“It’s not me; it’s the cursed sofa,” said Bertie, looking imploringly in her face and holding up both his hands to show that he was not touching her belongings, but still remaining on his knees.
Hereupon the Signora laughed; not loud, indeed, but yet audibly. And as the tigress bereft of her young will turn with equal anger on any within reach, so did Mrs. Proudie turn upon her female guest.
“Madam!” she said — and it is beyond the power of prose to tell of the fire which flashed from her eyes.
The signora stared her full in the face for a moment, and then turning to her brother said playfully, “Bertie, you idiot, get up.”
By this time the bishop, and Mr. Slope, and her three daughters were around her, and had collected together the wide ruins of her magnificence. The girls fell into circular rank behind their mother, and thus following her and carrying out the fragments, they left the reception-rooms in a manner not altogether devoid of dignity. Mrs. Proudie had to retire and re-array herself.
As soon as the constellation had swept by, Ethelbert rose from his knees and, turning with mock anger to the fat rector, said: “After all it was your doing, sir — not mine. But perhaps you are waiting for preferment, and so I bore it.”
Whereupon there was a laugh against the fat rector, in which both the bishop and the chaplain joined, and thus things got themselves again into order.
“Oh! my lord, I am so sorry for this accident,” said the signora putting out her hand so as to force the bishop to take it. “My brother is so thoughtless. Pray sit down and let me have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. Though I am so poor a creature as to want a sofa, I am not so selfish as to require it all.” Madeline could always dispose herself so as to make room for a gentleman, though, as she declared, the crinoline of her lady friends was much too bulky to be so accommodated.
“It was solely for the pleasure of meeting you that I have had myself dragged here,” she continued. “Of course, with your occupation, one cannot even hope that you should have time to come to us, that is, in the way of calling. And at your English dinner-parties all is so dull and so stately. Do you know, my lord, that in coming to England my only consolation has been the thought that I should know you;” and she looked at him with the look of a she-devil.
The bishop, however, thought that she looked very like an angel and, accepting the proffered seat, sat down beside her. He uttered some platitude as to his deep obligation for the trouble she had taken and wondered more and more who she was.
“Of course you know my sad story?” she continued.
The bishop didn’t know a word of it. He knew, however, or thought he knew that she couldn’t walk into a room like other people, and so made the most of that. He put on a look of ineffable distress and said that he was aware how God had afflicted her.
The signora just touched the corner of her eyes with the most lovely of pocket-handkerchiefs. Yes, she said — she had been sorely tried — tried, she thought, beyond the common endurance of humanity; but while her child was left to her, everything was left. “Oh! my lord,” she exclaimed, you must see that infant — the last bud of a wondrous tree: you must let a mother hope that you will lay your holy hands on her innocent head and consecrate her for female virtues. May I hope it?” said she, looking into the bishop’s eye and touching the bishop’s arm with her hand.
The bishop was but a man and said she might. After all, what was it but a request that he would confirm her daughter?— a request, indeed, very unnecessary to make, as he should do so as a matter of course if the young lady came forward in the usual way.
“The blood of Tiberius,” said the signora in all but a whisper; “the blood of Tiberius flows in her veins. She is the last of the Neros!”
The bishop had heard of the last of the Visigoths, and had floating in his brain some indistinct idea of the last of the Mohicans, but to have the last of the Neros thus brought before him for a blessing was very staggering. Still he liked the lady: she had a proper way of thinking and talked with more propriety than her brother. But who were they? It was now quite clear that that blue madman with the silky beard was not a Prince Vicinironi. The lady was married and was of course one of the Vicinironi’s by right of the husband. So the bishop went on learning.
“When will you see her? said the signora with a start.
“See whom?” said the bishop.
“My child,” said the mother.
“What is the young lady’s age?” asked the bishop.
“She is just seven,” said the signora.
“Oh,” said the bishop, shaking his head; “she is much too young — very much too young.”
“But in sunny Italy, you know, we do not count by years,” and the signora gave the bishop one of her very sweetest smiles.
“But indeed, she is a great deal too young,” persisted the bishop; “we never confirm before —”
“But you might speak to her; you might let her hear from your consecrated lips that she is not a castaway because she is a Roman; that she may be a Nero and yet a Christian; that she may owe her black locks and dark cheeks to the blood of the pagan Caesars and yet herself be a child of grace; you will tell her this, won’t you, my friend?”
The friend said he would and asked if the child could say her catechism.
“No,” said the signora, “I would not allow her to learn lessons such as those in a land ridden over by priests and polluted by the idolatry of Rome. It is here, here in Barchester, that she must first be taught to lisp those holy words. Oh, that you could be her instructor!”
Now, Dr. Proudie certainly liked the lady, but, seeing that he was a bishop, it was not probable that he was going to instruct a little girl in the first rudiments of her catechism; so he said he’d send a teacher.
“But you’ll see her yourself, my lord?”
The bishop said he would, but where should he call.
“At Papa’s house,” said the Signora with an air of some little surprise at the question.
The bishop actually wanted the courage to ask her who was her papa, so he was forced to at last to leave her without fathoming the mystery. Mrs. Proudie, in her second best, had now returned to the rooms, and her husband thought it as well that he should not remain in too close conversation with the lady whom his wife appeared to hold in such slight esteem. Presently he came across his youngest daughter.
“Netta,” said he, “do you know who is the father of that Signora Vicinironi?”
“It isn’t Vicinironi, Papa,” said Netta; “but Vesey Neroni and she’s Doctor Stanhope’s daughter. But I must go and do the civil to Griselda Grantly; I declare nobody has spoken a word to the poor girl this evening.”
Dr. Stanhope! Dr. Vesey Stanhope! Dr. Vesey Stanhope’s daughter, of whose marriage with a dissolute Italian scamp he now remembered to have heard something! And that impertinent blue cub who had examined him as to his episcopal bearings was old Stanhope’s son, and the lady who had entreated him to come and teach her child the catechism was old Stanhope’s daughter! The daughter of one of his own prebendaries! As these things flashed across his mind, he was nearly as angry as his wife had been. Nevertheless, he could not but own that the mother of the last of the Neros was an agreeable woman.
Dr. Proudie tripped out into the adjoining room, in which were congregated a crowd of Grantlyite clergymen, among whom the archdeacon was standing pre-eminent, while the old dean was sitting nearly buried in a huge arm chair by the fire-place. The bishop was very anxious to be gracious and, if possible, to diminish the bitterness which his chaplain had occasioned. Let Mr. Slope do the fortiter in re, he himself would pour in the suaviter in modo.
“Pray don’t stir, Mr. Dean,