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Page 87
As they left the hall-door, Mr Harding shook hands with each of the
men, and spoke a kind word to them about their individual cases and
ailments; and so they departed, answering his questions in the fewest
words, and retreated to their dens, a sorrowful repentant crew.
All but Bunce, who still remained to make his own farewell. "There's
poor old Bell," said Mr Harding; "I mustn't go without saying a word
to him; come through with me, Bunce, and bring the wine with you;"
and so they went through to the men's cottages, and found the old man
propped up as usual in his bed.
"I've come to say good-bye to you, Bell," said Mr Harding, speaking
loud, for the old man was deaf.
"And are you going away, then, really?" asked Bell.
"Indeed I am, and I've brought you a glass of wine; so that we may
part friends, as we lived, you know."
The old man took the proffered glass in his shaking hands, and drank
it eagerly. "God bless you, Bell!" said Mr Harding; "good-bye, my old
friend."
"And so you're really going?" the man again asked.
"Indeed I am, Bell."
The poor old bed-ridden creature still kept Mr Harding's hand in his
own, and the warden thought that he had met with something like warmth
of feeling in the one of all his subjects from whom it was the least
likely to be expected; for poor old Bell had nearly outlived all human
feelings. "And your reverence," said he, and then he paused, while
his old palsied head shook horribly, and his shrivelled cheeks sank
lower within his jaws, and his glazy eye gleamed with a momentary
light; "and your reverence, shall we get the hundred a year, then?"
How gently did Mr Harding try to extinguish the false hope of money
which had been so wretchedly raised to disturb the quiet of the dying
man! One other week and his mortal coil would be shuffled off; in
one short week would God resume his soul, and set it apart for its
irrevocable doom; seven more tedious days and nights of senseless
inactivity, and all would be over for poor Bell in this world; and
yet, with his last audible words, he was demanding his moneyed rights,
and asserting himself to be the proper heir of John Hiram's bounty!
Not on him, poor sinner as he was, be the load of such sin!
Mr Harding returned to his parlour, meditating with a sick heart
on what he had seen, and Bunce with him. We will not describe the
parting of these two good men, for good men they were. It was in
vain that the late warden endeavoured to comfort the heart of the old
bedesman; poor old Bunce felt that his days of comfort were gone. The
hospital had to him been a happy home, but it could be so no longer.
He had had honour there, and friendship; he had recognised his master,
and been recognised; all his wants, both of soul and body, had been
supplied, and he had been a happy man. He wept grievously as he
parted from his friend, and the tears of an old man are bitter.
"It is all over for me in this world," said he, as he gave the last
squeeze to Mr Harding's hand; "I have now to forgive those who have
injured me;--and to die."
And so the old man went out, and then Mr Harding gave way to his grief
and he too wept aloud.
Chapter XXI
CONCLUSION
Our tale is now done, and it only remains to us to collect the
scattered threads of our little story, and to tie them into a seemly
knot. This will not be a work of labour, either to the author or
to his readers; we have not to deal with many personages, or with
stirring events, and were it not for the custom of the thing, we might
leave it to the imagination of all concerned to conceive how affairs
at Barchester arranged themselves.
On the morning after the day last alluded to, Mr Harding, at an early
hour, walked out of the hospital, with his daughter under his arm, and
sat down quietly to breakfast at his lodgings over the chemist's shop.
There was no parade about his departure; no one, not even Bunce, was
there to witness it; had he walked to the apothecary's thus early to
get a piece of court plaster, or a box of lozenges, he could not have
done it with less appearance of an important movement. There was a
tear in Eleanor's eye as she passed through the big gateway and over
the bridge; but Mr Harding walked with an elastic step, and entered
his new abode with a pleasant face.
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