The parties most interested in the movement which is about to set Barchester by the ears were not the foremost to discuss the merit of the question, as is often the case; but when the bishop, the archdeacon, the warden, the steward, and Messrs Cox and Cummins, were all busy with the matter, each in his own way, it is not to be supposed that Hiram's bedesmen themselves were altogether passive spectators. Finney, the attorney, had been among them, asking sly questions, and raising immoderate hopes, creating a party hostile to the warden, and establishing a corps in the enemy's camp, as he figuratively calls it to himself. Poor old men: whoever may be righted or wronged by this inquiry, they at any rate will assuredly be only injured: to them it can only be an unmixed evil. How can their lot be improved? all their wants are supplied; every comfort is administered; they have warm houses, good clothes, plentiful diet, and rest after a life of labour; and above all, that treasure so inestimable in declining years, a true and kind friend to listen to their sorrows, watch over their sickness, and administer comfort as regards this world, and the world to come!
John Bold sometimes thinks of this, when he is talking loudly of the rights of the bedesmen, whom he has taken under his protection; but he quiets the suggestion within his breast with the high-sounding name of justice: 'Fiat justitia ruat coelum.' These old men should, by rights, have one hundred pounds a year instead of one shilling and sixpence a day, and the warden should have two hundred or three hundred pounds instead of eight hundred pounds. What is unjust must be wrong; what is wrong should be righted; and if he declined the task, who else would do it?
'Each one of you is clearly entitled to one hundred pounds a year by common law': such had been the important whisper made by Finney into the ears of Abel Handy, and by him retailed to his eleven brethren.
Too much must not be expected from the flesh and blood even of John Hiram's bedesmen, and the positive promise of one hundred a year to each of the twelve old men had its way with most of them. The great Bunce was not to be wiled away, and was upheld in his orthodoxy by two adherents. Abel Handy, who was the leader of the aspirants after wealth, had, alas, a stronger following. No less than five of the twelve soon believed that his views were just, making with their leader a moiety of the hospital. The other three, volatile unstable minds, vacillated between the two chieftains, now led away by the hope of gold, now anxious to propitiate the powers that still existed.
It had been proposed to address a petition to the bishop as visitor, praying his lordship to see justice done to the legal recipients of John Hiram's Charity, and to send copies of this petition and of the reply it would elicit to all the leading London papers, and thereby to obtain notoriety for the subject. This it was thought would pave the way for ulterior legal proceedings. It would have been a great thing to have had the signatures and marks of all the twelve injured legatees; but this was impossible: Bunce would have cut his hand off sooner than have signed it. It was then suggested by Finney that if even eleven could be induced to sanction the document, the one obstinate recusant might have been represented as unfit to judge on such a question--in fact, as being non compos mentis-- and the petition would have been taken as representing the feeling of the men. But this could not be done: Bunce's friends were as firm as himself, and as yet only six crosses adorned the document. It was the more provoking, as Bunce himself could write his name legibly, and one of those three doubting souls had for years boasted of like power, and possessed, indeed, a Bible, in which he was proud to show his name written by himself some thirty years ago--'Job Skulpit'; but it was thought that job Skulpit, having forgotten his scholarship, on that account recoiled from the petition, and that the other doubters would follow as he led them. A petition signed by half the hospital would have but a poor effect.
It was in Skulpit's room that the petition was now lying, waiting such additional signatures as Abel Handy, by his eloquence, could obtain for it. The six marks it bore were duly attested, thus:
his his his
Abel X Handy, Gregory X Moody, Mathew X Spriggs,
mark mark mark
&c., and places were duly designated in pencil for those brethren who were now expected to join: for Skulpit alone was left a spot on which his genuine signature might be written in fair clerk-like style. Handy had brought in the document, and spread it out on the small deal table, and was now standing by it persuasive and eager. Moody had followed with an inkhorn, carefully left behind by Finney; and Spriggs bore aloft, as though it were a sword, a well-worn ink-black pen, which from time to time he endeavoured to thrust into Skulpit's unwilling hand.
With the learned man were his two abettors in indecision, William Gazy and Jonathan Crumple. If ever the petition were to be forwarded, now was the time, so said Mr Finney; and great was the anxiety on the part of those whose one hundred pounds a year, as they believed, mainly depended on the document in question.
'To be kept out of all that money,' as the avaricious Moody had muttered to his friend Handy, 'by an old fool saying that he can write his own name like his betters!'
'Well, job,' said Handy, trying to impart to his own sour, ill-omened visage a smile of approbation, in which he greatly failed; 'so you're ready now, Mr Finney says; here's the place, d'ye see'--and he put his huge brown finger down on the dirty paper-'name or mark, it's all one. Come along, old boy; if so be we're to have the spending of this money, why the sooner the better--that's my maxim.'
'To be sure,' said Moody. 'We a'n't none of us so young; we can't stay waiting for old Catgut no longer.'
It was thus these miscreants named our excellent friend. The nickname he could easily have forgiven, but the allusion to the divine source of all his melodious joy would have irritated even him. Let us hope he never knew the insult.
'Only think, old Billy Gazy,' said Spriggs, who rejoiced in greater youth than his brethren, but having fallen into a fire when drunk, had had one eye burnt out, one cheek burnt through, and one arm nearly burnt off, and who, therefore, in regard to personal appearance, was not the most prepossessing of men, 'a hundred a year, and all to spend; only think, old Billy Gazy'; and he gave a hideous grin that showed off his misfortunes to their full extent.
Old Billy Gazy was not alive to much enthusiasm. Even these golden prospects did not arouse him to do more than rub his poor old bleared eyes with the cuff of his bedesman's gown, and gently mutter; 'he didn't know, not he; he didn't know.'
'But you'd know, Jonathan,' continued Spriggs, turning to the other friend of Skulpit's, who was sitting on a stool by the table, gazing vacantly at the petition. Jonathan Crumple was a meek, mild man, who had known better days; his means had been wasted by bad children, who had made his life wretched till he had been received into the hospital, of which he had not long been a member. Since that day he had known neither sorrow nor trouble, and this attempt to fill him with new hopes was, indeed, a cruelty.
'A hundred a year's a nice thing, for sartain, neighbour Spriggs,' said he. 'I once had nigh to that myself, but it didn't do me no good.' And he gave a low sigh, as he thought of the children of his own loins who had robbed him.
'And shall have again, Joe,' said Handy; 'and will have someone to keep it right and tight for you this time.'
Crumple sighed again--he had learned the impotency of worldly wealth, and would have been satisfied, if left 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 orator pointed 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.'