THE WARDEN
CHAPTER V
Dr Grantly Visits the Hospital
Though doubt and hesitation disturbed the rest of our poor
warden, no such weakness perplexed the nobler breast of his
son-in-law. As the indomitable cock preparing for the combat
sharpens his spurs, shakes his feathers, and erects his comb, so
did the archdeacon arrange his weapons for the coming war, without
misgiving and without fear. That he was fully confident of the
justice of his cause let no one doubt. Many a man can fight his
battle with good courage, but with a doubting conscience. Such was
not the case with Dr Grantly. He did not believe in the Gospel with
more assurance than he did in the sacred justice of all
ecclesiastical revenues. When he put his shoulder to the wheel to
defend the income of the present and future precentors of
Barchester, he was animated by as strong a sense of a holy cause,
as that which gives courage to a missionary in Africa, or enables a
sister of mercy to give up the pleasures of the world for the wards
of a hospital. He was about to defend the holy of holies from the
touch of the profane; to guard the citadel of his church from the
most rampant of its enemies; to put on his good armour in the best
of fights; and secure, if possible, the comforts of his creed for
coming generations of ecclesiastical dignitaries. Such a work
required no ordinary vigour; and the archdeacon was, therefore,
extraordinarily vigorous. It demanded a buoyant courage, and a
heart happy in its toil; and the archdeacon’s heart was
happy, and his courage was buoyant.
He knew that he would not be able to animate his father-in-law
with feelings like his own, but this did not much disturb him. He
preferred to bear the brunt of the battle alone, and did not doubt
that the warden would resign himself into his hands with passive
submission.
‘Well, Mr Chadwick,’ he said, walking into the
steward’s office a day or two after the signing of the
petition as commemorated in the last chapter: ‘anything from
Cox and Cummins this morning?’ Mr Chadwick handed him a
letter; which he read, stroking the tight-gaitered calf of his
right leg as he did so. Messrs Cox and Cummins merely said that
they had as yet received no notice from their adversaries; that
they could recommend no preliminary steps; but that should any
proceeding really be taken by the bedesmen, it would be expedient
to consult that very eminent Queen’s Counsel, Sir Abraham
Haphazard.
‘I quite agree with them,’ said Dr Grantly,
refolding the letter. ‘I perfectly agree with them. Haphazard
is no doubt the best man; a thorough churchman, a sound
conservative, and in every respect the best man we could
get—he’s in the House, too, which is a great
thing.’
Mr Chadwick quite agreed.
‘You remember how completely he put down that scoundrel
Horseman about the Bishop of Beverley’s income; how
completely he set them all adrift in the earl’s case.’
Since the question of St Cross had been mooted by the public, one
noble lord had become ‘the earl,’ par excellence, in
the doctor’s estimation. ‘How he silenced that fellow
at Rochester. Of course we must have Haphazard; and I’ll tell
you what, Mr Chadwick, we must take care to be in time, or the
other party will forestall us.’
With all his admiration for Sir Abraham, the doctor seemed to
think it not impossible that that great man might be induced to
lend his gigantic powers to the side of the church’s
enemies.
Having settled this point to his satisfaction, the doctor
stepped down to the hospital, to learn how matters were going on
there; and as he walked across the hallowed close, and looked up at
the ravens who cawed with a peculiar reverence as he wended his
way, he thought with increased acerbity of those whose impiety
would venture to disturb the goodly grace of cathedral
institutions.
And who has not felt the same? We believe that Mr Horseman
himself would relent, and the spirit of Sir Benjamin Hall give way,
were those great reformers to allow themselves to stroll by
moonlight round the towers of some of our ancient churches. Who
would not feel charity for a prebendary when walking the quiet
length of that long aisle at Winchester, looking at those decent
houses, that trim grass-plat, and feeling, as one must, the solemn,
orderly comfort of the spot! Who could be hard upon a dean while
wandering round the sweet close of Hereford, and owning that in
that precinct, tone and colour, design and form, solemn tower and
storied window, are all in unison, and all perfect! Who could lie
basking in the cloisters of Salisbury, and gaze on Jewel’s
library and that unequalled spire, without feeling that bishops
should sometimes be rich!
The tone of our archdeacon’s mind must not astonish us; it
has been the growth of centuries of church ascendancy; and though
some fungi now disfigure the tree, though there be much dead wood,
for how much good fruit have not we to be thankful? Who, without
remorse, can batter down the dead branches of an old oak, now
useless, but, ah! still so beautiful, or drag out the fragments of
the ancient forest, without feeling that they sheltered the younger
plants, to which they are now summoned to give way in a tone so
peremptory and so harsh?
The archdeacon, with all his virtues, was not a man of delicate
feeling; and after having made his morning salutations in the
warden’s drawing-room, he did not scruple to commence an
attack on ‘pestilent’ John Bold in the presence of Miss
Harding, though he rightly guessed that that lady was not
indifferent to the name of his enemy.
‘Nelly, my dear, fetch me my spectacles from the back
room,’ said her father, anxious to save both her blushes and
her feelings.
Eleanor brought the spectacles, while her father was trying, in
ambiguous phrases, to explain to her too-practical brother- in-law
that it might be as well not to say anything about Bold before her,
and then retreated. Nothing had been explained to her about Bold
and the hospital; but, with a woman’s instinct she knew that
things were going wrong.
‘We must soon be doing something,’ commenced the
archdeacon, wiping his brows with a large, bright-coloured
handkerchief, for he had felt busy, and had walked quick, and it
was a broiling summer’s day. ‘Of course you have heard
of the petition?’
Mr Harding owned, somewhat unwillingly, that he had heard of
it.
‘Well’—the archdeacon looked for some
expressions of opinion, but none coming, he continued—’
We must be doing something, you know; we mustn’t allow these
people to cut the ground from under us while we sit looking
on.’ The archdeacon, who was a practical man, allowed himself
the use of everyday expressive modes of speech when among his
closest intimates, though no one could soar into a more intricate
labyrinth of refined phraseology when the church was the subject,
and his lower brethren were his auditors.
The warden still looked mutely in his face, making the slightest
possible passes with an imaginary fiddle bow, and stopping, as he
did so, sundry imaginary strings with the fingers of his other
hand. ’Twas his constant consolation in conversational
troubles. While these vexed him sorely, the passes would be short
and slow, and the upper hand would not be seen to work; nay, the
strings on which it operated would sometimes lie concealed in the
musician’s pocket, and the instrument on which he played
would be beneath his chair— but as his spirit warmed to the
subject—as his trusting heart looking to the bottom of that
which vexed him, would see its clear way out—he would rise to
a higher melody, sweep the unseen strings with a bolder hand, and
swiftly fingering the cords from his neck, down along his
waistcoat, and up again to his very ear, create an ecstatic strain
of perfect music, audible to himself and to St Cecilia, and not
without effect.
‘I quite agree with Cox and Cummins,’ continued the
archdeacon. ‘They say we must secure Sir Abraham Haphazard. I
shall not have the slightest fear in leaving the case in Sir
Abraham’s hands.’
The warden played the slowest and saddest of tunes. It was but a
dirge on one string.
‘I think Sir Abraham will not be long in letting Master
Bold know what he’s about. I fancy I hear Sir Abraham
cross-questioning him at the Common Pleas.’
The warden thought of his income being thus discussed, his
modest life, his daily habits, and his easy work; and nothing
issued from that single cord, but a low wail of sorrow. ‘I
suppose they’ve sent this petition up to my father.’
The warden didn’t know; he imagined they would do so this
very day.
‘What I can’t understand is, how you let them do it,
with such a command as you have in the place, or should have with
such a man as Bunce. I cannot understand why you let them do
it.’
‘Do what?’ asked the warden.
‘Why, listen to this fellow Bold, and that other low
pettifogger, Finney—and get up this petition too. Why
didn’t you tell Bunce to destroy the petition?’
‘That would have been hardly wise,’ said the
warden.
‘Wise—yes, it would have been very wise if
they’d done it among themselves. I must go up to the palace
and answer it now, I suppose. It’s a very short answer
they’ll get, I can tell you.’
‘But why shouldn’t they petition, doctor?’
‘Why shouldn’t they!’ responded the
archdeacon, in a loud brazen voice, as though all the men in the
hospital were expected to hear him through the walls; ‘why
shouldn’t they? I’ll let them know why they
shouldn’t: by the bye, warden, I’d like to say a few
words to them all together.’
The warden’s mind misgave him, and even for a moment he
forgot to play. He by no means wished to delegate to his son-in-law
his place and authority of warden; he had expressly determined not
to interfere in any step which the men might wish to take in the
matter under dispute; he was most anxious neither to accuse them
nor to defend himself. All these things he was aware the archdeacon
would do in his behalf, and that not in the mildest manner; and yet
he knew not how to refuse the permission requested.
‘I’d so much sooner remain quiet in the
matter,’ said he, in an apologetic voice.
Quiet!’ said the archdeacon, still speaking with his
brazen trumpet; ‘do you wish to be ruined in
quiet?’
‘Why, if I am to be ruined, certainly.’
‘Nonsense, warden; I tell you something must be
done— we must act; just let me ring the bell, and send the
men word that I’ll speak to them in the quad.’
Mr Harding knew not how to resist, and the disagreeable order
was given. The quad, as it was familiarly called, was a small
quadrangle, open on one side to the river, and surrounded on the
others by the high wall of Mr Harding’s garden, by one gable
end of Mr Harding’s house, and by the end of the row of
buildings which formed the residences of the bedesmen. It was
flagged all round, and the centre was stoned; small stone gutters
ran from the four corners of the square to a grating in the centre;
and attached to the end of Mr Harding’s house was a conduit
with four cocks covered over from the weather, at which the old men
got their water, and very generally performed their morning toilet.
It was a quiet, sombre place, shaded over by the trees of the
warden’s garden. On the side towards the river, there stood a
row of stone seats, on which the old men would sit and gaze at the
little fish, as they flitted by in the running stream. On the other
side of the river was a rich, green meadow, running up to and
joining the deanery, and as little open to the public as the garden
of the dean itself. Nothing, therefore, could be more private than
the quad of the hospital; and it was there that the archdeacon
determined to convey to them his sense of their refractory
proceedings.
The servant soon brought in word that the men were assembled in
the quad, and the archdeacon, big with his purpose, rose to address
them.
‘Well, warden, of course you’re coming,’ said
he, seeing that Mr Harding did not prepare to follow him.
‘I wish you’d excuse me,’ said Mr Harding.
‘For heaven’s sake, don’t let us have division
in the camp,’ replied the archdeacon: ‘let us have a
long pull and a strong pull, but above all a pull all together;
come warden, come; don’t be afraid of your duty.’
Mr Harding was afraid; he was afraid that he was being led to do
that which was not his duty: he was not, however, strong enough to
resist, so he got up and followed his son-in-law.
The old men were assembled in groups in the quadrangle—
eleven of them at least, for poor old Johnny Bell was bed-ridden,
and couldn’t come; he had, however, put his mark to the
petition, as one of Handy’s earliest followers. ’Tis
true he could not move from the bed where he lay; ’tis true
he had no friend on earth, but those whom the hospital contained;
and of those the warden and his daughter were the most constant and
most appreciated; ’tis true that everything was administered
to him which his failing body could require, or which his faint
appetite could enjoy; but still his dull eye had glistened for a
moment at the idea of possessing a hundred pounds a year ‘to
his own cheek,’ as Abel Handy had eloquently expressed it;
and poor old Johnny Bell had greedily put his mark to the
petition.
When the two clergymen appeared, they all uncovered their heads.
Handy was slow to do it, and hesitated; but the black coat and
waistcoat of which he had spoken so irreverently in Skulpit’s
room, had its effect even on him, and he too doffed his hat. Bunce,
advancing before the others, bowed lowly to the archdeacon, and
with affectionate reverence expressed his wish, that the warden and
Miss Eleanor were quite well; ‘and the doctor’s
lady,’ he added, turning to the archdeacon, ‘and the
children at Plumstead, and my lord’; and having made his
speech, he also retired among the others, and took his place with
the rest upon the stone benches.
As the archdeacon stood up to make his speech, erect in the
middle of that little square , he looked like an ecclesiastical
statue placed there, as a fitting impersonation of the church
militant here on earth; his shovel hat, large, new, and well-
pronounced, a churchman’s hat in every inch, declared the
profession as plainly as does the Quaker’s broad brim; his
heavy eyebrows, large open eyes, and full mouth and chin expressed
the solidity of his order; the broad chest, amply covered with fine
cloth, told how well to do was its estate; one hand ensconced
within his pocket, evinced the practical hold which our mother
church keeps on her temporal possessions; and the other, loose for
action, was ready to fight if need be in her defence; and, below
these, the decorous breeches, and neat black gaiters showing so
admirably that well-turned leg, betokened the decency, the outward
beauty and grace of our church establishment.
‘Now, my men,’ he began, when he had settled himself
well in his position, ‘I want to say a few words to you. Your
good friend, the warden here, and myself, and my lord the bishop,
on whose behalf I wish to speak to you, would all be very sorry,
very sorry indeed, that you should have any just ground of
complaint. Any just ground of complaint on your part would be
removed at once by the warden, or by his lordship, or by me on his
behalf, without the necessity of any petition on your part.’
Here the orator stopped for a moment, expecting that some little
murmurs of applause would show that the weakest of the men were
beginning to give way; but no such murmurs came. Bunce, himself,
even sat with closed lips, mute and unsatisfactory. ‘Without
the necessity of any petition at all,’ he repeated.
‘I’m told you have addressed a petition to my
lord.’ He paused for a reply from the men, and after a while,
Handy plucked up courage and said, ‘Yes, we has.’
‘ You have addressed a petition to my lord, in which, as I
am informed, you express an opinion that you do not receive from
Hiram’s estate all that is your due.’ Here most of the
men expressed their assent. ‘Now what is it you ask for? What
is it you want that you hav’n’t got here? What is
it—’
‘A hundred a year,’ muttered old Moody, with a voice
as if it came out of the ground.
‘A hundred a year!’ ejaculated the archdeacon
militant, defying the impudence of these claimants with one hand
stretched out and closed, while with the other he tightly grasped,
and secured within his breeches pocket, that symbol of the
church’s wealth which his own loose half-crowns not unaptly
represented. ‘A hundred a year! Why, my men, you must be mad;
and you talk about John Hiram’s will! When John Hiram built a
hospital for worn-out old men, worn-out old labouring men, infirm
old men past their work, cripples, blind, bed-ridden, and such
like, do you think he meant to make gentlemen of them? Do you think
John Hiram intended to give a hundred a year to old single men, who
earned perhaps two shillings or half-a-crown a day for themselves
and families in the best of their time? No, my men, I’ll tell
you what John Hiram meant: he meant that twelve poor old worn-out
labourers, men who could no longer support themselves, who had no
friends to support them, who must starve and perish miserably if
not protected by the hand of charity; he meant that twelve such men
as these should come in here in their poverty and wretchedness, and
find within these walls shelter and food before their death, and a
little leisure to make their peace with God. That was what John
Hiram meant: you have not read John Hiram’s will, and I doubt
whether those wicked men who are advising you have done so. I have;
I know what his will was; and I tell you that that was his will,
and that that was his intention.’
Not a sound came from the eleven bedesmen, as they sat listening
to what, according to the archdeacon, was their intended estate.
They grimly stared upon his burly figure, but did not then express,
by word or sign, the anger and disgust to which such language was
sure to give rise.
‘Now let me ask you,’ he continued: ‘do you
think you are worse off than John Hiram intended to make you? Have
you not shelter, and food, and leisure? Have you not much more?
Have you not every indulgence which you are capable of enjoying?
Have you not twice better food, twice a better bed, ten times more
money in your pocket than you were ever able to earn for yourselves
before you were lucky enough to get into this place? And now you
send a petition to the bishop, asking for a hundred pounds a year!
I tell you what, my friends; you are deluded, and made fools of by
wicked men who are acting for their own ends. You will never get a
hundred pence a year more than what you have now: it is very
possible that you may get less; it is very possible that my lord
the bishop, and your warden, may make changes—’
‘No, no, no,’ interrupted Mr Harding, who had been
listening with indescribable misery to the tirade of his
son-in-law; ‘no, my friends. I want no changes—at least
no changes that shall make you worse off than you now are, as long
as you and I live together.’
‘God bless you, Mr Harding,’ said Bunce; and
‘God bless you, Mr Harding, God bless you, sir: we know you
was always our friend,’ was exclaimed by enough of the men to
make it appear that the sentiment was general.
The archdeacon had been interrupted in his speech before he had
quite finished it; but he felt that he could not recommence with
dignity after this little ebullition, and he led the way back into
the garden, followed by his father-in-law.
‘Well,’ said he, as soon as he found himself within
the cool retreat of the warden’s garden; ‘I think I
spoke to them plainly.’ And he wiped the perspiration from
his brow; for making a speech under a broiling mid-day sun in
summer, in a full suit of thick black cloth, is warm work.
‘Yes, you were plain enough,’ replied the warden, in
a tone which did not express approbation.
‘And that’s everything,’ said the other, who
was clearly well satisfied with himself; ‘that’s
everything: with those sort of people one must be plain, or one
will not be understood. Now, I think they did understand me—I
think they knew what I meant.’
The warden agreed. He certainly thought they had understood to
the full what had been said to them.
‘They know pretty well what they have to expect from us;
they know how we shall meet any refractory spirit on their part;
they know that we are not afraid of them. And now I’ll just
step into Chadwick’s, and tell him what I’ve done; and
then I’ll go up to the palace, and answer this petition of
theirs.’
The warden’s mind was very full—full nearly to
overcharging itself; and had it done so—had he allowed
himself to speak the thoughts which were working within him, he
would indeed have astonished the archdeacon by the reprobation he
would have expressed as to the proceeding of which he had been so
unwilling a witness. But different feelings kept him silent; he was
as yet afraid of differing from his son-in-law—he was anxious
beyond measure to avoid even a semblance of rupture with any of his
order, and was painfully fearful of having to come to an open
quarrel with any person on any subject. His life had hitherto been
so quiet, so free from strife; his little early troubles had
required nothing but passive fortitude; his subsequent prosperity
had never forced upon him any active cares—had never brought
him into disagreeable contact with anyone. He felt that he would
give almost anything—much more than he knew he ought to
do—to relieve himself from the storm which he feared was
coming. It was so hard that the pleasant waters of his little
stream should be disturbed and muddied by rough hands; that his
quiet paths should be made a battlefield; that the unobtrusive
corner of the world which had been allotted to him, as though by
Providence, should be invaded and desecrated, and all within it
made miserable and unsound.
Money he had none to give; the knack of putting guineas together
had never belonged to him; but how willingly, with what a foolish
easiness, with what happy alacrity, would he have abandoned the
half of his income for all time to come, could he by so doing have
quietly dispelled the clouds that were gathering over
him—could he have thus compromised the matter between the
reformer and the conservative, between his possible son-in-law,
Bold, and his positive son-in-law, the archdeacon.
And this compromise would not have been made from any prudential
motive of saving what would yet remain, for Mr Harding still felt
little doubt but he should be left for life in quiet possession of
the good things he had, if he chose to retain them. No; he would
have done so from the sheer love of quiet, and from a horror of
being made the subject of public talk. He had very often been moved
to pity—to that inward weeping of the heart for others’
woes; but none had he ever pitied more than that old lord, whose
almost fabulous wealth, drawn from his church preferments, had
become the subject of so much opprobrium, of such public scorn;
that wretched clerical octogenarian Croesus, whom men would not
allow to die in peace—whom all the world united to decry and
to abhor.
Was he to suffer such a fate? Was his humble name to be bandied
in men’s mouths, as the gormandiser of the resources of the
poor, as of one who had filched from the charity of other ages
wealth which had been intended to relieve the old and the infirm?
Was he to be gibbeted in the press, to become a byword for
oppression, to be named as an example of the greed of the English
church? Should it ever be said that he had robbed those old men,
whom he so truly and so tenderly loved in his heart of hearts? As
he slowly paced, hour after hour, under those noble lime-trees,
turning these sad thoughts within him, he became all but fixed in
his resolve that some great step must be taken to relieve him from
the risk of so terrible a fate.
In the meanwhile, the archdeacon, with contented mind and
unruffled spirit, went about his business. He said a word or two to
Mr Chadwick, and then finding, as he expected, the petition lying
in his father’s library, he wrote a short answer to the men,
in which he told them that they had no evils to redress, but rather
great mercies for which to be thankful; and having seen the bishop
sign it, he got into his brougham and returned home to Mrs Grantly,
and Plumstead Episcopi.