第100章

But she was desired to sit down again, and made to do so, so that Mrs Proudie might stand and preach over her. It is generally considered an offensive thing for a gentleman to keep his seat while another is kept standing before him, and we presume the same law holds with regard to ladies. It often is so felt; but we are inclined to say that it never produces half the discomfort or half the feeling of implied inferiority that is shown by a great man who desires his visitor to be seated while he himself speaks from his legs. Such a solecism in good breeding, when construed into English means this: "The accepted rule of courtesy in the world require that I should offer you a seat; if I did not do so, you would bring a charge against me in the world of being arrogant and ill-mannered; I will obey the world; but, nevertheless, I will not put myself on an equality with you. You may sit down, but I won't sit with you. Sit, therefore, at my bidding, and I'll stand and talk to you."This was just what Mrs Proudie meant to say; and Mrs Quiverful, though she was too anxious and too flurried thus to translate the full meaning of the manoeuvre, did not fail to feel its effect. She was cowed and uncomfortable, and a second time essayed to rise from her chair.

'Pray be seated, Mrs Quiverful, pray keep your seat. Your husband, I say, has been most weak and most foolish. It is impossible, Mrs Quiverful, to help people who will not help themselves. I much fear that I can now do nothing for you in this matter.'

'Oh! Mrs Proudie--don't say so,' said the poor woman, again jumping up.

'Pray be seated, Mrs Quiverful. I much fear that I can do nothing further for you in this matter. Your husband has, in a most unaccountable manner, taken upon himself to resign that which I was empowered to offer him. As a matter of course, the bishop expects that his clergy shall know their own minds. What he may ultimately do--what we may finally decide on doing--I cannot say. Knowing the extent of your family--'

'Fourteen children, Mrs Proudie, fourteen of them! and hardly bread--barely bread! It's hard for the children of a clergyman, it's hard for one who has always done his duty respectably!' Not a word fell from her about herself; but the tears came running down her big coarse cheeks, on which the dust of the August road had left its traces.

Mrs Proudie has not been portrayed in these pages as an agreeable or amiable lady. There has been no intention to impress the reader much in her favour. It is ordained that all novels should have a male and female angel, and a male and female devil. If it be considered that this rule is obeyed in these pages, the latter character must be supposed to have fallen to the lot of Mrs Proudie. But she was not all devil. There was a heart inside that stiff-ribbed bodice, though not, perhaps, of large dimensions, and certainly not easily accessible. Mrs Quiverful, however, did gain access, and Mrs Proudie proved herself a woman. Whether it was the fourteen children with their probable bare bread and the possible bare backs, or the respectability of the father's work, or the mingled dust and tears on the mother's face, we will not pretend to say. But Mrs Proudie was touched.

She did not show it as other women might have done. She did not give Mrs Quiverful eau-de-Cologne, or order her a glass of wine.

She did not take her to her toilet table, and offer her the use of brushes and combs, towels and water. She did not say soft little speeches and coax her kindly with equanimity. Mrs Quiverful, despite her rough appearance, would have been as amenable to such little tender cares as any lady in the land. But none such was forthcoming. Instead of that, Mrs Proudie slapped one hand upon the other, and declared--not with an oath; for as a lady and a Sabbatarian and a she-bishop, she could not swear,--but with an adjuration, that 'she wouldn't have it done.'

The meaning of this was that she wouldn't have Mr Quiverful's promised appointment cozened away by the treachery of Mr Slope and the weakness of her husband. This meaning she very soon explained to Mrs Quiverful.

'Why was your husband such a fool,' said she, now dismounted from her high horse and sitting confidentially down close to her visitor, 'as to take the bait which that man threw to him? If he had not been so utterly foolish, nothing could have prevented your going to the hospital.'

Poor Mrs Quiverful was ready enough with her own tongue in accusing her husband to his face of being soft, and perhaps she did not always speak of him to her children quite so respectfully as she might have done. But she did not like to hear him abused by others, and began to vindicate him, and to explain that of course he had taken Mr Slope to be an emissary of Mrs Proudie herself; that Mr Slope was thought to be peculiarly her friend; and that, therefore, Mr Quiverful would have been failing in respect to her had he assumed to doubt what Mr Slope had said.

Thus mollified Mrs Proudie again declared that she 'would not have it done,' and at last sent Mrs Quiverful home with an assurance that, to the furthest stretch of her power and influence in the palace, the appointment of Mr Quiverful should be insisted upon. As she repeated that word 'insisted', she thought of the bishop in his night-cap, and with compressed lips slightly shook her head. Oh! my aspiring pastors, divines to whose ears nolo episcopari are the sweetest of words, which of you would be a bishop on such terms as these?

Mrs Quiverful got home in the farmer's cart, not indeed with a light heart, but satisfied that she had done right in making her visit.