‘No, no, no,’ said Eleanor; ‘pray do not – pray wait till I see you. You will be home in a day or two, and then I will explain to you everything.’
‘I shall be home tomorrow,’ said he.
‘I am so glad,’ said Eleanor. ‘You will come and dine with me, and then we shall be so comfortable.’
Mr Harding promised. He did not exactly know what there was to be explained, or why Dr Grantly’s mind should not be disabused of the mistake into which he had fallen; but nevertheless he promised. He owed some reparation to his daughter, and he thought that he might best make it by obedience.
And thus the people were thinning off by degrees, as Charlotte and Eleanor walked about in quest of Bertie. Their search might have been long, had they not happened to hear his voice. He was comfortably ensconced in the ha-ha, with his back to the sloping side, smoking a cigar, and eagerly engaged in conversation with some youngster from the further side of the county, whom he had never met before, who was also smoking under Bertie’s pupilage, and listening with open ears to an account given by his companion of some of the pastimes of Eastern clime.
‘Bertie, I am seeking you everywhere,’ said Charlotte. ‘Come up here at once.’
Bertie looked up out of the ha-ha, and saw the two ladies before him. As there was nothing for him but to obey, he got up and threw away his cigar. From the first moment of his acquaintance with her he had liked Eleanor Bold. Had he been left to his own devices, had she been penniless, and had it then been quite out of the question that he should marry her, he would most probably have fallen violently in love with her. But now he could not help regarding her somewhat as he did the marble workshops at Carrara, as he had done his easel and palette, as he had done the lawyer’s chambers in London; in fact, as he had invariably regarded everything by which it had been proposed to him to obtain the means of living. Eleanor Bold appeared before him, no longer as a beautiful woman, but as a new profession called matrimony. It was a profession indeed requiring but little labour, and one in which an income was insured to him. But nevertheless he had been as it were goaded on to it; his sister had talked to him of Eleanor, just as she had talked of busts and portraits. Bertie did not dislike money, but he hated the very thought of earning it. He was now called away from his pleasant cigar to earn it, by offering himself as a husband to Mrs Bold. The work indeed was made easy enough; for in lieu of his having to seek the widow, the widow had apparently come to seek him.
He made some sudden absurd excuse to his auditor, and then throwing away his cigar, climbed up the wall of the ha-ha and joined the ladies on the lawn.
‘Come and give Mrs Bold an arm,’ said Charlotte, ‘while I set you on a piece of duty which, as a preux chevalier,2a you must immediately perform. Your personal danger will, I fear, be insignificant, as your antagonist is a clergyman.’
Bertie immediately gave his arm to Eleanor, walking between her and his sister. He had lived too long abroad to fall into the Englishman’s habit of offering each an arm to two ladies at the same time; a habit, by the by, which foreigners regard as an approach to bigamy, or a sort of incipient Mormonism.3a
The little history of Mr Slope’s misconduct was then told to Bertie by his sister, Eleanor’s ears tingling the while. And well they might tingle. If it were necessary to speak of the outrage at all, why should it be spoken of to such a person as Mr Stanhope, and why in her own hearing? She knew she was wrong, and was unhappy and dispirited, and yet she could think of no way to extricate herself, no way to set herself right. Charlotte spared her as much as she possibly could, spoke of the whole thing as though Mr Slope had taken a glass of wine too much, said that of course there would be nothing more about it, but that steps must be taken to exclude Mr Slope from the carriage.
‘Mrs Bold need be under no alarm about that.’ said Bertie, ‘for Mr Slope has gone this hour past. He told me that business made it necessary that he should start at once for Barchester.’
‘He is not so tipsy, at any rate, but what he knows his fault,’ said Charlotte. ‘Well, my dear, that is one difficulty over. Now I’ll leave you with your true knight, and get Madeline off as quickly as I can. The carriage is here, I suppose, Bertie?’
‘It has been here for the last hour.’
‘That’s well. Good-bye, my dear. Of course you’ll come in to tea. I shall trust to you to bring her, Bertie; even by force if necessary.’ And so saying, Charlotte ran off across the lawn, leaving her brother alone with the widow.
As Miss Stanhope went off, Eleanor bethought herself that, as Mr Slope had taken his departure, there no longer existed any necessity for separating Mr Stanhope from his sister Madeline, who so much needed his aid. It had been arranged that he should remain so as to preoccupy Mr Slope’s place in the carriage, and act as a social policeman, to effect the exclusion of that disagreeable gentleman. But Mr Slope had effected his own exclusion, and there was no possible reason now why Bertie should not go with his sister. At least Eleanor saw none, and she said as much.
‘Oh, let Charlotte have her own way,’ said he. ‘She has arranged it, and there will be no end of confusion, if we make another change. Charlotte always arranges everything in our house; and rules us like a despot’
‘But the signora?’ said Eleanor.
‘Oh, the signora can do very well without me. Indeed, she will have to do without me,’ he added, thinking rather of his studies in Carrara, than of his Barchester hymeneals.
‘Why, you are not going to leave us?’ asked Eleanor.
It has been said that Bertie Stanhope was a man without principle. He certainly was so. He had no power of using active mental exertion to keep himself from doing evil. Evil had no ugliness in his eyes; virtue no beauty. He was void of any of those feelings which actuate men to do good. But he was perhaps equally void of those which actuate men to do evil. He got into debt with utter recklessness, thinking nothing as to whether the tradesmen would ever be paid or not. But he did not invent active schemes of deceit for the sake of extracting the goods of others. If a man gave him credit, that was the man’s look-out; Bertie Stanhope troubled himself nothing further. In borrowing money he did the same; he gave people references to ‘his governor’; told them that the ‘old chap’ had a good income; and agreed to pay sixty per cent for the accommodation. AU this he did without a scruple of conscience; but then he never contrived active villainy.
In this affair of his marriage, it had been represented to him as a matter of duty that he ought to put himself in possession of Mrs Bold’s hand and fortune; and at first he had so regarded it. About her he had thought but little. It was the customary thing for men situated as he was to marry for money, and there was no reason why he should not do what others around him did. And so he consented. But now he began to see the matter in another light. He was setting himself down to catch this woman, as a cat sits to catch a mouse. He was to catch her, and swallow her up, her and her child, and her houses and land, in order that he might live on her instead of on his father. There was a cold, calculating, cautious cunning about this quite at variance with Bertie’s character. The prudence of the measure was quite as antagonistic to his feelings as the iniquity.
And then, should he be successful, what would be the reward? Having satisfied his creditors with half of the widow’s fortune, he would be allowed to sit down quietly at Barchester, keeping economical house with the remainder. His duty would be to rock the cradle of the late Mr Bold’s child, and his highest excitement a demure party at Plumstead Rectory, should it ultimately turn out that the archdeacon would be sufficiently reconciled to receive him.
There was very little in the programme to allure such a man as Bertie Stanhope. Would not the Carrara workshop, or whatever worldly career fortune might have in store for him, would not almost anything be better than this? The lady herself was undoubtedly all that was desirable; but the most desirable lady becomes nauseous when she has to be taken as a pill. He was pledged to his sister, however, and let him quarrel wi
th whom he would, it behoved him not to quarrel with her. If she were lost to him all would be lost that he could ever hope to derive henceforward from the paternal roof-tree. His mother was apparently indifferent to his weal or woe, to his wants or his welfare. His father’s brow got blacker and blacker from day to day, as the old man looked at his hopeless son. And as for Madeline – poor Madeline, whom of all of them he liked the best – she had enough to do to shift for herself. No; come what might, he must cling to his sister and obey her behests, let them be ever so stern; or at the very least seem to obey them. Could not some happy deceit bring him through in this matter, so that he might save appearances with his sister, and yet not betray the widow to her ruin? What if he made a confederate of Eleanor? ’Twas in this spirit that Bertie Stanhope set about his wooing.
‘But you are not going to leave Barchester?’ asked Eleanor.
‘I do not know,’ he replied; ‘I hardly know yet what I am going to do. But it is at any rate certain that I must do something.’
‘You mean about your profession?’ said she.
‘Yes, about my profession, if you can call it one.’
‘And is it not one?’ said Eleanor. ‘Were I a man, I know none I should prefer to it, except painting. And I believe the one is as much in your power as the other.’
‘Yes, just about equally so,’ said Bertie, with a little touch of inward satire directed at himself. He knew in his heart that he would never make a penny by either.
‘I have often wondered, Mr Stanhope, why you do not exert yourself more,’ said Eleanor, who felt a friendly fondness for the man with whom she was walking. ‘But I know it is very impertinent in me to say so.’
‘Impertinent!’ said he. ‘Not so, but much too kind. It is much too kind in you to take any interest in so idle a scamp.’
‘But you are not a scamp, though you are perhaps idle; and I do take an interest in you; a very great interest,’ she added, in a voice which almost made him resolve to change his mind. ‘And when I call you idle, I know you are only so for the present moment. Why can’t you settle steadily to work here in Barchester?’
‘And make busts of the bishop, dean, and chapter? or perhaps, if I achieve a great success, obtain a commission to put up an elaborate tombstone over a prebendary’s widow, a dead lady with a Grecian nose, a bandeau, and an intricate lace veil; lying of course on a marble sofa, from among the legs of which death will be creeping out and poking at his victim with a small toasting-fork.’
Eleanor laughed; but yet she thought that if the surviving prebendary paid the bill, the object of the artist as a professional man would in a great measure be obtained.
‘I don’t know about the dean and chapter and the prebendary’s widow,’ said Eleanor. ‘Of course you must take them as they come. But the fact of your having a great cathedral in which such ornaments are required, could not but be in your favour.’
‘No real artist could descend to the ornamentation of a cathedral,’ said Bertie, who had his ideas of the high ecstatic ambition of art, as indeed all artists have, who are not in receipt of a good income. ‘Buildings should be fitted to grace the sculpture, not the sculpture to grace the building.’
‘Yes, when the work of art is good enough to merit, it. Do you, Mr Stanhope, do something sufficiently excellent, and we ladies of Barchester will erect for it a fitting receptacle. Come, what shall the subject be?’
‘I’ll put you in your pony-chair, Mrs Bold, as Dannecker4a put Ariadne on her lion. Only you must promise to sit for me.’
‘My ponies are too tame, I fear, and my broad-brimmed straw hat will not look so well in marble as the lace veil of the prebendary’s wife.’
‘If you will not consent to that, Mrs Bold, I will consent to try no other subject in Barchester.’
‘You are determined then to push your fortune in other lands?’
‘I am determined,’ said Bertie, slowly and significantly, as he tried to bring up his mind to a great resolve; ‘I am determined in this matter to be guided wholly by you.’
‘Wholly by me?’ said Eleanor, astonished at, and not quite liking, his altered manner.
‘Wholly by you,’ said Bertie, dropping his companion’s arm, and standing before her on the path. In their walk they had come exactly to the spot in which Eleanor had been provoked into slapping Mr Slope’s face. Could it be possible that this place was peculiarly unpropitious to her comfort? could it be possible that she should here have to encounter yet another amorous swain?
‘If you will be guided by me, Mr Stanhope, you will set yourself down to steady and persevering work, and you will be ruled by your father as to the place in which it will be most advisable for you to do so.’
‘Nothing could be more prudent, if only it were practicable. But now, if you will let me, I will tell you how it is that I will be guided by you, and why. Will you let me tell you?’
‘I really do not know what you can have to tell.’
‘No – you cannot know. It is impossible that you should. But we have been very good friends, Mrs Bold, have we not?’
‘Yes, I think we have,’ said she, observing in his demeanour an earnestness very unusual with him.
‘You were kind enough to say just now that you took an interest in me, and I was perhaps vain enough to believe you.’
‘There is no vanity in that; I do so as your sister’s brother – and as my own friend also.’
‘Well, I don’t deserve that you should feel so kindly towards me,’ said Bertie; ‘but upon my word I am very grateful for it,’ and he paused awhile, hardly knowing how to introduce the subject that he had in hand.
And it was no wonder that he found it difficult. He had to make known to his companion the scheme that had been prepared to rob her of her wealth; he had to tell her that he had intended to marry her without loving her, or else that he loved her without intending to marry her; and he had also to bespeak from her not only his own pardon, but also that of his sister, and induce Mrs Bold to protest in her future communion with Charlotte that an offer had been duly made to her and duly rejected.
Bertie Stanhope was not prone to be very diffident of his own conversational powers, but it did seem to him that he was about to tax them almost too far. He hardly knew where to begin, and he hardly knew where he should end.
By this time Eleanor was again walking on slowly by his side, not taking his arm as she had heretofore done, but listening very intently for whatever Bertie might have to say to her.
‘I wish to be guided by you,’ said he; ‘and indeed, in this matter, there is no one else who can set me right’
‘Oh, that must be nonsense,’ said she.
‘Well, listen to me now, Mrs Bold; and if you can help it, pray don’t be angry with me.’
‘Angry!’ said she.
‘Oh, indeed you will have cause to be so. You know how very much attached to you my sister Charlotte is.’
Eleanor acknowledged that she did.
‘Indeed she is; I never knew her to love anyone so warmly on so short an acquaintance. You know also how well she loves me?’
Eleanor now made no answer, but she felt the blood tingle in her cheek as she gathered from what he said the probable result of this double-barrelled love on the part of Miss Stanhope.
‘I am her only brother, Mrs Bold, and it is not to be wondered at that she should love me. But you do not yet know Charlotte –you do not know how entirely the well-being of our family hangs on her. Without her to manage for us I do not know how we should get on from day to day. You cannot yet have observed all this.’
Eleanor had indeed observed a good deal of this; she did not however now say so, but allowed him to proceed with his story.
‘You cannot therefore be surprised that Charlotte should be most anxious to do the best for us all.’
Eleanor said that she was not at all surprised.
‘And she has had a very difficult game to play, Mrs Bold – a very difficult game. Poor Madeline’s unfortu
nate marriage and terrible accident, my mother’s ill health, my father’s absence from England, and last, and worst perhaps, my own roving, idle spirit have almost been too much for her. You cannot wonder if among all her cares one of the foremost is to see me settled in the world.’
Eleanor on this occasion expressed no acquiescence. She certainly supposed that a formal offer was to be made, and could not but think that so singular an exordium was never before made by a gentleman in a similar position. Mr Slope had annoyed her by the excess of his ardour. It was quite clear that no such danger was to be feared from Mr Stanhope. Prudential motives alone actuated him. Not only was he about to make love because his sister told him; but he also took the precaution of explaining all this before he began. ’Twas thus, we may presume, that the matter presented itself to Mrs Bold.
When he had got so far, Bertie began poking the gravel with a little cane which he carried. He still kept moving on, but very slowly, and his companion moved slowly by his side, not inclined to assist him in the task the performance of which appeared to be difficult to him.
‘Knowing how fond she is of yourself, Mrs Bold, cannot you imagine what scheme should have occurred to her?’
‘I can imagine no better scheme, Mr Stanhope, than the one I proposed to you just now.’
‘No,’ said he, somewhat lackadaisically; ‘I suppose that would be the best; but Charlotte thinks another plan might be joined with it. She wants me to marry you.’
A thousand remembrances flashed across Eleanor’s mind all in a moment – how Charlotte had talked about and praised her brother, how she had continually contrived to throw the two of them together, how she had encouraged all manner of little intimacies, how she had with singular cordiality persisted in treating Eleanor as one of the family. All this had been done to secure her comfortable income for the benefit of one of the family!
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