第49章

Whether or no the near neighbourhood of the foe may have acted in any way as an inducement to Mr Arabin to accept the living of St Ewold, we will not pretend to say; but it had at any rate been settled in Dr Gwynne's library, at Lazarus, that he would accept it, and that he would lend his assistance towards driving the enemy out of Barchester, or, at any rate, silencing him while he remained there. Mr Arabin intended to keep his rooms at Oxford, and to have the assistance of a curate at St Ewold; but he promised to give as much time as possible to the neighbourhood of Barchester, and from so great a man Dr Grantly was quite satisfied with such a promise.

It was no small part of the satisfaction derivable from such an arrangement that Dr Proudie would be forced to institute into a living, immediately under his own nose, the enemy of his favourite chaplain.

All through the dinner the archdeacon's good humour shone brightly in his face. He ate of the good things heartily, he drank wine with his wife and daughter, he talked pleasantly of his doings at Oxford, told his father-in-law that he ought to visit Dr Gwynne at Lazarus, and launched out again in praise of Dr Arabin.

'Is Mr Arabin married, papa?' asked Griselda.

'No, my dear; the fellow of a college is never married.'

'Is he a young man, papa?'

'About forty, I believe,' said the archdeacon.

'Oh!' said Griselda. Had her father said eighty, Mr Arabin would not have appeared to her to be very much older.

When the two gentlemen were left alone over their wine, Mr Harding told his tale of woe. But even this, sad as it was, did not much diminish the archdeacon's good humour, though it greatly added to his pugnacity.

'He can't do it,' said Dr Grantly over and over again, as his father-in-law explained to him the terms on which the new warden of the hospital was to be appointed; 'he can't do it. What he says is not worth the trouble of listening to. He can't alter the duties of the place.'

'Who can't?' asked the ex-warden.

'Neither can the bishop nor the chaplain, nor yet the bishop's wife, who, I take it, has really more to say to such matters than either of the other two. The whole body corporate of the palace together have no power to turn the warden of the hospital into a Sunday schoolmaster.'

'But the bishop has the power to appoint whom he pleases, and--'

'I don't know that; I rather think he'll find he has no such power.

Let him try it, and see what the press will say. For once we shall have the popular cry on our side. But Proudie, ass as he is, knows the world too well to get such a hornet's nest about his ears.'

Mr Harding winced at the idea of the press. He had had enough of that sort of publicity, and was unwilling to be shown up a second time either as a monster or as a martyr. He gently remarked that he hoped the newspapers would not get hold of his name again, and then suggested that perhaps it would be better that he should abandon his object. 'I am getting old,' said he; 'and after all I doubt whether I am fit to undertake new duties.'

'New duties!' said the archdeacon: 'don't I tell you there shall be no new duties?'

'Or, perhaps, old duties either,' said Mr Harding; 'I think I will remain content as I am.' The picture of Mr Slope carting away the rubbish was still present to his mind.

The archdeacon drank off his glass of claret, and prepared himself to be energetic. 'I do hope,' said he, 'that you are not going to be so weak as to allow such a man as Mr Slope to deter you from doing what you know is your duty to do. You know that it is your duty to resume your place at the hospital now that parliament has so settled the stipend as to remove those difficulties which induced you to resign it. You cannot deny this; and should your timidity now prevent you from doing so, your conscience will hereafter never forgive you;' and as he finished this clause of his speech, he pushed over the bottle to his companion.

'Your conscience will never forgive you,' he continued. 'You resigned the place from conscientious scruples, scruples which Igreatly respected, though I did not share them. All your friends respected them, and you left your old house as rich in reputation as you were ruined in fortune. It is now expected that you will return. Dr Gwynne was saying only the other day--'

'Dr Gwynne does not reflect how much older a man I am now than when he last saw me.'

'Old--nonsense!' said the archdeacon; 'you never thought yourself old till you listened to the impudent trash of that coxcomb at the palace.'

'I shall be sixty-five if I live till November,' said Mr Harding.