The Warden

CHAPTER XX Farewell

On the morn­ing af­ter Mr Hard­ing’s re­turn home he re­ceived a note from the bish­op full of af­fec­tion, con­do­lence, and praise. ‘Pray come to me at once,’ wrote the bish­op, ‘that we may see what had bet­ter be done; as to the hos­pi­tal, I will not say a word to dis­suade you; but I don’t like your go­ing to Crab­tree: at any rate, come to me at once.’

Mr Hard­ing did go to him at once; and long and con­fi­den­tial was the con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the two old friends. There they sat to­geth­er the whole long day, plot­ting to get the bet­ter of the archdea­con, and to car­ry out lit­tle schemes of their own, which they knew would be op­posed by the whole weight of his au­thor­ity.

The bish­op’s first idea was, that Mr Hard­ing, if left to him­self, would cer­tain­ly starve–not in the fig­ura­tive sense in which so many of our ladies and gen­tle­men do starve on in­comes from one to five hun­dred a year; not that he would be starved as re­gard­ed dress coats, port wine, and pock­et-​mon­ey; but that he would pos­itive­ly per­ish of ina­ni­tion for want of bread.

‘How is a man to live, when he gives up all his in­come?’ said the bish­op to him­self. And then the good-​na­tured lit­tle man be­gan to con­sid­er how his friend might be best res­cued from a death so hor­rid and painful.

His first propo­si­tion to Mr Hard­ing was, that they should live to­geth­er at the palace. He, the bish­op, pos­itive­ly as­sured Mr Hard­ing that he want­ed an­oth­er res­ident chap­lain–not a young work­ing chap­lain, but a steady, mid­dle-​aged chap­lain; one who would dine and drink a glass of wine with him, talk about the archdea­con, and poke the fire. The bish­op did not pos­itive­ly name all these du­ties, but he gave Mr Hard­ing to un­der­stand that such would be the na­ture of the ser­vice re­quired.

It was not with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty that Mr Hard­ing made his friend see that this would not suit him; that he could not throw up the bish­op’s prefer­ment, and then come and hang on at the bish­op’s ta­ble; that he could not al­low peo­ple to say of him that it was an easy mat­ter to aban­don his own in­come, as he was able to sponge on that of an­oth­er per­son. He suc­ceed­ed, how­ev­er, in ex­plain­ing that the plan would not do, and then the bish­op brought for­ward an­oth­er which he had in his sleeve. He, the bish­op, had in his will left cer­tain mon­eys to Mr Hard­ing’s two daugh­ters, imag­in­ing that Mr Hard­ing would him­self want no such as­sis­tance dur­ing his own life­time. This lega­cy amount­ed to three thou­sand pounds each, du­ty free; and he now pressed it as a gift on his friend.

‘The girls, you know,’ said he, ‘will have it just the same when you’re gone–and they won’t want it soon­er–and as for the in­ter­est dur­ing my life­time, it isn’t worth talk­ing about. I have more than enough.’

With much dif­fi­cul­ty and heart­felt sor­row, Mr Hard­ing re­fused al­so this of­fer. No; his wish was to sup­port him­self, how­ev­er poor­ly–not to be sup­port­ed on the char­ity of any­one. It was hard to make the bish­op un­der­stand this; it was hard to make him com­pre­hend that the on­ly re­al favour he could con­fer was the con­tin­ua­tion of his in­de­pen­dent friend­ship; but at last even this was done. At any rate, thought the bish­op, he will come and dine with me from time to time, and if he be ab­so­lute­ly starv­ing I shall see it.

Touch­ing the pre­cen­tor­ship, the bish­op was clear­ly of opin­ion that it could be held with­out the oth­er sit­ua­tion–an opin­ion from which no one dif­fered; and it was there­fore soon set­tled among all the par­ties con­cerned, that Mr Hard­ing should still be the pre­cen­tor of the cathe­dral.

On the day fol­low­ing Mr Hard­ing’s re­turn, the archdea­con reached Plum­stead full of Mr Cum­mins’s scheme re­gard­ing Pud­ding­dale and Mr Quiv­er­ful. On the very next morn­ing he drove over to Pud­ding­dale, and ob­tained the full con­sent of the wretched cler­ical Pri­am, who was en­deav­our­ing to feed his poor Hecu­ba and a dozen of Hec­tors on the small pro­ceeds of his ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal king­dom. Mr Quiv­er­ful had no doubts as to the le­gal rights of the war­den; his con­science would be quite clear as to ac­cept­ing the in­come; and as to The Jupiter, he begged to as­sure the archdea­con that he was quite in­dif­fer­ent to any em­ana­tions from the pro­fane por­tion of the pe­ri­od­ical press.

Hav­ing so far suc­ceed­ed, he next sound­ed the bish­op; but here he was as­ton­ished by most un­ex­pect­ed re­sis­tance. The bish­op did not think it would do. ‘Not do, why not?’ and see­ing that his fa­ther was not shak­en, he re­peat­ed the ques­tion in a sev­er­er form: ‘Why not do, my lord?’

His lord­ship looked very un­hap­py, and shuf­fled about in his chair, but still didn’t give way; he thought Pud­ding­dale wouldn’t do for Mr Hard­ing; it was too far from Barch­ester.

‘Oh! of course he’ll have a cu­rate.’

The bish­op al­so thought that Mr Quiv­er­ful wouldn’t do for the hos­pi­tal; such an ex­change wouldn’t look well at such a time; and, when pressed hard­er, he de­clared he didn’t think Mr Hard­ing would ac­cept of Pud­ding­dale un­der any cir­cum­stances.

‘How is he to live?’ de­mand­ed the archdea­con.

The bish­op, with tears in his eyes, de­clared that he had not the slight­est con­cep­tion how life was to be sus­tained with­in him at all. The archdea­con then left his fa­ther, and went down to the hos­pi­tal; but Mr Hard­ing wouldn’t lis­ten at all to the Pud­ding­dale scheme. To his eyes it had no at­trac­tion; it savoured of si­mo­ny, and was like­ly to bring down up­on him hard­er and more de­served stric­tures than any he had yet re­ceived: he pos­itive­ly de­clined to be­come vicar of Pud­ding­dale un­der any cir­cum­stances.

The archdea­con waxed wroth, talked big, and looked big­ger; he said some­thing about de­pen­dence and beg­gary, spoke of the du­ty ev­ery man was un­der to earn his bread, made pass­ing al­lu­sions to the fol­lies of youth and way­ward­ness of age, as though Mr Hard­ing were af­flict­ed by both, and end­ed by declar­ing that he had done. He felt that he had left no stone un­turned to ar­range mat­ters on the best and eas­iest foot­ing; that he had, in fact, so ar­ranged them, that he had so man­aged that there was no fur­ther need of any anx­iety in the mat­ter. And how had he been paid? His ad­vice had been sys­tem­at­ical­ly re­ject­ed; he had been not on­ly slight­ed, but dis­trust­ed and avoid­ed; he and his mea­sures had been ut­ter­ly thrown over, as had been Sir Abra­ham, who, he had rea­son to know, was much pained at what had oc­curred. He now found it was use­less to in­ter­fere any fur­ther, and he should re­tire. If any fur­ther as­sis­tance were re­quired from him, he would prob­ably be called on, and should be again hap­py to come for­ward. And so he left the hos­pi­tal, and has not since en­tered it from that day to this.

And here we must take leave of Archdea­con Grant­ly. We fear that he is rep­re­sent­ed in these pages as be­ing worse than he is; but we have had to do with his foibles, and not with his virtues. We have seen on­ly the weak side of the man, and have lacked the op­por­tu­ni­ty of bring­ing him for­ward on his strong ground. That he is a man some­what too fond of his own way, and not suf­fi­cient­ly scrupu­lous in his man­ner of achiev­ing it, his best friends can­not de­ny. That he is big­ot­ed in favour, not so much of his doc­trines as of his cloth, is al­so true: and it is true that the pos­ses­sion of a large in­come is a de­sire that sits near his heart. Nev­er­the­less, the archdea­con is a gen­tle­man and a man of con­science; he spends his mon­ey lib­er­al­ly, and does the work he has to do with the best of his abil­ity; he im­proves the tone of so­ci­ety of those among whom he lives. His as­pi­ra­tions are of a healthy, if not of the high­est, kind. Though nev­er an aus­tere man, he up­holds pro­pri­ety of con­duct both by ex­am­ple and pre­cept. He is gen­er­ous to the poor, and hos­pitable to the rich; in mat­ters of re­li­gion he is sin­cere, and yet no Phar­isee; he is in earnest, and yet no fa­nat­ic. On the whole, the Archdea­con of Barch­ester is a man do­ing more good than harm–a man to be fur­thered and sup­port­ed, though per­haps al­so to be con­trolled; and it is mat­ter of re­gret to us that the course of our nar­ra­tive has re­quired that we should see more of his weak­ness than his strength.

Mr Hard­ing al­lowed him­self no rest till ev­ery­thing was pre­pared for his de­par­ture from the hos­pi­tal. It may be as well to men­tion that he was not driv­en to the stern ne­ces­si­ty of sell­ing all his fur­ni­ture: he had been quite in earnest in his in­ten­tion to do so, but it was soon made known to him that the claims of Messrs Cox and Cum­mins made no such step oblig­atory. The archdea­con had thought it wise to make use of the threat of the lawyer’s bill, to fright­en his fa­ther-​in-​law in­to com­pli­ance; but he had no in­ten­tion to sad­dle Mr Hard­ing with costs, which had been in­curred by no means ex­clu­sive­ly for his ben­efit. The amount of the bill was added to the dioce­san ac­count, and was, in fact, paid out of the bish­op’s pock­et, with­out any con­scious­ness on the part of his lord­ship. A great part of his fur­ni­ture he did re­solve to sell, hav­ing no oth­er means to dis­pose of it; and the ponies and car­riage were trans­ferred, by pri­vate con­tract, to the use of an old maid­en la­dy in the city.

For his present use Mr Hard­ing took a lodg­ing in Barch­ester, and thith­er were con­veyed such ar­ti­cles as he want­ed for dai­ly use–his mu­sic, books, and in­stru­ments, his own arm-​chair, and Eleanor’s pet so­fa; her teapoy and his cel­laret, and al­so the slen­der but still suf­fi­cient con­tents of his wine-​cel­lar. Mrs Grant­ly had much wished that her sis­ter would re­side at Plum­stead, till her fa­ther’s house at Crab­tree should be ready for her; but Eleanor her­self strong­ly re­sist­ed this pro­pos­al. It was in vain urged up­on her, that a la­dy in lodg­ings cost more than a gen­tle­man; and that, un­der her fa­ther’s present cir­cum­stances, such an ex­pense should be avoid­ed. Eleanor had not pressed her fa­ther to give up the hos­pi­tal in or­der that she might live at Plum­stead Rec­to­ry and he alone in his Barch­ester lodg­ings; nor did Eleanor think that she would be treat­ing a cer­tain gen­tle­man very fair­ly, if she be­took her­self to the house which he would be the least de­sirous of en­ter­ing of any in the coun­ty. So she got a lit­tle bed­room for her­self be­hind the sit­ting-​room, and just over the lit­tle back par­lour of the chemist, with whom they were to lodge. There was some­what of a savour of sen­na soft­ened by pep­per­mint about the place; but, on the whole, the lodg­ings were clean and com­fort­able.

The day had been fixed for the mi­gra­tion of the ex-​war­den, and all Barch­ester were in a state of ex­cite­ment on the sub­ject. Opin­ion was much di­vid­ed as to the pro­pri­ety of Mr Hard­ing’s con­duct. The mer­can­tile part of the com­mu­ni­ty, the may­or and cor­po­ra­tion, and coun­cil, al­so most of the ladies, were loud in his praise. Noth­ing could be more no­ble, noth­ing more gen­er­ous, noth­ing more up­right. But the gen­try were of a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing–es­pe­cial­ly the lawyers and the cler­gy­men. They said such con­duct was very weak and undig­ni­fied; that Mr Hard­ing evinced a lamentable want of es­prit de corps, as well as courage; and that such an ab­di­ca­tion must do much harm, and could do but lit­tle good.

On the evening be­fore he left, he sum­moned all the be­des­men in­to his par­lour to wish them good-​bye. With Bunce he had been in fre­quent com­mu­ni­ca­tion since his re­turn from Lon­don, and had been at much pains to ex­plain to the old man the cause of his res­ig­na­tion, with­out in any way prej­udic­ing the po­si­tion of his suc­ces­sor. The oth­ers, al­so, he had seen more or less fre­quent­ly; and had heard from most of them sep­arate­ly some ex­pres­sion of re­gret at his de­par­ture; but he had post­poned his farewell till the last evening.

He now bade the maid put wine and glass­es on the ta­ble; and had the chairs ar­ranged around the room; and sent Bunce to each of the men to re­quest they would come and say farewell to their late war­den. Soon the noise of aged scuf­fling feet was heard up­on the grav­el and in the lit­tle hall, and the eleven men who were en­abled to leave their rooms were as­sem­bled.

‘Come in, my friends, come in,’ said the war­den–he was still war­den then. ‘Come in, and sit down’; and he took the hand of Abel Handy, who was the near­est to him, and led the limp­ing grum­bler to a chair. The oth­ers fol­lowed slow­ly and bash­ful­ly; the in­firm, the lame, and the blind: poor wretch­es! who had been so hap­py, had they but known it! Now their aged faces were cov­ered with shame, and ev­ery kind word from their mas­ter was a coal of fire burn­ing on their heads.

When first the news had reached them that Mr Hard­ing was go­ing to leave the hos­pi­tal, it had been re­ceived with a kind of tri­umph–his de­par­ture was, as it were, a pre­lude to suc­cess. He had ad­mit­ted his want of right to the mon­ey about which they were dis­put­ing; and as it did not be­long to him, of course, it did to them. The one hun­dred a year to each of them was ac­tu­al­ly be­com­ing a re­al­ity; and Abel Handy was a hero, and Bunce a faint-​heart­ed syco­phant, wor­thy nei­ther hon­our nor fel­low­ship. But oth­er tid­ings soon made their way in­to the old men’s rooms. It was first no­ti­fied to them that the in­come aban­doned by Mr Hard­ing would not come to them; and these ac­counts were con­firmed by at­tor­ney Finney. They were then in­formed that Mr Hard­ing’s place would be at once filled by an­oth­er. That the new war­den could not be a kinder man they all knew; that he would be a less friend­ly one most sus­pect­ed; and then came the bit­ter in­for­ma­tion that, from the mo­ment of Mr Hard­ing’s de­par­ture, the twopence a day, his own pe­cu­liar gift, must of ne­ces­si­ty be with­drawn.

And this was to be the end of all their mighty strug­gle–of their fight for their rights–of their pe­ti­tion, and their de­bates, and their hopes! They were to change the best of mas­ters for a pos­si­ble bad one, and to lose twopence a day each man! No; un­for­tu­nate as this was, it was not the worst, or near­ly the worst, as will just now be seen.

‘Sit down, sit down, my friends,’ said the war­den; ‘I want to say a word to you and to drink your healths, be­fore I leave you. Come up here, Moody, here is a chair for you; come, Jonathan Crum­ple’–and by de­grees he got the men to be seat­ed. It was not sur­pris­ing that they should hang back with faint hearts, hav­ing re­turned so much kind­ness with such deep in­grat­itude. Last of all of them came Bunce, and with sor­row­ful mien and slow step got in­to his ac­cus­tomed seat near the fire-​place.

When they were all in their places, Mr Hard­ing rose to ad­dress them; and then find­ing him­self not quite at home on his legs, he sat down again. ‘My dear old friends,’ said he, ‘you all know that I am go­ing to leave you.’

There was a sort of mur­mur ran round the room, in­tend­ed, per­haps, to ex­press re­gret at his de­par­ture; but it was but a mur­mur, and might have meant that or any­thing else.

‘There has been late­ly some mis­un­der­stand­ing be­tween us. You have thought, I be­lieve, that you did not get all that you were en­ti­tled to, and that the funds of the hos­pi­tal have not been prop­er­ly dis­posed of. As for me, I can­not say what should be the dis­po­si­tion of these mon­eys, or how they should be man­aged, and I have there­fore thought it best to go.’

‘We nev­er want­ed to drive your rev­er­ence out of it,’ said Handy.

‘No, in­deed, your rev­er­ence,’ said Skul­pit. ‘We nev­er thought it would come to this. When I signed the pe­ti­tion– that is I didn’t sign it, be­cause–’

‘Let his rev­er­ence speak, can’t you?’ said Moody.

‘No,’ con­tin­ued Mr Hard­ing; ‘I am sure you did not wish to turn me out; but I thought it best to leave you. I am not a very good hand at a law­suit, as you may all guess; and when it seemed nec­es­sary that our or­di­nary qui­et mode of liv­ing should be dis­turbed, I thought it bet­ter to go. I am nei­ther an­gry nor of­fend­ed with any man in the hos­pi­tal.’

Here Bunce ut­tered a kind of groan, very clear­ly ex­pres­sive of dis­agree­ment.

‘I am nei­ther an­gry nor dis­pleased with any man in the hos­pi­tal,’ re­peat­ed Mr Hard­ing, em­phat­ical­ly. ‘If any man has been wrong–and I don’t say any man has–he has erred through wrong ad­vice. In this coun­try all are en­ti­tled to look for their own rights, and you have done no more. As long as your in­ter­ests and my in­ter­ests were at vari­ance, I could give you no coun­sel on this sub­ject; but the con­nec­tion be­tween us has ceased; my in­come can no longer de­pend on your do­ings, and there­fore, as I leave you, I ven­ture to of­fer to you my ad­vice.’

The men all de­clared that they would from hence­forth be en­tire­ly guid­ed by Mr Hard­ing’s opin­ion in their af­fairs.

‘Some gen­tle­man will prob­ably take my place here very soon, and I strong­ly ad­vise you to be pre­pared to re­ceive him in a kind­ly spir­it and to raise no fur­ther ques­tion among your­selves as to the amount of his in­come. Were you to suc­ceed in less­en­ing what he has to re­ceive, you would not in­crease your own al­lowance. The sur­plus would not go to you; your wants are ad­equate­ly pro­vid­ed for, and your po­si­tion could hard­ly be im­proved.’

‘God bless your rev­er­ence, we knows it,’ said Sprig­gs.

‘It’s all true, your rev­er­ence,’ said Skul­pit. ‘We sees it all now.’

‘Yes, Mr Hard­ing,’ said Bunce, open­ing his mouth for the first time; ‘I be­lieve they do un­der­stand it now, now that they’ve driv­en from un­der the same roof with them such a mas­ter as not one of them will ev­er know again–now that they’re like to be in sore want of a friend.’

‘Come, come, Bunce,’ said Mr Hard­ing, blow­ing his nose and ma­noeu­vring to wipe his eyes at the same time.

‘Oh, as to that,’ said Handy, ‘we none of us nev­er want­ed to do Mr Hard­ing no harm; if he’s go­ing now, it’s not along of us; and I don’t see for what Mr Bunce speaks up agen us that way.’

‘You’ve ru­ined your­selves, and you’ve ru­ined me too, and that’s why,’ said Bunce.

‘Non­sense, Bunce,’ said Mr Hard­ing; ‘there’s no­body ru­ined at all. I hope you’ll let me leave you all friends, I hope you’ll all drink a glass of wine in friend­ly feel­ing with me and with one an­oth­er. You’ll have a good friend, I don’t doubt, in your new war­den; and if ev­er you want any oth­er, why af­ter all I’m not go­ing so far off but that I shall some­times see you’; and then, hav­ing fin­ished his speech, Mr Hard­ing filled all the glass­es, and him­self hand­ed each a glass to the men round him, and rais­ing his own said:

‘God bless you all! you have my heart­felt wish­es for your wel­fare. I hope you may live con­tent­ed, and die trust­ing in the Lord je­sus Christ, and thank­ful to Almighty God For the good things he has giv­en you. God bless you, my friends!’ and Mr Hard­ing drank his wine.

An­oth­er mur­mur, some­what more ar­tic­ulate than the first, passed round the cir­cle, and this time it was in­tend­ed to im­ply a bless­ing on Mr Hard­ing. It had, how­ev­er, but lit­tle cor­dial­ity in it. Poor old men! how could they be cor­dial with their sore con­sciences and shamed faces? how could they bid God bless him with hearty voic­es and a true beni­son, know­ing, as they did, that their vile ca­bal had driv­en him from his hap­py home, and sent him in his old age to seek shel­ter un­der a strange roof-​tree? They did their best, how­ev­er; they drank their wine, and with­drew.

As they left the hall-​door, Mr Hard­ing shook hands with each of the men, and spoke a kind word to them about their in­di­vid­ual cas­es and ail­ments; and so they de­part­ed, an­swer­ing his ques­tions in the fewest words, and re­treat­ed to their dens, a sor­row­ful re­pen­tant crew.

All but Bunce, who still re­mained to make his own farewell. ‘There’s poor old Bell,’ said Mr Hard­ing; ‘I mustn’t go with­out say­ing a word to him; come through with me, Bunce, and bring the wine with you’; and so they went through to the men’s cot­tages, and found the old man propped up as usu­al in his bed.

‘I’ve come to say good-​bye to you, Bell,’ said Mr Hard­ing, speak­ing loud, for the old man was deaf.

‘And are you go­ing away, then, re­al­ly?’ asked Bell.

‘In­deed I am, and I’ve brought you a glass of wine; so that we may part friends, as we lived, you know.’

The old man took the prof­fered glass in his shak­ing hands, and drank it ea­ger­ly. ‘God bless you, Bell!’ said Mr Hard­ing; ‘good-​bye, my old friend.’

‘And so you’re re­al­ly go­ing?’ the man again asked.

‘In­deed I am, Bell.’

The poor old bed-​rid­den crea­ture still kept Mr Hard­ing’s hand in his own, and the war­den thought that he had met with some­thing like warmth of feel­ing in the one of all his sub­jects from whom it was the least like­ly to be ex­pect­ed; for poor old Bell had near­ly out­lived all hu­man feel­ings. ‘And your rev­er­ence,’ said he, and then he paused, while his old palsied head shook hor­ri­bly, and his shriv­elled cheeks sank low­er with­in his jaws, and his glazy eye gleamed with a mo­men­tary light; ‘and your rev­er­ence, shall we get the hun­dred a year, then?’

How gen­tly did Mr Hard­ing try to ex­tin­guish the false hope of mon­ey which had been so wretched­ly raised to dis­turb the qui­et of the dy­ing man! One oth­er week and his mor­tal coil would be shuf­fled off; in one short week would God re­sume his soul, and set it apart for its ir­re­vo­ca­ble doom; sev­en more te­dious days and nights of sense­less in­ac­tiv­ity, and all would be over for poor Bell in this world; and yet, with his last au­di­ble words, he was de­mand­ing his mon­eyed rights, and as­sert­ing him­self to be the prop­er heir of John Hi­ram’s boun­ty! Not on him, poor sin­ner as he was, be the load of such sin!

Mr Hard­ing re­turned to his par­lour, med­itat­ing with a sick heart on what he had seen, and Bunce with him. We will not de­scribe the part­ing of these two good men, for good men they were. It was in vain that the late war­den en­deav­oured to com­fort the heart of the old be­des­man; poor old Bunce felt that his days of com­fort were gone. The hos­pi­tal had to him been a hap­py home, but it could be so no longer. He had had hon­our there, and friend­ship; he had recog­nised his mas­ter, and been recog­nised; all his wants, both of soul and body, had been sup­plied, and he had been a hap­py man. He wept grievous­ly as he part­ed from his friend, and the tears of an old man are bit­ter. ‘It is all over for me in this world,’ said he, as he gave the last squeeze to Mr Hard­ing’s hand; ‘I have now to for­give those who have in­jured me–and to die.’

And so the old man went out, and then Mr Hard­ing gave way to his grief and he too wept aloud.