“In such a matter as what?” said Eleanor very testily. “Upon my word I don’t know what this is all about.”
“We all want you to drop Mr. Slope.”
“You all want me to be as illiberal as yourselves. That I shall never be. I see no harm in Mr. Slope’s acquaintance, and I shall not insult the man by telling him that I do. He has thought it necessary to write to me, and I do not want the archdeacon’s advice about the letter. If I did, I would ask it.”
“Then, Eleanor, it is my duty to tell you,” and now she spoke with a tremendous gravity, “that the archdeacon thinks that such a correspondence is disgraceful, and that he cannot allow it to go on in his house.”
Eleanor’s eyes flashed fire as she answered her sister, jumping up from her seat as she did so. “You may tell the archdeacon that wherever I am I shall receive what letters I please and from whom I please. And as for the word ‘disgraceful,’ if Dr. Grantly has used it of me, he has been unmanly and inhospitable,” and she walked off to the door. “When Papa comes from the dining-room I will thank you to ask him to step up to my bedroom. I will show him Mr. Slope’s letter, but I will show it to no one else.” And so saying, she retreated to her baby.
She had no conception of the crime with which she was charged. The idea that she could be thought by her friends to regard Mr. Slope as a lover had never flashed upon her. She conceived that they were all prejudiced and illiberal in their persecution of him, and therefore she would not join in the persecution, even though she greatly disliked the man.
Eleanor was very angry as she seated herself in a low chair by her open window at the foot of her child’s bed. “To dare to say I have disgraced myself,” she repeated to herself more than once. “How Papa can put up with that man’s arrogance! I will certainly not sit down to dinner in his house again unless he begs my pardon for that word.” And then a thought struck her that Mr. Arabin might perchance hear of her “disgraceful” correspondence with Mr. Slope, and she turned crimson with pure vexation. Oh, if she had known the truth! If she could have conceived that Mr. Arabin had been informed as a fact that she was going to marry Mr. Slope!
She had not been long in her room before her father joined her. As he left the drawing-room Mrs. Grantly took her husband into the recess of the window and told him how signally she had failed.
“I will speak to her myself before I go to bed,” said the archdeacon.
“Pray do no such thing,” said she; “you can do no good and will only make an unseemly quarrel in the house. You have no idea how headstrong she can be.”
The archdeacon declared that as to that he was quite indifferent. He knew his duty and would do it. Mr. Harding was weak in the extreme in such matters. He would not have it hereafter on his conscience that he had not done all that in him lay to prevent so disgraceful an alliance. It was in vain that Mrs. Grantly assured him that speaking to Eleanor angrily would only hasten such a crisis and render it certain, if at present there were any doubt. He was angry, self-willed, and sore. The fact that a lady of his household had received a letter from Mr. Slope had wounded his pride in the sorest place, and nothing could control him.
Mr. Harding looked worn and woebegone as he entered his daughter’s room. These sorrows worried him sadly. He felt that if they were continued, he must go to the wall in the manner so kindly prophesied to him by the chaplain. He knocked gently at his daughter’s door, waited till he was distinctly bade to enter, and then appeared as though he and not she were the suspected criminal.
Eleanor’s arm was soon within his, and she had soon kissed his forehead and caressed him, not with joyous but with eager love. “Oh, Papa,” she said, “I do so want to speak to you. They have been talking about me downstairs tonight—don’t you know they have, Papa?”
Mr. Harding confessed with a sort of murmur that the archdeacon had been speaking of her.
“I shall hate Dr. Grantly soon—”
“Oh, my dear!”
“Well, I shall. I cannot help it. He is so uncharitable, so unkind, so suspicious of everyone that does not worship himself: and then he is so monstrously arrogant to other people who have a right to their opinions as well as he has to his own.”
“He is an earnest, eager man, my dear, but he never means to be unkind.”
“He is unkind, Papa, most unkind. There, I got that letter from Mr. Slope before dinner. It was you yourself who gave it to me. There, pray read it. It is all for you. It should have been addressed to you. You know how they have been talking about it downstairs. You know how they behaved to me at dinner. And since dinner Susan has been preaching to me, till I could not remain in the room with her. Read it, Papa, and then say whether that is a letter that need make Dr. Grantly so outrageous.”
Mr. Harding took his arm from his daughter’s waist and slowly read the letter. She expected to see his countenance lit with joy as he learnt that his path back to the hospital was made so smooth; but she was doomed to disappointment, as had once been the case before on a somewhat similar occasion. His first feeling was one of unmitigated disgust that Mr. Slope should have chosen to interfere in his behalf. He had been anxious to get back to the hospital, but he would have infinitely sooner resigned all pretensions to the place than have owed it in any manner to Mr. Slope’s influence in his favour. Then he thoroughly disliked the tone of Mr. Slope’s letter; it was unctuous, false, and unwholesome, like the man. He saw, which Eleanor had failed to see, that much more had been intended than was expressed. The appeal to Eleanor’s pious labours as separate from his own grated sadly against his feelings as a father. And then, when he came to the “darling boy” and the “silken tresses,” he slowly closed and folded the letter in despair. It was impossible that Mr. Slope should so write unless he had been encouraged. It was impossible Eleanor should have received such a letter, and have received it without annoyance, unless she were willing to encourage him. So at least Mr. Harding argued to himself.
How hard it is to judge accurately of the feelings of others. Mr. Harding, as he came to the close of the letter, in his heart condemned his daughter for indelicacy, and it made him miserable to do so. She was not responsible for what Mr. Slope might write. True. But then she expressed no disgust at it. She had rather expressed approval of the letter as a whole. She had given it to him to read, as a vindication for herself and also for him. The father’s spirits sank within him as he felt that he could not acquit her.
And yet it was the true feminine delicacy of Eleanor’s mind which brought on her this condemnation. Listen to me, ladies, and I beseech you to acquit her. She thought of this man, this lover of whom she was so unconscious, exactly as her father did, exactly as the Grantlys did. At least she esteemed him personally as they did. But she believed him to be in the main an honest man, and one truly inclined to assist her father. She felt herself bound, after what had passed, to show this letter to Mr. Harding. She thought it necessary that he should know what Mr. Slope had to say. But she did not think it necessary to apologize for, or condemn, or even allude to the vulgarity of the man’s tone, which arose, as does all vulgarity, from ignorance. It was nauseous to her to have a man like Mr. Slope commenting on her personal attractions, and she did not think it necessary to dilate with her father upon what was nauseous. She never supposed they could disagree on such a subject. It would have been painful for her to point it out, painful for her to speak strongly against a man of whom, on the whole, she was anxious to think and speak well. In encountering such a man she had encountered what was disagreeable, as she might do in walking the streets. But in such encounters she never thought it necessary to dwell on what disgusted her.
And he, foolish, weak, loving man, would not say one word, though one word would have cleared up everything. There would have been a deluge of tears, and in ten minutes everyone in the house