CHAPTER XLIII

       Mr. and Mrs. Quiverful Are Made Happy Mr. Slope is Encouraged by the Press

      Table of Contents

      Before she started for Ullathorne, Mrs. Proudie, careful soul, caused two letters to be written, one by herself and one by her lord, to the inhabitants of Puddingdale vicarage, which made happy the hearth of those within it.

      As soon as the departure of the horses left the bishop’s stable-groom free for other services, that humble denizen of the diocese started on the bishop’s own pony with the two dispatches. We have had so many letters lately that we will spare ourselves these. That from the bishop was simply a request that Mr. Quiverful would wait upon his lordship the next morning at 11 A.M.; that from the lady was as simply a request that Mrs. Quiverful would do the same by her, though it was couched in somewhat longer and more grandiloquent phraseology.

      It had become a point of conscience with Mrs. Proudie to urge the settlement of this great hospital question. She was resolved that Mr. Quiverful should have it. She was resolved that there should be no more doubt or delay, no more refusals and resignations, no more secret negotiations carried on by Mr. Slope on his own account in opposition to her behests.

      “Bishop,” she said immediately after breakfast on the morning of that eventful day, “have you signed the appointment yet?”

      “No, my dear, not yet; it is not exactly signed as yet.”

      “Then do it,” said the lady.

      The bishop did it, and a very pleasant day indeed he spent at Ullathorne. And when he got home, he had a glass of hot negus in his wife’s sitting-room and read the last number of the Little Dorrit of the day with great inward satisfaction. Oh, husbands, oh, my marital friends, what great comfort is there to be derived from a wife well obeyed!

      Much perturbation and flutter, high expectation and renewed hopes, were occasioned at Puddingdale, by the receipt of these episcopal dispatches. Mrs. Quiverful, whose careful ear caught the sound of the pony’s feet as he trotted up to the vicarage kitchen door, brought them in hurriedly to her husband. She was at the moment concocting the Irish stew destined to satisfy the noonday wants of fourteen young birds, let alone the parent couple. She had taken the letters from the man’s hands between the folds of her capacious apron so as to save them from the contamination of the stew, and in this guise she brought them to her husband’s desk.

      They at once divided the spoil, each taking that addressed to the other. “Quiverful,” said she with impressive voice, “you are to be at the palace at eleven tomorrow.”

      “And so are you, my dear,” said he, almost gasping with the importance of the tidings — and then they exchanged letters.

      “She’d never have sent for me again,” said the lady, “if it wasn’t all right.”

      “Oh, my dear, don’t be too certain,” said the gentleman, “Only think if it should be wrong.”

      “She’d never have sent for me, Q., if it wasn’t all right,” again argued the lady. “She’s stiff and hard and proud as piecrust, but I think she’s right at bottom.” Such was Mrs. Quiverful’s verdict about Mrs. Proudie, to which in after times she always adhered. People when they get their income doubled usually think that those through whose instrumentality this little ceremony is performed are right at bottom.

      “Oh, Letty!” said Mr. Quiverful, rising from his well-worn seat.

      “Oh, Q.!” said Mrs. Quiverful, and then the two, unmindful of the kitchen apron, the greasy fingers, and the adherent Irish stew, threw themselves warmly into each other’s arms.

      “For heaven’s sake, don’t let anyone cajole you out of it again,” said the wife.

      “Let me alone for that,” said the husband with a look of almost fierce determination, pressing his fist as he spoke rigidly on his desk, as though he had Mr. Slope’s head below his knuckles and meant to keep it there.

      “I wonder how soon it will be?” said she.

      “I wonder whether it will be at all?” said he, still doubtful.

      “Well, I won’t say too much,” said the lady. “The cup has slipped twice before, and it may fall altogether this time, but I’ll not believe it. He’ll give you the appointment tomorrow. You’ll find he will.”

      “Heaven send he may,” said Mr. Quiverful solemnly. And who that considers the weight of the burden on this man’s back will say that the prayer was an improper one? There were fourteen of them — fourteen of them living — as Mrs. Quiverful had so powerfully urged in the presence of the bishop’s wife. As long as promotion cometh from any human source, whether north or south, east or west, will not such a claim as this hold good, in spite of all our examination tests, detur digniori’s, and optimist tendencies? It is fervently to be hoped that it may. Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for a change we sink to something lower.

      And then the pair, sitting down lovingly together, talked over all their difficulties, as they so often did, and all their hopes as they so seldom were enabled to do.

      “You had better call on that man, Q., as you come away from the palace,” said Mrs. Quiverful, pointing to an angry call for money from the Barchester draper, which the postman had left at the vicarage that morning. Cormorant that he was, unjust, hungry cormorant! When rumour first got abroad that the Quiverfuls were to go to the hospital, this fellow with fawning eagerness had pressed his goods upon the wants of the poor clergyman. He had done so, feeling that he should be paid from the hospital funds, and flattering himself that a man with fourteen children, and money wherewithal to clothe them, could not but be an excellent customer. As soon as the second rumour reached him, he applied for his money angrily.

      And “the fourteen”— or such of them as were old enough to hope and discuss their hopes — talked over their golden future. The tall grown girls whispered to each other of possible Barchester parties, of possible allowances for dress, of a possible piano — the one they had in the vicarage was so weather-beaten with the storms of years and children as to be no longer worthy of the name — of the pretty garden, and the pretty house. ’Twas of such things it most behoved them to whisper.

      And the younger fry, they did not content themselves with whispers, but shouted to each other of their new playground beneath our dear ex-warden’s well-loved elms, of their future own gardens, of marbles to be procured in the wished-for city, and of the rumour which had reached them of a Barchester school.

      ’Twas in vain that their cautious mother tried to instil into their breasts the very feeling she had striven to banish from that of their father; ’twas in vain that she repeated to the girls that “there’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip;” ’twas in vain she attempted to make the children believe that they were to live at Puddingdale all their lives. Hopes mounted high, and would not have themselves quelled. The neighbouring farmers heard the news and came in to congratulate them. ’Twas Mrs. Quiverful herself who had kindled the fire, and in the first outbreak of her renewed expectations she did it so thoroughly that it was quite past her power to put it out again.

      Poor matron! Good, honest matron, doing thy duty in the state to which thou hast been called,