CHAPTER XXV

       Fourteen Arguments in Favour of Mr. Quiverful’s Claims

      Table of Contents

      We have most of us heard of the terrible anger of a lioness when, surrounded by her cubs, she guards her prey. Few of us wish to disturb the mother of a litter of puppies when mouthing a bone in the midst of her young family. Medea and her children are familiar to us, and so is the grief of Constance. Mrs. Quiverful, when she first heard from her husband the news which he had to impart, felt within her bosom all the rage of the lioness, the rapacity of the hound, the fury of the tragic queen, and the deep despair of the bereaved mother.

      Doubting, but yet hardly fearing, what might have been the tenor of Mr. Slope’s discourse, she rushed back to her husband as soon as the front door was closed behind the visitor. It was well for Mr. Slope that he so escaped — the anger of such a woman, at such a moment, would have cowed even him. As a general rule, it is highly desirable that ladies should keep their temper: a woman when she storms always makes herself ugly, and usually ridiculous also. There is nothing so odious to man as a virago. Though Theseus loved an Amazon, he showed his love but roughly, and from the time of Theseus downward, no man ever wished to have his wife remarkable rather for forward prowess than retiring gentleness. A low voice “is an excellent thing in woman.”

      Such may be laid down as a very general rule; and few women should allow themselves to deviate from it, and then only on rare occasions. But if there be a time when a woman may let her hair to the winds, when she may loose her arms, and scream out trumpet-tongued to the ears of men, it is when nature calls out within her not for her own wants, but for the wants of those whom her womb has borne, whom her breasts have suckled, for those who look to her for their daily bread as naturally as man looks to his Creator.

      There was nothing poetic in the nature of Mrs. Quiverful. She was neither a Medea nor a Constance. When angry, she spoke out her anger in plain words and in a tone which might have been modulated with advantage; but she did so, at any rate, without affectation. Now, without knowing it, she rose to a tragic vein.

      “Well, my dear, we are not to have it.” Such were the words with which her ears were greeted when she entered the parlour, still hot from the kitchen fire. And the face of her husband spoke even more plainly than his words:

      E’en such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night.

      “What!” said she — and Mrs. Siddons could not have put more passion into a single syllable —“What! Not have it? Who says so?” And she sat opposite to her husband, with her elbows on the table, her hands clasped together, and her coarse, solid, but once handsome face stretched over it towards him.

      She sat as silent as death while he told his story, and very dreadful to him her silence was. He told it very lamely and badly but still in such a manner that she soon understood the whole of it.

      “And so you have resigned it?” said she.

      I have had no opportunity of accepting it,” he replied. “I had no witnesses to Mr. Slope’s offer, even if that offer would bind the bishop. It was better for me, on the whole, to keep on good terms with such men than to fight for what I should never get!”

      “Witnesses!” she screamed, rising quickly to her feet and walking up and down the room. “Do clergymen require witnesses to their words? He made the promise in the bishop’s name, and if it is to be broken, I’ll know the reason why. Did he not positively say that the bishop had sent him to offer you the place?”

      “He did, my dear. But that is now nothing to the purpose.”

      “It is everything to the purpose, Mr. Quiverful. Witnesses indeed! And then to talk of your honour being questioned because you wish to provide for fourteen children. It is everything to the purpose; and so they shall know, if I scream it into their ears from the town cross of Barchester.”

      “You forget, Letitia, that the bishop has so many things in his gift. We must wait a little longer. That is all.”

      “Wait! Shall we feed the children by waiting? Will waiting put George, and Tom, and Sam out into the world? Will it enable my poor girls to give up some of their drudgery? Will waiting make Bessy and Jane fit even to be governesses? Will waiting pay for the things we got in Barchester last week?”

      “It is all we can do, my dear. The disappointment is as much to me as to you; and yet, God knows, I feel it more for your sake than my own.”

      Mrs. Quiverful was looking full into her husband’s face, and saw a small hot tear appear on each of those furrowed cheeks. This was too much for her woman’s heart. He also had risen, and was standing with his back to the empty grate. She rushed towards him and, seizing him in her arms, sobbed aloud upon his bosom.

      “You are too good, too soft, too yielding,” she said at last. “These men, when they want you, they use you like a cat’s paw; and when they want you no longer, they throw you aside like an old shoe. This is twice they have treated you so.”

      “In one way this will be all for the better,” argued he. “It will make the bishop feel that he is bound to do something for me.”

      “At any rate he shall hear of it,” said the lady, again reverting to her more angry mood. “At any rate he shall hear of it, and that loudly, and so shall she. She little knows Letitia Quiverful, if she thinks I will sit down quietly with the loss after all that passed between us at the palace. If there’s any feeling within her, I’ll make her ashamed of herself”— and she paced the room again, stamping the floor as she went with her fat, heavy foot. “Good heavens! What a heart she must have within her to treat in such a way as this the father of fourteen unprovided children!”

      Mr. Quiverful proceeded to explain that he didn’t think that Mrs. Proudie had had anything to do with it.

      “Don’t tell me,” said Mrs. Quiverful; “I know more about it than that. Doesn’t all the world know that Mrs. Proudie is bishop of Barchester and that Mr. Slope is merely her creature? Wasn’t it she that made me the promise, just as though the thing was in her own particular gift? I tell you, it was that woman who sent him over here today, because, for some reason of her own, she wants to go back from her word.”

      “My dear, you’re wrong —”

      “Now, Q., don’t be so soft,” she continued. “Take my word for it, the bishop knows no more about it than Jemima does.” Jemima was the two-year-old. “And if you’ll take my advice, you’ll lose no time in going over and seeing him yourself.”

      Soft, however, as Mr. Quiverful might be, he would not allow himself to be talked out of his opinion on this occasion, and proceeded with much minuteness to explain to his wife the tone in which Mr. Slope had spoken of Mrs. Proudie’s interference in diocesan matters. As he did so, a new idea gradually instilled itself into the matron’s head, and a new course of conduct presented itself to her judgement. What if, after all, Mrs. Proudie knew nothing of this visit of Mr. Slope’s? In that case, might it not be possible that that lady would still be staunch to her in this matter, still stand her friend, and, perhaps, possibly carry her through in opposition to Mr. Slope? Mrs. Quiverful said nothing as this vague hope occurred to her but listened with more than ordinary patience to what her husband had to say. While he was still explaining that in all probability the world was wrong in its estimation of Mrs. Proudie’s power and authority, she had fully made up her mind as to her course of action. She did not, however, proclaim her intention. She shook her head ominously as he continued his narration, and when he had completed, she rose to go, merely observing that it was cruel, cruel treatment. She then asked him if he would mind waiting for a late dinner instead of dining at their usual hour of three, and, having received from him a concession on this point, she proceeded to carry