The Warden (9 page)

Mr Harding determined to open his mind, and confess his doubts to his old friend; and to him he went on the morning after John Bold's uncourteous visit.

Up to this period no rumour of these cruel proceedings against the hospital had reached the bishop's ears. He had doubtless heard that men existed who questioned his right to present to a sinecure of £800 a year, as he had heard from time to time of some special immorality or disgraceful disturbance in the usually decent and quiet city of Barchester: but all he did, and all he was called on to do on such occasions, was to shake his head, and to beg his son, the great dictator, to see that no harm happened to the church.

It was a long story that Mr Harding had to tell before he made the bishop comprehend his own view of the case; but we need not follow him through the tale. At first the bishop counselled but one step, recommended but one remedy, had but one medicine in his whole pharmacopoeia strong enough to touch so grave a disorder – he prescribed the archdeacon. ‘Refer him to the archdeacon,' he repeated, as Mr Harding spoke of Bold and his visit. ‘The archdeacon will set you quite right about that,' he kindly said, when his friend spoke with hesitation of the justness of his cause. ‘No man has got up all that so well as the archdeacon'; but the dose, though large, failed to quiet the patient; indeed it almost produced nausea.

‘But, bishop,' said he, ‘did you ever read John Hiram's will?'

The bishop thought probably he had, thirty-five years ago, when first instituted to his see, but could not state positively: however, he very well knew that he had the absolute right to present to the wardenship, and that the income of the warden had been regularly settled.

‘But, bishop, the question is, who has the power to settle it? If, as this young man says, the will provides that the proceeds of the property are to be divided into shares, who has the power to alter these provisions?' The bishop had an indistinct idea that they altered themselves by the lapse of years; that a kind of ecclesiastical statute of limitation barred the rights of the twelve bedesmen to any increase of income arising from the increased value of property. He said something about tradition; more of the many learned men who by their practice had confirmed the present
arrangement; then went at some length into the propriety of maintaining the due difference in rank and income between a beneficed clergyman, and certain poor old men who were dependent on charity; and concluded his argument by another reference to the archdeacon.

The precentor sat thoughtfully gazing at the fire, and listening to the good-natured reasoning of his friend. What the bishop said had a sort of comfort in it, but it was not a sustaining comfort. It made Mr Harding feel that many others – indeed, all others of his own order – would think him right; but it failed to prove to him that he truly was so.

‘Bishop,' said he, at last, after both had sat silent for a while, ‘I should deceive you and myself too, if I did not tell you that I am very unhappy about this. Suppose that I cannot bring myself to agree with Dr Grantly! – that I find, after inquiry, that the young man is right, and that I am wrong – what then?'

The two men were sitting near each other – so near, that the bishop was able to lay his hand upon the other's knee, and he did so with a gentle pressure. Mr Harding well knew what that pressure meant. The bishop had no further argument to adduce; he could not fight for the cause as his son would do; he could not prove all the precentor's doubts to be groundless; but he could sympathize with his friend, and he did so; and Mr Harding felt that he had received that for which he came. There was another period of silence, after which the bishop asked with a degree of irritable energy, very unusual with him, whether this ‘pestilent intruder' (meaning John Bold) had any friends in Barchester.

Mr Harding had fully made up his mind to tell the bishop everything; to speak of his daughter's love, as well as his own troubles; to talk of John Bold in his double capacity of future son-in-law and present enemy; and though he felt it to be sufficiently disagreeable, now was his time to do it.

‘He is very intimate at my own house, bishop.' The bishop stared; he was not so far gone in orthodoxy and church-militancy as his son, but still he could not bring himself to understand how so declared an enemy of the establishment could be admitted on terms of intimacy into the house, not only of so firm a pillar as Mr Harding, but one so much injured as the warden of the hospital.

‘Indced, I like Mr Bold much, personally,' continued the disinterested victim;
‘and to tell you the “truth” ' – he hesitated as he brought out the dreadful tidings – ‘I have sometimes thought it not improbable that he would be my second son-in-law.' The bishop did not whistle; we believe that they lose the power of doing so on being consecrated; and that in these days one might as easily meet a corrupt judge as a whistling bishop; but he looked as though he would have done so, but for his apron.

What a brother-in-law for the archdeacon! what an alliance for Barchester Close! what a connection for even the episcopal palace! The bishop, in his simple mind, felt no doubt that John Bold, had he so much power, would shut up all cathedrals, and probably all parish churches; distribute all tithes among Methodists, Baptists, and other savage tribes; utterly annihilate the sacred bench, and make shovel hats and lawn sleeves as illegal as cowls, sandals, and sackcloth!
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Here was a nice man to be initiated into the comfortable arcana of ecclesiastical snuggeries; one who doubted the integrity of parsons, and probably disbelieved the Trinity!

Mr Harding saw what an effect his communication had made, and almost repented the openness of his disclosure; he, however, did what he could to moderate the grief of his friend and patron. ‘I did not say that there is any engagement between them. Had there been, Eleanor would have told me: I know her well enough to be assured that she would have done so; but I see that they are fond of each other; and as a man and a father, I have had no objection to urge against their intimacy.'

‘But, Harding,' said the bishop, ‘how are you to oppose him, if he is your son-in-law?'

‘I don't mean to oppose him; it is he who opposes me: if anything is to be done in defence, I suppose Chadwick will do it. I suppose –'

‘Oh, the archdeacon will see to that: were the young man twice his brother-in-law, the archdeacon will never be deterred from doing what he feels to be right.'

Mr Harding reminded the bishop that the archdeacon and the reformer were not yet brothers, and very probably never would be; exacted from him a promise that Eleanor's name should not be mentioned in any discussion between the father bishop and son archdeacon respecting the hospital; and then took his departure, leaving his poor old friend bewildered, amazed, and confounded.

With the learned man were his two abettors in indecision, William Gazy and Jonathan Crumple. If ever the petition were to be forwarded, now was the time, so said Mr Finney; and great was the anxiety on the part of those whose one hundred pounds a year, as they believed, mainly depended on the document in question.

‘To be kept out of all that money,' as the avaricious Moody had muttered to his friend Handy, ‘by an old fool saying that he can write his own name like his betters.'

‘Well Job,' said Handy, trying to impart to his own sour, ill-omened visage a smile of approbation, in which he greatly failed; ‘so you're ready now, Mr Finney says; here's the place, d'ye see' – and he put his huge brown finger down on the dirty paper – ‘name or mark, it's all one. Come along, old boy; if so be we're to have the spending of this money, why the sooner the better – that's my maxim.'

‘To be sure,' said Moody; ‘we a'n't none of us so young: we can't stay waiting for old Catgut no longer.'

It was thus these miscreants named our excellent friend: the nickname he could easily have forgiven, but the allusion to the divine source of all his melodious joy would have irritated even him. Let us hope he never knew the insult.

‘Only think, old Billy Gazy,' said Spriggs, who rejoiced in greater youth than his brethren, but having fallen into a fire when drunk, had had one eye burnt out, one cheek burnt through, and one arm nearly burnt off, and who, therefore, in regard to personal appearance, was not the most prepossessing of men; ‘a hundred a year,
and all to spend: only think, old Billy Gazy'; and he gave a hideous grin that showed off his misfortunes to their full extent.

Old Billy Gazy was not alive to much enthusiasm – even these golden prospects did not arouse him to do more than rub his poor old bleared eyes with the cuff of his bedesman's gown, and gently mutter, ‘he didn't know, not he; he didn't know.'

‘But you'd know, Jonathan,' continued Spriggs, turning to the other friend of Skulpit's, who was sitting on a stool by the table, gazing vacantly at the petition. Jonathan Crumple was a meek, mild man, who had known better days; his means had been wasted by bad children, who had made his life wretched till he had been received into the hospital, of which he had not long been a member. Since that day he had known neither sorrow nor trouble, and this attempt to fill him with new hopes was, indeed, a cruelty.

‘A hundred a year's a nice thing, for sartain, neighbour Spriggs,' said he: ‘I once had nigh to that myself, but it didn't do me no good.' And he gave a low sigh, as he thought of the children of his own loins who had robbed him.

‘And shall have again, Joe,' said Handy; ‘and will have someone to keep it right and tight for you this time.'

Crumple sighed again – he had learned the impotency of worldly wealth, and would have been satisfied, if left untempted, to have remained happy with one and sixpence a day.

‘Come, Skulpit,' repeated Handy, getting impatient, ‘you're not going to go along with old Bunce in helping that parson to rob us all. Take the pen, man, and right yourself. Well,' he added, seeing that Skulpit still doubted, ‘to see a man as is afraid to stand by hisself, is, to my thinking, the meanest thing as is.'

‘Sink them all for parsons, says I,' growled Moody; ‘hungry beggars, as never thinks their bellies full till they have robbed all and every thing.'

‘Who's to harm you, man?' argued Spriggs: ‘let them look never so black at you, they can't get you put out when you're once in – no, not old Catgut, with Calves to help him!' I am sorry to say the archdeacon himself was designated by this scurrilous allusion to his nether person.

‘A hundred a year to win, and nothing to lose,' continued
Handy, ‘my eyes! – Well, how a man's to doubt about sich a bit of cheese as that passes me – but some men is timorous – some men is born with no pluck in them – some men is cowed at the very first sight of a gentleman's coat and waistcoat.'

Oh, Mr Harding, if you had but taken the archdeacon's advice in that disputed case, when Joe Mutters was this ungrateful demagogue's rival candidate!

‘Afraid of a parson,' growled Moody, with a look of ineffable scorn; ‘I tell ye what I'd be afraid of – I'd be afraid of not getting nothing from ‘em but just what I could take by might and right – that's the most I'd be afraid on of any parson of ‘em all.'

‘But,' said Skulpit, apologetically, ‘Mr Harding's not so bad – he did give us twopence a day, didn't he now?'

‘Twopence a day!' exclaimed Spriggs with scorn, opening awfully the red cavern of his lost eye.

‘Twopence a day!' muttered Moody with a curse; ‘sink his twopence!'

‘Twopence a day!' exclaimed Handy; ‘and I'm to go, hat in hand, and thank a chap for twopence a day, when he owes me a hundred pounds a year; no, thank ye; that may do for you, but it won't for me. Come, I say, Skulpit, are you a going to put your mark to this here paper, or are you not?'

Skulpit looked round in wretched indecision to his two friends. ‘What d'ye think, Billy Gazy?' said he.

But Billy Gazy couldn't think: he made a noise like the bleating of an old sheep, which was intended to express the agony of his doubt, and again muttered that ‘he didn't know'.

‘Take hold, you old cripple,' said Handy, thrusting the pen into poor Billy's hand: ‘there, so – ugh! you old fool, you've been and smeared it all – there – that'll do for you – that's as good as the best name as ever was written': and a big blotch of ink was presumed to represent Billy Gazy's acquiescence.

‘Now Jonathan,' said Handy, turning to Crumple.

‘A hundred a year's a nice thing, for sartain,' again argued Crumple. ‘Well, neighbour Skulpit, how's it to be?'

‘Oh, please yourself,' said Skulpit; ‘please yourself, and you'll please me.'

The pen was thrust into Crumple's hand, and a faint, wandering,
meaningless sign was made, betokening such sanction and authority as Jonathan Crumple was able to convey.

‘Come, Job,' said Handy, softened by success, ‘don't let 'em have to say that old Bunce has a man like you under his thumb – a man that always holds his head in the hospital as high as Bunce himself, though you're never axed to drink wine, and sneak, and tell lies about your betters, as he does.'

Skulpit held the pen, and made little flourishes with it in the air, but still hesitated.

‘And if you'll be said by me,' continued Handy, ‘you'll not write your name to it at all, but just put your mark like the others' – the cloud began to clear from Skulpit's brow – ‘we all know you can do it if you like, but maybe you wouldn't like to seem uppish, you know.'

‘Well, the mark would be best,' said Skulpit: ‘one name and the rest marks wouldn't look well, would it?'

‘The worst in the world,' said Handy; ‘there – there': and stooping over the petition, the learned clerk made a huge cross on the place left for his signature.

‘That's the game,' said Handy, triumphantly pocketing the petition; ‘we're all in a boat now, that is, the nine of us; and as for old Bunce, and his cronies, they may –' But as he was hobbling off to the door, with a crutch on one side and a stick on the other, he was met by Bunce himself.

‘Well, Handy, and what may old Bunce do?' said the grey-haired, upright senior.

Handy muttered something, and was departing; but he was stopped in the doorway by the huge frame of the newcomer.

‘You've been doing no good here, Abel Handy,' said he, ‘'tis plain to see that; and 'tisn't much good, I'm thinking, you ever do.'

‘I mind my own business, Master Bunce,' muttered the other, ‘and do you do the same. It a'n't nothing to you what I does – and your spying and poking here won't do no good nor yet no harm.'

‘I suppose then, Job,' continued Bunce, not noticing his opponent, ‘if the truth must out, you've stuck your name to that petition of theirs at last.'

Skulpit looked as though he were about to sink into nothing with shame.

‘What is it to you what he signs?' said Handy. ‘I suppose if we all wants to ax for our own, we needn't ax leave of you first, Mr Bunce, big a man as you are: and as to your sneaking in here, into Job's room when he's busy, and where you're not wanted –'

‘I've knowed Job Skulpit, man and boy, sixty years,' said Bunce, looking at the man of whom he spoke, ‘and that's ever since the day he was born. I knowed the mother that bore him, when she and I were little wee things, picking daisies together in the close yonder; and I've lived under the same roof with him more nor ten years; and after that I may come into his room without axing leave, and yet no sneaking neither.'

‘So you can, Mr Bunce,' said Skulpit; ‘so you can, any hour, day or night.'

‘And I'm free also to tell him my mind,' continued Bunce, looking at the one man and addressing the other; ‘and I tell him now that he's done a foolish and a wrong thing: he's turned his back upon one who is his best friend; and is playing the game of others, who care nothing for him, whether he be poor or rich, well or ill, alive or dead. A hundred a year? Are the lot of you soft enough to think that if a hundred a year be to be given, it's the likes of you that will get it?' – and he pointed to Billy Gazy, Spriggs, and Crumple. ‘Did any of us ever do anything worth half the money? Was it to make gentlemen of us we were brought in here, when all the world turned against us, and we couldn't longer earn our daily bread? A'n't you all as rich in your ways as he in his?' – and the orator pointed to the side on which the warden lived. ‘A'n't you getting all you hoped for, ay, and more than you hoped for? Wouldn't each of you have given the dearest limb of his body to secure that which now makes you so unthankful?'

‘We wants what John Hiram left us,' said Handy; ‘we wants what's ourn by law; it don't matter what we expected; what's ourn by law should be ourn, and by goles
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we'll have it.'

‘Law!' said Bunce, with all the scorn he knew how to command – ‘law! Did ye ever know a poor man yet was the better for law, or for a lawyer? Will Mr Finney ever be as good to you, Job, as that man has been? Will he see to you when you're sick, and comfort you when you're wretched? Will he –'

‘No, nor give you port wine, old boy, on cold winter nights! he
won't do that, will he?' asked Handy: and laughing at the severity of his own wit, he and his colleagues retired, carrying with them, however, the now powerful petition.

There is no help for spilt milk; and Mr Bunce could only retire to his own room, disgusted at the frailty of human nature – Job Skulpit scratched his head – Jonathan Crumple again remarked that ‘for sartain, sure a hundred a year was very nice' – and Billy Gazy again rubbed his eyes, and lowly muttered that ‘he didn't know'.