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Page 81
Had he not cause for triumph? Had he not been supremely successful?
Had he not for the first time in his life held his own purpose
against that of his son-in-law, and manfully combated against great
odds,--against the archdeacon's wife as well as the archdeacon? Had
he not gained a great victory, and was it not fit that he should step
into his cab with triumph?
He had not told Eleanor when he would return, but she was on the
look-out for him by every train by which he could arrive, and the
pony-carriage was at the Barchester station when the train drew up
at the platform.
"My dear," said he, sitting beside her, as she steered her little
vessel to one side of the road to make room for the clattering omnibus
as they passed from the station into the town, "I hope you'll be able
to feel a proper degree of respect for the vicar of Crabtree."
"Dear papa," said she, "I am so glad."
There was great comfort in returning home to that pleasant house,
though he was to leave it so soon, and in discussing with his daughter
all that he had done, and all that he had to do. It must take some
time to get out of one house into another; the curate at Crabtree
could not be abolished under six months, that is, unless other
provision could be made for him; and then the furniture:--the most of
that must be sold to pay Sir Abraham Haphazard for sitting up till
twelve at night. Mr Harding was strangely ignorant as to lawyers'
bills; he had no idea, from twenty pounds to two thousand, as to the
sum in which he was indebted for legal assistance. True, he had
called in no lawyer himself; true, he had been no consenting party to
the employment of either Cox and Cummins, or Sir Abraham; he had never
been consulted on such matters;--the archdeacon had managed all this
himself, never for a moment suspecting that Mr Harding would take upon
him to end the matter in a way of his own. Had the lawyers' bills
been ten thousand pounds, Mr Harding could not have helped it; but
he was not on that account disposed to dispute his own liability.
The question never occurred to him; but it did occur to him that he
had very little money at his banker's, that he could receive nothing
further from the hospital, and that the sale of the furniture was his
only resource.
"Not all, papa," said Eleanor pleadingly.
"Not quite all, my dear," said he; "that is, if we can help it. We
must have a little at Crabtree,--but it can only be a little; we
must put a bold front on it, Nelly; it isn't easy to come down from
affluence to poverty."
And so they planned their future mode of life; the father taking
comfort from the reflection that his daughter would soon be freed from
it, and she resolving that her father would soon have in her own house
a ready means of escape from the solitude of the Crabtree vicarage.
When the archdeacon left his wife and father-in-law at the Chapter
Coffee House to go to Messrs Cox and Cummins, he had no very defined
idea of what he had to do when he got there. Gentlemen when at law,
or in any way engaged in matters requiring legal assistance, are very
apt to go to their lawyers without much absolute necessity;--gentlemen
when doing so, are apt to describe such attendance as quite
compulsory, and very disagreeable. The lawyers, on the other hand,
do not at all see the necessity, though they quite agree as to the
disagreeable nature of the visit;--gentlemen when so engaged are
usually somewhat gravelled at finding nothing to say to their learned
friends; they generally talk a little politics, a little weather, ask
some few foolish questions about their suit, and then withdraw, having
passed half an hour in a small dingy waiting-room, in company with
some junior assistant-clerk, and ten minutes with the members of the
firm; the business is then over for which the gentleman has come up
to London, probably a distance of a hundred and fifty miles. To be
sure he goes to the play, and dines at his friend's club, and has a
bachelor's liberty and bachelor's recreation for three or four days;
and he could not probably plead the desire of such gratifications as
a reason to his wife for a trip to London.
Married ladies, when your husbands find they are positively obliged to
attend their legal advisers, the nature of the duty to be performed is
generally of this description.
The archdeacon would not have dreamt of leaving London without going
to Cox and Cummins; and yet he had nothing to say to them. The game
was up; he plainly saw that Mr Harding in this matter was not to be
moved; his only remaining business on this head was to pay the bill
and have done with it; and I think it may be taken for granted,
that whatever the cause may be that takes a gentleman to a lawyer's
chambers, he never goes there to pay his bill.
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