Barchester Towers

A >> Anthony Trollope >> Barchester Towers


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 L1000 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, good-naturedly 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 _soupcon_ 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 note-paper
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 lady-love. 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?"