“I do not know Lord Tattenham Corner.”
“No, but Dr. Grantly does. It is nothing to me if he knows all the young lords on every racecourse in England. I shall not interfere with him, nor shall he with me.”
“I am sorry to differ with you, Mrs. Bold, but as you have spoken to me on this matter, and especially as you blame me for what little I said on the subject, I must tell you that I do differ from you. Dr. Grantly’s position as a man in the world gives him a right to choose his own acquaintances, subject to certain influences. If he chooses them badly, those influences will be used. If he consorts with persons unsuitable to him, his bishop will interfere. What the bishop is to Dr. Grantly, Dr. Grantly is to you.”
“I deny it. I utterly deny it,” said Eleanor, jumping from her seat and literally flashing before Mr. Arabin, as she stood on the drawing-room floor. He had never seen her so excited, he had never seen her look half so beautiful.
“I utterly deny it,” said she. “Dr. Grantly has no sort of jurisdiction over me whatsoever. Do you and he forget that I am not altogether alone in the world? Do you forget that I have a father? Dr. Grantly, I believe, always has forgotten it.
“From you, Mr. Arabin,” she continued, “I would have listened to advice because I should have expected it to have been given as one friend may advise another—not as a schoolmaster gives an order to a pupil. I might have differed from you—on this matter I should have done so—but had you spoken to me in your usual manner and with your usual freedom, I should not have been angry. But now—was it manly of you, Mr. Arabin, to speak of me in this way—so disrespectful—so—? I cannot bring myself to repeat what you said. You must understand what I feel. Was it just of you to speak of me in such a way and to advise my sister’s husband to turn me out of my sister’s house because I chose to know a man of whose doctrine you disapprove?”
“I have no alternative left to me, Mrs. Bold,” said he, standing with his back to the fireplace, looking down intently at the carpet pattern, and speaking with a slow, measured voice, “but to tell you plainly what did take place between me and Dr. Grantly.”
“Well,” said she, finding that he paused for a moment.
“I am afraid that what I may say may pain you.”
“It cannot well do so more than what you have already done,” said she.
“Dr. Grantly asked me whether I thought it would be prudent for him to receive you in his house as the wife of Mr. Slope, and I told him that I thought it would be imprudent. Believing it to be utterly impossible that Mr. Slope and—”
“Thank you, Mr. Arabin, that is sufficient. I do not want to know your reasons,” said she, speaking with a terribly calm voice. “I have shown to this gentleman the commonplace civility of a neighbour; and because I have done so, because I have not indulged against him in all the rancour and hatred which you and Dr. Grantly consider due to all clergymen who do not agree with yourselves, you conclude that I am to marry him; or rather you do not conclude so—no rational man could really come to such an outrageous conclusion without better ground; you have not thought so, but, as I am in a position in which such an accusation must be peculiarly painful, it is made in order that I may be terrified into hostility against this enemy of yours.”
As she finished speaking, she walked to the drawing-room window and stepped out into the garden. Mr. Arabin was left in the room, still occupied in counting the pattern on the carpet. He had, however, distinctly heard and accurately marked every word that she had spoken. Was it not clear from what she had said that the archdeacon had been wrong in imputing to her any attachment to Mr. Slope? Was it not clear that Eleanor was still free to make another choice? It may seem strange that he should for a moment have had a doubt, and yet he did doubt. She had not absolutely denied the charge; she had not expressly said that it was untrue. Mr. Arabin understood little of the nature of a woman’s feelings, or he would have known how improbable it was that she should make any clearer declaration than she had done. Few men do understand the nature of a woman’s heart, till years have robbed such understanding of its value. And it is well that it should be so, or men would triumph too easily.
Mr. Arabin stood counting the carpet, unhappy, wretchedly unhappy, at the hard words that had been spoken to him, and yet happy, exquisitely happy, as he thought that after all the woman whom he so regarded was not to become the wife of the man whom he so much disliked. As he stood there he began to be aware that he was himself in love. Forty years had passed over his head, and as yet woman’s beauty had never given him an uneasy hour. His present hour was very uneasy.
Not that he remained there for half or a quarter of that time. In spite of what Eleanor had said, Mr. Arabin was, in truth, a manly man. Having ascertained that he loved this woman, and having now reason to believe that she was free to receive his love, at least if she pleased to do so, he followed her into the garden to make such wooing as he could.
He was not long in finding her. She was walking to and fro beneath the avenue of elms that stood in the archdeacon’s grounds, skirting the churchyard. What had passed between her and Mr. Arabin had not, alas, tended to lessen the acerbity of her spirit. She was very angry—more angry with him than with anyone. How could he have so misunderstood her? She had been so intimate with him, had allowed him such latitude in what he had chosen to say to her, had complied with his ideas, cherished his views, fostered his precepts, cared for his comforts, made much of him in every way in which a pretty woman can make much of an unmarried man without committing herself or her feelings! She had been doing this, and while she had been doing it he had regarded her as the affianced wife of another man.
As she passed along the avenue, every now and then an unbidden tear would force itself on her cheek, and as she raised her hand to brush it away, she stamped with her little foot upon the sward with very spite to think that she had been so treated.
Mr. Arabin was very near to her when she first saw him, and she turned short round and retraced her steps down the avenue, trying to rid her cheeks of all trace of the telltale tears. It was a needless endeavour, for Mr. Arabin was in a state of mind that hardly allowed him to observe such trifles. He followed her down the walk and overtook her just as she reached the end of it.
He had not considered how he would address her; he had not thought what he would say. He had only felt that it was wretchedness to him to quarrel with her, and that it would be happiness to be allowed to love her. And yet he could not lower himself by asking her pardon. He had done her no wrong. He had not calumniated her, not injured her, as she had accused him of doing. He could not confess sins of which he had not been guilty. He could only let the past be past and ask her as to her and his hopes for the future.
“I hope we are not to part as enemies?” said he.
“There shall be no enmity on my part,” said Eleanor; “I endeavour to avoid all enmities. It would be a hollow pretence were I to say that there can be true friendship between us, after what has just passed. People cannot make their friends of those whom they despise.”
“And am I despised?”
“I must have been so before you could have spoken of me as you did. And I was deceived, cruelly deceived. I believed that you thought well of me; I believed that you esteemed me.”
“Thought well of you and esteemed you!” said he. “In justifying myself before you, I must use stronger words than those.” He paused for a moment, and Eleanor’s heart beat with painful violence within her bosom as she waited for him to go on. “I have esteemed, do esteem you, as I never yet esteemed any woman. Think well of you! I never thought to think so well, so much of any human creature. Speak calumny of you! Insult you! Wilfully injure you! I wish it were my privilege to shield you from calumny, insult, and injury. Calumny! Ah me! ‘Twere almost better that it were so. Better than to worship with a sinful worship; sinful and vain also.” And then he walked along beside her, with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down on the grass beneath his feet and utterly at a loss how to express his meaning. And Eleanor walked beside him determined at least to give him no assistance.
“Ah