Eleanor put on her happiest face as she heard her father on the stairs, for she thought she had only to congratulate him; but directly she saw his face she knew that there was but little matter for congratulation. She had seen him with the same weary look of sorrow on one or two occasions before, and remembered it well. She had seen him when he first read that attack upon himself in The Jupiter which had ultimately caused him to resign the hospital, and she had seen him also when the archdeacon had persuaded him to remain there against his own sense of propriety and honour. She knew at a glance that his spirit was in deep trouble.
“Oh, Papa, what is it?” said she, putting down her boy to crawl upon the floor.
“I came to tell you, my dear,” said he, “that I am going out to Plumstead: you won’t come with me, I suppose?”
“To Plumstead, Papa? Shall you stay there?”
“I suppose I shall, to-night: I must consult the archdeacon about this weary hospital. Ah me! I wish I had never thought of it again.”
“Why, Papa, what is the matter?”
“I’ve been with Mr. Slope, my dear, and he isn’t the pleasantest companion in the world, at least not to me.” Eleanor gave a sort of half-blush, but she was wrong if she imagined that her father in any way alluded to her acquaintance with Mr. Slope.
“Well, Papa.”
“He wants to turn the hospital into a Sunday-school and a preaching-house, and I suppose he will have his way. I do not feel myself adapted for such an establishment, and therefore, I suppose, I must refuse the appointment.”
“What would be the harm of the school, Papa?”
“The want of a proper schoolmaster, my dear.”
“But that would of course be supplied.”
“Mr. Slope wishes to supply it by making me his schoolmaster. But as I am hardly fit for such work, I intend to decline.”
“Oh, Papa! Mr. Slope doesn’t intend that. He was here yesterday, and what he intends —”
“He was here yesterday, was he?” asked Mr. Harding.
“Yes, Papa.”
“And talking about the hospital?”
“He was saying how glad he would be, and the bishop too, to see you back there again. And then he spoke about the Sunday-school; and to tell the truth I agreed with him; and I thought you would have done so too. Mr. Slope spoke of a school, not inside the hospital, but just connected with it, of which you would be the patron and visitor; and I thought you would have liked such a school as that; and I promised to look after it and to take a class — and it all seemed so very —. But, oh, Papa! I shall be so miserable if I find I have done wrong.”
“Nothing wrong at all, my dear,” said he gently, very gently rejecting his daughter’s caress. There can be nothing wrong in your wishing to make yourself useful; indeed, you ought to do so by all means. Everyone must now exert himself who would not choose to go to the wall.” Poor Mr. Harding thus attempted in his misery to preach the new doctrine to his child. “Himself or herself, it’s all the same,” he continued; “you will be quite right, my dear, to do something of this sort; but —”
“Well, Papa.”
I am not quite sure that if I were you I would select Mr. Slope for my guide.”
“But I never have done so and never shall.”
“It would he very wicked of me to speak evil of him, for to tell the truth I know no evil of him, but I am not quite sure that he is honest. That he is not gentlemanlike in his manners, of that I am quite sure.”
“I never thought of taking him for my guide, Papa.”
“As for myself, my dear,” continued he, “we know the old proverb — ‘It’s bad teaching an old dog tricks.’ I must decline the Sunday-school, and shall therefore probably decline the hospital also. But I will first see your brother-inlaw.” So he took up his hat, kissed the baby, and withdrew, leaving Eleanor in as low spirits as himself.
All this was a great aggravation to his misery. He had so few with whom to sympathize that he could not afford to be cut off from the one whose sympathy was of the most value to him. And yet it seemed probable that this would be the case. He did not own to himself that he wished his daughter to hate Mr. Slope, yet had she expressed such a feeling there would have been very little bitterness in the rebuke he would have given her for so uncharitable a state of mind. The fact, however, was that she was on friendly terms with Mr. Slope, that she coincided with his views, adhered at once to his plans, and listened with delight to his teaching. Mr. Harding hardly wished his daughter to hate the man, but he would have preferred that to her loving him.
He walked away to the inn to order a fly, went home to put up his carpet-bag, and then started for Plumstead. There was, at any rate, no danger that the archdeacon would fraternize with Mr. Slope; but then he would recommend internecine war, public appeals, loud reproaches, and all the paraphernalia of open battle. Now that alternative was hardly more to Mr. Harding’s taste than the other.
When Mr. Harding reached the parsonage, he found that the archdeacon was out and would not be home till dinnertime, so he began his complaint to his elder daughter. Mrs. Grantly entertained quite as strong an antagonism to Mr. Slope as did her husband; she was also quite as alive to the necessity of combating the Proudie faction, of supporting the old church interest of the close, of keeping in her own set such of the loaves and fishes as duly belonged to it; and was quite as well prepared as her lord to carry on the battle without giving or taking quarter. Not that she was a woman prone to quarrelling, or ill-inclined to live at peace with her clerical neighbours, but she felt, as did the archdeacon, that the presence of Mr. Slope in Barchester was an insult to everyone connected with the late bishop and that his assumed dominion in the diocese was a spiritual injury to her husband. Hitherto people had little guessed how bitter Mrs. Grantly could be. She lived on the best of terms with all the rectors’ wives around her. She had been popular with all the ladies connected with the close. Though much the wealthiest of the ecclesiastical matrons of the county, she had so managed her affairs that her carriage and horses had given umbrage to none. She had never thrown herself among the county grandees so as to excite the envy of other clergymen’s wives. She never talked too loudly of earls and countesses, or boasted that she gave her governess sixty pounds a year, or her cook seventy. Mrs. Grantly had lived the life of a wise, discreet, peace-making woman, and the people of Barchester were surprised at the amount of military vigour she displayed as general of the feminine Grantlyite forces.
Mrs. Grantly soon learned that her sister Eleanor had promised to assist Mr. Slope in the affairs of the hospital school, and it was on this point that her attention first fixed itself.
“How can Eleanor endure him?” said she.
“He is a very crafty man,” said her father, “and his craft has been successful in making Eleanor think that he is a meek, charitable, good clergyman. God forgive me, if I wrong him, but such is not his true character in my opinion.”
“His true character, indeed!” said she with something approaching scorn for her father’s moderation. “I only hope he won’t have craft enough to make Eleanor forget herself and her position.”
“Do you mean marry him?” said he, startled out of his usual demeanour by the abruptness and horror of so dreadful a proposition.
“What is there so improbable in it? Of course that would be his own object if he thought he had any chance of success. Eleanor has a thousand a year entirely at her own disposal, and what better fortune could fall to Mr. Slope’s