His voice was so pitiful that Lady Sophia was touched. She saw that he wanted her to persuade him to stay in town, and yet his conscience troubled him.
“I’m only a servant of the Church,” he said. “I don’t know that I have the right to refuse to go where I am sent. Perhaps he’s not far wrong in thinking that it’s all I’m good for. Oh, Sophia, I’m so unhappy!”
She realized how much it meant for that bold spirit thus to humble itself. He paid a heavy price for his vanity. He was like a child in her hands, needing consolation and support. She began to speak to him gently. She suggested that the offer of this deanery signified only that Lord Stonehenge, feeling he owed something to the son of the late Lord Chancellor, had been unable on account of other claims to give him the bishopric. From the observation of long years she had learnt on what points Theodore most prided himself, (in the past this knowledge had been used to give little admonishing stabs,) and now she took them one by one. She appealed skilfully to his prepossessions. With well-directed flattery, calling to his mind past triumphs, and compliments paid him by the great ones of the earth, she caused him little by little to gather courage. Presently she saw the hopeless expression of the mouth give way to a smile of pleasure, and a new confidence came into his eyes. His very back was straightened. In the new uprightness with which he held himself, she perceived that her subtle words were taking due effect. At last she reminded him of his work at St. Gregory’s.
“After all, you’re a figure in London,” she said. “You have power and influence. For my part I have wondered that you contemplated leaving it for an obscure country town like Barchester. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised if you’d refused the bishopric.”
He breathed more freely, and with his quick and happy optimism began already to see things more genially.
“Besides, we Sprattes are somebody in the world,” concluded Lady Sophia, with a smile, the faint irony of which he did not see. “I don’t think you would show a proper spirit if you allowed yourself to be trampled on.”
“Ah, Sophia, I knew that at the bottom of your heart you were as proud of your stock as I. You’re quite right. I owe it to my family as well as to myself not to allow them to thrust me into obscurity. I shall refuse the deanery, Sophia; and Lord Stonehenge——”
“Can go to the devil,” she added, quietly.
Canon Spratte smiled with all his old vivacity.
“Sophia, I thank you. It is not right that I should say such things, but you have entirely expressed my sentiments.”