The Last Chronicle of Barset (127 page)

‘Of course, my dear, I will see him.'

‘And Posy shall come back when he has gone,' said Mrs Arabin.

‘Posy will do me more good than Dr Filgrave I am quite sure – but Posy shall go now.' So Posy scrambled off the bed, and the doctor was ushered into the room.

‘A day or two will see the end of it, Mr Archdeacon – I should say a day or two,' said the doctor, as he met Dr Grantly in the hall. ‘I should say that a day or two will see the end of it. Indeed I will not undertake that twenty-four hours may not see the close of his earthly troubles. He has no suffering, no pain, no disturbing cause. Nature simply retires to rest.' Dr Filgrave, as he said this, made a slow falling motion with his hands, which alone on various occasions had been thought to be worth all the money paid for his attendance. ‘Perhaps you would wish that I should step in in the evening, Mr Dean? As it happens, I shall be at liberty.' The dean of course said that he would take it as an additional favour. Neither the dean nor the archdeacon had the slightest belief in Dr Filgrave, and yet they would hardly have been contented that their father-in-law should have departed without him.

‘Look at that man, now,' said the archdeacon, when the doctor had gone, ‘who talks so glibly about nature going to rest. I've known him all my life. He's an older man by some months than our dear old friend upstairs. And he looks as if he were going to attend death-beds in Barchester for ever.'

‘I suppose he is right in what he tells us now?' said the dean.

‘No doubt he is; but my belief doesn't come from his saying it.' Then there was a pause as the two church dignitaries sat together, doing nothing, feeling that the solemnity of the moment was such that it would be hardly becoming that they should even attempt to read. ‘His going will make an old man of me,' said the archdeacon. ‘It will be different with you.'

‘It will make an old woman of Eleanor, I fear.'

‘I seem to have known him all my life,' said the archdeacon. ‘I have known him ever since I left college; and I have known him as one man seldom knows another. There is nothing that he has done – as I believe nothing that he has thought – with which I have not been cognisant. I feel sure that he never had an impure fancy in his mind, or a faulty wish in his heart. His tenderness has surpassed the tenderness of woman; and yet, when occasion came for showing it, he had all the spirit of a hero. I shall never forget his resignation of the hospital, and all that I did and said to make him keep it.'

‘But he was right?'

‘As Septimus Harding he was, I think, right; but it would have been wrong in any other man. And he was right, too, about the deanery.' For promotion had once come in Mr Harding's way, and he, too, might have been Dean of Barchester.
¹
The fact is, he never was wrong. He couldn't go wrong. He lacked guile, and he feared God – and a man who does both will never go far astray. I don't think he ever coveted aught in his life – except a new case for his violincello and somebody to listen to him when he played it.' Then the archdeacon got up, and walked about the room in his enthusiasm; and, perhaps, as he walked some thoughts as to the sterner ambition of his own life passed through his mind. What things had he coveted? Had he lacked guile? He told himself that he had feared God – but he was not sure he was telling himself true even in that.

During the whole of the morning Mrs Arabin and Mrs Grantly were with their father, and during the greater part of the day there was absolute silence in the room. He seemed to sleep; and they, though they knew that in truth he was not sleeping, feared to disturb him by a word. About two Mrs Baxter brought him his dinner, and
he did rouse himself, and swallowed a spoonful of soup and half a glass of wine. At this time Posy came to him, and stood at the bedside, looking at him with her great wide eyes. She seemed to be aware that life had now gone so far with her dear old friend that she must not be allowed to sit upon his bed again. But he put his hand out to her, and she held it, standing quite still and silent. When Mrs Baxter came to take away the tray, Posy's mother got up, and whispered a word to the child. Then Posy went away, and her eyes never beheld the old man again. That was a day which Posy never forgot – not though she should live to be much older than her grandfather was when she thus left him.

‘It is so sweet to have you both here,' he said, when he had been lying silent for nearly an hour after the child had gone. Then they got up, and came and stood close to him. ‘There is nothing left for me to wish, my dears – nothing.' Not long after that he expressed a desire that the two husbands – his two sons-in-law – should come to him; and Mrs Arabin went to them, and brought them to the room. As he took their hands he merely repeated the same words again. ‘There is nothing left for me to wish, my dears – nothing.' He never spoke again above his breath; but ever and anon his daughters, who watched him, could see that he was praying. The two men did not stay with him long, but returned to the gloom of the library. The gloom had almost become the darkness of night, and they were still sitting there without any light, when Mrs Baxter entered the room. ‘The dear gentleman is no more,' said Mrs Baxter; and it seemed to the archdeacon that the very moment of his father's death had repeated itself. When Dr Filgrave called he was told that his services could be of no further use. ‘Dear, dear!' said the doctor. ‘We are all dust, Mrs Baxter; are we not?' There were people in Barchester who pretended to know how often the doctor had repeated this little formula during the last thirty years.

There was no violence of sorrow in the house that night; but there were aching hearts, and one heart so sore that it seemed that no cure for its anguish could ever reach it. ‘He has always been with me,' Mrs Arabin said to her husband, as he strove to console her. ‘It was not that I loved him better than Susan, but I have felt so much more of
his loving tenderness. The sweetness of his voice has been in my ears almost daily since I was born.'

They buried him in the cathedral which he had loved so well, and in which nearly all the work of his life had been done; and all Barchester was there to see him laid in his grave within the cloisters. There was no procession of coaches, no hearse, nor was there any attempt at funereal pomp. From the dean's side door, across the vaulted passage, and into the transept – over the little step upon which he had so nearly fallen when last he made his way out of the building – the coffin was carried on men's shoulders. It was but a short journey from his bedroom to his grave. But the bell had been tolling sadly all the morning, and the nave and the aisles and the transepts, close up to the door leading from the transept into the cloister, were crowded with those who had known the name and the figure and the voice of Mr Harding as long as they had known anything. Up to this day no one would have said specially that Mr Harding was a favourite in the town. He had never been forward enough in anything to become the acknowledged possessor of popularity. But, now that he was gone, men and women told each other how good he had been. They remembered the sweetness of his smile, and talked of loving little words which he had spoken to them – either years ago or the other day, for his words had always been loving. The dean and the archdeacon came first, shoulder to shoulder, and after them came their wives. I do not know that it was the proper order for mourning, but it was a touching sight to be seen, and was long remembered in Barchester. Painful as it was for them, the two women would be there, and the two sisters would walk together – nor would they go before their husbands. Then there were the archdeacon's two sons – for the Rev. Charles Grantly had come to Plumstead on the occasion. And in the vaulted passage which runs between the deanery and the end of the transept all the chapter, with the choir, the prebendaries, with the fat old chancellor, the precentor, and the minor canons down to the little choristers – they all were there, and followed in at the transept door, two by two. And in the transept they were joined by another clergyman whom no one had expected to see that day. The bishop was there, looking old and worn
– almost as though he were unconscious of what he was doing. Since his wife's death no one had seen him out of the palace or of the palace grounds till that day. But there he was – and they made way for him into the procession behind the two ladies – and the archdeacon, when he saw it, resolved that there should be peace in his heart, if peace might be possible.

They made their way into the cloisters where the grave had been dug – as many as might be allowed to follow. The place indeed was open to all who chose to come; but they who had only slightly known the man refrained from pressing upon those who had a right to stand around his coffin. But there was one other there whom the faithful chronicler of Barchester should mention. Before any other one had reached the spot, the sexton and the verger between them had led in between them, among the graves beneath the cloisters, a blind man, very old, with a wondrous stoop, but who must have owned a grand stature before extreme old age had bent him, and they placed him sitting on a stone in the corner of the archway. But as soon as the shuffling of steps reached his ears, he raised himself with the aid of his stick, and stood during the service leaning against the pillar. The blind man was so old that he might almost have been Mr Harding's father. This was John Bunce, bedesman from Hiram's Hospital – and none perhaps there had known Mr Harding better than he had known him. When the earth had been thrown on to the coffin, and the service was over, and they were about to disperse, Mrs Arabin went up to the old man, and taking his hand between hers whispered a word into his ear. ‘Oh, Miss Eleanor,' he said. ‘Oh, Miss Eleanor!' Within a fortnight he also was lying within the cathedral precincts.

And so they buried Mr Septimus Harding, formerly Warden of Hiram's Hospital in the city of Barchester, of whom the chronicler may say that that city never knew a sweeter gentleman or a better Christian.

*

The fortnight following Mr Harding's death was passed very quietly at Hogglestock, for during that time no visitor made an appearance in the parish except Mr Snapper on the Sundays. Mr Snapper, when he had completed the service on the first of these Sundays, intimated to Mr Crawley his opinion that probably that gentleman might himself wish to resume the duties on the following Sabbath. Mr Crawley, however, courteously declined to do anything of the kind. He said that it was quite out of the question that he should do so without a direct communication made to him from the bishop, or by the bishop's order. The assizes had, of course, gone by, and all question of the trial was over. Nevertheless – as Mr Snapper said – the bishop had not, as yet, given any order. Mr Snapper was of opinion that the bishop in these days was not quite himself. He had spoken to the bishop about it and the bishop had told him peevishly – ‘I must say quite peevishly,' Mr Snapper had said – that nothing was to be done at present. Mr Snapper was not the less clearly of opinion that Mr Crawley might resume his duties. To this, however, Mr Crawley would not assent.

But even during the fortnight Mr Crawley had not remained altogether neglected. Two days after Mr Harding's death he had received a note from the dean in which he was advised not to resume the duties at Hogglestock for the present. ‘Of course you can understand that we have a sad house here for the present,' the dean had said. ‘But as soon as ever we are able to move in the matter we will arrange things for you as comfortably as we can. I will see the bishop myself.' Mr Crawley had no ambitious idea of any comfort which might accrue to him beyond that of an honourable return to his humble preferment at Hogglestock; but, nevertheless, he was in this case minded to do as the dean counselled him. He had submitted himself to the bishop, and he would wait till the bishop absolved him from his submission.

On the day after the funeral, the bishop had sent his compliments to the dean with the expression of a wish that the dean would call upon him on any early day that might be convenient with reference to the position of Mr Crawley of Hogglestock. The note was in the bishop's own handwriting and was as mild and civil as a bishop's note could be. Of course the dean named an early day for the interview; but it was necessary before he went to the bishop that he should discuss the matter with the archdeacon. If St Ewold's might be given to Mr Crawley, the Hogglestock difficulties would all be brought to an end. The archdeacon, after the funeral, had returned to Plumstead, and thither the dean went to him before he saw the bishop. He did succeed – he and Mrs Grantly between them – but with very great difficulty, in obtaining a conditional promise. They had both thought that when the archdeacon became fully aware that Grace was to be his daughter-in-law, he would at once have been delighted to have an opportunity of extricating from his poverty a clergyman with whom it was his fate to be so closely connected. But he fought the matter on twenty different points. He declared at first that as it was his primary duty to give to the people of St Ewold's the best clergyman he could select for them he could not give the preferment to Mr Crawley, because Mr Crawley, in spite of all his zeal and piety, was a man so quaint in his manners and so eccentric in his mode of speech as not to be the best clergyman whom he could select. ‘What is my old friend Thorne to do with a man in his parish who won't drink a glass of wine with him?' For Ullathorne, the seat of that Mr Wilfred Thorne who had been so guilty in the matter of the foxes, was situated in the parish of St Ewold's. When Mrs Grantly proposed that Mr Thorne's consent should be asked, the archdeacon became very angry. He had never heard so unecclesiastical a proposition in his life. It was his special duty to do the best he could for Mr Thorne, but it was specially his duty to do so without consulting Mr Thorne about it. As the archdeacon's objection had been argued simply on the point of the glass of wine, both the dean and Mrs Grantly thought that he was unreasonable. But they had their point to gain, and therefore they only flattered him. They were sure that Mr Thorne would like to have a clergyman in the parish who would himself be closely
connected with the archdeacon. Then Dr Grantly alleged that he might find himself in a trap. What if he conferred the living of St Ewold's on Mr Crawley and after all there should be no marriage between his son and Grace? ‘Of course they'll be married,' said Mrs Grantly. ‘It's all very well for you to say that, my dear; but thewhole family are so queer that there is no knowing what the girl may do. She may take up some other fad now, and refuse him point blank.' ‘She has never taken up any fad,' said Mrs Grantly, who now mounted almost to wrath in defence of her future daughter-in-law, ‘and you are wrong to say that she has. She has behaved beautifully – as nobody knows better than you do.' Then the archdeacon gave way so far as to promise that St Ewold's should be offered to Mr Crawley as soon as Grace Crawley was in truth engagedto Henry Grantly.