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Page 13
Mr Harding saw what an effect his communication had made, and almost
repented the openness of his disclosure; he, however, did what he
could to moderate the grief of his friend and patron. "I do not say
that there is any engagement between them. Had there been, Eleanor
would have told me; I know her well enough to be assured that she
would have done so; but I see that they are fond of each other; and
as a man and a father, I have had no objection to urge against their
intimacy."
"But, Mr Harding," said the bishop, "how are you to oppose him, if he
is your son-in-law?"
"I don't mean to oppose him; it is he who opposes me; if anything is
to be done in defence, I suppose Chadwick will do it. I suppose--"
"Oh, the archdeacon will see to that: were the young man twice his
brother-in-law, the archdeacon will never be deterred from doing what
he feels to be right."
Mr Harding reminded the bishop that the archdeacon and the reformer
were not yet brothers, and very probably never would be; exacted from
him a promise that Eleanor's name should not be mentioned in any
discussion between the father bishop and son archdeacon respecting the
hospital; and then took his departure, leaving his poor old friend
bewildered, amazed, and confounded.
Chapter IV
HIRAM'S BEDESMEN
The parties most interested in the movement which is about to set
Barchester by the ears were not the foremost to discuss the merit
of the question, as is often the case; but when the bishop, the
archdeacon, the warden, the steward, and Messrs Cox and Cummins,
were all busy with the matter, each in his own way, it is not to be
supposed that Hiram's bedesmen themselves were altogether passive
spectators. Finney, the attorney, had been among them, asking sly
questions, and raising immoderate hopes, creating a party hostile
to the warden, and establishing a corps in the enemy's camp, as he
figuratively calls it to himself. Poor old men: whoever may be
righted or wronged by this inquiry, they at any rate will assuredly
be only injured: to them it can only be an unmixed evil. How can
their lot be improved? all their wants are supplied; every comfort is
administered; they have warm houses, good clothes, plentiful diet,
and rest after a life of labour; and above all, that treasure so
inestimable in declining years, a true and kind friend to listen to
their sorrows, watch over their sickness, and administer comfort as
regards this world, and the world to come!
John Bold sometimes thinks of this, when he is talking loudly of the
rights of the bedesmen, whom he has taken under his protection; but he
quiets the suggestion within his breast with the high-sounding name
of justice: "_Fiat justitia, ruat coelum_." These old men should,
by rights, have one hundred pounds a year instead of one shilling
and sixpence a day, and the warden should have two hundred or three
hundred pounds instead of eight hundred pounds. What is unjust must
be wrong; what is wrong should be righted; and if he declined the
task, who else would do it?
"Each one of you is clearly entitled to one hundred pounds a year by
common law": such had been the important whisper made by Finney into
the ears of Abel Handy, and by him retailed to his eleven brethren.
Too much must not be expected from the flesh and blood even of John
Hiram's bedesmen, and the positive promise of one hundred a year to
each of the twelve old men had its way with most of them. The great
Bunce was not to be wiled away, and was upheld in his orthodoxy by
two adherents. Abel Handy, who was the leader of the aspirants after
wealth, had, alas, a stronger following. No less than five of the
twelve soon believed that his views were just, making with their
leader a moiety of the hospital. The other three, volatile unstable
minds, vacillated between the two chieftains, now led away by the hope
of gold, now anxious to propitiate the powers that still existed.
It had been proposed to address a petition to the bishop as visitor,
praying his lordship to see justice done to the legal recipients of
John Hiram's Charity, and to send copies of this petition and of the
reply it would elicit to all the leading London papers, and thereby
to obtain notoriety for the subject. This it was thought would pave
the way for ulterior legal proceedings. It would have been a great
thing to have had the signatures and marks of all the twelve injured
legatees; but this was impossible: Bunce would have cut his hand off
sooner than have signed it. It was then suggested by Finney that
if even eleven could be induced to sanction the document, the one
obstinate recusant might have been represented as unfit to judge on
such a question,--in fact, as being _non compos mentis_,--and the
petition would have been taken as representing the feeling of the men.
But this could not be done: Bunce's friends were as firm as himself,
and as yet only six crosses adorned the document. It was the more
provoking, as Bunce himself could write his name legibly, and one of
those three doubting souls had for years boasted of like power, and
possessed, indeed, a Bible, in which he was proud to show his name
written by himself some thirty years ago--"Job Skulpit;" but it was
thought that Job Skulpit, having forgotten his scholarship, on that
account recoiled from the petition, and that the other doubters would
follow as he led them. A petition signed by half the hospital would
have but a poor effect.
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