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 dépend_," 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."

"Exactly," said Madeline. "She is just one of those English

nonentities who would tie her head up in a bag for three months every

summer, if her mother and her grandmother had tied up their heads

before her. It would never occur to her to think whether there was

any use in submitting to such a nuisance."

"It's very hard in a country like England, for a young woman to set

herself in opposition to prejudices of that sort," said the prudent

Charlotte.

"What you mean is that it's very hard for a fool not to be a fool,"

said Madeline.

Bertie Stanhope had been so much knocked about the world from his

earliest years that he had not retained much respect for the gravity

of English customs; but even to his mind an idea presented itself

that, perhaps in a wife, true British prejudice would not in the long

run be less agreeable than Anglo-Italian freedom from restraint. He

did not exactly say so, but he expressed the idea in another way.

"I fancy," said he, "that if I were to die, and then walk, I should

think that my widow looked better in one of those caps than any other

kind of head-dress."

"Yes--and you'd fancy also that she could do nothing better than shut

herself up and cry for you, or else burn herself. But she would think

differently. She'd probably wear one of those horrid she-helmets,

because she'd want the courage not to do so; but she'd wear it with a

heart longing for the time when she might be allowed to throw it off.

I hate such shallow false pretences. For my part I would let the world

say what it pleased, and show no grief if I felt none--and perhaps

not, if I did."

"But wearing a widow's cap won't lessen her fortune," said Charlotte.

"Or increase it," said Madeline. "Then why on earth does she do it?"

"But Lotte's object is to make her put it off," said Bertie.

"If it be true that she has got twelve hundred a year quite at her

own disposal, and she be not utterly vulgar in her manners, I would

advise you to marry her. I dare say she's to be had for the asking:

and as you are not going to marry her for love, it doesn't much

matter whether she is good-looking or not. As to your really marrying

a woman for love, I don't believe you are fool enough for that."

"Oh, Madeline!" exclaimed her sister.

"And oh, Charlotte!" said the other.

"You don't mean to say that no man can love a woman unless he be a

fool?"

"I mean very much the same thing--that any man who is willing to

sacrifice his interest to get possession of a pretty face is a fool.

Pretty faces are to be had cheaper than that. I hate your mawkish

sentimentality, Lotte. You know as well as I do in what way husbands

and wives generally live together; you know how far the warmth of

conjugal affection can withstand the trial of a bad dinner, of a

rainy day, or of the least privation which poverty brings with it;

you know what freedom a man claims for himself, what slavery he

would exact from his wife if he could! And you know also how wives

generally obey. Marriage means tyranny on one side and deceit on the

other. I say that a man is a fool to sacrifice his interests for

such a bargain. A woman, too generally, has no other way of living."

"But Bertie has no other way of living," said Charlotte.

"Then, in God's name, let him marry Mrs. Bold," said Madeline. And

so it was settled between them.

But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension

whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or

Bertie Stanhope. And here perhaps it may be allowed to the novelist

to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling

tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to

violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers by

maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the

fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this, is

too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius

been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false

hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are

never to be realized? Are not promises all but made of delightful

horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most

commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species

of deceit in this to which the honesty of the present age should lend

no countenance?

And what can be the worth of that solicitude which a peep into the

third volume can utterly dissipate? What the value of those literary

charms which are absolutely destroyed by their enjoyment? When we

have once learnt what was that picture before which was hung Mrs.

Ratcliffe's solemn curtain, we feel no further interest about either

the frame or the veil. They are to us merely a receptacle for old

bones, an inappropriate coffin, which we would wish to have decently

buried out of our sight.

And then how grievous a thing it is to have the pleasure of your

novel destroyed by the ill-considered triumph of a previous reader.

"Oh, you needn't be alarmed for Augusta; of course she accepts

Gustavus in the end." "How very ill-natured you are, Susan," says

Kitty with tears in her eyes: "I don't care a bit about it now."

Dear Kitty, if you will read my book, you may defy the ill-nature of

your sister. There shall be no secret that she can tell you. Nay,

take the third volume if you please--learn from the last pages all

the results of our troubled story, and the story shall have lost none

of its interest, if indeed there be any interest in it to lose.

Our doctrine is that the author and the reader should move along

together in full confidence with each other. Let the personages

of the drama undergo ever so complete a comedy of errors among

themselves, but let the spectator never mistake the Syracusan for

the Ephesian; otherwise he is one of the dupes, and the part of a

dupe is never dignified.

I would not for the value of this chapter have it believed by a

single reader that my Eleanor could bring herself to marry Mr. Slope,

or that she should be sacrificed to a Bertie Stanhope. But among the

good folk of Barchester many believed both the one and the other.