Barchester Towers. Anthony TrollopeЧитать онлайн книгу.
“Why so, Papa?”
“This new act of Parliament that is to put us all on our feet again,” continued he, “settles my income at four hundred and fifty pounds per annum.”
“Four hundred and fifty,” said she, “instead of eight hundred! Well, that is rather shabby. But still, Papa, you’ll have the dear old house and the garden?”
“My dear,” said he, “it’s worth twice the money;” and as he spoke he showed a jaunty kind of satisfaction in his tone and manner and in the quick, pleasant way in which he paced Eleanor’s drawing-room. “It’s worth twice the money. I shall have the house and the garden and a larger income than I can possibly want.”
“At any rate, you’ll have no extravagant daughter to provide for;” and as she spoke, the young widow put her arm within his, and made him sit on the sofa beside her; “at any rate, you’ll not have that expense.”
“No, my dear, and I shall be rather lonely without her; but we won’t think of that now. As regards income, I shall have plenty for all I want. I shall have my old house, and I don’t mind owning now that I have felt sometimes the inconvenience of living in a lodging. Lodgings are very nice for young men, but at my time of life there is a want of—I hardly know what to call it, perhaps not respectability—”
“Oh, Papa! I’m sure there’s been nothing like that. Nobody has thought it; nobody in all Barchester has been more respected than you have been since you took those rooms in High Street. Nobody! Not the dean in his deanery, or the archdeacon out at Plumstead.”
“The archdeacon would not be much obliged to you if he heard you,” said he, smiling somewhat at the exclusive manner in which his daughter confined her illustration to the church dignitaries of the chapter of Barchester; “but at any rate I shall be glad to get back to the old house. Since I heard that it was all settled, I have begun to fancy that I can’t be comfortable without my two sitting-rooms.”
“Come and stay with me, Papa, till it is settled—there’s a dear Papa.”
“Thank ye, Nelly. But no, I won’t do that. It would make two movings. I shall be very glad to get back to my old men again. Alas! alas! There have six of them gone in these few last years. Six out of twelve! And the others I fear have had but a sorry life of it there. Poor Bunce, poor old Bunce!”
Bunce was one of the surviving recipients of Hiram’s charity, an old man, now over ninety, who had long been a favourite of Mr. Harding’s.
“How happy old Bunce will be,” said Mrs. Bold, clapping her soft hands softly. “How happy they all will be to have you back again. You may be sure there will soon be friendship among them again when you are there.”
“But,” said he, half-laughing, “I am to have new troubles, which will be terrible to me. There are to be twelve old women, and a matron. How shall I manage twelve women and a matron!”
“The matron will manage the women, of course.”
“And who’ll manage the matron?” said he.
“She won’t want to be managed. She’ll be a great lady herself, I suppose. But, Papa, where will the matron live? She is not to live in the warden’s house with you, is she?”
“Well, I hope not, my dear.”
“Oh, Papa, I tell you fairly, I won’t have a matron for a new stepmother.”
“You shan’t, my dear; that is, if I can help it. But they are going to build another house for the matron and the women, and I believe they haven’t even fixed yet on the site of the building.”
“And have they appointed the matron?” said Eleanor.
“They haven’t appointed the warden yet,” replied he.
“But there’s no doubt about that, I suppose,” said his daughter.
Mr. Harding explained that he thought there was no doubt; that the archdeacon had declared as much, saying that the bishop and his chaplain between them had not the power to appoint anyone else, even if they had the will to do so, and sufficient impudence to carry out such a will. The archdeacon was of opinion that, though Mr. Harding had resigned his wardenship, and had done so unconditionally, he had done so under circumstances which left the bishop no choice as to his reappointment, now that the affair of the hospital had been settled on a new basis by act of Parliament. Such was the archdeacon’s opinion, and his father-in-law received it without a shadow of doubt.
Dr. Grantly had always been strongly opposed to Mr. Harding’s resignation of the place. He had done all in his power to dissuade him from it. He had considered that Mr. Harding was bound to withstand the popular clamour with which he was attacked for receiving so large an income as eight hundred a year from such a charity, and was not even yet satisfied that his father-in-law’s conduct had not been pusillanimous and undignified. He looked also on this reduction of the warden’s income as a shabby, paltry scheme on the part of government for escaping from a difficulty into which it had been brought by the public press. Dr. Grantly observed that the government had no more right to dispose of a sum of four hundred and fifty pounds a year out of the income of Hiram’s legacy than of nine hundred; whereas, as he said, the bishop, dean, and chapter clearly had a right to settle what sum should be paid. He also declared that the government had no more right to saddle the charity with twelve old women than with twelve hundred; and he was, therefore, very indignant on the matter. He probably forgot when so talking that government had done nothing of the kind, and had never assumed any such might or any such right. He made the common mistake of attributing to the government, which in such matters is powerless, the doings of Parliament, which in such matters is omnipotent.
But though he felt that the glory and honour of the situation of warden of Barchester Hospital were indeed curtailed by the new arrangement; that the whole establishment had to a certain degree been made vile by the touch of Whig commissioners; that the place, with its lessened income, its old women, and other innovations, was very different from the hospital of former days; still the archdeacon was too practical a man of the world to wish that his father-in-law, who had at present little more than £200 per annum for all his wants, should refuse the situation, defiled, undignified, and commission-ridden as it was.
Mr. Harding had, accordingly, made up his mind that he would return to his old home at the hospital, and, to tell the truth, had experienced almost a childish pleasure in the idea of doing so. The diminished income was to him not even the source of momentary regret. The matron and the old women did rather go against the grain, but he was able to console himself with the reflection that, after all, such an arrangement might be of real service to the poor of the city. The thought that he must receive his reappointment as the gift of the new bishop, and probably through the hands of Mr. Slope, annoyed him a little, but his mind was set at rest by the assurance of the archdeacon that there would be no favour in such a presentation. The reappointment of the old warden would be regarded by all the world as a matter of course. Mr. Harding, therefore, felt no hesitation in telling his daughter that they might look upon his return to his old quarters as a settled matter.
“And you won’t have to ask for it, Papa?”
“Certainly not, my dear. There is no ground on which I could ask for any favour from the bishop, whom, indeed, I hardly know. Nor would I ask a favour, the granting of which might possibly be made a question to be settled by Mr. Slope. No,” said he, moved for a moment by a spirit very unlike his own, “I certainly shall be very glad to go back to the hospital; but I should never go there if it were necessary that my doing so should be the subject of a request to Mr. Slope.”
This little outbreak of her father’s anger jarred on the present tone of Eleanor’s mind. She had not learnt to like Mr. Slope, but she had learnt to think that he had much respect for her father; and she would, therefore, willingly use her efforts to induce something like good feeling between them.
“Papa,” said she, “I think you somewhat mistake Mr. Slope’s character.”