Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope (ebook reader below 3000 .txt) 📗

found herself alone with the archdeacon, on the evening of the Ullathorne party, she had expressed herself very forcibly as to Mr. Arabin’s conduct on that occasion. He had, she declared, looked and acted and talked very unlike a decent parish clergyman. At first the archdeacon had laughed at this, and assured her that she need not trouble herself⁠—that Mr. Arabin would be found to be quite safe. But by degrees he began to find that his wife’s eyes had been sharper than his own. Other people coupled the signora’s name with that of Mr. Arabin. The meagre little prebendary who lived in the close told him to a nicety how often Mr. Arabin had visited at Dr. Stanhope’s, and how long he had remained on the occasion of each visit. He had asked after Mr. Arabin at the cathedral library, and an officious little vicar choral had offered to go and see whether he could be found at Dr. Stanhope’s. Rumour, when she has contrived to sound the first note on her trumpet, soon makes a loud peal audible enough. It was too clear that Mr. Arabin had succumbed to the Italian woman, and that the archdeacon’s credit would suffer fearfully if something were not done to rescue the brand from the burning. Besides, to give the archdeacon his due, he was really attached to Mr. Arabin, and grieved greatly at his backsliding.

They were sitting, talking over their sorrows, in the drawing-room before dinner on the day after Mr. Slope’s departure for London, and on this occasion Mrs. Grantly spoke out her mind freely. She had opinions of her own about parish clergymen, and now thought it right to give vent to them.

“If you would have been led by me, Archdeacon, you would never have put a bachelor into St. Ewold’s.”

“But my dear, you don’t meant to say that all bachelor clergymen misbehave themselves.”

“I don’t know that clergymen are so much better than other men,” said Mrs. Grantly. “It’s all very well with a curate, whom you have under your own eye and whom you can get rid of if he persists in improprieties.”

“But Mr. Arabin was a fellow, and couldn’t have had a wife.”

“Then I would have found someone who could.”

“But, my dear, are fellows never to get livings?”

“Yes, to be sure they are, when they get engaged. I never would put a young man into a living unless he were married, or engaged to be married. Now, here is Mr. Arabin. The whole responsibility lies upon you.”

“There is not at this moment a clergyman in all Oxford more respected for morals and conduct than Arabin.”

“Oh, Oxford!” said the lady, with a sneer. “What men choose to do at Oxford nobody ever hears of. A man may do very well at Oxford who would bring disgrace on a parish; and to tell you the truth, it seems to me that Mr. Arabin is just such a man.”

The archdeacon groaned deeply, but he had no further answer to make.

“You really must speak to him, Archdeacon. Only think what the Thornes will say if they hear that their parish clergyman spends his whole time philandering with this woman.”

The archdeacon groaned again. He was a courageous man, and knew well enough how to rebuke the younger clergymen of the diocese, when necessary. But there was that about Mr. Arabin which made the doctor feel that it would be very difficult to rebuke him with good effect.

“You can advise him to find a wife for himself, and he will understand well enough what that means,” said Mrs. Grantly.

The archdeacon had nothing for it but groaning. There was Mr. Slope: he was going to be made dean; he was going to take a wife; he was about to achieve respectability and wealth, an excellent family mansion, and a family carriage; he would soon be among the comfortable élite of the ecclesiastical world of Barchester; whereas his own protégé, the true scion of the true church, by whom he had sworn, would be still but a poor vicar, and that with a very indifferent character for moral conduct! It might be all very well recommending Mr. Arabin to marry, but how would Mr. Arabin, when married, support a wife?

Things were ordering themselves thus in Plumstead drawing-room when Dr. and Mrs. Grantly were disturbed in their sweet discourse by the quick rattle of a carriage and pair of horses on the gravel sweep. The sound was not that of visitors, whose private carriages are generally brought up to country-house doors with demure propriety, but betokened rather the advent of some person or persons who were in a hurry to reach the house, and had no intention of immediately leaving it. Guests invited to stay a week, and who were conscious of arriving after the first dinner-bell, would probably approach in such a manner. So might arrive an attorney with the news of a granduncle’s death, or a son from college with all the fresh honours of a double first. No one would have had himself driven up to the door of a country-house in such a manner who had the slightest doubt of his own right to force an entry.

“Who is it?” said Mrs. Grantly, looking at her husband.

“Who on earth can it be?” said the archdeacon to his wife. He then quietly got up and stood with the drawing-room door open in his hand. “Why, it’s your father!”

It was indeed Mr. Harding, and Mr. Harding alone. He had come by himself in a post-chaise with a couple of horses from Barchester, arriving almost after dark, and evidently full of news. His visits had usually been made in the quietest manner; he had rarely presumed to come without notice, and had always been driven up in a modest old green fly, with one horse, that hardly made itself heard as it crawled up to the hall-door.

“Good gracious, Warden, is it you?” said the archdeacon, forgetting in his surprise the events of the last few years. “But come in; nothing the matter, I hope.”

“We are very glad you are come, Papa,” said his daughter. “I’ll go and get