“I thought Mr. Slope seemed to talk to nobody there but that daughter of Stanhope’s,” said Mr. Harding, wishing to defend his child.
“Oh, Mr. Slope is a cleverer man than you think of, Papa, and keeps more than one iron in the fire.”
To give Eleanor her due, any suspicion as to the slightest inclination on her part towards Mr. Slope was a wrong to her. She had no more idea of marrying Mr. Slope than she had of marrying the bishop, and the idea that Mr. Slope would present himself as a suitor had never occurred to her. Indeed, to give her her due again, she had never thought about suitors since her husband’s death. But nevertheless it was true that she had overcome all that repugnance to the man which was so strongly felt for him by the rest of the Grantly faction. She had forgiven him his sermon. She had forgiven him his Low Church tendencies, his Sabbath-schools, and puritanical observances. She had forgiven his pharisaical arrogance, and even his greasy face and oily, vulgar manners. Having agreed to overlook such offences as these, why should she not in time be taught to regard Mr. Slope as a suitor?
And as to him, it must also be affirmed that he was hitherto equally innocent of the crime imputed to him. How it had come to pass that a man whose eyes were generally so widely open to everything around him had not perceived that this young widow was rich as well as beautiful, cannot probably now be explained. But such was the fact. Mr. Slope had ingratiated himself with Mrs. Bold, merely as he had done with other ladies, in order to strengthen his party in the city. He subsequently amended his error, but it was not till after the interview between him and Mr. Harding.
CHAPTER XIV
The New Champion
The archdeacon did not return to the parsonage till close upon the hour of dinner, and there was therefore no time to discuss matters before that important ceremony. He seemed to be in an especial good humour, and welcomed his father-in-law with a sort of jovial earnestness that was usual with him when things on which he was intent were going on as he would have them.
“It’s all settled, my dear,” said he to his wife as he washed his hands in his dressing-room, while she, according to her wont, sat listening in the bedroom; “Arabin has agreed to accept the living. He’ll be here next week.” And the archdeacon scrubbed his hands and rubbed his face with a violent alacrity, which showed that Arabin’s coming was a great point gained.
“Will he come here to Plumstead?” said the wife.
“He has promised to stay a month with us,” said the archdeacon, “so that he may see what his parish is like. You’ll like Arabin very much. He’s a gentleman in every respect, and full of humour.”
“He’s very queer, isn’t he?” asked the lady.
“Well—he is a little odd in some of his fancies, but there’s nothing about him you won’t like. He is as staunch a churchman as there is at Oxford. I really don’t know what we should do without Arabin. It’s a great thing for me to have him so near me, and if anything can put Slope down, Arabin will do it.”
The Reverend Francis Arabin was a fellow of Lazarus, the favoured disciple of the great Dr. Gwynne, a High Churchman at all points—so high, indeed, that at one period of his career he had all but toppled over into the cesspool of Rome—a poet and also a polemical writer, a great pet in the common-rooms at Oxford, an eloquent clergyman, a droll, odd, humorous, energetic, conscientious man, and, as the archdeacon had boasted of him, a thorough gentleman. As he will hereafter be brought more closely to our notice, it is now only necessary to add that he had just been presented to the vicarage of St. Ewold by Dr. Grantly, in whose gift as archdeacon the living lay. St. Ewold is a parish lying just without the city of Barchester. The suburbs of the new town, indeed, are partly within its precincts, and the pretty church and parsonage are not much above a mile distant from the city gate.
St. Ewold is not a rich piece of preferment—it is worth some three or four hundred a year at most, and has generally been held by a clergyman attached to the cathedral choir. The archdeacon, however, felt, when the living on this occasion became vacant, that it imperatively behoved him to aid the force of his party with some tower of strength, if any such tower could be got to occupy St. Ewold’s. He had discussed the matter with his brethren in Barchester, not in any weak spirit as the holder of patronage to be used for his own or his family’s benefit, but as one to whom was committed a trust on the due administration of which much of the church’s welfare might depend. He had submitted to them the name of Mr. Arabin, as though the choice had rested with them all in conclave, and they had unanimously admitted that, if Mr. Arabin would accept St. Ewold’s, no better choice could possibly be made.
If Mr. Arabin would accept St. Ewold’s! There lay the difficulty. Mr. Arabin was a man standing somewhat prominently before the world, that is, before the Church of England world. He was not a rich man, it is true, for he held no preferment but his fellowship; but he was a man not over-anxious for riches, not married of course, and one whose time was greatly taken up in discussing, both in print and on platforms, the privileges and practices of the church to which he belonged. As the archdeacon had done battle for its temporalities, so did Mr. Arabin do battle for its spiritualities, and both had done so conscientiously; that is, not so much each for his own benefit as for that of others.
Holding such a position as Mr. Arabin did, there was much reason to doubt whether he would consent to become the parson of St. Ewold’s, and Dr. Grantly had taken the trouble to go himself to Oxford on the matter. Dr. Gwynne and Dr. Grantly together had succeeded in persuading this eminent divine that duty required him to go to Barchester. There were wheels within wheels in this affair. For some time past Mr. Arabin had been engaged in a tremendous controversy with no less a person than Mr. Slope, respecting the apostolic succession. These two gentlemen had never seen each other, but they had been extremely bitter in print. Mr. Slope had endeavoured to strengthen his cause by calling Mr. Arabin an owl, and Mr. Arabin had retaliated by hinting that Mr. Slope was an infidel. This battle had been commenced in the columns of “The Jupiter,” a powerful newspaper, the manager of which was very friendly to Mr. Slope’s view of the case. The matter, however, had become too tedious for the readers of “The Jupiter,” and a little note had therefore been appended to one of Mr. Slope’s most telling rejoinders, in which it had been stated that no further letters from the reverend gentlemen could be inserted except as advertisements.
Other methods of publication were, however, found, less expensive than advertisements in “The Jupiter,” and the war went on merrily. Mr. Slope declared that the main part of the consecration of a clergyman was the self-devotion of the inner man to the duties of the ministry. Mr. Arabin contended that a man was not consecrated at all, had, indeed, no single attribute of a clergyman, unless he became so through the imposition of some bishop’s hands, who had become a bishop through the imposition of other hands, and so on in a direct line to one of the apostles. Each had repeatedly hung the other on the horns of a dilemma, but neither seemed to be a whit the worse for the hanging; and so the war went on merrily.
Whether or no the near neighbourhood of the foe may have acted in any way as an inducement to Mr. Arabin to accept the living of St. Ewold, we will not pretend to say; but it had at any rate been settled in Dr. Gwynne’s library, at Lazarus, that he would accept it, and that he would lend his assistance towards driving the enemy out of Barchester, or, at any rate, silencing him while he remained there. Mr. Arabin intended to keep his rooms at Oxford and to have the assistance of a curate at St. Ewold, but he promised to give as much time as possible to the neighbourhood of Barchester, and from so great a man Dr. Grantly was quite satisfied with such a promise. It was no small part of the satisfaction derivable from such an arrangement that Bishop Proudie would be forced to institute into a living immediately under his own nose the enemy of his favourite chaplain.