The Warden (25 page)

‘Yes, my dear,' said the warden. ‘The attorney-general named ten for my meeting; to be sure ten is late, but what could I do, you know? Great men will have their own way.'

And he gave his daughter a kiss, and shook hands with the doctor, and again tried to look unconcerned.

‘And you have absolutely been with the attorney-general?' asked the archdeacon.

Mr Harding signified that he had.

‘Good heavens, how unfortunate!' And the archdeacon raised his huge hands in the manner in which his friends are so accustomed to see him express disapprobation and astonishment. ‘What will Sir Abraham think of it? Did you not know that it is not customary for clients to go direct to their counsel?'

‘Isn't it!' asked the warden, innocently. ‘Well, at any rate, I've done it now. Sir Abraham didn't seem to think it so very strange.'

The archdeacon gave a sigh that would have moved a man-of-war.

‘But, papa, what did you say to Sir Abraham?' asked the lady.

‘I asked him, my dear, to explain John Hiram's will to me. He couldn't explain it in the only way which would have satisfied me, and so I resigned the wardenship.'

‘Resigned it!' said the archdeacon, in a solemn voice, sad and low, but yet sufficiently audible; a sort of whisper that Macready
¹
would have envied, and the galleries have applauded with a couple of rounds. ‘Resigned it! Good heavens!' and the dignitary of the Church sank back horrified into a horse-hair armchair.

‘At least I told Sir Abraham that I would resign; and of course I must now do so.'

‘Not at all,' said the archdeacon, catching a ray of hope. ‘Nothing that you say in such a way to your own counsel can be in any way binding on you; of course you were there to ask his advice. I'm sure, Sir Abraham did not advise any such step.'

Mr Harding could not say that he had.

‘I am sure he disadvised you from it,' continued the reverend cross-examiner.

Mr Harding could not deny this.

‘I'm sure Sir Abraham must have advised you to consult your friends.'

To this proposition also Mr Harding was obliged to assent.

‘Then your threat of resignation amounts to nothing, and we are just where we were before.'

Mr Harding was now standing on the rug, moving uneasily from one foot to the other. He made no distinct answer to the archdeacon's last proposition, for his mind was chiefly engaged on thinking how he could escape to bed. That his resignation was a thing finally fixed on, a fact all but completed, was not in his mind a matter of any doubt; he knew his own weakness; he knew how prone he was to be led; but he was not weak enough to give way now, to go back from the position to which his conscience had driven him, after having purposely come to London to declare his determination: he did not in the least doubt his resolution,
but he greatly doubted his power of defending it against his son-in-law.

‘You must be very tired, Susan,' said he: ‘wouldn't you like to go to bed?'

But Susan didn't want to go till her husband went – she had an idea that her papa might be bullied if she were away: she wasn't tired at all, or at least she said so.

The archdeacon was pacing the room, expressing, by certain noddles of his head, his opinion of the utter fatuity of his father-in-law.

‘Why,' at last he said – and angels might have blushed at the rebuke expressed in his tone and emphasis – ‘why did you go off from Barchester so suddenly? Why did you take such a step without giving us notice, after what had passed at the palace?'

The warden hung his head, and made no reply: he could not condescend to say that he had not intended to give his son-in-law the slip; and as he had not the courage to avow it, he said nothing.

‘Papa has been too much for you,' said the lady.

The archdeacon took another turn, and again ejaculated, ‘Good heavens!' this time in a very low whisper, but still audible.

‘I think I'll go to bed,' said the warden, taking up a side candle.

‘At any rate you'll promise me to take no further step without consultation,' said the archdeacon. Mr Harding made no answer, but slowly proceeded to light his candle. ‘Of course,' continued the other, ‘such a declaration as that you made to Sir Abraham means nothing. Come, warden, promise me this. The whole affair, you see, is already settled, and that with very little trouble or expense. Bold has been compelled to abandon his action, and all you have to do is to remain quiet at the hospital.' Mr Harding still made no reply, but looked meekly into his son-in-law's face. The archdeacon thought he knew his father-in-law, but he was mistaken; he thought that he had already talked over a vacillating man to resign his promise. ‘Come,' said he, ‘promise Susan to give up this idea of resigning the wardenship.'

The warden looked at his daughter, thinking probably at the moment that if Eleanor were contented with him, he need not so much regard his other child, and said, ‘I am sure Susan will not ask me to break my word, or to do what I know to be wrong.'

‘Papa,' said she, ‘it would be madness in you to throw up your preferment. What are you to live on?'

‘God, that feeds the young ravens,
²
will take care of me also,' said Mr Harding, with a smile, as though afraid of giving offence by making his reference to scripture too solemn.

‘Pish!' said the archdeacon, turning away rapidly; ‘if the ravens persisted in refusing the food prepared for them, they wouldn't be fed.' A clergyman generally dislikes to be met in argument by any scriptural quotation; he feels as affronted as a doctor does, when recommended by an old woman to take some favourite dose, or as a lawyer when an unprofessional man attempts to put him down by a quibble.

‘I shall have the living of Crabtree,' modestly suggested the warden.

‘Eighty pounds a year!' sneered the archdeacon.

‘And the precentorship,' said the father-in-law.

‘It goes with the wardenship,' said the son-in-law. Mr Harding was prepared to argue this point, and began to do so, but Dr Grantly stopped him. ‘My dear warden,' said he, ‘this is all nonsense. Eighty pounds or a hundred and sixty makes very little difference. You can't live on it – you can't ruin Eleanor's prospects for ever. In point of fact, you can't resign; the bishop wouldn't accept it; the whole thing is settled. What I now want to do is to prevent any inconvenient tittle-tattle – any more newspaper articles.'

‘That's what I want, too,' said the warden.

‘And to prevent that,' continued the other, ‘we mustn't let any talk of resignation get abroad.'

‘But I shall resign,' said the warden, very, very meekly.

‘Good heavens! Susan, my dear, what can I say to him?'

‘But, papa,' said Mrs Grantly, getting up, and putting her arm through that of her father, ‘what is Eleanor to do if you throw away your income?'

A hot tear stood in each of the warden's eyes as he looked round upon his married daughter. Why should one sister who was so rich predict poverty for another? some such idea as this was on his mind, but he gave no utterance to it. Then he thought of the pelican feeding its young with blood from its own breast, but he
gave no utterance to that either; and then of Eleanor waiting for him at home, waiting to congratulate him on the end of all his trouble.

“Think of Eleanor, papa,' said Mrs Grantly.

‘I do think of her,' said her father.

‘And you will not do this rash thing!' The lady was really moved beyond her usual calm composure.

‘It can never be rash to do right,' said he. ‘I shall certainly resign this wardenship.'

‘Then, Mr Harding, there is nothing before you but ruin,' said the archdeacon, now moved beyond all endurance. ‘Ruin both for you and Eleanor. How do you mean to pay the monstrous expenses of this action?'

Mrs Grantly suggested that, as the action was abandoned, the costs would not be heavy.

‘Indeed they will, my dear,' continued he. ‘One cannot have the attorney-general up at twelve o'clock at night for nothing – but of course your father has not thought of this.'

‘I will sell my furniture,' said the warden.

‘Furniture!' ejaculated the other, with a most powerful sneer.

‘Come, archdeacon,' said the lady, ‘we needn't mind that at present. You know you never expected papa to pay the costs.'

‘Such absurdity is enough to provoke Job,'
³
said the archdeacon, marching quickly up and down the room. ‘Your father is like a child. Eight hundred pounds a year! – eight hundred and eighty with the house – with nothing to do. The very place for him. And to throw that up because some scoundrel writes an article in a newspaper! Well – I have done my duty. If he chooses to ruin his child I cannot help it'; and he stood still at the fireplace, and looked at himself in a dingy mirror which stood on the chimneypiece.

There was a pause for about a minute, and then the warden, finding that nothing else was coming, lighted his candle, and quietly said, ‘Good night.'

‘Good night, papa,' said the lady.

And so the warden retired; but, as he closed the door behind him, he heard the well-known ejaculation – slower, lower, more solemn, more ponderous than ever – ‘Good heavens!'

T
HE
party met the next morning at breakfast; and a very sombre affair it was – very unlike the breakfasts at Plumstead Episcopi.

There were three thin, small, dry bits of bacon, each an inch long, served up under a huge old plated cover; there were four three-cornered bits of dry toast, and four square bits of buttered toast; there was a loaf of bread, and some oily-looking butter; and on the sideboard there were the remains of a cold shoulder of mutton. The archdeacon, however, had not come up from his rectory to St Paul's Churchyard to enjoy himself, and therefore nothing was said of the scanty fare.

The guests were as sorry as the viands – hardly anything was said over the breakfast-table. The archdeacon munched his toast in ominous silence, turning over bitter thoughts in his deep mind. The warden tried to talk to his daughter, and she tried to answer him; but they both failed. There were no feelings at present in common between them. The warden was thinking only of getting back to Barchester, and calculating whether the archdeacon would expect him to wait for him; and Mrs Grantly was preparing herself for a grand attack which she was to make on her father, as agreed upon between herself and her husband during their curtain confabulation of that morning.

When the waiter had creaked out of the room with the last of the teacups, the archdeacon got up and went to the window, as though to admire the view. The room looked out on a narrow passage which runs from St Paul's Churchyard to Paternoster Row; and Dr Grantly patiently perused the names of the three shopkeepers whose doors were in view. The warden still kept his seat at the table, and examined the pattern of the tablecloth; and Mrs Grantly, seating herself on the sofa, began to knit.

After a while the warden pulled his
Bradshaw
out of his pocket, and began laboriously to consult it. There was a train for Barchester at 10 a.m. That was out of the question, for it was nearly
ten already. Another at 3 p.m.; another, the night mail-train, at 9 p.m. The three o'clock train would take him home to tea, and would suit very well.

‘My dear,' said he, ‘I think I shall go back home at three o'clock today. I shall get home at half-past eight. I don't think there's anything to keep me in London.'

‘The archdeacon and I return by the early train tomorrow, papa; won't you wait and go back with us?'

‘Why, Eleanor will expect me tonight; and I've so much to do; and —'

‘Much to do!' said the archdeacon
sotto voce
;
¹
but the warden heard him.

‘You'd better wait for us, papa.'

‘Thank ye, my dear! I think I'll go this afternoon.' The tamest animal will turn when driven too hard, and even Mr Harding was beginning to fight for his own way.

‘I suppose you won't be back before three?' said the lady, addressing her husband.

‘I must leave this at two,' said the warden.

‘Quite out of the question,' said the archdeacon, answering his wife, and still reading the shopkeepers' names; ‘I don't suppose I shall be back till five.'

There was another long pause, during which Mr Harding continued to study his
Bradshaw
.

‘I must go to Cox and Cummins,' said the archdeacon at last.

‘Oh, to Cox and Cummins,' said the warden. It was quite a matter of indifference to him where his son-in-law went. The names of Cox and Cummins had now no interest in his ears. What had he to do with Cox and Cummins further, having already had his suit finally adjudicated upon in a court of conscience, a judgement without power of appeal fully registered, and the matter settled so that all the lawyers in London could not disturb it. The archdeacon could go to Cox and Cummins, could remain there all day in anxious discussion; but what might be said there was no longer matter of interest to him, who was so soon to lay aside the name of Warden of Barchester Hospital.

The archdeacon took up his shining new clerical hat, and put on his black new clerical gloves, and looked heavy, respectable,
decorous, and opulent, a decided clergyman of the Church of England, every inch of him. ‘I suppose I shall see you at Barchester the day after tomorrow,' said he.

The warden supposed he would.

‘I must once more beseech you to take no further steps till you see my father; if you owe me nothing,' and the archdeacon looked as though he thought a great deal were due to him, ‘at least you owe so much to my father'; and, without waiting for a reply, Dr Grantly wended his way to Cox and Cummins.