If, on the other hand, the archdeacon accepted as his enemy the man whom the new puppet bishop put before him as such, he would have to talk about Mr. Slope, and write about Mr. Slope, and in all matters treat with Mr. Slope, as a being standing, in some degree, on ground similar to his own. He would have to meet Mr. Slope, to—Bah! the idea was sickening. He could not bring himself to have to do with Mr. Slope.
“He is the most thoroughly bestial creature that ever I set my eyes upon,” said the archdeacon.
“Who—the bishop?” asked the other innocently.
“Bishop! no—I’m not talking about the bishop. How on earth such a creature got ordained!—they’ll ordain anybody now, I know, but he’s been in the church these ten years, and they used to be a little careful ten years ago.”
“Oh! You mean Mr. Slope.”
“Did you ever see any animal less like a gentleman?” asked Dr. Grantly.
“I can’t say I felt myself much disposed to like him.”
“Like him!” again shouted the doctor, and the assenting ravens again cawed an echo; “of course, you don’t like him: it’s not a question of liking. But what are we to do with him?”
“Do with him?” asked Mr. Harding.
“Yes—what are we to do with him? How are we to treat him? There he is, and there he’ll stay. He has put his foot in that palace, and he’ll never take it out again till he’s driven. How are we to get rid of him?”
“I don’t suppose he can do us much harm.”
“Not do harm!—Well, I think you’ll find yourself of a different opinion before a month is gone. What would you say now, if he got himself put into the hospital? Would that be harm?”
Mr. Harding mused awhile and then said he didn’t think the new bishop would put Mr. Slope into the hospital.
“If he doesn’t put him there, he’ll put him somewhere else where he’ll be as bad. I tell you that that man, to all intents and purposes, will be Bishop of Barchester!” And again Dr. Grantly raised his hat and rubbed his hand thoughtfully and sadly over his head.
“Impudent scoundrel!” he continued after a while. “To dare to cross-examine me about the Sunday-schools in the diocese, and Sunday travelling too: I never in my life met his equal for sheer impudence. Why, he must have thought we were two candidates for ordination!”
“I declare I thought Mrs. Proudie was the worst of the two,” said Mr. Harding.
“When a woman is impertinent, one must only put up with it, and keep out of her way in future, but I am not inclined to put up with Mr. Slope. ‘Sabbath travelling!’“ and the doctor attempted to imitate the peculiar drawl of the man he so much disliked: “‘Sabbath travelling!’ Those are the sort of men who will ruin the Church of England and make the profession of a clergyman disreputable. It is not the dissenters or the papists that we should fear, but the set of canting, lowbred hypocrites who are wriggling their way in among us; men who have no fixed principle, no standard ideas of religion or doctrine, but who take up some popular cry, as this fellow has done about ‘Sabbath travelling.’“
Dr. Grantly did not again repeat the question aloud, but he did so constantly to himself: “What were they to do with Mr. Slope?” How was he openly, before the world, to show that he utterly disapproved of and abhorred such a man?
Hitherto Barchester had escaped the taint of any extreme rigour of church doctrine. The clergymen of the city and neighbourhood, though very well inclined to promote High Church principles, privileges, and prerogatives, had never committed themselves to tendencies which are somewhat too loosely called Puseyite practices. They all preached in their black gowns, as their fathers had done before them; they wore ordinary black cloth waistcoats; they had no candles on their altars, either lighted or unlighted; they made no private genuflexions, and were contented to confine themselves to such ceremonial observances as had been in vogue for the last hundred years. The services were decently and demurely read in their parish churches, chanting was confined to the cathedral, and the science of intoning was unknown. One young man who had come direct from Oxford as a curate to Plumstead had, after the lapse of two or three Sundays, made a faint attempt, much to the bewilderment of the poorer part of the congregation. Dr. Grantly had not been present on the occasion, but Mrs. Grantly, who had her own opinion on the subject, immediately after the service expressed a hope that the young gentleman had not been taken ill, and offered to send him all kinds of condiments supposed to be good for a sore throat. After that there had been no more intoning at Plumstead Episcopi.
But now the archdeacon began to meditate on some strong measures of absolute opposition. Dr. Proudie and his crew were of the lowest possible order of Church of England clergymen, and therefore it behoved him, Dr. Grantly, to be of the very highest. Dr. Proudie would abolish all forms and ceremonies, and therefore Dr. Grantly felt the sudden necessity of multiplying them. Dr. Proudie would consent to deprive the church of all collective authority and rule, and therefore Dr. Grantly would stand up for the full power of convocation and the renewal of all its ancient privileges.
It was true that he could not himself intone the service, but he could procure the cooperation of any number of gentlemanlike curates well trained in the mystery of doing so. He would not willingly alter his own fashion of dress, but he could people Barchester with young clergymen dressed in the longest frocks and in the highest-breasted silk waistcoats. He certainly was not prepared to cross himself, or to advocate the real presence, but without going this length there were various observances, by adopting which he could plainly show his antipathy to such men as Dr. Proudie and Mr. Slope.
All these things passed through his mind as he paced up and down the close with Mr. Harding. War, war, internecine war was in his heart. He felt that, as regarded himself and Mr. Slope, one of the two must be annihilated as far as the city of Barchester was concerned, and he did not intend to give way until there was not left to him an inch of ground on which he could stand. He still flattered himself that he could make Barchester too hot to hold Mr. Slope, and he had no weakness of spirit to prevent his bringing about such a consummation if it were in his power.
“I suppose Susan must call at the palace,” said Mr. Harding.
“Yes, she shall call there, but it shall be once and once only. I dare say ‘the horses’ won’t find it convenient to come out to Plumstead very soon, and when that once is done the matter may drop.”
“I don’t suppose Eleanor need call. I don’t think Eleanor would get on at all well with Mrs. Proudie.”
“Not the least necessity in life,” replied the archdeacon, not without the reflexion that a ceremony which was necessary for his wife might not be at all binding on the widow of John Bold. “Not the slightest reason on earth why she should do so, if she doesn’t like it. For myself, I don’t think that any decent young woman should be subjected to the nuisance of being in the same room with that man.”
And so the two clergymen parted, Mr. Harding going to his daughter’s house, and the archdeacon seeking the seclusion of his brougham.
The new inhabitants of the palace did not express any higher opinion of their visitors than their visitors had expressed of them. Though they did not use quite such strong language as Dr. Grantly had done, they felt as much personal aversion, and were quite as well aware as he was that there would be a battle to be fought, and that there was hardly room for Proudieism in Barchester as long as Grantlyism was predominant.
Indeed, it may be doubted whether Mr. Slope had not already within his breast a better prepared system of strategy, a more accurately defined line of hostile conduct than the archdeacon. Dr. Grantly was going to fight because he found that he hated the man. Mr. Slope had predetermined to hate the man because he foresaw the necessity of fighting him. When he had first reviewed the carte du pays previous to his entry into Barchester, the idea had occurred to him of conciliating the archdeacon, of cajoling and flattering him into submission,