THE NEW CAMPAIGN
The archdeacon did not return to the parsonage till close upon the
hour of dinner, and there was therefore no time to discuss matters
before that important ceremony. He seemed to be in an especial good
humour, and welcomed his father-in-law with a sort of jovial
earnestness that was usual with him when things on which was intent
were going on as he would have them.
'It's all settled, my dear,' said he to his wife as he washed his
hands in his dressing-room, while she, according to her wont, sat
listening in the bedroom; 'Arabin has agreed to accept the living.
He'll be here next week.' And the archdeacon scrubbed his hands and
rubbed his face with a violent alacrity, which showed that Arabin's
coming was a great point gained.
'Will he come here to Plumstead?' said the wife.
'He has promised to stay a month with us,' said the archdeacon, 'so
that he may see what his parish is like. You'll like Arabin very
much. He's a gentleman in every respect, and full of good humour.'
'He's very queer, isn't he?' asked the wife.
'Well--he is a little odd in some of his fancies; but there's
nothing about him you won't like. He is as staunch a churchman as
there is at Oxford. I really don't know what we should do without
Arabin. It's a great thing for me to have him so near me; and if
anything can put Slope down, Arabin will do it.'
The Reverend Francis Arabin was a fellow of Lazarus, the favoured
disciple of the great Dr Gwynne, a high churchman at all points; so
high, indeed, that at one period of his career he had all but
toppled over into the cesspool of Rome; a poet and also a polemical
writer, a great pet in the common rooms at Oxford, an eloquent
clergyman, a droll, odd, humorous, energetic, conscientious man,
and, as the archdeacon had boasted of him, a thorough gentleman. As
he will hereafter be brought more closely to our notice, it is now
only necessary to add, that he had just been presented to the
vicarage of St Ewold by Dr Grantly, in whose gift as archdeacon the
living lay. St Ewold's is a parish lying just without the city of
Barchester. The suburbs of the new town, indeed, are partly within
its precincts, and the pretty church and parsonage are not much
above a mile distant from the city gate.
St Ewold is not a rich piece of preferment--it is worth some three
or four hundred a year, at most, and has generally been held by a
clergyman attached to the cathedral choir. The archdeacon, however,
felt, when the living on this occasion became vacant, that it
imperatively behoved him to aid the force of his party with some
tower of strength, if any such tower could be got to occupy St
Ewold's. He had discussed the matter with his brethren in
Barchester; not in any weak spirit as the holder of patronage to be
used for his own or his family's benefit, but as one to whom was
committed a trust, on the due administration of which much of the
church's welfare might depend. He had submitted to them the name of
Mr Arabin, as though the choice had rested with them all in
conclave, and they had unanimously admitted that, if Mr Arabin
would accept St Ewold's no better choice could possibly be made.
If Mr Arabin would accept St Ewold's! There lay the difficulty. Mr
Arabin was a man standing somewhat prominently before the world,
that is, before the Church of England world. He was not a rich man,
it is true, for he held no preferment but his fellowship; but he
was a man not over anxious for riches, not married of course, and
one whose time was greatly taken up in discussing, both in print
and on platforms, the privileges and practices of the church to
which he belonged. As the archdeacon had done battle for its
temporalities, so did Mr Arabin do battle for its spiritualities;
and both had done so conscientiously; that is, not so much each for
his own benefit as for that of others.
Holding such a position as Mr Arabin did, there was much reason to
doubt whether he would consent to become the parson of St Ewold's,
and Dr Grantly had taken the trouble to go himself to Oxford on the
matter. Dr Gwynne and Dr Grantly together had succeeded in
persuading this eminent divine that duty required him to go
Barchester. There were wheels within wheels in this affair. For
some time past Mr Arabin had been engaged in a tremendous
controversy with no less a person than Mr Slope, respecting the
apostolic succession. These two gentlemen had never seen each
other, but they had been extremely bitter in print. Mr Slope had
endeavoured to strengthen his cause by calling Mr Arabin an owl,
and Mr Arabin had retaliated by hinting that Mr Slope was an
infidel. This battle had been commenced in the columns of the daily
Jupiter, a powerful newspaper, the manager of which was very
friendly to Mr Slope's view of the case. The matter, however, had
become too tedious for the readers of the Jupiter, and a little
note had therefore been appended to one of Mr Slope's most telling
rejoinders, in which it had been stated that no further letters
from the reverend gentlemen could be inserted except as
advertisements.
Other methods of publication were, however, found less expensive
than advertisements in the Jupiter; and the war went on merrily. Mr
Slope declared that the main part of the consecration of a
clergyman was the self-devotion of the inner man to the duties of
the ministry. Mr Arabin contended that a man was not consecrated at
all, had, indeed, no single attribute of a clergyman, unless he
became so through the imposition of some bishop's hands, who had
become a bishop through the imposition of other hands, and so on in
a direct line to one of the apostles. Each had repeatedly hung the
other on the horns of a dilemma; but neither seemed to a whit the
worse for the hanging; and so the war went on merrily.
Whether or no the near neighbourhood of the foe may have acted in
any way as an inducement to Mr Arabin to accept the living of St
Ewold, we will not pretend to say; but it had at any rate been
settled in Dr Gwynne's library, at Lazarus, that he would accept
it, and that he would lend his assistance towards driving the enemy
out of Barchester, or, at any rate, silencing him while he remained
there. Mr Arabin intended to keep his rooms at Oxford, and to have
the assistance of a curate at St Ewold; but he promised to give as
much time as possible to the neighbourhood of Barchester, and from
so great a man Dr Grantly was quite satisfied with such a promise.
It was no small part of the satisfaction derivable from such an
arrangement that Dr Proudie would be forced to institute into a
living, immediately under his own nose, the enemy of his favourite
chaplain.
All through the dinner the archdeacon's good humour shone brightly
in his face. He ate of the good things heartily, he drank wine with
his wife and daughter, he talked pleasantly of his doings at
Oxford, told his father-in-law that he ought to visit Dr Gwynne at
Lazarus, and launched out again in praise of Dr Arabin.
'Is Mr Arabin married, papa?' asked Griselda.
'No, my dear; the fellow of a college is never married.'
'Is he a young man, papa?'
'About forty, I believe,' said the archdeacon.
'Oh!' said Griselda. Had her father said eighty, Mr Arabin would
not have appeared to her to be very much older.
When the two gentlemen were left alone over their wine, Mr Harding
told his tale of woe. But even this, sad as it was, did not much
diminish the archdeacon's good humour, though it greatly added to
his pugnacity.
'He can't do it,' said Dr Grantly over and over again, as his
father-in-law explained to him the terms on which the new warden of
the hospital was to be appointed; 'he can't do it. What he says is
not worth the trouble of listening to. He can't alter the duties of
the place.'
'Who can't?' asked the ex-warden.
'Neither can the bishop nor the chaplain, nor yet the bishop's
wife, who, I take it, has really more to say to such matters than
either of the other two. The whole body corporate of the palace
together have no power to turn the warden of the hospital into a
Sunday schoolmaster.'
'But the bishop has the power to appoint whom he pleases, and--'
'I don't know that; I rather think he'll find he has no such power.
Let him try it, and see what the press will say. For once we shall
have the popular cry on our side. But Proudie, ass as he is, knows
the world too well to get such a hornet's nest about his ears.'
Mr Harding winced at the idea of the press. He had had enough of
that sort of publicity, and was unwilling to be shown up a second
time either as a monster or as a martyr. He gently remarked that he
hoped the newspapers would not get hold of his name again, and then
suggested that perhaps it would be better that he should abandon
his object. 'I am getting old,' said he; 'and after all I doubt
whether I am fit to undertake new duties.'
'New duties!' said the archdeacon: 'don't I tell you there shall be
no new duties?'
'Or, perhaps, old duties either,' said Mr Harding; 'I think I will
remain content as I am.' The picture of Mr Slope carting away the
rubbish was still present to his mind.
The archdeacon drank off his glass of claret, and prepared himself
to be energetic. 'I do hope,' said he, 'that you are not going to
be so weak as to allow such a man as Mr Slope to deter you from
doing what you know is your duty to do. You know that it is your
duty to resume your place at the hospital now that parliament has
so settled the stipend as to remove those difficulties which
induced you to resign it. You cannot deny this; and should your
timidity now prevent you from doing so, your conscience will
hereafter never forgive you;' and as he finished this clause of his
speech, he pushed over the bottle to his companion.
'Your conscience will never forgive you,' he continued. 'You
resigned the place from conscientious scruples, scruples which I
greatly respected, though I did not share them. All your friends
respected them, and you left your old house as rich in reputation
as you were ruined in fortune. It is now expected that you will
return. Dr Gwynne was saying only the other day--'
'Dr Gwynne does not reflect how much older a man I am now than when
he last saw me.'
'Old--nonsense!' said the archdeacon; 'you never thought yourself
old till you listened to the impudent trash of that coxcomb at the
palace.'
'I shall be sixty-five if I live till November,' said Mr Harding.
'And seventy-five if you live till November ten years,' said the
archdeacon. 'And you bid fair to be as efficient then as you were
ten years ago. But for heaven's sake let us have no pretence in
this matter. Your plea of old age is only a pretence. But you're
not drinking your wine. It is only a pretence. The fact is, you are
half afraid of this Slope, and would rather subject yourself to
comparative poverty and discomfort, than come to blows with a man
who will trample on you, if you let him.'
'I certainly don't like coming to blows, if I can help it.'
'Nor I neither--but sometimes we can't help it. This man's object
is to induce you to refuse the hospital, that he may put some
creature of his own into it; that he may show his power, and insult
us all by insulting you, whose cause and character are so
intimately bound up with that of the chapter. You owe it to us all
to resist him in this, even if you have no solicitude for yourself.
But surely, for your own sake, you will not be so lily-livered as
to fall into this trap which he has baited for you, and let him
take the very bread out of your mouth without a struggle.'
Mr Harding did not like being called lily-livered, and was rather
inclined to resent it. 'I doubt there is any true courage,' said
he, 'in squabbling for money.'
'If honest men did not squabble for money, in this world of ours,
the dishonest men would get it all; and I do not see that the cause
of virtue would be much improved. No,--we must use the means which
we have. If we were to carry your argument home, we might give away
every shilling of revenue which the church has; and I presume you
are not prepared to say that the church would be strengthened by
such a sacrifice.' The archdeacon filled his glass and then emptied
it, drinking with much reverence a silent toast to the well-being
and permanent security of those temporalities which were so dear to
his soul.
'I think all quarrels between a clergyman and his bishop should be
avoided,' said Mr Harding.
'I think so too; but it is quite as much the duty of the bishop to
look to that as of his inferior. I tell you what, my friend; I'll
see the bishop in this matter, that is, if you will allow me; and
you may be sure I will not compromise you. My opinion is, that all
this trash about Sunday-schools and the sermons has originated
wholly with Slope and Mrs Proudie, and that the bishop knows
nothing about it. The bishop can't very well refuse to see me, and
I'll come upon him when he has neither his wife nor his chaplain by
him. I think you'll find that it will end in his sending you the
appointment without any condition whatever. And as to the seats in
the cathedral, we may safely leave that to Mr Dean. I believe the
fool positively thinks that the bishop could walk away with the
cathedral, if he pleased.'
And so the matter was arranged between them. Mr Harding had come
expressly for advice, and therefore felt himself bound to take the
advice given him. He had known, moreover, beforehand, that the
archdeacon would not hear of his giving the matter up, and
accordingly though he had in perfect good faith put forward his own
views, he was prepared to yield.
They therefore went into the drawing-room in good humour with each
other, and the evening passed pleasantly in prophetic discussion on
the future wars of Arabin and Slope. The frogs had the mice would
be nothing to them, nor the angers of Agamemnon and Achilles. How
the archdeacon rubbed his hands, and plumed himself on the success
of his last move. He could not himself descend into the arena with
Slope, but Arabin would have no such scruples. Arabin was exactly
the man for such work, and the only man whom he knew that was fit
for it.
The archdeacon's good humour and high buoyancy continued till, when
reclining on his pillow, Mrs Grantly commenced to give him her view
of the state of affairs in Barchester. And then certainly he was
startled. The last words he said that night were as follows:--
'If she does, by heaven, I'll never speak to her again. She dragged
me into the mire once, but I'll not pollute myself with such filth
as that--' And the archdeacon gave a shudder which shook the whole
room, so violently was he convulsed with the thought which then
agitated his mind.
Now in this matter, the widow Bold was scandalously ill-treated by
her relatives. She had spoken to the man three or four times, and
had expressed her willingness to teach in a Sunday-school. Such was
the full extent of her sins in the matter of Mr Slope. Poor
Eleanor! But time will show.
The next morning Mr Harding returned to Barchester, no further word
having been spoken in his hearing respecting Mr Slope's
acquaintance with his younger daughter. But he observed that the
archdeacon at breakfast was less cordial than he had been on the
preceding evening.