THE WARDEN
CHAPTER XVII
Sir Abraham Haphazard
Mr Harding was shown into a comfortable inner sitting-room,
looking more like a gentleman’s book-room than a
lawyer’s chambers, and there waited for Sir Abraham. Nor was
he kept waiting long: in ten or fifteen minutes he heard a clatter
of voices speaking quickly in the passage, and then the
attorney-general entered.
‘Very sorry to keep you waiting, Mr Warden,’ said
Sir Abraham, shaking hands with him; ‘and sorry, too, to name
so disagreeable an hour; but your notice was short, and as you said
today, I named the very earliest hour that was not disposed
of.’
Mr Harding assured him that he was aware that it was he that
should apologise.
Sir Abraham was a tall thin man, with hair prematurely gray, but
bearing no other sign of age; he had a slight stoop, in his neck
rather than his back, acquired by his constant habit of leaning
forward as he addressed his various audiences. He might be fifty
years old, and would have looked young for his age, had not
constant work hardened his features, and given him the appearance
of a machine with a mind. His face was full of intellect, but
devoid of natural expression. You would say he was a man to use,
and then have done with; a man to be sought for on great
emergencies, but ill-adapted for ordinary services; a man whom you
would ask to defend your property, but to whom you would be sorry
to confide your love. He was bright as a diamond, and as cutting,
and also as unimpressionable. He knew everyone whom to know was an
honour, but he was without a friend; he wanted none, however, and
knew not the meaning of the word in other than its parliamentary
sense. A friend! Had he not always been sufficient to himself, and
now, at fifty, was it likely that he should trust another? He was
married, indeed, and had children, but what time had he for the
soft idleness of conjugal felicity? His working days or term times
were occupied from his time of rising to the late hour at which he
went to rest, and even his vacations were more full of labour than
the busiest days of other men. He never quarrelled with his wife,
but he never talked to her—he never had time to talk, he was
so taken up with speaking. She, poor lady, was not unhappy; she had
all that money could give her, she would probably live to be a
peeress, and she really thought Sir Abraham the best of
husbands.
Sir Abraham was a man of wit, and sparkled among the brightest
at the dinner-tables of political grandees: indeed, he always
sparkled; whether in society, in the House of Commons, or the
courts of law, coruscations flew from him; glittering sparkles, as
from hot steel, but no heat; no cold heart was ever cheered by
warmth from him, no unhappy soul ever dropped a portion of its
burden at his door.
With him success alone was praiseworthy, and he knew none so
successful as himself. No one had thrust him forward; no powerful
friends had pushed him along on his road to power. No; he was
attorney-general, and would, in all human probability, be lord
chancellor by sheer dint of his own industry and his own talent.
Who else in all the world rose so high with so little help? A
premier, indeed! Who had ever been premier without mighty friends?
An archbishop! Yes, the son or grandson of a great noble, or else,
probably, his tutor. But he, Sir Abraham, had had no mighty lord at
his back; his father had been a country apothecary, his mother a
farmer’s daughter. Why should he respect any but himself? And
so he glitters along through the world, the brightest among the
bright; and when his glitter is gone, and he is gathered to his
fathers, no eye will be dim with a tear, no heart will mourn for
its lost friend.
‘And so, Mr Warden,’ said Sir Abraham, ‘all
our trouble about this lawsuit is at an end.’
Mr Harding said he hoped so, but he didn’t at all
understand what Sir Abraham meant. Sir Abraham, with all his
sharpness, could not have looked into his heart and read his
intentions.
‘All over. You need trouble yourself no further about it;
of course they must pay the costs, and the absolute expense to you
and Dr Grantly will be trifling—that is, compared with what
it might have been if it had been continued.’
‘I fear I don’t quite understand you, Sir
Abraham.’
‘Don’t you know that their attorneys have noticed us
that they have withdrawn the suit?’
Mr Harding explained to the lawyer that he knew nothing of this,
although he had heard in a roundabout way that such an intention
had been talked of; and he also at length succeeded in making Sir
Abraham understand that even this did not satisfy him. The
attorney-general stood up, put his hands into his breeches’
pockets, and raised his eyebrows, as Mr Harding proceeded to detail
the grievance from which he now wished to rid himself.
‘I know I have no right to trouble you personally with
this matter, but as it is of most vital importance to me, as all my
happiness is concerned in it, I thought I might venture to seek
your advice.’
Sir Abraham bowed, and declared his clients were entitled to the
best advice he could give them; particularly a client so
respectable in every way as the Warden of Barchester Hospital.
‘A spoken word, Sir Abraham, is often of more value than
volumes of written advice. The truth is, I am ill-satisfied with
this matter as it stands at present. I do see—I cannot help
seeing, that the affairs of the hospital are not arranged according
to the will of the founder.’
‘None of such institutions are, Mr Harding, nor can they
be; the altered circumstances in which we live do not admit of
it.’
‘Quite true—that is quite true; but I can’t
see that those altered circumstances give me a right to eight
hundred a year. I don’t know whether I ever read John
Hiram’s will, but were I to read it now I could not
understand it. What I want you, Sir Abraham, to tell me, is
this—am I, as warden, legally and distinctly entitled to the
proceeds of the property, after the due maintenance of the twelve
bedesmen?’
Sir Abraham declared that he couldn’t exactly say in so
many words that Mr Harding was legally entitled to, &c.,
&c., &c., and ended in expressing a strong opinion that it
would be madness to raise any further question on the matter, as
the suit was to be—nay, was, abandoned. Mr Harding, seated in
his chair, began to play a slow tune on an imaginary
violoncello.
‘Nay, my dear sir,’ continued the attorney-general,
‘there is no further ground for any question; I don’t
see that you have the power of raising it.’
‘I can resign,’ said Mr Harding, slowly playing away
with his right hand, as though the bow were beneath the chair in
which he was sitting.
‘What! throw it up altogether?’ said the
attorney-general, gazing with utter astonishment at his client.
‘Did you see those articles in The Jupiter?’ said Mr
Harding, piteously, appealing to the sympathy of the lawyer.
Sir Abraham said he had seen them. This poor little clergyman,
cowed into such an act of extreme weakness by a newspaper article,
was to Sir Abraham so contemptible an object, that he hardly knew
how to talk to him as to a rational being.
‘Hadn’t you better wait,’ said he, ‘till
Dr Grantly is in town with you? Wouldn’t it be better to
postpone any serious step till you can consult with him?’
Mr Harding declared vehemently that he could not wait, and Sir
Abraham began seriously to doubt his sanity.
‘Of course,’ said the latter, ‘if you have
private means sufficient for your wants, and if
this—’
‘I haven’t a sixpence, Sir Abraham,’ said the
warden.
‘God bless me! Why, Mr Harding, how do you mean to
live?’
Mr Harding proceeded to explain to the man of law that he meant
to keep his precentorship—that was eighty pounds a year; and,
also, that he meant to fall back upon his own little living of
Crabtree, which was another eighty pounds. That, to be sure, the
duties of the two were hardly compatible; but perhaps he might
effect an exchange. And then, recollecting that the
attorney-general would hardly care to hear how the service of a
cathedral church is divided among the minor canons, stopped short
in his explanations.
Sir Abraham listened in pitying wonder. ‘I really think,
Mr Harding, you had better wait for the archdeacon. This is a most
serious step—one for which, in my opinion, there is not the
slightest necessity; and, as you have done me the honour of asking
my advice, I must implore you to do nothing without the approval of
your friends. A man is never the best judge of his own
position.’
‘A man is the best judge of what he feels himself.
I’d sooner beg my bread till my death than read such another
article as those two that have appeared, and feel, as I do, that
the writer has truth on his side.’
‘Have you not a daughter, Mr Harding—an unmarried
daughter?’
‘I have,’ said he, now standing also, but still
playing away on his fiddle with his hand behind his back. ‘I
have, Sir Abraham; and she and I are completely agreed on this
subject.’
‘Pray excuse me, Mr Harding, if what I say seems
impertinent; but surely it is you that should be prudent on her
behalf. She is young, and does not know the meaning of living on an
income of a hundred and sixty pounds a year. On her account give up
this idea. Believe me, it is sheer Quixotism.’
The warden walked away to the window, and then back to his
chair; and then, irresolute what to say, took another turn to the
window. The attorney-general was really extremely patient, but he
was beginning to think that the interview had been long enough.
‘But if this income be not justly mine, what if she and I
have both to beg?’ said the warden at last, sharply, and in a
voice so different from that he had hitherto used, that Sir Abraham
was startled. ‘If so, it would be better to beg.’
‘My dear sir, nobody now questions its
justness.’
‘Yes, Sir Abraham, one does question it—the most
important of all witnesses against me—I question it myself.
My God knows whether or no I love my daughter; but I would sooner
that she and I should both beg, than that she should live in
comfort on money which is truly the property of the poor. It may
seem strange to you, Sir Abraham, it is strange to myself, that I
should have been ten years in that happy home, and not have thought
of these things till they were so roughly dinned into my ears. I
cannot boast of my conscience, when it required the violence of a
public newspaper to awaken it; but, now that it is awake, I must
obey it. When I came here, I did not know that the suit was
withdrawn by Mr Bold, and my object was to beg you to abandon my
defence. As there is no action, there can be no defence; but it is,
at any rate, as well that you should know that from tomorrow I
shall cease to be the warden of the hospital. My friends and I
differ on this subject, Sir Abraham, and that adds much to my
sorrow; but it cannot be helped.’ And, as he finished what he
had to say, he played up such a tune as never before had graced the
chambers of any attorney-general. He was standing up, gallantly
fronting Sir Abraham, and his right arm passed with bold and rapid
sweeps before him, as though he were embracing some huge
instrument, which allowed him to stand thus erect; and with the
fingers of his left hand he stopped, with preternatural velocity, a
multitude of strings, which ranged from the top of his collar to
the bottom of the lappet of his coat. Sir Abraham listened and
looked in wonder. As he had never before seen Mr Harding, the
meaning of these wild gesticulations was lost upon him; but he
perceived that the gentleman who had a few minutes since been so
subdued as to be unable to speak without hesitation, was now
impassioned—nay, almost violent.
‘You’ll sleep on this, Mr Harding, and
tomorrow—’
‘I have done more than sleep upon it,’ said the
warden; ‘I have lain awake upon it, and that night after
night. I found I could not sleep upon it: now I hope to do
so.’
The attorney-general had no answer to make to this; so he
expressed a quiet hope that whatever settlement was finally made
would be satisfactory; and Mr Harding withdrew, thanking the great
man for his kind attention.
Mr Harding was sufficiently satisfied with the interview to feel
a glow of comfort as he descended into the small old square of
Lincoln’s Inn. It was a calm, bright, beautiful night, and by
the light of the moon, even the chapel of Lincoln’s Inn, and
the sombre row of chambers, which surround the quadrangle, looked
well. He stood still a moment to collect his thoughts, and reflect
on what he had done, and was about to do. He knew that the
attorney-general regarded him as little better than a fool, but
that he did not mind; he and the attorney- general had not much in
common between them; he knew also that others, whom he did care
about, would think so too; but Eleanor, he was sure, would exult in
what he had done, and the bishop, he trusted, would sympathise with
him.
In the meantime he had to meet the archdeacon, and so he walked
slowly down Chancery Lane and along Fleet Street, feeling sure that
his work for the night was not yet over. When he reached the hotel
he rang the bell quietly, and with a palpitating heart; he almost
longed to escape round the corner, and delay the coming storm by a
further walk round St Paul’s Churchyard, but he heard the
slow creaking shoes of the old waiter approaching, and he stood his
ground manfully.