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Page 89
Here he performs afternoon service every Sunday, and administers the
Sacrament once in every three months. His audience is not large; and,
had they been so, he could not have accommodated them: but enough come
to fill his six pews, and on the front seat of those devoted to the
poor is always to be seen our old friend Mr Bunce, decently arrayed in
his bedesman's gown.
Mr Harding is still precentor of Barchester; and it is very rarely
the case that those who attend the Sunday morning service miss the
gratification of hearing him chant the Litany, as no other man in
England can do it. He is neither a discontented nor an unhappy
man; he still inhabits the lodgings to which he went on leaving the
hospital, but he now has them to himself. Three months after that
time Eleanor became Mrs Bold, and of course removed to her husband's
house.
There were some difficulties to be got over on the occasion of the
marriage. The archdeacon, who could not so soon overcome his grief,
would not be persuaded to grace the ceremony with his presence, but he
allowed his wife and children to be there. The marriage took place
in the cathedral, and the bishop himself officiated. It was the last
occasion on which he ever did so; and, though he still lives, it is
not probable that he will ever do so again.
Not long after the marriage, perhaps six months, when Eleanor's
bridal-honours were fading, and persons were beginning to call her Mrs
Bold without twittering, the archdeacon consented to meet John Bold at
a dinner-party, and since that time they have become almost friends.
The archdeacon firmly believes that his brother-in-law was, as a
bachelor, an infidel, an unbeliever in the great truths of our
religion; but that matrimony has opened his eyes, as it has those of
others. And Bold is equally inclined to think that time has softened
the asperities of the archdeacon's character. Friends though they
are, they do not often revert to the feud of the hospital.
Mr Harding, we say, is not an unhappy man: he keeps his lodgings, but
they are of little use to him, except as being the one spot on earth
which he calls his own. His time is spent chiefly at his daughter's
or at the palace; he is never left alone, even should he wish to be
so; and within a twelvemonth of Eleanor's marriage his determination
to live at his own lodging had been so far broken through and
abandoned, that he consented to have his violoncello permanently
removed to his daughter's house.
Every other day a message is brought to him from the bishop. "The
bishop's compliments, and his lordship is not very well to-day, and
he hopes Mr Harding will dine with him." This bulletin as to the old
man's health is a myth; for though he is over eighty he is never ill,
and will probably die some day, as a spark goes out, gradually and
without a struggle. Mr Harding does dine with him very often, which
means going to the palace at three and remaining till ten; and
whenever he does not the bishop whines, and says that the port wine is
corked, and complains that nobody attends to him, and frets himself
off to bed an hour before his time.
It was long before the people of Barchester forgot to call Mr Harding
by his long well-known name of Warden. It had become so customary to
say Mr Warden, that it was not easily dropped. "No, no," he always
says when so addressed, "not warden now, only precentor."
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