Mr. Slope, as we have said, left the palace with a feeling of considerable triumph. Not that he thought that his difficulties were all over — he did not so deceive himself — but he felt that he had played his first move well, as well as the pieces on the board would allow, and that he had nothing with which to reproach himself. He first of all posted the letter to the archbishop and, having made that sure, proceeded to push the advantage which he had gained. Had Mrs. Bold been at home, he would have called on her, but he knew that she was at Plumstead, so he wrote the following note. It was the beginning of what, he trusted, might be a long and tender series of epistles.
MY DEAR MRS. BOLD,
You will understand perfectly that I cannot at present correspond with your father. I heartily wish that I could and hope the day may be not long distant when mists shall have been cleared away and we may know each other. But I cannot preclude myself from the pleasure of sending you these few lines to say that Mr. Q. has today, in my presence, resigned any title that he ever had to the wardenship of the hospital, and that the bishop has assured me that it is his intention to offer it to your esteemed father.
Will you, with my respectful compliments, ask him, who I believe is now a fellow-visitor with you, to call on the bishop either on Wednesday or Thursday, between ten and one. This is by the bishop’s desire. If you will so far oblige me as to let me have a line naming either day, and the hour which will suit Mr. Harding, I will take care that the servants shall have orders to show him in without delay. Perhaps I should say no more — but still I wish you could make your father understand that no subject will be mooted between his lordship and him which will refer at all to the method in which he may choose to perform his duty. I for one am persuaded that no clergyman could perform it more satisfactorily than he did, or than he will do again.
On a former occasion I was indiscreet and much too impatient, considering your father’s age and my own. I hope he will not now refuse my apology. I still hope also that with your aid and sweet pious labours we may live to attach such a Sabbath-school to the old endowment as may, by God’s grace and furtherance, be a blessing to the poor of this city.
You will see at once that this letter is confidential. The subject, of course, makes it so. But, equally, of course, it is for your parent’s eye as well as for your own, should you think proper to show it to him.
I hope my darling little friend Johnny is as strong as ever — dear little fellow. Does he still continue his rude assaults on those beautiful long silken tresses?
I can assure you your friends miss you from Barchester sorely, but it would be cruel to begrudge you your sojourn among flowers and fields during this truly sultry weather.
Pray believe me, my dear Mrs. Bold, Yours most sincerely, OBADIAH SLOPE Barchester, Friday.
Now this letter, taken as a whole, and with the consideration that Mr. Slope wished to assume a great degree of intimacy with Eleanor, would not have been bad but for the allusion to the tresses. Gentlemen do not write to ladies about their tresses unless they are on very intimate terms indeed. But Mr. Slope could not be expected to be aware of this. He longed to put a little affection into his epistle, and yet he thought it injudicious, as the letter would, he knew, be shown to Mr. Harding. He would have insisted that the letter should be strictly private and seen by no eyes but Eleanor’s own, had he not felt that such an injunction would have been disobeyed. He therefore restrained his passion, did not sign himself “yours affectionately,” and contented himself instead with the compliment to the tresses.
Having finished his letter, he took it to Mrs. Bold’s house and, learning there, from the servant, that things were to be sent out to Plumstead that afternoon, left it, with many injunctions, in her hands.
We will now follow Mr. Slope so as to complete the day with him and then return to his letter and its momentous fate in the next chapter.
There is an old song which gives us some very good advice about courting:
It’s gude to be off with the auld luve Before ye be on wi’ the new.
Of the wisdom of this maxim Mr. Slope was ignorant, and accordingly, having written his letter to Mrs. Bold, he proceeded to call upon the Signora Neroni. Indeed, it was hard to say which was the old love and which the new, Mr. Slope having been smitten with both so nearly at the same time. Perhaps he thought it not amiss to have two strings to his bow. But two strings to Cupid’s bow are always dangerous to him on whose behalf they are to be used. A man should remember that between two stools he may fall to the ground.
But in sooth Mr. Slope was pursuing Mrs. Bold in obedience to his better instincts, and the signora in obedience to his worser. Had he won the widow and worn her, no one, could have blamed him. You, O reader, and I and Eleanor’s other friends would have received the story of such a winning with much disgust and disappointment, but we should have been angry with Eleanor, not with Mr. Slope. Bishop, male and female, dean and chapter and diocesan clergy in full congress could have found nothing to disapprove of in such an alliance. Convocation itself, that mysterious and mighty synod, could in no wise have fallen foul of it. The possession of ￡1000 a year and a beautiful wife would not at all have hurt the voice of the pulpit charmer, or lessened the grace and piety of the exemplary clergyman.
But not of such a nature were likely to be his dealings with the Signora Neroni. In the first place he knew that her husband was living, and therefore he could not woo her honestly. Then again she had nothing to recommend her to his honest wooing had such been possible. She was not only portionless, but also from misfortune unfitted to be chosen as the wife of any man who wanted a useful mate. Mr. Slope was aware that she was a helpless, hopeless cripple.
But Mr. Slope could not help himself. He knew that he was wrong in devoting his time to the back drawing-room in Dr. Stanhope’s house. He knew that what took place there would, if divulged, utterly ruin him with Mrs. Bold. He knew that scandal would soon come upon his heels and spread abroad among the black coats of Barchester some tidings, exaggerated tidings, of the sighs which he poured into the lady’s ears. He knew that he was acting against the recognized principles of his life, against those laws of conduct by which he hoped to achieve much higher success. But, as we have said, he could not help himself. Passion, for the first time in his life, passion was too strong for him.
As for the signora, no such plea can be put forward for her, for in truth she cared no more for Mr. Slope than she did for twenty others who had been at her feet before him. She willingly, nay greedily, accepted his homage. He was the finest fly that Barchester had hitherto afforded to her web, and the signora was a powerful spider that made wondrous webs and could in no way live without catching flies. Her taste in this respect was abominable, for she had no use for the victims when caught. She could not eat them matrimonially, as young lady flies do whose webs are most frequently of their mothers’ weaving. Nor could she devour them by any escapade of a less legitimate description. Her unfortunate affliction precluded her from all hope of levanting with a lover. It would be impossible to run away with a lady who required three servants to move her from a sofa.
The signora was subdued by no passion. Her time for love was gone. She had lived out her heart, such heart as she had ever had, in her early years, at an age when Mr. Slope was thinking of the second book of Euclid and his unpaid bill at the buttery hatch. In age the lady was younger than the gentleman, but in feelings, in knowledge of the affairs of love, in intrigue, he was immeasurably her junior. It was necessary to her to have some man at her feet. It was the one customary excitement of her life. She delighted in the exercise of power which this gave her; it was now nearly the only food for her ambition; she would boast to her sister that she could make a fool of any man, and the sister, as little imbued with feminine delicacy as herself, good-naturedly thought it but fair that such amusement should be afforded to a poor invalid who was debarred from the ordinary pleasures of life.
Mr. Slope was madly in love but hardly knew it. The Signora spitted him, as a boy does a cockchafer on a cork, that she might enjoy the energetic agony of his gyrations. And she knew very well what she was doing.
Mr. Slope having added to his person all such adornments as are possible to a clergyman making a morning visit — such as a clean necktie, clean handkerchief, new gloves, and a soup?on of not unnecessary scent — called about three o’clock at the doctor’s door. At about this hour the signora was almost always alone in the back drawing-room. The mother had not come down. The doctor was out or in his own room. Bertie was out, and Charlotte at any rate left the room if anyone called whose object was specially with her sister. Such was her idea of being charitable and sisterly.
Mr: Slope, as was his custom, asked for Mr. Stanhope, and was told, as was the servant’s custom, that the signora was in the drawing-room. Upstairs he accordingly went. He found her, as he always did, lying on her sofa with a French volume before her and a beautiful little inlaid writing-case open on her table. At the moment of his entrance she was in the act of writing.
“Ah, my friend,” said she, putting out her left hand to him across her desk, “I did not expect you today and was this very instant writing to you —”
Mr. Slope, taking the soft, fair, delicate hand in his — and very soft and fair and delicate it was — bowed over it his huge red head and kissed it. It was a sight to see, a deed to record if the author could fitly do it, a picture to put on canvas. Mr. Slope was big, awkward, cumbrous, and, having his heart in his pursuit, was ill at ease. The lady was fair, as we have said, and delicate; everything about her was fine and refined; her hand in his looked like a rose lying among carrots, and when he kissed it, he looked as a cow might do on finding such a flower among her food. She was graceful as a couchant goddess and, moreover, as self-possessed as Venus must have been when courting Adonis.
Oh, that such grace and such beauty should have condescended to waste itself on such a pursuit!
“I was in the act of writing to you,” said she, “but now my scrawl may go into the basket;” and she raised the sheet of gilded note-paper from off her desk as though to tear it.
“Indeed it shall not,” said he, laying the embargo of half a stone weight of human flesh and blood upon the devoted paper. “Nothing that you write for my eyes, signora, shall be so desecrated,” and he took up the letter, put that also among the carrots and fed on it, and then proceeded to read it.
“Gracious me! Mr. Slope,” said she, “I hope you don’t mean to say you keep all the trash I write to you. Half my time I don’t know what I write, and when I do, I know it is only fit for the back of the fire. I hope you have not that ugly trick of keeping letters.”
“At any rate, I don’t throw them into a waste-paper basket. If destruction is their doomed lot, they perish worthily, and are burnt on a pyre, as Dido was of old.”
“With a steel pen stuck through them, of course,” said she, ‘to make the simile more complete. Of all the ladies of my acquaintance I think Lady Dido was the most absurd. Why did she not do as Cleopatra did? Why did she not take out her ships and insist on going with him? She could not bear to lose the land she had got by a swindle, and then she could not bear the loss of her lover. So she fell between two stools. Mr. Slope, whatever you do, never mingle love and business.”
Mr. Slope blushed up to his eyes and over his mottled forehead to the very roots of his hair. He felt sure that the signora knew all about his intentions with reference to Mrs Bold. His conscience told him that he was detected. His doom was to be spoken; he was to be punished for his duplicity and rejected by the beautiful creature before him. Poor man. He little dreamt that had all his intentions with reference to Mrs. Bold been known to the signora, it would only have added zest to that lady’s amusement. It was all very well to have Mr. Slope at her feet, to show her power by making an utter fool of a clergyman, to gratify her own infidelity by thus proving the little strength which religion had in controlling the passions even of a religious man, but it would be an increased gratification if she could be made to understand that she was at the same time alluring her victim away from another, whose love if secured would be in every way beneficent and salutary.
The Signora had indeed discovered, with the keen instinct of such a woman, that Mr. Slope was bent on matrimony with Mrs. Bold, but in alluding to Dido she had not thought of it. She instantly perceived, however, from her lover’s blushes, what was on his mind and was not slow in taking advantage of it.
She looked him full in the face, not angrily, nor yet with a smile, but with an intense and overpowering gaze; then, holding up her forefinger and slightly shaking her head, she said:
“Whatever you do, my friend, do not mingle love and business. Either stick to your treasure and your city of wealth, or else follow your love like a true man. But never attempt both. If you do, you’ll have to die with a broken heart as did poor Dido. Which is it to be with you, Mr. Slope, love or money?”
Mr. Slope was not so ready with a pathetic answer as he usually was with touching episodes in his extempore sermons. He felt that he ought to say something pretty, something also that should remove the impression on the mind of his lady-love. But he was rather put about how to do it.
“Love,” said he, “true overpowering love, must be the strongest passion a man can feel; it must control every other wish and put aside every other pursuit. But with me love will never act in that way unless it be returned;” and he threw upon the signora a look of tenderness which was intended to make up for all the deficiencies of his speech.
“Take my advice,” said she. “Never mind love. After all, what is it? The dream of a few weeks. That is all its joy. The disappointment of a life is its Nemesis. Who was ever successful in true love? Success in love argues that the love is false. True love is always despondent or tragical. Juliet loved, Haidee loved, Dido loved, and what came of it? Troilus loved and ceased to be a man.”
“Troilus loved and was fooled,” said the more manly chaplain. “A man may love and yet not be a Troilus. All women are not Cressidas.”
“No, all women are not Cressidas. The falsehood is not always on the woman’s side. Imogen was true, but how was she rewarded? Her lord believed her to be the paramour of the first he who came near her in his absence. Desdemona was true and was smothered. Ophelia was true and went mad. There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel. But in wealth, money, houses, lands, goods, and chattels, in the good things of this world, yes, in them there is something tangible, something that can be retained and enjoyed.”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Slope, feeling himself bound to enter some protest against so very unorthodox a doctrine, “this world’s wealth will make no one happy.”
“And what will make you happy — you — you?” said she, raising herself up and speaking to him with energy across the table. “From what source do you look for happiness? Do not say that you look for none. I shall not believe you. It is a search in ............