THE CHRONICLES OF BARSETSHIRE (Complete Collection). Anthony Trollope
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is time that I should return.”
“Well, pleasant hours and pleasant days must come to an end. It is a pity that so few of them are pleasant; or perhaps, rather —”
“It is a pity, certainly, that men and women do so much to destroy the pleasantness of their days,” said she, interrupting him. “It is a pity that there should be so little charity abroad.”
“Charity should begin at home,” said he, and he was proceeding to explain that he as a clergyman could not be what she would call charitable at the expense of those principles which he considered it his duty to teach when he remembered that it would be worse than vain to argue on such a matter with the future wife of Mr. Slope. “But you are just leaving us,” he continued, “and I will not weary your last hour with another lecture. As it is, I fear I have given you too many.”
“You should practise as well as preach, Mr. Arabin.”
“Undoubtedly I should. So should we all. All of us who presume to teach are bound to do our utmost towards fulfilling our own lessons. I thoroughly allow my deficiency in doing so, but I do not quite know now to what you allude. Have you any special reason for telling me now that I should practise as well as preach?”
Eleanor made no answer. She longed to let him know the cause of her anger, to upbraid him for speaking of her disrespectfully, and then at last to forgive him, and so part friends. She felt that she would be unhappy to leave him in her present frame of mind, but yet she could hardly bring herself to speak to him of Mr. Slope. And how could she allude to the innuendo thrown out by the archdeacon, and thrown out, as she believed, at the instigation of Mr. Arabin? She wanted to make him know that he was wrong, to make him aware that he had ill-treated her, in order that the sweetness of her forgiveness might be enhanced. She felt that she liked him too well to be contented to part with him in displeasure, yet she could not get over her deep displeasure without some explanation, some acknowledgement on his part, some assurance that he would never again so sin against her.
“Why do you tell me that I should practise what I preach?” continued he.
“All men should do so.”
“Certainly. That is as it were understood and acknowledged. But you do not say so to all men, or to all clergymen. The advice, good as it is, is not given except in allusion to some special deficiency. If you will tell me my special deficiency, I will endeavour to profit by the advice.”
She paused for awhile and then, looking full in his face, she said, “You are not bold enough, Mr. Arabin, to speak out to me openly and plainly, and yet you expect me, a woman, to speak openly to you. Why did you speak calumny of me to Dr. Grantly behind my back?”
“Calumny!” said he, and his whole face became suffused with blood. “What calumny? If I have spoken calumny of you, I will beg your pardon, and his to whom I spoke it, and God’s pardon also. But what calumny have I spoken of you to Dr. Grantly?”
She also blushed deeply. She could not bring herself to ask him whether he had not spoken of her as another man’s wife. “You know that best yourself,” said she. “But I ask you as a man of honour, if you have not spoken of me as you would not have spoken of your own sister — or rather I will not ask you,” she continued, finding that he did not immediately answer her. “I will not put you to the necessity of answering such a question. Dr. Grantly has told me what you said.”
“Dr. Grantly certainly asked me for my advice, and I gave it. He asked me —”
“I know he did, Mr. Arabin. He asked you whether he would be doing right to receive me at Plumstead if I continued my acquaintance with a gentleman who happens to be personally disagreeable to yourself and to him.”
“You are mistaken, Mrs. Bold. I have no personal knowledge of Mr. Slope; I never met him in my life.”
“You are not the less individually hostile to him. It is not for me to question the propriety of your enmity, but I had a right to expect that my name should not have been mixed up in your hostilities. This has been done and been done by you in a manner the most injurious and the most distressing to me as a woman. I must confess, Mr. Arabin, that from you I expected a different sort of usage.”
As she spoke she with difficulty restrained her tears — but she did restrain them. Had she given way and sobbed aloud, as in such cases a woman should do, he would have melted at once, implored her pardon, perhaps knelt at her feet ‘ and declared his love. Everything would have been explained, and Eleanor would have gone back to Barchester with a contented mind. How easily would she have forgiven and forgotten the archdeacon’s suspicions had she but heard the whole truth from Mr. Arabin. But then where would have been my novel? She did not cry, and Mr. Arabin did not melt.
“‘You do me an injustice,” said he. “My advice was asked by Dr. Grantly, and I was obliged to give it.”
“Dr. Grantly has been most officious, most impertinent. I have as complete a right to form my acquaintance as he has to form his. What would you have said had I consulted you as to the propriety of my banishing Dr. Grantly from my house because he knows Lord Tattenham Corner? I am sure Lord Tattenham is quite as objectionable an acquaintance for a clergyman as Mr. Slope is for a clergyman’s daughter.”
“I do not know Lord Tattenham Corner.”
“No, but Dr. Grantly does. It is nothing to me if he knows all the young lords on every race-course in England. I shall not interfere with him, nor shall he with me.”
“I am sorry to differ with you, Mrs. Bold, but as you have spoken to me on this matter, and especially as you blame me for what little I said on the subject, I must tell you that I do differ from you. Dr. Grantly’s position as a man in the world gives him a right to choose his own acquaintances, subject to certain influences. If he chooses them badly, those influences will be used. If he consorts with persons unsuitable to him, his bishop will interfere. What the bishop is to Dr. Grantly, Dr. Grantly is to you.”
“I deny it. I utterly deny it,” said Eleanor, jumping from her seat and literally flashing before Mr. Arabin, as she stood on the drawing-room floor. He had never seen her so excited, he had never seen her look half so beautiful.
“I utterly deny it,” said she. “Dr. Grantly has no sort of jurisdiction over me whatsoever. Do you and he forget that I am not altogether alone in the world? Do you forget that I have a father? Dr. Grantly, I believe, always has forgotten it.
“From you, Mr. Arabin,” she continued, “I would have listened to advice because I should have expected it to have been given as one friend may advise another — not as a schoolmaster gives an order to a pupil. I might have differed from you — on this matter I should have done so — but had you spoken to me in your usual manner and with your usual freedom, I should not have been angry. But now — was it manly of you, Mr. Arabin, to speak of me in this way — so disrespectful — so —? I cannot bring myself to repeat what you said. You must understand what I feel. Was it just of you to speak of me in such a way and to advise my sister’s husband to turn me out of my sister’s house because I chose to know a man of whose doctrine you disapprove?”
“I have no alternative left to me, Mrs. Bold,” said he, standing with his back to the fire-place, looking down intently at the carpet pattern, and speaking with a slow, measured voice, “but to tell you plainly what did take place between me and Dr. Grantly.”
“Well,” said she, finding that he paused for a moment.
“I am afraid that what I may say may pain you.”
“It cannot well do so more than what you have already done,” said she.
“Dr. Grantly asked me whether I thought it would be prudent for him to receive you in his house as the wife of Mr. Slope, and I told him that I thought it would be imprudent. Believing it to be utterly impossible that Mr. Slope and —”
“Thank you, Mr. Arabin, that is sufficient. I do not want to know your reasons,” said she, speaking with a terribly calm voice. “I have shown to this gentleman the commonplace civility