Barchester Towers Part 72

How much each of them had to tell the other, and how certain each was that the story which he or she had to tell would astonish the other!

"My dear, I am so anxious to see you," said Mr. Harding, kissing his daughter.

"Oh, Papa, I have so much to tell you!" said the daughter, returning the embrace.

"My dear, they have offered me the deanery!" said Mr. Harding, antic.i.p.ating by the suddenness of the revelation the tidings which Eleanor had to give him.

"Oh, Papa," said she, forgetting her own love and happiness in her joy at the surprising news. "Oh, Papa, can it be possible? Dear Papa, how thoroughly, thoroughly happy that makes me!"

"But, my dear, I think it best to refuse it."

"Oh, Papa!"

"I am sure you will agree with me, Eleanor, when I explain it to you.

You know, my dear, how old I am. If I live I--"

"But, Papa, I must tell you about myself."

"Well, my dear."

"I do so wonder how you'll take it."

"Take what?"

"If you don't rejoice at it, if it doesn't make you happy, if you don't encourage me, I shall break my heart."

"If that be the case, Nelly, I certainly will encourage you."

"But I fear you won't. I do so fear you won't. And yet you can't but think I am the most fortunate woman living on G.o.d's earth."

"Are you, dearest? Then I certainly will rejoice with you. Come, Nelly, come to me and tell me what it is."

"I am going--"

He led her to the sofa and, seating himself beside her, took both her hands in his. "You are going to be married, Nelly. Is not that it?"

"Yes," she said faintly. "That is, if you will approve;" and then she blushed as she remembered the promise which she had so lately volunteered to him and which she had so utterly forgotten in making her engagement with Mr. Arabin.

Mr. Harding thought for a moment who the man could be whom he was to be called upon to welcome as his son-in-law. A week since he would have had no doubt whom to name. In that case he would have been prepared to give his sanction, although he would have done so with a heavy heart. Now he knew that at any rate it would not be Mr. Slope, though he was perfectly at a loss to guess who could possibly have filled the place. For a moment he thought that the man might be Bertie Stanhope, and his very soul sank within him.

"Well, Nelly?"

"Oh, Papa, promise to me that, for my sake, you will love him."

"Come, Nelly, come; tell me who it is."

"But will you love him, Papa?"

"Dearest, I must love anyone that you love." Then she turned her face to his and whispered into his ear the name of Mr. Arabin.

No man that she could have named could have more surprised or more delighted him. Had he looked round the world for a son-in-law to his taste, he could have selected no one whom he would have preferred to Mr. Arabin. He was a clergyman; he held a living in the neighbourhood; he was of a set to which all Mr. Harding's own partialities most closely adhered; he was the great friend of Dr. Grantly; and he was, moreover, a man of whom Mr. Harding knew nothing but what he approved.

Nevertheless, his surprise was so great as to prevent the immediate expression of his joy. He had never thought of Mr. Arabin in connexion with his daughter; he had never imagined that they had any feeling in common. He had feared that his daughter had been made hostile to clergymen of Mr. Arabin's stamp by her intolerance of the archdeacon's pretensions. Had he been put to wish, he might have wished for Mr.

Arabin for a son-in-law; but had he been put to guess, the name would never have occurred to him.

"Mr. Arabin!" he exclaimed; "impossible!"

"Oh, Papa, for heaven's sake don't say anything against him! If you love me, don't say anything against him. Oh, Papa, it's done and mustn't be undone--oh, Papa!"

Fickle Eleanor! Where was the promise that she would make no choice for herself without her father's approval? She had chosen, and now demanded his acquiescence. "Oh, Papa, isn't he good? Isn't he n.o.ble?

Isn't he religious, high-minded, everything that a good man possibly can be?" She clung to her father, beseeching him for his consent.

"My Nelly, my child, my own daughter! He is; he is n.o.ble and good and high-minded; he is all that a woman can love and a man admire. He shall be my son, my own son. He shall be as close to my heart as you are. My Nelly, my child, my happy, happy child!"

We need not pursue the interview any further. By degrees they returned to the subject of the new promotion. Eleanor tried to prove to him, as the Grantlys had done, that his age could be no bar to his being a very excellent dean, but those arguments had now even less weight on him than before. He said little or nothing but sat, meditative. Every now and then he would kiss his daughter and say "yes," or "no," or "very true," or "well, my dear, I can't quite agree with you there,"

but he could not be got to enter sharply into the question of "to be, or not to be" Dean of Barchester. Of her and her happiness, of Mr.

Arabin and his virtues, he would talk as much as Eleanor desired--and to tell the truth, that was not a little--but about the deanery he would now say nothing further. He had got a new idea into his head--why should not Mr. Arabin be the new dean?

CHAPTER L

The Archdeacon Is Satisfied with the State of Affairs

The archdeacon, in his journey into Barchester, had been a.s.sured by Mr. Harding that all their prognostications about Mr. Slope and Eleanor were groundless. Mr. Harding, however, had found it very difficult to shake his son-in-law's faith in his own acuteness. The matter had, to Dr. Grantly, been so plainly corroborated by such patent evidence, borne out by such endless circ.u.mstances, that he at first refused to take as true the positive statement which Mr. Harding made to him of Eleanor's own disavowal of the impeachment. But at last he yielded in a qualified way. He brought himself to admit that he would at the present regard his past convictions as a mistake, but in doing this he so guarded himself that if, at any future time, Eleanor should come forth to the world as Mrs. Slope, he might still be able to say: "There, I told you so. Remember what you said and what I said; and remember also for coming years, that I was right in this matter--as in all others."

He carried, however, his concession so far as to bring himself to undertake to call at Eleanor's house, and he did call accordingly, while the father and daughter were yet in the middle of their conference. Mr. Harding had had so much to hear and to say that he had forgotten to advise Eleanor of the honour that awaited her, and she heard her brother-in-law's voice in the hall while she was quite unprepared to see him.

"There's the archdeacon," she said, springing up.

"Yes, my dear. He told me to tell you that he would come and see you; but to tell the truth I had forgotten all about it."

Eleanor fled away, regardless of all her father's entreaties. She could not now, in the first hours of her joy, bring herself to bear all the archdeacon's retractions, apologies, and congratulations.

He would have so much to say, and would be so tedious in saying it; consequently, the archdeacon, when he was shown into the drawing-room, found no one there but Mr. Harding.

"You must excuse Eleanor," said Mr. Harding.

"Is anything the matter?" asked the doctor, who at once antic.i.p.ated that the whole truth about Mr. Slope had at last come out.

"Well, something is the matter. I wonder now whether you will be much surprised."

The archdeacon saw by his father-in-law's manner that after all he had nothing to tell him about Mr. Slope. "No," said he, "certainly not--nothing will ever surprise me again." Very many men now-a-days besides the archdeacon adopt or affect to adopt the _nil admirari_ doctrine; but nevertheless, to judge from their appearance, they are just as subject to sudden emotions as their grandfathers and grandmothers were before them.

"What do you think Mr. Arabin has done?"

"Mr. Arabin! It's nothing about that daughter of Stanhope's, I hope?"