untempted, to have remained happy with one and
sixpence a day.
'Come, Skulpit,'
repeated Handy, getting
impatient, 'you're
not going to go along with old Bunce in helping that parson
to rob us all. Take the pen, man, and right yourself. Well,'
he added,
seeing that Skulpit still doubted, 'to see a man as is
afraid to stand by hisself is, to my thinking, the meanest thing
as is.'
'Sink them all for parsons, says I,' growled Moody;
'hungry beggars, as never thinks their bellies full till they have
robbed all and everything!'
'Who's to harm you, man?' argued Spriggs. 'Let them
look never so black at you, they can't get you put out when
you're once in--no, not old Catgut, with Calves to help him!'
I am sorry to say the archdeacon himself was designated by
this scurrilous
allusion to his
nether person.
'A hundred a year to win, and nothing to lose,' continued
Handy. 'My eyes! Well, how a man's to doubt about sich
a bit of
cheese as that passes me--but some men is timorous--
some men is born with no pluck in them--some men is cowed
at the very first sight of a gentleman's coat and waistcoat.'
Oh, Mr Harding, if you had but taken the archdeacon's
advice in that disputed case, when Joe Mutters was this
ungrateful demagogue's rival candidate!
'Afraid of a parson,' growled Moody, with a look of ineffable
scorn. 'I tell ye what I'd be afraid of--I'd be afraid of
not getting nothing from 'em but just what I could take by
might and right--that's the most I'd be afraid on of any
parson of 'em all.'
'But,' said Skulpit, apologetically, 'Mr Harding's not so
bad--he did give us twopence a day, didn't he now?'
'Twopence a day!' exclaimed Spriggs with scorn, opening
awfully the red
cavern of his lost eye.
'Twopence a day!' muttered Moody with a curse; 'sink
his twopence!'
'Twopence a day!' exclaimed Handy; 'and I'm to go, hat
in hand, and thank a chap for twopence a day, when he owes
me a hundred pounds a year; no, thank ye; that may do for
you, but it won't for me. Come, I say, Skulpit, are you a going
to put your mark to this here paper, or are you not?'
Skulpit looked round in
wretched indecision to his two
friends. 'What d'ye think, Bill Gazy?' said he.
But Bill Gazy couldn't think. He made a noise like the
bleating of an old sheep, which was intended to express the
agony of his doubt, and again muttered that 'he didn't know.'
'Take hold, you old cripple,' said Handy,
thrusting the pen
into poor Billy's hand: 'there, so--ugh! you old fool, you've
been and smeared it all--there--that'll do for you--that's as
good as the best name as ever was written': and a big blotch
of ink was presumed to represent Billy Gazy's acquiescence.
'Now, Jonathan,' said Handy, turning to Crumple.
'A hundred a year's a nice thing, for sartain,' again argued
Crumple. 'Well, neighbour Skulpit, how's it to be?'
'Oh, please yourself,' said Skulpit: 'please yourself, and
you'll please me.'
The pen was
thrust into Crumple's hand, and a faint,
wandering, meaningless sign was made, betokening such
sanction and authority as Jonathan Crumple was able to convey.
'Come, job,' said Handy, softened by success, 'don't let
'em have to say that old Bunce has a man like you under his
thumb--a man that always holds his head in the hospital as
high as Bunce himself, though you're never axed to drink
wine, and sneak, and tell lies about your betters as he does.'
Skulpit held the pen, and made little flourishes with it in the
air, but still hesitated.
'And if you'll be said by me,' continued Handy, 'you'll not
write your name to it at all, but just put your mark like the
others,' --the cloud began to clear from Skulpit's brow--'we
all know you can do it if you like, but maybe you wouldn't
like to seem uppish, you know.'
'Well, the mark would be best,' said Skulpit. 'One name
and the rest marks wouldn't look well, would it?'
'The worst in the world,' said Handy; 'there--there': and
stooping over the
petition, the
learned clerk made a huge
cross on the place left for his signature.
'That's the game,' said Handy,
triumphantly pocketing the
petition; 'we're all in a boat now, that is, the nine of us; and
as for old Bunce, and his cronies, they may--' But as he was
hobbling off to the door, with a
crutch on one side and a
stick on the other, he was met by Bunce himself.
'Well Handy, and what may old Bunce do?' said the gray-
haired,
upright senior.
Handy muttered something, and was departing; but he
was stopped in the
doorway by the huge frame of the newcomer.
'You've been doing no good here, Abel Handy,' said he, ''tis
plain to see that; and 'tisn't much good, I'm thinking, you
ever do.'
'I mind my own business, Master Bunce,' muttered the
other, 'and do you do the same. It ain't nothing to you what
I does--and your spying and poking here won't do no good
nor yet no harm.'
'I suppose then, job,' continued Bunce, not noticing his
opponent, 'if the truth must out, you've stuck your name to
that
petition of
theirs at last.'
Skulpit looked as though he were about to sink into the
ground with shame.
'What is it to you what he signs?' said Handy. 'I suppose
if we all wants to ax for our own, we needn't ax leave of you
first, Mr Bunce, big a man as you are; and as to your sneaking
in here, into Job's room when he's busy, and where you're
not wanted--'
'I've knowed job Skulpit, man and boy, sixty years,' said
Bunce, looking at the man of whom he spoke, 'and that's ever
since the day he was born. I knowed the mother that bore
him, when she and I were little wee things, picking daisies
together in the close yonder; and I've lived under the same
roof with him more nor ten years; and after that I may come
into his room without axing leave, and yet no sneaking neither.'
'So you can, Mr Bunce,' said Skulpit; 'so you can, any
hour, day or night.'
'And I'm free also to tell him my mind,' continued Bunce,
looking at the one man and addressing the other; 'and I tell
him now that he's done a foolish and a wrong thing. He's
turned his back upon one who is his best friend; and is playing
the game of others, who care nothing for him, whether he be
poor or rich, well or ill, alive or dead. A hundred a year?
Are the lot of you soft enough to think that if a hundred a
year be to be given, it's the likes of you that will get it?'--and
he
pointed to Billy Gazy, Spriggs, and Crumple. 'Did any of
us ever do anything worth half the money? Was it to make
gentlemen of us we were brought in here, when all the world
turned against us, and we couldn't longer earn our daily
bread? A'n't you all as rich in your ways as he in his?'--and
the
oratorpointed to the side on which the
warden lived.
'A'n't you getting all you hoped for, ay, and more than you
hoped for? Wouldn't each of you have given the dearest limb
of his body to secure that which now makes you so unthankful?'
'We wants what John Hiram left us,' said Handy. 'We
wants what's ourn by law; it don't matter what we expected.
What's ourn by law should be ourn, and by goles we'll have it.'
'Law!' said Bunce, with all the scorn he knew how to
command--'law! Did ye ever know a poor man yet was the
better for law, or for a
lawyer? Will Mr Finney ever be as
good to you, job, as that man has been? Will he see to you
when you're sick, and comfort you when you're
wretched?
Will he--'
'No, nor give you port wine, old boy, on cold winter nights!
he won't do that, will he?' asked Handy; and laughing at the
severity of his own wit, he and his colleagues
retired, carrying
with them, however, the now powerful
petition.
There is no help for spilt milk; and Mr Bunce could only
retire to his own room, disgusted at the
frailty of human nature.
Job Skulpit scratched his head--Jonathan Crumple again
remarked, that, 'for sartain, sure a hundred a year was very
nice'--and Billy Gazy again rubbed his eyes, and lowly
muttered that 'he didn't know.'
CHAPTER V
Dr Grantly Visits the Hospital
Though doubt and
hesitation disturbed the rest of our poor
warden, no such
weakness perplexed the nobler
breast of his son-in-law. As the
indomitable cock preparing
for the
combat sharpens his spurs, shakes his feathers, and
erects his comb, so did the archdeacon arrange his weapons
for the coming war, without
misgiving and without fear. That
he was fully
confident of the justice of his cause let no one
doubt. Many a man can fight his battle with good courage,
but with a doubting
conscience. Such was not the case with
Dr Grantly. He did not believe in the Gospel with more
assurance than he did in the
sacred justice of all ecclesiastical
revenues. When he put his shoulder to the wheel to defend
the
income of the present and future precentors of Barchester,
he was
animated" target="_blank" title="a.栩栩如生的;活跃的">
animated by as strong a sense of a holy cause, as that
which gives courage to a
missionary in Africa, or enables a
sister of mercy to give up the pleasures of the world for the
wards of a hospital. He was about to defend the holy of holies
from the touch of the
profane; to guard the
citadel of his
church from the most rampant of its enemies; to put on his
good
armour in the best of fights; and secure, if possible, the
comforts of his creed for coming generations of ecclesiastical
dignitaries. Such a work required no ordinary
vigour; and
the archdeacon was,
therefore,
extraordinarilyvigorous. It
demanded a
buoyant courage, and a heart happy in its toil; and
the archdeacon's heart was happy, and his courage was
buoyant.
He knew that he would not be able to
animate his father-in-law
with feelings like his own, but this did not much disturb
him. He preferred to bear the brunt of the battle alone, and
did not doubt that the
warden would
resign himself into his
hands with
passive submission.
'Well, Mr Chadwick,' he said, walking into the steward's
office a day or two after the signing of the
petition as
commemorated in the last chapter: 'anything from Cox and
Cummins this morning?' Mr Chadwick handed him a letter;
which he read, stroking the tight-gaitered calf of his right leg
as he did so. Messrs Cox and Cummins merely said that they
had as yet received no notice from their adversaries; that they
could
recommend no
preliminary steps; but that should any
proceeding really be taken by the bedesmen, it would be
expedient to
consult that very
eminent Queen's Counsel, Sir
Abraham Haphazard.
'I quite agree with them,' said Dr Grantly, refolding the
letter. 'I
perfectly agree with them. Haphazard is no doubt
the best man; a
thoroughchurchman, a sound conservative,
and in every respect the best man we could get--he's in the
House, too, which is a great thing.'
Mr Chadwick quite agreed.
'You remember how completely he put down that scoundrel
Horseman about the Bishop of Beverley's
income; how completely
he set them all adrift in the earl's case.' Since the question
of St Cross had been mooted by the public, one noble lord had
become 'the earl,' par
excellence, in the doctor's estimation.
'How he silenced that fellow at Rochester. Of course
we must have Haphazard; and I'll tell you what, Mr Chadwick,