Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope [top business books of all time .txt] 📗

such delight in jeering him. He stood there, therefore, red as a carbuncle and mute as a fish; grinning sufficiently to show his teeth; an object of pity.

But the signora had no pity; she knew nothing of mercy. Her present object was to put Mr. Slope down, and she was determined to do it thoroughly, now that she had him in her power.

“What, Mr. Slope, no answer? Why it can’t possibly be that the woman has been fool enough to refuse you? She can’t surely be looking out after a bishop. But I see how it is, Mr. Slope. Widows are proverbially cautious. You should have let her alone till the new hat was on your head, till you could show her the key of the deanery.”

“Signora,” said he at last, trying to speak in a tone of dignified reproach, “you really permit yourself to talk on solemn subjects in a very improper way.”

“Solemn subjects⁠—what solemn subject? Surely a dean’s hat is not such a solemn subject.”

“I have no aspirations such as those you impute to me. Perhaps you will drop the subject.”

“Oh, certainly, Mr. Slope; but one word first. Go to her again with the prime minister’s letter in your pocket. I’ll wager my shawl to your shovel she does not refuse you then.”

“I must say, signora, that I think you are speaking of the lady in a very unjustifiable manner.”

“And one other piece of advice, Mr. Slope; I’ll only offer you one other;” and then she commenced singing⁠—

It’s gude to be merry and wise, Mr. Slope;
It’s gude to be honest and true;
It’s gude to be off with the old love⁠—Mr. Slope,
Before you are on with the new.

“Ha, ha, ha!”

And the signora, throwing herself back on her sofa, laughed merrily. She little recked how those who heard her would, in their own imaginations, fill up the little history of Mr. Slope’s first love. She little cared that some among them might attribute to her the honour of his earlier admiration. She was tired of Mr. Slope and wanted to get rid of him; she had ground for anger with him, and she chose to be revenged.

How Mr. Slope got out of that room he never himself knew. He did succeed ultimately, and probably with some assistance, in getting his hat and escaping into the air. At last his love for the signora was cured. Whenever he again thought of her in his dreams, it was not as of an angel with azure wings. He connected her rather with fire and brimstone, and though he could still believe her to be a spirit, he banished her entirely out of heaven and found a place for her among the infernal gods. When he weighed in the balance, as he not seldom did, the two women to whom he had attached himself in Barchester, the preeminent place in his soul’s hatred was usually allotted to the signora.

XLVII The Dean Elect

During the entire next week Barchester was ignorant who was to be its new dean. On Sunday morning Mr. Slope was decidedly the favourite, but he did not show himself in the cathedral, and then he sank a point or two in the betting. On Monday he got a scolding from the bishop in the hearing of the servants, and down he went till nobody would have him at any price; but on Tuesday he received a letter, in an official cover, marked private, by which he fully recovered his place in the public favour. On Wednesday he was said to be ill, and that did not look well; but on Thursday morning he went down to the railway station with a very jaunty air; and when it was ascertained that he had taken a first-class ticket for London, there was no longer any room for doubt on the matter.

While matters were in this state of ferment at Barchester, there was not much mental comfort at Plumstead. Our friend the archdeacon had many grounds for inward grief. He was much displeased at the result of Dr. Gwynne’s diplomatic mission to the palace, and did not even scruple to say to his wife that had he gone himself, he would have managed the affair much better. His wife did not agree with him, but that did not mend the matter.

Mr. Quiverful’s appointment to the hospital was, however, a fait accompli, and Mr. Harding’s acquiescence in that appointment was not less so. Nothing would induce Mr. Harding to make a public appeal against the bishop, and the Master of Lazarus quite approved of his not doing so.

“I don’t know what has come to the master,” said the archdeacon over and over again. “He used to be ready enough to stand up for his order.”

“My dear Archdeacon,” Mrs. Grantly would say in reply, “what is the use of always fighting? I really think the master is right.” The master, however, had taken steps of his own of which neither the archdeacon nor his wife knew anything.

Then Mr. Slope’s successes were henbane to Dr. Grantly, and Mrs. Bold’s improprieties were as bad. What would be all the world to Archdeacon Grantly if Mr. Slope should become Dean of Barchester and marry his wife’s sister! He talked of it and talked of it till he was nearly ill. Mrs. Grantly almost wished that the marriage were done and over, so that she might hear no more about it.

And there was yet another ground of misery which cut him to the quick nearly as closely as either of the others. That paragon of a clergyman whom he had bestowed upon St. Ewold’s, that college friend of whom he had boasted so loudly, that ecclesiastical knight before whose lance Mr. Slope was to fall and bite the dust, that worthy bulwark of the church as it should be, that honoured representative of Oxford’s best spirit, was⁠—so at least his wife had told him half a dozen times⁠—misconducting himself!

Nothing had been seen of Mr. Arabin at Plumstead for the last week, but a good deal had, unfortunately, been heard of him. As soon as Mrs. Grantly had