"But I cannot leave him to obtain a wedding dress for her...and that will mean goodness knows how many visits to Madame Ella, or whatever she calls herself, when I can least spare the time, and I dare suppose that my girls will at least be invited to the ceremony in the church..."

  "The Cathedral, my dear. Heriot has prevailed upon the Bishop to perform the ceremony."

  "The Bishop! Oh, Oakrhynd! That makes it no better, the girls cannot attend their sister's wedding in the Cathedral, of all places, in dresses a year old and known to the whole of Barchester!"

  "I leave all that to you, my dear. Surely you may furbish up their dresses in the time?"

  "A fortnight, Oakrhynd... a day less than a fortnight! And my dinner party, three days later!"

  "Surely Rose may take Diana's place as your right hand? Surely she must have some grasp of household matters. She will have a house of her own before long."

  Mrs. Oakrhynd all but snorted at such an idea.

  "All she can think of is her dress for the occasion and whether she may wear my pearl hair ornament. And she does not know a Scotch woodcock from a Turkish fig."

  "That does not bode well for her husband's welfare," suggested Rose's father.

  "Oh, she will never have the need to order a dinner. There will be a housekeeper and all the servants she needs. But I can have no help in that quarter."

  "I fear, my dear, that this is a problem you must solve on your own, I can be of no assistance."

  He dipped his pen for a third time and continued with his letter to Cassius Jones, and Mrs. Oakrhynd left the room with a flounce which said, as clearly as it might, 'I might have known I would get no assistance from you!'

  In this fashion Diana passed out of the Oakrhynd ken. While they fell in with her suggestions as to concealing the rift, it was to be some months before she was forgiven sufficiently for her to be asked to provide accommodation for Rose, making an excursion to the metropolis to buy trousseau items. After that foray, in which Diana played a helpful and knowledgeable part, fences were mended and Mr. and Mrs. Harding[1] appeared at the grand Cathedral wedding of Rose Oakrhynd and Lord Levenham, and Mari made an appearance as a flower girl in the bride's attendance. Her mother made a brief return to Barchester but did not take a part in the wedding. Her son was born some six weeks later, and was named Philip Luke, and Lord Levenham and his new-wed wife stood sponsors. Holly was again in Italy and, though her parents were not yet to know, in the same situation as Diana had been.

  This role of flower girl was to be repeated from time to time until Mari was of an age to be bridesmaid to her various floral cousins. Mrs. Oakrhynd succeeded in marrying off her Flower-garden within seven years, which was no mean achievement. But she was never to forgive Holly for being the first of the family to achieve wedlock. However, Holly, while aware of this curious resentment, was too much the darling of her Lang to let it make her unhappy. In his care she had all the music she craved, her voice was admired, and she sang, though never to such an appreciative audience as she had had at the concert in Barchester. She was too shy to care for public performances, but she sang for many years at the annual Barchester Hospital Concert. In due time she had a son who was to become a very fine violinist. His father sent him to the Philip Hardy School of Music, by then highly acclaimed in both musical and educational circles (as Diana had predicted), where he received a training that led to his appearing all over Europe and America as a professional musician. Not long after he was born, a daughter made her appearance, and she was to become as fine a soprano as her mother and as well renowned in her sphere as her brother. The Heriots were as contented a family as one would find in a day's march, content in themselves and happy in their children.

  However, that is far in the future, and we have still to discover the fate of a number of those with whom we have become much better acquainted. However, I find that when characters wander off the stage with which one has provided them, some readers wish to know what became of them, as in the case of my dear Mary Bold. So we can say farewell to these four, content in the knowledge that no worse fate awaited them than to achieve a contented old age. If anyone will say to me later, 'Whatever became of Langton Heriot's son?' I will say I never really knew him and so I cannot say.

  As Peter Clark surmised in the article, which appeared the day after polling day and of which we have already read the peroration, Mr. Thorne won the seat for Barset East by a comfortable majority. Mr. Purser's absence while the city, ably led by his rival, dealt swiftlywith the outcome of the flood at Hoggle End, did not go unnoticed even by his most fervent supporters. Such laggardliness was unlikely to increase his popularity in the city, and it was in the city that he had hoped to garner most of the new £10 votes. Even the flood of beer released upon these new voters did not make up for his having, as they saw it, left his tenants and workers to shift for themselves in another less agreeable flood, and many of them did not scruple to say so to Mr. Closerstil, who haunted the hustings where such voters were casting their votes, imploring them to consider his client rather than this Johnny-come-lately Thorne. Halfway through the poll, Mr. Closerstil tracked his client down to his house, where he found Mrs. Purser close-lipped and evidently containing herself with difficulty.

  "You'll find him in the parlour," she said. "And if you can rouse him, you're a better man than I take you for."

  Mrs. Purser had taken a dislike to her husband's agent.

  Mr. Purser, who should have been out, either rallying the vote to the hustings or impressing those already there with his virtues or, like his rival, partaking in the rescue of his tenants, was seated in the parlour window, which overlooked the garden, and gloomily considering the much- prized gothic ruin that graced the far end of the vista. When Closerstil came in, he looked up and looked the agent up and down, and observed,

  "Go away. You've ruined me, you know that, you've ruined me. Thousands you've had and nothing to show for it, and now I lost the works, the houses, everything nearly, and not a penny left to recoup. Not a penny. Even if I call in every ha'penny I've lent out, and there's a fair few would find it hard to get the money together, I wouldn't have enough."

  To this, Closerstil replied that if he wanted to have a seat in Parliament he'd better bestir himself and make an effort to gain the votes he needed. He mentioned Thorne's initiative and the rescue by railway, and Purser simply shrugged his shoulders.

  "What good would a seat be to me now? Just more expense, a lodging in Town and all the travelling back and forth. No, I can't be doing with that, not now."

  Closerstil shrugged his shoulders.

  "If you're willing to let all the work and all the money go to waste..." he said.

  "Willing! Of course I ain't willing! But what can I do?"

  "Aren't you taking too dark a view of the matter?"

  "Have you seen the damage?" demanded his client, and Closertstil was constrained to admit that he had not.

  "The Works is drowned six foot deep, the furnaces is broke, the chimbley ruined, my yard under four feet of water and all the timber and such damaged, and half the Hoggle End houses have collapsed, and if the clay-pits ain't drowned also, well, it's more than I can hope for."

  Closerstil made a sound which might have been sympathetic.

  "And that man Clark that I fetched from London for to be Editor of the Echo, he's hinting that if them folk gone a-missing prove to be drownded, I should be in the dock as a murderer! Me!"

  Closerstil perceived that his client was both literally and figuratively, and probably financially, in deep waters, and he sat down unasked and scribbled a name on a piece of paper.

  "If you need money," he said. "Here's a firm will advance you what you need. You'll pay for it, mind, but they'll let you have it, right off. Perhaps you'd better take the train to Town and find them. You'll do no good here. You've no chance, Purser and that's the gospel truth. I'll bid you good day."

  With that he thrust the scrap of paper into his client's hand and departed before it occurred to the afflicted Mr. Purser to ask him to account for some of the large sums of money disbursed by him. Purser, left alone, resumed his gloomy contemplation of the ruined chapel until it occurred to him to look at the scrap of paper thrust in his hand.

  On it was written:

  Messrs. Van Siever, Burton, Bangles and Musselboro, Agents.

  Hook Court. In the City,

  He read it twice and then stowed it in his waistcoat pocket. He removed his gaze from the ruin and started to contemplate the wallpaper. Then he seemed to make up his mind. Getting to his feet, he went to the door and bellowed,

  "I'm for Town by the four forty five. Pack me a bag."

  Mrs. Purser, thin-lipped, did as he asked, and when he went upstairs to change his clothes and to collect the bag she said to him.

  "When will you be back?"

  "How should I know?"

  "I wish to know," said Mrs. Purser with that mulish look which was becoming more and more habitual with her and which, Purser knew, boded no good.

  "I need to raise money," said Purser. "It may take some days."

  "A week," said she. "Not an hour longer. After seven days, the house will be shut and the servants on board wages, and I will be with my mother."

  "You can't do that!"

  "I can and, what is more, I will." said Mrs. Purser. "Seven days."

  Mrs. Purser, who had married Purser in order to fulfil a dream of being the wife of the leading citizen as her mother, wife of the last true Mayor of the City, had been, had now decided that the pains of such a marriage were not worth what little glory he had reflected upon her. Her fortune was secure, thanks to her father, and she had no intention of expending it on the rescue of a husband she now regarded as a serious error of judgement and whom shed intended to shed as soon as she could do so without incurring criticism. This seemed to be a possible occasion; hence the seven-day ultimatum.

  Mr. Purser did indeed catch that train, and when he came back after a more than a fortnight with half the amount he considered necessary, at an exorbitant cost, he found that his wife had been as good as her word and had shut up the house and left. The only servant remaining was the groom who looked after the Purser pair for which there was no room at the former Mayor's stables. Being a bachelor of many years' standing, accustomed to cater for himself, he agreed to cook Mr. Purser's dinner as long as that same employer was in the kitchen and ready to be served by six o'clock in the evening. For his breakfast and anything more, he might forage for himself. Mr. Purser, reluctant to approach his wife and beg her to come back (and none too sure that she would agree to his request, however he made it), agreed to this arrangement, and there we will leave him for a few days, in somewhat squalid conditions, working as he had never worked before, first to retrieve the money he had out on loan and, when he had it, trying to decide whether to build up the brickworks and the builders' yard again or whether to go to another town and start again. In such matters, he consulted Patrick the groom, which is to say he laid out his schemes before him and listened to what Patrick had to say. This was more than he had ever done before. Patrick had walked down with him to the site of the Brickworks and had looked at the wrecked furnaces, the collapsed chimney and the flooded clay pits. He had shaken his grizzled head, and around the clay pipe which he had always in his mouth (though unlit when he was in the stables), he said portentously,

  "Tain't no manner o' use throwin' good money after bad, Mr. Purser. I was you, I'd skip and skip fast."

  "I need to sell the works, Patrick."

  Patrick shook his head.

  "'Taint worth a grig this instant minute," he said. "You wait, Mr. Purser. Them railway folk'll dredge the river this summer and there won't be no floods next year nor the next nor yet the year after that. That'll be the time to sell. Folks' memories is short. Then you'll have money to your hand when you need it. Them works is your cash under the bed, Mr. Purser, mark my words."

  They went home, and Patrick cooked the dinner and said no more. Next morning, Mr. Purser packed his traps again, and the last that was seen of the 'Mayor' of Barchester in that city was in Barhester Railway Station boarding the eight twenty-seven up. Letters were later delivered in which he resigned his various posts, but these gave no address but 'London'. Nothing was heard of him until two months later, when a representative from the firm of Van Siever, Burton, Bangles and Musselboro came looking for their client. The representative sought to distrain on the house which all Barchester had thought to be his, but which he had sold to his wife for a comfortable sum some weeks before through an 'agent' who had not told them where his principal was to be found. She had immediately let it on easy terms to Miss Prentice: Mrs. Proudie we should say, but old habits are hard to break. She wished for a place where her invalid father might be cared for in comfort and where she might visit him daily. Mr. Prentice caused the Gothic ruin to be demolished and replaced with a summer house whence he might supervise his gardener, who set the garden to potatoes, fruit and vegetables, and he benefited considerably from this interest. However, that hardly concerns us here.

  Mr. Musselboro, for it was he who represented the firm, attempted to discover Purser's whereabouts but without success. Nor did he find Mrs. Purser willing to disgorge the money Mr. Purser owed to Van S B. B. and M. Her fortune was her own, she told him. It had been settled upon her by her father, who had disliked and distrusted Mr. Purser and who had made the settlement secure against any depredations either of her husband or of any possible Mr. Musselboros.

  Mr. Musselboro gloomily inspected the derelict brickworks and the still flooded clay pits, and enquired whether any had made an offer for them. When Mr. Grabbit, the lawyer to whom Mr. Purser had formerly entrusted his affairs, heard of these enquiries, he laughed and said that there were a great many people in Barchester who had a lien on those possessions, for all they were worthless. Mr. Musselboro sighed when he heard this and went away and set a search in hand for the 'villain'. I hardly know whether to be glad or sorry that the search was futile: Mr. Purser is no favourite of mine, nor, I dare say, of yours, and yet, and yet, how can one sympathize with the Van Sievers and the Musselboros of this world? Let us suppose that in some distant town our Mr. Purser was making his way back to prosperity, perhaps a wiser and more far-sighted man. He may yet get his coveted Parliamentary seat, from which he will rail against the worthless, feckless, idle aristocracy but it will not be under the name of Purser and it will not be for Barset East.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  'It is my experience that the only thing which travels faster than bad news is good news'

  The date for the formal opening of the Hospital during the first week in October was fast approaching. The programme for the great day had been decided for some considerable time. There were to be speeches outside the Hospital itself (weather permitting) from the President of the Hospital Committee (the Bishop himself); his fiancée would present a prize of two golden sovereigns to the writer of the best essay on the pertinent subject of 'Why does Barchester need a Hospital'. This had been won by a boy attending the school in the parish of St. Ewold's, which surprised nobody. The Duke would then (it was hoped) make his speech, and then reveal the name board of the Hospital, now waiting for a final coat of varnish in the signwriter's next door to the pastrycook's in the New High Street, by hauling down a cover, declare the Lady Glencora Memorial Hospital open, and then go in, accompanied by the Committee, to make a tour of the premises. When these ceremonies were over, he was to attend a formal dinner which should be attended by a great many Barchester worthies. It was an admirable programme, but during the time which had elapsed since it had been compiled, a great number of things had happened.

  First, the damage done to the roof of the Assembly Rooms had revealed further faults, and Mrs. Arabin and Mr. Grant had decided that the whole building would have to be re-roofed and re-tiled, and the windows along the roof-ridge renewed. This was now in progress and the work being done with as much haste as was allowable but, regrettably, it would not be finished before the great day, and thus no use could be made of the Rooms.

  Furthermore, the fundamental reason for the programme had gone. The Hospital was already open. In fact, the Hospital was all but full. Mary and her nurses had been at full stretch for ten days and had lost three patients to pneumonia. They were all old people. To be woken at dawn was nothing new for these, but to wade through cold water for half a mile or more in nightclothes and then climb a steep incline in those same nightclothes, now soaking wet, and then wait, uncomforted, some hours of a chilly late September day before they could be taken to shelter and warmth, had been too much for two elderly women and an old man. The five others who had succumbed to inflammation of the lungs were recovering, and Mary was surprised and pleased by the numerous gifts of food and clothes which were left at the Hospital for her patients. One woman had arrived and asked to see Mary, and announced that she had nothing to give because her family was large and there was nothing to spare, but she would sit with someone for an hour or two when she could, if that would help. Mary took her to the ward where there was a new mother whose first baby had been stillborn soon after she arrived in Barchester Station, and whose husband was amongst those missing as he had set off in pursuit of a neighbour who had fallen and been swept away. She was understandably inconsolable.

  Perhaps, suggested Mary, Mrs. Reece might be able to convince her that, tragic as was her loss, her husband might be safe and there might be other children. Mrs. Reece sat herself down at the bedside, and in half an hour her tales of her family, which was was large and lively, had coaxed a smile from poor little Lizzie and the two had become firm friends. Mrs. Reece it was who discovered that the husband was alive, having found a tree to cling to as the Bar bore bravely up his head, and he had been cast up on the farther bank and cared for by a farmer in the next county. She found him at the Police Station making urgent enquiries about his wife at the same time as she had been there asking about him. Mrs. Reece it was who triumphantly ushered him into.the Hospital and oversaw the reunion.

 

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