ULLATHORNE SPORTS--ACT III
And now Miss Thorne's guests were beginning to take their
departure, and the amusement of those who remained was becoming
slack. It was getting dark, and ladies in morning costumes were
thinking that if they were to appear by candle-light they ought to
readjust themselves. Some young gentlemen had been heard to talk so
loud that prudent mammas determined to retire judiciously, and the
more discreet of the male sex, whose libation had been moderate,
felt that there was not much more left for them to do.
Morning parties, as a rule, are failures. People never know how to
get away from them gracefully. A picnic on an island or a mountain
or in a wood may perhaps be permitted. There is no master of the
mountain bound by courtesy to bid you stay while in his heart he is
longing for your departure. But in a private home or in private
grounds a morning party is a bore. One is called on to eat and
drink at unnatural hours. One is obliged to give up the day which
is useful, and is then left without resources for the evening which
is useless. One gets home fagged and desouvre, and yet at an hour
too early for bed. There is not comfortable resource left. Cards in
these genteel days are among the things tabooed, and a rubber of
whist is impracticable.
All this began now to be felt. Some young people had come with some
amount of hope that they might get up a dance in the evening, and
were unwilling to leave till all such hope was at an end. Others,
fearful of staying longer than was expected, had ordered their
carriages early, and were doing their best to go, solicitous for
their servants and horses. The countess and her noble brood were
among the first to leave, and as regarded the Hon. George, it was
certainly time that he did so. Her ladyship was in a great fret and
fume. Those horrid roads would, she was sure, be the death of her
if unhappily she were caught in them by the dark of night. The
lamps she was assured were good, but no lamp could withstand the
jolting of the roads of East Barsetshire.
The De Courcy property lay in the western division of the county.
Mrs Proudie could not stay when the countess was gone. So the
bishop was searched for by the Revs. Messrs. Grey and Green, and
found in one corner of the tent enjoying himself thoroughly in a
disquisition on the hebdomadal board. He obeyed, however, the
behests of the lady without finishing the sentence in which he was
promising to Dr Gwynne that his authority at Oxford should remain
unimpaired; and the episcopal horses turned their noses towards the
palatial stables. Then the Grantlys went. Before they did so Mr
Harding managed to whisper a word into his daughter's ear. Of
course, he said, he would undeceive the Grantlys as to that foolish
rumour about Mr Slope.
'No, no, no,' said Eleanor; 'pray do not--pray wait till I see you.
You will be home in a day or two, and then I will explain to you
everything.'
'I shall be home to-morrow,' said he.
'I am so glad,' said Eleanor. 'You will come and dine with me, and
then we shall be so comfortable.'
Mr Harding promised. He did not exactly know what there was to be
explained, or why Dr Grantly's mind should not be disabused of the
mistake into which he had fallen; but nevertheless he promised. He
owed some reparation to his daughter, and he thought that he might
best make it by obedience.
And thus the people were thinning off by degrees, as Charlotte and
Eleanor walked about in quest of Bertie. Their search might have
been long, had they not happened to hear his voice. He was
comfortably ensconced in the ha-ha, with his back to the sloping
side, smoking a cigar, and eagerly engaged in conversation with
some youngster from the further side of the county, whom he had
never met before, who was also smoking under Bertie's pupilage, and
listening with open ears to an account given by his companion of
some of the pastimes of the Eastern clime.
'Bertie, I am seeking you everywhere,' said Charlotte. 'Come up
here at once.'
Bertie looked up out of the ha-ha, and saw the two ladies before
him. As there was nothing for him but to obey, he got up and threw
away his cigar. From the first moment of his acquaintance with her
he had liked Eleanor Bold. Had he been left to his own devices, had
she been penniless, and had it then been quite out of the question
that he should marry her, he would most probably have fallen
violently in love with her. But now he could not help regarding her
somewhat as he did the marble workshops at Carrara, as he had done
his easel and palette, as he had done the lawyer's chambers in
London; in fact, as he had invariably regarded everything by which
it had been proposed to obtain the means of living. Eleanor Bold
appeared before him, no longer as a beautiful woman, but as a new
profession called matrimony. It was a profession indeed requiring
but little labour, and one in which an income was insured to him.
But nevertheless he had been as it were goaded on to it; his sister
had talked to him of Eleanor, just as she had talked of busts and
portraits. Bertie did not dislike money, but he hated the very
thought of earning it. He was now called away from his pleasant
cigar to earn it, by offering himself as a husband to Mrs Bold. The
work indeed was made easy enough; for in lieu of his having to seek
the widow, the widow had apparently come to seek him.
He made some sudden absurd excuse to his auditor, and then throwing
away his cigar, climbed up the wall of the ha-ha and joined the
ladies on the lawn.
'Come and give Mrs Bold your arm,' said Charlotte, 'while I set you
on a piece of duty which, as a preux chevalier, you must
immediately perform. Your personal danger will, I fear, be
insignificant, as your antagonist is a clergyman.'
Bertie immediately gave his arm to Eleanor, walking between her and
his sister. He had lived too long abroad to fall into an
Englishman's habit of offering each an arm to two ladies at the
same time; a habit, by the bye, which foreigners regard as an
approach to bigamy, or a sort of incipient Mormonism.
The little history of Mr Slope's misconduct was then told to Bertie
by his sister, Eleanor's ears tingling the while. And well they
might tingle. If it were necessary to speak of the outrage at all,
why should it be spoken of to such a person as Mr Stanhope, and why
in her own hearing? She knew she was wrong, and was unhappy and
dispirited, and yet she could think of no way to extricate herself,
no way to set herself right. Charlotte spared her as much as she
possibly could, spoke of the whole thing as though Mr Slope had
taken a glass of wine too much, said that of course there would be
nothing more about it, but that steps must be taken to exclude Mr
Slope from the carriage.
'Mrs Bold need be under no alarm about that,' said Bertie, 'for Mr
Slope has gone this hour past. He told me that business made it
necessary that he should start at once for Barchester.'
'He is not so tipsy, at any rate, but what he knows his fault,'
said Charlotte. 'Well, my dear, that is one difficulty over. Now
I'll leave you with your true knight, and get Madeline off as
quickly as I can. The carriage is here, I suppose, Bertie?'
'It has been here for the last hour.'
'That's well. Good-bye, my dear. Of course you'll come in to tea. I
shall trust you to bring her, Bertie; even by force if necessary.'
And so saying, Charlotte was off across the lawn, leaving her
brother alone with the widow.
As Miss Stanhope went off, Eleanor bethought herself that, as Mr
Slope had taken his departure, there no longer existed any
necessity for separating Mr Stanhope from his sister Madeline, who
so much needed his aid. It had been arranged that he should remain
so as to preoccupy Mr Slope's place in the carriage, and act as a
social policeman to effect the exclusion of that disagreeable
gentleman. But Mr Slope had effected his own exclusion, and there
as no possible reason now why Bertie should not go with his sister.
At least Eleanor saw none, and she said so much.
'Oh, let Charlotte have her own way,' said he. 'She has arranged
it, and there will be no end of confusion if we make another
change. Charlotte always arranges everything in our house; and
rules us like a despot.'
'But the signora?' said Eleanor.
'Oh, the signora can do very well without me. Indeed, she will have
to do without me,' he added, thinking rather of his studies in
Carrara, than of his Barchester hymeneals.
'Why, you are not going to leave us?' asked Eleanor.
It has been said that Bertie Stanhope was a man without principle.
He certainly was so. He had no power of using active mental
exertion to keep himself from doing evil. Evil had no ugliness in
his eyes; virtue no beauty. He was void of any of those feelings
which actuate men to do good. But he was perhaps equally void of
those which actuate men to do evil. He got into debt with utter
recklessness, thinking of nothing as to whether the tradesmen would
ever be paid or not. But he did not invent active schemes of deceit
for the sake of extracting the goods of others. If a man gave him
credit, that was the man's look-out; Bertie Stanhope troubled
himself nothing further. In borrowing money he did the same; he
gave people references to 'his governor', told them that the 'old
chap' had a good income; and agreed to pay sixty per cent for the
accommodation. All this he did without a scruple of conscience; but
then he never contrived active villainy.
In this affair of his marriage, it had been represented to him as a
matter of duty that he ought to put himself in possession of Mrs
Bold's hand and fortune; and at first he had so regarded it. About
her he had thought but little. It was the customary thing for men
situated as he was to marry for money, and there was no reason why
he should not do what others around him did. And so he consented.
But now he began to see the matter in another light. He was setting
himself down to catch a woman, as a cat sits to catch a mouse. He
was to catch her, and swallow her up, her and her child, and her
houses and land, in order that he might live on her instead of on
his father. There was a cold, calculating, cautious cunning about
this quite at variance with Bertie's character. The prudence of the
measure was quite as antagonistic to his feelings as the iniquity.
And then, should he be successful, what would be the reward? Having
satisfied his creditors with half of the widow's fortune, he would
be allowed to sit down quietly at Barchester, keeping economical
house with the remainder. His duty would be to rock the cradle of
the late Mr Bold's child, and his highest excitement a demure party
at Plumstead rectory, should it ultimately turn out that the
archdeacon be sufficiently reconciled to receive him.
There was little in the programme to allure such a man as Bertie
Stanhope. Would not the Carrara workshop, or whatever worldly
career fortune might have in store for him, would not almost
anything be better than this? The lady herself was undoubtedly all
that was desirable; but the most desirable lady becomes nauseous
when she has to be taken as a pill. He was pledged to his sister,
however, and let him quarrel with whom he would, it behoved him not
to quarrel with her. If she were lost to him all would be lost that
he could ever hope to derive henceforward from the paternal
roof-tree. His mother was apparently indifferent to his weal or
woe, to his wants or to his warfare. His father's brow got blacker
and blacker from day to day, as the old man looked at his hopeless
son. And as for Madeline--poor Madeline, whom of all of them he
liked the best,--she had enough to do to shift for herself. No;
come what might, he must cling to his sister and obey her behests,
let them be ever so stern; or at the very least be seen to obey
them. Could not some happy deceit bring him through in this matter,
so that he might save appearances with his sister, and yet not
betray the widow to her ruin? What if he made a confidence of
Eleanor?
'Twas in this spirit that Bertie Stanhope set about his wooing.
'But you are not going to leave Barchester?' asked Eleanor.
'I do not know,' he replied. 'I hardly know yet what I am going to
do. But it is at any rate certain that I must do something.'
'You mean about your profession?' said she.
'Yes, about my profession, if you can call it one.'
'And is it not one?' said Eleanor. 'Were I a man, I know none I
should prefer to it, except painting. And I believe the one is as
much in your power as the other.'
'Yes, just about equally so,' said Bertie with a little touch of
inward satire directed at himself. He knew in his heart that he
would never make a penny by either.
'I have often wondered, Mr Stanhope, why you do not exert yourself
more,' said Eleanor, who felt a friendly fondness for the man with
whom she was walking. 'But I know it is very impertinent in me to
say so.'
'Impertinent!' said he. 'Not so, but much too kind. It is much too
kind in you to take an interest in so idle a scamp.'
'And make busts of the bishop, dean and chapter? Or perhaps, if I
achieve great success, obtain a commission to put up an elaborate
tombstone over a prebendary's widow, a dead lady with a Grecian
nose, a bandeau, and an intricate lace veil; lying of course on a
marble sofa, from among the legs of which Death will be creeping
out and poking at his victim with a small toasting-fork.'
Eleanor laughed; but yet she thought that if the surviving
prebendary paid the bill the object of the artist as a professional
man would, in great measure, be obtained.
'I don't know about the dean and chapter and the prebendary's
widow,' said Eleanor. 'Of course you must take them as they come.
But the fact of your having a great cathedral in which such
ornaments are required, could not but be in your favour.'
'No real artist could descend to the ornamentation of a cathedral,'
said Bertie, who had his ideas of the high ecstatic ambition of
art, as indeed all artists have, who are not in receipt of a good
income. 'Building should be fitted to grace the sculpture, not the
sculpture to grace the building.'
'Yes, when the work of art is good enough to merit it. Do you, Mr
Stanhope, do something sufficiently excellent, and we ladies of
Barchester will erect for it a fitting receptacle. Come, what shall
the subject be?'
'I'll put you in your pony-chair, Mrs Bold, as Dannecker put
Ariadne on her lion. Only you must promise to sit for me.'
'My ponies are too tame, I fear, and my broad-brimmed straw hat
will not look so well in marble as the lace veil of the
prebendary's wife.'
'If you will not consent to that, Mrs Bold, I will consent to try
no other subject in Barchester.'
'You are determined, then, to push your fortune in other lands?'
'I am determined,' said Bertie, slowly and significantly as he
tried to bring up his mind to a great resolve; 'I am determined in
this matter to be guided wholly by you.'
'Wholly by me!' said Eleanor, astonished at, and not quite liking
his altered manner.
'Wholly by you,' said Bertie, dropping his companion's arm, and
standing before her on the path. In their walk they had come
exactly to the spot where Eleanor had been provoked into slapping
Mr Slope's face. Could it be possible that the place was peculiarly
unpropitious to her comfort? Could it be possible that she should
her have to encounter another amorous swain?
'If you will be guided by me, Mr Stanhope, you will set yourself
down to steady and persevering work, and you will be ruled by your
father as to the place in which it will be most advisable for you
to do so.'
'Nothing could be more prudent, if only it were practicable. But
now, if you will let me, I will tell you how it is that I will be
guided by you, and why. Will you let me tell you?'
'I really do not know what you can have to tell.'
'No--you cannot know. It is impossible that you should. But we have
been very good friends, Mrs Bold, have we not?'
'Yes, I think we have,' said she, observing in his demeanour an
earnestness very unusual with him.
'You were kind enough to say just now that you took an interest in
me, and I was perhaps vain enough to believe you.'
'There is no vanity in that; I do so as your sister's brother,--and
as my own friend also.'
'Well, I don't deserve that you should feel so kindly towards me,'
said Bertie; 'but upon my word I am very grateful for it,' and he
paused awhile, hardly knowing how to introduce the subject that he
had in hand.
And it was no wonder that he found it difficult. He had to make
known to his companion the scheme that had been prepared to rob her
of her wealth; he had to tell her that he loved her without
intending to marry her; and he had also to bespeak from her not
only his own pardon, but also that of his sister, and induce Mrs
Bold to protest in her future communication with Charlotte that an
offer had been duly made to her and duly rejected.
Bertie Stanhope was not prone to be very diffident of his own
conversational powers, but it did seem to him that he was about to
tax them almost too far. He hardly knew where to begin, and he
hardly knew where he should end.
'I wish to be guided by you,' said he; 'and, indeed, in this
matter, there is no one else who can set me right.'
'Oh, that must be nonsense,' said she.
'Well, listen to me now, Mrs Bold; and if you can help it, pray
don't be angry with me.'
'Angry!' said she.
'Oh, indeed you will have cause to do so. You know how very much
attached to you my sister Charlotte is.'
Eleanor acknowledged that she did.
'Indeed she is; I never knew her to love any one so warmly on so
short an acquaintance. You know also how well she loves me?'
Eleanor now made no answer, but she felt the blood tingle in her
cheek as she gathered from what he said the probable result of this
double-barrelled love on the part of Miss Stanhope.
'I am her only brother, Mrs Bold, and it is not to be wondered at
that she should love me. But you do not yet know Charlotte--you do
not know how entirely the well-being of our family hangs on her.
Without her to manage for us, I do not know how we should get on
from day to day. You cannot yet have observed all this.'
Eleanor had indeed observed a good deal of this; she did not
however now say so, but allowed him to proceed with his story.
'You cannot therefore be surprised that Charlotte should be most
anxious to do the best for us all.
Eleanor said that she was not at all surprised.
'And she has had a very difficult game to play, Mrs Bold--a very
difficult game. Poor Madeline's unfortunate marriage and terrible
accident, my mother's ill-health, my father's absence from England,
and last, and worst perhaps my own roving, idle spirit have almost
been too much for her. You cannot wonder if among all her cares one
of the foremost is to see me settled in the world.'
Eleanor on this occasion expressed no acquiescence. She certainly
supposed that a formal offer was to be made, and could not but
think that so singular an exordium was never before made by a
gentleman in a similar position. Mr Slope had annoyed her by the
excess of his ardour. It was quiet clear that no such danger was to
be feared from Mr Stanhope. Prudential motives alone actuated him. Not only was he about to
make love because his sister told him, but he also took the
precaution of explaining all this before he began. 'Twas thus, we
may presume, that the matter presented itself to Mrs Bold.
When he had got so far, Bertie began poling in the gravel with a
little cane which he carried. He still kept moving on, but very
slowly, and his companion moved slowly by his side, not inclined to
assist him in the task the performance of which appeared to be
difficult to him.
'Knowing how fond she is of yourself, Mrs Bold, cannot you imagine
what scheme should have occurred to her?'
'I can imagine no better scheme, Mr Stanhope, than the one I
proposed to you just now.'
'No,' said he, somewhat lack-a-daisically; 'I suppose that would be
the best; but Charlotte thinks another plan might be joined with
it.--She wants me to marry you.'
A thousand remembrances flashed across Eleanor's mind all in a
moment--how Charlotte had talked about and praised her brother, how
she had continually contrived to throw the two of them together,
how she had encouraged all manner of little intimacies, how she had
with singular cordiality persisted in treating Eleanor as one of
the family. All this had been done to secure her comfortable income
for the benefit of one of the family!
Such a feeling as this is very bitter when it first impresses
itself on a young mind. To the old such plots and plans, such
matured schemes for obtaining the goods of this world without the
trouble of earning them, such long-headed attempts to convert
'tuum' into 'meum' are the ways of life to which they are
accustomed. 'Tis thus that many live, and it therefore behoves all
those who are well to do in the world be on their guard against
those who are not. With them it is the success that disgusts, not
the attempt. But Eleanor had not yet learnt to look on her money as
a source of danger; she had not begun to regard herself as fair
game to be hunted down by hungry gentlemen. She had enjoyed the
society of the Stanhopes, she had greatly liked the cordiality of
Charlotte, and had been happy in her new friends. Now she saw the
cause of all that kindness, and her mind was opened to a new phase
of human life.
'Miss Stanhope,' said she haughtily, 'has been contriving for me a
great deal of honour, but she might have saved herself the trouble.
I an not sufficiently ambitious.'
'Pray don't be angry with her, Mrs Bold,' said he, 'or with me
either.'
'Certainly not with you, Mr Stanhope,' said she, with considerable
sarcasm in her tone. 'Certainly not with you.'
'No,--nor with her,' said he imploringly.
'And why, may I ask you, Mr Stanhope, have you told me this
singular story? For I may presume I may judge by your manner of
telling it, that--that--that you and your sister are not exactly of
one mind on the subject.'
'No, we are not.'
'And if so,' said Mrs Bold, who was now really angry with the
unnecessary insult, which she thought had been offered to her, 'and
if so, why has it been worth your while to tell me all this?'
'I did once think, Mrs Bold--that you--that you--'
The widow now again became entirely impassive, and would not lend
the slightest assistance to her companion.
'I did once think that you perhaps might--might have been taught to
regard me as more than a friend.'
'Never!,' said Mrs Bold, 'never. If I have ever allowed myself to
do anything to encourage such an idea, I have been very much to
blame,--very much to blame, indeed.'
'You never have,' said Bertie, who really had a good-natured
anxiety to make what he said as little unpleasant as possible. 'You
never have, and I have seen for some time that I had no chance; but
my sister's hopes ran higher. I have not mistaken you, Mrs Bold,
though perhaps she has.'
'Then why have you said all this to me?'
'Because I must not anger her.'
'And will not this anger her? Upon my word, Mr Stanhope, I do not
understand the policy of your family. Oh, how I wish I was at
home!' And as she expressed this wish, she could restrain herself
no longer, but burst out into a flood of tears.
Poor Bertie was greatly moved. 'You shall have the carriage to
yourself going home,' said he, 'at least you and my father. As for
me I can walk, or for the matter of that it does not much signify
what I do.' He perfectly understood that part of Eleanor's grief
arose from the apparent necessity of going back to Barchester in
the carriage of her second suitor.
This somewhat mollified her. 'Oh, Mr Stanhope,' said she, 'why
should you have made me so miserable? What will have gained by
telling me all this?'
He had not even yet explained to her the most difficult part of his
proposition; he had not told her that she was to be a party to the
little deception which he intended to play off upon his sister.
This suggestion had still to be made, and as it was absolutely
necessary, he proceeded to make it.
We need not follow him through the whole of his statement. At last,
and not without considerable difficulty, he made Eleanor understand
why he had let her into his confidence, seeing that he no longer
intended her the honour of a formal offer. At last he made her
comprehend the part which she was destined to play in this little
family comedy.
But when she did understand it, she was only more angry with him
than ever: more angry, not only with him, but with Charlotte also.
Her fair name was to bandied about between them in different
senses, and each sense false. She was to played off by the sister
against the father; and then by the brother against the sister. Her
dear friend Charlotte, with all her agreeable sympathy and
affection, was striving to sacrifice her for the Stanhope family
welfare; and Bertie, who, as he now proclaimed himself, was over
head and heels in debt, completed the compliment of owning that he
did not care to have his debts paid at so great a sacrifice to
himself. Then she was asked to conspire together with this
unwilling suitor, for the sake of making the family believe that he
had in obedience to their commands done his best to throw himself
thus away!
She lifted up her face when she had finished, and looking at him
with much dignity, even through her tears, she said--
'I regret to say it, Mr Stanhope; but after what has passed, I
believe that all intercourse between your family and myself had
better cease.'
'Well, perhaps it had,' said Bertie naively; 'perhaps that will be
better, at any rate for a time; and then Charlotte will think you
are offended at what I have done.'
'And now I will go back to the house, if you please,' said Eleanor.
'I can find my way by myself, Mr Stanhope: after what has passed,'
she added, 'I would rather go alone.'
'But I must find the carriage for you, Mrs Bold, and I must tell my
father that you will return with him alone, and I must make some
excuse to him for not going with you; and I must bid the servant
put you down at your own house, for I suppose you will not now
choose to see them again in the close.'
There was a truth about this, and a perspicuity in making
arrangements for lessening her immediate embarrassment, which had
some effect in softening Eleanor's anger. So she suffered herself
to walk by his side over the now deserted lawn, till they came to
the drawing-room window. There was something about Bertie Stanhope
which gave him in the estimation of every one, a different standing
from that which any other man would occupy under similar
circumstances. Angry as Eleanor was, and great as was her cause for
anger, she was not half as angry with him as she would have been
with any one else. He was apparently so simple, so good- natured,
so unaffected and easy to talk to, that she had already
half-forgiven him before he was at the drawing-room window. When
they arrived there, Dr Stanhope was sitting nearly alone with Mr
and Miss Thorne; one or two other unfortunates were there, who from
one cause or another were still delayed in getting away; but they
were every moment getting fewer in number.
As soon as he had handed Eleanor over to his father, Bertie started
off to the front gate, in search of the carriage, and there waited
leaning patiently against the front wall, and comfortably smoking a
cigar, till it came up. When he returned to the room, Dr Stanhope
and Eleanor were alone with their hosts.
'At last, Miss Thorne,' said he cheerily, 'I have come to relieve
you. Mrs Bold and my father are the last roses in the very
delightful summer you have given us, and desirable as Mrs Bold's
society always is, now at least you must be glad to see the last
flowers plucked from the tree.'
Miss Thorne declared that she was delighted to have Mrs Bold and Dr
Stanhope still with her; and Mr Thorne would have said the same,
had he not been checked by a yawn, which he could not suppress.
'Father, will you give your arm to Mrs Bold?' said Bertie: and so
the last adieux were made, and the prebendary led out Mrs Bold,
followed by his son.
'I shall be home soon after you,' said he, as the two got into the
carriage.
'Are you not coming in the carriage?' said the father.
'No, no; I have some one to see on the road, and shall walk. John,
mind you drive to Mrs Bold's house first.'
Eleanor, looking out of the window, saw him with his hat in his
hand, bowing to her with his usual gay smile, as though nothing had
happened to mar the tranquillity of the day. It was many a long
year before she saw him again. Dr Stanhope hardly spoke to her on
her way home: and she was safely deposited by John at her own
hall-door, before the carriage drove into the close.
And thus our heroine played the last act of that day's melodrama.