第188章

'My dear, perhaps you will leave us for a few moments,' said the bishop.

Poor bishop! Poor weak bishop! As the words came from his mouth he knew that they would be spoken in vain, and that if so, it would have been better for him to have left them unspoken.

'Why should I be dismissed from your room without a reason?' said Mrs Proudie. 'Cannot Dr Tempest understand that a wife may share her husband's counsels--as she must share his troubles? If he cannot, I pity him very much as to his own household.'

'Dr Tempest,' said the bishop, 'Mrs Proudie takes the greatest possible interest in everything concerning the diocese.'

'I am sure, my lord,' said the doctor, 'that you will see how unseemly it would be that I should interfere in any way between you and Mrs Proudie. I certainly will not do so. I can only say again that if you will communicate with me your wishes in writing, I will attend to them--if it be possible.'

'You mean to be stubborn,' said Mrs Proudie, whose prudence was beginning to give way under the great provocation to which her temper was being subjected.

'Yes, madam; if it is to be called stubbornness, I must be stubborn. My lord, Mrs Proudie spoke to me on this subject in the breakfast-room after you had left it, and I then ventured to explain to her that in accordance with such light as I have on the matter, I could not discuss it in her presence. I greatly grieve that I failed to make myself understood by her--as, otherwise, this unpleasantness might have been spared.'

'I understood you very well, Dr Tempest, and I think you to be a most unreasonable man. Indeed, I might use a much harsher word.'

'You may use any word you please, Mrs Proudie,' said the doctor.

'My dear, I really think you had better leave us for a few minutes,' said the bishop.

'No, my lord--no,' said Mrs Proudie, turning round upon her husband.

'Not so. It would be most unbecoming that I should be turned out of a room in this palace by an uncourteous word from a parish clergyman. It would be unseemly. If Dr Tempest forgets his duty, I will not forget mine. There are other clergymen in the diocese besides Dr Tempest who can undertake the very easy task of this commission. As for his having been appointed rural dean I don't know how many years ago, it is matter of no consequence whatever. In such a preliminary inquiry any three clergymen will suffice. It need not be done by the rural dean at all.'

'My dear!'

'I will not be turned out of this room by Dr Tempest;--and that is enough.'

'My lord,' said the doctor, 'you had better write to me as I proposed to you just now.'

'His lordship will not write. His lordship will do nothing of the kind,' said Mrs Proudie.

'My dear!' said the bishop, driven in his perplexity beyond all carefulness of reticence. 'My dear, I do wish you wouldn't--I do indeed.

If you would only go away!'

'I will not go away, my lord,' said Mrs Proudie.

'But I will,' said Dr Tempest, feeling true compassion for the unfortunate man whom he saw writhing in agony before him. 'It will manifestly be for the best that I should retire. My lord, I wish you good morning. Mrs Proudie, good morning.' And so he left the room.

'A most stubborn and a most ungentlemanlike man,' said Mrs Proudie, as soon as the door was closed behind the retreating rural dean. 'I do not think that in the whole course of my life I ever met with anyone so insubordinate and so ill-mannered. He is worse than the archdeacon.' As she uttered these words she paced about the room. The bishop said nothing; and when she herself had been silent for a few minutes she turned upon him. 'Bishop,' she said, 'I hope that you agree with me. Iexpect that will agree with me in a matter that is so of much moment to my comfort, and I may say to my position generally in the diocese.

Bishop, why do you not speak?'

'You have behaved in such a way that I do not know that I shall ever speak again,' said the bishop.

'What is that you say?'

'I say that I do not know how I shall ever speak again. You have disgraced me.'

'Disgraced you! I disgrace you! It is you that disgrace yourself by saying such words.'

'Very well. Let it be so. Perhaps you will go away now and leave me to myself. I have got a bad headache, and I can't talk any more. Oh dear, oh dear, what will he think of it?'

'And you mean to tell me that I have been wrong?'

'Yes, you have been wrong--very wrong. Why didn't you go away when Iasked you? You are always being wrong. I wish I had never come to Barchester. In any other position I should not have felt it so much. As it is I do not know how I can ever show my face again.'

'Not have felt what so much, Mr Proudie?' said the wife, going back in the excitement of her anger to the nomenclature of old days. 'And this is to be my return for all my care in your behalf! Allow me to tell you, sir, that in any position in which you may be placed I know what is due to you, and that your dignity will never lose anything in my hands. Iwish that you were as well able to take care of it yourself.' Then she stalked out of the room, and left the poor man alone.

Bishop Proudie sat alone in his study throughout the whole day. Once or twice in the course of the morning his chaplain came to him on some matter of business, and was answered with a smile--the peculiar softness of which the chaplain did not fail to attribute the right cause. For it was soon known throughout the household that there had been a quarrel. Could he quite have made up his mind to do so--could he have resolved that it would be altogether better to quarrel with his wife--the bishop would have appealed to the chaplain, and have asked at any rate for sympathy. But even yet he could not bring himself to confess his misery, and to own himself to another to be the wretch that he was. Then during the long hours of the day he sat thinking of it all.