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Page 69
It appears to us a question whether any clergyman can go through our
church service with decorum, morning after morning, in an immense
building, surrounded by not more than a dozen listeners. The best
actors cannot act well before empty benches, and though there is, of
course, a higher motive in one case than the other, still even the
best of clergymen cannot but be influenced by their audience; and to
expect that a duty should be well done under such circumstances, would
be to require from human nature more than human power.
When the two ladies with the gilt crosses, the old man with his
crutch, and the still palpitating housemaid were going, Mr Harding
found himself obliged to go too. The verger stood in his way, and
looked at him and looked at the door, and so he went. But he returned
again in a few minutes, and re-entered with another twopence. There
was no other sanctuary so good for him.
As he walked slowly down the nave, and then up one aisle, and then
again down the nave and up the other aisle, he tried to think gravely
of the step he was about to take. He was going to give up eight
hundred a year voluntarily; and doom himself to live for the rest of
his life on about a hundred and fifty. He knew that he had hitherto
failed to realise this fact as he ought to do. Could he maintain
his own independence and support his daughter on a hundred and fifty
pounds a year without being a burden on anyone? His son-in-law was
rich, but nothing could induce him to lean on his son-in-law after
acting, as he intended to do, in direct opposition to his son-in-law's
counsel. The bishop was rich, but he was about to throw away the
bishop's best gift, and that in a manner to injure materially the
patronage of the giver: he could neither expect nor accept anything
further from the bishop. There would be not only no merit, but
positive disgrace, in giving up his wardenship, if he were not
prepared to meet the world without it. Yes, he must from this time
forward bound all his human wishes for himself and his daughter to
the poor extent of so limited an income. He knew he had not thought
sufficiently of this, that he had been carried away by enthusiasm,
and had hitherto not brought home to himself the full reality of his
position.
He thought most about his daughter, naturally. It was true that she
was engaged, and he knew enough of his proposed son-in-law to be sure
that his own altered circumstances would make no obstacle to such a
marriage; nay, he was sure that the very fact of his poverty would
induce Bold more anxiously to press the matter; but he disliked
counting on Bold in this emergency, brought on, as it had been, by
his doing. He did not like saying to himself, Bold has turned me
out of my house and income, and, therefore, he must relieve me of my
daughter; he preferred reckoning on Eleanor as the companion of his
poverty and exile,--as the sharer of his small income.
Some modest provision for his daughter had been long since made. His
life was insured for three thousand pounds, and this sum was to go to
Eleanor. The archdeacon, for some years past, had paid the premium,
and had secured himself by the immediate possession of a small
property which was to have gone to Mrs Grantly after her father's
death. This matter, therefore, had been taken out of the warden's
hands long since, as, indeed, had all the business transactions of
his family, and his anxiety was, therefore, confined to his own life
income.
Yes. A hundred and fifty per annum was very small, but still it might
suffice; but how was he to chant the litany at the cathedral on Sunday
mornings, and get the service done at Crabtree Parva? True, Crabtree
Church was not quite a mile and a half from the cathedral; but he
could not be in two places at once. Crabtree was a small village,
and afternoon service might suffice, but still this went against his
conscience; it was not right that his parishioners should be robbed
of any of their privileges on account of his poverty. He might, to
be sure, make some arrangements for doing week-day service at the
cathedral; but he had chanted the litany at Barchester so long, and
had a conscious feeling that he did it so well, that he was unwilling
to give up the duty.
Thinking of such things, turning over in his own mind together small
desires and grave duties, but never hesitating for a moment as to the
necessity of leaving the hospital, Mr Harding walked up and down the
abbey, or sat still meditating on the same stone step, hour after
hour. One verger went and another came, but they did not disturb him;
every now and then they crept up and looked at him, but they did so
with a reverential stare, and, on the whole, Mr Harding found his
retreat well chosen. About four o'clock his comfort was disturbed
by an enemy in the shape of hunger. It was necessary that he should
dine, and it was clear that he could not dine in the abbey: so he left
his sanctuary not willingly, and betook himself to the neighbourhood
of the Strand to look for food.
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