The Warden

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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.




Chapter XXI

CONCLUSION

Our tale is now done, and it only remains to us to collect the
scattered threads of our little story, and to tie them into a seemly
knot. This will not be a work of labour, either to the author or
to his readers; we have not to deal with many personages, or with
stirring events, and were it not for the custom of the thing, we might
leave it to the imagination of all concerned to conceive how affairs
at Barchester arranged themselves.

On the morning after the day last alluded to, Mr Harding, at an early
hour, walked out of the hospital, with his daughter under his arm, and
sat down quietly to breakfast at his lodgings over the chemist's shop.
There was no parade about his departure; no one, not even Bunce, was
there to witness it; had he walked to the apothecary's thus early to
get a piece of court plaster, or a box of lozenges, he could not have
done it with less appearance of an important movement. There was a
tear in Eleanor's eye as she passed through the big gateway and over
the bridge; but Mr Harding walked with an elastic step, and entered
his new abode with a pleasant face.

"Now, my dear," said he, "you have everything ready, and you can
make tea here just as nicely as in the parlour at the hospital." So
Eleanor took off her bonnet and made the tea. After this manner did
the late Warden of Barchester Hospital accomplish his flitting, and
change his residence.

It was not long before the archdeacon brought his father to discuss
the subject of a new warden. Of course he looked upon the nomination
as his own, and he had in his eye three or four fitting candidates,
seeing that Mr Cummins's plan as to the living of Puddingdale could
not be brought to bear. How can I describe the astonishment which
confounded him, when his father declared that he would appoint no
successor to Mr Harding? "If we can get the matter set to rights, Mr
Harding will return," said the bishop; "and if we cannot, it will be
wrong to put any other gentleman into so cruel a position."

It was in vain that the archdeacon argued and lectured, and even
threatened; in vain he my-lorded his poor father in his sternest
manner; in vain his "good heavens!" were ejaculated in a tone that
might have moved a whole synod, let alone one weak and aged bishop.
Nothing could induce his father to fill up the vacancy caused by Mr
Harding's retirement.

Even John Bold would have pitied the feelings with which the
archdeacon returned to Plumstead: the church was falling, nay, already
in ruins; its dignitaries were yielding without a struggle before the
blows of its antagonists; and one of its most respected bishops, his
own father,--the man considered by all the world as being in such
matters under his, Dr Grantly's, control,--had positively resolved to
capitulate, and own himself vanquished!

And how fared the hospital under this resolve of its visitor? Badly
indeed. It is now some years since Mr Harding left it, and the
warden's house is still tenantless. Old Bell has died, and Billy
Gazy; the one-eyed Spriggs has drunk himself to death, and three
others of the twelve have been gathered into the churchyard mould.
Six have gone, and the six vacancies remain unfilled! Yes, six have
died, with no kind friend to solace their last moments, with no
wealthy neighbour to administer comforts and ease the stings of death.
Mr Harding, indeed, did not desert them; from him they had such
consolation as a dying man may receive from his Christian pastor; but
it was the occasional kindness of a stranger which ministered to them,
and not the constant presence of a master, a neighbour, and a friend.

Nor were those who remained better off than those who died.
Dissensions rose among them, and contests for pre-eminence; and
then they began to understand that soon one among them would be the
last,--some one wretched being would be alone there in that now
comfortless hospital,--the miserable relic of what had once been so
good and so comfortable.

The building of the hospital itself has not been allowed to go to
ruins. Mr Chadwick, who still holds his stewardship, and pays the
accruing rents into an account opened at a bank for the purpose, sees
to that; but the whole place has become disordered and ugly. The
warden's garden is a wretched wilderness, the drive and paths are
covered with weeds, the flower-beds are bare, and the unshorn lawn is
now a mass of long damp grass and unwholesome moss. The beauty of the
place is gone; its attractions have withered. Alas! a very few years
since it was the prettiest spot in Barchester, and now it is a
disgrace to the city.

Mr Harding did not go out to Crabtree Parva. An arrangement was made
which respected the homestead of Mr Smith and his happy family, and
put Mr Harding into possession of a small living within the walls of
the city. It is the smallest possible parish, containing a part of
the Cathedral Close and a few old houses adjoining. The church is a
singular little Gothic building, perched over a gateway, through which
the Close is entered, and is approached by a flight of stone steps
which leads down under the archway of the gate. It is no bigger
than an ordinary room,--perhaps twenty-seven feet long by eighteen
wide,--but still it is a perfect church. It contains an old carved
pulpit and reading-desk, a tiny altar under a window filled with dark
old-coloured glass, a font, some half-dozen pews, and perhaps a dozen
seats for the poor; and also a vestry. The roof is high pitched, and
of black old oak, and the three large beams which support it run down
to the side walls, and terminate in grotesquely carved faces,--two
devils and an angel on one side, two angels and a devil on the other.
Such is the church of St Cuthbert at Barchester, of which Mr Harding
became rector, with a clear income of seventy-five pounds a year.

Here he performs afternoon service every Sunday, and administers the
Sacrament once in every three months. His audience is not large; and,
had they been so, he could not have accommodated them: but enough come
to fill his six pews, and on the front seat of those devoted to the
poor is always to be seen our old friend Mr Bunce, decently arrayed in
his bedesman's gown.

Mr Harding is still precentor of Barchester; and it is very rarely
the case that those who attend the Sunday morning service miss the
gratification of hearing him chant the Litany, as no other man in
England can do it. He is neither a discontented nor an unhappy
man; he still inhabits the lodgings to which he went on leaving the
hospital, but he now has them to himself. Three months after that
time Eleanor became Mrs Bold, and of course removed to her husband's
house.

There were some difficulties to be got over on the occasion of the
marriage. The archdeacon, who could not so soon overcome his grief,
would not be persuaded to grace the ceremony with his presence, but he
allowed his wife and children to be there. The marriage took place
in the cathedral, and the bishop himself officiated. It was the last
occasion on which he ever did so; and, though he still lives, it is
not probable that he will ever do so again.

Not long after the marriage, perhaps six months, when Eleanor's
bridal-honours were fading, and persons were beginning to call her Mrs
Bold without twittering, the archdeacon consented to meet John Bold at
a dinner-party, and since that time they have become almost friends.
The archdeacon firmly believes that his brother-in-law was, as a
bachelor, an infidel, an unbeliever in the great truths of our
religion; but that matrimony has opened his eyes, as it has those of
others. And Bold is equally inclined to think that time has softened
the asperities of the archdeacon's character. Friends though they
are, they do not often revert to the feud of the hospital.

Mr Harding, we say, is not an unhappy man: he keeps his lodgings, but
they are of little use to him, except as being the one spot on earth
which he calls his own. His time is spent chiefly at his daughter's
or at the palace; he is never left alone, even should he wish to be
so; and within a twelvemonth of Eleanor's marriage his determination
to live at his own lodging had been so far broken through and
abandoned, that he consented to have his violoncello permanently
removed to his daughter's house.

Every other day a message is brought to him from the bishop. "The
bishop's compliments, and his lordship is not very well to-day, and
he hopes Mr Harding will dine with him." This bulletin as to the old
man's health is a myth; for though he is over eighty he is never ill,
and will probably die some day, as a spark goes out, gradually and
without a struggle. Mr Harding does dine with him very often, which
means going to the palace at three and remaining till ten; and
whenever he does not the bishop whines, and says that the port wine is
corked, and complains that nobody attends to him, and frets himself
off to bed an hour before his time.

It was long before the people of Barchester forgot to call Mr Harding
by his long well-known name of Warden. It had become so customary to
say Mr Warden, that it was not easily dropped. "No, no," he always
says when so addressed, "not warden now, only precentor."