THE WARDEN
CHAPTER VII
‘The Jupiter’
Though Eleanor Harding rode off from John Bold on a high horse,
it must not be supposed that her heart was so elate as her
demeanour. In the first place, she had a natural repugnance to
losing her lover; and in the next, she was not quite So sure that
she was in the right as she pretended to be. Her father had told
her, and that now repeatedly, that Bold was doing nothing unjust or
ungenerous; and why then should she rebuke him, and throw him off,
when she felt herself so ill able to bear his loss?—but such
is human nature, and young-lady-nature especially. As she walked
off from him beneath the shady elms of the close, her look, her
tone, every motion and gesture of her body, belied her heart; she
would have given the world to have taken him by the hand, to have
reasoned with him, persuaded him, cajoled him, coaxed him out of
his project; to have overcome him with all her female artillery,
and to have redeemed her father at the cost of herself; but pride
would not let her do this, and she left him without a look of love
or a word of kindness.
Had Bold been judging of another lover and of another lady, he
might have understood all this as well as we do; but in matters of
love men do not see clearly in their own affairs. They say that
faint heart never won fair lady; and it is amazing to me how fair
ladies are won, so faint are often men’s hearts! Were it not
for the kindness of their nature, that seeing the weakness of our
courage they will occasionally descend from their impregnable
fortresses, and themselves aid us in effecting their own defeat,
too often would they escape unconquered if not unscathed, and free
of body if not of heart.
Poor Bold crept off quite crestfallen; he felt that as regarded
Eleanor Harding his fate was sealed, unless he could consent to
give up a task to which he had pledged himself and which indeed it
would not be easy for him to give up. Lawyers were engaged, and the
question had to a certain extent been taken up by the public;
besides, how could a high-spirited girl like Eleanor Harding really
learn to love a man for neglecting a duty which he assumed! Could
she allow her affection to be purchased at the cost of his own
self-respect?
As regarded the issue of his attempt at reformation in the
hospital, Bold had no reason hitherto to be discontented with his
success. All Barchester was by the ears about it. The bishop, the
archdeacon, the warden, the steward, and several other clerical
allies, had daily meetings, discussing their tactics, and preparing
for the great attack. Sir Abraham Haphazard had been consulted, but
his opinion was not yet received: copies of Hiram’s will,
copies of wardens’ journals, copies of leases, copies of
accounts, copies of everything that could be copied, and of some
that could not, had been sent to him; and the case was assuming
most creditable dimensions. But, above all, it had been mentioned
in the daily Jupiter. That all- powerful organ of the press in one
of its leading thunderbolts launched at St Cross, had thus
remarked: ‘Another case, of smaller dimensions indeed, but of
similar import, is now likely to come under public notice. We are
informed that the warden or master of an old almshouse attached to
Barchester Cathedral is in receipt of twenty-five times the annual
income appointed for him by the will of the founder, while the sum
yearly expended on the absolute purposes of the charity has always
remained fixed. In other words, the legatees under the
founder’s will have received no advantage from the increase
in the value of the property during the last four centuries, such
increase having been absorbed by the so-called warden. It is
impossible to conceive a case of greater injustice. It is no answer
to say that some six or nine or twelve old men receive as much of
the goods of this world as such old men require. On what
foundation, moral or divine, traditional or legal, is grounded the
warden’s claim to the large income he receives for doing
nothing? The contentment of these almsmen, if content they be, can
give him no title to this wealth! Does he ever ask himself, when he
stretches wide his clerical palm to receive the pay of some dozen
of the working clergy, for what service he is so remunerated? Does
his conscience ever entertain the question of his right to such
subsidies? Or is it possible that the subject never so presents
itself to his mind; that he has received for many years, and
intends, should God spare him, to receive for years to come these
fruits of the industrious piety of past ages, indifferent as to any
right on his own part, or of any injustice to others! We must
express an opinion that nowhere but in the Church of England, and
only there among its priests, could such a state of moral
indifference be found.’
I must for the present leave my readers to imagine the state of
Mr Harding’s mind after reading the above article. They say
that forty thousand copies of The Jupiter are daily sold, and that
each copy is read by five persons at the least. Two hundred
thousand readers then would hear this accusation against him; two
hundred thousand hearts would swell with indignation at the griping
injustice, the barefaced robbery of the warden of Barchester
Hospital! And how was he to answer this? How was he to open his
inmost heart to this multitude, to these thousands, the educated,
the polished, the picked men of his own country; how show them that
he was no robber, no avaricious, lazy priest scrambling for gold,
but a retiring, humble-spirited man, who had innocently taken what
had innocently been offered to him?
‘Write to The Jupiter,’ suggested the bishop.
‘Yes,’ said the archdeacon, more worldly wise than
his father, ‘yes, and be smothered with ridicule; tossed over
and over again with scorn; shaken this way and that, as a rat in
the mouth of a practised terrier. You will leave out some word or
letter in your answer, and the ignorance of the cathedral clergy
will be harped upon; you will make some small mistake, which will
be a falsehood, or some admission, which will be self-condemnation;
you will find yourself to have been vulgar, ill-tempered,
irreverend, and illiterate, and the chances are ten to one, but
that being a clergyman, you will have been guilty of blasphemy! A
man may have the best of causes, the best of talents, and the best
of tempers; he may write as well as Addison, or as strongly as
Junius; but even with all this he cannot successfully answer, when
attacked by The Jupiter. In such matters it is omnipotent. What the
Czar is in Russia, or the mob in America, that The Jupiter is in
England. Answer such an article! No, warden; whatever you do,
don’t do that. We were to look for this sort of thing, you
know; but we need not draw down on our heads more of it than is
necessary.’
The article in The Jupiter, while it so greatly harassed our
poor warden, was an immense triumph to some of the opposite party.
Sorry as Bold was to see Mr Harding attacked so personally, it
still gave him a feeling of elation to find his cause taken up by
so powerful an advocate: and as to Finney, the attorney, he was
beside himself. What! to be engaged in the same cause and on the
same side with The Jupiter; to have the views he had recommended
seconded, and furthered, and battled for by The Jupiter! Perhaps to
have his own name mentioned as that of the learned gentleman whose
efforts had been so successful on behalf of the poor of Barchester!
He might be examined before committees of the House of Commons,
with heaven knows how much a day for his personal expenses—he
might be engaged for years on such a suit! There was no end to the
glorious golden dreams which this leader in The Jupiter produced in
the soaring mind of Finney.
And the old bedesmen, they also heard of this article, and had a
glimmering, indistinct idea of the marvellous advocate which had
now taken up their cause. Abel Handy limped hither and thither
through the rooms, repeating all that he understood to have been
printed, with some additions of his own which he thought should
have been added. He told them how The Jupiter had declared that
their warden was no better than a robber, and that what The Jupiter
said was acknowledged by the world to be true. How The Jupiter had
affirmed that each one of them—‘each one of us,
Jonathan Crumple, think of that!’—had a clear right to
a hundred a year; and that if The Jupiter had said so, it was
better than a decision of the Lord Chancellor: and then he carried
about the paper, supplied by Mr Finney, which, though none of them
could read it, still afforded in its very touch and aspect positive
corroboration of what was told them; and Jonathan Crumple pondered
deeply over his returning wealth; and job Skulpit saw how right he
had been in signing the petition, and said so many scores of times;
and Spriggs leered fearfully with his one eye; and Moody, as he
more nearly approached the coming golden age, hated more deeply
than ever those who still kept possession of what he so coveted.
Even Billy Gazy and poor bed-ridden Bell became active and uneasy,
and the great Bunce stood apart with lowering brow, with deep grief
seated in his heart, for he perceived that evil days were
coming.
It had been decided, the archdeacon advising, that no
remonstrance, explanation, or defence should be addressed from the
Barchester conclave to the editor of The Jupiter; but hitherto that
was the only decision to which they had come.
Sir Abraham Haphazard was deeply engaged in preparing a bill for
the mortification of papists, to be called the ‘Convent
Custody Bill,’ the purport of which was to enable any
Protestant clergyman over fifty years of age to search any nun whom
he suspected of being in possession of treasonable papers or
Jesuitical symbols; and as there were to be a hundred and
thirty-seven clauses in the bill, each clause containing a separate
thorn for the side of the papist, and as it was known the bill
would be fought inch by inch, by fifty maddened Irishmen, the due
construction and adequate dovetailing of it did consume much of Sir
Abraham’s time. The bill had all its desired effect. Of
course it never passed into law; but it so completely divided the
ranks of the Irish members, who had bound themselves together to
force on the ministry a bill for compelling all men to drink Irish
whiskey, and all women to wear Irish poplins, that for the
remainder of the session the Great Poplin and Whiskey League was
utterly harmless.
Thus it happened that Sir Abraham’s opinion was not at
once forthcoming, and the uncertainty, the expectation, and
suffering of the folk of Barchester was maintained at a high
pitch.