The next two weeks passed pleasantly enough at Plumstead. The whole party there assembled seemed to get on well together. Eleanor made the house agreeable, and the archdeacon and Mr. Grantly seemed to have forgotten her iniquity as regarded Mr. Slope. Mr. Harding had his violoncello, and played to them while his daughters accompanied him. Johnny Bold, by the help either of Mr. Rerechild or else by that of his coral and carrot-juice, got through his teething troubles. There had been gaieties, too, of all sorts. They had dined at Ullathorne, and the Thornes had dined at the rectory. Eleanor had been duly put to stand on her box, and in that position had found herself quite unable to express her opinion on the merits of flounces, such having been the subject given to try her elocution. Mr. Arabin had of course been much in his own parish, looking to the doings at his vicarage, calling on his parishioners, and taking on himself the duties of his new calling. But still he had been every evening at Plumstead, and Mrs. Grantly was partly willing to agree with her husband that he was a pleasant inmate in a house.
They had also been at a dinner-party at Dr. Stanhope’s, of which Mr. Arabin had made one. He also, mothlike, burnt his wings in the flames of the signora’s candle. Mrs. Bold, too, had been there, and had felt somewhat displeased with the taste—want of taste she called it—shown by Mr. Arabin in paying so much attention to Madame Neroni. It was as infallible that Madeline should displease and irritate the women as that she should charm and captivate the men. The one result followed naturally on the other. It was quite true that Mr. Arabin had been charmed. He thought her a very clever and a very handsome woman; he thought also that her peculiar affliction entitled her to the sympathy of all. He had never, he said, met so much suffering joined to such perfect beauty and so clear a mind. ‘Twas thus he spoke of the signora, coming home in the archdeacon’s carriage, and Eleanor by no means liked to hear the praise. It was, however, exceedingly unjust of her to be angry with Mr. Arabin, as she had herself spent a very pleasant evening with Bertie Stanhope, who had taken her down to dinner and had not left her side for one moment after the gentlemen came out of the dining-room. It was unfair that she should amuse herself with Bertie and yet begrudge her new friend his license of amusing himself with Bertie’s sister. And yet she did so. She was half-angry with him in the carriage, and said something about meretricious manners. Mr. Arabin did not understand the ways of women very well, or else he might have flattered himself that Eleanor was in love with him.
But Eleanor was not in love with him. How many shades there are between love and indifference, and how little the graduated scale is understood! She had now been nearly three weeks in the same house with Mr. Arabin, and had received much of his attention and listened daily to his conversation. He had usually devoted at least some portion of his evening to her exclusively. At Dr. Stanhope’s he had devoted himself exclusively to another. It does not require that a woman should be in love to be irritated at this; it does not require that she should even acknowledge to herself that it is unpleasant to her. Eleanor had no such self-knowledge. She thought in her own heart that it was only on Mr. Arabin’s account that she regretted that he could condescend to be amused by the signora. “I thought he had more mind,” she said to herself as she sat watching her baby’s cradle on her return from the party. “After all, I believe Mr. Stanhope is the pleasanter man of the two.” Alas for the memory of poor John Bold! Eleanor was not in love with Bertie Stanhope, nor was she in love with Mr. Arabin. But her devotion to her late husband was fast fading when she could revolve in her mind, over the cradle of his infant, the faults and failings of other aspirants to her favour.
Will anyone blame my heroine for this? Let him or her rather thank God for all His goodness—for His mercy endureth forever.
Eleanor, in truth, was not in love; neither was Mr. Arabin. Neither indeed was Bertie Stanhope, though he had already found occasion to say nearly as much as that he was. The widow’s cap had prevented him from making a positive declaration, when otherwise he would have considered himself entitled to do so on a third or fourth interview. It was, after all, but a small cap now, and had but little of the weeping willow left in its construction. It is singular how these emblems of grief fade away by unseen gradations. Each pretends to be the counterpart of the forerunner, and yet the last little bit of crimped white crape that sits so jauntily on the back of the head is as dissimilar to the first huge mountain of woe which disfigured the face of the weeper as the state of the Hindu is to the jointure of the English dowager.
But let it be clearly understood that Eleanor was in love with no one, and that no one was in love with Eleanor. Under these circumstances her anger against Mr. Arabin did not last long, and before two days were over they were both as good friends as ever. She could not but like him, for every hour spent in his company was spent pleasantly. And yet she could not quite like him, for there was always apparent in his conversation a certain feeling on his part that he hardly thought it worth his while to be in earnest. It was almost as though he were playing with a child. She knew well enough that he was in truth a sober, thoughtful man who, in some matters and on some occasions, could endure an agony of earnestness. And yet to her he was always gently playful. Could she have seen his brow once clouded, she might have learnt to love him.
So things went on at Plumstead, and on the whole not unpleasantly, till a huge storm darkened the horizon and came down upon the inhabitants of the rectory with all the fury of a waterspout. It was astonishing how in a few minutes the whole face of the heavens was changed. The party broke up from breakfast in perfect harmony, but fierce passions had arisen before the evening which did not admit of their sitting at the same board for dinner. To explain this it will be necessary to go back a little.
It will be remembered that the bishop expressed to Mr. Slope in his dressingroom his determination that Mr. Quiverful should be confirmed in his appointment to the hospital, and that his lordship requested Mr. Slope to communicate this decision to the archdeacon. It will also be remembered that the archdeacon had indignantly declined seeing Mr. Slope, and had instead written a strong letter to the bishop in which he all but demanded the situation of warden for Mr. Harding. To this letter the archdeacon received an immediate formal reply from Mr. Slope, in which it was stated that the bishop had received and would give his best consideration to the archdeacon’s letter.
The archdeacon felt himself somewhat checkmated by this reply. What could he do with a man who would neither see him, nor argue with him by letter, and who had undoubtedly the power of appointing any clergyman he pleased? He had consulted with Mr. Arabin, who had suggested the propriety of calling in the aid of the Master of Lazarus. “If,” said he, “you and Dr. Gwynne formally declare your intention of waiting upon the bishop, the bishop will not dare to refuse to see you; and if two such men as you are see him together, you will probably not leave him without carrying your point.”
The archdeacon did not quite like admitting the necessity of his being backed by the Master of Lazarus before he could obtain admission into the episcopal palace of Barchester, but still he felt that the advice was good, and he resolved to take it. He wrote again to the bishop, expressing a hope that nothing further would be done in the matter of the hospital till the consideration promised by his lordship had been given, and then sent off a warm appeal to his friend the master, imploring him to come to Plumstead and assist in driving the bishop into compliance. The master had rejoined, raising some difficulty, but not declining, and the archdeacon had again pressed his point, insisting on the necessity for immediate action. Dr. Gwynne unfortunately had the gout, and could therefore name no immediate day, but still agreed to come, if it should be finally found necessary. So the matter stood, as regarded the party at Plumstead.
But Mr. Harding had another friend fighting his battle for him, quite as powerful as the Master of Lazarus, and this was Mr. Slope. Though the bishop had so pertinaciously insisted on giving way to his wife in the matter of the hospital, Mr. Slope did not think it necessary to abandon his object. He had, he thought, daily more and more reason to imagine that the widow would receive his overtures favourably, and he could not but feel that Mr. Harding at the hospital, and placed there by his means, would be more likely to receive him as a son-in-law than Mr. Harding growling in opposition and disappointment under the archdeacon’s wing at Plumstead. Moreover, to give Mr. Slope due credit, he was actuated by greater motives even than these. He wanted a wife, and he wanted money, but he wanted power more than either. He had fully realized the fact that he must come to blows with Mrs. Proudie. He had no desire to remain in Barchester as her chaplain. Sooner than do so, he would risk the loss of his whole connexion with the diocese. What! Was he to feel within him the possession of no ordinary talents—was he to know himself to be courageous, firm, and, in matters where his conscience did not interfere, unscrupulous—and yet he contented to be the working factotum of a woman prelate? Mr. Slope had higher ideas of his own destiny. Either he or Mrs. Proudie must go to the wall, and now had come the time when he would try which it should be.
The bishop had declared that Mr. Quiverful should be the new warden. As Mr. Slope went downstairs, prepared to see the archdeacon, if necessary, but fully satisfied that no such necessity would arise, he declared to himself that Mr. Harding should be warden. With the object of carrying this point, he rode over to Puddingdale and had a further interview with the worthy expectant of clerical good things. Mr. Quiverful was on the whole a worthy man. The impossible task of bringing up as ladies and gentlemen fourteen children on an income which was insufficient to give them with decency the common necessaries of life, had had an effect upon him not beneficial either to his spirit or his keen sense of honour. Who can boast that he would have supported such a burden with a different result? Mr. Quiverful was an honest, painstaking, drudging man, anxious indeed for bread and meat, anxious for means to quiet his butcher and cover with returning smiles the now sour countenance of the baker’s wife; but anxious also to be right with his own conscience. He was not careful, as another might be who sat on an easier worldly seat, to stand well with those around him, to shun a breath which might sully his name or a rumour which might affect his honour. He could not afford such niceties of conduct, such moral luxuries. It must suffice for him to be ordinarily honest according to the ordinary honesty of the world’s ways, and to let men’s tongues wag as they would.
He had felt that his brother clergymen, men whom he had known for the last twenty years, looked coldly on him from the first moment that he had shown himself willing to sit at the feet of Mr. Slope; he had seen that their looks grew colder still when it became bruited about that he was to be the bishop’s new warden at Hiram’s Hospital. This was painful enough, but it was the cross which he was doomed to bear. He thought of his wife, whose last new silk dress was six years in wear. He thought of all his young flock, whom he could hardly take to church with him on Sundays, for there were not decent shoes and stockings for them all to wear. He thought of the well-worn sleeves of his own black coat and of the stern face of the draper, from whom he would fain ask for cloth to make another, did he not know that the credit would be refused him. Then he thought of the comfortable house in Barchester, of the comfortable income, of his boys sent to school, of his girls with books in their hands instead of darning needles, of his wife’s face again covered with smiles, and of his daily board again covered with plenty. He thought of these things; and do thou also, reader, think of them, and then wonder, if thou canst, that Mr. Slope had appeared to him to possess all those good gifts which could grace a bishop’s chaplain. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.”
Why, moreover, should the Barchester clergy have looked coldly on Mr. Quiverful? Had they not all shown that they regarded with complacency the loaves and fishes of their mother church? Had they not all, by some hook or crook, done better for themselves than he had done? They were not burdened as he was burdened. Dr. Grantly had five children and nearly as many thousands a year on which to feed them. It was very well for him to turn up his nose at a new bishop who could do nothing for him, and a chaplain who was beneath his notice; but it was cruel in a man so circumstanced to set the world against the father of fourteen children because he was anxious to obtain for them an honourable support! He, Mr. Quiverful, had not asked for the wardenship; he had not even accepted it till he had been assured that Mr. Harding had refused it. How hard then that he should be blamed for doing that which not to have done would have argued a most insane imprudence!
Thus in this matter of the hospital poor Mr. Quiverful had his trials, and he had also his consolations. On the whole the consolations were the more vivid of the two. The stern draper heard of the coming promotion, and the wealth of his warehouse was at Mr. Quiverful’s disposal. Coming events cast their shadows before, and the coming event of Mr. Quiverful’s transference to Barchester produced a delicious shadow in the shape of a new outfit for Mrs. Quiverful and her three elder daughters. Such consolations come home to the heart of a man, and quite home to the heart of a woman. Whatever the husband might feel, the wife cared nothing for frowns of dean, archdeacon, or prebendary. To her the outsides and insides of her husband and fourteen children were everything. In her bosom every other ambition had been swallowed up in that maternal ambition of seeing them and him and herself duly clad and properly fed. It had come to that with her that life had now no other purpose. She recked nothing of the imaginary rights of others. She had no patience with her husband when he declared to her that he could not accept the hospital unless he knew that Mr. Harding had refused it. Her husband had no right to be quixotic at the expense of fourteen children. The narrow escape of throwing away his good fortune which her lord had had, almost paralysed her. Now, indeed, they had received a full promise, not only from Mr. Slope, but also from Mrs. Proudie. Now, indeed, they might reckon with safety on their good fortune. But what if all had been lost? What if her fourteen bairns had been resteeped to the hips in poverty by the morbid sentimentality of their father? Mrs. Quiverful was just at present a happy woman, but yet it nearly took her breath away when she thought of the risk they had run.
“I don’t know what your father means when he talks so much of what is due to Mr. Harding,” she said to her eldest daughter. “Does he think that Mr. Harding would give him £450 a year out of fine feeling? And what signifies it whom he offends, as long as he gets the place? He does not expect anything better. It passes me to think how your father can be so soft, while everybody around him is so griping.”
Thus, while the outer world was accusing Mr. Quiverful of rapacity for promotion and of disregard to his honour, the inner world of his own household was falling foul of him, with equal vehemence, for his willingness to sacrifice their interests to a false feeling of sentimental pride. It is astonishing how much difference the point of view makes in the aspect of all that we look at!
Such were the feelings of the different members of the family at Puddingdale on the occasion of Mr. Slope’s second visit. Mrs. Quiverful, as soon as she saw his horse coming up the avenue from the vicarage gate, hastily packed up her huge basket of needlework and hurried herself and her daughter out of the room in which she was sitting with her husband. “It’s Mr. Slope,” she said. “He’s come to settle with you about the hospital. I do hope we shall now be able to move at once.” And she hastened to bid the maid of all work go to the door, so that the welcome great man might not be kept waiting.
Mr. Slope thus found Mr. Quiverful alone. Mrs. Quiverful went off to her kitchen and back settlements with anxious beating heart, almost dreading that there might be some slip between the cup of her happiness and the lip of her fruition, but yet comforting herself with the reflexion that after what had taken place, any such slip could hardly be possible.
Mr. Slope was all smiles as he shook his brother clergyman’s hand and said that he had ridden over because he thought it right at once to put Mr. Quiverful in possession of the facts of the matter regarding the wardenship of the hospital. As he spoke, the poor expectant husband and father saw at a glance that his brilliant hopes were to be dashed to the ground, and that his visitor was now there for the purpose of unsaying what on his former visit he had said. There was something in the tone of the voice, something in the glance of the eye, which told the tale. Mr. Quiverful knew it all at once. He maintained his self-possession, however, smiled with a slight unmeaning smile, and merely said that he was obliged to Mr. Slope for the trouble he was taking.
“It has been a troublesome matter from first to last,” said Mr. Slope, “and the bishop has hardly known how to act. Between ourselves—but mind this of course must go no further, Mr. Quiverful.”
Mr. Quiverful said that of course it should not. “The truth is that poor Mr. Harding has hardly known his own mind. You remember our last conversation, no doubt.”
Mr. Quiverful assured him that he remembered it very well indeed.
“You will remember that I told you that Mr. Harding had refused to return to the hospital.”
Mr. Quiverful declared that nothing could be more distinct on his memory.
“And acting on this refusal, I suggested that you should take the hospital,” continued Mr. Slope.
“I understood you to say that the bishop had authorised you to offer it to me.
“Did I? Did I go so far as that? Well, perhaps it may be that in my anxiety in your behalf I did commit myself further than I should have done. So far as my own memory serves me, I don’t think I did go quite so far as that. But I own I was very anxious that you should get it, and I may have said more than was quite prudent.”
“But,” said Mr. Quiverful in his deep anxiety to prove his case, “my wife received as distinct a promise from Mrs. Proudie as one human being could give to another.”
Mr. Slope smiled and gently shook his head. He meant the smile for a pleasant smile, but it was diabolical in the eyes of the man he was speaking to. “Mrs. Proudie!” he said. “If we are to go to what passes between the ladies in these matters, we shall really be in a nest of troubles from which we shall never extricate ourselves. Mrs. Proudie is a most excellent lady, kindhearted, charitable, pious, and in every way estimable. But, my dear Mr. Quiverful, the patronage of the diocese is not in her hands.”
Mr. Quiverful for a moment sat panic-stricken and silent. “Am I to understand, then, that I have received no promise?” he said as soon as he had sufficiently collected his thoughts.
“If you will allow me, I will tell you exactly how the matter rests. You certainly did receive a promise conditional on Mr. Harding’s refusal. I am sure you will do me the justice to remember that you yourself declared that you could accept the appointment on no other condition than the knowledge that Mr. Harding had declined it.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Quiverful; “I did say that, certainly.”
“Well, it now appears that he did not refuse it.”
“But surely you told me, and repeated it more than once, that he had done so in your own hearing.”
“So I understood him. But it seems I was in error. But don’t for a moment, Mr. Quiverful, suppose that I mean to throw you over. No. Having held out my hand to a man in your position, with your large family and pressing claims, I am not now going to draw it back again. I only want you to act with me fairly and honestly.”
“Whatever I do I shall endeavour at any rate to act fairly,” said the poor man, feeling that he had to fall back for support on the spirit of martyrdom within him.
“I am sure you will,” said the other. “I am sure you have no wish to obtain possession of an income which belongs by all right to another. No man knows better than you do Mr. Harding’s history, or can better appreciate his character. Mr. Harding is very desirous of returning to his old position, and the bishop feels that he is at the present moment somewhat hampered, though of course he is not bound, by the conversation which took place on the matter between you and me.”
“Well,” said Mr. Quiverful, dreadfully doubtful as to what his conduct under such circumstances should be, and fruitlessly striving to harden his nerves with some of that instinct of self-preservation which made his wife so bold.
“The wardenship of this little hospital is not the only thing in the bishop’s gift, Mr. Quiverful, nor is it by many degrees the best. And his lordship is not the man to forget anyone whom he has once marked with approval. If you would allow me to advise you as a friend—”
“Indeed, I shall be most grateful to you,” said the poor vicar of Puddingdale.
“I should advise you to withdraw from any opposition to Mr. Harding’s claims. If you persist in your demand, I do not think you will ultimately succeed. Mr. Harding has all but a positive right to the place. But if you will allow me to inform the bishop that you decline to stand in Mr. Harding’s way, I think I may promise you—though, by the by, it must not be taken as a formal promise—that the bishop will not allow you to be a poorer man than you would have been had you become warden.”
Mr. Quiverful sat in his armchair, silent, gazing at vacancy. What was he to say? All this that came from Mr. Slope was so true. Mr. Harding had a right to the hospital. The bishop had a great many good things to give away. Both the bishop and Mr. Slope would be excellent friends and terrible enemies to a man in his position. And then he had no proof of any promise; he could not force the bishop to appoint him.
“Well, Mr. Quiverful, what do you say about it?”
“Oh, of course, whatever you think fit, Mr. Slope. It’s a great disappointment, a very great disappointment. I won’t deny that I am a very poor man, Mr. Slope.”
“In the end, Mr. Quiverful, you will find that it will have been better for you.”
The interview ended in Mr. Slope receiving a full renunciation from Mr. Quiverful of any claim he might have to the appointment in question. It was only given verbally and without witnesses, but then the original promise was made in the same way.
Mr. Slope again assured him that he should not be forgotten, and then rode back to Barchester, satisfied that he would now be able to mould the bishop to his wishes.
We have most of us heard of the terrible anger of a lioness when, surrounded by her cubs, she guards her prey. Few of us wish to disturb the mother of a litter of puppies when mouthing a bone in the midst of her young family. Medea and her children are familiar to us, and so is the grief of Constance. Mrs. Quiverful, when she first heard from her husband the news which he had to impart, felt within her bosom all the rage of the lioness, the rapacity of the hound, the fury of the tragic queen, and the deep despair of the bereaved mother.
Doubting, but yet hardly fearing, what might have been the tenor of Mr. Slope’s discourse, she rushed back to her husband as soon as the front door was closed behind the visitor. It was well for Mr. Slope that he so escaped—the anger of such a woman, at such a moment, would have cowed even him. As a general rule, it is highly desirable that ladies should keep their temper: a woman when she storms always makes herself ugly, and usually ridiculous also. There is nothing so odious to man as a virago. Though Theseus loved an Amazon, he showed his love but roughly, and from the time of Theseus downward, no man ever wished to have his wife remarkable rather for forward prowess than retiring gentleness. A low voice “is an excellent thing in woman.”
Such may be laid down as a very general rule; and few women should allow themselves to deviate from it, and then only on rare occasions. But if there be a time when a woman may let her hair to the winds, when she may loose her arms, and scream out trumpet-tongued to the ears of men, it is when nature calls out within her not for her own wants, but for the wants of those whom her womb has borne, whom her breasts have suckled, for those who look to her for their daily bread as naturally as man looks to his Creator.
There was nothing poetic in the nature of Mrs. Quiverful. She was neither a Medea nor a Constance. When angry, she spoke out her anger in plain words, and in a tone which might have been modulated with advantage; but she did so, at any rate, without affectation. Now, without knowing it, she rose to a tragic vein.
“Well, my dear, we are not to have it.” Such were the words with which her ears were greeted when she entered the parlour, still hot from the kitchen fire. And the face of her husband spoke even more plainly than his words:—
E’en such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woebegone,
Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night.
“What!” said she—and Mrs. Siddons could not have put more passion into a single syllable—”What! Not have it? Who says so?” And she sat opposite to her husband, with her elbows on the table, her hands clasped together, and her coarse, solid, but once handsome face stretched over it towards him.
She sat as silent as death while he told his story, and very dreadful to him her silence was. He told it very lamely and badly but still in such a manner that she soon understood the whole of it.
“And so you have resigned it?” said she.
“I have had no opportunity of accepting it,” he replied. “I had no witnesses to Mr. Slope’s offer, even if that offer would bind the bishop. It was better for me, on the whole, to keep on good terms with such men than to fight for what I should never get!”
“Witnesses!” she screamed, rising quickly to her feet and walking up and down the room. “Do clergymen require witnesses to their words? He made the promise in the bishop’s name, and if it is to be broken, I’ll know the reason why. Did he not positively say that the bishop had sent him to offer you the place?”
“He did, my dear. But that is now nothing to the purpose.”
“It is everything to the purpose, Mr. Quiverful. Witnesses indeed! And then to talk of your honour being questioned because you wish to provide for fourteen children. It is everything to the purpose; and so they shall know, if I scream it into their ears from the town cross of Barchester.”
“You forget, Letitia, that the bishop has so many things in his gift. We must wait a little longer. That is all.”
“Wait! Shall we feed the children by waiting? Will waiting put George, and Tom, and Sam out into the world? Will it enable my poor girls to give up some of their drudgery? Will waiting make Bessy and Jane fit even to be governesses? Will waiting pay for the things we got in Barchester last week?”
“It is all we can do, my dear. The disappointment is as much to me as to you; and yet, God knows, I feel it more for your sake than my own.”
Mrs. Quiverful was looking full into her husband’s face, and saw a small hot tear appear on each of those furrowed cheeks. This was too much for her woman’s heart. He also had risen, and was standing with his back to the empty grate. She rushed towards him and, seizing him in her arms, sobbed aloud upon his bosom.
“You are too good, too soft, too yielding,” she said at last. “These men, when they want you, they use you like a cat’s paw; and when they want you no longer, they throw you aside like an old shoe. This is twice they have treated you so.”
“In one way this will be all for the better,” argued he. “It will make the bishop feel that he is bound to do something for me.”
“At any rate he shall hear of it,” said the lady, again reverting to her more angry mood. “At any rate he shall hear of it, and that loudly; and so shall she. She little knows Letitia Quiverful, if she thinks I will sit down quietly with the loss after all that passed between us at the palace. If there’s any feeling within her, I’ll make her ashamed of herself,”—and she paced the room again, stamping the floor as she went with her fat, heavy foot. “Good heavens! What a heart she must have within her to treat in such a way as this the father of fourteen unprovided children!”
Mr. Quiverful proceeded to explain that he didn’t think that Mrs. Proudie had had anything to do with it.
“Don’t tell me,” said Mrs. Quiverful; “I know more about it than that. Doesn’t all the world know that Mrs. Proudie is bishop of Barchester and that Mr. Slope is merely her creature? Wasn’t it she that made me the promise, just as though the thing was in her own particular gift? I tell you, it was that woman who sent him over here to-day, because, for some reason of her own, she wants to go back from her word.”
“My dear, you’re wrong—”
“Now, Q., don’t be so soft,” she continued. “Take my word for it, the bishop knows no more about it than Jemima does.” Jemima was the two-year-old. “And if you’ll take my advice, you’ll lose no time in going over and seeing him yourself.”
Soft, however, as Mr. Quiverful might be, he would not allow himself to be talked out of his opinion on this occasion, and proceeded with much minuteness to explain to his wife the tone in which Mr. Slope had spoken of Mrs. Proudie’s interference in diocesan matters. As he did so, a new idea gradually instilled itself into the matron’s head, and a new course of conduct presented itself to her judgement. What if, after all, Mrs. Proudie knew nothing of this visit of Mr. Slope’s? In that case, might it not be possible that that lady would still be staunch to her in this matter, still stand her friend, and, perhaps, possibly carry her through in opposition to Mr. Slope? Mrs. Quiverful said nothing as this vague hope occurred to her, but listened with more than ordinary patience to what her husband had to say. While he was still explaining that in all probability the world was wrong in its estimation of Mrs. Proudie’s power and authority, she had fully made up her mind as to her course of action. She did not, however, proclaim her intention. She shook her head ominously as he continued his narration, and when he had completed, she rose to go, merely observing that it was cruel, cruel treatment. She then asked him if he would mind waiting for a late dinner instead of dining at their usual hour of three; and, having received from him a concession on this point, she proceeded to carry her purpose into execution.
She determined that she would at once go to the palace, that she would do so, if possible, before Mrs. Proudie could have had an interview with Mr. Slope, and that she would be either submissive, piteous, and pathetic, or else indignant, violent, and exacting, according to the manner in which she was received.
She was quite confident in her own power. Strengthened as she was by the pressing wants of fourteen children, she felt that she could make her way through legions of episcopal servants and force herself, if need be, into the presence of the lady who had so wronged her. She had no shame about it, no mauvaise honte, no dread of archdeacons. She would, as she declared to her husband, make her wail heard in the marketplace if she did not get redress and justice. It might be very well for an unmarried young curate to be shamefaced in such matters; it might be all right that a snug rector, really in want of nothing, but still looking for better preferment, should carry on his affairs decently under the rose. But Mrs. Quiverful, with fourteen children, had given over being shamefaced and, in some things, had given over being decent. If it were intended that she should be illused in the manner proposed by Mr. Slope, it should not be done under the rose. All the world should know of it.
In her present mood, Mrs. Quiverful was not over-careful about her attire. She tied her bonnet under her chin, threw her shawl over her shoulders, armed herself with the old family cotton umbrella, and started for Barchester. A journey to the palace was not quite so easy a thing for Mrs. Quiverful as for our friend at Plumstead. Plumstead is nine miles from Barchester, and Puddingdale is but four. But the archdeacon could order round his brougham, and his high-trotting fast bay gelding would take him into the city within the hour. There was no brougham in the coach-house of Puddingdale Vicarage, no bay horse in the stables. There was no method of locomotion for its inhabitants but that which nature has assigned to man.
Mrs. Quiverful was a broad, heavy woman, not young, nor given to walking. In her kitchen, and in the family dormitories, she was active enough, but her pace and gait were not adapted for the road. A walk into Barchester and back in the middle of an August day would be to her a terrible task, if not altogether impracticable. There was living in the parish, about half a mile from the vicarage on the road to the city, a decent, kindly farmer, well to do as regards this world and so far mindful of the next that he attended his parish church with decent regularity. To him Mrs. Quiverful had before now appealed in some of her more pressing family troubles, and had not appealed in vain. At his door she now presented herself, and, having explained to his wife that most urgent business required her to go at once to Barchester, begged that Farmer Subsoil would take her thither in his tax-cart. The farmer did not reject her plan, and, as soon as Prince could be got into his collar, they started on their journey.
Mrs. Quiverful did not mention the purpose of her business, nor did the farmer alloy his kindness by any unseemly questions. She merely begged to be put down at the bridge going into the city and to be taken up again at the same place in the course of two hours. The farmer promised to be punctual to his appointment, and the lady, supported by her umbrella, took the short cut to the close and, in a few minutes, was at the bishop’s door.
Hitherto she had felt no dread with regard to the coming interview. She had felt nothing but an indignant longing to pour forth her claims, and declare her wrongs, if those claims were not fully admitted. But now the difficulty of her situation touched her a little. She had been at the palace once before, but then she went to give grateful thanks. Those who have thanks to return for favours received find easy admittance to the halls of the great. Such is not always the case with men, or even with women, who have favours to beg. Still less easy is access for those who demand the fulfilment of promises already made.
Mrs. Quiverful had not been slow to learn the ways of the world. She knew all this, and she knew also that her cotton umbrella and all but ragged shawl would not command respect in the eyes of the palatial servants. If she were too humble, she knew well that she would never succeed. To overcome by imperious overbearing with such a shawl as hers upon her shoulders and such a bonnet on her head would have required a personal bearing very superior to that with which nature had endowed her. Of this also Mrs. Quiverful was aware. She must make it known that she was the wife of a gentleman and a clergyman, and must yet condescend to conciliate.
The poor lady knew but one way to overcome these difficulties at the very threshold of her enterprise, and to this she resorted. Low as were the domestic funds at Puddingdale, she still retained possession of half a crown, and this she sacrificed to the avarice of Mrs. Proudie’s metropolitan sesquipedalian serving-man. She was, she said, Mrs. Quiverful of Puddingdale, the wife of the Rev. Mr. Quiverful. She wished to see Mrs. Proudie. It was indeed quite indispensable that she should see Mrs. Proudie. James Fitzplush looked worse than dubious, did not know whether his lady were out, or engaged, or in her bedroom; thought it most probable she was subject to one of these or to some other cause that would make her invisible; but Mrs. Quiverful could sit down in the waiting-room while inquiry was being made of Mrs. Proudie’s maid.
“Look here, my man,” said Mrs. Quiverful; “I must see her;” and she put her card and halfcrown—think of it, my reader, think of it; her last halfcrown—into the man’s hand and sat herself down on a chair in the waiting-room.
Whether the bribe carried the day, or whether the bishop’s wife really chose to see the vicar’s wife, it boots not now to inquire. The man returned and, begging Mrs. Quiverful to follow him, ushered her into the presence of the mistress of the diocese.
Mrs. Quiverful at once saw that her patroness was in a smiling humour. Triumph sat throned upon her brow, and all the joys of dominion hovered about her curls. Her lord had that morning contested with her a great point. He had received an invitation to spend a couple of days with the archbishop. His soul longed for the gratification. Not a word, however, in his grace’s note alluded to the fact of his being a married man; if he went at all, he must go alone. This necessity would have presented no insurmountable bar to the visit, or have militated much against the pleasure, had he been able to go without any reference to Mrs. Proudie. But this he could not do. He could not order his portmanteau to be packed and start with his own man, merely telling the lady of his heart that he would probably be back on Saturday. There are men—may we not rather say monsters?—who do such things, and there are wives—may we not rather say slaves?—who put up with such usage. But Dr. and Mrs. Proudie were not among the number.
The bishop, with some beating about the bush, made the lady understand that he very much wished to go. The lady, without any beating about the bush, made the bishop understand that she wouldn’t hear of it. It would be useless here to repeat the arguments that were used on each side, and needless to record the result. Those who are married will understand very well how the battle was lost and won, and those who are single will never understand it till they learn the lesson which experience alone can give. When Mrs. Quiverful was shown into Mrs. Proudie’s room, that lady had only returned a few minutes from her lord. But before she left him she had seen the answer to the archbishop’s note written and sealed. No wonder that her face was wreathed with smiles as she received Mrs. Quiverful.
She instantly spoke of the subject which was so near the heart of her visitor. “Well, Mrs. Quiverful,” said she, “is it decided yet when you are to move into Barchester?”
“That woman,” as she had an hour or two since been called, became instantly re-endowed with all the graces that can adorn a bishop’s wife. Mrs. Quiverful immediately saw that her business was to be piteous, and that nothing was to be gained by indignation—nothing, indeed, unless she could be indignant in company with her patroness.
“Oh, Mrs. Proudie,” she began, “I fear we are not to move to Barchester at all.”
“Why not?” said that lady sharply, dropping at a moment’s notice her smiles and condescension, and turning with her sharp quick way to business which she saw at a glance was important.
And then Mrs. Quiverful told her tale. As she progressed in the history of her wrongs she perceived that the heavier she leant upon Mr. Slope the blacker became Mrs. Proudie’s brow, but that such blackness was not injurious to her own case. When Mr. Slope was at Puddingdale Vicarage that morning she had regarded him as the creature of the lady-bishop; now she perceived that they were enemies. She admitted her mistake to herself without any pain or humiliation. She had but one feeling, and that was confined to her family. She cared little how she twisted and turned among these newcomers at the bishop’s palace so long as she could twist her husband into the warden’s house. She cared not which was her friend or which was her enemy, if only she could get this preferment which she so sorely wanted.
She told her tale, and Mrs. Proudie listened to it almost in silence. She told how Mr. Slope had cozened her husband into resigning his claim, and had declared that it was the bishop’s will that none but Mr. Harding should be warden. Mrs. Proudie’s brow became blacker and blacker. At last she started from her chair and, begging Mrs. Quiverful to sit and wait for her return, marched out of the room.
“Oh, Mrs. Proudie, it’s for fourteen children—for fourteen children.” Such was the burden that fell on her ear as she closed the door behind her.
It was hardly an hour since Mrs. Proudie had left her husband’s apartment victorious, and yet so indomitable was her courage that she now returned thither panting for another combat. She was greatly angry with what she thought was his duplicity. He had so clearly given her a promise on this matter of the hospital. He had been already so absolutely vanquished on that point. Mrs. Proudie began to feel that if every affair was to be thus discussed and battled about twice and even thrice, the work of the diocese would be too much even for her.
Without knocking at the door, she walked quickly into her husband’s room and found him seated at his office table, with Mr. Slope opposite to him. Between his fingers was the very note which he had written to the archbishop in her presence—and it was open! Yes, he had absolutely violated the seal which had been made sacred by her approval. They were sitting in deep conclave, and it was too clear that the purport of the archbishop’s invitation had been absolutely canvassed again, after it had been already debated and decided on in obedience to her behests! Mr. Slope rose from his chair and bowed slightly. The two opposing spirits looked each other fully in the face, and they knew that they were looking each at an enemy.
“What is this, Bishop, about Mr. Quiverful?” said she, coming to the end of the table and standing there.
Mr. Slope did not allow the bishop to answer but replied himself. “I have been out to Puddingdale this morning, ma’am, and have seen Mr. Quiverful. Mr. Quiverful has abandoned his claim to the hospital because he is now aware that Mr. Harding is desirous to fill his old place. Under these circumstances I have strongly advised his lordship to nominate Mr. Harding.”
“Mr. Quiverful has not abandoned anything,” said the lady, with a very imperious voice. “His lordship’s word has been pledged to him, and it must be respected.”
The bishop still remained silent. He was anxiously desirous of making his old enemy bite the dust beneath his feet. His new ally had told him that nothing was more easy for him than to do so. The ally was there now at his elbow to help him, and yet his courage failed him. It is so hard to conquer when the prestige of former victories is all against one. It is so hard for the cock who has once been beaten out of his yard to resume his courage and again take a proud place upon a dunghill.
“Perhaps I ought not to interfere,” said Mr. Slope, “but yet—”
“Certainly you ought not,” said the infuriated dame.
“But yet,” continued Mr. Slope, not regarding the interruption, “I have thought it my imperative duty to recommend the bishop not to slight Mr. Harding’s claims.”
“Mr. Harding should have known his own mind,” said the lady.
“If Mr. Harding be not replaced at the hospital, his lordship will have to encounter much ill-will, not only in the diocese, but in the world at large. Besides, taking a higher ground, his lordship, as I understand, feels it to be his duty to gratify, in this matter, so very worthy a man and so good a clergyman as Mr. Harding.”
“And what is to become of the Sabbath-day school and of the Sunday services in the hospital?” said Mrs. Proudie, with something very nearly approaching to a sneer on her face.
“I understand that Mr. Harding makes no objection to the Sabbath-day school,” said Mr. Slope. “And as to the hospital services, that matter will be best discussed after his appointment. If he has any permanent objection, then, I fear, the matter must rest.”
“You have a very easy conscience in such matters, Mr. Slope,” said she.
“I should not have an easy conscience,” he rejoined, “but a conscience very far from being easy, if anything said or done by me should lead the bishop to act unadvisedly in this matter. It is clear that in the interview I had with Mr. Harding I misunderstood him—”
“And it is equally clear that you have misunderstood Mr. Quiverful,” said she, now at the top of her wrath. “What business have you at all with these interviews? Who desired you to go to Mr. Quiverful this morning? Who commissioned you to manage this affair? Will you answer me, sir? Who sent you to Mr. Quiverful this morning?”
There was a dead pause in the room. Mr. Slope had risen from his chair, and was standing with his hand on the back of it, looking at first very solemn and now very black. Mrs. Proudie was standing as she had at first placed herself, at the end of the table, and as she interrogated her foe she struck her hand upon it with almost more than feminine vigour. The bishop was sitting in his easy chair twiddling his thumbs, turning his eyes now to his wife, and now to his chaplain, as each took up the cudgels. How comfortable it would be if they could fight it out between them without the necessity of any interference on his part; fight it out so that one should kill the other utterly, as far as diocesan life was concerned, so that he, the bishop, might know clearly by whom it behoved him to be led. There would be the comfort of quiet in either case; but if the bishop had a wish as to which might prove the victor, that wish was certainly not antagonistic to Mr. Slope.
“Better the d–––– you know than the d–––– you don’t know,” is an old saying, and perhaps a true one; but the bishop had not yet realized the truth of it.
“Will you answer me, sir?” she repeated. “Who instructed you to call on Mr. Quiverful this morning?” There was another pause. “Do you intend to answer me, sir?”
“I think, Mrs. Proudie, that under all the circumstances it will be better for me not to answer such a question,” said Mr. Slope. Mr. Slope had many tones in his voice, all duly under his command; among them was a sanctified low tone and a sanctified loud tone—he now used the former.
“Did anyone send you, sir?”
“Mrs. Proudie,” said Mr. Slope, “I am quite aware how much I owe to your kindness. I am aware also what is due by courtesy from a gentleman to a lady. But there are higher considerations than either of those, and I hope I shall be forgiven if I now allow myself to be actuated solely by them. My duty in this matter is to his lordship, and I can admit of no questioning but from him. He has approved of what I have done, and you must excuse me if I say that, having that approval and my own, I want none other.”
What horrid words were these which greeted the ear of Mrs. Proudie? The matter was indeed too clear. There was premeditated mutiny in the camp. Not only had ill-conditioned minds become insubordinate by the fruition of a little power, but sedition had been overtly taught and preached. The bishop had not yet been twelve months in his chair, and rebellion had already reared her hideous head within the palace. Anarchy and misrule would quickly follow unless she took immediate and strong measures to put down the conspiracy which she had detected.
“Mr. Slope,” she said with slow and dignified voice, differing much from that which she had hitherto used, “Mr. Slope, I will trouble you, if you please, to leave the apartment. I wish to speak to my lord alone.”
Mr. Slope also felt that everything depended on the present interview. Should the bishop now be re-petticoated, his thraldom would be complete and forever. The present moment was peculiarly propitious for rebellion. The bishop had clearly committed himself by breaking the seal of the answer to the archbishop; he had therefore fear to influence him. Mr. Slope had told him that no consideration ought to induce him to refuse the archbishop’s invitation; he had therefore hope to influence him. He had accepted Mr. Quiverful’s resignation and therefore dreaded having to renew that matter with his wife. He had been screwed up to the pitch of asserting a will of his own, and might possibly be carried on till by an absolute success he should have been taught how possible it was to succeed. Now was the moment for victory or rout. It was now that Mr. Slope must make himself master of the diocese, or else resign his place and begin his search for fortune again. He saw all this plainly. After what had taken place any compromise between him and the lady was impossible. Let him once leave the room at her bidding and leave the bishop in her hands, and he might at once pack up his portmanteau and bid adieu to episcopal honours, Mrs. Bold, and the Signora Neroni.
And yet it was not so easy to keep his ground when he was bidden by a lady to go, or to continue to make a third in a party between a husband and wife when the wife expressed a wish for a tête-à-tête with her husband.
“Mr. Slope,” she repeated, “I wish to be alone with my lord.”
“His lordship has summoned me on most important diocesan business,” said Mr. Slope, glancing with uneasy eye at Dr. Proudie. He felt that he must trust something to the bishop, and yet that that trust was so woefully ill-placed. “My leaving him at the present moment is, I fear, impossible.”
“Do you bandy words with me, you ungrateful man?” said she. “My lord, will you do me the favour to beg Mr. Slope to leave the room?”
My lord scratched his head, but for the moment said nothing. This was as much as Mr. Slope expected from him, and was on the whole, for him, an active exercise of marital rights.
“My lord,” said the lady, “is Mr. Slope to leave this room, or am I?”
Here Mrs. Proudie made a false step. She should not have alluded to the possibility of retreat on her part. She should not have expressed the idea that her order for Mr. Slope’s expulsion could be treated otherwise than by immediate obedience. In answer to such a question the bishop naturally said in his own mind that, as it was necessary that one should leave the room, perhaps it might be as well that Mrs. Proudie did so. He did say so in his own mind, but externally he again scratched his head and again twiddled his thumbs.
Mrs. Proudie was boiling over with wrath. Alas, alas! Could she but have kept her temper as her enemy did, she would have conquered as she had ever conquered. But divine anger got the better of her, as it has done of other heroines, and she fell.
“My lord,” said she, “am I to be vouchsafed an answer or am I not?”
At last he broke his deep silence and proclaimed himself a Slopeite. “Why, my dear,” said he, “Mr. Slope and I are very busy.”
That was all. There was nothing more necessary. He had gone to the battlefield, stood the dust and heat of the day, encountered the fury of the foe, and won the victory. How easy is success to those who will only be true to themselves!
Mr. Slope saw at once the full amount of his gain, and turned on the vanquished lady a look of triumph which she never forgot and never forgave. Here he was wrong. He should have looked humbly at her and, with meek entreating eye, have deprecated her anger. He should have said by his glance that he asked pardon for his success, and that he hoped forgiveness for the stand which he had been forced to make in the cause of duty. So might he perchance have somewhat mollified that imperious bosom and prepared the way for future terms. But Mr. Slope meant to rule without terms. Ah, forgetful, inexperienced man! Can you cause that little trembling victim to be divorced from the woman that possesses him? Can you provide that they shall be separated at bed and board? Is he not flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone, and must he not so continue? It is very well now for you to stand your ground and triumph as she is driven ignominiously from the room, but can you be present when those curtains are drawn, when that awful helmet of proof has been tied beneath the chin, when the small remnants of the bishop’s prowess shall be cowed by the tassel above his head? Can you then intrude yourself when the wife wishes “to speak to my lord alone?”
But for the moment Mr. Slope’s triumph was complete, for Mrs. Proudie without further parley left the room and did not forget to shut the door after her. Then followed a close conference between the new allies, in which was said much which it astonished Mr. Slope to say and the bishop to hear. And yet the one said it and the other heard it without ill-will. There was no mincing of matters now. The chaplain plainly told the bishop that the world gave him credit for being under the governance of his wife; that his credit and character in the diocese were suffering; that he would surely get himself in hot water if he allowed Mrs. Proudie to interfere in matters which were not suitable for a woman’s powers; and in fact that he would become contemptible if he did not throw off the yoke under which he groaned. The bishop at first hummed and hawed and affected to deny the truth of what was said. But his denial was not stout and quickly broke down. He soon admitted by silence his state of vassalage and pledged himself, with Mr. Slope’s assistance, to change his courses. Mr. Slope also did not make out a bad case for himself. He explained how it grieved him to run counter to a lady who had always been his patroness, who had befriended him in so many ways, who had, in fact, recommended him to the bishop’s notice; but, as he stated, his duty was now imperative; he held a situation of peculiar confidence, and was immediately and especially attached to the bishop’s person. In such a situation his conscience required that he should regard solely the bishop’s interests, and therefore he had ventured to speak out.
The bishop took this for what it was worth, and Mr. Slope only intended that he should do so. It gilded the pill which Mr. Slope had to administer, and which the bishop thought would be less bitter than that other pill which he had so long been taking.
“My lord,” had his immediate reward, like a good child. He was instructed to write and at once did write another note to the archbishop accepting his grace’s invitation. This note Mr. Slope, more prudent than the lady, himself took away and posted with his own hands. Thus he made sure that this act of self-jurisdiction should be as nearly as possible a fait accompli. He begged, and coaxed, and threatened the bishop with a view of making him also write at once to Mr. Harding, but the bishop, though temporally emancipated from his wife, was not yet enthralled to Mr. Slope. He said, and probably said truly, that such an offer must be made in some official form; that he was not yet prepared to sign the form; and that he should prefer seeing Mr. Harding before he did so. Mr. Slope might, however, beg Mr. Harding to call upon him. Not disappointed with his achievement Mr. Slope went his way. He first posted the precious note which he had in his pocket, and then pursued other enterprises in which we must follow him in other chapters.
Mrs. Proudie, having received such satisfaction as was to be derived from slamming her husband’s door, did not at once betake herself to Mrs. Quiverful. Indeed, for the first few moments after her repulse she felt that she could not again see that lady. She would have to own that she had been beaten, to confess that the diadem had passed from her brow, and the sceptre from her hand! No, she would send a message to her with a promise of a letter on the next day or the day after. Thus resolving, she betook herself to her bedroom, but here she again changed her mind. The air of that sacred enclosure somewhat restored her courage and gave her more heart. As Achilles warmed at the sight of his armour, as Don Quixote’s heart grew strong when he grasped his lance, so did Mrs. Proudie look forward to fresh laurels, as her eye fell on her husband’s pillow. She would not despair. Having so resolved, she descended with dignified mien and refreshed countenance to Mrs. Quiverful.
This scene in the bishop’s study took longer in the acting than in the telling. We have not, perhaps, had the whole of the conversation. At any rate Mrs. Quiverful was beginning to be very impatient, and was thinking that Farmer Subsoil would be tired of waiting for her, when Mrs. Proudie returned. Oh, who can tell the palpitations of that maternal heart, as the suppliant looked into the face of the great lady to see written there either a promise of house, income, comfort and future competence, or else the doom of continued and ever-increasing poverty! Poor mother! Poor wife! There was little there to comfort you!
“Mrs. Quiverful,” thus spoke the lady with considerable austerity, and without sitting down herself, “I find that your husband has behaved in this matter in a very weak and foolish manner.”
Mrs. Quiverful immediately rose upon her feet, thinking it disrespectful to remain sitting while the wife of the bishop stood. But she was desired to sit down again, and made to do so, so that Mrs. Proudie might stand and preach over her. It is generally considered an offensive thing for a gentleman to keep his seat while another is kept standing before him, and we presume the same law holds with regard to ladies. It often is so felt, but we are inclined to say that it never produces half the discomfort or half the feeling of implied inferiority that is shown by a great man who desires his visitor to be seated while he himself speaks from his legs. Such a solecism in good breeding, when construed into English, means this: “The accepted rules of courtesy in the world require that I should offer you a seat; if I did not do so, you would bring a charge against me in the world of being arrogant and ill-mannered; I will obey the world, but, nevertheless, I will not put myself on an equality with you. You may sit down, but I won’t sit with you. Sit, therefore, at my bidding, and I’ll stand and talk at you!”
This was just what Mrs. Proudie meant to say, and Mrs. Quiverful, though she was too anxious and too flurried thus to translate the full meaning of the manoeuvre, did not fail to feel its effect. She was cowed and uncomfortable, and a second time essayed to rise from her chair.
“Pray be seated, Mrs. Quiverful, pray keep your seat. Your husband, I say, has been most weak and most foolish. It is impossible, Mrs. Quiverful, to help people who will not help themselves. I much fear that I can now do nothing for you in this matter.”
“Oh, Mrs. Proudie, don’t say so,” said the poor woman, again jumping up.
“Pray be seated, Mrs. Quiverful. I must fear that I can do nothing further for you in this matter. Your husband has, in a most unaccountable manner, taken upon himself to resign that which I was empowered to offer him. As a matter of course, the bishop expects that his clergy shall know their own minds. What he may ultimately do—what we may finally decide on doing—I cannot now say. Knowing the extent of your family—”
“Fourteen children, Mrs. Proudie, fourteen of them! And barely bread—barely bread? It’s hard for the children of a clergyman, it’s hard for one who has always done his duty respectably!” Not a word fell from her about herself, but the tears came streaming down her big, coarse cheeks, on which the dust of the August road had left its traces.
Mrs. Proudie has not been portrayed in these pages as an agreeable or an amiable lady. There has been no intention to impress the reader much in her favour. It is ordained that all novels should have a male and a female angel and a male and a female devil. If it be considered that this rule is obeyed in these pages, the latter character must be supposed to have fallen to the lot of Mrs. Proudie. But she was not all devil. There was a heart inside that stiff-ribbed bodice, though not, perhaps, of large dimensions, and certainly not easily accessible. Mrs. Quiverful, however, did gain access, and Mrs. Proudie proved herself a woman. Whether it was the fourteen children with their probable bare bread and their possible bare backs, or the respectability of the father’s work, or the mingled dust and tears on the mother’s face, we will not pretend to say. But Mrs. Proudie was touched.
She did not show it as other women might have done. She did not give Mrs. Quiverful eau-de-Cologne, or order her a glass of wine. She did not take her to her toilet table and offer her the use of brushes and combs, towels and water. She did not say soft little speeches and coax her kindly back to equanimity. Mrs. Quiverful, despite her rough appearance, would have been as amenable to such little tender cares as any lady in the land. But none such were forthcoming. Instead of this, Mrs. Proudie slapped one hand upon the other and declared—not with an oath, for, as a lady and a Sabbatarian and a she-bishop, she could not swear, but with an adjuration—that she “wouldn’t have it done.”
The meaning of this was that she wouldn’t have Mr. Quiverful’s promised appointment cozened away by the treachery of Mr. Slope and the weakness of her husband. This meaning she very soon explained to Mrs. Quiverful.
“Why was your husband such a fool,” said she, now dismounted from her high horse and sitting confidentially down close to her visitor, “as to take the bait which that man threw to him? If he had not been so utterly foolish, nothing could have prevented your going to the hospital.”
Poor Mrs. Quiverful was ready enough with her own tongue in accusing her husband to his face of being soft, and perhaps did not always speak of him to her children quite so respectfully as she might have done. But she did not at all like to hear him abused by others, and began to vindicate him and to explain that of course he had taken Mr. Slope to be an emissary from Mrs. Proudie herself; that Mr. Slope was thought to be peculiarly her friend; and that, therefore, Mr. Quiverful would have been failing in respect to her had he assumed to doubt what Mr. Slope had said.
Thus mollified, Mrs. Proudie again declared that she “would not have it done,” and at last sent Mrs. Quiverful home with an assurance that, to the furthest stretch of her power and influence in the palace, the appointment of Mr. Quiverful should be insisted on. As she repeated the word “insisted,” she thought of the bishop in his nightcap and, with compressed lips, slightly shook her head. Oh, my aspiring pastors, divines to whose ears nolo episcopari are the sweetest of words, which of you would be a bishop on such terms as these?
Mrs. Quiverful got home in the farmer’s cart, not indeed with a light heart, but satisfied that she had done right in making her visit.
Mr. Slope, as we have said, left the palace with a feeling of considerable triumph. Not that he thought that his difficulties were all over—he did not so deceive himself—but he felt that he had played his first move well, as well as the pieces on the board would allow, and that he had nothing with which to reproach himself. He first of all posted the letter to the archbishop and, having made that sure, proceeded to push the advantage which he had gained. Had Mrs. Bold been at home, he would have called on her, but he knew that she was at Plumstead, so he wrote the following note. It was the beginning of what, he trusted, might be a long and tender series of epistles.
My dear Mrs. Bold,
You will understand perfectly that I cannot at present correspond with your father. I heartily wish that I could, and hope the day may be not long distant when mists shall have been cleared away, and we may know each other. But I cannot preclude myself from the pleasure of sending you these few lines to say that Mr. Q. has to-day, in my presence, resigned any title that he ever had to the wardenship of the hospital, and that the bishop has assured me that it is his intention to offer it to your esteemed father.
Will you, with my respectful compliments, ask him, who I believe is now a fellow-visitor with you, to call on the bishop either on Wednesday or Thursday, between ten and one. This is by the bishop’s desire. If you will so far oblige me as to let me have a line naming either day, and the hour which will suit Mr. Harding, I will take care that the servants shall have orders to show him in without delay. Perhaps I should say no more—but still I wish you could make your father understand that no subject will be mooted between his lordship and him which will refer at all to the method in which he may choose to perform his duty. I for one am persuaded that no clergyman could perform it more satisfactorily than he did, or than he will do again.
On a former occasion I was indiscreet and much too impatient, considering your father’s age and my own. I hope he will not now refuse my apology. I still hope also that with your aid and sweet pious labours we may live to attach such a Sabbath-school to the old endowment as may, by God’s grace and furtherance, be a blessing to the poor of this city.
You will see at once that this letter is confidential. The subject, of course, makes it so. But, equally, of course, it is for your parent’s eye as well as for your own, should you think proper to show it to him.
I hope my darling little friend Johnny is as strong as ever—dear little fellow. Does he still continue his rude assaults on those beautiful long silken tresses?
I can assure you your friends miss you from Barchester sorely, but it would be cruel to begrudge you your sojourn among flowers and fields during this truly sultry weather.
Pray believe me, my dear Mrs. Bold,
Yours most sincerely,
Obadiah Slope
Barchester, Friday.
Now this letter, taken as a whole, and with the consideration that Mr. Slope wished to assume a great degree of intimacy with Eleanor, would not have been bad but for the allusion to the tresses. Gentlemen do not write to ladies about their tresses unless they are on very intimate terms indeed. But Mr. Slope could not be expected to be aware of this. He longed to put a little affection into his epistle, and yet he thought it injudicious, as the letter would, he knew, be shown to Mr. Harding. He would have insisted that the letter should be strictly private and seen by no eyes but Eleanor’s own, had he not felt that such an injunction would have been disobeyed. He therefore restrained his passion, did not sign himself “yours affectionately,” and contented himself instead with the compliment to the tresses.
Having finished his letter, he took it to Mrs. Bold’s house and, learning there, from the servant, that things were to be sent out to Plumstead that afternoon, left it, with many injunctions, in her hands.
We will now follow Mr. Slope so as to complete the day with him and then return to his letter and its momentous fate in the next chapter.
There is an old song which gives us some very good advice about courting:—
It’s gude to be off with the auld luve
Before ye be on wi’ the new.
Of the wisdom of this maxim Mr. Slope was ignorant, and accordingly, having written his letter to Mrs. Bold, he proceeded to call upon the Signora Neroni. Indeed, it was hard to say which was the old love and which the new, Mr. Slope having been smitten with both so nearly at the same time. Perhaps he thought it not amiss to have two strings to his bow. But two strings to Cupid’s bow are always dangerous to him on whose behalf they are to be used. A man should remember that between two stools he may fall to the ground.
But in sooth Mr. Slope was pursuing Mrs. Bold in obedience to his better instincts, and the signora in obedience to his worser. Had he won the widow and worn her, no one could have blamed him. You, O reader, and I, and Eleanor’s other friends would have received the story of such a winning with much disgust and disappointment, but we should have been angry with Eleanor, not with Mr. Slope. Bishop, male and female, dean and chapter and diocesan clergy in full congress could have found nothing to disapprove of in such an alliance. Convocation itself, that mysterious and mighty synod, could in no wise have fallen foul of it. The possession of £1000 a year and a beautiful wife would not at all have hurt the voice of the pulpit charmer, or lessened the grace and piety of the exemplary clergyman.
But not of such a nature were likely to be his dealings with the Signora Neroni. In the first place he knew that her husband was living, and therefore he could not woo her honestly. Then again she had nothing to recommend her to his honest wooing, had such been possible. She was not only portionless, but also from misfortune unfitted to be chosen as the wife of any man who wanted a useful mate. Mr. Slope was aware that she was a helpless, hopeless cripple.
But Mr. Slope could not help himself. He knew that he was wrong in devoting his time to the back drawing-room in Dr. Stanhope’s house. He knew that what took place there would, if divulged, utterly ruin him with Mrs. Bold. He knew that scandal would soon come upon his heels and spread abroad among the black coats of Barchester some tidings, exaggerated tidings, of the sighs which he poured into the lady’s ears. He knew that he was acting against the recognized principles of his life, against those laws of conduct by which he hoped to achieve much higher success. But, as we have said, he could not help himself. Passion, for the first time in his life, passion was too strong for him.
As for the signora, no such plea can be put forward for her, for in truth she cared no more for Mr. Slope than she did for twenty others who had been at her feet before him. She willingly, nay greedily, accepted his homage. He was the finest fly that Barchester had hitherto afforded to her web, and the signora was a powerful spider that made wondrous webs, and could in no way live without catching flies. Her taste in this respect was abominable, for she had no use for the victims when caught. She could not eat them matrimonially, as young lady flies do whose webs are most frequently of their mothers’ weaving. Nor could she devour them by any escapade of a less legitimate description. Her unfortunate affliction precluded her from all hope of levanting with a lover. It would be impossible to run away with a lady who required three servants to move her from a sofa.
The signora was subdued by no passion. Her time for love was gone. She had lived out her heart, such heart as she had ever had, in her early years, at an age when Mr. Slope was thinking of the second book of Euclid and his unpaid bill at the buttery hatch. In age the lady was younger than the gentleman, but in feelings, in knowledge of the affairs of love, in intrigue, he was immeasurably her junior. It was necessary to her to have some man at her feet. It was the one customary excitement of her life. She delighted in the exercise of power which this gave her; it was now nearly the only food for her ambition; she would boast to her sister that she could make a fool of any man, and the sister, as little imbued with feminine delicacy as herself, goodnaturedly thought it but fair that such amusement should be afforded to a poor invalid who was debarred from the ordinary pleasures of life.
Mr. Slope was madly in love but hardly knew it. The Signora spitted him, as a boy does a cockchafer on a cork, that she might enjoy the energetic agony of his gyrations. And she knew very well what she was doing.
Mr. Slope having added to his person all such adornments as are possible to a clergyman making a morning visit—such as a clean necktie, clean handkerchief, new gloves, and a soupçon of not unnecessary scent—called about three o’clock at the doctor’s door. At about this hour the signora was almost always alone in the back drawing-room. The mother had not come down. The doctor was out or in his own room. Bertie was out, and Charlotte at any rate left the room if anyone called whose object was specially with her sister. Such was her idea of being charitable and sisterly.
Mr. Slope, as was his custom, asked for Mr. Stanhope, and was told, as was the servant’s custom, that the signora was in the drawing-room. Upstairs he accordingly went. He found her, as he always did, lying on her sofa with a French volume before her and a beautiful little inlaid writing-case open on her table. At the moment of his entrance she was in the act of writing.
“Ah, my friend,” said she, putting out her left hand to him across her desk, “I did not expect you to-day and was this very instant writing to you—”
Mr. Slope, taking the soft, fair, delicate hand in his—and very soft and fair and delicate it was—bowed over it his huge red head and kissed it. It was a sight to see, a deed to record if the author could fitly do it, a picture to put on canvas. Mr. Slope was big, awkward, cumbrous, and, having his heart in his pursuit, was ill at ease. The lady was fair, as we have said, and delicate; everything about her was fine and refined; her hand in his looked like a rose lying among carrots, and when he kissed it, he looked as a cow might do on finding such a flower among her food. She was graceful as a couchant goddess and, moreover, as self-possessed as Venus must have been when courting Adonis.
Oh, that such grace and such beauty should have condescended to waste itself on such a pursuit!
“I was in the act of writing to you,” said she, “but now my scrawl may go into the basket;” and she raised the sheet of gilded notepaper from off her desk as though to tear it.
“Indeed it shall not,” said he, laying the embargo of half a stone weight of human flesh and blood upon the devoted paper. “Nothing that you write for my eyes, signora, shall be so desecrated,” and he took up the letter, put that also among the carrots and fed on it, and then proceeded to read it.
“Gracious me! Mr. Slope,” said she, “I hope you don’t mean to say you keep all the trash I write to you. Half my time I don’t know what I write, and when I do, I know it is only fit for the back of the fire. I hope you have not that ugly trick of keeping letters.”
“At any rate, I don’t throw them into a waste-paper basket. If destruction is their doomed lot, they perish worthily, and are burnt on a pyre, as Dido was of old.”
“With a steel pen stuck through them, of course,” said she, “to make the simile more complete. Of all the ladies of my acquaintance I think Lady Dido was the most absurd. Why did she not do as Cleopatra did? Why did she not take out her ships and insist on going with him? She could not bear to lose the land she had got by a swindle, and then she could not bear the loss of her lover. So she fell between two stools. Mr. Slope, whatever you do, never mingle love and business.”
Mr. Slope blushed up to his eyes and over his mottled forehead to the very roots of his hair. He felt sure that the signora knew all about his intentions with reference to Mrs Bold. His conscience told him that he was detected. His doom was to be spoken; he was to be punished for his duplicity, and rejected by the beautiful creature before him. Poor man. He little dreamt that had all his intentions with reference to Mrs. Bold been known to the signora, it would only have added zest to that lady’s amusement. It was all very well to have Mr. Slope at her feet, to show her power by making an utter fool of a clergyman, to gratify her own infidelity by thus proving the little strength which religion had in controlling the passions even of a religious man; but it would be an increased gratification if she could be made to understand that she was at the same time alluring her victim away from another, whose love if secured would be in every way beneficent and salutary.
The Signora had indeed discovered, with the keen instinct of such a woman, that Mr. Slope was bent on matrimony with Mrs. Bold, but in alluding to Dido she had not thought of it. She instantly perceived, however, from her lover’s blushes, what was on his mind and was not slow in taking advantage of it.
She looked him full in the face, not angrily, nor yet with a smile, but with an intense and overpowering gaze; then, holding up her forefinger and slightly shaking her head, she said:—
“Whatever you do, my friend, do not mingle love and business. Either stick to your treasure and your city of wealth, or else follow your love like a true man. But never attempt both. If you do, you’ll have to die with a broken heart as did poor Dido. Which is it to be with you, Mr. Slope, love or money?”
Mr. Slope was not so ready with a pathetic answer as he usually was with touching episodes in his extempore sermons. He felt that he ought to say something pretty, something also that should remove the impression on the mind of his ladylove. But he was rather put about how to do it.
“Love,” said he, “true overpowering love, must be the strongest passion a man can feel; it must control every other wish, and put aside every other pursuit. But with me love will never act in that way unless it be returned;” and he threw upon the signora a look of tenderness which was intended to make up for all the deficiencies of his speech.
“Take my advice,” said she. “Never mind love. After all, what is it? The dream of a few weeks. That is all its joy. The disappointment of a life is its Nemesis. Who was ever successful in true love? Success in love argues that the love is false. True love is always despondent or tragical. Juliet loved, Haidee loved, Dido loved, and what came of it? Troilus loved and ceased to be a man.”
“Troilus loved and was fooled,” said the more manly chaplain. “A man may love and yet not be a Troilus. All women are not Cressidas.”
“No, all women are not Cressidas. The falsehood is not always on the woman’s side. Imogen was true, but how was she rewarded? Her lord believed her to be the paramour of the first he who came near her in his absence. Desdemona was true and was smothered. Ophelia was true and went mad. There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel. But in wealth, money, houses, lands, goods, and chattels, in the good things of this world, yes, in them there is something tangible, something that can be retained and enjoyed.”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Slope, feeling himself bound to enter some protest against so very unorthodox a doctrine, “this world’s wealth will make no one happy.”
“And what will make you happy—you—you?” said she, raising herself up and speaking to him with energy across the table. “From what source do you look for happiness? Do not say that you look for none. I shall not believe you. It is a search in which every human being spends an existence.”
“And the search is always in vain,” said Mr. Slope. “We look for happiness on earth, while we ought to be content to hope for it in heaven.”
“Pshaw! You preach a doctrine which you know you don’t believe. It is the way with you all. If you know that there is no earthly happiness, why do you long to be a bishop or a dean? Why do you want lands and income?”
“I have the natural ambition of a man,” said he.
“Of course you have, and the natural passions; and therefore I say that you don’t believe the doctrine you preach. St. Paul was an enthusiast. He believed so that his ambition and passions did not war against his creed. So does the Eastern fanatic who passes half his life erect upon a pillar. As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will think no preaching sincere that is not recommended by the practice of the preacher.”
Mr. Slope was startled and horrified, but he felt that he could not answer. How could he stand up and preach the lessons of his Master, being there, as he was, on the devil’s business? He was a true believer, otherwise this would have been nothing to him. He had audacity for most things, but he had not audacity to make a plaything of the Lord’s word. All this the signora understood, and felt much interest as she saw her cockchafer whirl round upon her pin.
“Your wit delights in such arguments,” said he, “but your heart and your reason do not go along with them.”
“My heart!” said she; “you quite mistake the principles of my composition if you imagine that there is such a thing about me.” After all, there was very little that was false in anything that the signora said. If Mr. Slope allowed himself to be deceived, it was his own fault. Nothing could have been more open than her declarations about herself.
The little writing-table with her desk was still standing before her, a barrier, as it were, against the enemy. She was sitting as nearly upright as she ever did, and he had brought a chair close to the sofa, so that there was only the corner of the table between him and her. It so happened that as she spoke her hand lay upon the table, and as Mr. Slope answered her he put his hand upon hers.
“No heart!” said he. “That is a heavy charge which you bring against yourself, and one of which I cannot find you guilty—”
She withdrew her hand, not quickly and angrily, as though insulted by his touch, but gently and slowly.
“You are in no condition to give a verdict on the matter,” said she, “as you have not tried me. No, don’t say that you intend doing so, for you know you have no intention of the kind; nor indeed have I, either. As for you, you will take your vows where they will result in something more substantial than the pursuit of such a ghostlike, ghastly love as mine—”
“Your love should be sufficient to satisfy the dream of a monarch,” said Mr. Slope, not quite clear as to the meaning of his words.
“Say an archbishop, Mr. Slope,” said she. Poor fellow! She was very cruel to him. He went round again upon his cork on this allusion to his profession. He tried, however, to smile and gently accused her of joking on a matter, which was, he said, to him of such vital moment.
“Why—what gulls do you men make of us,” she replied. “How you fool us to the top of our bent; and of all men you clergymen are the most fluent of your honeyed, caressing words. Now look me in the face, Mr. Slope, boldly and openly.”
Mr. Slope did look at her with a languishing loving eye, and as he did so he again put forth his hand to get hold of hers.
“I told you to look at me boldly, Mr. Slope, but confine your boldness to your eyes.”
“Oh, Madeline!” he sighed.
“Well, my name is Madeline,” said she, “but none except my own family usually call me so. Now look me in the face, Mr. Slope. Am I to understand that you say you love me?”
Mr. Slope never had said so. If he had come there with any formed plan at all, his intention was to make love to the lady without uttering any such declaration. It was, however, quite impossible that he should now deny his love. He had, therefore, nothing for it but to go down on his knees distractedly against the sofa and swear that he did love her with a love passing the love of man.
The signora received the assurance with very little palpitation or appearance of surprise. “And now answer me another question,” said she. “When are you to be married to my dear friend Eleanor Bold?”
Poor Mr. Slope went round and round in mortal agony. In such a condition as his it was really very hard for him to know what answer to give. And yet no answer would be his surest condemnation. He might as well at once plead guilty to the charge brought against him.
“And why do you accuse me of such dissimulation?” said he.
“Dissimulation! I said nothing of dissimulation. I made no charge against you, and make none. Pray don’t defend yourself to me. You swear that you are devoted to my beauty, and yet you are on the eve of matrimony with another. I feel this to be rather a compliment. It is to Mrs. Bold that you must defend yourself. That you may find difficult; unless, indeed, you can keep her in the dark. You clergymen are cleverer than other men.”
“Signora, I have told you that I loved you, and now you rail at me.”
“Rail at you. God bless the man; what would he have? Come, answer me this at your leisure—not without thinking now, but leisurely and with consideration—are you not going to be married to Mrs. Bold?”
“I am not,” said he. And as he said it he almost hated, with an exquisite hatred, the woman whom he could not help loving with an exquisite love.
“But surely you are a worshipper of hers?”
“I am not,” said Mr. Slope, to whom the word worshipper was peculiarly distasteful. The signora had conceived that it would be so.
“I wonder at that,” said she. “Do you not admire her? To my eye she is the perfection of English beauty. And then she is rich, too. I should have thought she was just the person to attract you. Come, Mr. Slope, let me give you advice on this matter. Marry the charming widow; she will be a good mother to your children and an excellent mistress of a clergyman’s household.”
“Oh, signora, how can you be so cruel?”
“Cruel,” said she, changing the voice of banter which she had been using for one which was expressively earnest in its tone; “is that cruelty?”
“How can I love another while my heart is entirely your own?”
“If that were cruelty, Mr. Slope, what might you say of me if I were to declare that I returned your passion? What would you think if I bound you even by a lover’s oath to do daily penance at this couch of mine? What can I give in return for a man’s love? Ah, dear friend, you have not realized the conditions of my fate.”
Mr. Slope was not on his knees all this time. After his declaration of love, he had risen from them as quickly as he thought consistent with the new position which he now filled, and as he stood was leaning on the back of his chair. This outburst of tenderness on the signora’s part quite overcame him and made him feel for the moment that he could sacrifice everything to be assured of the love of the beautiful creature before him, maimed, lame, and already married as she was.
“And can I not sympathize with your lot?” said he, now seating himself on her sofa and pushing away the table with his foot.
“Sympathy is so near to pity!” said she. “If you pity me, cripple as I am, I shall spurn you from me.”
“Oh, Madeline, I will only love you,” and again he caught her hand and devoured it with kisses. Now she did not draw it from him, but sat there as he kissed it, looking at him with her great eyes, just as a great spider would look at a great fly that was quite securely caught.
“Suppose Signor Neroni were to come to Barchester,” said she. “Would you make his acquaintance?”
“Signor Neroni!” said he.
“Would you introduce him to the bishop, and Mrs. Proudie, and the young ladies?” said she, again having recourse to that horrid quizzing voice which Mr. Slope so particularly hated.
“Why do you ask such a question?” said he.
“Because it is necessary that you should know that there is a Signor Neroni. I think you had forgotten it.”
“If I thought that you retained for that wretch one particle of the love of which he was never worthy, I would die before I would distract you by telling you what I feel. No! Were your husband the master of your heart, I might perhaps love you, but you should never know it.”
“My heart again! How you talk. And you consider then that if a husband be not master of his wife’s heart, he has no right to her fealty; if a wife ceases to love, she may cease to be true. Is that your doctrine on this matter, as a minister of the Church of England?”
Mr. Slope tried hard within himself to cast off the pollution with which he felt that he was defiling his soul. He strove to tear himself away from the noxious siren that had bewitched him. But he could not do it. He could not be again heart free. He had looked for rapturous joy in loving this lovely creature, and he already found that he met with little but disappointment and self-rebuke. He had come across the fruit of the Dead Sea, so sweet and delicious to the eye, so bitter and nauseous to the taste. He had put the apple to his mouth, and it had turned to ashes between his teeth. Yet he could not tear himself away. He knew, he could not but know, that she jeered at him, ridiculed his love, and insulted the weakness of his religion. But she half-permitted his adoration, and that half-permission added such fuel to his fire that all the fountain of his piety could not quench it. He began to feel savage, irritated, and revengeful. He meditated some severity of speech, some taunt that should cut her, as her taunts cut him. He reflected as he stood there for a moment, silent before her, that if he desired to quell her proud spirit, he should do so by being prouder even than herself; that if he wished to have her at his feet suppliant for his love, it behoved him to conquer her by indifference. All this passed through his mind. As far as dead knowledge went, he knew, or thought he knew, how a woman should be tamed. But when he essayed to bring his tactics to bear, he failed like a child. What chance has dead knowledge with experience in any of the transactions between man and man? What possible chance between man and woman? Mr. Slope loved furiously, insanely and truly, but he had never played the game of love. The signora did not love at all, but she was up to every move of the board. It was Philidor pitted against a schoolboy.
And so she continued to insult him, and he continued to bear it.
“Sacrifice the world for love!” she said in answer to some renewed vapid declaration of his passion. “How often has the same thing been said, and how invariably with the same falsehood!”
“Falsehood,” said he. “Do you say that I am false to you? Do you say that my love is not real?”
“False? Of course it is false, false as the father of falsehood—if indeed falsehoods need a sire and are not self-begotten since the world began. You are ready to sacrifice the world for love? Come let us see what you will sacrifice. I care nothing for nuptial vows. The wretch, I think you were kind enough to call him so, whom I swore to love and obey is so base that he can only be thought of with repulsive disgust. In the council chamber of my heart I have divorced him. To me that is as good as though aged lords had gloated for months over the details of his licentious life. I care nothing for what the world can say. Will you be as frank? Will you take me to your home as your wife? Will you call me Mrs. Slope before bishop, dean, and prebendaries?” The poor tortured wretch stood silent, not knowing what to say. “What! You won’t do that. Tell me, then, what part of the world is it that you will sacrifice for my charms?”
“Were you free to marry, I would take you to my house tomorrow and wish no higher privilege.”
“I am free,” said she, almost starting up in her energy. For though there was no truth in her pretended regard for her clerical admirer, there was a mixture of real feeling in the scorn and satire with which she spoke of love and marriage generally. “I am free—free as the winds. Come, will you take me as I am? Have your wish; sacrifice the world, and prove yourself a true man.”
Mr. Slope should have taken her at her word. She would have drawn back, and he would have had the full advantage of the offer. But he did not. Instead of doing so, he stood wrapt in astonishment, passing his fingers through his lank red hair and thinking, as he stared upon her animated countenance, that her wondrous beauty grew more wonderful as he gazed on it. “Ha! ha! ha!” she laughed out loud. “Come, Mr. Slope, don’t talk of sacrificing the world again. People beyond one-and-twenty should never dream of such a thing. You and I, if we have the dregs of any love left in us, if we have the remnants of a passion remaining in our hearts, should husband our resources better. We are not in our première jeunesse. The world is a very nice place. Your world, at any rate, is so. You have all manner of fat rectories to get and possible bishoprics to enjoy. Come, confess; on second thoughts you would not sacrifice such things for the smiles of a lame lady?”
It was impossible for him to answer this. In order to be in any way dignified, he felt that he must be silent.
“Come,” said she, “don’t boody with me: don’t be angry because I speak out some home truths. Alas, the world, as I have found it, has taught me bitter truths. Come, tell me that I am forgiven. Are we not to be friends?” and she again put out her hand to him.
He sat himself down in the chair beside her, took her proffered hand, and leant over her.
“There,” said she with her sweetest, softest smile—a smile to withstand which a man should be cased in triple steel, “there; seal your forgiveness on it,” and she raised it towards his face. He kissed it again and again, and stretched over her as though desirous of extending the charity of his pardon beyond the hand that was offered to him. She managed, however, to check his ardour. For one so easily allured as this poor chaplain, her hand was surely enough.
“Oh, Madeline!” said he, “tell me that you love me—do you—do you love me?”
“Hush,” said she. “There is my mother’s step. Our tête-à-tête has been of monstrous length. Now you had better go. But we shall see you soon again, shall we not?”
Mr. Slope promised that he would call again on the following day.
“And, Mr. Slope,” she continued, “pray answer my note. You have it in your hand, though I declare during these two hours you have not been gracious enough to read it. It is about the Sabbath-school and the children. You know how anxious I am to have them here. I have been learning the catechism myself, on purpose. You must manage it for me next week. I will teach them, at any rate, to submit themselves to their spiritual pastors and masters.”
Mr. Slope said but little on the subject of Sabbath-schools, but he made his adieu, and betook himself home with a sad heart, troubled mind, and uneasy conscience.
It will be remembered that Mr. Slope, when leaving his billet-doux at the house of Mrs. Bold, had been informed that it would be sent out to her at Plumstead that afternoon. The archdeacon and Mr. Harding had in fact come into town together in the brougham, and it had been arranged that they should call for Eleanor’s parcels as they left on their way home. Accordingly they did so call, and the maid, as she handed to the coachman a small basket and large bundle carefully and neatly packed, gave in at the carriage window Mr. Slope’s epistle. The archdeacon, who was sitting next to the window, took it and immediately recognized the handwriting of his enemy.
“Who left this?” said he.
“Mr. Slope called with it himself, your Reverence,” said the girl, “and was very anxious that Missus should have it to-day.”
So the brougham drove off, and the letter was left in the archdeacon’s hand. He looked at it as though he held a basket of adders. He could not have thought worse of the document had he read it and discovered it to be licentious and atheistical. He did, moreover, what so many wise people are accustomed to do in similar circumstances; he immediately condemned the person to whom the letter was written, as though she were necessarily a particeps criminis.
Poor Mr. Harding, though by no means inclined to forward Mr. Slope’s intimacy with his daughter, would have given anything to have kept the letter from his son-in-law. But that was now impossible. There it was in his hand, and he looked as thoroughly disgusted as though he were quite sure that it contained all the rhapsodies of a favoured lover.
“It’s very hard on me,” said he after awhile, “that this should go on under my roof.”
Now here the archdeacon was certainly most unreasonable. Having invited his sister-in-law to his house, it was a natural consequence that she should receive her letters there. And if Mr. Slope chose to write to her, his letter would, as a matter of course, be sent after her. Moreover, the very fact of an invitation to one’s house implies confidence on the part of the inviter. He had shown that he thought Mrs. Bold to be a fit person to stay with him by his asking her to do so, and it was most cruel to her that he should complain of her violating the sanctity of his rooftree, when the laches committed were none of her committing.
Mr. Harding felt this, and felt also that when the archdeacon talked thus about his roof, what he said was most offensive to himself as Eleanor’s father. If Eleanor did receive a letter from Mr. Slope, what was there in that to pollute the purity of Dr. Grantly’s household? He was indignant that his daughter should be so judged and so spoken of, and he made up his mind that even as Mrs. Slope she must be dearer to him than any other creature on God’s earth. He almost broke out and said as much, but for the moment he restrained himself.
“Here,” said the archdeacon, handing the offensive missile to his father-in-law, “I am not going to be the bearer of his love-letters. You are her father and may do as you think fit with it.”
By doing as he thought fit with it, the archdeacon certainly meant that Mr. Harding would be justified in opening and reading the letter, and taking any steps which might in consequence be necessary. To tell the truth, Dr. Grantly did feel rather a stronger curiosity than was justified by his outraged virtue to see the contents of the letter. Of course he could not open it himself, but he wished to make Mr. Harding understand that he, as Eleanor’s father, would be fully justified in doing so. The idea of such a proceeding never occurred to Mr. Harding. His authority over Eleanor ceased when she became the wife of John Bold. He had not the slightest wish to pry into her correspondence. He consequently put the letter into his pocket, and only wished that he had been able to do so without the archdeacon’s knowledge. They both sat silent during half the journey home, and then Dr. Grantly said, “Perhaps Susan had better give it to her. She can explain to her sister better than either you or I can do how deep is the disgrace of such an acquaintance.”
“I think you are very hard upon Eleanor,” replied Mr. Harding. “I will not allow that she has disgraced herself, nor do I think it likely that she will do so. She has a right to correspond with whom she pleases, and I shall not take upon myself to blame her because she gets a letter from Mr. Slope.”
“I suppose,” said Dr. Grantly, “you don’t wish her to marry the man. I suppose you’ll admit that she would disgrace herself if she did do so.”
“I do not wish her to marry him,” said the perplexed father. “I do not like him, and do not think he would make a good husband. But if Eleanor chooses to do so, I shall certainly not think that she disgraces herself.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Dr. Grantly and threw himself back into the corner of his brougham. Mr. Harding said nothing more, but commenced playing a dirge with an imaginary fiddle bow upon an imaginary violoncello, for which there did not appear to be quite room enough in the carriage; he continued the tune, with sundry variations, till he arrived at the rectory door.
The archdeacon had been meditating sad things in his mind. Hitherto he had always looked on his father-in-law as a true partisan, though he knew him to be a man devoid of all the combative qualifications for that character. He had felt no fear that Mr. Harding would go over to the enemy, though he had never counted much on the ex-warden’s prowess in breaking the hostile ranks. Now, however, it seemed that Eleanor, with her wiles, had completely trepanned and bewildered her father, cheated him out of his judgement, robbed him of the predilections and tastes of his life, and caused him to be tolerant of a man whose arrogance and vulgarity would, a few years since, have been unendurable to him. That the whole thing was as good as arranged between Eleanor and Mr. Slope there was no longer any room to doubt. That Mr. Harding knew that such was the case, even this could hardly be doubted. It was too manifest that he at any rate suspected it and was prepared to sanction it.
And to tell the truth, such was the case. Mr. Harding disliked Mr. Slope as much as it was in his nature to dislike any man. Had his daughter wished to do her worst to displease him by a second marriage, she could hardly have succeeded better than by marrying Mr. Slope. But, as he said to himself now very often, what right had he to condemn her if she did nothing that was really wrong? If she liked Mr. Slope, it was her affair. It was indeed miraculous to him that a woman with such a mind, so educated, so refined, so nice in her tastes, should like such a man. Then he asked himself whether it was possible that she did so.
Ah, thou weak man; most charitable, most Christian, but weakest of men! Why couldn’t thou not have asked herself? Was she not the daughter of thy loins, the child of thy heart, the best beloved to thee of all humanity? Had she not proved to thee, by years of closest affection, her truth and goodness and filial obedience? And yet, knowing and feeling all this, thou couldst endure to go groping in darkness, hearing her named in strains which wounded thy loving heart, and being unable to defend her as thou shouldst have done!
Mr. Harding had not believed, did not believe, that his daughter meant to marry this man, but he feared to commit himself to such an opinion. If she did do it there would be then no means of retreat. The wishes of his heart were: first, that there should be no truth in the archdeacon’s surmises; and in this wish he would have fain trusted entirely, had he dared so to do; secondly, that the match might be prevented, if unfortunately, it had been contemplated by Eleanor; thirdly, that should she be so infatuated as to marry this man, he might justify his conduct and declare that no cause existed for his separating himself from her.
He wanted to believe her incapable of such a marriage; he wanted to show that he so believed of her; but he wanted also to be able to say hereafter that she had done nothing amiss, if she should unfortunately prove herself to be different from what he thought her to be.
Nothing but affection could justify such fickleness, but affection did justify it. There was but little of the Roman about Mr. Harding. He could not sacrifice his Lucretia even though she should be polluted by the accepted addresses of the clerical Tarquin at the palace. If Tarquin could be prevented, well and good, but if not, the father would still open his heart to his daughter and accept her as she presented herself, Tarquin and all.
Dr. Grantly’s mind was of a stronger calibre, and he was by no means deficient in heart. He loved with an honest genuine love his wife and children and friends. He loved his father-in-law, and was quite prepared to love Eleanor too, if she would be one of his party, if she would be on his side, if she would regard the Slopes and the Proudies as the enemies of mankind and acknowledge and feel the comfortable merits of the Gwynnes and Arabins. He wished to be what he called “safe” with all those whom he had admitted to the penetralia of his house and heart. He could luxuriate in no society that was deficient in a certain feeling of faithful, staunch High Churchism, which to him was tantamount to freemasonry. He was not strict in his lines of definition. He endured without impatience many different shades of Anglo-church conservatism; but with the Slopes and Proudies he could not go on all fours.
He was wanting in, moreover, or perhaps it would be more correct to say, he was not troubled by that womanly tenderness which was so peculiar to Mr. Harding. His feelings towards his friends were that while they stuck to him, he would stick to them; that he would work with them shoulder and shoulder; that he would be faithful to the faithful. He knew nothing of that beautiful love which can be true to a false friend.
And thus these two men, each miserable enough in his own way, returned to Plumstead.
It was getting late when they arrived there, and the ladies had already gone up to dress. Nothing more was said as the two parted in the hall. As Mr. Harding passed to his own room he knocked at Eleanor’s door and handed in the letter. The archdeacon hurried to his own territory, there to unburden his heart to his faithful partner.
What colloquy took place between the marital chamber and the adjoining dressingroom shall not be detailed. The reader, now intimate with the persons concerned, can well imagine it. The whole tenor of it also might be read in Mrs. Grantly’s brow as she came down to dinner.
Eleanor, when she received the letter from her father’s hand, had no idea from whom it came. She had never seen Mr. Slope’s handwriting, or if so had forgotten it, and did not think of him as she twisted the letter as people do twist letters when they do not immediately recognize their correspondents either by the writing or the seal. She was sitting at her glass, brushing her hair and rising every other minute to play with her boy, who was sprawling on the bed and who engaged pretty nearly the whole attention of the maid as well as of his mother.
At last, sitting before her toilet-table, she broke the seal and, turning over the leaf, saw Mr. Slope’s name. She first felt surprised, and then annoyed, and then anxious. As she read it she became interested. She was so delighted to find that all obstacles to her father’s return to the hospital were apparently removed that she did not observe the fulsome language in which the tidings were conveyed. She merely perceived that she was commissioned to tell her father that such was the case, and she did not realize the fact that such a communication should not have been made, in the first instance, to her by an unmarried young clergyman. She felt, on the whole, grateful to Mr. Slope and anxious to get on her dress that she might run with the news to her father. Then she came to the allusion to her own pious labours, and she said in her heart that Mr. Slope was an affected ass. Then she went on again and was offended by her boy being called Mr. Slope’s darling—he was nobody’s darling but her own, or at any rate not the darling of a disagreeable stranger like Mr. Slope. Lastly she arrived at the tresses and felt a qualm of disgust. She looked up in the glass, and there they were before her, long and silken, certainly, and very beautiful. I will not say but that she knew them to be so, but she felt angry with them and brushed them roughly and carelessly. She crumpled the letter up with angry violence, and resolved, almost without thinking of it, that she would not show it to her father. She would merely tell him the contents of it. She then comforted herself again with her boy, had her dress fastened, and went down to dinner.
As she tripped down the stairs she began to ascertain that there was some difficulty in her situation. She could not keep from her father the news about the hospital, nor could she comfortably confess the letter from Mr. Slope before the Grantlys. Her father had already gone down. She had heard his step upon the lobby. She resolved therefore to take him aside and tell him her little bit of news. Poor girl! She had no idea how severely the unfortunate letter had already been discussed.
When she entered the drawing-room, the whole party were there, including Mr. Arabin, and the whole party looked glum and sour. The two girls sat silent and apart as though they were aware that something was wrong. Even Mr. Arabin was solemn and silent. Eleanor had not seen him since breakfast. He had been the whole day at St. Ewold’s, and such having been the case, it was natural that he should tell how matters were going on there. He did nothing of the kind, however, but remained solemn and silent. They were all solemn and silent. Eleanor knew in her heart that they had been talking about her, and her heart misgave her as she thought of Mr. Slope and his letter. At any rate she felt it to be quite impossible to speak to her father alone while matters were in this state.
Dinner was soon announced, and Dr. Grantly, as was his wont, gave Eleanor his arm. But he did so as though the doing it were an outrage on his feelings rendered necessary by sternest necessity. With quick sympathy Eleanor felt this, and hardly put her fingers on his coat-sleeve. It may be guessed in what way the dinner-hour was passed. Dr. Grantly said a few words to Mr. Arabin, Mr. Arabin said a few words to Mrs. Grantly, she said a few words to her father, and he tried to say a few words to Eleanor. She felt that she had been tried and found guilty of something, though she knew not what. She longed to say out to them all, “Well, what is it that I have done; out with it, and let me know my crime; for heaven’s sake let me hear the worst of it;” but she could not. She could say nothing, but sat there silent, half-feeling that she was guilty, and trying in vain to pretend even to eat her dinner.
At last the cloth was drawn, and the ladies were not long following it. When they were gone, the gentlemen were somewhat more sociable but not much so. They could not of course talk over Eleanor’s sins. The archdeacon had indeed so far betrayed his sister-in-law as to whisper into Mr. Arabin’s ear in the study, as they met there before dinner, a hint of what he feared. He did so with the gravest and saddest of fears, and Mr. Arabin became grave and apparently sad enough as he heard it. He opened his eyes, and his mouth and said in a sort of whisper “Mr. Slope!” in the same way as he might have said “The Cholera!” had his friend told him that that horrid disease was in his nursery. “I fear so, I fear so,” said the archdeacon, and then together they left the room.
We will not accurately analyse Mr. Arabin’s feelings on receipt of such astounding tidings. It will suffice to say that he was surprised, vexed, sorrowful, and ill at ease. He had not perhaps thought very much about Eleanor, but he had appreciated her influence, and had felt that close intimacy with her in a country-house was pleasant to him, and also beneficial. He had spoken highly of her intelligence to the archdeacon, and had walked about the shrubberies with her, carrying her boy on his back. When Mr. Arabin had called Johnny his darling, Eleanor was not angry.
Thus the three men sat over their wine, all thinking of the same subject, but unable to speak of it to each other. So we will leave them and follow the ladies into the drawing-room.
Mrs. Grantly had received a commission from her husband, and had undertaken it with some unwillingness. He had desired her to speak gravely to Eleanor and to tell her that, if she persisted in her adherence to Mr. Slope, she could no longer look for the countenance of her present friends. Mrs. Grantly probably knew her sister better than the doctor did, and assured him that it would be in vain to talk to her. The only course likely to be of any service in her opinion was to keep Eleanor away from Barchester. Perhaps she might have added, for she had a very keen eye in such things, that there might also be ground for hope in keeping Eleanor near Mr. Arabin. Of this, however, she said nothing. But the archdeacon would not be talked over; he spoke much of his conscience, and declared that, if Mrs. Grantly would not do it, he would. So instigated, the lady undertook the task, stating, however, her full conviction that her interference would be worse than useless. And so it proved.
As soon as they were in the drawing-room Mrs. Grantly found some excuse for sending her girls away, and then began her task. She knew well that she could exercise but very slight authority over her sister. Their various modes of life, and the distance between their residences, had prevented any very close confidence. They had hardly lived together since Eleanor was a child. Eleanor had, moreover, especially in latter years, resented in a quiet sort of way the dictatorial authority which the archdeacon seemed to exercise over her father, and on this account had been unwilling to allow the archdeacon’s wife to exercise authority over herself.
“You got a note just before dinner, I believe,” began the eldest sister.
Eleanor acknowledged that she had done so, and felt that she turned red as she acknowledged it. She would have given anything to have kept her colour, but the more she tried to do so the more signally she failed.
“Was it not from Mr. Slope?”
Eleanor said that the letter was from Mr. Slope.
“Is he a regular correspondent of yours, Eleanor?”
“Not exactly,” said she, already beginning to feel angry at the cross-examination. She determined, and why it would be difficult to say, that nothing should induce her to tell her sister Susan what was the subject of the letter. Mrs. Grantly, she knew, was instigated by the archdeacon, and she would not plead to any arraignment made against her by him.
“But, Eleanor dear, why do you get letters from Mr. Slope at all, knowing, as you do, he is a person so distasteful to Papa, and to the archdeacon, and indeed to all your friends?”
“In the first place, Susan, I don’t get letters from him; and in the next place, as Mr. Slope wrote the one letter which I have got, and as I only received it, which I could not very well help doing, as Papa handed it to me, I think you had better ask Mr. Slope instead of me.”
“What was his letter about, Eleanor?”
“I cannot tell you,” said she, “because it was confidential. It was on business respecting a third person.”
“It was in no way personal to yourself then?”
“I won’t exactly say that, Susan,” said she, getting more and more angry at her sister’s questions.
“Well, I must say it’s rather singular,” said Mrs. Grantly, affecting to laugh, “that a young lady in your position should receive a letter from an unmarried gentleman of which she will not tell the contents and which she is ashamed to show to her sister.”
“I am not ashamed,” said Eleanor, blazing up. “I am not ashamed of anything in the matter; only I do not choose to be cross-examined as to my letters by anyone.”
“Well, dear,” said the other, “I cannot but tell you that I do not think Mr. Slope a proper correspondent for you.”
“If he be ever so improper, how can I help his having written to me? But you are all prejudiced against him to such an extent that that which would be kind and generous in another man is odious and impudent in him. I hate a religion that teaches one to be so one-sided in one’s charity.”
“I am sorry, Eleanor, that you hate the religion you find here, but surely you should remember that in such matters the archdeacon must know more of the world than you do. I don’t ask you to respect or comply with me, although I am, unfortunately, so many years your senior; but surely, in such a matter as this, you might consent to be guided by the archdeacon. He is most anxious to be your friend, if you will let him.”
“In such a matter as what?” said Eleanor very testily. “Upon my word I don’t know what this is all about.”
“We all want you to drop Mr. Slope.”
“You all want me to be as illiberal as yourselves. That I shall never be. I see no harm in Mr. Slope’s acquaintance, and I shall not insult the man by telling him that I do. He has thought it necessary to write to me, and I do not want the archdeacon’s advice about the letter. If I did, I would ask it.”
“Then, Eleanor, it is my duty to tell you,” and now she spoke with a tremendous gravity, “that the archdeacon thinks that such a correspondence is disgraceful, and that he cannot allow it to go on in his house.”
Eleanor’s eyes flashed fire as she answered her sister, jumping up from her seat as she did so. “You may tell the archdeacon that wherever I am I shall receive what letters I please and from whom I please. And as for the word ‘disgraceful,’ if Dr. Grantly has used it of me, he has been unmanly and inhospitable,” and she walked off to the door. “When Papa comes from the dining-room I will thank you to ask him to step up to my bedroom. I will show him Mr. Slope’s letter, but I will show it to no one else.” And so saying, she retreated to her baby.
She had no conception of the crime with which she was charged. The idea that she could be thought by her friends to regard Mr. Slope as a lover had never flashed upon her. She conceived that they were all prejudiced and illiberal in their persecution of him, and therefore she would not join in the persecution, even though she greatly disliked the man.
Eleanor was very angry as she seated herself in a low chair by her open window at the foot of her child’s bed. “To dare to say I have disgraced myself,” she repeated to herself more than once. “How Papa can put up with that man’s arrogance! I will certainly not sit down to dinner in his house again unless he begs my pardon for that word.” And then a thought struck her that Mr. Arabin might perchance hear of her “disgraceful” correspondence with Mr. Slope, and she turned crimson with pure vexation. Oh, if she had known the truth! If she could have conceived that Mr. Arabin had been informed as a fact that she was going to marry Mr. Slope!
She had not been long in her room before her father joined her. As he left the drawing-room Mrs. Grantly took her husband into the recess of the window and told him how signally she had failed.
“I will speak to her myself before I go to bed,” said the archdeacon.
“Pray do no such thing,” said she; “you can do no good and will only make an unseemly quarrel in the house. You have no idea how headstrong she can be.”
The archdeacon declared that as to that he was quite indifferent. He knew his duty and would do it. Mr. Harding was weak in the extreme in such matters. He would not have it hereafter on his conscience that he had not done all that in him lay to prevent so disgraceful an alliance. It was in vain that Mrs. Grantly assured him that speaking to Eleanor angrily would only hasten such a crisis and render it certain, if at present there were any doubt. He was angry, self-willed, and sore. The fact that a lady of his household had received a letter from Mr. Slope had wounded his pride in the sorest place, and nothing could control him.
Mr. Harding looked worn and woebegone as he entered his daughter’s room. These sorrows worried him sadly. He felt that if they were continued, he must go to the wall in the manner so kindly prophesied to him by the chaplain. He knocked gently at his daughter’s door, waited till he was distinctly bade to enter, and then appeared as though he and not she were the suspected criminal.
Eleanor’s arm was soon within his, and she had soon kissed his forehead and caressed him, not with joyous but with eager love. “Oh, Papa,” she said, “I do so want to speak to you. They have been talking about me downstairs tonight—don’t you know they have, Papa?”
Mr. Harding confessed with a sort of murmur that the archdeacon had been speaking of her.
“I shall hate Dr. Grantly soon—”
“Oh, my dear!”
“Well, I shall. I cannot help it. He is so uncharitable, so unkind, so suspicious of everyone that does not worship himself: and then he is so monstrously arrogant to other people who have a right to their opinions as well as he has to his own.”
“He is an earnest, eager man, my dear, but he never means to be unkind.”
“He is unkind, Papa, most unkind. There, I got that letter from Mr. Slope before dinner. It was you yourself who gave it to me. There, pray read it. It is all for you. It should have been addressed to you. You know how they have been talking about it downstairs. You know how they behaved to me at dinner. And since dinner Susan has been preaching to me, till I could not remain in the room with her. Read it, Papa, and then say whether that is a letter that need make Dr. Grantly so outrageous.”
Mr. Harding took his arm from his daughter’s waist and slowly read the letter. She expected to see his countenance lit with joy as he learnt that his path back to the hospital was made so smooth; but she was doomed to disappointment, as had once been the case before on a somewhat similar occasion. His first feeling was one of unmitigated disgust that Mr. Slope should have chosen to interfere in his behalf. He had been anxious to get back to the hospital, but he would have infinitely sooner resigned all pretensions to the place than have owed it in any manner to Mr. Slope’s influence in his favour. Then he thoroughly disliked the tone of Mr. Slope’s letter; it was unctuous, false, and unwholesome, like the man. He saw, which Eleanor had failed to see, that much more had been intended than was expressed. The appeal to Eleanor’s pious labours as separate from his own grated sadly against his feelings as a father. And then, when he came to the “darling boy” and the “silken tresses,” he slowly closed and folded the letter in despair. It was impossible that Mr. Slope should so write unless he had been encouraged. It was impossible Eleanor should have received such a letter, and have received it without annoyance, unless she were willing to encourage him. So at least Mr. Harding argued to himself.
How hard it is to judge accurately of the feelings of others. Mr. Harding, as he came to the close of the letter, in his heart condemned his daughter for indelicacy, and it made him miserable to do so. She was not responsible for what Mr. Slope might write. True. But then she expressed no disgust at it. She had rather expressed approval of the letter as a whole. She had given it to him to read, as a vindication for herself and also for him. The father’s spirits sank within him as he felt that he could not acquit her.
And yet it was the true feminine delicacy of Eleanor’s mind which brought on her this condemnation. Listen to me, ladies, and I beseech you to acquit her. She thought of this man, this lover of whom she was so unconscious, exactly as her father did, exactly as the Grantlys did. At least she esteemed him personally as they did. But she believed him to be in the main an honest man, and one truly inclined to assist her father. She felt herself bound, after what had passed, to show this letter to Mr. Harding. She thought it necessary that he should know what Mr. Slope had to say. But she did not think it necessary to apologize for, or condemn, or even allude to the vulgarity of the man’s tone, which arose, as does all vulgarity, from ignorance. It was nauseous to her to have a man like Mr. Slope commenting on her personal attractions, and she did not think it necessary to dilate with her father upon what was nauseous. She never supposed they could disagree on such a subject. It would have been painful for her to point it out, painful for her to speak strongly against a man of whom, on the whole, she was anxious to think and speak well. In encountering such a man she had encountered what was disagreeable, as she might do in walking the streets. But in such encounters she never thought it necessary to dwell on what disgusted her.
And he, foolish, weak, loving man, would not say one word, though one word would have cleared up everything. There would have been a deluge of tears, and in ten minutes everyone in the house would have understood how matters really were. The father would have been delighted. The sister would have kissed her sister and begged a thousand pardons. The archdeacon would have apologized and wondered, and raised his eyebrows, and gone to bed a happy man. And Mr. Arabin—Mr. Arabin would have dreamt of Eleanor, have awoke in the morning with ideas of love, and retired to rest the next evening with schemes of marriage. But, alas, all this was not to be.
Mr. Harding slowly folded the letter, handed it back to her, kissed her forehead, and bade God bless her. He then crept slowly away to his own room.
As soon as he had left the passage, another knock was given at Eleanor’s door, and Mrs. Grantly’s very demure own maid, entering on tiptoe, wanted to know would Mrs. Bold be so kind as to speak to the archdeacon for two minutes in the archdeacon’s study, if not disagreeable. The archdeacon’s compliments, and he wouldn’t detain her two minutes.
Eleanor thought it was very disagreeable; she was tired and fagged and sick at heart; her present feelings towards Dr. Grantly were anything but those of affection. She was, however, no coward, and therefore promised to be in the study in five minutes. So she arranged her hair, tied on her cap, and went down with a palpitating heart.
There are people who delight in serious interviews, especially when to them appertains the part of offering advice or administering rebuke, and perhaps the archdeacon was one of these. Yet on this occasion he did not prepare himself for the coming conversation with much anticipation of pleasure. Whatever might be his faults he was not an inhospitable man, and he almost felt that he was sinning against hospitality in upbraiding Eleanor in his own house. Then, also, he was not quite sure that he would get the best of it. His wife had told him that he decidedly would not, and he usually gave credit to what his wife said. He was, however, so convinced of what he considered to be the impropriety of Eleanor’s conduct, and so assured also of his own duty in trying to check it, that his conscience would not allow him to take his wife’s advice and go to bed quietly.
Eleanor’s face as she entered the room was not such as to reassure him. As a rule she was always mild in manner and gentle in conduct; but there was that in her eye which made it not an easy task to scold her. In truth she had been little used to scolding. No one since her childhood had tried it but the archdeacon, and he had generally failed when he did try it. He had never done so since her marriage; and now, when he saw her quiet, easy step as she entered his room, he almost wished that he had taken his wife’s advice.
He began by apologizing for the trouble he was giving her. She begged him not to mention it, assured him that walking downstairs was no trouble to her at all, and then took a seat and waited patiently for him to begin his attack.
“My dear Eleanor,” he said, “I hope you believe me when I assure you that you have no sincerer friend than I am.” To this Eleanor answered nothing, and therefore he proceeded. “If you had a brother of your own, I should not probably trouble you with what I am going to say. But as it is I cannot but think that it must be a comfort to you to know that you have near you one who is as anxious for your welfare as any brother of your own could be.”
“I never had a brother,” said she.
“I know you never had, and it is therefore that I speak to you.”
“I never had a brother,” she repeated, “but I have hardly felt the want. Papa has been to me both father and brother.”
“Your father is the fondest and most affectionate of men. But—”
“He is—the fondest and most affectionate of men, and the best of counsellors. While he lives I can never want advice.”
This rather put the archdeacon out. He could not exactly contradict what his sister-in-law said about her father, and yet he did not at all agree with her. He wanted her to understand that he tendered his assistance because her father was a soft, goodnatured gentleman not sufficiently knowing in the ways of the world; but he could not say this to her. So he had to rush into the subject-matter of his proffered counsel without any acknowledgement on her part that she could need it, or would be grateful for it.
“Susan tells me that you received a letter this evening from Mr. Slope.”
“Yes; Papa brought it in the brougham. Did he not tell you?”
“And Susan says that you objected to let her know what it was about.”
“I don’t think she asked me. But had she done so, I should not have told her. I don’t think it nice to be asked about one’s letters. If one wishes to show them, one does so without being asked.”
“True. Quite so. What you say is quite true. But is not the fact of your receiving letters from Mr. Slope, which you do not wish to show to your friends, a circumstance which must excite some—some surprise—some suspicion—”
“Suspicion!” said she, not speaking above her usual voice, speaking still in a soft, womanly tone but yet with indignation. “Suspicion! And who suspects me, and of what?” And then there was a pause, for the archdeacon was not quite ready to explain the ground of his suspicion. “No, Dr. Grantly, I did not choose to show Mr. Slope’s letter to Susan. I could not show it to anyone till Papa had seen it. If you have any wish to read it now, you can do so,” and she handed the letter to him over the table.
This was an amount of compliance which he had not at all expected, and which rather upset him in his tactics. However, he took the letter, perused it carefully, and then refolding it, kept it on the table under his hand. To him it appeared to be in almost every respect the letter of a declared lover; it seemed to corroborate his worst suspicions; and the fact of Eleanor’s showing it to him was all but tantamount to a declaration on her part that it was her pleasure to receive love-letters from Mr. Slope. He almost entirely overlooked the real subject-matter of the epistle, so intent was he on the forthcoming courtship and marriage.
“I’ll thank you to give it me back, if you please, Dr. Grantly.”
He took it in his hand and held it up, but made no immediate overture to return it. “And Mr. Harding has seen this?” said he.
“Of course he has,” said she; “it was written that he might see it. It refers solely to his business—of course I showed it to him.”
“And, Eleanor, do you think that that is a proper letter for you—for a person in your condition—to receive from Mr. Slope?”
“Quite a proper letter,” said she, speaking, perhaps, a little out of obstinacy, probably forgetting at the moment the objectionable mention of her silken curls.
“Then, Eleanor, it is my duty to tell you that I wholly differ from you.”
“So I suppose,” said she, instigated now by sheer opposition and determination not to succumb. “You think Mr. Slope is a messenger direct from Satan. I think he is an industrious, well-meaning clergyman. It’s a pity that we differ as we do. But, as we do differ, we had probably better not talk about it.”
Here Eleanor undoubtedly put herself in the wrong. She might probably have refused to talk to Dr. Grantly on the matter in dispute without any impropriety, but, having consented to listen to him, she had no business to tell him that he regarded Mr. Slope as an emissary from the evil one; nor was she justified in praising Mr. Slope, seeing that in her heart of hearts she did not think well of him. She was, however, wounded in spirit, and angry, and bitter. She had been subjected to contumely and cross-questioning and ill-usage through the whole evening. No one, not even Mr. Arabin, not even her father, had been kind to her. All this she attributed to the prejudice and conceit of the archdeacon, and therefore she resolved to set no bounds to her antagonism to him. She would neither give nor take quarter. He had greatly presumed in daring to question her about her correspondence, and she was determined to show that she thought so.
“Eleanor, you are forgetting yourself,” said he, looking very sternly at her. “Otherwise you would never tell me that I conceive any man to be a messenger from Satan.”
“But you do,” said she. “Nothing is too bad for him. Give me that letter, if you please;” and she stretched out her hand and took it from him. “He has been doing his best to serve Papa, doing more than any of Papa’s friends could do; and yet, because he is the chaplain of a bishop whom you don’t like, you speak of him as though he had no right to the usage of a gentleman.”
“He has done nothing for your father.”
“I believe that he has done a great deal; and, as far as I am concerned, I am grateful to him. Nothing that you can say can prevent my being so. I judge people by their acts, and his, as far as I can see them, are good.” She then paused for a moment. “If you have nothing further to say, I shall be obliged by being permitted to say good night—I am very tired.”
Dr. Grantly had, as he thought, done his best to be gracious to his sister-in-law. He had endeavoured not to be harsh to her, and had striven to pluck the sting from his rebuke. But he did not intend that she should leave him without hearing him.
“I have something to say, Eleanor, and I fear I must trouble you to hear it. You profess that it is quite proper that you should receive from Mr. Slope such letters as that you have in your hand. Susan and I think very differently. You are, of course, your own mistress, and much as we both must grieve should anything separate you from us, we have no power to prevent you from taking steps which may lead to such a separation. If you are so wilful as to reject the counsel of your friends, you must be allowed to cater for yourself. But, Eleanor, I may at any rate ask you this. Is it worth your while to break away from all those you have loved—from all who love you—for the sake of Mr. Slope?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Dr. Grantly; I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t want to break away from anybody.”
“But you will do so if you connect yourself with Mr. Slope. Eleanor, I must speak out to you. You must choose between your sister and myself and our friends, and Mr. Slope and his friends. I say nothing of your father, as you may probably understand his feelings better than I do.”
“What do you mean, Dr. Grantly? What am I to understand? I never heard such wicked prejudice in my life.”
“It is no prejudice, Eleanor. I have known the world longer than you have done. Mr. Slope is altogether beneath you. You ought to know and feel that he is so. Pray—pray think of this before it is too late.”
“Too late!”
“Or if you will not believe me, ask Susan; you cannot think she is prejudiced against you. Or even consult your father—he is not prejudiced against you. Ask Mr. Arabin—”
“You haven’t spoken to Mr. Arabin about this!” said she, jumping up and standing before him.
“Eleanor, all the world in and about Barchester will be speaking of it soon.”
“But have you spoken to Mr. Arabin about me and Mr. Slope?”
“Certainly I have, and he quite agrees with me.”
“Agrees with what?” said she. “I think you are trying to drive me mad.”
“He agrees with me and Susan that it is quite impossible you should be received at Plumstead as Mrs. Slope.”
Not being favourites with the tragic muse, we do not dare to attempt any description of Eleanor’s face when she first heard the name of Mrs. Slope pronounced as that which would or should or might at some time appertain to herself. The look, such as it was, Dr. Grantly did not soon forget. For a moment or two she could find no words to express her deep anger and deep disgust; indeed, at this conjuncture, words did not come to her very freely.
“How dare you be so impertinent?” at last she said, and then she hurried out of the room without giving the archdeacon the opportunity of uttering another word. It was with difficulty she contained herself till she reached her own room; and then, locking the door, she threw herself on her bed and sobbed as though her heart would break.
But even yet she had no conception of the truth. She had no idea that her father and her sister had for days past conceived in sober earnest the idea that she was going to marry this man. She did not even then believe that the archdeacon thought that she would do so. By some manoeuvre of her brain she attributed the origin of the accusation to Mr. Arabin, and as she did so her anger against him was excessive, and the vexation of her spirit almost unendurable. She could not bring herself to think that the charge was made seriously. It appeared to her most probable that the archdeacon and Mr. Arabin had talked over her objectionable acquaintance with Mr. Slope; that Mr. Arabin in his jeering, sarcastic way had suggested the odious match as being the severest way of treating with contumely her acquaintance with his enemy; and that the archdeacon, taking the idea from him, thought proper to punish her by the allusion. The whole night she lay awake thinking of what had been said, and this appeared to be the most probable solution.
But the reflexion that Mr. Arabin should have in any way mentioned her name in connexion with that of Mr. Slope was overpowering; and the spiteful illnature of the archdeacon in repeating the charge to her made her wish to leave his house almost before the day had broken. One thing was certain: nothing should make her stay there beyond the following morning, and nothing should make her sit down to breakfast in company with Dr. Grantly. When she thought of the man whose name had been linked with her own, she cried from sheer disgust. It was only because she would be thus disgusted, thus pained and shocked and cut to the quick, that the archdeacon had spoken the horrid word. He wanted to make her quarrel with Mr. Slope, and therefore he had outraged her by his abominable vulgarity. She determined that at any rate he should know that she appreciated it.
Nor was the archdeacon a bit better satisfied with the result of his serious interview than was Eleanor. He gathered from it, as indeed he could hardly fail to do, that she was very angry with him, but he thought that she was thus angry, not because she was suspected of an intention to marry Mr. Slope, but because such an intention was imputed to her as a crime. Dr. Grantly regarded this supposed union with disgust, but it never occurred to him that Eleanor was outraged because she looked at it exactly in the same light.
He returned to his wife, vexed and somewhat disconsolate, but nevertheless confirmed in his wrath against his sister-in-law. “Her whole behaviour,” said he, “has been most objectionable. She handed me his love-letter to read as though she were proud of it. And she is proud of it. She is proud of having this slavering, greedy man at her feet. She will throw herself and John Bold’s money into his lap; she will ruin her boy, disgrace her father and you, and be a wretched miserable woman.”
His spouse, who was sitting at her toilet-table, continued her avocations, making no answer to all this. She had known that the archdeacon would gain nothing by interfering, but she was too charitable to provoke him by saying so while he was in such deep sorrow.
“This comes of a man making such a will as that of Bold’s,” he continued. “Eleanor is no more fitted to be trusted with such an amount of money in her own hands than is a charity-school girl.” Still Mrs. Grantly made no reply. “But I have done my duty; I can do nothing further. I have told her plainly that she cannot be allowed to form a link of connexion between me and that man. From henceforward it will not be in my power to make her welcome at Plumstead. I cannot have Mr. Slope’s love-letters coming here. Susan, I think you had better let her understand that, as her mind on this subject seems to be irrevocably fixed, it will be better for all parties that she should return to Barchester.”
Now Mrs. Grantly was angry with Eleanor—nearly as angry as her husband—but she had no idea of turning her sister out of the house. She therefore at length spoke out and explained to the archdeacon in her own mild, seducing way that he was fuming and fussing and fretting himself very unnecessarily. She declared that things, if left alone, would arrange themselves much better than he could arrange them, and at last succeeded in inducing him to go to bed in a somewhat less inhospitable state of mind.
On the following morning Eleanor’s maid was commissioned to send word into the dining-room that her mistress was not well enough to attend prayers and that she would breakfast in her own room. Here she was visited by her father, and declared to him her intention of returning immediately to Barchester. He was hardly surprised by the announcement. All the household seemed to be aware that something had gone wrong. Everyone walked about with subdued feet, and people’s shoes seemed to creak more than usual. There was a look of conscious intelligence on the faces of the women, and the men attempted, but in vain, to converse as though nothing were the matter. All this had weighed heavily on the heart of Mr. Harding, and when Eleanor told him that her immediate return to Barchester was a necessity, he merely sighed piteously and said that he would be ready to accompany her.
But here she objected strenuously. She had a great wish, she said, to go alone; a great desire that it might be seen that her father was not implicated in her quarrel with Dr. Grantly. To this at last he gave way; but not a word passed between them about Mr. Slope—not a word was said, not a question asked as to the serious interview on the preceding evening. There was, indeed, very little confidence between them, though neither of them knew why it should be so. Eleanor once asked him whether he would not call upon the bishop, but he answered rather tartly that he did not know—he did not think he should, but he could not say just at present. And so they parted. Each was miserably anxious for some show of affection, for some return of confidence, for some sign of the feeling that usually bound them together. But none was given. The father could not bring himself to question his daughter about her supposed lover, and the daughter would not sully her mouth by repeating the odious word with which Dr. Grantly had roused her wrath. And so they parted.
There was some trouble in arranging the method of Eleanor’s return. She begged her father to send for a postchaise, but when Mrs. Grantly heard of this, she objected strongly. If Eleanor would go away in dudgeon with the archdeacon, why should she let all the servants and all the neighbourhood know that she had done so? So at last Eleanor consented to make use of the Plumstead carriage, and as the archdeacon had gone out immediately after breakfast and was not to return till dinnertime, she also consented to postpone her journey till after lunch, and to join the family at that time. As to the subject of the quarrel not a word was said by anyone. The affair of the carriage was arranged by Mr. Harding, who acted as Mercury between the two ladies; they, when they met, kissed each other very lovingly and then sat down each to her crochet work as though nothing was amiss in all the world.