Barchester Towers

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

"Is Mr. Arabin married, Papa?" asked Griselda.

"No, my dear, the fellow of a college is never married."

"Is he a young man, Papa?"

"About forty, I believe," said the archdeacon.

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

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

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

"Who can't?" asked the ex-warden.

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

"But the bishop has the power to appoint whom he pleases, and--"

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

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

"New duties?" said the archdeacon; "don't I tell you there shall be
no new duties?"

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

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

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

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

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

"I shall be sixty-five if I live till November," said Mr. Harding.

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

"I certainly don't like coming to blows, if I can help it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XV

The Widow's Suitors


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

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

What man as needy as Mr. Quiverful would have been more
disinterested?

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

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

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

"You mean Mrs. Grantly," said Slope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so he slowly rode along, very meditative.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You haven't done much, Bertie, about getting any orders," said his
sister.

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

"Then you mean to give up your profession," said she.

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

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

"How the deuce am I to do it?" said he.

"To tell you the truth, Bertie, you'll never make a penny by any
profession."

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

"How do you mean to live then?" asked the sister.

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

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

"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," said Bertie.

"Will you take my advice?" said his sister.

"_Cela depend_," said the brother.

"Will you marry a wife with money?"

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

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

"Whew-w-w-w!" whistled Bertie, "a widow!"

"She is very beautiful," said Charlotte.

"With a son and heir all ready to my hand," said Bertie.

"A baby that will very likely die," said Charlotte.

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

"There is only one after all," pleaded Charlotte.

"And that a very little one, as the maidservant said," rejoined
Bertie.

"Beggars mustn't be choosers, Bertie; you can't have everything."

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

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

"Well, Madeline, so I'm going to be married," Bertie began as soon as
the servants had withdrawn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Of course she wears a widow's cap, but she'll put that off when
Bertie marries her."

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

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