The Warden

CHAPTER IX The Conference

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing the archdea­con was with his fa­ther be­times, and a note was sent down to the war­den beg­ging his at­ten­dance at the palace. Dr Grant­ly, as he cog­itat­ed on the mat­ter, lean­ing back in his brougham as he jour­neyed in­to Barch­ester, felt that it would be dif­fi­cult to com­mu­ni­cate his own sat­is­fac­tion ei­ther to his fa­ther or his fa­ther-​in-​law. He want­ed suc­cess on his own side and dis­com­fi­ture on that of his en­emies. The bish­op want­ed peace on the sub­ject; a set­tled peace if pos­si­ble, but peace at any rate till the short re­main­der of his own days had spun it­self out. Mr Hard­ing re­quired not on­ly suc­cess and peace, but he al­so de­mand­ed that he might stand jus­ti­fied be­fore the world.

The bish­op, how­ev­er, was com­par­ative­ly easy to deal with; and be­fore the ar­rival of the oth­er, the du­ti­ful son had per­suad­ed his fa­ther that all was go­ing on well, and then the war­den ar­rived.

It was Mr Hard­ing’s wont, when­ev­er he spent a morn­ing at the palace, to seat him­self im­me­di­ate­ly at the bish­op’s el­bow, the bish­op oc­cu­py­ing a huge arm-​chair fit­ted up with can­dle- sticks, a read­ing ta­ble, a draw­er, and oth­er para­pher­na­lia, the po­si­tion of which chair was nev­er moved, sum­mer or win­ter; and when, as was usu­al, the archdea­con was there al­so, he con­front­ed the two el­ders, who thus were en­abled to fight the bat­tle against him to­geth­er; and to­geth­er sub­mit to de­feat, for such was their con­stant fate.

Our war­den now took his ac­cus­tomed place, hav­ing greet­ed his son-​in-​law as he en­tered, and then af­fec­tion­ate­ly in­quired af­ter his friend’s health. There was a gen­tle­ness about the bish­op to which the soft wom­an­ly af­fec­tion of Mr Hard­ing par­tic­ular­ly en­deared it­self, and it was quaint to see how the two mild old priests pressed each oth­er’s hand, and smiled and made lit­tle signs of love.

‘Sir Abra­ham’s opin­ion has come at last,’ be­gan the archdea­con. Mr Hard­ing had heard so much, and was most anx­ious to know the re­sult.

‘It is quite favourable,’ said the bish­op, press­ing his friend’s arm. ‘I am so glad.’

Mr Hard­ing looked at the mighty bear­er of the im­por­tant news for con­fir­ma­tion of these glad tid­ings.

‘Yes,’ said the archdea­con; ‘Sir Abra­ham has giv­en most minute at­ten­tion to the case; in­deed, I knew he would–most minute at­ten­tion; and his opin­ion is–and as to his opin­ion on such a sub­ject be­ing cor­rect, no one who knows Sir Abra­ham’s char­ac­ter can doubt–his opin­ion is, that they hav’n't got a leg to stand on.’

‘But as how, archdea­con?’

‘Why, in the first place:–but you’re no lawyer, war­den, and I doubt you won’t un­der­stand it; the gist of the mat­ter is this:–un­der Hi­ram’s will two paid guardians have been se­lect­ed for the hos­pi­tal; the law will say two paid ser­vants, and you and I won’t quar­rel with the name.’

‘At any rate I will not if I am one of the ser­vants,’ said Mr Hard­ing. ‘A rose, you know–’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the archdea­con, im­pa­tient of po­et­ry at such a time. ‘Well, two paid ser­vants, we’ll say; one to look af­ter the men, and the oth­er to look af­ter the mon­ey. You and Chad­wick are these two ser­vants, and whether ei­ther of you be paid too much, or too lit­tle, more or less in fact than the founder willed, it’s as clear as day­light that no one can fall foul of ei­ther of you for re­ceiv­ing an al­lot­ted stipend.’

‘That does seem clear,’ said the bish­op, who had winced vis­ibly at the words ser­vants and stipend, which, how­ev­er, ap­peared to have caused no un­easi­ness to the archdea­con.

‘Quite clear,’ said he, ‘and very sat­is­fac­to­ry. In point of fact, it be­ing nec­es­sary to se­lect such ser­vants for the use of the hos­pi­tal, the pay to be giv­en to them must de­pend on the rate of pay for such ser­vices, ac­cord­ing to their mar­ket val­ue at the pe­ri­od in ques­tion; and those who man­age the hos­pi­tal must be the on­ly judges of this.’

‘And who does man­age the hos­pi­tal?’ asked the war­den. ‘Oh, let them find that out; that’s an­oth­er ques­tion: the ac­tion is brought against you and Chad­wick; that’s your de­fence, and a per­fect and full de­fence it is. Now that I think very sat­is­fac­to­ry.’

‘Well,’ said the bish­op, look­ing in­quir­ing­ly up in­to his friend’s face, who sat silent awhile, and ap­par­ent­ly not so well sat­is­fied.

‘And con­clu­sive,’ con­tin­ued the archdea­con; ‘if they press it to a ju­ry, which they won’t do, no twelve men in Eng­land will take five min­utes to de­cide against them.’

‘But ac­cord­ing to that’ said Mr Hard­ing, ‘I might as well have six­teen hun­dred a year as eight, if the man­agers choose to al­lot it to me; and as I am one of the man­agers, if not the chief man­ag­er, my­self, that can hard­ly be a just ar­range­ment.’

‘Oh, well; all that’s noth­ing to the ques­tion. The ques­tion is, whether this in­trud­ing fel­low, and a lot of cheat­ing at­tor­neys and pesti­lent dis­senters, are to in­ter­fere with an ar­range­ment which ev­ery­one knows is es­sen­tial­ly just and ser­vice­able to the church. Pray don’t let us be split­ting hairs, and that amongst our­selves, or there’ll nev­er be an end of the cause or the cost.’

Mr Hard­ing again sat silent for a while, dur­ing which the bish­op once and again pressed his arm, and looked in his face to see if he could catch a gleam of a con­tent­ed and eased mind; but there was no such gleam, and the poor war­den con­tin­ued play­ing sad dirges on in­vis­ible stringed in­stru­ments in all man­ner of po­si­tions; he was ru­mi­nat­ing in his mind on this opin­ion of Sir Abra­ham, look­ing to it weari­ly and earnest­ly for sat­is­fac­tion, but find­ing none. At last he said, ‘Did you see the opin­ion, archdea­con?’

The archdea­con said he had not–that was to say, he -had- that was, he had not seen the opin­ion it­self; he had seen what had been called a copy, but he could not say whether of a whole or part; nor could he say that what he had seen were the ip­sis­si­ma ver­ba of the great man him­self; but what he had seen con­tained ex­act­ly the de­ci­sion which he had an­nounced, and which he again de­clared to be to his mind ex­treme­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry.

‘I should like to see the opin­ion,’ said the war­den; ‘that is, a copy of it.’

‘Well, I sup­pose you can if you make a point of it; but I don’t see the use my­self; of course it is es­sen­tial that the pur­port of it should not be known, and it is there­fore un­ad­vis­able to mul­ti­ply copies.’

‘Why should it not be known?’ asked the war­den.

‘What a ques­tion for a man to ask!’ said the archdea­con, throw­ing up his hands in to­ken of his sur­prise; ‘but it is like you–a child is not more in­no­cent than you are in mat­ters of busi­ness. Can’t you see that if we tell them that no ac­tion will lie against you, but that one may pos­si­bly lie against some oth­er per­son or per­sons, that we shall be putting weapons in­to their hands, and be teach­ing them how to cut our own throats?’

The war­den again sat silent, and the bish­op again looked at him wist­ful­ly: ‘The on­ly thing we have now to do,’ con­tin­ued the archdea­con, ‘is to re­main qui­et, hold our peace, and let them play their own game as they please.’

‘We are not to make known then,’ said the war­den, ‘that we have con­sult­ed the at­tor­ney-​gen­er­al, and that we are ad­vised by him that the founder’s will is ful­ly and fair­ly car­ried out.’

‘God bless my soul!’ said the archdea­con, ‘how odd it is that you will not see that all we are to do is to do noth­ing: why should we say any­thing about the founder’s will? We are in pos­ses­sion; and we know that they are not in a po­si­tion to put us out; sure­ly that is enough for the present.’

Mr Hard­ing rose from his seat and paced thought­ful­ly up and down the li­brary, the bish­op the while watch­ing him painful­ly at ev­ery turn, and the archdea­con con­tin­uing to pour forth his con­vic­tions that the af­fair was in a state to sat­is­fy any pru­dent mind.

‘And The Jupiter?’ said the war­den, stop­ping sud­den­ly.

‘Oh! The Jupiter,’ an­swered the oth­er. ‘The Jupiter can break no bones. You must bear with that; there is much, of course, which it is our bound­en du­ty to bear; it can­not be all ros­es for us here,’ and the archdea­con looked ex­ceed­ing­ly moral; ‘be­sides, the mat­ter is too triv­ial, of too lit­tle gen­er­al in­ter­est to be men­tioned again in The Jupiter, un­less we stir up the sub­ject.’ And the archdea­con again looked ex­ceed­ing­ly know­ing and world­ly wise.

The war­den con­tin­ued his walk; the hard and sting­ing words of that news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, each one of which had thrust a thorn as it were in­to his in­most soul, were fresh in his mem­ory; he had read it more than once, word by word, and what was worse, he fan­cied it was as well known to ev­ery­one as to him­self. Was he to be looked on as the un­just grip­ing priest he had been there de­scribed? Was he to be point­ed at as the con­sumer of the bread of the poor, and to be al­lowed no means of re­fut­ing such charges, of clear­ing his be­grimed name, of stand­ing in­no­cent in the world, as hith­er­to he had stood? Was he to bear all this, to re­ceive as usu­al his now hat­ed in­come, and be known as one of those greedy priests who by their ra­pac­ity have brought dis­grace on their church? And why? Why should he bear all this? Why should he die, for he felt that he could not live, un­der such a weight of oblo­quy? As he paced up and down the room he re­solved in his mis­ery and en­thu­si­asm that he could with plea­sure, if he were al­lowed, give up his place, aban­don his pleas­ant home, leave the hos­pi­tal, and live poor­ly, hap­pi­ly, and with an un­sul­lied name, on the small re­main­der of his means.

He was a man some­what shy of speak­ing of him­self, even be­fore those who knew him best, and whom he loved the most; but at last it burst forth from him, and with a some­what jerk­ing elo­quence he de­clared that he could not, would not, bear this mis­ery any longer.

‘If it can be proved,’ said he at last, ‘that I have a just and hon­est right to this, as God well knows I al­ways deemed I had; if this salary or stipend be re­al­ly my due, I am not less anx­ious than an­oth­er to re­tain it. I have the well-​be­ing of my child to look to. I am too old to miss with­out some pain the com­forts to which I have been used; and I am, as oth­ers are, anx­ious to prove to the world that I have been right, and to up­hold the place I have held; but I can­not do it at such a cost as this. I can­not bear this. Could you tell me to do so?’ And he ap­pealed, al­most in tears, to the bish­op, who had left his chair, and was now lean­ing on the war­den’s arm as he stood on the fur­ther side of the ta­ble fac­ing the archdea­con. ‘Could you tell me to sit there at ease, in­dif­fer­ent, and sat­is­fied, while such things as these are said loud­ly of me in the world?’

The bish­op could feel for him and sym­pa­thise with him, but he could not ad­vise him, he could on­ly say, ‘No, no, you shall be asked to do noth­ing that is painful; you shall do just what your heart tells you to be right; you shall do what­ev­er you think best your­self. Theophilus, don’t ad­vise him, pray don’t ad­vise the war­den to do any­thing which is painful.’

But the archdea­con, though he could not sym­pa­thise, could ad­vise; and he saw that the time had come when it be­hoved him to do so in a some­what peremp­to­ry man­ner.

‘Why, my lord,’ he said, speak­ing to his fa­ther: and when he called his fa­ther ‘my lord,’ the good old bish­op shook in his shoes, for he knew that an evil time was com­ing. ‘Why, my lord, there are two ways of giv­ing ad­vice: there is ad­vice that may be good for the present day; and there is ad­vice that may be good for days to come: now I can­not bring my­self to give the for­mer, if it be in­com­pat­ible with the oth­er.’

‘No, no, no, I sup­pose not,’ said the bish­op, re-​seat­ing him­self, and shad­ing his face with his hands. Mr Hard­ing sat down with his back to the fur­ther wall, play­ing to him­self some air fit­ted for so calami­tous an oc­ca­sion, and the archdea­con said out his say stand­ing, with his back to the emp­ty fire-​place.

‘It is not to be sup­posed but that much pain will spring out of this un­nec­es­sar­ily raised ques­tion. We must all have fore­seen that, and the mat­ter has in no wise gone on worse than we ex­pect­ed; but it will be weak, yes, and wicked al­so, to aban­don the cause and own our­selves wrong, be­cause the in­quiry is painful. It is not on­ly our­selves we have to look to; to a cer­tain ex­tent the in­ter­est of the church is in our keep­ing. Should it be found that one af­ter an­oth­er of those who hold prefer­ment aban­doned it when­ev­er it might be at­tacked, is it not plain that such at­tacks would be re­newed till noth­ing was left us? and, that if so de­sert­ed, the Church of Eng­land must fall to the ground al­to­geth­er? If this be true of many, it is true of one. Were you, ac­cused as you now are, to throw up the war­den­ship, and to re­lin­quish the prefer­ment which is your prop­er­ty, with the vain ob­ject of prov­ing your­self dis­in­ter­est­ed, you would fail in that ob­ject, you would in­flict a des­per­ate blow on your broth­er cler­gy­men, you would en­cour­age ev­ery can­tan­ker­ous dis­senter in Eng­land to make a sim­ilar charge against some source of cler­ical rev­enue, and you would do your best to dis­heart­en those who are most anx­ious to de­fend you and up­hold your po­si­tion. I can fan­cy noth­ing more weak, or more wrong. It is not that you think that there is any jus­tice in these charges, or that you doubt your own right to the war­den­ship: you are con­vinced of your own hon­esty, and yet would yield to them through cow­ardice.’

‘Cow­ardice!’ said the bish­op, ex­pos­tu­lat­ing. Mr Hard­ing sat un­moved, gaz­ing on his son-​in-​law.

‘Well; would it not be cow­ardice? Would he not do so be­cause he is afraid to en­dure the evil things which will be false­ly spo­ken of him? Would that not be cow­ardice? And now let us see the ex­tent of the evil which you dread. The Jupiter pub­lish­es an ar­ti­cle which a great many, no doubt, will read; but of those who un­der­stand the sub­ject how many will be­lieve The Jupiter? Ev­ery­one knows what its ob­ject is: it has tak­en up the case against Lord Guild­ford and against the Dean of Rochester, and that against half a dozen bish­ops; and does not ev­ery­one know that it would take up any case of the kind, right or wrong, false or true, with known jus­tice or known in­jus­tice, if by do­ing so it could fur­ther its own views? Does not all the world know this of The Jupiter? Who that re­al­ly knows you will think the worse of you for what The Jupiter says? And why care for those who do not know you? I will say noth­ing of your own com­fort, but I do say that you could not be jus­ti­fied in throw­ing up, in a fit of pas­sion, for such it would be, the on­ly main­te­nance that Eleanor has; and if you did so, if you re­al­ly did va­cate the war­den­ship, and sub­mit to ru­in, what would that prof­it you? If you have no fu­ture right to the in­come, you have had no past right to it; and the very fact of your aban­don­ing your po­si­tion would cre­ate a de­mand for re­pay­ment of that which you have al­ready re­ceived and spent.’

The poor war­den groaned as he sat per­fect­ly still, look­ing up at the hard-​heart­ed or­ator who thus tor­ment­ed him, and the bish­op echoed the sound faint­ly from be­hind his hands; but the archdea­con cared lit­tle for such signs of weak­ness, and com­plet­ed his ex­hor­ta­tion.

‘But let us sup­pose the of­fice to be left va­cant, and that your own trou­bles con­cern­ing it were over; would that sat­is­fy you? Are your on­ly as­pi­ra­tions in the mat­ter con­fined to your­self and fam­ily? I know they are not. I know you are as anx­ious as any of us for the church to which we be­long; and what a grievous blow would such an act of apos­ta­cy give her! You owe it to the church of which you are a mem­ber and a min­is­ter, to bear with this af­flic­tion, how­ev­er se­vere it may be: you owe it to my fa­ther, who in­sti­tut­ed you, to sup­port his rights: you owe it to those who pre­ced­ed you to as­sert the le­gal­ity of their po­si­tion; you owe it to those who are to come af­ter you, to main­tain un­in­jured for them that which you re­ceived un­in­jured from oth­ers; and you owe to us all the un­flinch­ing as­sis­tance of per­fect broth­er­hood in this mat­ter, so that up­hold­ing one an­oth­er we may sup­port our great cause with­out blush­ing and with­out dis­grace.’

And so the archdea­con ceased, and stood self-​sat­is­fied, watch­ing the ef­fect of his spo­ken wis­dom.

The war­den felt him­self, to a cer­tain ex­tent, sti­fled; he would have giv­en the world to get him­self out in­to the open air with­out speak­ing to, or notic­ing those who were in the room with him; but this was im­pos­si­ble. He could not leave with­out say­ing some­thing, and he felt him­self con­found­ed by the archdea­con’s elo­quence. There was a heavy, un­feel­ing, unan­swer­able truth in what he had said; there was so much prac­ti­cal, but odi­ous com­mon sense in it, that he nei­ther knew how to as­sent or to dif­fer. If it were nec­es­sary for him to suf­fer, he felt that he could en­dure with­out com­plaint and with­out cow­ardice, pro­vid­ing that he was self-​sat­is­fied of the jus­tice of his own cause. What he could not en­dure was, that he should be ac­cused by oth­ers, and not ac­quit­ted by him­self. Doubt­ing, as he had be­gun to doubt, the jus­tice of his own po­si­tion in the hos­pi­tal, he knew that his own self-​con­fi­dence would not be re­stored be­cause Mr Bold had been in er­ror as to some le­gal form; nor could he be sat­is­fied to es­cape, be­cause, through some le­gal fic­tion, he who re­ceived the great­est ben­efit from the hos­pi­tal might be con­sid­ered on­ly as one of its ser­vants.

The archdea­con’s speech had si­lenced him–stu­pe­fied him –an­ni­hi­lat­ed him; any­thing but sat­is­fied him. With the bish­op it fared not much bet­ter. He did not dis­cern clear­ly how things were, but he saw enough to know that a bat­tle was to be pre­pared for; a bat­tle that would de­stroy his few re­main­ing com­forts, and bring him with sor­row to the grave.

The war­den still sat, and still looked at the archdea­con, till his thoughts fixed them­selves whol­ly on the means of es­cape from his present po­si­tion, and he felt like a bird fas­ci­nat­ed by gaz­ing on a snake.

‘I hope you agree with me,’ said the archdea­con at last, break­ing the dread si­lence; ‘my lord, I hope you agree with me.’

Oh, what a sigh the bish­op gave! ‘My lord, I hope you agree with me,’ again re­peat­ed the mer­ci­less tyrant.

‘Yes, I sup­pose so,’ groaned the poor old man, slow­ly.

‘And you, war­den?’

Mr Hard­ing was now stirred to ac­tion–he must speak and move, so he got up and took one turn be­fore he an­swered.

‘Do not press me for an an­swer just at present; I will do noth­ing light­ly in the mat­ter, and of what­ev­er I do I will give you and the bish­op no­tice.’ And so with­out an­oth­er word he took his leave, es­cap­ing quick­ly through the palace hall, and down the lofty steps, nor did he breathe freely till he found him­self alone un­der the huge elms of the silent close. Here he walked long and slow­ly, think­ing on his case with a trou­bled air, and try­ing in vain to con­fute the archdea­con’s ar­gu­ment. He then went home, re­solved to bear it all–ig­nominy, sus­pense, dis­grace, self-​doubt, and heart-​burn­ing–and to do as those would have him, who he still be­lieved were most fit and most able to coun­sel him aright.