第76章

Before they all retired it was settled that the whole party should drive over on the following day to inspect the parsonage at St Ewold. The three clergymen were to discuss dilapidations, and the two ladies were to lend their assistance in suggesting such changes as might be necessary for a bachelor's abode. Accordingly, soon after breakfast, the carriage was at the door. There was only room for four inside, and the archdeacon got upon the box. Eleanor found herself opposite to Mr Arabin, and was, therefore, in a manner forced into conversation with him. They were soon on comfortable terms together; and had she thought about it, she would have thought that, in spite of his black cloth, Mr Arabin would not have been a bad addition to the Stanhope family party.

Now that the archdeacon was away, they could all trifle. Mr Harding began by telling them in the most innocent manner imaginable an old legend about Mr Arabin's new parish. There was, he said, in days of yore, an illustrious priestess of St Ewold, famed through the whole country for curing all manner of diseases. She had a well, as all priestesses have ever had, which well was extant to this day, and shared in the minds of many of the people the sanctity which belonged to the consecrated grounds of the parish church. Mr Arabin declared that he should look on such tenets on the part of the parishioners as anything but orthodox. And Mrs Grantly replied that she so entirely disagreed with him as to think that no parish was in a proper estate that had not its priestess as well as its priest. 'The duties are never well done,' said she, 'unless they are so divided.'

'I suppose, papa,' said Eleanor, 'that in the oldest times the priestess bore all the sway herself. Mr Arabin, perhaps, thinks that such might be too much the case now if a sacred lady were admitted within the parish.'

'I think, at any rate,' said he, 'that it is safer to run no such risk. No priestly pride has ever exceeded that of sacerdotal females. A very lowly curate, I might, perhaps, essay to rule; but a curatess would be sure to get the better of me.'

'There are certainly examples of such accidents happening,' said Mrs Grantly. 'They do say that there is a priestess at Barchester who is very imperious in all things touching the altar. Perhaps the fear of such a fate as that is before your eyes.'

When they were joined by the archdeacon on the gravel before the vicarage, they descended again to grave dullness. Not that Archdeacon Grantly was a dull man; but his frolic humours were of a cumbrous kind; and his wit, when he was witty, did not generally extend itself to his auditory. On the present occasion, he was soon making speeches about wounded roofs and walls, which he declared to be in want of some surgeon's art. There was not a partition that he did not tap, nor a block of chimneys that he did not narrowly examine; all water-pipes, flues, cisterns, and sewers underwent his examination; and he even descended, in the care of his friend, so far as to bore sundry boards in the floors with a bradawl.

Mr Arabin accompanied him through the rooms, trying to look wise in such domestic matters, and the other three also followed. Mrs Grantly showed that she herself had not been priestess of a parish twenty years for nothing, and examined the bells and window panes in a very knowing way.

'You will, at any rate, have a beautiful prospect out of your own window, if this is to be your private sanctum,' said Eleanor. She was standing at the lattice of a little room up stairs, from which the view certainly was very lovely. It was from the back of the vicarage, and there was nothing to interrupt the eye between the house and the glorious gray pile of the cathedral. The intermediate ground, however, was beautifully studded with timber. In the immediate foreground ran the little river which afterwards skirted the city; and, just to the right of the cathedral the pointed gables and chimneys of Hiram's Hospital peeped out of the elms which encompass it.

'Yes,' said he, joining her. 'I shall have a beautifully complete view of my adversaries. I shall sit down before the hostile town, and fire away at them at a very pleasant distance. I shall just be able to lodge a shot in the hospital, should the enemy ever get possession of it; and as for the palace, I have it within full range.'

'I never saw anything like you clergymen,' said Eleanor; 'you are always thinking of fighting each other.'

'Either that,' said he, 'or else supporting each other. The pity is that we cannot do the one without the other. But are we not here to fight? Is not ours a church militant? What is all our work but fighting, and hard fighting, if it be well done?'

'But not with each other.'

'That's as it may be. The same complaint which you make of me for battling with another clergyman of our own church, the Mahometan would make against me for battling with the error of a priest of Rome. Yet, surely, you would not be inclined to say that I should be wrong to do battle with such as him. A pagan, too, with his multiplicity of gods, would think it equally odd that the Christian and the Mahometan should disagree.'

'Ah! But you wage your wars about trifles so bitterly.'

'Wars about trifles,' said he, 'are always bitter, especially among neighbours. When the differences are great, and the parties comparative strangers, men quarrel with courtesy. What combatants are ever so eager as two brothers?'

'But do not such contentions bring scandal on the church?'

'More scandal would fall on the church if there were no such contentions. We have but one way to avoid them--that of acknowledging a common head of our church, whose word on all points of doctrine shall be authoritative. Such a termination of our difficulties is alluring enough. It has charms which are irresistible to many, and all but irresistible, I own, to me.'

'You speak now of the Church of Rome?' said Eleanor.