Mr Harding, with a smile, as though afraid of giving offence by making his reference to scripture too solemn.
‘Pish!’ said the archdeacon, turning away rapidly. ‘If the ravens persisted in refusing the food prepared for them, they wouldn’t be fed.’ A clergyman generally dislikes to be met in argument by any scriptural quotation; he feels as affronted as a doctor does, when recommended by an old woman to take some favourite dose, or as a lawyer when an unprofessional man attempts to put him down by a quibble.
‘I shall have the living of Crabtree,’ modestly suggested the warden. ‘Eighty pounds a year!’ sneered the archdeacon.
‘And the precentorship,’ said the father-in-law.
‘It goes with the wardenship,’ said the son-in-law. Mr Harding was prepared to argue this point, and began to do so, but Dr Grantly stopped him. ‘My dear warden,’ said he, ‘this is all nonsense. Eighty pounds or a hundred and sixty makes very little difference. You can’t live on it — you can’t ruin Eleanor’s prospects for ever. In point of fact, you can’t resign; the bishop wouldn’t accept it; the whole thing is settled. What I now want to do is to prevent any inconvenient tittle-tattle — any more newspaper articles.’
‘That’s what I want, too,’ said the warden.
‘And to prevent that,’ continued the other, ‘we mustn’t let any talk of resignation get abroad.’
‘But I shall resign,’ said the warden, very, very meekly.
‘Good heavens! Susan, my dear, what can I say to him?’
‘But, papa,’ said Mrs Grantly, getting up, and putting her arm through that of her father, ‘what is Eleanor to do if you throw away your income?’
A hot tear stood in each of the warden’s eyes as he looked round upon his married daughter. Why should one sister who was so rich predict poverty for another? Some such idea as this was on his mind, but he gave no utterance to it. Then he thought of the pelican feeding its young with blood from its own breast, but he gave no utterance to that either; and then of Eleanor waiting for him at home, waiting to congratulate him on the end of all his trouble.
‘Think of Eleanor, papa,’ said Mrs Grantly.
‘I do think of her,’ said her father.
‘And you will not do this rash thing?’ The lady was really moved beyond her usual calm composure.
‘It can never be rash to do right,’ said he. ‘I shall certainly resign this wardenship.’
‘Then, Mr Harding, there is nothing before you but ruin,’ said the archdeacon, now moved beyond all endurance. ‘Ruin both for you and Eleanor. How do you mean to pay the monstrous expenses of this action?’
Mrs Grantly suggested that, as the action was abandoned, the costs would not be heavy.
‘Indeed they will, my dear,’ continued he. ‘One cannot have the attorney-general up at twelve o’clock at night for nothing — but of course your father has not thought of this.’
‘I will sell my furniture,’ said the warden. ‘Furniture!’ ejaculated the other, with a most powerful sneer.
Come, archdeacon,’ said the lady, ‘we needn’t mind that at present. You know you never expected papa to pay the costs.’
‘Such absurdity is enough to provoke job,’ said the archdeacon, marching quickly up and down the room. ‘Your father is like a child. Eight hundred pounds a year!— eight hundred and eighty with the house — with nothing to do. The very place for him. And to throw that up because some scoundrel writes an article in a newspaper! Well — I have done my duty. If he chooses to ruin his child I cannot help it’; and he stood still at the fire-place, and looked at himself in a dingy mirror which stood on the chimney-piece.
There was a pause for about a minute, and then the warden, finding that nothing else was coming, lighted his candle, and quietly said, ‘Good-night.’
‘Good-night, papa,’ said the lady.
And so the warden retired; but, as he closed the door behind him, he heard the well-known ejaculation — slower, lower, more solemn, more ponderous than ever —‘Good heavens!’
Chapter XIX
The Warden Resigns
The party met the next morning at breakfast; and a very sombre affair it was — very unlike the breakfasts at Plumstead Episcopi.
There were three thin, small, dry bits of bacon, each an inch long, served up under a huge old plated cover; there were four three-cornered bits of dry toast, and four square bits of buttered toast; there was a loaf of bread, and some oily- looking butter; and on the sideboard there were the remains of a cold shoulder of mutton. The archdeacon, however, had not come up from his rectory to St Paul’s Churchyard to enjoy himself and therefore nothing was said of the scanty fare.
The guests were as sorry as the viands — hardly anything was said over the breakfast-table. The archdeacon munched his toast in ominous silence, turning over bitter thoughts in his deep mind. The warden tried to talk to his daughter, and she tried to answer him; but they both failed. There were no feelings at present in common between them. The warden was thinking only of getting back to Barchester, and calculating whether the archdeacon would expect him to wait for him; and Mrs Grantly was preparing herself for a grand attack which she was to make on her father, as agreed upon between herself and her husband during their curtain confabulation of that morning.
When the waiter had creaked out of the room with the last of the teacups, the archdeacon got up and went to the window as though to admire the view. The room looked out on a narrow passage which runs from St Paul’s Churchyard to Paternoster Row; and Dr Grantly patiently perused the names of the three shopkeepers whose doors were in view. The warden still kept his seat at the table, and examined the pattern of the tablecloth; and Mrs Grantly, seating herself on the sofa, began to knit.
After a while the warden pulled his Bradshaw out of his pocket, and began laboriously to consult it. There was a train for Barchester at 10 A.M. That was out of the question, for it was nearly ten already. Another at 3 P.M.; another, the night-mail train, at 9 P.M. The three o’clock train would take him home to tea, and would suit very well.
‘My dear,’ said he, ‘I think I shall go back home at three o’clock today. I shall get home at half-past eight. I don’t think there’s anything to keep me in London.’
‘The archdeacon and I return by the early train tomorrow, papa; won’t you wait and go back with us?’
‘Why, Eleanor will expect me tonight; and I’ve so much to do; and —’
‘Much to do!’ said the archdeacon sotto voce; but the warden heard him.
‘You’d better wait for us, papa.’
‘Thank ye, my dear! I think I’ll go this afternoon.’ The tamest animal will turn when driven too hard, and even Mr Harding was beginning to fight for his own way.
I suppose you won’t be back before three?’ said the lady, addressing her husband.
‘I must leave this at two,’ said the warden.
‘Quite out of the question,’ said the archdeacon, answering his wife, and still reading the shopkeepers’ names; ‘I don’t suppose I shall be back till five.’
There was another long pause, during which Mr Harding continued to study his Bradshaw.
‘I must go to Cox and Cummins,’ said the archdeacon at last.
‘Oh, to Cox and Cummins,’ said the warden. It was quite a matter of indifference to him where his son-in-law went. The names of Cox and Cummins had now no interest in his ears. What