Poor Bertie was greatly moved. “You shall have the carriage to yourself going home,” said he; “at least you and my father. As for me, I can walk, or for the matter of that it does not much signify what I do.” He perfectly understood that part of Eleanor’s grief arose from the apparent necessity of her going back to Barchester in the carriage with her second suitor.
This somewhat mollified her. “Oh, Mr. Stanhope,” said she, “why should you have made me so miserable? What will you have gained by telling me all this?”
He had not even yet explained to her the most difficult part of his proposition; he had not told her that she was to be a party to the little deception which he intended to play off upon his sister. This suggestion had still to be made, and as it was absolutely necessary, he proceeded to make it.
We need not follow him through the whole of his statement. At last, and not without considerable difficulty, he made Eleanor understand why he had let her into his confidence, seeing that he no longer intended her the honour of a formal offer. At last he made her comprehend the part which she was destined to play in this little family comedy.
But when she did understand it, she was only more angry with him than ever; more angry, not only with him, but with Charlotte also. Her fair name was to be bandied about between them in different senses, and each sense false. She was to be played off by the sister against the father, and then by the brother against the sister. Her dear friend Charlotte, with all her agreeable sympathy and affection, was striving to sacrifice her for the Stanhope family welfare; and Bertie, who, as he now proclaimed himself, was over head and ears in debt, completed the compliment of owning that he did not care to have his debts paid at so great a sacrifice of himself. Then she was asked to conspire together with this unwilling suitor for the sake of making the family believe that he had in obedience to their commands done his best to throw himself thus away!
She lifted up her face when he had finished, and looking at him with much dignity, even through her tears, she said:
“I regret to say it, Mr. Stanhope, but after what has passed I believe that all intercourse between your family and myself had better cease.”
“Well, perhaps it had,” said Bertie naïvely; “perhaps that will be better at any rate for a time; and then Charlotte will think you are offended at what I have done.”
“And now I will go back to the house, if you please,” said Eleanor. “I can find my way by myself, Mr. Stanhope: after what has passed,” she added, “I would rather go alone.”
“But I must find the carriage for you, Mrs. Bold; and I must tell my father that you will return with him alone; and I must make some excuse to him for not going with you; and I must bid the servant put you down at your own house, for I suppose you will not now choose to see them again in the close.”
There was a truth about this, and a perspicuity in making arrangements for lessening her immediate embarrassment, which had some effect in softening Eleanor’s anger. So she suffered herself to walk by his side over the now deserted lawn, till they came to the drawing-room window. There was something about Bertie Stanhope which gave him, in the estimation of everyone, a different standing from that which any other man would occupy under similar circumstances. Angry as Eleanor was, and great as was her cause for anger, she was not half as angry with him as she would have been with anyone else. He was apparently so simple, so goodnatured, so unaffected and easy to talk to, that she had already half-forgiven him before he was at the drawing-room window.
When they arrived there, Dr. Stanhope was sitting nearly alone with Mr. and Miss Thorne; one or two other unfortunates were there, who from one cause or another were still delayed in getting away, but they were every moment getting fewer in number.
As soon as he had handed Eleanor over to his father, Bertie started off to the front gate in search of the carriage, and there he waited leaning patiently against the front wall, comfortably smoking a cigar, till it came up. When he returned to the room, Dr. Stanhope and Eleanor were alone with their hosts.
“At last, Miss Thorne,” said he cheerily, “I have come to relieve you. Mrs. Bold and my father are the last roses of the very delightful summer you have given us, and desirable as Mrs. Bold’s society always is, now at least you must be glad to see the last flowers plucked from the tree.”
Miss Thorne declared that she was delighted to have Mrs. Bold and Dr. Stanhope still with her, and Mr. Thorne would have said the same, had he not been checked by a yawn, which he could not suppress.
“Father, will you give your arm to Mrs. Bold?” said Bertie: and so the last adieux were made, and the prebendary led out Mrs. Bold, followed by his son.
“I shall be home soon after you,” said he as the two got into the carriage.
“Are you not coming in the carriage?” said the father.
“No, no; I have someone to see on the road, and shall walk. John, mind you drive to Mrs. Bold’s house first.”
Eleanor, looking out of the window, saw him with his hat in his hand, bowing to her with his usual gay smile, as though nothing had happened to mar the tranquillity of the day. It was many a long year before she saw him again. Dr. Stanhope hardly spoke to her on her way home, and she was safely deposited by John at her own hall-door before the carriage drove into the close.
And thus our heroine played the last act of that day’s melodrama.
Chapter XLIII.
Mr. And Mrs. Quiverful Are Made Happy
Mr. Slope is Encouraged by the Press
Before she started for Ullathorne, Mrs. Proudie, careful soul, caused two letters to be written, one by herself and one by her lord, to the inhabitants of Puddingdale vicarage, which made happy the hearth of those within it.
As soon as the departure of the horses left the bishop’s stable-groom free for other services, that humble denizen of the diocese started on the bishop’s own pony with the two dispatches. We have had so many letters lately that we will spare ourselves these. That from the bishop was simply a request that Mr. Quiverful would wait upon his lordship the next morning at 11 A.M.; that from the lady was as simply a request that Mrs. Quiverful would do the same by her, though it was couched in somewhat longer and more grandiloquent phraseology.
It had become a point of conscience with Mrs. Proudie to urge the settlement of this great hospital question. She was resolved that Mr. Quiverful should have it. She was resolved that there should be no more doubt or delay, no more refusals and resignations, no more secret negotiations carried on by Mr. Slope on his own account in opposition to her behests.
“Bishop,” she said immediately after breakfast on the morning of that eventful day, “have you signed the appointment yet?”
“No, my dear, not yet; it is not exactly signed as yet.”
“Then do it,” said the lady.
The bishop did it, and a very pleasant day indeed he spent at Ullathorne. And when he got home, he had a glass of hot negus in his wife’s sitting-room, and read the last number of the Little Dorrit of the day with great inward satisfaction. Oh, husbands, oh, my marital friends, what great comfort is there to be derived from a wife well obeyed!
Much perturbation and flutter, high expectation and renewed hopes, were occasioned at Puddingdale, by the receipt of these episcopal dispatches. Mrs. Quiverful, whose careful ear caught the sound of the pony’s feet as he trotted up to the vicarage kitchen door, brought them in hurriedly to her husband. She was at the moment concocting the Irish stew destined to satisfy the noonday wants of fourteen young birds, let alone the parent couple. She had taken the letters from the man’s hands between the folds of her capacious apron so as to save them from the contamination