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The building of the hospital itself has not been allowed to
go to ruins. Mr Chadwick, who still holds his stewardship,
and pays the accruing rents into an account opened at a bank
for the purpose, sees to that; but the whole place has become
disordered and ugly. The warden's garden is a wretched
wilderness, the drive and paths are covered with weeds, the
flower-beds are bare, and the unshorn lawn is now a mass of
long damp grass and unwholesome moss. The beauty of the
place is gone; its attractions have withered. Alas! a very
few years since it was the prettiest spot in Barchester, and now
it is a disgrace to the city.
Mr Harding did not go out to Crabtree Parva. An
arrangement was made which respected the homestead of Mr
Smith and his happy family, and put Mr Harding into possession
of a small living within the walls of the city. It is the smallest
possible parish, containing a part of the Cathedral Close
and a few old houses adjoining. The church is a singular
little Gothic building, perched over a gateway, through which
the Close is entered, and is approached by a flight of stone steps
which leads down under the archway of the gate. It is no bigger
than an ordinary room--perhaps twenty-seven feet long by eighteen
wide--but still it is a perfect church. It contains an old carved
pulpit and reading-desk, a tiny altar under a window filled with
dark old-coloured glass, a font, some half-dozen pews, and
perhaps a dozen seats for the poor; and also a vestry.
The roof is high pitched, and of black old oak, and the three
large beams which support it run down to the side walls, and
terminate in grotesquely carved faces--two devils and an angel on
one side, two angels and a devil on the other. Such is the church
of St Cuthbert at Barchester, of which Mr Harding became rector,
with a clear income of seventy-five pounds a year.
Here he performs afternoon service every Sunday, and administers
the Sacrament once in every three months. His audience is not
large; and, had they been so, he could not have accommodated them:
but enough come to fill his six pews, and on the front seat of
those devoted to the poor is always to be seen our old friend Mr
Bunce, decently arrayed in his bedesman's gown.
Mr Harding is still precentor of Barchester; and it is very
rarely the case that those who attend the Sunday morning
service miss the gratification of hearing him chant the Litany,
as no other man in England can do it. He is neither a discontented
nor an unhappy man; he still inhabits the lodgings to which he
went on leaving the hospital, but he now has them to himself.
Three months after that time Eleanor became Mrs Bold, and of
course removed to her husband's house.
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