The Last Chronicle of Barset Part 85

"What is this that you say?"

"I say that I do not know how I shall ever speak again. You have disgraced me."

"Disgraced you! I disgrace you! It is you that disgrace yourself by saying such words."

"Very well. Let it be so. Perhaps you will go away now and leave me to myself. I have got a bad headache, and I can't talk any more. Oh dear, oh dear, what will he think of it!"

"And you mean to tell me that I have been wrong!"

"Yes, you have been wrong,--very wrong. Why didn't you go away when I asked you? You are always being wrong. I wish I had never come to Barchester. In any other position I should not have felt it so much.

As it is I do not know how I can ever show my face again."

"Not have felt what so much, Mr. Proudie?" said the wife, going back in the excitement of her anger to the nomenclature of old days. "And this is to be my return for all my care in your behalf! Allow me to tell you, sir, that in any position in which you may be placed I know what is due to you, and that your dignity will never lose anything in my hands. I wish that you were as well able to take care of it yourself." Then she stalked out of the room, and left the poor man alone.

Bishop Proudie sat alone in his study throughout the whole day. Once or twice in the course of the morning his chaplain came to him on some matter of business, and was answered with a smile,--the peculiar softness of which the chaplain did not fail to attribute to the right cause. For it was soon known throughout the household that there had been a quarrel. Could he quite have made up his mind to do so,--could he have resolved that it would be altogether better to quarrel with his wife,--the bishop would have appealed to the chaplain, and have asked at any rate for sympathy. But even yet he could not bring himself to confess his misery, and to own himself to another to be the wretch that he was. Then during the long hours of the day he sat thinking of it all. How happy could he be if it were only possible for him to go away, and become even a curate in a parish, without his wife! Would there ever come to him a time of freedom? Would she ever die? He was older than she, and of course he would die first. Would it not be a fine thing if he could die at once, and thus escape from his misery?

What could he do, even supposing himself strong enough to fight the battle? He could not lock her up. He could not even very well lock her out of his room. She was his wife, and must have the run of his house. He could not altogether debar her from the society of the diocesan clergymen. He had, on this very morning, taken strong measures with her. More than once or twice he had desired her to leave the room. What was there to be done with a woman who would not obey her husband,--who would not even leave him to the performance of his own work? What a blessed thing it would be if a bishop could go away from his home to his work every day like a clerk in a public office,--as a stone-mason does! But there was no such escape for him.

He could not go away. And how was he to meet her again on this very day?

And then for hours he thought of Dr. Tempest and Mr. Crawley, considering what he had better do to repair the shipwreck of the morning. At last he resolved that he would write to the doctor; and before he had again seen his wife, he did write his letter, and he sent it off. In this letter he made no direct allusion to the occurrence of the morning, but wrote as though there had not been any fixed intention of a personal discussion between them. "I think it will be better that there should be a commission," he said, "and I would suggest that you should have four other clergymen with you.

Perhaps you will select two yourself out of your rural deanery; and, if you do not object, I will name as the other two Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful, who are both resident in the city." As he wrote these two names he felt ashamed of himself, knowing that he had chosen the two men as being special friends of his wife, and feeling that he should have been brave enough to throw aside all considerations of his wife's favour,--especially at this moment, in which he was putting on his armour to do battle against her. "It is not probable,"

he continued to say in his letter, "that you will be able to make your report until after the trial of this unfortunate gentleman shall have taken place, and a verdict shall have been given. Should he be acquitted, that, I imagine, should end the matter. There can be no reason why we should attempt to go beyond the verdict of a jury.

But should he be found guilty, I think we ought to be ready with such steps as it will be becoming for us to take at the expiration of any sentence which may be p.r.o.nounced. It will be, at any rate, expedient that in such case the matter should be brought before an ecclesiastical court." He knew well as he wrote this, that he was proposing something much milder than the course intended by his wife when she had instigated him to take proceedings in the matter; but he did not much regard that now. Though he had been weak enough to name certain clergymen as a.s.sessors with the rural dean, because he thought that by doing so he would to a certain degree conciliate his wife,--though he had been so far a coward, yet he was resolved that he would not sacrifice to her his own judgment and his own conscience in his manner of proceeding. He kept no copy of his letter, so that he might be unable to show her his very words when she should ask to see them. Of course he would tell her what he had done; but in telling her he would keep to himself what he had said as to the result of an acquittal in a civil court. She need not yet be told that he had promised to take such a verdict as sufficing also for an ecclesiastical acquittal. In this spirit his letter was written and sent off before he again saw his wife.

He did not meet her till they came together in the drawing-room before dinner. In explaining the whole truth as to circ.u.mstances as they existed at the palace at that moment, it must be acknowledged that Mrs. Proudie herself, great as was her courage, and wide as were the resources which she possessed within herself, was somewhat appalled by the position of affairs. I fear that it may now be too late for me to excite much sympathy in the mind of any reader on behalf of Mrs. Proudie. I shall never be able to make her virtues popular. But she had virtues, and their existence now made her unhappy. She did regard the dignity of her husband, and she felt at the present moment that she had almost compromised it. She did also regard the welfare of the clergymen around her, thinking of course in a general way that certain of them who agreed with her were the clergymen whose welfare should be studied, and that certain of them who disagreed with her were the clergymen whose welfare should be postponed. But now an idea made its way into her bosom that she was not perhaps doing the best for the welfare of the diocese generally.

What if it should come to pa.s.s that all the clergymen of the diocese should refuse to open their mouths in her presence on ecclesiastical subjects, as Dr. Tempest had done? This special day was not one on which she was well contented with herself, though by no means on that account was her anger mitigated against the offending rural dean.

During dinner she struggled to say a word or two to her husband, as though there had been no quarrel between them. With him the matter had gone so deep that he could not answer her in the same spirit.

There were sundry members of the family present,--daughters, and a son-in-law, and a daughter's friend who was staying with them; but even in the hope of appearing to be serene before them he could not struggle through his deep despondence. He was very silent, and to his wife's words he answered hardly anything. He was courteous and gentle with them all, but he spoke as little as was possible, and during the evening he sat alone, with his head leaning on his hand,--not pretending even to read. He was aware that it was too late to make even an attempt to conceal his misery and his disgrace from his own family.

His wife came to him that night in his dressing-room in a spirit of feminine softness that was very unusual with her. "My dear," said she, "let us forget what occurred this morning. If there has been any anger we are bound as Christians to forget it." She stood over him as she spoke, and put her hand upon his shoulder almost caressingly.

"When a man's heart is broken, he cannot forget it," was his reply.

She still stood by him, and still kept her hand upon him; but she could think of no other words of comfort to say. "I will go to bed,"

he said. "It is the best place for me." Then she left him, and he went to bed.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE SOFTNESS OF SIR RAFFLE BUFFLE.

We have seen that John Eames was prepared to start on his journey in search of the Arabins, and have seen him after he had taken farewell of his office and of his master there, previous to his departure; but that matter of his departure had not been arranged altogether with comfort as far as his official interests were concerned. He had been perhaps a little abrupt in his mode of informing Sir Raffle Buffle that there was a pressing cause for his official absence, and Sir Raffle had replied to him that no private pressure could be allowed to interfere with his public duties. "I must go, Sir Raffle, at any rate," Johnny had said; "it is a matter affecting my family, and must not be neglected." "If you intend to go without leave," said Sir Raffle, "I presume you will first put your resignation into the hands of Mr. Kissing." Now, Mr. Kissing was the secretary to the Board.

This had been serious undoubtedly. John Eames was not specially anxious to keep his present position as private secretary to Sir Raffle, but he certainly had no desire to give up his profession altogether. He said nothing more to the great man on that occasion, but before he left the office he wrote a private note to the chairman expressing the extreme importance of his business, and begging that he might have leave of absence. On the next morning he received it back with a very few words written across it. "It can't be done,"

were the very few words which Sir Raffle Buffle had written across the note from his private secretary. Here was a difficulty which Johnny had not antic.i.p.ated, and which seemed to be insuperable. Sir Raffle would not have answered him in that strain if he had not been very much in earnest.

"I should send him a medical certificate," said Cradell, his friend of old.

"Nonsense," said Eames.

"I don't see that it's nonsense at all. They can't get over a medical certificate from a respectable man; and everybody has got something the matter with him of some kind."

"I should go and let him do his worst," said Fisher, who was another clerk. "It wouldn't be more than putting you down a place or two.

As to losing your present berth you don't mind that, and they would never think of dismissing you."

"But I do mind being put down a place or two," said Johnny, who could not forget that were he so put down his friend Fisher would gain the step which he would lose.

"I should give him a barrel of oysters, and talk to him about the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said FitzHoward, who had been private secretary to Sir Raffle before Eames, and might therefore be supposed to know the man.

"That might have done very well if I had not asked him and been refused first," said John Eames. "I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll write a long letter on a sheet of foolscap paper, with a regular margin, so that it must come before the Board, and perhaps that will frighten him."

When he mentioned his difficulty on that evening to Mr. Toogood, the lawyer begged him to give up the journey. "It will only be sending a clerk, and it won't cost so very much after all," said Toogood. But Johnny's pride could not allow him to give way. "I'm not going to be done about it," said he. "I'm not going to resign, but I will go even though they may dismiss me. I don't think it will come to that, but if it does it must." His uncle begged of him not to think of such an alternative; but this discussion took place after dinner, and away from the office, and Eames would not submit to bow his neck to authority. "If it comes to that," said he, "a fellow might as well be a slave at once. And what is the use of a fellow having a little money if it does not make him independent? You may be sure of one thing, I shall go; and that on the day fixed."

On the next morning John Eames was very silent when he went into Sir Raffle's room at the office. There was now only this day and another before that fixed for his departure, and it was of course very necessary that matters should be arranged. But he said nothing to Sir Raffle during the morning. The great man himself was condescending and endeavoured to be kind. He knew that his stern refusal had greatly irritated his private secretary, and was anxious to show that, though in the cause of public duty he was obliged to be stern, he was quite willing to forget his sternness when the necessity for it had pa.s.sed away. On this morning, therefore, he was very cheery.

But to all his cheery good-humour John Eames would make no response.

Late in the afternoon, when most of the men had left the office, Johnny appeared before the chairman for the last time that day with a very long face. He was dressed in black, and had changed his ordinary morning coat for a frock, which gave him an appearance altogether unlike that which was customary to him. And he spoke almost in a whisper, very slowly; and when Sir Raffle joked,--and Sir Raffle often would joke,--he not only did not laugh, but he absolutely sighed. "Is there anything the matter with you, Eames?" asked Sir Raffle.

"I am in great trouble," said John Eames.

"And what is your trouble?"

"It is essential for the honour of one of my family that I should be at Florence by this day week. I cannot make up my mind what I ought to do. I do not wish to lose my position in the public service, to which, as you know, I am warmly attached; but I cannot submit to see the honour of my family sacrificed!"

"Eames," said Sir Raffle, "that must be nonsense;--that must be nonsense. There can be no reason why you should always expect to have your own way in everything."

"Of course if I go without leave I shall be dismissed."

"Of course you will. It is out of the question that a young man should take the bit between his teeth in that way."

"As for taking the bit between his teeth, Sir Raffle, I do not think that any man was ever more obedient, perhaps I should say more submissive, than I have been. But there must be a limit to everything."

"What do you mean by that, Mr. Eames?" said Sir Raffle, turning in anger upon his private secretary. But Johnny disregarded his anger.

Johnny, indeed, had made up his mind that Sir Raffle should be very angry. "What do you mean, Mr. Eames, by saying that there must be a limit? I know nothing about limits. One would suppose that you intended to make an accusation against me."

"So I do. I think, Sir Raffle, that you are treating me with great cruelty. I have explained to you that family circ.u.mstances--"

"You have explained nothing, Mr. Eames."

"Yes, I have, Sir Raffle. I have explained to you that matters relating to my family, which materially affect the honour of a certain one of its members, demand that I should go at once to Florence. You tell me that if I go I shall be dismissed."

"Of course you must not go without leave. I never heard of such a thing in all my life." And Sir Raffle lifted up his hands towards heaven, almost in dismay.

"So I have drawn up a short statement of the circ.u.mstances, which I hope may be read at the Board when the question of my dismissal comes before it."

"You mean to go, then?"

"Yes, Sir Raffle; I must go. The honour of a certain branch of my family demands that I should do so. As I have for some time been so especially under you, I thought it would be proper to show you what I have said before I send my letter in, and therefore I have brought it with me. Here it is." And Johnny handed to Sir Raffle an official doc.u.ment of large dimensions.