“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 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.”
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