The Last Chronicle of Barset

by Anthony Trollope

  CHAPTER LXXXI.

  BARCHESTER CLOISTERS.

  On the morning of the Sunday after the dean's return Mr. Harding waslying in his bed, and Posy was sitting on the bed beside him. It wasmanifest to all now that he became feebler and feebler from day today, and that he would never leave his bed again. Even the archdeaconhad shaken his head, and had acknowledged to his wife that the lastday for her father was near at hand. It would very soon be necessarythat he should select another vicar for St. Ewolds.

  "Grandpa won't play cat's-cradle," said Posy, as Mrs. Arabin enteredthe room.

  "No, darling,--not this morning," said the old man. He himself knewwell enough that he would never play cat's-cradle again. Even thatwas over for him now.

  "She teases you, papa," said Mrs. Arabin.

  "No, indeed," said he. "Posy never teases me;" and he slowly movedhis withered hand down outside the bed, so as to hold the child byher frock. "Let her stay with me, my dear."

  "Dr. Filgrave is downstairs, papa. You will see him, if he comes up?"Now Dr. Filgrave was the leading physician of Barchester, and nobodyof note in the city,--or for the matter of that in the easterndivision of the county,--was allowed to start upon the last greatjourney without some assistance from him as the hour of going drewnigh. I do not know that he had much reputation for prolonging life,but he was supposed to add a grace to the hour of departure. Mr.Harding had expressed no wish to see the doctor,--had rather declaredhis conviction that Dr. Filgrave could be of no possible service tohim. But he was not a man to persevere in his objection in oppositionto the wishes of the friends around him; and as soon as thearchdeacon had spoken a word on the subject he assented.

  "Of course, my dear, I will see him."

  "And Posy shall come back when he has gone," said Mrs. Arabin.

  "Posy will do me more good than Dr. Filgrave I am quite sure;--butPosy shall go now." So Posy scrambled off the bed, and the doctor wasushered into the room.

  "A day or two will see the end of it, Mr. Archdeacon--I should say aday or two," said the doctor, as he met Dr. Grantly in the hall. "Ishould say that a day or two would see the end of it. Indeed I willnot undertake that twenty-four hours may not see the close of hisearthly troubles. He has no suffering, no pain, no disturbing cause.Nature simply retires to rest." Dr. Filgrave, as he said this, made aslow falling motion with his hands, which alone on various occasionshad been thought to be worth all the money paid for his attendance."Perhaps you would wish that I should step in in the evening, Mr.Dean? As it happens, I shall be at liberty." The dean of course saidthat he would take it as an additional favour. Neither the dean northe archdeacon had the slightest belief in Dr. Filgrave, and yet theywould hardly have been contented that their father-in-law should havedeparted without him.

  "Look at that man, now," said the archdeacon, when the doctor hadgone, "who talks so glibly about nature going to rest. I've knownhim all my life. He's an older man by some months than our dearold friend upstairs. And he looks as if he were going to attenddeath-beds in Barchester for ever."

  "I suppose he is right in what he tells us now?" said the dean.

  "No doubt he is; but my belief doesn't come from his saying it." Thenthere was a pause as the two church dignitaries sat together, doingnothing, feeling that the solemnity of the moment was such that itwould be hardly becoming that they should even attempt to read. "Hisgoing will make an old man of me," said the archdeacon. "It will bedifferent with you."

  "It will make an old woman of Eleanor, I fear."

  "I seem to have known him all my life," said the archdeacon. "I haveknown him ever since I left college; and I have known him as oneman seldom knows another. There is nothing that he has done,--as Ibelieve, nothing that he has thought,--with which I have not beencognizant. I feel sure that he never had an impure fancy in his mind,or a faulty wish in his heart. His tenderness has surpassed thetenderness of woman; and yet, when an occasion came for showing it,he had all the spirit of a hero. I shall never forget his resignationof the hospital, and all that I did and said to make him keep it."

  "But he was right?"

  "As Septimus Harding he was, I think, right; but it would have beenwrong in any other man. And he was right, too, about the deanery."For promotion had once come in Mr. Harding's way, and he, too, mighthave been Dean of Barchester. "The fact is, he never was wrong.He couldn't go wrong. He lacked guile, and he feared God,--and aman who does both will never go far astray. I don't think he evercoveted aught in his life,--except a new case for his violoncello andsomebody to listen to him when he played it." Then the archdeacon gotup, and walked about the room in his enthusiasm; and, perhaps, ashe walked some thoughts as to the sterner ambition of his own lifepassed through his mind. What things had he coveted? Had he lackedguile? He told himself that he had feared God,--but he was not surethat he was telling himself true even in that.

  During the whole of the morning Mrs. Arabin and Mrs. Grantly werewith their father, and during the greater part of the day there wasabsolute silence in the room. He seemed to sleep; and they, thoughthey knew that in truth he was not sleeping, feared to disturb himby a word. About two Mrs. Baxter brought him his dinner, and he didrouse himself, and swallowed a spoonful or two of soup and halfa glass of wine. At this time Posy came to him, and stood at thebedside, looking at him with her great wide eyes. She seemed to beaware that life had now gone so far with her dear old friend that shemust not be allowed to sit upon his bed again. But he put his handout to her, and she held it, standing quite still and silent. WhenMrs. Baxter came to take away the tray, Posy's mother got up, andwhispered a word to the child. Then Posy went away, and her eyesnever beheld the old man again. That was a day which Posy willnever forget,--not though she should live to be much older than hergrandfather was when she thus left him.

  "It is so sweet to have you both here," he said, when he had beenlying silent for nearly an hour after the child had gone. Then theygot up, and came and stood close to him. "There is nothing left forme to wish, my dears;--nothing." Not long after that he expressed adesire that the two husbands,--his two sons-in-law,--should come tohim; and Mrs. Arabin went to them, and brought them to the room. Ashe took their hands he merely repeated the same words again. "Thereis nothing left for me to wish, my dears;--nothing." He never spokeagain above his breath; but ever and anon his daughters, who watchedhim, could see that he was praying. The two men did not stay with himlong, but returned to the gloom of the library. The gloom had almostbecome the darkness of night, and they were still sitting therewithout any light, when Mrs. Baxter entered the room. "The deargentleman is no more," said Mrs. Baxter; and it seemed to thearchdeacon that the very moment of his father's death had repeateditself. When Dr. Filgrave called he was told that his services couldbe of no further use. "Dear, dear!" said the doctor. "We are alldust, Mrs. Baxter; are we not?" There were people in Barchester whopretended to know how often the doctor had repeated this littleformula during the last thirty years.

  There was no violence of sorrow in the house that night; but therewere aching hearts, and one heart so sore that it seemed that no curefor its anguish could ever reach it. "He has always been with me,"Mrs. Arabin said to her husband, as he strove to console her. "It wasnot that I loved him better than Susan, but I have felt so much moreof his loving tenderness. The sweetness of his voice has been in myears almost daily since I was born."

  They buried him in the cathedral which he had loved so well, andin which nearly all the work of his life had been done; and allBarchester was there to see him laid in his grave within thecloisters. There was no procession of coaches, no hearse, nor wasthere any attempt at funereal pomp. From the dean's side door, acrossthe vaulted passage, and into the transept,--over the little stepupon which he had so nearly fallen when last he made his way out ofthe building,--the coffin was carried on men's shoulders. It wasbut a short journey from his bedroom to his grave. But the bell hadbeen tolling sadly all the morning, and the nave and the aisles andthe transepts, close up to the door leading f
rom the transept intothe cloister, were crowded with those who had known the name andthe figure and the voice of Mr. Harding as long as they had knownanything. Up to this day no one would have said specially that Mr.Harding was a favourite in the town. He had never been forward enoughin anything to become the acknowledged possessor of popularity. But,now that he was gone, men and women told each other how good he hadbeen. They remembered the sweetness of his smile, and talked ofloving little words which he had spoken to them,--either years agoor the other day, for his words had always been loving. The dean andthe archdeacon came first, shoulder to shoulder, and after them cametheir wives. I do not know that it was the proper order for mourning,but it was a touching sight to be seen, and was long remembered inBarchester. Painful as it was for them, the two women would be there,and the two sisters would walk together;--nor would they go beforetheir husbands. Then there were the archdeacon's two sons,--for theRev. Charles Grantly had come to Plumstead on the occasion. And inthe vaulted passage which runs between the deanery and the end ofthe transept all the chapter, with the choir, the prebendaries, withthe fat old chancellor, the precentor, and the minor canons downto the little choristers,--they all were there, and followed in atthe transept door, two by two. And in the transept they were joinedby another clergyman whom no one had expected to see that day. Thebishop was there, looking old and worn,--almost as though he wereunconscious of what he was doing. Since his wife's death no one hadseen him out of the palace or of the palace grounds till that day.But there he was,--and they made way for him into the processionbehind the two ladies,--and the archdeacon, when he saw it, resolvedthat there should be peace in his heart, if peace might be possible.

  They made their way into the cloisters where the grave had beendug,--as many as might be allowed to follow. The place indeed wasopen to all who chose to come; but they who had only slightly knownthe man, refrained from pressing upon those who had a right to standaround his coffin. But there was one other there whom the faithfulchronicler of Barchester should mention. Before any other one hadreached the spot, the sexton and the verger between them had led inbetween them, among the graves beneath the cloisters, a blind man,very old, with a wondrous stoop, but who must have owned a grandstature before extreme old age had bent him, and they placed himsitting on a stone in the corner of the archway. But as soon as theshuffling of steps reached his ears, he raised himself with theaid of his stick, and stood during the service leaning against thepillar. The blind man was so old that he might almost have beenMr. Harding's father. This was John Bunce, a bedesman from Hiram'sHospital,--and none perhaps there had known Mr. Harding better thanhe had known him. When the earth had been thrown on to the coffin,and the service was over, and they were about to disperse, Mrs.Arabin went up to the old man, and taking his hand between herswhispered a word into his ear. "Oh, Miss Eleanor," he said. "Oh, MissEleanor!" Within a fortnight he also was lying within the cathedralprecincts.

  And so they buried Mr. Septimus Harding, formerly Warden of Hiram'sHospital in the city of Barchester, of whom the chronicler may saythat that city never knew a sweeter gentleman or a better Christian.