Part 31 (2/2)

”I should not have an easy conscience,” he rejoined, ”but a conscience very far from being easy, if anything said or done by me should lead the bishop to act unadvisedly in this matter. It is clear that in the interview I had with Mr. Harding I misunderstood him--”

”And it is equally clear that you have misunderstood Mr. Quiverful,”

said she, now at the top of her wrath. ”What business have you at all with these interviews? Who desired you to go to Mr. Quiverful this morning? Who commissioned you to manage this affair? Will you answer me, sir? Who sent you to Mr. Quiverful this morning?”

There was a dead pause in the room. Mr. Slope had risen from his chair, and was standing with his hand on the back of it, looking at first very solemn and now very black. Mrs. Proudie was standing as she had at first placed herself, at the end of the table, and as she interrogated her foe she struck her hand upon it with almost more than feminine vigour. The bishop was sitting in his easy chair twiddling his thumbs, turning his eyes now to his wife, and now to his chaplain, as each took up the cudgels. How comfortable it would be if they could fight it out between them without the necessity of any interference on his part; fight it out so that one should kill the other utterly, as far as diocesan life was concerned, so that he, the bishop, might know clearly by whom it behoved him to be led.

There would be the comfort of quiet in either case; but if the bishop had a wish as to which might prove the victor, that wish was certainly not antagonistic to Mr. Slope.

”Better the d---- you know than the d---- you don't know,” is an old saying, and perhaps a true one; but the bishop had not yet realized the truth of it.

”Will you answer me, sir?” she repeated. ”Who instructed you to call on Mr. Quiverful this morning?” There was another pause. ”Do you intend to answer me, sir?”

”I think, Mrs. Proudie, that under all the circ.u.mstances it will be better for me not to answer such a question,” said Mr. Slope. Mr.

Slope had many tones in his voice, all duly under his command; among them was a sanctified low tone and a sanctified loud tone--he now used the former.

”Did anyone send you, sir?”

”Mrs. Proudie,” said Mr. Slope, ”I am quite aware how much I owe to your kindness. I am aware also what is due by courtesy from a gentleman to a lady. But there are higher considerations than either of those, and I hope I shall be forgiven if I now allow myself to be actuated solely by them. My duty in this matter is to his lords.h.i.+p, and I can admit of no questioning but from him. He has approved of what I have done, and you must excuse me if I say that, having that approval and my own, I want none other.”

What horrid words were these which greeted the ear of Mrs. Proudie?

The matter was indeed too clear. There was premeditated mutiny in the camp. Not only had ill-conditioned minds become insubordinate by the fruition of a little power, but sedition had been overtly taught and preached. The bishop had not yet been twelve months in his chair, and rebellion had already reared her hideous head within the palace.

Anarchy and misrule would quickly follow unless she took immediate and strong measures to put down the conspiracy which she had detected.

”Mr. Slope,” she said with slow and dignified voice, differing much from that which she had hitherto used, ”Mr. Slope, I will trouble you, if you please, to leave the apartment. I wish to speak to my lord alone.”

Mr. Slope also felt that everything depended on the present interview. Should the bishop now be re-petticoated, his thraldom would be complete and forever. The present moment was peculiarly propitious for rebellion. The bishop had clearly committed himself by breaking the seal of the answer to the archbishop; he had therefore fear to influence him. Mr. Slope had told him that no consideration ought to induce him to refuse the archbishop's invitation; he had therefore hope to influence him. He had accepted Mr. Quiverful's resignation and therefore dreaded having to renew that matter with his wife. He had been screwed up to the pitch of a.s.serting a will of his own, and might possibly be carried on till by an absolute success he should have been taught how possible it was to succeed. Now was the moment for victory or rout. It was now that Mr. Slope must make himself master of the diocese, or else resign his place and begin his search for fortune again. He saw all this plainly.

After what had taken place any compromise between him and the lady was impossible. Let him once leave the room at her bidding and leave the bishop in her hands, and he might at once pack up his portmanteau and bid adieu to episcopal honours, Mrs. Bold, and the Signora Neroni.

And yet it was not so easy to keep his ground when he was bidden by a lady to go, or to continue to make a third in a party between a husband and wife when the wife expressed a wish for a _tete-a-tete_ with her husband.

”Mr. Slope,” she repeated, ”I wish to be alone with my lord.”

”His lords.h.i.+p has summoned me on most important diocesan business,”

said Mr. Slope, glancing with uneasy eye at Dr. Proudie. He felt that he must trust something to the bishop, and yet that that trust was so woefully ill-placed. ”My leaving him at the present moment is, I fear, impossible.”

”Do you bandy words with me, you ungrateful man?” said she. ”My lord, will you do me the favour to beg Mr. Slope to leave the room?”

My lord scratched his head, but for the moment said nothing. This was as much as Mr. Slope expected from him, and was on the whole, for him, an active exercise of marital rights.

”My lord,” said the lady, ”is Mr. Slope to leave this room, or am I?”

Here Mrs. Proudie made a false step. She should not have alluded to the possibility of retreat on her part. She should not have expressed the idea that her order for Mr. Slope's expulsion could be treated otherwise than by immediate obedience. In answer to such a question the bishop naturally said in his own mind that, as it was necessary that one should leave the room, perhaps it might be as well that Mrs.

Proudie did so. He did say so in his own mind, but externally he again scratched his head and again twiddled his thumbs.

<script>