Her acquaintance with Dr. Grantly or his family was very slight indeed. The archdeacon, as a matter of course, knew every clergyman in the archdeaconry — it may almost be said in the diocese — and had some acquaintance, more or less intimate, with their wives and families. With Mr. Quiverful he had been concerned on various matters of business, but of Mrs. Q. he had seen very little. Now, however, he was in too gracious a mood to pass her by unnoticed. The Quiverfuls, one and all, had looked for the bitterest hostility from Dr. Grantly; they knew his anxiety that Mr. Harding should return to his old home at the hospital, and they did not know that a new home had been offered to him at the deanery. Mrs. Quiverful was therefore not a little surprised, and not a little rejoiced also, at the tone in which she was addressed.
“How do you do, Mrs. Quiverful, how do you do?” said he, stretching his left hand out of the gig as he spoke to her. “I am very glad to see you employed in so pleasant and useful a manner; very glad indeed.”
Mrs. Quiverful thanked him, and shook hands with him, and looked into his face suspiciously. She was not sure whether the congratulations and kindness were or were not ironical.
“Pray tell Mr. Quiverful from me,” he continued, “that I am rejoiced at his appointment. It’s a comfortable place, Mrs. Quiverful, and a comfortable house, and I am very glad to see you in it. Good-bye — good-bye.” And he drove on, leaving the lady well pleased and astonished at his good nature. On the whole things were going well with the archdeacon, and he could afford to be charitable to Mrs. Quiverful. He looked forth from his gig smilingly on all the world and forgave everyone in Barchester their sins, excepting only Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope. Had he seen the bishop, he would have felt inclined to pat even him kindly on the head.
He determined to go home by St. Ewold’s. This would take him some three miles out of his way, but he felt that he could not leave Plumstead comfortably without saying one word of good-fellowship to Mr. Arabin. When he reached the parsonage, the vicar was still out, but from what he had heard, he did not doubt but that he would meet him on the road between their two houses. He was right in this, for about half-way home, at a narrow turn, he came upon Mr. Arabin, who was on horseback.
“Well, well, well, well,” said the archdeacon loudly, joyously, and with supreme good humour; “well, well, well, well, so after all we have no further cause to fear Mr. Slope.”
“I hear from Mrs. Grantly that they have offered the deanery to Mr. Harding,” said the other.
“Mr. Slope has lost more than the deanery I find,” and then the archdeacon laughed jocosely. “Come, come, Arabin, you have kept your secret well enough. I know all about it now.”
“I have had no secret, Archdeacon,” said the other with a quiet smile. “None at all — not for a day. It was only yesterday that I knew my own good fortune, and today I went over to Plumstead to ask your approval. From what Mrs. Grantly has said to me I am led to hope that I shall have it.”
“With all my heart, with all my heart,” said the archdeacon cordially, holding his friend fast by the hand. “It’s just as I would have it. She is an excellent young woman; she will not come to you empty-handed; and I think she will make you a good wife. If she does her duty by you as her sister does by me, you’ll be a happy man; that’s all I can say.” And as he finished speaking a tear might have been observed in each of the doctor’s eyes.
Mr. Arabin warmly returned the archdeacon’s grasp, but he said little. His heart was too full for speaking, and he could not express the gratitude which he felt. Dr. Grantly understood him as well as though he had spoken for an hour.
“And mind, Arabin,” said he, “no one but myself shall tie the knot. We’ll get Eleanor out to Plumstead, and it shall come off there. I’ll make Susan stir herself, and we’ll do it in style. I must be off to London tomorrow on special business. Harding goes with me. But I’ll be back before your bride has got her wedding-dress ready.” And so they parted.
On his journey home the archdeacon occupied his mind with preparations for the marriage festivities. He made a great resolve that he would atone to Eleanor for all the injury he had done her by the munificence of his future treatment. He would show her what was the difference in his eyes between a Slope and an Arabin. On one other thing also he decided with a firm mind: if the affair of the dean should not be settled in Mr. Arabin’s favour, nothing should prevent him putting a new front and bow-window to the dining-room at St. Ewold’s parsonage.
“So we’re sold after all, Sue,” said he to his wife, accosting her with a kiss as soon as he entered his house. He did not call his wife Sue above twice or thrice in a year, and these occasions were great high days.
“Eleanor has had more sense than we gave her credit for,” said Mrs. Grantly.
And there was great content in Plumstead Rectory that evening. Mrs. Grantly promised her husband that she would now open her heart and take Mr. Arabin into it. Hitherto she had declined to do so.
CHAPTER LI
Mr. Slope Bids Farewell to the Palace and Its Inhabitants
We must now take leave of Mr. Slope, and of the bishop also, and of Mrs. Proudie. These leave-takings in novels are as disagreeable as they are in real life; not so sad, indeed, for they want the reality of sadness; but quite as perplexing, and generally less satisfactory. What novelist, what Fielding, what Scott, what George Sand, or Sue, or Dumas, can impart an interest to the last chapter of his fictitious history? Promises of two children and superhuman happiness are of no avail, nor assurance of extreme respectability carried to an age far exceeding that usually allotted to mortals. The sorrows of our heroes and heroines, they are your delight, oh public!— their sorrows, or their sins, or their absurdities; not their virtues, good sense, and consequent rewards. When we begin to tint our final pages with couleur de rose, as in accordance with fixed rule we must do, we altogether extinguish our own powers of pleasing. When we become dull, we offend your intellect; and we must become dull or we should offend your taste. A late writer, wishing to sustain his interest to the last page, hung his hero at the end of the third volume. The consequence was that no one would read his novel. And who can apportion out and dovetail his incidents, dialogues, characters, and descriptive morsels so as to fit them all exactly into 930 pages, without either compressing them unnaturally, or extending them artificially at the end of his labour? Do I not myself know that I am at this moment in want of a dozen pages and that I am sick with cudgelling my brains to find them? And then, when everything is done, the kindest-hearted critic of them all invariably twits us with the incompetency and lameness of our conclusion. We have either become idle and neglected it, or tedious and overlaboured it. It is insipid or unnatural, overstrained or imbecile. It means nothing, or attempts too much. The last scene of all, as all last scenes we fear must be,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
I can only say that if some critic who thoroughly knows his work and has laboured on it till experience has made him perfect will write the last fifty pages of a novel in the way they should be written, I, for one, will in future do my best to copy the example. Guided by my own lights only, I confess that I despair of success.
For the last week or ten days Mr. Slope had seen nothing of Mrs. Proudie and very little of the bishop. He still lived in the palace and still went through his usual routine work, but the confidential doings of the diocese had passed into other hands. He had seen this clearly