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.