“Have you been here long, John?” said Mr. Toogood.
“A goodish many years, sir.”
“So I thought, by the look of you. One can see that you belong in a way to the place. You do a good deal of business here, I suppose, at this time of the year?”
“Well, sir, pretty fair. The house ain’t what it used to be, sir.”
“Times are bad at Barchester—are they?”
“I don’t know much about the times. It’s the people is worse than the times, I think. They used to like to have a little bit of dinner now and again at a hotel;—and a drop of something to drink after it.”
“And don’t they like it now?”
“I think they like it well enough, but they don’t do it. I suppose it’s their wives as don’t let ’em come out and enjoy theirselves. There used to be the Goose and Glee club;—that was once a month. They’ve gone and clean done away with themselves—that club has. There’s old Bumpter in the High Street—he’s the last of the old Geese. They died off, you see, and when Mr. Biddle died they wouldn’t choose another president. A club for having dinner, sir, ain’t nothing without a president.”
“I suppose not.”
“And there’s the Freemasons. They must meet, you know, sir, in course, because of the dooties. But if you’ll believe me, sir, they don’t so much as wet their whistles. They don’t indeed. It always used to be a supper, and that was once a month. Now they pays a rent for the use of the room! Who is to get a living out of that, sir?—not in the way of a waiter, that is.”
“If that’s the way things are going on I suppose the servants leave their places pretty often?”
“I don’t know about that, sir. A man may do a deal worse than The Dragon of Wantly. Them as goes away to better themselves, often worses themselves, as I call it. I’ve seen a good deal of that.”
“And you stick to the old shop?”
“Yes, sir; I’ve been here fifteen year, I think it is. There’s a many goes away, as doesn’t go out of their own heads, you know, sir.”
“They get the sack, you mean?”
“There’s words between them and master—or more likely, missus. That’s where it is. Servants is so foolish. I often tell ’em how wrong folks are to say that soft words butter no parsnips, and hard words break no bones.”
“I think you’ve lost some of the old hands here since this time last year, John?”
“You knows the house then, sir?”
“Well;—I’ve been here before.”
“There was four of them went, I think it’s just about twelve months back, sir.”
“There was a man in the yard I used to know, and last time I was down here, I found that he was gone.”
“There was one of ’em out of the yard, and two out of the house. Master and them had got to very high words. There was poor Scuttle, who had been post-boy at The Compasses before he came here.”
“He went away to New Zealand, didn’t he?”
“B’leve he did, sir; or to some foreign parts. And Anne, as was under-chambermaid here; she went with him, fool as she was. They got theirselves married and went off, and he was well nigh as old as me. But seems he’d saved a little money, and that goes a long way with any girl.”
“Was he the man who drove Mr. Soames that day the cheque was lost?” Mr. Toogood asked this question perhaps a little too abruptly. At any rate he obtained no answer to it. The waiter said he knew nothing about Mr. Soames, or the cheque, and the lawyer suspecting that the waiter was suspecting him, finished his brandy-and-water and went to bed.
Early on the following morning he observed that he was specially regarded by a shabby-looking man, dressed in black, but in a black suit that was very old, with a red nose, whom he had seen in the hotel on the preceding day; and he learned that this man was a cousin of the landlord—one Dan Stringer—who acted as a clerk in the hotel bar. He took an opportunity also of saying a word to Mr. Stringer the landlord—whom he found to be a somewhat forlorn and gouty individual, seated on cushions in a little parlour behind the bar. After breakfast he went out, and having twice walked round the Cathedral close and inspected the front of the palace and looked up at the windows of the prebendaries’ houses, he knocked at the door of the deanery. The dean and Mrs. Arabin were on the Continent, he was told. Then he asked for Mr. Harding, having learned that Mr. Harding was Mrs. Arabin’s father, and that he lived at the deanery. Mr. Harding was at home, but was not very well, the servant said. Mr. Toogood, however, persevered, sending up his card, and saying that he wished to have a few minutes’ conversation with Mr. Harding on very particular business. He wrote a word upon his card before giving it to the servant—“about Mr. Crawley.” In a few minutes he was shown into the library, and had hardly time, while looking at the shelves, to remember what Mr. Crawley had said of his anger at the beautiful bindings, before an old man, very thin and very pale, shuffled into the room. He stooped a good deal, and his black clothes were very loose about his shrunken limbs. He was not decrepit, nor did he seem to be one who had advanced to extreme old age; but yet he shuffled rather than walked, hardly raising his feet from the ground. Mr. Toogood, as he came forward to meet him,
