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Page 36
"And who does manage the hospital?" asked the warden. "Oh, let them
find that out; that's another question: the action is brought against
you and Chadwick; that's your defence, and a perfect and full defence
it is. Now that I think very satisfactory."
"Well," said the bishop, looking inquiringly up into his friend's
face, who sat silent awhile, and apparently not so well satisfied.
"And conclusive," continued the archdeacon; "if they press it to a
jury, which they won't do, no twelve men in England will take five
minutes to decide against them."
"But according to that" said Mr Harding, "I might as well have sixteen
hundred a year as eight, if the managers choose to allot it to me; and
as I am one of the managers, if not the chief manager, myself, that
can hardly be a just arrangement."
"Oh, well; all that's nothing to the question. The question is,
whether this intruding fellow, and a lot of cheating attorneys and
pestilent dissenters, are to interfere with an arrangement which
everyone knows is essentially just and serviceable to the church.
Pray don't let us be splitting hairs, and that amongst ourselves, or
there'll never be an end of the cause or the cost."
Mr Harding again sat silent for a while, during which the bishop once
and again pressed his arm, and looked in his face to see if he could
catch a gleam of a contented and eased mind; but there was no such
gleam, and the poor warden continued playing sad dirges on invisible
stringed instruments in all manner of positions; he was ruminating in
his mind on this opinion of Sir Abraham, looking to it wearily and
earnestly for satisfaction, but finding none. At last he said, "Did
you see the opinion, archdeacon?"
The archdeacon said he had not,--that was to say, he had,--that was,
he had not seen the opinion itself; he had seen what had been called a
copy, but he could not say whether of a whole or part; nor could he
say that what he had seen were the _ipsissima verba_ of the great man
himself; but what he had seen contained exactly the decision which he
had announced, and which he again declared to be to his mind extremely
satisfactory.
"I should like to see the opinion," said the warden; "that is, a copy
of it."
"Well, I suppose you can if you make a point of it; but I don't see
the use myself; of course it is essential that the purport of it
should not be known, and it is therefore unadvisable to multiply
copies."
"Why should it not be known?" asked the warden.
"What a question for a man to ask!" said the archdeacon, throwing up
his hands in token of his surprise; "but it is like you:--a child is
not more innocent than you are in matters of business. Can't you see
that if we tell them that no action will lie against you, but that one
may possibly lie against some other person or persons, that we shall
be putting weapons into their hands, and be teaching them how to cut
our own throats?"
The warden again sat silent, and the bishop again looked at him
wistfully. "The only thing we have now to do," continued the
archdeacon, "is to remain quiet, hold our peace, and let them play
their own game as they please."
"We are not to make known then," said the warden, "that we have
consulted the attorney-general, and that we are advised by him that
the founder's will is fully and fairly carried out."
"God bless my soul!" said the archdeacon, "how odd it is that you will
not see that all we are to do is to do nothing: why should we say
anything about the founder's will? We are in possession; and we know
that they are not in a position to put us out; surely that is enough
for the present."
Mr Harding rose from his seat and paced thoughtfully up and down the
library, the bishop the while watching him painfully at every turn,
and the archdeacon continuing to pour forth his convictions that the
affair was in a state to satisfy any prudent mind.
"And _The Jupiter_?" said the warden, stopping suddenly.
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