“Are the arrangements with reference to the Sabbath-day schools generally pretty good in your archdeaconry?” asked Mr. Slope.
“Sabbath-day schools!” repeated the archdeacon with an affectation of surprise. “Upon my word, I can’t tell; it depends mainly on the parson’s wife and daughters. There is none at Plumstead.”
This was almost a fib on the part of the archdeacon, for Mrs. Grantly has a very nice school. To be sure it is not a Sunday-school exclusively, and is not so designated, but that exemplary lady always attends there for an hour before church, and hears the children say their catechism, and sees that they are clean and tidy for church, with their hands washed and their shoes tied; and Grisel and Florinda, her daughters, carry thither a basket of large buns, baked on the Saturday afternoon, and distribute them to all the children not especially under disgrace, which buns are carried home after church with considerable content, and eaten hot at tea, being then split and toasted. The children of Plumstead would indeed open their eyes if they heard their venerated pastor declare that there was no Sunday-school in his parish.
Mr. Slope merely opened his wide eyes wider and slightly shrugged his shoulders. He was not, however, prepared to give up his darling project.
“I fear there is a great deal of Sabbath travelling here,” said he. “On looking at the ‘Bradshaw,’ I see that there are three trains in and three out every Sabbath. Could nothing be done to induce the company to withdraw them? Don’t you think, Dr. Grantly, that a little energy might diminish the evil?”
“Not being a director, I really can’t say. But if you can withdraw the passengers, the company I dare say will withdraw the trains,” said the doctor. “It’s merely a question of dividends.”
“But surely, Dr. Grantly,” said the lady; “surely we should look at it differently. You and I, for instance, in our position: surely we should do all that we can to control so grievous a sin. Don’t you think so, Mr. Harding?” and she turned to the precentor, who was sitting mute and unhappy.
Mr. Harding thought that all porters and stokers, guards, brakesmen, and pointsmen ought to have an opportunity of going to church, and he hoped that they all had.
“But surely, surely,” continued Mrs. Proudie, “surely that is not enough. Surely that will not secure such an observance of the Sabbath as we are taught to conceive is not only expedient but indispensable; surely—”
Come what come might, Dr. Grantly was not to be forced into a dissertation on a point of doctrine with Mrs. Proudie, nor yet with Mr. Slope, so without much ceremony he turned his back upon the sofa and began to hope that Dr. Proudie had found that the palace repairs had been such as to meet his wishes.
“Yes, yes,” said his lordship; upon the whole he thought so—upon the whole, he didn’t know that there was much ground for complaint; the architect, perhaps, might have—but his double, Mr. Slope, who had sidled over to the bishop’s chair, would not allow his lordship to finish his ambiguous speech.
“There is one point I would like to mention, Mr. Archdeacon. His lordship asked me to step through the premises, and I see that the stalls in the second stable are not perfect.”
“Why—there’s standing there for a dozen horses,” said the archdeacon.
“Perhaps so,” said the other; “indeed, I’ve no doubt of it; but visitors, you know, often require so much accommodation. There are so many of the bishop’s relatives who always bring their own horses.”
Dr. Grantly promised that due provision for the relatives’ horses should be made, as far at least as the extent of the original stable building would allow. He would himself communicate with the architect.
“And the coach-house, Dr. Grantly,” continued Mr. Slope; “there is really hardly room for a second carriage in the large coach-house, and the smaller one, of course, holds only one.”
“And the gas,” chimed in the lady; “there is no gas through the house, none whatever, but in the kitchen and passages. Surely the palace should have been fitted through with pipes for gas, and hot water too. There is no hot water laid on anywhere above the ground-floor; surely there should be the means of getting hot water in the bedrooms without having it brought in jugs from the kitchen.”
The bishop had a decided opinion that there should be pipes for hot water. Hot water was very essential for the comfort of the palace. It was, indeed, a requisite in any decent gentleman’s house.
Mr. Slope had remarked that the coping on the garden wall was in many places imperfect.
Mrs. Proudie had discovered a large hole, evidently the work of rats, in the servants’ hall.
The bishop expressed an utter detestation of rats. There was nothing, he believed, in this world that he so much hated as a rat.
Mr. Slope had, moreover, observed that the locks of the outhouses were very imperfect: he might specify the coal-cellar and the woodhouse.
Mrs. Proudie had also seen that those on the doors of the servants’ bedrooms were in an-equally bad condition; indeed, the locks all through the house were old-fashioned and unserviceable.
The bishop thought that a great deal depended on a good lock and quite as much on the key. He had observed that the fault very often lay with the key, especially if the wards were in any way twisted.
Mr. Slope was going on with his catalogue of grievances, when he was somewhat loudly interrupted by the archdeacon, who succeeded in explaining that the diocesan architect, or rather his foreman, was the person to be addressed on such subjects, and that he, Dr. Grantly, had inquired as to the comfort of the palace merely as a point of compliment. He was sorry, however, that so many things had been found amiss: and then he rose from his chair to escape.
Mrs. Proudie, though she had contrived to lend her assistance in recapitulating the palatial dilapidations, had not on that account given up her hold of Mr. Harding, nor ceased from her cross-examinations as to the iniquity of Sabbatical amusements. Over and over again had she thrown out her “Surely, surely,” at Mr. Harding’s devoted head, and ill had that gentleman been able to parry the attack.
He had never before found himself subjected to such a nuisance. Ladies hitherto, when they had consulted him on religious subjects, had listened to what he might choose to say with some deference, and had differed, if they differed, in silence. But Mrs. Proudie interrogated him and then lectured. “Neither thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,” said she impressively, and more than once, as though Mr. Harding had forgotten the words. She shook her finger at him as she quoted the favourite law, as though menacing him with punishment, and then called upon him categorically to state whether he did not think that travelling on the Sabbath was an abomination and a desecration.
Mr. Harding had never been so hard pressed in his life. He felt that he ought to rebuke the lady for presuming so to talk to a gentleman and a clergyman many years her senior, but he recoiled from the idea of scolding the bishop’s wife, in the bishop’s presence, on his first visit to the palace; moreover, to tell the truth, he was somewhat afraid of her. She, seeing him sit silent and absorbed, by no means refrained from the attack.
“I hope, Mr. Harding,” said she, shaking her head slowly and solemnly, “I hope you will not leave me to think that you approve of Sabbath travelling,” and she looked a look of unutterable meaning into his eyes.
There was no standing this, for Mr. Slope was now looking at him, and so was the bishop, and so was the archdeacon, who had completed his adieux on that side of the room. Mr. Harding therefore