Barchester Towers

by Anthony Trollope

  ‘Then, my lord, if I may be allowed to express a wish, I would prefer that no discussion on the subject should take place between us in the presence of a third person.’

  ‘Don’t alarm yourself, Mr Slope,’ said Mrs Proudie, ‘no discussion is at all necessary. The bishop merely intends to express his own wishes.’

  ‘I merely intend, Mr Slope, to express my own wishes – no discussion will be at all necessary,’ said the bishop, reiterating his wife’s words.

  ‘That is more, my lord, than we any of us can be sure of,’ said Mr Slope; ‘I cannot, however, force Mrs Proudie to leave the room; nor can I refuse to remain here if it be your lordship’s wish that I should do so.’

  ‘It is his lordship’s wish, certainly,’ said Mrs Proudie.

  ‘Mr Slope,’ began the bishop, in a solemn, serious voice, ‘it grieves me to have to find fault. It grieves me much to have to find fault with a clergyman; but especially so with a clergyman in your position.’

  ‘Why, what have I done amiss, my lord?’ demanded Mr Slope, boldly.

  ‘What have you done amiss, Mr Slope?’ said Mrs Proudie, standing erect before the culprit, and raising that terrible fore-finger. ‘Do you dare to ask the bishop what you have done amiss? does not your conscience –’

  ‘Mrs Proudie, pray let it be understood, once for all, that I will have no words with you.’

  ‘Ah, sir, but you will have words,’ said she; ‘you must have words. Why have you had so many words with that Signora Neroni? Why have you disgraced yourself, you a clergyman, too, by constantly consorting with such a woman as that – with a married woman – with one altogether unfit for a clergyman’s society?’

  ‘At any rate, I was introduced to her in your drawing-room,’ retorted Mr Slope.

  ‘And shamefully you behaved there,’ said Mrs Proudie; ‘most shamefully. I was wrong to allow you to remain in the house a day after what I then saw. I should have insisted on your instant dismissal.’

  ‘I have yet to learn, Mrs Proudie, that you have the power to insist either on my going from hence or on my staying here.’

  ‘What!’ said the lady; ‘I am not to have the privilege of saying who shall and who shall not frequent my own drawing-room! I am not to save my servants and dependants from having their morals corrupted by improper conduct! I am not to save my own daughters from impurity! I will let you see, Mr Slope, whether I have the power or whether I have not. You will have the goodness to understand that you no longer fill any situation about the bishop; and as your room will be immediately wanted in the palace for another chaplain, I must ask you to provide yourself with apartments as soon as may be convenient to you.’

  ‘My lord,’ said Mr Slope, appealing to the bishop, and so turning his back completely on the lady, ‘will you permit me to ask that I may have from your own lips any decision that you may have come to on this matter?’

  ‘Certainly. Mr Slope, certainly,’ said the bishop; ‘that is but reasonable. Well, my decision is that you had better look for some other preferment. For the situation which you have lately held I do not think that you are well suited.’

  ‘And what, my lord, has been my fault?’

  ‘That Signora Neroni is one fault,’ said Mrs Proudie; ‘and a very abominable fault she is; very abominable and very disgraceful. Fie, Mr Slope, fiel You an evangelical clergyman indeed!’

  ‘My lord, I desire to know for what fault I am turned out of your lordship’s house.’

  ‘You hear what Mrs Proudie says,’ said the bishop.

  ‘When I publish the history of this transaction, my lord, as I decidedly shall do in my own vindication, I presume you will not wish me to state that you have discarded me at your wife’s bidding – because she has objected to my being acquainted with another lady, the daughter of one of the prebendaries of the chapter?’

  ‘You may publish what you please, sir,’ said Mrs Proudie. ‘But you will not be insane enough to publish any of your doings in Barchester. Do you think I have not heard of your kneelings at that creature’s feet – that is, if she has any feet – and of your constant slobbering over her hand? I advise you to beware, Mr Slope, of what you do and say. Clergymen have been unfrocked for less than what you have been guilty of.’

  ‘My lord, if this goes on I shall be obliged to indict this woman – Mrs Proudie I mean – for defamation of character.’

  ‘I think, Mr Slope, you had better now retire,’ said the bishop. ‘I will enclose to you a cheque for any balance that may be due to you; and, under the present circumstances, it will of course be better for all parties that you should leave the palace at the earliest possible moment I will allow you for your journey back to London, and for your maintenance in Barchester for a week from this date.’

  ‘If, however, you wish to remain in this neighbourhood,’ said Mrs Proudie, ‘and will solemnly pledge yourself never again to see that woman, and will promise also to be more circumspect in your conduct, the bishop will mention your name to Mr Quiverful, who now wants a curate at Puddingdale. The house is, I imagine, quite sufficient for your requirements; and there will moreover be a stipend of fifty pounds a year.’

  ‘May God forgive you, madam, for the manner in which you have treated me,’ said Mr Slope, looking at her with a very heavenly look; ‘and remember this, madam, that you yourself may still have a fall’; and he looked at her with a very worldly look. ‘As to the bishop, I pity him!’ And so saying, Mr Slope left the room. Thus ended the intimacy of the Bishop of Barchester with his first confidential chaplain.

  Mrs Proudie was right in this; namely, that Mr Slope was not insane enough to publish to the world any of his doings in Barchester. He did not trouble his friend Mr Towers with any written statement of the iniquity of Mrs Proudie, or the imbecility of her husband. He was aware that it would be wise in him to drop for the future all allusion to his doings in the cathedral city. Soon after the interview just recorded he left Barchester, shaking the dust off his feet as he entered the railway carriage; and he gave no longing, lingering look after the cathedral towers, as the train hurried him quickly out of their sight.

  It is well known that the family of the Slopes never starve: they always fall on their feet like cats, and let them fall where they will, they live on the fat of the land. Our Mr Slope did so. On his return to town he found that the sugar-refiner had died, and that his widow was inconsolable; or, in other words, in want of consolation. Mr Slope consoled her, and soon found himself settled with much comfort in the house in Baker Street. He possessed himself, also, before long, of a church in the vicinity of the New Road, and became known to fame as one of the most eloquent preachers and pious clergymen in that part of the metropolis. There let us leave him.

  Of the bishop and his wife very little further need be said. From that time forth nothing material occurred to interrupt the even course of their domestic harmony. Very speedily, a further vacancy on the bench of bishops gave to Dr Proudie the seat in the House of Lords, which he at first so anxiously longed for. But by this time he had become a wiser man. He did certainly take his seat, and occasionally registered a vote in favour of government views on ecclesiastical matters. But he had thoroughly learnt that his proper sphere of action lay in close contiguity with Mrs Proudie’s wardrobe. He never again aspired to disobey, or seemed even to wish for autocratic diocesan authority. If ever he thought of freedom, he did so as men think of the millennium, as of a good time which may be coming, but which nobody expects to come in their day. Mrs Proudie might be said still to bloom, and was, at any rate, strong; and the bishop had no reason to apprehend that he would be speedily visited with the sorrows of a widower’s life.

  He is still Bishop of Barchester. He has so graced that throne, that the government has been averse to translate him, even to higher dignities. There may he remain, under safe pupilage, till the newfangled manners of the age have discovered him to be superannuated, and bestowed on him a pension. As for Mrs Proudie, our prayers for her are that she may
live for ever.

  CHAPTER 18

  The New Dean Takes Possession of the Deanery, and the New Warden of the Hospital

  MR HARDING and the archdeacon together made their way to Oxford, and there, by dint of cunning argument, they induced the Master of Lazarus also to ask himself this momentous question: ‘Why should not Mr Arabin be Dean of Barchester?’ He, of course, for a while tried his hand at persuading Mr Harding that he was foolish, over-scrupulous, self-willed, and weak-minded; but he tried in vain. If Mr Harding would not give way to Dr Grantly, it was not likely that he would give way to Dr Gwynne; more especially now that so admirable a scheme as that of inducting Mr Arabin into the deanery had been set on foot. When the master found that his eloquence was vain, and heard also that Mr Arabin was about to become Mr Harding’s son-in-law, he confessed that he also would, under such circumstances, be glad to see his old friend and protégé, the fellow of his college, placed in the comfort-able position that was going a-begging.

  ‘It might be the means you know, Master, of keeping Mr Slope out,’ said the archdeacon with grave caution.

  ‘He has no more chance of it,’ said the master, ‘than our college chaplain. I know more about it than that.’

  Mrs Grantly had been right in her surmise. It was the Master of Lazarus who had been instrumental in representing in high places the claims which Mr Harding had upon the government, and he now consented to use his best endeavours towards getting the offer transferred to Mr Arabin. The three of them went on to London together, and there they remained a week, to the great disgust of Mrs Grantly, and most probably also of Mrs Gwynne. The minister was out of town in one direction, and his private secretary in another. The clerks who remained could do nothing in such a matter as this, and all was difficulty and confusion. The two doctors seemed to have plenty to do; they bustled here and they bustled there, and complained at their club in the evenings that they had been driven off their legs; but Mr Harding had no occupation. Once or twice he suggested that he might perhaps return to Barchester. His request, however, was peremptorily refused, and he had nothing for it but to while away his time in Westminster Abbey.

  At length an answer from the great man came. The Master of Lazarus had made his proposition through the Bishop of Belgravia. Now this bishop, though but newly gifted with his diocesan honours, was a man of much weight in the clerico-political world. He was, if not as pious, at any rate as wise as St Paul, and had been with so much effect all things to all men, that though he was great among the dons of Oxford, he had been selected for the most favourite seat on the bench by a Whig prime minister. To him Dr Gwynne had made known his wishes and his arguments, and the bishop had made them known to the Marquis of Kensington Gore. The marquis, who was Lord High Steward of the Pantry Board, and who by most men was supposed to hold the highest office out of the Cabinet, trafficked much in affairs of this kind. He not only suggested the arrangement to the minister over a cup of coffee, standing on a drawing-room rug in Windsor Castle, but he also favourably mentioned Mr Arabin’s name in the ear of a distinguished person.

  And so the matter was arranged. The answer of the great man came, and Mr Arabin was made Dean of Barchester. The three clergymen who had come up to town on this important mission dined together with great glee on the day on which the news reached them. In a silent, decent, clerical manner, they toasted Mr Arabin with full bumpers of claret. The satisfaction of all of them was supreme. The Master of Lazarus had been successful in his attempt, and success is dear to us all. The archdeacon had trampled upon Mr Slope, and had lifted to high honours the young clergyman whom he had induced to quit the retirement and comfort of the university. So at least the archdeacon thought; though to speak sooth, not he, but circumstances, had trampled on Mr Slope. But the satisfaction of Mr Harding was, of all, perhaps, the most complete. He laid aside his usual melancholy manner, and brought forth little quiet jokes from the inmost mirth of his heart; he poked his fun at the archdeacon about Mr Slope’s marriage, and quizzed him for his improper love for Mrs Proudie. On the following day they all returned to Barchester.

  It was arranged that Mr Arabin should know nothing of what had been done till he received the minister’s letter from the hands of his embryo father-in-law. In order that no time might be lost, a message had been sent to him by the preceding night’s post, begging him to be at the deanery at the hour that the train from London arrived. There was nothing in this which surprised Mr Arabin. It had somehow got about through all Barchester that Mr Harding was the new dean, and all Barchester was prepared to welcome him with peeling bells and full hearts. Mr Slope had certainly had a party; there had certainly been those in Barchester who were prepared to congratulate him on his promotion with assumed sincerity, but even his own party was not broken-hearted by his failure. The inhabitants of the city, even the high-souled ecstatic young ladies of thirty-five, had begun to comprehend that their welfare, and the welfare of the place, was connected in some mysterious manner with daily chants and bi-weekly anthems. The expenditure of the palace had not added much to the popularity of the bishop’s side of the question; and, on the whole, there was a strong reaction. When it became known to all the world that Mr Harding was to be the new dean, all the world rejoiced heartily.

  Mr Arabin, we have said, was not surprised at the summons which called him to the deanery. He had not as yet seen Mr Harding since Eleanor had accepted him, nor had he seen him since he had learnt his future father-in-law’s preferment. There was nothing more natural, more necessary, than that they should meet each other at the earliest possible moment. Mr Arabin was waiting in the deanery parlour when Mr Harding and Dr Grantly were driven up from the station.

  There was some excitement in the bosoms of them all, as they met and shook hands; by far too much to enable either of them to begin his story and tell it in a proper equable style of narrative. Mr Harding was some minutes quite dumbfounded, and Mr Arabin could only talk in short, spasmodic sentences about his love and good fortune. He slipped in, as best he could, some sort of congratulation about the deanship, and then went on with his hopes and fears – hopes that he might be received as a son, and fears that he hardly deserved such good fortune. Then he went back to the dean; it was the most thoroughly satisfactory appointment, he said, of which he had ever heard.

  ‘Butl but! but –’ said Mr Harding; and then failing to get any further, he looked imploringly at the archdeacon.

  ‘The truth is, Arabin,’ said the doctor, ‘that, after all, you are not destined to be son-in-law to a dean. Nor am I either: more’s the pity.’

  Mr Arabin looked at him for explanation. ‘Is not Mr Harding to be the new dean?’

  ‘It appears not,’ said the archdeacon. Mr Arabin’s face fell a little, and he looked from one to the other. It was plainly to be seen from them both that there was no cause of unhappiness in the matter, at least not of unhappiness to them; but there was as yet no elucidation of the mystery.

  ‘Think how old I am,’ said Mr Harding, imploringly.

  ‘Piddlestick!’ said the archdeacon.

  ‘That’s all very well, but it won’t make a young man of me,’ said Mr Harding.

  ‘And who is to be dean?’ asked Mr Arabin.

  ‘Yes, that’s the question,’ said the archdeacon. ‘Come, Mr Precentor, since you obstinately refuse to be anything else, let us know who is to be the man. He has got the nomination in his pocket.’

  With eyes brim full of tears, Mr Harding pulled out the letter and handed it to his future son-in-law. He tried to make a little speech, but failed altogether. Having given up the document, he turned round to the wall, feigning to blow his nose, and then sat himself down on the old dean’s dingy horse-hair sofa. And here we find it necessary to bring our account of the interview to an end.

  Nor can we pretend to describe the rapture with which Mr Harding was received by his daughter. She wept with grief and wept with joy; with grief that her father should, in his old age, still be without that rank an
d worldly position which, according to her ideas, he had so well earned; and with joy in that he, her darling father, should have bestowed on that other dear one the good things of which he himself would not open his hand to take possession. And here Mr Harding again showed his weakness. In the mêlée of this exposal of their loves and reciprocal affection, he found himself unable to resist the entreaties of all parties that the lodgings in the High Street should be given up. Eleanor would not live in the deanery, she said, unless her father lived there also. Mr Arabin would not be dean, unless Mr Harding would be co-dean with him. The archdeacon declared that his father-in-law should not have his own way in everything, and Mrs Grantly carried him off to Plumstead, that he might remain there till Mr and Mrs Arabin were in a state to receive him in their own mansion.

  Pressed by such arguments as these, what could a weak old man do but yield?

  But there was yet another task which it behoved Mr Harding to do before he could allow himself to be at rest. Little has been said in these pages of the state of those remaining old men who had lived under his sway at the hospital. But not on this account must it be presumed that he had forgotten them, or that in their state of anarchy and in their want of due government he had omitted to visit them. He visited them constantly, and had latterly given them to understand that they would soon be required to subscribe their adherence to a new master. There were now but five of them, one of them having been but quite lately carried to his rest – but five of the full number, which had hitherto been twelve, and which was now to be raised to twenty-four, including women. Of these old Bunce, who for many years had been the favourite of the late warden, was one; and Abel Handy, who had been the humble means of driving that warden from his home was another.

  Mr Harding now resolved that he himself would introduce the new warden to the hospital. He felt that many circumstances might conspire to make the men receive Mr Quiverful with aversion and disrespect; he felt also that Mr Quiverful might himself feel some qualms of conscience if he entered the hospital with an idea that he did so in hostility to his predecessor. Mr Harding therefore determined to walk in, arm in arm with Mr Quiverful, and to ask from these men their respectful obedience to their new master.