The Chronicles of Barsetshire (57 page)

Mrs. Proudie was delighted to hear it; nothing, she declared, pleased her so much as to think

Her bairn respectit like the lave.

She did not put it precisely in these words, but what she said came to the same thing; and then, having petted and fondled her little man sufficiently, she proceeded to business.

“The poor dean is still alive,” said she.

“So I hear, so I hear,” said the bishop. “I’ll go to the deanery directly after breakfast to-morrow.”

“We are going to this party at Ullathorne to-morrow morning, my dear; we must be there early, you know—by twelve o’clock I suppose.”

“Oh—ah!” said the bishop; “then I’ll certainly call the next day.”

“Was much said about it at ——?” asked Mrs. Proudie.

“About what?” said the bishop.

“Filling up the dean’s place,” said Mrs. Proudie. As she spoke, a spark of the wonted fire returned to her eye, and the bishop felt himself to be a little less comfortable than before.

“Filling up the dean’s place; that is, if the dean dies? Very little, my dear. It was mentioned, just mentioned.”

“And what did you say about it, Bishop?”

“Why, I said that I thought that if, that is, should—should the dean die, that is, I said I thought—” As he went on stammering and floundering, he saw that his wife’s eye was fixed sternly on him. Why should he encounter such evil for a man whom he loved so slightly as Mr. Slope? Why should he give up his enjoyments and his ease and such dignity as might be allowed to him to fight a losing battle for a chaplain? The chaplain, after all, if successful, would be as great a tyrant as his wife. Why fight at all? Why contend? Why be uneasy? From that moment he determined to fling Mr. Slope to the winds and take the goods the gods provided.

“I am told,” said Mrs. Proudie, speaking very slowly, “that Mr. Slope is looking to be the new dean.”

“Yes—certainly, I believe he is,” said the bishop.

“And what does the archbishop say about that?” asked Mrs. Proudie.

“Well, my dear, to tell the truth, I promised Mr. Slope to speak to the archbishop. Mr. Slope spoke to me about it. It is very arrogant of him, I must say—but that is nothing to me.”

“Arrogant!” said Mrs. Proudie; “it is the most impudent piece of pretension I ever heard of in my life. Mr. Slope Dean of Barchester, indeed! And what did you do in the matter, Bishop?”

“Why, my dear, I did speak to the archbishop.”

“You don’t mean to tell me,” said Mrs. Proudie, “that you are going to make yourself ridiculous by lending your name to such a preposterous attempt as this? Mr. Slope Dean of Barchester, indeed!” And she tossed her head and put her arms a-kimbo with an air of confident defiance that made her husband quite sure that Mr. Slope never would be Dean of Barchester. In truth, Mrs. Proudie was all but invincible; had she married Petruchio, it may be doubted whether that arch wife-tamer would have been able to keep her legs out of those garments which are presumed by men to be peculiarly unfitted for feminine use.

“It is preposterous, my dear.”

“Then why have you endeavoured to assist him?”

“Why—my dear, I haven’t assisted him—much.”

“But why have you done it at all? Why have you mixed your name up in anything so ridiculous? What was it you did say to the archbishop?”

“Why, I just did mention it; I just did say that—that in the event of the poor dean’s death, Mr. Slope would—would—”

“Would what?”

“I forget how I put it—would take it if he could get it; something of that sort. I didn’t say much more than that.”

“You shouldn’t have said anything at all. And what did the archbishop say?”

“He didn’t say anything; he just bowed and rubbed his hands. Somebody else came up at the moment, and as we were discussing the new parochial universal school committee, the matter of the new dean dropped; after that I didn’t think it wise to renew it.”

“Renew it! I am very sorry you ever mentioned it. What will the archbishop think of you?”

“You may be sure, my dear, the archbishop thought very little about it.”

“But why did you think about it, Bishop? How could you think of making such a creature as that Dean of Barchester? Dean of Barchester! I suppose he’ll be looking for a bishopric some of these days—a man that hardly knows who his own father was; a man that I found without bread to his mouth or a coat to his back. Dean of Barchester, indeed! I’ll dean him.”

Mrs. Proudie considered herself to be in politics a pure Whig; all her family belonged to the Whig party. Now, among all ranks of Englishmen and Englishwomen (Mrs. Proudie should, I think, be ranked among the former on the score of her great strength of mind), no one is so hostile to lowly-born pretenders to high station as the pure Whig.

The bishop thought it necessary to exculpate himself. “Why, my dear,” said he, “it appeared to me that you and Mr. Slope did not get on quite so well as you used to do!”

“Get on!” said Mrs. Proudie, moving her foot uneasily on the hearth-rug and compressing her lips in a manner that betokened much danger to the subject of their discourse.

“I began to find that he was objectionable to you”—Mrs. Proudie’s foot worked on the hearth-rug with great rapidity—”and that you would be more comfortable if he was out of the palace”—Mrs. Proudie smiled, as a hyena may probably smile before he begins his laugh—”and therefore I thought that if he got this place, and so ceased to be my chaplain, you might be pleased at such an arrangement.”

And then the hyena laughed out. Pleased at such an arrangement! Pleased at having her enemy converted into a dean with twelve hundred a year! Medea, when she describes the customs of her native country (I am quoting from Robson’s edition), assures her astonished auditor that in her land captives, when taken, are eaten. “You pardon them?” says Medea. “We do indeed,” says the mild Grecian. “We eat them!” says she of Colchis, with terrific energy. Mrs. Proudie was the Medea of Barchester; she had no idea of not eating Mr. Slope. Pardon him! Merely get rid of him! Make a dean of him! It was not so they did with their captives in her country, among people of her sort! Mr. Slope had no such mercy to expect; she would pick him to the very last bone.

“Oh, yes, my dear, of course he’ll cease to be your chaplain,” said she. “After what has passed, that must be a matter of course. I couldn’t for a moment think of living in the same house with such a man. Besides, he has shown himself quite unfit for such a situation; making broils and quarrels among the clergy; getting you, my dear, into scrapes; and taking upon himself as though he were as good as bishop himself. Of course he’ll go. But because he leaves the palace, that is no reason why he should get into the deanery.”

“Oh, of course not!” said the bishop; “but to save appearances, you know, my dear—”

“I don’t want to save appearances; I want Mr. Slope to appear just what he is—a false, designing, mean, intriguing man. I have my eye on him; he little knows what I see. He is misconducting himself in the most disgraceful way with that lame Italian woman. That family is a disgrace to Barchester, and Mr. Slope is a disgrace to Barchester. If he doesn’t look well to it, he’ll have his gown stripped off his back instead of having a dean’s hat on his head. Dean, indeed! The man has gone mad with arrogance.”

The bishop said nothing further to excuse either himself or his chaplain, and having shown himself passive and docile, was again taken into favour. They soon went to dinner, and he spent the pleasantest evening he had had in his own house for a long time. His daughter played and sang to him as he sipped his coffee and read his newspaper, and Mrs. Proudie asked good-natured little questions about the archbishop; and then he went happily to bed and slept as quietly as though Mrs. Proudie had been Griselda herself. While shaving himself in the morning and preparing for the festivities of Ullathorne, he fully resolved to run no more tilts against a warrior so fully armed at all points as was Mrs. Proudie.

CHAPTER 15

Oxford—The Master and Tutor of Lazarus

Mr. Arabin, as we have said, had but a sad walk of it under the trees of Plumstead churchyard. He did not appear to any of the family till dinner-time, and then he seemed, as far as their judgement went, to be quite himself. He had, as was his wont, asked himself a great many questions, and given himself a great many answers; and the upshot of this was that he had sent himself down for an ass. He had determined that he was much too old and much too rusty to commence the manoeuvres of love-making; that he had let the time slip through his hands which should have been used for such purposes; and that now he must lie on his bed as he had made it. Then he asked himself whether in truth he did love this woman; and he answered himself, not without a long struggle, but at last honestly, that he certainly did love her. He then asked himself whether he did not also love her money, and he again answered himself that he did so. But here he did not answer honestly. It was and ever had been his weakness to look for impure motives for his own conduct. No doubt, circumstanced as he was, with a small living and a fellowship, accustomed as he had been to collegiate luxuries and expensive comforts, he might have hesitated to marry a penniless woman had he felt ever so strong a predilection for the woman herself; no doubt Eleanor’s fortune put all such difficulties out of the question; but it was equally without doubt that his love for her had crept upon him without the slightest idea on his part that he could ever benefit his own condition by sharing her wealth.

When he had stood on the hearth-rug, counting the pattern, and counting also the future chances of his own life, the remembrances of Mrs. Bold’s comfortable income had certainly not damped his first assured feeling of love for her. And why should it have done so? Need it have done so with the purest of men? Be that as it may, Mr. Arabin decided against himself; he decided that it had done so in his case, and that he was not the purest of men.

He also decided, which was more to his purpose, that Eleanor did not care a straw for him, and that very probably she did care a straw for his rival. Then he made up his mind not to think of her any more, and went on thinking of her till he was almost in a state to drown himself in the little brook which ran at the bottom of the archdeacon’s grounds.

And ever and again his mind would revert to the Signora Neroni, and he would make comparisons between her and Eleanor Bold, not always in favour of the latter. The signora had listened to him, and flattered him, and believed in him; at least she had told him so. Mrs. Bold had also listened to him, but had never flattered him; had not always believed in him; and now had broken from him in violent rage. The signora, too, was the more lovely woman of the two, and had also the additional attraction of her affliction—for to him it was an attraction.

But he never could have loved the Signora Neroni as he felt that he now loved Eleanor; and so he flung stones into the brook, instead of flinging in himself, and sat down on its margin as sad a gentleman as you shall meet in a summer’s day.

He heard the dinner-bell ring from the churchyard, and he knew that it was time to recover his self-possession. He felt that he was disgracing himself in his own eyes, that he had been idling his time and neglecting the high duties which he had taken upon himself to perform. He should have spent this afternoon among the poor at St. Ewold’s, instead of wandering about at Plumstead, an ancient, love-lorn swain, dejected and sighing, full of imaginary sorrows and Wertherian grief. He was thoroughly ashamed of himself, and determined to lose no time in retrieving his character, so damaged in his own eyes.

Thus when he appeared at dinner he was as animated as ever and was the author of most of the conversation which graced the archdeacon’s board on that evening. Mr. Harding was ill at ease and sick at heart, and did not care to appear more comfortable than he really was; what little he did say was said to his daughter. He thought that the archdeacon and Mr. Arabin had leagued together against Eleanor’s comfort, and his wish now was to break away from the pair, and undergo in his Barchester lodgings whatever Fate had in store for him. He hated the name of the hospital; his attempt to regain his lost inheritance there had brought upon him so much suffering. As far as he was concerned, Mr. Quiverful was now welcome to the place.

And the archdeacon was not very lively. The poor dean’s illness was of course discussed in the first place. Dr. Grantly did not mention Mr. Slope’s name in connexion with the expected event of Dr. Trefoil’s death; he did not wish to say anything about Mr. Slope just at present, nor did he wish to make known his sad surmises; but the idea that his enemy might possibly become Dean of Barchester made him very gloomy. Should such an event take place, such a dire catastrophe come about, there would be an end to his life as far as his life was connected with the city of Barchester. He must give up all his old haunts, all his old habits, and live quietly as a retired rector at Plumstead. It had been a severe trial for him to have Dr. Proudie in the palace, but with Mr. Slope also in the deanery he felt that he should be unable to draw his breath in Barchester close.

Thus it came to pass that in spite of the sorrow at his heart, Mr. Arabin was apparently the gayest of the party. Both Mr. Harding and Mrs. Grantly were in a slight degree angry with him on account of his want of gloom. To the one it appeared as though he were triumphing at Eleanor’s banishment, and to the other that he was not affected as he should have been by all the sad circumstances of the day—Eleanor’s obstinacy, Mr. Slope’s success, and the poor dean’s apoplexy. And so they were all at cross-purposes.

Mr. Harding left the room almost together with the ladies, and then the archdeacon opened his heart to Mr. Arabin. He still harped upon the hospital. “What did that fellow mean,” said he, “by saying in his letter to Mrs. Bold, that if Mr. Harding would call on the bishop, it would be all right? Of course I would not be guided by anything he might say, but still it may be well that Mr. Harding should see the bishop. It would be foolish to let the thing slip through our fingers because Mrs. Bold is determined to make a fool of herself.”

Mr. Arabin hinted that he was not quite so sure that Mrs. Bold would make a fool of herself. He said that he was not convinced that she did regard Mr. Slope so warmly as she was supposed to do. The archdeacon questioned and cross-questioned him about this, but elicited nothing, and at last remained firm in his own conviction that he was destined,
malgré lui
, to be the brother-in-law of Mr. Slope. Mr. Arabin strongly advised that Mr. Harding should take no step regarding the hospital in connexion with, or in consequence of, Mr. Slope’s letter. “If the bishop really means to confer the appointment on Mr. Harding,” argued Mr. Arabin, “he will take care to let him have some other intimation than a message conveyed through a letter to a lady. Were Mr. Harding to present himself at the palace, he might merely be playing Mr. Slope’s game;” and thus it was settled that nothing should be done till the great Dr. Gwynne’s arrival, or at any rate without that potentate’s sanction.

It was droll to observe how these men talked of Mr. Harding as though he were a puppet, and planned their intrigues and small ecclesiastical manoeuvres in reference to Mr. Harding’s future position without dreaming of taking him into their confidence. There was a comfortable house and income in question, and it was very desirable, and certainly very just, that Mr. Harding should have them; but that at present was not the main point; it was expedient to beat the bishop and, if possible, to smash Mr. Slope. Mr. Slope had set up, or was supposed to have set up, a rival candidate. Of all things the most desirable would have been to have had Mr. Quiverful’s appointment published to the public, and then annulled by the clamour of an indignant world, loud in the defence of Mr. Harding’s rights. But of such an event the chance was small; a slight fraction only of the world would be indignant, and that fraction would be one not accustomed to loud speaking. And then the preferment had, in a sort of way, been offered to Mr. Harding and had, in a sort of way, been refused by him.

Mr. Slope’s wicked, cunning hand had been peculiarly conspicuous in the way in which this had been brought to pass, and it was the success of Mr. Slope’s cunning which was so painfully grating to the feelings of the archdeacon. That which of all things he most dreaded was that he should be out-generalled by Mr. Slope; and just at present it appeared probable that Mr. Slope would turn his flank, steal a march on him, cut off his provisions, carry his strong town by a
coup de main
, and at last beat him thoroughly in a regular pitched battle. The archdeacon felt that his flank had been turned when desired to wait on Mr. Slope instead of the bishop, that a march had been stolen when Mr. Harding was induced to refuse the bishop’s offer, that his provisions would be cut off when Mr. Quiverful got the hospital, that Eleanor was the strong town doomed to be taken, and that Mr. Slope, as Dean of Barchester, would be regarded by all the world as conqueror in the final conflict.

Dr. Gwynne was the
Deus ex machina
who was to come down upon the Barchester stage and bring about deliverance from these terrible evils. But how can melodramatic
dénouements
be properly brought about, how can vice and Mr. Slope be punished, and virtue and the archdeacon be rewarded, while the avenging god is laid up with the gout? In the mean time evil may be triumphant, and poor innocence, transfixed to the earth by an arrow from Dr. Proudie’s quiver, may lie dead upon the ground, not to be resuscitated even by Dr. Gwynne.

Two or three days after Eleanor’s departure, Mr. Arabin went to Oxford and soon found himself closeted with the august head of his college. It was quite clear that Dr. Gwynne was not very sanguine as to the effects of his journey to Barchester, and not over-anxious to interfere with the bishop. He had had the gout, but was very nearly convalescent, and Mr. Arabin at once saw that had the mission been one of which the master thoroughly approved, he would before this have been at Plumstead.

As it was, Dr. Gwynne was resolved on visiting his friend, and willingly promised to return to Barchester with Mr. Arabin. He could not bring himself to believe that there was any probability that Mr. Slope would be made Dean of Barchester. Rumour, he said, had reached even his ears, not at all favourable to that gentleman’s character, and he expressed himself strongly of opinion that any such appointment was quite out of the question. At this stage of the proceedings, the master’s right-hand man, Tom Staple, was called in to assist at the conference. Tom Staple was the Tutor of Lazarus and, moreover, a great man at Oxford. Though universally known by a species of nomenclature so very undignified, Tom Staple was one who maintained a high dignity in the university. He was, as it were, the leader of the Oxford tutors, a body of men who consider themselves collectively as being by very little, if at all, second in importance to the heads themselves. It is not always the case that the master, or warden, or provost, or principal can hit it off exactly with his tutor. A tutor is by no means indisposed to have a will of his own. But at Lazarus they were great friends and firm allies at the time of which we are writing.

Tom Staple was a hale, strong man of about forty-five, short in stature, swarthy in face, with strong, sturdy black hair and crisp black beard of which very little was allowed to show itself in shape of whiskers. He always wore a white neckcloth, clean indeed, but not tied with that scrupulous care which now distinguishes some of our younger clergy. He was, of course, always clothed in a seemly suit of solemn black. Mr. Staple was a decent cleanly liver, not over-addicted to any sensuality; but nevertheless a somewhat warmish hue was beginning to adorn his nose, the peculiar effect, as his friends averred, of a certain pipe of port introduced into the cellars of Lazarus the very same year in which the tutor entered it as a freshman. There was also, perhaps, a little redolence of port wine, as it were the slightest possible twang, in Mr. Staple’s voice.

In these latter days Tom Staple was not a happy man; university reform had long been his bugbear, and now was his bane. It was not with him, as with most others, an affair of politics, respecting which, when the need existed, he could, for parties’ sake or on behalf of principle, maintain a certain amount of necessary zeal; it was not with him a subject for dilettante warfare and courteous, commonplace opposition. To him it was life and death. The
status quo
of the university was his only idea of life, and any reformation was as bad to him as death. He would willingly have been a martyr in the cause, had the cause admitted of martyrdom.

At the present day, unfortunately, public affairs will allow of no martyrs, and therefore it is that there is such a deficiency of zeal. Could gentlemen of £10,000 a year have died on their own door-steps in defence of protection, no doubt some half-dozen glorious old baronets would have so fallen, and the school of protection would at this day have been crowded with scholars. Who can fight strenuously in any combat in which there is no danger? Tom Staple would have willingly been impaled before a Committee of the House, could he by such self-sacrifice have infused his own spirit into the component members of the hebdomadal board.

Tom Staple was one of those who in his heart approved of the credit system which had of old been in vogue between the students and tradesmen of the university. He knew and acknowledged to himself that it was useless in these degenerate days publicly to contend with
The Jupiter
on such a subject.
The Jupiter
had undertaken to rule the university, and Tom Staple was well aware that
The Jupiter
was too powerful for him. But in secret, and among his safe companions, he would argue that the system of credit was an ordeal good for young men to undergo.

The bad men, said he, the weak and worthless, blunder into danger and burn their feet; but the good men, they who have any character, they who have that within them which can reflect credit on their Alma Mater, they come through scatheless. What merit will there be to a young man to get through safely, if he be guarded and protected and restrained like a schoolboy? By so doing, the period of the ordeal is only postponed, and the manhood of the man will be deferred from the age of twenty to that of twenty-four. If you bind him with leading-strings at college, he will break loose while eating for the bar in London; bind him there, and he will break loose afterwards, when he is a married man. The wild oats must be sown somewhere. ‘Twas thus that Tom Staple would argue of young men, not, indeed, with much consistency, but still with some practical knowledge of the subject gathered from long experience.