‘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 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 he could respect. Admiring you
as I do, I immediately resolved on bringing you to
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.
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
Things were gloomy at the palace. It has already
been said that for may 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 methods, 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 recognised 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 unpleasant.
The bishop and his wife were at present alone in the
palace. Their married daughter and her husband
had left them, and the 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 had 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.
