“Oh, Mr. Eames, that is the worst of all.”
“So I am told. The bishop has a wife, I believe.”
“Yes, he has a wife, certainly,” said Mrs. Arabin.
“And people say that she is not very good-natured.”
“There are some of us at Barchester who do not love her very dearly. I cannot say that she is one of my own especial friends.”
“I believe she has been hard to Mr. Crawley,” said John Eames.
“I should not be in the least surprised,” said Mrs. Arabin.
Then they reached Turin, and there, taking up Galignani’s Messenger in the reading-room of Trompetta’s Hotel, John Eames saw that Mrs. Proudie was dead. “Look at that,” said he, taking the paragraph to Mrs. Arabin; “Mrs. Proudie is dead!”
“Mrs. Proudie dead!” she exclaimed. “Poor woman! Then there will be peace at Barchester!”
“I never knew her very intimately,” she afterwards said to her companion, “and I do not know that I have a right to say that she ever did me an injury. But I remember well her first coming into Barchester. My sister’s father-in-law, the late bishop, was just dead. He was a mild, kind, dear old man, whom my father loved beyond all the world, except his own children. You may suppose we were all a little sad. I was not specially connected with the cathedral then, except through my father,”—and Mrs. Arabin, as she told all this, remembered that in the days of which she was speaking she was a young mourning widow—“but I think I can never forget the sort of harsh-toned paean of low-church trumpets with which that poor woman made her entry into the city. She might have been more lenient, as we had never sinned by being very high. She might, at any rate, have been more gentle with us at first. I think we had never attempted much beyond decency, goodwill and comfort. Our comfort she utterly destroyed. Goodwill was not to her taste. And as for decency, when I remember some things, I must say that when the comfort and goodwill went, the decency went along with them. And now she is dead! I wonder how the bishop will get on without her.”
“Like a house on fire, I should think,” said Johnny.
“Fie, Mr. Eames; you shouldn’t speak in such a way on such a subject.”
Mrs. Arabin and Johnny became fast friends as they journeyed home. There was a sweetness in his character which endeared him readily to women; though, as we have seen, there was a want of something to make one woman cling to him. He could be soft and pleasant-mannered. He was fond of making himself useful, and was a perfect master of all those little caressing modes of behaviour in which the caress is quite impalpable, and of which most women know the value and appreciate the comfort. By the time that they had reached Paris John had told Mrs. Arabin the whole story of Lily Dale and Crosbie, and Mrs. Arabin had promised to assist him, if any assistance might be in her power.
“Of course I have heard of Miss Dale,” she said, “because we know the De Courcys.” Then she turned away her face, almost blushing, as she remembered the first time that she had seen that Lady Alexandrina De Courcy whom Mr. Crosbie had married. It had been at Mr. Thorne’s house at Ullathorne, and on that day she had done a thing which she had never since remembered without blushing. But it was an old story now, and a story of which her companion knew nothing—of which he never could know anything. That day at Ullathorne Mrs. Arabin, the wife of the Dean of Barchester, than whom there was no more discreet clerical matron in the diocese, had—boxed a clergyman’s ears!
“Yes,” said John, speaking of Crosbie, “he was a wise fellow; he knew what he was about; he married an earl’s daughter.”
“And now I remember hearing that somebody gave him a terrible beating. Perhaps it was you?”
“It wasn’t terrible at all,” said Johnny.
“Then it was you?”
“Oh, yes; it was I.”
“Then it was you who saved poor old Lord De Guest from the bull?”
“Go on, Mrs. Arabin. There is no end of the grand things I’ve done.”
“You’re quite a hero of romance.”
He bit his lip as he told himself that he was not enough of a hero. “I don’t know about that,” said Johnny. “I think what a man ought to do in these days is to seem not to care what he eats and drinks, and to have his linen very well got up. Then he’ll be a hero.” But that was hard upon Lily.
“Is that what Miss Dale requires?” said Mrs. Arabin.
“I was not thinking about her particularly,” said Johnny, lying.
They slept a night in Paris, as they had done also at Turin—Mrs. Arabin not finding herself able to accomplish such marvels in the way of travelling as her companion had achieved—and then arrived in London in the evening. She was taken to a certain quiet clerical hotel at the top of Suffolk Street, much patronized by bishops and deans of the better sort, expecting to find a message there from her husband. And there was the message—just arrived. The dean had reached Florence three days after her departure; and as he would do the journey home in twenty-four hours less than she had taken, he would be there, at the hotel, on the day after tomorrow. “I suppose I may wait for him, Mr. Eames?” said Mrs. Arabin.
“I will see Mr. Toogood tonight, and I will call here tomorrow, whether I see him or not. At what hour will you be in?”
“Don’t trouble yourself to do that.
