Anthony Trollope - The Barsetshire Chronicles - All 6 Books in One Edition

“You haven’t done much, Bertie, about getting any orders,” said his sister.

“Orders!” said he; “who on earth is there at Barchester to give one orders? Who among the people here could possibly think it worth his while to have his head done into marble?”

“Then you mean to give up your profession,” said she.

“No, I don’t,” said he, going on with some absurd portrait of the bishop. “Look at that, Lotte; isn’t it the little man all over, apron and all? I’d go on with my profession at once, as you call it, if the governor would set me up with a studio in London; but as to sculpture at Barchester — I suppose half the people here don’t know what a torso means.”

“The governor will not give you a shilling to start you in London,” said Lotte. “Indeed, he can’t give you what would be sufficient, for he has not got it. But you might start yourself very well, if you pleased.”

“How the deuce am I to do it?” said he.

“To tell you the truth, Bertie, you’ll never make a penny by any profession.”

“That’s what I often think myself,” said he, not in the least offended. “Some men have a great gift of making money, but they can’t spend it. Others can’t put two shillings together, but they have a great talent for all sorts of outlay. I begin to think that my genius is wholly in the latter line.”

“How do you mean to live then?” asked the sister.

“I suppose I must regard myself as a young raven and look for heavenly manna; besides, we have all got something when the governor goes.”

“Yes — you’ll have enough to supply yourself with gloves and boots; that is, if the Jews have not got the possession of it all. I believe they have the most of it already. I wonder, Bertie, at your indifference; that you with your talents and personal advantages should never try to settle yourself in life. I look forward with dread to the time when the governor must go. Mother, and Madeline, and I— we shall be poor enough, but you will have absolutely nothing.”

“Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,” said Bertie.

“Will you take my advice?” said his sister.

“Cela depend,” said the brother.

“Will you marry a wife with money?”

“At any rate,” said he, “I won’t marry one without; wives with money a’nt so easy to get now-a-days; the parsons pick them all up.”

“And a parson will pick up the wife I mean for you, if you do not look quickly about it; the wife I mean is Mrs. Bold.”

“Whew-w-w-w!” whistled Bertie, “a widow!”

“She is very beautiful,” said Charlotte.

“With a son and heir all ready to my hand,” said Bertie. “A baby that will very likely die,” said Charlotte.

“I don’t see that,” said Bertie. “But however he may live for me — I don’t wish to kill him; only, it must be owned that a ready-made family is a drawback.”

“There is only one after all,” pleaded Charlotte.

“And that a very little one, as the maidservant said,” rejoined Bertie.

“Beggars mustn’t be choosers, Bertie; you can’t have everything.”

“God knows I am not unreasonable,” said he, “nor yet opinionated, and if you’ll arrange it all for me, Lotte, I’ll marry the lady. Only mark this: the money must be sure and the income at my own disposal, at any rate for the lady’s life.”

Charlotte was explaining to her brother that he must make love for himself if he meant to carry on the matter, and was encouraging him to do so by warm eulogiums on Eleanor’s beauty, when the signora was brought into the drawing-room. When at home, and subject to the gaze of none but her own family, she allowed herself to be dragged about by two persons, and her two bearers now deposited her on her sofa. She was not quite so grand in her apparel as she had been at the bishop’s party, but yet she was dressed with much care, and though there was a look of care and pain about her eyes, she was, even by daylight, extremely beautiful.

“Well, Madeline, so I’m going to be married,” Bertie began as soon as the servants had withdrawn.

“There’s no other foolish thing left that you haven’t done,” said Madeline, “and therefore you are quite right to try that.”

“Oh, you think it’s a foolish thing, do you?” said he. “There’s Lotte advising me to marry by all means. But on such a subject your opinion ought to be the best; you have experience to guide you.”

“Yes, I have,” said Madeline with a sort of harsh sadness in her tone, which seemed to say — What is it to you if I am sad? I have never asked your sympathy.

Bertie was sorry when he saw that she was hurt by what he said, and he came and squatted on the floor close before her face to make his peace with her.

“Come, Mad, I was only joking; you know that. But in sober earnest Lotte is advising me to marry. She wants me to marry this Mrs. Bold. She’s a widow with lots of tin, a fine baby, a beautiful complexion, and the George and Dragon hotel up in the High Street. By Jove, Lotte, if I marry her, I’ll keep the public-house myself — it’s just the life to suit me.”

“What,” said Madeline, “that vapid, swarthy creature in the widow’s cap, who looked as though her clothes had been stuck on her back with a pitchfork!” The signora never allowed any woman to be beautiful.

“Instead of being vapid,” said Lotte, “I call her a very lovely woman. She was by far the loveliest woman in the rooms the other night; that is, excepting you, Madeline.”

Even the compliment did not soften the asperity of the maimed beauty. “Every woman is charming according to Lotte,” she said; “I never knew an eye with so little true appreciation. In the first place, what woman on earth could look well in such a thing as that she had on her head.”

“Of course she wears a widow’s cap, but she’ll put that off when Bertie marries her.”

“I don’t see any of course in it,” said Madeline. “The death of twenty husbands should not make me undergo such a penance. It is as much a relic of paganism as the sacrifice of a Hindu woman at the burning of her husband’s body. If not so bloody, it is quite as barbarous and quite as useless.”

“But you don’t blame her for that,” said Bertie. “She does it because it’s the custom of the country. People would think ill of her if she didn’t do it.”

“Exactly,” said Madeline. “She is just one of those English nonentities who would tie her head up in a bag for three months every summer, if her mother and her grandmother had tied up their heads before her. It would never occur to her to think whether there was any use in submitting to such a nuisance.”

“It’s very hard in a country like England, for a young woman to set herself in opposition to prejudices of that sort,” said the prudent Charlotte.

“What you mean is that it’s very hard for a fool not to be a fool,” said Madeline.

Bertie Stanhope had been so much knocked about the world from his earliest years that he had not retained much respect for the gravity of English customs, but even to his mind an idea presented itself that, perhaps in a wife, true British prejudice would not in the long run be less agreeable than Anglo-Italian freedom from restraint. He did not exactly say so, but he expressed the idea in another way.