“If you wish it to be so.”
“I do wish it.”
“And I shall tell my mother today that I am engaged to you—unless she refuses to see me. Go to Mrs. Broughton now. I feel that we are almost cruel to be thinking of ourselves in this house at such a time.” Upon this Dalrymple went, and Clara Van Siever was left to her reflections. She had never before had a lover. She had never had even a friend whom she loved and trusted. Her life had been passed at school till she was nearly twenty, and since then she had been vainly endeavouring to accommodate herself and her feelings to her mother. Now she was about to throw herself into the absolute power of a man who was nearly a stranger to her! But she did love him, as she had never loved anyone else;—and then, on the other side, there was Mr. Musselboro!
Dalrymple was upstairs for an hour, and Clara did not see him again before he left the house. It was clear to her, from Mrs. Broughton’s first words, that Conway had told her what had passed. “Of course I shall never see anything more of either of you now?” said Mrs. Broughton.
“I should say that probably you will see a great deal of us both.”
“There are some people,” said Mrs. Broughton, “who can do well for their friends, but can never do well for themselves. I am one of them. I saw at once how great a thing it would be for both of you to bring you two together—especially for you, Clara; and therefore I did it. I may say that I never had it out of my mind for months past. Poor Dobbs misunderstood what I was doing. God knows how far that may have brought about what has happened.”
“Oh, Mrs. Broughton!”
“Of course he could not be blind to one thing;—nor was I. I mention it now because it is right, but I shall never, never allude to it again. Of course he saw, and I saw, that Conway—was attached to me. Poor Conway meant no harm. I was aware of that. But there was the terrible fact. I knew at once that the only cure for him was a marriage with some girl that he could respect. Admiring you as I do, I immediately resolved on bringing you two together. My dear, I have been successful, and I heartily trust that you may be happier than Maria Broughton.”
Miss Van Siever knew the woman, understood all the facts, and pitying the condition of the wretched creature, bore all this without a word of rebuke. She scorned to put out her strength against one who was in truth so weak.
LXVI
Requiescat in Pace
Things were very gloomy at the palace. It has been already said that for many days after Dr. Tempest’s visit to Barchester the intercourse between the bishop and Mrs. Proudie had not been of a pleasant nature. He had become so silent, so sullen, and so solitary in his ways, that even her courage had been almost cowed, and for a while she had condescended to use gentler measures, with the hope that she might thus bring her lord round to his usual state of active submission; or perhaps, if we strive to do her full justice, we may say of her that her effort was made conscientiously, with the idea of inducing him to do his duty with proper activity. For she was a woman not without a conscience, and by no means indifferent to the real service which her husband, as bishop of the diocese, was bound to render to the affairs of the Church around her. Of her own struggles after personal dominion she was herself unconscious; and no doubt they gave her, when recognized and acknowledged by herself, many stabs to her inner self, of which no single being in the world knew anything. And now, as after a while she failed in producing any amelioration in the bishop’s mood, her temper also gave way, and things were becoming very gloomy and very unpleasant.
The bishop and his wife were at present alone in the palace. Their married daughter and her husband had left them, and their unmarried daughter was also away. How far the bishop’s mood may have produced this solitude in the vast house I will not say. Probably Mrs. Proudie’s state of mind may have prevented her from having other guests in the place of those who were gone. She felt herself to be almost disgraced in the eyes of all those around her by her husband’s long absence from the common rooms of the house and by his dogged silence at meals. It was better, she thought, that they two should be alone in the palace.
Her own efforts to bring him back to something like life, to some activity of mind if not of body, were made constantly; and when she failed, as she did fail day after day, she would go slowly to her own room, and lock her door, and look back in her solitude at all the days of her life. She had agonies in these minutes of which no one near her knew anything. She would seize with her arm the part of the bed near which she would stand, and hold by it, grasping it, as though she were afraid to fall; and then, when it was at the worst with her, she would go to her closet—a closet that no eyes ever saw unlocked but her own—and fill for herself and swallow some draught; and then she would sit down with the Bible before her, and read it sedulously. She spent hours every day with her Bible before her, repeating to herself whole chapters, which she almost knew by heart.
It cannot be said that she was a bad woman, though she had in her time done an indescribable amount
