor, or a count or a prince.

“Not at all!” The bishop was delighted to have the opportunity of welcoming La Signora Vicinironi—so at least he said—and attempted to force his way round to the front of the sofa. He had, at any rate, learnt that his strange guests were brother and sister. The man, he presumed, must be Signor Vicinironi—or count, or prince, as it might be. It was wonderful what good English he spoke. There was just a twang of foreign accent, and no more.

“No—not long,” said the bishop and tried again to make his way between the back of the sofa and a heavy rector, who was staring over it at the grimaces of the signora.

“Ah—I thought so,” said Bertie, “but you are changed about sometimes, a’nt you?”

“Translations are occasionally made,” said Dr. Proudie, “but not so frequently as in former days.”

“They’ve cut them all down to pretty nearly the same figure, haven’t they?” said Bertie.

To this the bishop could not bring himself to make any answer, but again attempted to move the rector.

“But the work, I suppose, is different?” continued Bertie. “Is there much to do here, at Barchester?” This was said exactly in the tone that a young Admiralty clerk might use in asking the same question of a brother acolyte at the Treasury.

“The work of a bishop of the Church of England,” said Dr. Proudie with considerable dignity, “is not easy. The responsibility which he has to bear is very great indeed.”

“Is it?” said Bertie, opening wide his wonderful blue eyes. “Well, I never was afraid of responsibility. I once had thoughts of being a bishop, myself.”

“That is, a parson—a parson first, you know, and a bishop afterwards. If I had once begun, I’d have stuck to it. But, on the whole, I like the Church of Rome the best.”

“Now, there’s my father,” continued Bertie; “he hasn’t stuck to it. I fancy he didn’t like saying the same thing over so often. By the by, Bishop, have you seen my father?”

The bishop was more amazed than ever. Had he seen his father? “No,” he replied; he had not yet had the pleasure: he hoped he might; and, as he said so, he resolved to bear heavy on that fat, immovable rector, if ever he had the power of doing so.

“He’s in the room somewhere,” said Bertie, “and he’ll turn up soon. By the by, do you know much about the Jews?”

At last the bishop saw a way out. “I beg your pardon,” said he, “but I’m forced to go round the room.”

“Well—I believe I’ll follow in your wake,” said Bertie. “Terribly hot—isn’t it?” This he addressed to the fat rector with whom he had brought himself into the closest contact. “They’ve got this sofa into the worst possible part of the room; suppose we move it. Take care, Madeline.”

The sofa had certainly been so placed that those who were behind it found great difficulty in getting out; there was but a narrow gangway, which one person could stop. This was a bad arrangement, and one which Bertie thought it might be well to improve.

“Take care, Madeline,” said he, and turning to the fat rector, added, “Just help me with a slight push.”

The rector’s weight was resting on the sofa and unwittingly lent all its impetus to accelerate and increase the motion which Bertie intentionally originated. The sofa rushed from its moorings and ran halfway into the middle of the room. Mrs. Proudie was standing with Mr. Slope in front of the signora, and had been trying to be condescending and sociable; but she was not in the very best of tempers, for she found that, whenever she spoke to the lady, the lady replied by speaking to Mr. Slope. Mr. Slope was a favourite, no doubt, but Mrs. Proudie had no idea of being less thought of than the chaplain. She was beginning to be stately, stiff, and offended, when unfortunately the castor of the sofa caught itself in her lace train, and carried away there is no saying how much of her garniture. Gathers were heard to go, stitches to crack, plaits to fly open, flounces were seen to fall, and breadths to expose themselves; a long ruin of rent lace disfigured the carpet, and still clung to the vile wheel on which the sofa moved.

So, when a granite battery is raised, excellent to the eyes of warfaring men, is its strength and symmetry admired. It is the work of years. Its neat embrasures, its finished parapets, its casemated stories show all the skill of modern science. But, anon, a small spark is applied to the treacherous fusee—a cloud of dust arises to the heavens—and then nothing is to be seen but dirt and dust and ugly fragments.

We know what was the wrath of Juno when her beauty was despised. We know to what storms of passion even celestial minds can yield. As Juno may have looked at Paris on Mount Ida, so did Mrs. Proudie look on Ethelbert Stanhope when he pushed the leg of the sofa into her lace train.

“Oh, you idiot, Bertie!” said the signora, seeing what had been done, and what were to be the consequences.

“Idiot!” re-echoed Mrs. Proudie, as though the word were not half strong enough to express the required meaning; “I’ll let him know—” and then looking round to learn, at a glance, the worst, she saw that at present it behoved her to collect the scattered débris of her dress.

Bertie, when he saw what he had done, rushed over the sofa and threw himself on one knee before the offended lady. His object, doubtless, was to liberate the torn lace from the castor, but he looked as though he were imploring pardon from a goddess.

“Unhand it, sir!” said Mrs. Proudie. From what scrap of dramatic poetry she had extracted the word cannot be said, but it must have rested on her memory, and now seemed opportunely dignified for the occasion.

“I’ll fly to the looms of the fairies to repair the damage, if you’ll only forgive me,” said Ethelbert, still on his knees.

“Unhand it, sir!” said Mrs. Proudie with redoubled emphasis, and all but furious wrath. This allusion to the fairies was a direct mockery and intended to turn her into ridicule. So at least it seemed to her. “Unhand it, sir!” she almost screamed.

“It’s not me; it’s the cursed sofa,” said Bertie, looking imploringly in her face and holding up both his hands to show that he was not touching her belongings, but still remaining on his knees.

Hereupon the Signora laughed; not loud, indeed, but yet audibly. And as the tigress bereft of her young will turn with equal anger on any within reach, so did Mrs. Proudie turn upon her female guest.

“Madam!” she said—and it is beyond the power of prose to tell of the fire which flashed from her eyes.

The signora stared her full in the face for a moment, and then turning to her brother said playfully, “Bertie, you idiot, get up.”

By this time the bishop, and Mr. Slope, and her three daughters were around her, and had collected together the wide ruins of her magnificence. The girls fell into circular rank behind their mother, and thus following her and carrying out the fragments, they left the reception-rooms in a manner not altogether devoid of dignity. Mrs. Proudie had to retire and re-array herself.

As soon as the constellation had swept by, Ethelbert rose from his knees and, turning with mock anger to the fat rector, said: “After all it was your doing, sir—not mine. But perhaps you are waiting for preferment, and so I bore it.”

Whereupon there was a laugh against the fat rector, in which both the bishop and the chaplain joined, and thus things got themselves again into order.

“Oh! my lord, I am so sorry for this accident,” said the signora, putting out her hand so as to force the bishop to take it. “My brother is so thoughtless. Pray sit down, and let me have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. Though I am so poor a creature as to want a sofa, I am not so selfish as to require it all.” Madeline could always dispose herself so as to make room for a gentleman, though, as she declared, the crinoline of her lady friends was much too bulky to be so accommodated.

“It was solely for the pleasure of meeting you that I have had myself dragged here,” she continued. “Of course, with your occupation, one cannot even hope that you should have time to come to us, that is, in the way of calling. And at your English dinner-parties all is so dull and so stately. Do you know, my lord, that in coming to England my only consolation has been the thought that I should know you;” and she looked at him with the look of a she-devil.

The bishop, however, thought that she looked very like an angel and, accepting the proffered seat, sat down beside her. He uttered some platitude as to his deep obligation for the trouble she had taken, and wondered more and more who she was.

The bishop didn’t know a word of it. He knew, however, or thought he knew, that she couldn’t walk into a room like other people, and so made the most of that. He put on a look of ineffable distress and said that he was aware how God had afflicted her.

The signora just touched the corner of her eyes with the most lovely of pockethandkerchiefs. Yes, she said—she had been sorely tried—tried, she thought, beyond the common endurance of humanity; but while her child was left to her, everything was left. “Oh! my lord,” she exclaimed, “you must see that infant—the last bud of a wondrous tree: you must let a mother hope that you will lay your holy hands on her innocent head and consecrate her for female virtues. May I hope it?” said she, looking into the bishop’s eye and touching the bishop’s arm with her hand.

The bishop was but a man and said she might. After all, what was it but a request that he would confirm her daughter?—a request, indeed, very unnecessary to make, as he should do so as a matter of course if the young lady came forward in the usual way.

“The blood of Tiberius,” said the signora in all but a whisper; “the blood of Tiberius flows in her veins. She is the last of the Neros!”

The bishop had heard of the last of the Visigoths, and had floating in his brain some indistinct idea of the last of the Mohicans, but to have the last of the Neros thus brought before him for a blessing was very staggering. Still he liked the lady: she had a proper way of thinking and talked with more propriety than her brother. But who were they? It was now quite clear that that blue madman with the silky beard was not a Prince Vicinironi. The lady was married and was of course one of the Vicinironi’s by right of the husband. So the bishop went on learning.

“Oh,” said the bishop, shaking his head; “she is much too young—very much too young.”

“But in sunny Italy, you know, we do not count by years,” and the signora gave the bishop one of her very sweetest smiles.

“But indeed, she is a great deal too young,” persisted the bishop; “we never confirm before—”

“But you might speak to her; you might let her hear from your consecrated lips that she is not a castaway because she is a Roman; that she may be a Nero and yet a Christian; that she may owe her black locks and dark cheeks to the blood of the pagan Caesars, and yet herself be a child of grace; you will tell her this, won’t you, my friend?”

“No,” said the signora, “I would not allow her to learn lessons such as those in a land ridden over by priests and polluted by the idolatry of Rome. It is here, here in Barchester, that she must first be taught to lisp those holy words. Oh, that you could be her instructor!”

Now, Dr. Proudie certainly liked the lady, but, seeing that he was a bishop, it was not probable that he was going to instruct a little girl in the first rudiments of her catechism; so he said he’d send a teacher.

“At Papa’s house,” said the Signora with an air of some little surprise at the question.

The bishop actually wanted the courage to ask her who was her papa, so he was forced at last to leave her without fathoming the mystery. Mrs. Proudie, in her second best, had now returned to the rooms, and her husband thought it as well that he should not remain in too close conversation with the lady whom his wife appeared to hold in such slight esteem. Presently he came across his youngest daughter.

“Netta,” said he, “do you know who is the father of that Signora Vicinironi?”

“It isn’t Vicinironi, Papa,” said Netta; “but Vesey Neroni, and she’s Doctor Stanhope’s daughter. But I must go and do the civil to Griselda Grantly; I declare nobody has spoken a word to the poor girl this evening.”

Dr. Stanhope! Dr. Vesey Stanhope! Dr. Vesey Stanhope’s daughter, of whose marriage with a dissolute Italian scamp he now remembered to have heard something! And that impertinent blue cub who had examined him as to his episcopal bearings was old Stanhope’s son, and the lady who had entreated him to come and teach her child the catechism was old Stanhope’s daughter! The daughter of one of his own prebendaries! As these things flashed across his mind, he was nearly as angry as his wife had been. Nevertheless, he could not but own that the mother of the last of the Neros was an agreeable woman.

Dr. Proudie tripped out into the adjoining room, in which were congregated a crowd of Grantlyite clergymen, among whom the archdeacon was standing preeminent, while the old dean was sitting nearly buried in a huge arm chair by the fireplace. The bishop was very anxious to be gracious, and, if possible, to diminish the bitterness which his chaplain had occasioned. Let Mr. Slope do the fortiter in re, he himself would pour in the suaviter in modo.

“Pray don’t stir, Mr. Dean, pray don’t stir,” he said as the old man essayed to get up; “I take it as a great kindness, your coming to such an omnium gatherum as this. But we have hardly got settled yet, and Mrs. Proudie has not been able to see her friends as she would wish to do. Well, Mr. Archdeacon, after all, we have not been so hard upon you at Oxford.”

“No,” said the archdeacon, “you’ve only drawn our teeth and cut out our tongues; you’ve allowed us still to breathe and swallow.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the bishop; “it’s not quite so easy to cut out the tongue of an Oxford magnate—and as for teeth—ha, ha, ha! Why, in the way we’ve left the matter, it’s very odd if the heads of colleges don’t have their own way quite as fully as when the hebdomadal board was in all its glory; what do you say, Mr. Dean?”

“You must have been sad bunglers if it is so,” said the archdeacon; “and indeed, to tell the truth, I think you have bungled it. At any rate, you must own this; you have not done the half what you boasted you would do.”

“Now, as regards your system of professors—” began the chancellor slowly. He was never destined to get beyond such beginning.

“Talking of professors,” said a soft clear voice, close behind the chancellor’s elbow; “how much you Englishmen might learn from Germany; only you are all too proud.”

The bishop, looking round, perceived that that abominable young Stanhope had pursued him. The dean stared at him as though he were some unearthly apparition; so also did two or three prebendaries and minor canons. The archdeacon laughed.

“German professors!” groaned out the chancellor, as though his nervous system had received a shock which nothing but a week of Oxford air could cure.

“Yes,” continued Ethelbert, not at all understanding why a German professor should be contemptible in the eyes of an Oxford don. “Not but what the name is best earned at Oxford. In Germany the professors do teach; at Oxford, I believe, they only profess to do so, and sometimes not even that. You’ll have those universities of yours about your ears soon, if you don’t consent to take a lesson from Germany.”

There was no answering this. Dignified clergymen of sixty years of age could not condescend to discuss such a matter with a young man with such clothes and such a beard.

“Have you got good water out at Plumstead, Mr. Archdeacon?” said the bishop by way of changing the conversation.

“Nor so generally used,” said another; “that is, for inward application.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the bishop, “a good cellar of wine is a very comfortable thing in a house.”

“Your German professors, Sir, prefer beer, I believe,” said the sarcastic little meagre prebendary.

“They don’t think much of either,” said Ethelbert, “and that perhaps accounts for their superiority. Now the Jewish professor—”

The insult was becoming too deep for the spirit of Oxford to endure, so the archdeacon walked off one way and the chancellor another, followed by their disciples, and the bishop and the young reformer were left together on the hearthrug.

The bishop was determined not to stand another examination, or be led on any terms into Palestine, so he again remembered that he had to do something very particular, and left young Stanhope with the dean. The dean did not get the worst of it for Ethelbert gave him a true account of his remarkable doings in the Holy Land.

“Oh, Mr. Harding,” said the bishop, overtaking the ci-devant warden; “I wanted to say one word about the hospital. You know, of course, that it is to be filled up.”

“Of course,” continued the bishop; “there can be only one man whom I could wish to see in that situation. I don’t know what your own views may be, Mr. Harding—”

“They are very simply told, my lord,” said the other; “to take the place if it be offered me, and to put up with the want of it should another man get it.”

The bishop professed himself delighted to hear it; Mr. Harding might be quite sure that no other man would get it. There were some few circumstances which would in a slight degree change the nature of the duties. Mr. Harding was probably aware of this, and would, perhaps, not object to discuss the matter with Mr. Slope. It was a subject to which Mr. Slope had given a good deal of attention.

Mr. Harding felt, he knew not why, oppressed and annoyed. What could Mr. Slope do to him? He knew that there were to be changes. The nature of them must be communicated to the warden through somebody, and through whom so naturally as the bishop’s chaplain? ‘Twas thus he tried to argue himself back to an easy mind, but in vain.

Mr. Slope in the meantime had taken the seat which the bishop had vacated on the signora’s sofa, and remained with that lady till it was time to marshal the folk to supper. Not with contented eyes had Mrs. Proudie seen this. Had not this woman laughed at her distress, and had not Mr. Slope heard it? Was she not an intriguing Italian woman, half wife and half not, full of affectation, airs, and impudence? Was she not horribly bedizened with velvet and pearls, with velvet and pearls, too, which had not been torn off her back? Above all, did she not pretend to be more beautiful than her neighbours? To say that Mrs. Proudie was jealous would give a wrong idea of her feelings. She had not the slightest desire that Mr. Slope should be in love with herself. But she desired the incense of Mr. Slope’s spiritual and temporal services, and did not choose that they should be turned out of their course to such an object as Signora Neroni. She considered also that Mr. Slope ought in duty to hate the signora, and it appeared from his manner that he was very far from hating her.

“Come, Mr. Slope,” she said, sweeping by and looking all that she felt, “can’t you make yourself useful? Do pray take Mrs. Grantly down to supper.”

Mrs. Grantly heard and escaped. The words were hardly out of Mrs. Proudie’s mouth before the intended victim had stuck her hand through the arm of one of her husband’s curates and saved herself. What would the archdeacon have said had he seen her walking downstairs with Mr. Slope?

Mr. Slope heard also, but was by no means so obedient as was expected. Indeed, the period of Mr. Slope’s obedience to Mrs. Proudie was drawing to a close. He did not wish yet to break with her, nor to break with her at all, if it could be avoided. But he intended to be master in that palace, and as she had made the same resolution it was not improbable that they might come to blows.

Before leaving the signora he arranged a little table before her and begged to know what he should bring her. She was quite indifferent, she said—nothing—anything. It was now she felt the misery of her position, now that she must be left alone. Well, a little chicken, some ham, and a glass of champagne.

Mr. Slope had to explain, not without blushing for his patron, that there was no champagne.

Sherry would do just as well. And then Mr. Slope descended with the learned Miss Trefoil on his arm. Could she tell him, he asked, whether the ferns of Barsetshire were equal to those of Cumberland? His strongest worldly passion was for ferns—and before she could answer him he left her wedged between the door and the sideboard. It was fifty minutes before she escaped, and even then unfed.

“You are not leaving us, Mr. Slope,” said the watchful lady of the house, seeing her slave escaping towards the door, with stores of provisions held high above the heads of the guests.

“Pray, Mr. Slope, let her brother take it to her,” said Mrs. Proudie, quite out loud. “It is out of the question that you should be so employed. Pray, Mr. Slope, oblige me; I am sure Mr. Stanhope will wait upon his sister.”

Ethelbert was most agreeably occupied in the furthest corner of the room, making himself both useful and agreeable to Mrs. Proudie’s youngest daughter.

“I couldn’t get out, madam, if Madeline were starving for her supper,” said he; “I’m physically fixed, unless I could fly.”

The lady’s anger was increased by seeing that her daughter also had gone over to the enemy, and when she saw, that in spite of her remonstrances, in the teeth of her positive orders, Mr. Slope went off to the drawing-room, the cup of her indignation ran over, and she could not restrain herself. “Such manners I never saw,” she said, muttering. “I cannot and will not permit it;” and then, after fussing and fuming for a few minutes, she pushed her way through the crowd and followed Mr. Slope.

When she reached the room above, she found it absolutely deserted, except by the guilty pair. The signora was sitting very comfortably up to her supper, and Mr. Slope was leaning over her and administering to her wants. They had been discussing the merits of Sabbath-day schools, and the lady had suggested that as she could not possibly go to the children, she might be indulged in the wish of her heart by having the children brought to her.

Mr. Slope was saved the necessity of committing himself to a promise by the entry of Mrs. Proudie. She swept close up to the sofa so as to confront the guilty pair, stared full at them for a moment, and then said, as she passed on to the next room, “Mr. Slope, his lordship is especially desirous of your attendance below; you will greatly oblige me if you will join him.” And so she stalked on.

Mr. Slope muttered something in reply, and prepared to go downstairs. As for the bishop’s wanting him, he knew his lady patroness well enough to take that assertion at what it was worth; but he did not wish to make himself the hero of a scene, or to become conspicuous for more gallantry than the occasion required.

“Yes—always—madam,” said Mrs. Proudie, returning; “always the same—always equally adverse to impropriety of conduct of every description;” and she stalked back through the room again, following Mr. Slope out of the door.

The signora couldn’t follow her, or she certainly would have done so. But she laughed loud, and sent the sound of it ringing through the lobby and down the stairs after Mrs. Proudie’s feet. Had she been as active as Grimaldi, she could probably have taken no better revenge.

“Mr. Slope,” said Mrs. Proudie, catching the delinquent at the door, “I am surprised you should leave my company to attend on such a painted Jezebel as that.”

“But she’s lame, Mrs. Proudie, and cannot move. Somebody must have waited upon her.”

“Lame,” said Mrs. Proudie; “I’d lame her if she belonged to me. What business had she here at all?—such impertinence—such affectation.”

In the hall and adjacent rooms all manner of cloaking and shawling was going on, and the Barchester folk were getting themselves gone. Mrs. Proudie did her best to smirk at each and every one as they made their adieux, but she was hardly successful. Her temper had been tried fearfully. By slow degrees the guests went.

“Send back the carriage quick,” said Ethelbert, as Dr. and Mrs. Stanhope took their departure.

The younger Stanhopes were left to the very last, and an uncomfortable party they made with the bishop’s family. They all went into the dining-room, and then the bishop observing that “the lady” was alone in the drawing-room, they followed him up. Mrs. Proudie kept Mr. Slope and her daughters in close conversation, resolving that he should not be indulged, nor they polluted. The bishop, in mortal dread of Bertie and the Jews, tried to converse with Charlotte Stanhope about the climate of Italy. Bertie and the signora had no resource but in each other.

“Did you get your supper at last, Madeline?” said the impudent or else mischievous young man.

“Oh, yes,” said Madeline; “Mr. Slope was so very kind as to bring it me. I fear, however, he put himself to more inconvenience than I wished.”

Mrs. Proudie looked at her but said nothing. The meaning of her look might have been thus translated; “If ever you find yourself within these walls again, I’ll give you leave to be as impudent and affected and as mischievous as you please.”

At last the carriage returned with the three Italian servants, and La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni was carried out, as she had been carried in.

The lady of the palace retired to her chamber by no means contented with the result of her first grand party at Barchester.

Chapter XII.
Slope Versus Harding

Two or three days after the party, Mr. Harding received a note begging him to call on Mr. Slope, at the palace, at an early hour on the following morning. There was nothing uncivil in the communication, and yet the tone of it was thoroughly displeasing. It was as follows:

My dear Mr. Harding,

Will you favour me by calling on me at the palace tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. The bishop wishes me to speak to you touching the hospital. I hope you will excuse my naming so early an hour. I do so as my time is greatly occupied. If, however, it is positively inconvenient to you, I will change it to 10. You will, perhaps, be kind enough to let me have a note in reply.

Believe me to be,
My dear Mr. Harding,
Your assured friend,
Obh. Slope
The Palace, Monday morning,
20th August, 185––

Mr. Harding neither could nor would believe anything of the sort, and he thought, moreover, that Mr. Slope was rather impertinent to call himself by such a name. His assured friend, indeed! How many assured friends generally fall to the lot of a man in this world? And by what process are they made? And how much of such process had taken place as yet between Mr. Harding and Mr. Slope? Mr. Harding could not help asking himself these questions as he read and re-read the note before him. He answered it, however, as follows:

Dear Sir,

I will call at the palace tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. as you desire.

Truly yours,
S. Harding
High Street, Barchester, Monday

And on the following morning, punctually at half-past nine, he knocked at the palace door and asked for Mr. Slope.

The bishop had one small room allotted to him on the ground-floor, and Mr. Slope had another. Into this latter Mr. Harding was shown and asked to sit down. Mr. Slope was not yet there. The ex-warden stood up at the window looking into the garden, and could not help thinking how very short a time had passed since the whole of that house had been open to him, as though he had been a child of the family, born and bred in it. He remembered how the old servants used to smile as they opened the door to him; how the familiar butler would say, when he had been absent a few hours longer than usual, “A sight of you, Mr. Harding, is good for sore eyes;” how the fussy housekeeper would swear that he couldn’t have dined, or couldn’t have breakfasted, or couldn’t have lunched. And then, above all, he remembered the pleasant gleam of inward satisfaction which always spread itself over the old bishop’s face whenever his friend entered his room.

A tear came into each eye as he reflected that all this was gone. What use would the hospital be to him now? He was alone in the world, and getting old; he would soon, very soon have to go and leave it all, as his dear old friend had gone; go, and leave the hospital, and his accustomed place in the cathedral, and his haunts and pleasures, to younger and perhaps wiser men. That chanting of his! Perhaps, in truth, the time for it was gone by. He felt as though the world were sinking from his feet; as though this, this was the time for him to turn with confidence to those hopes which he had preached with confidence to others. “What,” said he to himself, “can a man’s religion be worth if it does not support him against the natural melancholy of declining years?” And as he looked out through his dimmed eyes into the bright parterres of the bishop’s garden, he felt that he had the support which he wanted.

Nevertheless, he did not like to be thus kept waiting. If Mr. Slope did not really wish to see him at half-past nine o’clock, why force him to come away from his lodgings with his breakfast in his throat? To tell the truth, it was policy on the part of Mr. Slope. Mr. Slope had made up his mind that Mr. Harding should either accept the hospital with abject submission, or else refuse it altogether, and had calculated that he would probably be more quick to do the latter, if he could be got to enter upon the subject in an ill-humour. Perhaps Mr. Slope was not altogether wrong in his calculation.

It was nearly ten when Mr. Slope hurried into the room and, muttering something about the bishop and diocesan duties, shook Mr. Harding’s hand ruthlessly and begged him to be seated.

Now the air of superiority which this man assumed did go against the grain with Mr. Harding, and yet he did not know how to resent it. The whole tendency of his mind and disposition was opposed to any contra-assumption of grandeur on his own part, and he hadn’t the worldly spirit or quickness necessary to put down insolent pretensions by downright and open rebuke, as the archdeacon would have done. There was nothing for Mr. Harding but to submit, and he accordingly did so.

“About the hospital, Mr. Harding?” began Mr. Slope, speaking of it as the head of a college at Cambridge might speak of some sizarship which had to be disposed of.

Mr. Harding crossed one leg over another, and then one hand over the other on the top of them, and looked Mr. Slope in the face; but he said nothing.

“It’s to be filled up again,” said Mr. Slope. Mr. Harding said that he had understood so.

“Of course, you know, the income will be very much reduced,” continued Mr. Slope. “The bishop wished to be liberal, and he therefore told the government that he thought it ought to be put at not less than £450. I think on the whole the bishop was right, for though the services required will not be of a very onerous nature, they will be more so than they were before. And it is, perhaps, well that the clergy immediately attached to the cathedral town should be made as comfortable as the extent of the ecclesiastical means at our disposal will allow. Those are the bishop’s ideas, and I must say mine also.”

“So much for the income, Mr. Harding. The house will, of course, remain to the warden, as before. It should, however, I think, be stipulated that he should paint inside every seven years, and outside every three years, and be subject to dilapidations, in the event of vacating, either by death or otherwise. But this is a matter on which the bishop must yet be consulted.”

Mr. Harding still rubbed his hands and still sat silent, gazing up into Mr. Slope’s unprepossessing face.

“Then, as to the duties,” continued he, “I believe, if I am rightly informed, there can hardly be said to have been any duties hitherto,” and he gave a sort of half-laugh, as though to pass off the accusation in the guise of a pleasantry.

Mr. Harding thought of the happy, easy years he had passed in his old home; of the wornout, aged men whom he had succoured; of his good intentions; and of his work, which had certainly been of the lightest. He thought of these things, doubting for a moment whether he did or did not deserve the sarcasm. He gave his enemy the benefit of the doubt, and did not rebuke him. He merely observed, very tranquilly, and perhaps with too much humility, that the duties of the situation, such as they were, had, he believed, been done to the satisfaction of the late bishop.

Mr. Slope again smiled, and this time the smile was intended to operate against the memory of the late bishop rather than against the energy of the ex-warden; so it was understood by Mr. Harding. The colour rose to his cheeks, and he began to feel very angry.

“You must be aware, Mr. Harding, that things are a good deal changed in Barchester,” said Mr. Slope.

Mr. Harding said that he was aware of it. “And not only in Barchester, Mr. Harding, but in the world at large. It is not only in Barchester that a new man is carrying out new measures and casting away the useless rubbish of past centuries. The same thing is going on throughout the country. Work is now required from every man who receives wages, and they who have to superintend the doing of work, and the paying of wages, are bound to see that this rule is carried out. New men, Mr. Harding, are now needed and are now forthcoming in the church, as well as in other professions.”

All this was wormwood to our old friend. He had never rated very high his own abilities or activity, but all the feelings of his heart were with the old clergy, and any antipathies of which his heart was susceptible were directed against those new, busy, uncharitable, self-lauding men, of whom Mr. Slope was so good an example.

“By no means,” said Mr. Slope. “The bishop is very anxious that you should accept the appointment, but he wishes you should understand beforehand what will be the required duties. In the first place, a Sabbath-day school will be attached to the hospital.”

“No, Mr. Harding, not for the old men, but for the benefit of the children of such of the poor of Barchester as it may suit. The bishop will expect that you shall attend this school, and that the teachers shall be under your inspection and care.”

Mr. Harding slipped his topmost hand off the other and began to rub the calf of the leg which was supported.

“As to the old men,” continued Mr. Slope, “and the old women who are to form a part of the hospital, the bishop is desirous that you shall have morning and evening service on the premises every Sabbath, and one weekday service; that you shall preach to them once at least on Sundays; and that the whole hospital be always collected for morning and evening prayer. The bishop thinks that this will render it unnecessary that any separate seats in the cathedral should be reserved for the hospital inmates.”

“Indeed, it would be difficult to find seats for the women; on the whole, Mr. Harding, I may as well say at once, that for people of that class the cathedral service does not appear to me the most useful—even if it be so for any class of people.”

“I am not desirous of doing so; at least, not at the present moment. I hope, however, you fully understand the bishop’s wishes about the new establishment of the hospital; and if, as I do not doubt, I shall receive from you an assurance that you accord with his lordship’s views, it will give me very great pleasure to be the bearer from his lordship to you of the presentation to the appointment.”

“If such unfortunately should be the case, which I can hardly conceive, I presume your own feelings will dictate to you the propriety of declining the appointment.”

“But if I accept the appointment and yet disagree with the bishop, what then?”

This question rather bothered Mr. Slope. It was true that he had talked the matter over with the bishop and had received a sort of authority for suggesting to Mr. Harding the propriety of a Sunday school and certain hospital services, but he had no authority for saying that these propositions were to be made peremptory conditions attached to the appointment. The bishop’s idea had been that Mr. Harding would of course consent and that the school would become, like the rest of those new establishments in the city, under the control of his wife and his chaplain. Mr. Slope’s idea had been more correct. He intended that Mr. Harding should refuse the situation, and that an ally of his own should get it, but he had not conceived the possibility of Mr. Harding openly accepting the appointment and as openly rejecting the conditions.

“It is not, I presume, probable,” said he, “that you will accept from the hands of the bishop a piece of preferment with a fixed predetermination to disacknowledge the duties attached to it.”

“If I become warden,” said Mr. Harding, “and neglect my duty, the bishop has means by which he can remedy the grievance.”

“I hardly expected such an argument from you, or I may say the suggestion of such a line of conduct,” said Mr. Slope with a great look of injured virtue.

“I shall be glad at any rate to know what answer I am to make to his lordship,” said Mr. Slope.

“I will take an early opportunity of seeing his lordship myself,” said Mr. Harding.

“Such an arrangement,” said Mr. Slope, “will hardly give his lordship satisfaction. Indeed, it is impossible that the bishop should himself see every clergyman in the diocese on every subject of patronage that may arise. The bishop, I believe, did see you on the matter, and I really cannot see why he should be troubled to do so again.”

“Do you know, Mr. Slope, how long I have been officiating as a clergyman in this city?” Mr. Slope’s wish was now nearly fulfilled. Mr. Harding had become angry, and it was probable that he might commit himself.

“I really do not see what that has to do with the question. You cannot think the bishop would be justified in allowing you to regard as a sinecure a situation that requires an active man, merely because you have been employed for many years in the cathedral.”

“But it might induce the bishop to see me, if I asked him to do so. I shall consult my friends in this matter, Mr. Slope; but I mean to be guilty of no subterfuge—you may tell the bishop that as I altogether disagree with his views about the hospital, I shall decline the situation if I find that any such conditions are attached to it as those you have suggested;” and so saying, Mr. Harding took his hat and went his way.

Mr. Slope was contented. He considered himself at liberty to accept Mr. Harding’s last speech as an absolute refusal of the appointment. At least, he so represented it to the bishop and to Mrs. Proudie.

“Not at all,” said Mrs. Proudie; “you little know how determined the whole set of them are to withstand your authority.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Slope, “if he can hold it without the slightest acknowledgement of your lordship’s jurisdiction.”

“I don’t know that there is much cause for sorrow,” said the lady. “Mr. Quiverful is a much more deserving man, more in need of it, and one who will make himself much more useful in the close neighbourhood of the palace.”

Chapter XIII.
The Rubbish Cart

Mr. Harding was not a happy man as he walked down the palace pathway and stepped out into the close. His preferment and pleasant house were a second time gone from him, but that he could endure. He had been schooled and insulted by a man young enough to be his son, but that he could put up with. He could even draw from the very injuries which had been inflicted on him some of that consolation which we may believe martyrs always receive from the injustice of their own sufferings, and which is generally proportioned in its strength to the extent of cruelty with which martyrs are treated. He had admitted to his daughter that he wanted the comfort of his old home, and yet he could have returned to his lodgings in the High Street, if not with exaltation, at least with satisfaction, had that been all. But the venom of the chaplain’s harangue had worked into his blood, and sapped the life of his sweet contentment.

“New men are carrying out new measures and are carting away the useless rubbish of past centuries!” What cruel words these had been; and how often are they now used with all the heartless cruelty of a Slope! A man is sufficiently condemned if it can only be shown that either in politics or religion he does not belong to some new school established within the last score of years. He may then regard himself as rubbish and expect to be carted away. A man is nothing now unless he has within him a full appreciation of the new era, an era in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We must laugh at everything that is established. Let the joke be ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of joking; nevertheless we must laugh—or else beware the cart. We must talk, think, and live up to the spirit of the times, and write up to it too, if that cacoethes be upon us, or else we are nought. New men and new measures, long credit and few scruples, great success or wonderful ruin, such are now the tastes of Englishmen who know how to live. Alas, alas! Under such circumstances Mr. Harding could not but feel that he was an Englishman who did not know how to live. This new doctrine of Mr. Slope and the rubbish cart, new at least at Barchester, sadly disturbed his equanimity.

“The same thing is going on throughout the whole country! Work is now required from every man who receives wages!” And had he been living all his life receiving wages and doing no work? Had he in truth so lived as to be now in his old age justly reckoned as rubbish fit only to be hidden away in some huge dust-hole? The school of men to whom he professes to belong, the Grantlys, the Gwynnes, and the old high set of Oxford divines, are afflicted with no such self-accusations as these which troubled Mr. Harding. They, as a rule, are as satisfied with the wisdom and propriety of their own conduct as can be any Mr. Slope, or any Dr. Proudie, with his own. But unfortunately for himself Mr. Harding had little of this self-reliance. When he heard himself designated as rubbish by the Slopes of the world, he had no other resource than to make inquiry within his own bosom as to the truth of the designation. Alas, alas! The evidence seemed generally to go against him.

He had professed to himself in the bishop’s parlour that in these coming sources of the sorrow of age, in these fits of sad regret from which the latter years of few reflecting men can be free, religion would suffice to comfort him. Yes, religion could console him for the loss of any worldly good, but was his religion of that active sort which would enable him so to repent of misspent years as to pass those that were left to him in a spirit of hope for the future? And such repentance itself, is it not a work of agony and of tears? It is very easy to talk of repentance, but a man has to walk over hot ploughshares before he can complete it; to be skinned alive as was St. Bartholomew; to be stuck full of arrows as was St. Sebastian; to lie broiling on a gridiron like St. Lorenzo! How if his past life required such repentance as this? Had he the energy to go through with it?

Mr. Harding, after leaving the palace, walked slowly for an hour or so beneath the shady elms of the close and then betook himself to his daughter’s house. He had at any rate made up his mind that he would go out to Plumstead to consult Dr. Grantly, and that he would in the first instance tell Eleanor what had occurred.

And now he was doomed to undergo another misery. Mr. Slope had forestalled him at the widow’s house. He had called there on the preceding afternoon. He could not, he had said, deny himself the pleasure of telling Mrs. Bold that her father was about to return to the pretty house at Hiram’s Hospital. He had been instructed by the bishop to inform Mr. Harding that the appointment would now be made at once. The bishop was of course only too happy to be able to be the means of restoring to Mr. Harding the preferment which he had so long adorned. And then by degrees Mr. Slope had introduced the subject of the pretty school which he hoped before long to see attached to the hospital. He had quite fascinated Mrs. Bold by his description of this picturesque, useful, and charitable appendage, and she had gone so far as to say that she had no doubt her father would approve, and that she herself would gladly undertake a class.

Anyone who had heard the entirely different tone and seen the entirely different manner in which Mr. Slope had spoken of this projected institution to the daughter and to the father could not have failed to own that Mr. Slope was a man of genius. He said nothing to Mrs. Bold about the hospital sermons and services, nothing about the exclusion of the old men from the cathedral, nothing about dilapidation and painting, nothing about carting away the rubbish. Eleanor had said to herself that certainly she did not like Mr. Slope personally, but that he was a very active, zealous clergyman and would no doubt be useful in Barchester. All this paved the way for much additional misery to Mr. Harding.

Eleanor put on her happiest face as she heard her father on the stairs, for she thought she had only to congratulate him; but directly she saw his face she knew that there was but little matter for congratulation. She had seen him with the same weary look of sorrow on one or two occasions before, and remembered it well. She had seen him when he first read that attack upon himself in “The Jupiter” which had ultimately caused him to resign the hospital, and she had seen him also when the archdeacon had persuaded him to remain there against his own sense of propriety and honour. She knew at a glance that his spirit was in deep trouble.

“Oh, Papa, what is it?” said she, putting down her boy to crawl upon the floor.

“I came to tell you, my dear,” said he, “that I am going out to Plumstead: you won’t come with me, I suppose?”

“I suppose I shall, tonight: I must consult the archdeacon about this weary hospital. Ah me! I wish I had never thought of it again.”

“I’ve been with Mr. Slope, my dear, and he isn’t the pleasantest companion in the world, at least not to me.” Eleanor gave a sort of half-blush, but she was wrong if she imagined that her father in any way alluded to her acquaintance with Mr. Slope.

“He wants to turn the hospital into a Sunday-school and a preaching-house, and I suppose he will have his way. I do not feel myself adapted for such an establishment, and therefore, I suppose, I must refuse the appointment.”

“Mr. Slope wishes to supply it by making me his schoolmaster. But as I am hardly fit for such work, I intend to decline.”

“Oh, Papa! Mr. Slope doesn’t intend that. He was here yesterday, and what he intends—”

“He was saying how glad he would be, and the bishop too, to see you back there again. And then he spoke about the Sunday-school; and to tell the truth I agreed with him; and I thought you would have done so too. Mr. Slope spoke of a school, not inside the hospital, but just connected with it, of which you would be the patron and visitor; and I thought you would have liked such a school as that; and I promised to look after it and to take a class—and it all seemed so very—. But, oh, Papa! I shall be so miserable if I find I have done wrong.”

“Nothing wrong at all, my dear,” said he gently, very gently rejecting his daughter’s caress. “There can be nothing wrong in your wishing to make yourself useful; indeed, you ought to do so by all means. Everyone must now exert himself who would not choose to go to the wall.” Poor Mr. Harding thus attempted in his misery to preach the new doctrine to his child. “Himself or herself, it’s all the same,” he continued; “you will be quite right, my dear, to do something of this sort; but—”

“I am not quite sure that if I were you I would select Mr. Slope for my guide.”

“It would be very wicked of me to speak evil of him, for to tell the truth I know no evil of him; but I am not quite sure that he is honest. That he is not gentlemanlike in his manners, of that I am quite sure.”

“As for myself, my dear,” continued he, “we know the old proverb—’It’s bad teaching an old dog tricks.’ I must decline the Sunday-school, and shall therefore probably decline the hospital also. But I will first see your brother-in-law.” So he took up his hat, kissed the baby, and withdrew, leaving Eleanor in as low spirits as himself.

All this was a great aggravation to his misery. He had so few with whom to sympathize that he could not afford to be cut off from the one whose sympathy was of the most value to him. And yet it seemed probable that this would be the case. He did not own to himself that he wished his daughter to hate Mr. Slope, yet had she expressed such a feeling there would have been very little bitterness in the rebuke he would have given her for so uncharitable a state of mind. The fact, however, was that she was on friendly terms with Mr. Slope, that she coincided with his views, adhered at once to his plans, and listened with delight to his teaching. Mr. Harding hardly wished his daughter to hate the man, but he would have preferred that to her loving him.

He walked away to the inn to order a fly, went home to put up his carpetbag, and then started for Plumstead. There was, at any rate, no danger that the archdeacon would fraternize with Mr. Slope; but then he would recommend internecine war, public appeals, loud reproaches, and all the paraphernalia of open battle. Now that alternative was hardly more to Mr. Harding’s taste than the other.

When Mr. Harding reached the parsonage, he found that the archdeacon was out, and would not be home till dinnertime, so he began his complaint to his elder daughter. Mrs. Grantly entertained quite as strong an antagonism to Mr. Slope as did her husband; she was also quite as alive to the necessity of combating the Proudie faction, of supporting the old church interest of the close, of keeping in her own set such of the loaves and fishes as duly belonged to it; and was quite as well prepared as her lord to carry on the battle without giving or taking quarter. Not that she was a woman prone to quarrelling, or ill-inclined to live at peace with her clerical neighbours; but she felt, as did the archdeacon, that the presence of Mr. Slope in Barchester was an insult to everyone connected with the late bishop, and that his assumed dominion in the diocese was a spiritual injury to her husband. Hitherto people had little guessed how bitter Mrs. Grantly could be. She lived on the best of terms with all the rectors’ wives around her. She had been popular with all the ladies connected with the close. Though much the wealthiest of the ecclesiastical matrons of the county, she had so managed her affairs that her carriage and horses had given umbrage to none. She had never thrown herself among the county grandees so as to excite the envy of other clergymen’s wives. She never talked too loudly of earls and countesses, or boasted that she gave her governess sixty pounds a year, or her cook seventy. Mrs. Grantly had lived the life of a wise, discreet, peacemaking woman, and the people of Barchester were surprised at the amount of military vigour she displayed as general of the feminine Grantlyite forces.

Mrs. Grantly soon learned that her sister Eleanor had promised to assist Mr. Slope in the affairs of the hospital school, and it was on this point that her attention first fixed itself.

“He is a very crafty man,” said her father, “and his craft has been successful in making Eleanor think that he is a meek, charitable, good clergyman. God forgive me, if I wrong him, but such is not his true character in my opinion.”

“His true character, indeed!” said she, with something approaching scorn for her father’s moderation. “I only hope he won’t have craft enough to make Eleanor forget herself and her position.”

“Do you mean marry him?” said he, startled out of his usual demeanour by the abruptness and horror of so dreadful a proposition.

“What is there so improbable in it? Of course that would be his own object if he thought he had any chance of success. Eleanor has a thousand a year entirely at her own disposal, and what better fortune could fall to Mr. Slope’s lot than the transferring of the disposal of such a fortune to himself?”

“Why not?” said Susan. “Why shouldn’t she like him? He’s just the sort of man to get on with a woman left, as she is, with no one to look after her.”

“Ah, Papa, how innocent you are! Of course it was to be expected that Eleanor should marry again. I should be the last to advise her against it, if she would only wait the proper time, and then marry at least a gentleman.”

“But you don’t really mean to say that you suppose Eleanor has ever thought of marrying Mr. Slope? Why, Mr. Bold has only been dead a year.”

“Eighteen months,” said his daughter. “But I don’t suppose Eleanor has ever thought about it. It is very probable, though, that he has; and that he will try and make her do so; and that he will succeed too, if we don’t take care what we are about.”

This was quite a new phase of the affair to poor Mr. Harding. To have thrust upon him as his son-in-law, as the husband of his favourite child, the only man in the world whom he really positively disliked, would be a misfortune which he felt he would not know how to endure patiently. But then, could there be any ground for so dreadful a surmise? In all worldly matters he was apt to look upon the opinion of his eldest daughter as one generally sound and trustworthy. In her appreciation of character, of motives, and the probable conduct both of men and women, she was usually not far wrong. She had early foreseen the marriage of Eleanor and John Bold; she had at a glance deciphered the character of the new bishop and his chaplain; could it possibly be that her present surmise should ever come forth as true?

“Well, Papa, I can’t say that I think she dislikes him as she ought to do. Why is he visiting there as a confidential friend, when he never ought to have been admitted inside the house? Why is it that she speaks to him about your welfare and your position, as she clearly has done? At the bishop’s party the other night I saw her talking to him for half an hour at the stretch.”

“I thought Mr. Slope seemed to talk to nobody there but that daughter of Stanhope’s,” said Mr. Harding, wishing to defend his child.

“Oh, Mr. Slope is a cleverer man than you think of, Papa, and keeps more than one iron in the fire.”

To give Eleanor her due, any suspicion as to the slightest inclination on her part towards Mr. Slope was a wrong to her. She had no more idea of marrying Mr. Slope than she had of marrying the bishop, and the idea that Mr. Slope would present himself as a suitor had never occurred to her. Indeed, to give her her due again, she had never thought about suitors since her husband’s death. But nevertheless it was true that she had overcome all that repugnance to the man which was so strongly felt for him by the rest of the Grantly faction. She had forgiven him his sermon. She had forgiven him his Low Church tendencies, his Sabbath-schools, and puritanical observances. She had forgiven his pharisaical arrogance, and even his greasy face and oily, vulgar manners. Having agreed to overlook such offences as these, why should she not in time be taught to regard Mr. Slope as a suitor?

And as to him, it must also be affirmed that he was hitherto equally innocent of the crime imputed to him. How it had come to pass that a man whose eyes were generally so widely open to everything around him had not perceived that this young widow was rich as well as beautiful, cannot probably now be explained. But such was the fact. Mr. Slope had ingratiated himself with Mrs. Bold, merely as he had done with other ladies, in order to strengthen his party in the city. He subsequently amended his error, but it was not till after the interview between him and Mr. Harding.

Chapter XIV.
The New Champion

The archdeacon did not return to the parsonage till close upon the hour of dinner, and there was therefore no time to discuss matters before that important ceremony. He seemed to be in an especial good humour, and welcomed his father-in-law with a sort of jovial earnestness that was usual with him when things on which he was intent were going on as he would have them.

“It’s all settled, my dear,” said he to his wife as he washed his hands in his dressingroom, while she, according to her wont, sat listening in the bedroom; “Arabin has agreed to accept the living. He’ll be here next week.” And the archdeacon scrubbed his hands and rubbed his face with a violent alacrity, which showed that Arabin’s coming was a great point gained.

“He has promised to stay a month with us,” said the archdeacon, “so that he may see what his parish is like. You’ll like Arabin very much. He’s a gentleman in every respect, and full of humour.”

“Well—he is a little odd in some of his fancies, but there’s nothing about him you won’t like. He is as staunch a churchman as there is at Oxford. I really don’t know what we should do without Arabin. It’s a great thing for me to have him so near me, and if anything can put Slope down, Arabin will do it.”

The Reverend Francis Arabin was a fellow of Lazarus, the favoured disciple of the great Dr. Gwynne, a High Churchman at all points—so high, indeed, that at one period of his career he had all but toppled over into the cesspool of Rome—a poet and also a polemical writer, a great pet in the common-rooms at Oxford, an eloquent clergyman, a droll, odd, humorous, energetic, conscientious man, and, as the archdeacon had boasted of him, a thorough gentleman. As he will hereafter be brought more closely to our notice, it is now only necessary to add that he had just been presented to the vicarage of St. Ewold by Dr. Grantly, in whose gift as archdeacon the living lay. St. Ewold is a parish lying just without the city of Barchester. The suburbs of the new town, indeed, are partly within its precincts, and the pretty church and parsonage are not much above a mile distant from the city gate.

St. Ewold is not a rich piece of preferment—it is worth some three or four hundred a year at most, and has generally been held by a clergyman attached to the cathedral choir. The archdeacon, however, felt, when the living on this occasion became vacant, that it imperatively behoved him to aid the force of his party with some tower of strength, if any such tower could be got to occupy St. Ewold’s. He had discussed the matter with his brethren in Barchester, not in any weak spirit as the holder of patronage to be used for his own or his family’s benefit, but as one to whom was committed a trust on the due administration of which much of the church’s welfare might depend. He had submitted to them the name of Mr. Arabin, as though the choice had rested with them all in conclave, and they had unanimously admitted that, if Mr. Arabin would accept St. Ewold’s, no better choice could possibly be made.

If Mr. Arabin would accept St. Ewold’s! There lay the difficulty. Mr. Arabin was a man standing somewhat prominently before the world, that is, before the Church of England world. He was not a rich man, it is true, for he held no preferment but his fellowship; but he was a man not over-anxious for riches, not married of course, and one whose time was greatly taken up in discussing, both in print and on platforms, the privileges and practices of the church to which he belonged. As the archdeacon had done battle for its temporalities, so did Mr. Arabin do battle for its spiritualities, and both had done so conscientiously; that is, not so much each for his own benefit as for that of others.

Holding such a position as Mr. Arabin did, there was much reason to doubt whether he would consent to become the parson of St. Ewold’s, and Dr. Grantly had taken the trouble to go himself to Oxford on the matter. Dr. Gwynne and Dr. Grantly together had succeeded in persuading this eminent divine that duty required him to go to Barchester. There were wheels within wheels in this affair. For some time past Mr. Arabin had been engaged in a tremendous controversy with no less a person than Mr. Slope, respecting the apostolic succession. These two gentlemen had never seen each other, but they had been extremely bitter in print. Mr. Slope had endeavoured to strengthen his cause by calling Mr. Arabin an owl, and Mr. Arabin had retaliated by hinting that Mr. Slope was an infidel. This battle had been commenced in the columns of “The Jupiter,” a powerful newspaper, the manager of which was very friendly to Mr. Slope’s view of the case. The matter, however, had become too tedious for the readers of “The Jupiter,” and a little note had therefore been appended to one of Mr. Slope’s most telling rejoinders, in which it had been stated that no further letters from the reverend gentlemen could be inserted except as advertisements.

Other methods of publication were, however, found, less expensive than advertisements in “The Jupiter,” and the war went on merrily. Mr. Slope declared that the main part of the consecration of a clergyman was the self-devotion of the inner man to the duties of the ministry. Mr. Arabin contended that a man was not consecrated at all, had, indeed, no single attribute of a clergyman, unless he became so through the imposition of some bishop’s hands, who had become a bishop through the imposition of other hands, and so on in a direct line to one of the apostles. Each had repeatedly hung the other on the horns of a dilemma, but neither seemed to be a whit the worse for the hanging; and so the war went on merrily.

Whether or no the near neighbourhood of the foe may have acted in any way as an inducement to Mr. Arabin to accept the living of St. Ewold, we will not pretend to say; but it had at any rate been settled in Dr. Gwynne’s library, at Lazarus, that he would accept it, and that he would lend his assistance towards driving the enemy out of Barchester, or, at any rate, silencing him while he remained there. Mr. Arabin intended to keep his rooms at Oxford and to have the assistance of a curate at St. Ewold, but he promised to give as much time as possible to the neighbourhood of Barchester, and from so great a man Dr. Grantly was quite satisfied with such a promise. It was no small part of the satisfaction derivable from such an arrangement that Bishop Proudie would be forced to institute into a living immediately under his own nose the enemy of his favourite chaplain.

All through dinner the archdeacon’s good humour shone brightly in his face. He ate of the good things heartily, he drank wine with his wife and daughter, he talked pleasantly of his doings at Oxford, told his father-in-law that he ought to visit Dr. Gwynne at Lazarus, and launched out again in praise of Mr. Arabin.

“Oh!” said Griselda. Had her father said eighty, Mr. Arabin would not have appeared to her to be very much older.

When the two gentlemen were left alone over their wine, Mr. Harding told his tale of woe. But even this, sad as it was, did not much diminish the archdeacon’s good humour, though it greatly added to his pugnacity.

“He can’t do it,” said Dr. Grantly over and over again, as his father-in-law explained to him the terms on which the new warden of the hospital was to be appointed; “he can’t do it. What he says is not worth the trouble of listening to. He can’t alter the duties of the place.”

“Neither the bishop nor the chaplain, nor yet the bishop’s wife, who, I take it, has really more to say to such matters than either of the other two. The whole body corporate of the palace together have no power to turn the warden of the hospital into a Sunday-schoolmaster.”

“I don’t know that; I rather think he’ll find he has no such power. Let him try it, and see what the press will say. For once we shall have the popular cry on our side. But Proudie, ass as he is, knows the world too well to get such a hornet’s nest about his ears.”

Mr. Harding winced at the idea of the press. He had had enough of that sort of publicity, and was unwilling to be shown up a second time either as a monster or as a martyr. He gently remarked that he hoped the newspapers would not get hold of his name again, and then suggested that perhaps it would be better that he should abandon his object. “I am getting old,” said he, “and after all I doubt whether I am fit to undertake new duties.”

“New duties?” said the archdeacon; “don’t I tell you there shall be no new duties?”

“Or perhaps old duties either,” said Mr. Harding; “I think I will remain content as I am.” The picture of Mr. Slope carting away the rubbish was still present to his mind.

The archdeacon drank off his glass of claret and prepared himself to be energetic. “I do hope,” said he, “that you are not going to be so weak as to allow such a man as Mr. Slope to deter you from doing what you know it is your duty to do. You know it is your duty to resume your place at the hospital now that parliament has so settled the stipend as to remove those difficulties which induced you to resign it. You cannot deny this, and should your timidity now prevent you from doing so, your conscience will hereafter never forgive you,” and as he finished this clause of his speech, he pushed over the bottle to his companion.

“Your conscience will never forgive you,” he continued. “You resigned the place from conscientious scruples, scruples which I greatly respected, though I did not share them. All your friends respected them, and you left your old house as rich in reputation as you were ruined in fortune. It is now expected that you will return. Dr. Gwynne was saying only the other day—”

“Dr. Gwynne does not reflect how much older a man I am now than when he last saw me.”

“Old—nonsense,” said the archdeacon; “you never thought yourself old till you listened to the impudent trash of that coxcomb at the palace.”

“And seventy-five, if you live till November ten years,” said the archdeacon. “And you bid fair to be as efficient then as you were ten years ago. But for heaven’s sake let us have no pretence in this matter. Your plea of old age is a pretence. But you’re not drinking your wine. It is only a pretence. The fact is, you are half-afraid of this Slope, and would rather subject yourself to comparative poverty and discomfort than come to blows with a man who will trample on you, if you let him.”

“Nor I neither—but sometimes we can’t help it. This man’s object is to induce you to refuse the hospital, that he may put some creature of his own into it; that he may show his power and insult us all by insulting you, whose cause and character are so intimately bound up with that of the chapter. You owe it to us all to resist him in this, even if you have no solicitude for yourself. But surely, for your own sake, you will not be so lily-livered as to fall into this trap which he has baited for you and let him take the very bread out of your mouth without a struggle.”

Mr. Harding did not like being called lily-livered, and was rather inclined to resent it. “I doubt there is any true courage,” said he, “in squabbling for money.”

“If honest men did not squabble for money, in this wicked world of ours, the dishonest men would get it all, and I do not see that the cause of virtue would be much improved. No—we must use the means which we have. If we were to carry your argument home, we might give away every shilling of revenue which the church has, and I presume you are not prepared to say that the church would be strengthened by such a sacrifice.” The archdeacon filled his glass and then emptied it, drinking with much reverence a silent toast to the wellbeing and permanent security of those temporalities which were so dear to his soul.

“I think all quarrels between a clergyman and his bishop should be avoided,” said Mr. Harding.

“I think so too, but it is quite as much the duty of the bishop to look to that as of his inferior. I tell you what, my friend; I’ll see the bishop in this matter—that is, if you will allow me—and you may be sure I will not compromise you. My opinion is that all this trash about the Sunday-schools and the sermons has originated wholly with Slope and Mrs. Proudie, and that the bishop knows nothing about it. The bishop can’t very well refuse to see me, and I’ll come upon him when he has neither his wife nor his chaplain by him. I think you’ll find that it will end in his sending you the appointment without any condition whatever. And as to the seats in the cathedral, we may safely leave that to Mr. Dean. I believe the fool positively thinks that the bishop could walk away with the cathedral if he pleased.”

And so the matter was arranged between them. Mr. Harding had come expressly for advice, and therefore felt himself bound to take the advice given him. He had known, moreover, beforehand that the archdeacon would not hear of his giving the matter up, and accordingly, though he had in perfect good faith put forward his own views, he was prepared to yield.

They therefore went into the drawing-room in good humour with each other, and the evening passed pleasantly in prophetic discussions on the future wars of Arabin and Slope. The frogs and the mice would be nothing to them, nor the angers of Agamemnon and Achilles. How the archdeacon rubbed his hands and plumed himself on the success of his last move. He could not himself descend into the arena with Slope, but Arabin would have no such scruples. Arabin was exactly the man for such work, and the only man whom he knew that was fit for it.

The archdeacon’s good humour and high buoyancy continued till, when reclining on his pillow, Mrs. Grantly commenced to give him her view of the state of affairs at Barchester. And then certainly he was startled. The last words he said that night were as follows:—

“If she does, by heaven I’ll never speak to her again. She dragged me into the mire once, but I’ll not pollute myself with such filth as that—” And the archdeacon gave a shudder which shook the whole room, so violently was he convulsed with the thought which then agitated his mind.

Now in this matter the widow Bold was scandalously illtreated by her relatives. She had spoken to the man three or four times, and had expressed her willingness to teach in a Sunday-school. Such was the full extent of her sins in the matter of Mr. Slope. Poor Eleanor! But time will show.

The next morning Mr. Harding returned to Barchester, no further word having been spoken in his hearing respecting Mr. Slope’s acquaintance with his younger daughter. But he observed that the archdeacon at breakfast was less cordial than he had been on the preceding evening.

Chapter XV.
The Widow’s Suitors

Mr. Slope lost no time in availing himself of the bishop’s permission to see Mr. Quiverful, and it was in his interview with this worthy pastor that he first learned that Mrs. Bold was worth the wooing. He rode out to Puddingdale to communicate to the embryo warden the goodwill of the bishop in his favour, and during the discussion on the matter it was not unnatural that the pecuniary resources of Mr. Harding and his family should become the subject of remark.

Mr. Quiverful, with his fourteen children and his four hundred a year, was a very poor man, and the prospect of this new preferment, which was to be held together with his living, was very grateful to him. To what clergyman so circumstanced would not such a prospect be very grateful? But Mr. Quiverful had long been acquainted with Mr. Harding, and had received kindness at his hands, so that his heart misgave him as he thought of supplanting a friend at the hospital. Nevertheless, he was extremely civil, cringingly civil, to Mr. Slope; treated him quite as the great man; entreated this great man to do him the honour to drink a glass of sherry, at which, as it was very poor Marsala, the now pampered Slope turned up his nose; and ended by declaring his extreme obligation to the bishop and Mr. Slope and his great desire to accept the hospital, if—if it were certainly the case that Mr. Harding had refused it.

“Mr. Harding did positively refuse it,” said Mr. Slope with a certain air of offended dignity, “when he heard of the conditions to which the appointment is now subjected. Of course you understand, Mr. Quiverful, that the same conditions will be imposed on yourself.”

Mr. Quiverful cared nothing for the conditions. He would have undertaken to preach any number of sermons Mr. Slope might have chosen to dictate, and to pass every remaining hour of his Sundays within the walls of a Sunday-school. What sacrifices, or at any rate, what promises would have been too much to make for such an addition to his income, and for such a house! But his mind still recurred to Mr. Harding.

“To be sure,” said he; “Mr. Harding’s daughter is very rich, and why should he trouble himself with the hospital?”

“I meant his widowed daughter,” said the other. “Mrs. Bold has twelve hundred a year of her own, and I suppose Mr. Harding means to live with her.”

“Twelve hundred a year of her own!” said Slope, and very shortly afterwards took his leave, avoiding, as far as it was possible for him to do, any further allusion to the hospital. “Twelve hundred a year!” said he to himself as he rode slowly home. If it were the fact that Mrs. Bold had twelve hundred a year of her own, what a fool would he be to oppose her father’s return to his old place. The train of Mr. Slope’s ideas will probably be plain to all my readers. Why should he not make the twelve hundred a year his own? And if he did so, would it not be well for him to have a father-in-law comfortably provided with the good things of this world? Would it not, moreover, be much more easy for him to gain the daughter if he did all in his power to forward the father’s views?

These questions presented themselves to him in a very forcible way, and yet there were many points of doubt. If he resolved to restore to Mr. Harding his former place, he must take the necessary steps for doing so at once; he must immediately talk over the bishop, quarrel on the matter with Mrs. Proudie, whom he knew he could not talk over, and let Mr. Quiverful know that he had been a little too precipitate as to Mr. Harding’s positive refusal. That he could effect all this he did not doubt, but he did not wish to effect it for nothing. He did not wish to give way to Mr. Harding and then be rejected by the daughter. He did not wish to lose one influential friend before he had gained another.

And thus he rode home, meditating many things in his mind. It occurred to him that Mrs. Bold was sister-in-law to the archdeacon, and that not even for twelve hundred a year would he submit to that imperious man. A rich wife was a great desideratum to him, but success in his profession was still greater; there were, moreover, other rich women who might be willing to become wives; and after all, this twelve hundred a year might, when inquired into, melt away into some small sum utterly beneath his notice. Then also he remembered that Mrs. Bold had a son.

Another circumstance also much influenced him, though it was one which may almost be said to have influenced him against his will. The vision of the Signora Neroni was perpetually before his eyes. It would be too much to say that Mr. Slope was lost in love, but yet he thought, and kept continually thinking, that he had never seen so beautiful a woman. He was a man whose nature was open to such impulses, and the wiles of the Italianized charmer had been thoroughly successful in imposing upon his thoughts. We will not talk about his heart: not that he had no heart, but because his heart had little to do with his present feelings. His taste had been pleased, his eyes charmed, and his vanity gratified. He had been dazzled by a sort of loveliness which he had never before seen, and had been caught by an easy, free, voluptuous manner which was perfectly new to him. He had never been so tempted before, and the temptation was now irresistible. He had not owned to himself that he cared for this woman more than for others around him, but yet he thought often of the time when he might see her next, and made, almost unconsciously, little cunning plans for seeing her frequently.

He had called at Dr. Stanhope’s house the day after the bishop’s party, and then the warmth of his admiration had been fed with fresh fuel. If the signora had been kind in her manner and flattering in her speech when lying upon the bishop’s sofa, with the eyes of so many on her, she had been much more so in her mother’s drawing-room, with no one present but her sister to repress either her nature or her art. Mr. Slope had thus left her quite bewildered, and could not willingly admit into his brain any scheme a part of which would be the necessity of his abandoning all further special friendship with this lady.

And here the author must beg it to be remembered that Mr. Slope was not in all things a bad man. His motives, like those of most men, were mixed, and though his conduct was generally very different from that which we would wish to praise, it was actuated perhaps as often as that of the majority of the world by a desire to do his duty. He believed in the religion which he taught, harsh, unpalatable, uncharitable as that religion was. He believed those whom he wished to get under his hoof, the Grantlys and Gwynnes of the church, to be the enemies of that religion. He believed himself to be a pillar of strength, destined to do great things, and with that subtle, selfish, ambiguous sophistry to which the minds of all men are so subject, he had taught himself to think that in doing much for the promotion of his own interests, he was doing much also for the promotion of religion. But Mr. Slope had never been an immoral man. Indeed, he had resisted temptations to immorality with a strength of purpose that was creditable to him. He had early in life devoted himself to works which were not compatible with the ordinary pleasures of youth, and he had abandoned such pleasures not without a struggle. It must therefore be conceived that he did not admit to himself that he warmly admired the beauty of a married woman without heartfelt stings of conscience; and to pacify that conscience he had to teach himself that the nature of his admiration was innocent.

And thus he rode along meditative and ill at ease. His conscience had not a word to say against his choosing the widow and her fortune. That he looked upon as a godly work rather than otherwise; as a deed which, if carried through, would redound to his credit as a Christian. On that side lay no future remorse, no conduct which he might probably have to forget, no inward stings. If it should turn out to be really the fact that Mrs. Bold had twelve hundred a year at her own disposal, Mr. Slope would rather look upon it as a duty which he owed his religion to make himself the master of the wife and the money; as a duty too, in which some amount of self-sacrifice would be necessary. He would have to give up his friendship with the signora, his resistance to Mr. Harding, his antipathy—no, he found on mature self-examination that he could not bring himself to give up his antipathy to Dr. Grantly. He would marry the lady as the enemy of her brother-in-law if such an arrangement suited her; if not, she must look elsewhere for a husband.

It was with such resolve as this that he reached Barchester. He would at once ascertain what the truth might be as to the lady’s wealth, and having done this he would be ruled by circumstances in his conduct respecting the hospital. If he found that he could turn round and secure the place for Mr. Harding without much self-sacrifice, he would do so; but if not, he would woo the daughter in opposition to the father. But in no case would he succumb to the archdeacon.

He saw his horse taken round to the stable, and immediately went forth to commence his inquiries. To give Mr. Slope his due, he was not a man who ever let much grass grow under his feet.

Poor Eleanor! She was doomed to be the intended victim of more schemes than one.

About the time that Mr. Slope was visiting the vicar of Puddingdale, a discussion took place respecting her charms and wealth at Dr. Stanhope’s house in the close. There had been morning callers there, and people had told some truth and also some falsehood respecting the property which John Bold had left behind him. By degrees the visitors went, and as the doctor went with them, and as the doctor’s wife had not made her appearance, Charlotte Stanhope and her brother were left together. He was sitting idly at the table, scrawling caricatures of Barchester notables, then yawning, then turning over a book or two, and evidently at a loss how to kill his time without much labour.

“You haven’t done much, Bertie, about getting any orders,” said his sister.

“Orders!” said he; “who on earth is there at Barchester to give one orders? Who among the people here could possibly think it worth his while to have his head done into marble?”

“No, I don’t,” said he, going on with some absurd portrait of the bishop. “Look at that, Lotte; isn’t it the little man all over, apron and all? I’d go on with my profession at once, as you call it, if the governor would set me up with a studio in London; but as to sculpture at Barchester—I suppose half the people here don’t know what a torso means.”

“The governor will not give you a shilling to start you in London,” said Lotte. “Indeed, he can’t give you what would be sufficient, for he has not got it. But you might start yourself very well, if you pleased.”

“To tell you the truth, Bertie, you’ll never make a penny by any profession.”

“That’s what I often think myself,” said he, not in the least offended. “Some men have a great gift of making money, but they can’t spend it. Others can’t put two shillings together, but they have a great talent for all sorts of outlay. I begin to think that my genius is wholly in the latter line.”

“I suppose I must regard myself as a young raven and look for heavenly manna; besides, we have all got something when the governor goes.”

“Yes—you’ll have enough to supply yourself with gloves and boots; that is, if the Jews have not got the possession of it all. I believe they have the most of it already. I wonder, Bertie, at your indifference; that you, with your talents and personal advantages, should never try to settle yourself in life. I look forward with dread to the time when the governor must go. Mother, and Madeline, and I—we shall be poor enough, but you will have absolutely nothing.”

“At any rate,” said he, “I won’t marry one without; wives with money a’nt so easy to get now-a-days; the parsons pick them all up.”

“And a parson will pick up the wife I mean for you, if you do not look quickly about it; the wife I mean is Mrs. Bold.”

“I don’t see that,” said Bertie. “But however, he may live for me—I don’t wish to kill him; only, it must be owned that a ready-made family is a drawback.”

“God knows I am not unreasonable,” said he, “nor yet opinionated, and if you’ll arrange it all for me, Lotte, I’ll marry the lady. Only mark this: the money must be sure, and the income at my own disposal, at any rate for the lady’s life.”

Charlotte was explaining to her brother that he must make love for himself if he meant to carry on the matter, and was encouraging him to do so by warm eulogiums on Eleanor’s beauty, when the signora was brought into the drawing-room. When at home, and subject to the gaze of none but her own family, she allowed herself to be dragged about by two persons, and her two bearers now deposited her on her sofa. She was not quite so grand in her apparel as she had been at the bishop’s party, but yet she was dressed with much care, and though there was a look of care and pain about her eyes, she was, even by daylight, extremely beautiful.

“Well, Madeline, so I’m going to be married,” Bertie began as soon as the servants had withdrawn.

“There’s no other foolish thing left that you haven’t done,” said Madeline, “and therefore you are quite right to try that.”

“Oh, you think it’s a foolish thing, do you?” said he. “There’s Lotte advising me to marry by all means. But on such a subject your opinion ought to be the best; you have experience to guide you.”

“Yes, I have,” said Madeline with a sort of harsh sadness in her tone, which seemed to say—”What is it to you if I am sad? I have never asked your sympathy.”

Bertie was sorry when he saw that she was hurt by what he said, and he came and squatted on the floor close before her face to make his peace with her.

“Come, Mad, I was only joking; you know that. But in sober earnest, Lotte is advising me to marry. She wants me to marry this Mrs. Bold. She’s a widow with lots of tin, a fine baby, a beautiful complexion, and the George and Dragon hotel up in the High Street. By Jove, Lotte, if I marry her, I’ll keep the public-house myself—it’s just the life to suit me.”

“What,” said Madeline, “that vapid, swarthy creature in the widow’s cap, who looked as though her clothes had been stuck on her back with a pitchfork!” The signora never allowed any woman to be beautiful.

“Instead of being vapid,” said Lotte, “I call her a very lovely woman. She was by far the loveliest woman in the rooms the other night; that is, excepting you, Madeline.”

Even the compliment did not soften the asperity of the maimed beauty. “Every woman is charming according to Lotte,” she said; “I never knew an eye with so little true appreciation. In the first place, what woman on earth could look well in such a thing as that she had on her head.”

“Of course she wears a widow’s cap, but she’ll put that off when Bertie marries her.”

“I don’t see any of course in it,” said Madeline. “The death of twenty husbands should not make me undergo such a penance. It is as much a relic of paganism as the sacrifice of a Hindu woman at the burning of her husband’s body. If not so bloody, it is quite as barbarous, and quite as useless.”

“But you don’t blame her for that,” said Bertie. “She does it because it’s the custom of the country. People would think ill of her if she didn’t do it.”

“Exactly,” said Madeline. “She is just one of those English nonentities who would tie her head up in a bag for three months every summer, if her mother and her grandmother had tied up their heads before her. It would never occur to her to think whether there was any use in submitting to such a nuisance.”

“It’s very hard in a country like England, for a young woman to set herself in opposition to prejudices of that sort,” said the prudent Charlotte.

“What you mean is that it’s very hard for a fool not to be a fool,” said Madeline.

Bertie Stanhope had been so much knocked about the world from his earliest years that he had not retained much respect for the gravity of English customs; but even to his mind an idea presented itself that, perhaps in a wife, true British prejudice would not in the long run be less agreeable than Anglo-Italian freedom from restraint. He did not exactly say so, but he expressed the idea in another way.

“I fancy,” said he, “that if I were to die, and then walk, I should think that my widow looked better in one of those caps than any other kind of headdress.”

“Yes—and you’d fancy also that she could do nothing better than shut herself up and cry for you, or else burn herself. But she would think differently. She’d probably wear one of those horrid she-helmets, because she’d want the courage not to do so; but she’d wear it with a heart longing for the time when she might be allowed to throw it off. I hate such shallow false pretences. For my part I would let the world say what it pleased, and show no grief if I felt none—and perhaps not, if I did.”

“If it be true that she has got twelve hundred a year quite at her own disposal, and she be not utterly vulgar in her manners, I would advise you to marry her. I dare say she’s to be had for the asking: and as you are not going to marry her for love, it doesn’t much matter whether she is good-looking or not. As to your really marrying a woman for love, I don’t believe you are fool enough for that.”

“I mean very much the same thing—that any man who is willing to sacrifice his interest to get possession of a pretty face is a fool. Pretty faces are to be had cheaper than that. I hate your mawkish sentimentality, Lotte. You know as well as I do in what way husbands and wives generally live together; you know how far the warmth of conjugal affection can withstand the trial of a bad dinner, of a rainy day, or of the least privation which poverty brings with it; you know what freedom a man claims for himself, what slavery he would exact from his wife if he could! And you know also how wives generally obey. Marriage means tyranny on one side and deceit on the other. I say that a man is a fool to sacrifice his interests for such a bargain. A woman, too generally, has no other way of living.”

“Then, in God’s name, let him marry Mrs. Bold,” said Madeline. And so it was settled between them.

But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope. And here perhaps it may be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this, is too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are never to be realized? Are not promises all but made of delightful horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species of deceit in this to which the honesty of the present age should lend no countenance?

And what can be the worth of that solicitude which a peep into the third volume can utterly dissipate? What the value of those literary charms which are absolutely destroyed by their enjoyment? When we have once learnt what was that picture before which was hung Mrs. Ratcliffe’s solemn curtain, we feel no further interest about either the frame or the veil. They are to us merely a receptacle for old bones, an inappropriate coffin, which we would wish to have decently buried out of our sight.

And then how grievous a thing it is to have the pleasure of your novel destroyed by the ill-considered triumph of a previous reader. “Oh, you needn’t be alarmed for Augusta; of course she accepts Gustavus in the end.” “How very illnatured you are, Susan,” says Kitty with tears in her eyes: “I don’t care a bit about it now.” Dear Kitty, if you will read my book, you may defy the illnature of your sister. There shall be no secret that she can tell you. Nay, take the third volume if you please—learn from the last pages all the results of our troubled story, and the story shall have lost none of its interest, if indeed there be any interest in it to lose.

Our doctrine is that the author and the reader should move along together in full confidence with each other. Let the personages of the drama undergo ever so complete a comedy of errors among themselves, but let the spectator never mistake the Syracusan for the Ephesian; otherwise he is one of the dupes, and the part of a dupe is never dignified.

I would not for the value of this chapter have it believed by a single reader that my Eleanor could bring herself to marry Mr. Slope, or that she should be sacrificed to a Bertie Stanhope. But among the good folk of Barchester many believed both the one and the other.

Chapter XI. Mrs. Proudie’s Reception—Concluded

Chapter XII. Slope Versus Harding

Chapter XIII. The Rubbish Cart

Chapter XIV. The New Champion

Chapter XV. The Widow’s Suitors

Chapter XI.
Mrs. Proudie’s Reception—Concluded

Chapter XII.
Slope Versus Harding

Chapter XIII.
The Rubbish Cart

Chapter XIV.
The New Champion

Chapter XV.
The Widow’s Suitors