Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

31. CHAPTER XXXI: THE BISHOP'S LIBRARY (continued)

Sir Omicron Pie had been sent for from London. That great man had shown himself a wonderful adept at keeping life still moving within an old man's heart in the case of good old Bishop Grantly, and it might be reasonably expected that he would be equally successful with a dean. In the mean time, Dr Fillgrave and Mr Rerechild were doing their best; and poor Miss Trefoil sat at the head of her father's bed, longing, as in such cases daughters do long, to be allowed to do something to show her love; if it were only to chafe his feet with her hands, or wait in menial offices on those autocratic doctors; anything so that now in the time of need she might be of use.

The archdeacon alone of the attendant clergy had been admitted for a moment into the sick man's chamber. He had crept in with creaking shoes, had said with smothered voice a word of consolation to the sorrowing daughter, had looked on the distorted face of his old friend with solemn but yet eager scrutinising eye, as though he said in his heart, 'and so some day it will probably be with me;' and then, having whispered an unmeaning word or two to the doctors, had creaked his way back again into the library.

'He'll never speak again, I fear,' said the archdeacon as he noiselessly closed the door, as though the unconscious dying man, from whom all sense had fled, would have heard in his distant chamber the spring of the lock which was now so carefully handled.

'Indeed! Indeed! Is he so bad?' said the meagre little prebendary, turning over in his own mind all the probable candidates for the deanery, and wondering whether the archdeacon would think it worth his while to accept it. 'The fit must have been very violent.'

'When a man over seventy has a stroke of apoplexy, it seldom comes very lightly,' said the burly chancellor.

'He was an excellent, sweet-tempered man,' said one of the vicars choral. 'Heaven knows how we shall repair his loss.'