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Updated: May 19, 2025
There was an explosion. The woodwork was splintered and shattered. A single push opened the door. "Now," said Captain Twinely, "come in and search." The little meeting-house was scantily furnished. A high, octangular wooden pulpit with a precentor's pew in front of it stood at the far end. The place was bare of hanging or cupboard which could have been used as a hiding-place.
As certainly as the shutting of a money-box is followed by the turning of the key, did the precentor walk stiffly from the vestry to his box a toll of the bell in front of the minister. Tammas's halfpenny rang in the plate as Gavin passed T'nowhead's pew, and Gavin's sixpence with the snapping-to of the precentor's door.
The bishop had no further argument to adduce; he could not fight for the cause as his son would do; he could not prove all the precentor's doubts to be groundless; but he could sympathise with his friend, and he did so; and Mr Harding felt that he had received that for which he came.
But a fig for staves and for under-masters! The boys clapped fast the gates behind them, and barred the under-masters out in the street, singing twice as loudly as before, and mocking at them with wry faces through the bars; and then trooped off up the old precentor's private stair and sang at his door until the old man could not hear his own ears, and came out storming and grim as grief.
He was walking up the aisle with his mother, his boots creaked, the bell's note was dropping, dropping, the fat verger with his staff was undoing the cord of their seat, the boys of the choir-school were looking at him and he was blushing, he was on his knees and the edge of the kneeler was cutting into his trousers, the precentor's voice, as remote from things human as the cathedral bell itself, was crying, "Dearly beloved brethren."
Then the precentor's fingers relaxed their grip, and he tottered into the middle of the room. "Hendry," he pleaded, holding out his arms pathetically, "tak' back these words. Oh, man, have pity, and tak' them back!" But Hendry would not, and then Lang Tammas's mouth worked convulsively, and he sobbed, crying, "Nobody kent it, but mair than mortal son, O God, I did love the lad!"
Harding should have been above the world, but he was not above Archdeacon Grantly, and was always more or less in debt to his son-in-law, who had to a certain extent assumed the management of the precentor's pecuniary affairs. Mr. Harding had been precentor of Barchester for ten years when the murmurs respecting the proceeds of Hiram's estate again became audible.
It had grown late, and Erasmus Eckhart had surely been waiting some time for his school friend in the old precentor's house. This was really the case, but the Wittenberg theologian, whose course of study had ended only a fortnight before, and who, with his long, brown locks and bright blue eyes, still looked like a gay young student, had had no reason to lament the delay.
And this is what I sang, with a heart that knocked to the notes of the old madrigal like the precentor's tuning-fork to a meeting-house psalm: "Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting, Which, clad in damask mantles, deck the arbours, And then behold your lips where sweet love harbours, My eyes perplex me with a double doubting, Whether the roses be your lips, or your lips the roses."
No doubt with such an income Mr Harding should be above the world, as the saying is; but, at any rate, he is not above Archdeacon Theophilus Grantly, for he is always more or less in debt to his son-in-law, who has, to a certain extent, assumed the arrangement of the precentor's pecuniary affairs.
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