On the morning of the Sunday after the dean's return, Mr Harding was lying in his bed, and Posy was sitting on the bed beside him. It was manifest to all now that he became feebler and feebler from day to day, and that he would never leave his bed again. Even the archdeacon had shaken his head, and had acknowledged to his wife that the last day for her father was near at hand. It would very soon be necessary that he should elect another vicar for St Ewold's.
'Grandpa won't play cat's-cradle,' said Posy, as Mrs Arabin entered the room.
'No, darling--not this morning,' said the old man. He himself well knew that he would never play cat's-cradle again. Even that was over for him how.
'She teases you, papa,' said Mrs Arabin.
'No, indeed,' said he. 'Posy never teases me;' and he slowly moved his withered hand down outside the bed, so as to hold the child by her 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 nobody of note in the city--or for that matter of that in the eastern division of the county--was allowed to start upon the last great journey without some assistance from him as the hour of going drew nigh. 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 expressed no wish to see the doctor--had rather declared his conviction that Dr Filgrave could be of no possible service to him. But he was not a man to persevere in his objection in opposition to the wishes of his friends around him; and as soon as the archdeacon 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'm quite sure;--but Posy shall go now.' So Posy scrambled off the bed, and the doctor was ushered into the room.
'A day or two will see the end of it, archdeacon; I should say a day or two,' said the doctor, as he met Dr Grantly in the hall. 'I should say that a day or two will see the end of it. Indeed I will not undertake that twenty-four hours may not see the close of his earthly troubles. He has no suffering, no pain, no disturbing cause. Nature simply retires to rest.' Dr Filgrave, as he said this, made a slow falling motion with his hands, which alone on various occasions had been thought to be worth all the money paid for his attendance. 'Perhaps you would wish that I should step in this evening, Mr Dean? As it happens, I shall be at liberty.'
The dean of course said that he would take it as an additional favour.
Neither the dean nor the archdeacon had the slightest belief in Dr Filgrave, and yet they would hardly have been contented that their father-in-law should have departed without him.
'Look at that man, now,' said the archdeacon, when the doctor had gone, 'who talks so glibly about nature going to rest. I've known him all my life. He's an older man by some months than our dear old friend upstairs. And he looks as if he were going to attend death-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.' Then there was a pause as the two church dignitaries sat together, doing nothing, feeling that the solemnity of the moment was such that it would be hardly becoming that they should even attempt to read. 'His going will make an old man of me,' said the archdeacon. 'It will be different 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 have known him ever since I left college; and I have known him as one man seldom does know another. There is nothing that he has done--as Ibelieve nothing that he has thought--with which I have not been cognisant. I feel sure that he never had an impure fancy in his mind, or a faulty wish in his heart. His tenderness has surpassed the tenderness of a woman; and yet, when occasion came for showing it, he had all the spirit of a hero. I shall never forget his resignation of 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 been wrong in any other man. And he was right, too, about the deanery.' For promotion had come in Mr Harding's way, and he, too, might have been Dean of Barchester. 'The fact is, he never was wrong. He couldn't go wrong. He lacked guile, and he feared God--and a man who does both will never go far astray. I don't think he ever coveted aught in his life--except a new case for his violoncello and somebody to listen to him when he played it.' Then the archdeacon got up, and walked about the room in his enthusiasm; and, perhaps, as he walked some thoughts as to the sterner ambition of his own life passed through his mind. What things had he coveted? Had he lacked guile? He told himself that had feared God--but he was not sure that he was telling himself true even in that.
