The Last Chronicle of Barset

CHAPTER XLII

MR TOO­GOOD TRAV­ELS PRO­FES­SION­AL­LY

Mr Too­good paid an­oth­er vis­it to Barset­shire, in or­der that he might get a lit­tle fur­ther in­for­ma­tion which he thought would be nec­es­sary be­fore despatch­ing his nephew up­on the traces of Dean Ara­bin and his wife. He went down to Barch­ester af­ter his work was over by an evening train, and put him­self up at ‘The Drag­on of Want­ly’, in­tend­ing to have the whole of the next day for his work. Mr Walk­er had asked him to come and take a re­turn potluck din­ner with Mrs Walk­er at Sil­ver­bridge; and this he had said that he would do. Af­ter hav­ing ‘rum­maged about for tid­ings’ in Barch­ester, as he called it, he would take the train for Sil­ver­bridge, and would get back to town in time for busi­ness on the third day. ‘One day won’t be much, you know,’ he said to his part­ner, as he made half an apol­ogy for ab­sent­ing him­self on busi­ness which was not to be in any de­gree re­mu­ner­ative. ‘That sort of thing is very well when one does it with­out any ex­pense’ said Crump. ‘So it is,’ said Too­good; ‘and the ex­pense won’t make it any worse.’ He had made up his mind, and it was not prob­able that any­thing Mr Crump might say would de­ter him.

He saw John Eames be­fore he start­ed. ‘You’ll be ready this day week, will you?’ John Eames promised that he would. ‘It will cost you some forty pounds, I should say. By George–if you have to go on to Jerusalem, it will cost you more.’ In an­swer to this, John­ny plead­ed that it would be as good as any oth­er tour to him. He would see the world. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Too­good; ‘I’ll pay half. On­ly you mustn’t tell Crump. And it will be quite as well not to tell Maria.’ But John­ny would hear noth­ing of this scheme. He would pay the en­tire cost of his own jour­ney. He had lots of mon­ey, he said, and would like noth­ing bet­ter. ‘Then I’ll run down,’ said Too­good, ‘and rum­mage up what tid­ings I can. As for writ­ing to the dean, what’s the good of writ­ing to a man when you don’t know where he is? Busi­ness let­ters al­ways lie at ho­tels for two months, and then come back with dou­ble postage. From all I can hear, you’ll stum­ble on her be­fore you find him. If we do noth­ing else but bring him back, it will be a great thing to have the sup­port of such a friend in the court. A Barch­ester ju­ry won’t like to find a man guilty who is hand-​and-​glove with the dean.’

Mr Too­good reached the ‘Drag­on’ about eleven o’clock, and al­lowed the boots to give him a pair of slip­pers and a can­dle­stick. But he would not go to bed just at that mo­ment. He would go in­to the cof­fee-​room first, and have a glass of hot brandy-​and-​wa­ter. So the hot brandy-​and-​wa­ter was brought to him, and a cigar, and as he smoked and drank he con­versed with the wait­er. The man was a wait­er of the an­cient class, a grey-​haired wait­er, with seedy clothes, and a dirty tow­el un­der his arm; not a dap­per wait­er, with black shiny hair, and dressed like a guest for a din­ner-​par­ty. There are two dis­tinct class­es of wait­ers, and as far as I have been able to per­ceive, the spe­cial sta­tus of the wait­er in ques­tion can­not be de­cid­ed by ob­ser­va­tion of the class of wait­er to which he be­longs. In such a town as Barch­ester you may find the old wait­er with the dirty tow­el in the head inn, or in the sec­ond-​class inn, and so you may the dap­per wait­er. Or you may find both in each and not know which is se­nior wait­er and which ju­nior wait­er. But for ser­vice I al­ways pre­fer the old wait­er with the dirty tow­el, and I find it more easy to sat­is­fy him in the mat­ter of six­pence when my re­la­tions with the inn come to an end.

‘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 them­selves. 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 years, I think it is. There’s a many goes away, as doesn’t go out of their 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 sent, 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 Com­pass” 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 them­selves 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 door. 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 build­ings, 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, thought that he had nev­er seen a sweet­er face. There was very much of melan­choly in it, of that soft sad­ness of age which seems to ac­knowl­edge, and in some sort to re­gret, the wan­ing oil of life; but the re­gret to be read in such faces has in it noth­ing of the bit­ter­ness of grief; there is no re­pin­ing that the end has come, but sim­ply a touch of sor­row that so much that is dear must be left be­hind. Mr Hard­ing shook hands with his vis­itor, and in­vit­ed him to sit down, and then seat­ed him­self, fold­ing his hands to­geth­er over his knees, and he said a few words in a very low voice as to the ab­sence of his daugh­ter and the dean.

‘I hope you will ex­cuse my trou­bling you,’ said Mr Too­good.

‘It is no trou­ble at all–if I could be of any use. I don’t know whether it is prop­er, but may I ask whether you call as–as–as a friend of Mr Craw­ley’s?’

‘Al­to­geth­er as a friend, Mr Hard­ing.’

‘I’m glad of that; though of course I am well aware that the gen­tle­men en­gaged on the pros­ecu­tion must do their du­ty. Still–I don’t know–some­how I would rather not hear of them speak of this poor gen­tle­man be­fore the tri­al.’

‘You know Mr Craw­ley then?’

‘Very slight­ly–very slight­ly in­deed. He is a gen­tle­man not much giv­en to so­cial habits, and has been but sel­dom here. But he is an old friend whom my son-​in-​law loves dear­ly.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that, Mr Hard­ing. Per­haps be­fore I go any fur­ther, I ought to tell you that Mrs Craw­ley and I are first-​cousins.’

‘Oh, in­deed. Then you are a friend.’

‘I nev­er saw him in my life till a few days ago. He is very queer, you know–very queer in­deed. I’m a lawyer, Mr Hard­ing, prac­tis­ing in Lon­don;–an at­tor­ney, that is. At each sep­arate an­nounce­ment Mr Hard­ing bowed, and when Too­good named his spe­cial branch of his pro­fes­sion Mr Hard­ing bowed low­er than be­fore, as though de­sirous of show­ing that he had great re­spect for at­tor­neys. ‘And of course I’m anx­ious if on­ly out of re­spect for the fam­ily, that my wife’s cousin should pull through this lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty, if pos­si­ble.’

‘And for the sake of the poor man him­self too, and for his wife and chil­dren;–and for the sake of the cloth.’

‘Ex­act­ly; tak­ing it all to­geth­er it’s such a pity, you know. I think, Mr Hard­ing, he can hard­ly have in­tend­ed to steal the mon­ey.’

‘I’m sure he did not.’

‘It’s very hard to be sure of any­body, Mr Hard­ing–very hard.’

‘I feel quite sure he did not. He has been a most pi­ous, hard­work­ing cler­gy­man. I can­not bring my­self to think that he is guilty. What does the Latin proverb say? “No one of a sud­den be­comes most base”.’

‘But the temp­ta­tion, Mr Hard­ing, was very strong. He was aw­ful­ly bad­gered about his debts. That butch­er at Sil­ver­bridge was play­ing the mis­chief with him.’

‘All the butch­ers in Barset­shire could not make an hon­est man steal mon­ey, and I think that Mr Craw­ley is an hon­est man. You’ll ex­cuse me for be­ing a lit­tle hot about one of my own or­der.’

‘Why, he’s my cousin–or rather, my wife’s. But the fact is, Mr Hard­ing, we must get hold of the dean as soon as pos­si­ble; and I’m go­ing to send an gen­tle­man af­ter him.’

‘To send a gen­tle­man af­ter him?’ said Mr Hard­ing, al­most in dis­may.

‘Yes, I think that will be best.’

‘I’m afraid he’ll have to go a long way, Mr Too­good.’

‘The dean, I’m told, is in Jerusalem.’

‘I’m afraid he is–or on his jour­ney there. He’s to be there for the East­er week, and Sun­day week will be East­er Sun­day. But why should the gen­tle­man want to go to Jerusalem af­ter the dean?’

Then Mr Too­good ex­plained as well as he was able that the dean might have some­thing to say on the sub­ject which would serve Mr Craw­ley’s de­fence. ‘We shouldn’t leave any stone un­turned,’ said Mr Too­good. ‘As far as I can judge, Craw­ley still thinks–or half thinks–that he got the cheque from your son-​in-​law.’ Mr Hard­ing shook his head sor­row­ful­ly. ‘I’m not say­ing he did, you know,’ con­tin­ued Mr Too­good. ‘I can’t see my­self how it is pos­si­ble;–but still, we ought not to leave any stone un­turned. And Mrs Ara­bin–can you tell me at all where we shall find her?’

‘Has she any­thing to do with it, Mr Too­good?’

‘I can’t quite say that she has, but it’s just pos­si­ble. As I said be­fore, Mr Hard­ing, we mustn’t leave a stone un­turned. They’re not ex­pect­ed here till the end of April?’

‘About the twen­ty-​fifth or twen­ty-​sixth, I think.’

‘And the as­sizes are the twen­ty-​eighth. The judges come in­to the city on that day. It will be too late too wait till then. We must have our de­fence ready, you know. Can you say where my friend will find Mrs Ara­bin?’

Mr Hard­ing be­gan nurs­ing his knee, pat­ting and be­ing very ten­der to it, as he sat me­di­at­ing with his head on one side–med­itat­ing not so much as to the na­ture of his an­swer as to that of the ques­tion. Could it be nec­es­sary that any emis­sary from a lawyer’s of­fice should be sent af­ter his daugh­ter? He did not like the idea of his Eleanor be­ing dis­turbed by ques­tions as to a theft. Though she had been twice mar­ried and had a son who was now near­ly a man, still she was his Eleanor. But if it was nec­es­sary on Mr Craw­ley’s be­half, of course it must be done. ‘Her last ad­dress was at Paris, sir; but I think she gone on to Flo­rence. She has friends there, and she pur­pos­es to meet the dean at Venice on his re­turn.’ Then Mr Hard­ing turned to the ta­ble and wrote on a card his daugh­ter’s ad­dress.

‘I sup­pose Mrs Ara­bin must have heard of this af­fair?’ Said Mr Too­good.

‘She had not done so when she last wrote. I men­tioned it to her the oth­er day, be­fore I knew that she had left Paris. If my let­ters and her sis­ter’s let­ters have been sent on to her, she must know by now.’

Then Mr Too­good got up to take his leave. ‘You will ex­cuse me for trou­bling you, I hope, Mr Hard­ing.’

‘Oh, sir, pray do not men­tion that. It is no trou­ble, if one could be of any ser­vice.’

‘One can al­ways try to be of ser­vice. In these af­fairs so much is to be done by rum­mag­ing about, as I al­ways call it. There have been many the­atri­cal man­agers, you know, Mr Hard­ing, who have usu­al­ly made up the pieces ac­cord­ing to the dress­es they have hap­pened to have in their wardrobes.’

‘Have there, in­deed, now? I nev­er should have thought of that.’

‘And we lawyers have to do the same thing.’

‘Not with your clothes, Mr Too­good?’

‘Not ex­act­ly with our clothes;–but with our in­for­ma­tion.’

‘I do not quite un­der­stand you, Mr Too­good.’

‘In prepar­ing a de­fence we have to rum­mage about and get up what we can. If we can’t find any­thing that suits us ex­act­ly, we are obliged to use what we do find as well as we can. I re­mem­ber, when I was a young man, an ostler was to be tried for steal­ing some oats in the Bor­ough; and he did steal them too, and sold them at a rag-​shop reg­ular­ly. The ev­idence against was as plain as a pikestaff. All I could find out was that on a cer­tain day a horse had trod on a fel­low’s foot. So we put it to the ju­ry whether the man could walk as far as the rag-​shop with a bag of oats when he was dead lame;–and we got him off.’

‘Did you, though,’ said Mr Hard­ing.

‘Yes, we did.’

‘And he was guilty?’

‘He had been reg­ular­ly at it for months.’

‘Dear, dear, dear! Wouldn’t it have been bet­ter to have had him pun­ished for the fault–gen­tly; so as to warn him of the con­se­quences of such do­ings?’

‘Our busi­ness was to get him off–and we got him off. It’s my busi­ness to get my cousin’s hus­band off, if I can, and we must do it by hook or by crook. It’s a very dif­fi­cult piece of work, be­cause he won’t let us em­ploy a bar­ris­ter. How­ev­er, I shall have one in the court and say noth­ing to him about it at all. Good-​bye, Mr Hard­ing. As you say, it would be thou­sand pities that a cler­gy­man should be con­vict­ed of a theft;–and one so well con­nect­ed too.’

Mr Hard­ing, when he was left alone, be­gan to turn the mat­ter over in his mind and to re­flect whether the thou­sand pities of which Mr Too­good had spo­ken ap­per­tained to the con­vic­tion of the crim­inal, or the do­ing of the crime. ‘If he did steal the mon­ey I sup­pose he ought to be pun­ished, let him be ev­er so much a cler­gy­man,’ said Mr Hard­ing to him­self. But yet–how ter­ri­ble it would be! Of cler­gy­men con­vict­ed of fraud in Lon­don he had of­ten heard; but noth­ing of the kind had ev­er dis­graced the dio­cese to which he be­longed since he had known it. He could not teach him­self to hope that Mr Craw­ley should be ac­quit­ted if Mr Craw­ley were guilty;–but he could teach him­self to be­lieve that Mr Craw­ley was in­no­cent. Some­thing of a doubt had crept across his mind as he talked to the lawyer. Mr Too­good, though Mrs Craw­ley was his cousin, seemed to be­lieve that the mon­ey had been stolen; and Mr Too­good as a lawyer ought to un­der­stand such mat­ters bet­ter than an old se­clud­ed cler­gy­man in Barch­ester. But, nev­er­the­less, Mr Too­good might be wrong; and Mr Hard­ing suc­ceed­ed in sat­is­fy­ing him­self at last that he could not be do­ing harm in think­ing Mr Too­good was wrong. When he had made up his mind on this mat­ter he sat down and wrote the fol­low­ing let­ter, which he ad­dressed to his daugh­ter at the post-​of­fice in Flo­rence:-

‘DEAN­ERY–, March, 186- ‘DEAR­EST NEL­LY, ‘When I wrote on Tues­day I told you about poor Mr Craw­ley, that he was a cler­gy­man in Barset­shire of whose mis­for­tune you read an ac­count in Galig­nani’s Mes­sen­ger–and I think Su­san must have writ­ten about it al­so, be­cause ev­ery­body here is talk­ing of noth­ing else, and be­cause, of course, we know how strong a re­gard the dean has for Mr Craw­ley. But since that some­thing has oc­curred which makes me write to you again–at once. A gen­tle­man has just been here, and has in­deed on­ly this mo­ment left me, who tells me that he is an at­tor­ney in Lon­don, and that he is near­ly re­lat­ed to Mrs Craw­ley. He seems to be a very good-​na­tured man, and I dare­say he un­der­stands his busi­ness as a lawyer. His name is Too­good, and he has come down as he says to get ev­idence to help the poor gen­tle­man on his tri­al. I can­not un­der­stand how this should be nec­es­sary, be­cause it seems to me that the ev­idence should all be want­ed on the oth­er side. I can­not for a mo­ment sup­pose that a cler­gy­man and a gen­tle­man such as Mr Craw­ley should have stolen mon­ey, and if he is in­no­cent I can­not un­der­stand why all this trou­ble should be nec­es­sary to pre­vent a ju­ry from find­ing him guilty.

‘Mr Too­good came here be­cause he want­ed to see the dean–and you al­so. He did not ex­plain, as far as I can re­mem­ber, why he want­ed to see you; but he said it would be nec­es­sary, and that he was go­ing to send off a mes­sen­ger to find you first, and the dean af­ter­wards. It has some­thing to do with the mon­ey which was giv­en to Mr Craw­ley last year, and which, if I re­mem­ber right, was your present. But of course Mr Too­good could not have known any­thing about that. How­ev­er, I gave him the ad­dress–poste restante, Flo­rence–and I dare­say that some­body will make you out be­fore long, if you are still stop­ping in Flo­rence. I did not like let­ting him go with­out telling you about it, as I thought that a lawyer’s com­ing to you would star­tle you.

‘The bairns are quite well, as I told you in my oth­er let­ter, and Miss Jones says that lit­tle El­ly is as good as gold. They are with me ev­ery morn­ing and evening, and be­have lit­tle dar­ling an­gels, as they are. Posy is my own lit­tle jew­el al­ways. You may be quite sure I do noth­ing to spoil them.–God bless you, dear­est Nel­ly, Your most af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther, ‘SEP­TI­MUS HARD­ING’

Af­ter this he wrote an­oth­er let­ter to his oth­er daugh­ter, Mrs Grant­ly, telling her al­so of Mr Too­good’s vis­it; and then he spent the re­main­der of the day think­ing over the grav­ity of the oc­cur­rence. How ter­ri­ble it would be if a beneficed cler­gy­man in the dio­cese should re­al­ly be found guilty of theft by a ju­ry from the city! And then he had al­ways heard so high a char­ac­ter of this man from his son-​in-​law. No–it was im­pos­si­ble to be­lieve that Mr Craw­ley had in truth stolen a cheque for twen­ty pounds!

Mr Too­good could get no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion in Barch­ester, and went on to Sil­ver­bridge ear­ly in the af­ter­noon. He was half dis­posed to go by Hog­gle­stock and look up his cousin, whom he had nev­er seen, and his cousin’s hus­band, up­on whose busi­ness he was now in­tent; but on re­flec­tion he feared that he might do more harm than good. He had quite ap­pre­ci­at­ed the fact that Mr Craw­ley was not like oth­er men. ‘The man’s not above half-​saved,’ he had said to his wife–mean­ing there­by to in­sin­uate that the poor cler­gy­man was not in full pos­ses­sion of his wits. And, to tell the truth of Mr Too­good, he was a lit­tle afraid of his rel­ative. There was some­thing in Mr Craw­ley’s man­ner, in spite of his de­clared pover­ty, and in spite al­so of his ex­treme hu­mil­ity, which seemed to an­nounce that he ex­pect­ed to be obeyed when he spoke on any point with au­thor­ity. Mr Too­good had not for­got­ten the tone in which Mr Craw­ley had said to him, ‘Sir, this is a thing you can­not do.’ And he thought that, up­on the whole, he had bet­ter not go to Hog­gle­stock on this oc­ca­sion.

When at Sil­ver­bridge, he be­gan at once to ‘rum­mage about’. His chief rum­mag­ing was to be done at Mr Walk­er’s ta­ble; but be­fore din­ner he had time to call up­on the mag­is­trate’s clerk, and ask a few ques­tions as to the pro­ceed­ings at the sit­ting from which Mr Craw­ley was com­mit­ted. He found a very tac­iturn old man, who was near­ly as dif­fi­cult to deal with in any rum­mag­ing pro­cess as a por­cu­pine. But, nev­er­the­less, at last he reached a state of con­ver­sa­tion which was not ab­so­lute­ly hos­tile. Mr Too­good plead­ed that he was the poor man’s cousin–plead­ed that, as the fam­ily lawyer, he was nat­ural­ly the poor man’s pro­tec­tor at such a time as the present–plead­ed al­so that as the poor man was so very poor, no one else could come for­ward on his be­half–and in this way some­what soft­ened the hard sharp­ness of the old por­cu­pine’s quills. But af­ter all this, there was very lit­tle to be learned from the old por­cu­pine. ‘There was not a mag­is­trate on the bench,’ he said, ‘who had any doubt that the ev­idence was suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy them in send­ing the case to the as­sizes. They had all re­gret­ted,’–and the por­cu­pine said in his soft­est mo­ment–’that the gen­tle­man had come there with­out a le­gal ad­vis­er.’ ‘Ah, that’s been the mis­chief of it all!’ said Mr Too­good, dash­ing his hand against the por­cu­pine’s ma­hogany ta­ble. ‘But the facts are so strong, Mr Too­good!’ ‘No­body there to soft­en ‘em down, you know,’ said Mr Too­good, shak­ing his head. Very lit­tle more than this was learned from the por­cu­pine; and then Mr Too­good went away, and pre­pared for Mr Walk­er’s din­ner.

Mr Walk­er had in­vit­ed Dr Tem­pest and Miss Anne Pret­ty­man and Ma­jor Grant­ly to meet Mr Too­good, and had ex­plained, in a man­ner in­tend­ed to be half earnest and half jo­cose, that though Mr Too­good was an at­tor­ney, like him­self, and was at this mo­ment en­gaged in a no­ble way on be­half of his cousin’s hus­band, with­out any idea of re­ceiv­ing back even the mon­ey which he would be out of pock­et, still he wasn’t quite–not quite, you know–’not quite so much of a gen­tle­man as I am’–Mr Walk­er would have said, had he spo­ken out freely that which he in­sin­uat­ed. But he con­tent­ed him­self with the em­pha­sis he put up­on the ‘not quite’, which ex­pressed his mean­ing ful­ly. And Mr Walk­er was cor­rect in his opin­ion of Mr Too­good. As re­gards the two at­tor­neys I will not ven­ture to say that ei­ther of them was not a ‘per­fect gen­tle­man’. A per­fect gen­tle­man is a thing which I can­not de­fine. But un­doubt­ed­ly Mr Walk­er was a big­ger man in his way than was Mr Too­good in his, and did ha­bit­ual­ly con­sort in the coun­ty of Barset­shire with men of high­er stand­ing than those with whom Mr Too­good as­so­ci­at­ed in Lon­don.

It seemed to be un­der­stood that Mr Craw­ley was to be the gen­er­al sub­ject of con­ver­sa­tion, and no one at­tempt­ed to talk about any­thing else. In­deed, at this time, very lit­tle else was talked about in that part of the coun­ty;–not on­ly be­cause of the in­ter­est nat­ural­ly at­tach­ing to the ques­tion of the sus­pect­ed guilt of a parish cler­gy­man, but be­cause much had be­come late­ly known of Mr Craw­ley’s char­ac­ter, and be­cause it was known al­so that an in­ternecine feud had arisen be­tween him and the bish­op. It had un­doubt­ed­ly be­come the gen­er­al opin­ion that Mr Craw­ley had picked up and had used a cheque which was not his own;–that he had, in fact, stolen it; but there was, in spite of that be­lief, a gen­er­al wish that he might be ac­quit­ted and left in his liv­ing. And when the tid­ings of Mr Craw­ley’s vic­to­ry over the bish­op at the palace had be­come bruit­ed about, pop­ular sym­pa­thy went with the vic­tor. The theft was, as it were, con­doned, and peo­ple made ex­cus­es which were not al­ways ra­tio­nal, but which were found­ed on the in­stincts of true hu­man­ity. And now the tid­ings of an­oth­er stage in the bat­tle, as fought against Mr Craw­ley by the bish­op, had gone forth through the coun­ty, and men had heard that the ru­ral dean was to be in­struct­ed to make in­quiries which should be pre­lim­inary to pro­ceed­ings against Mr Craw­ley in an ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal court. Dr Tem­pest, who was now about to meet Mr Too­good at Mr Walk­er’s, was the ru­ral dean to whom Mr Craw­ley would have to sub­mit him­self in any such in­quiry; but Dr Tem­pest had not as yet re­ceived from the bish­op any of­fi­cial or­der on the sub­ject.

‘We are so de­light­ed to think that you have tak­en up your cousin’s case,’ said Mrs Walk­er to Mr Too­good in al­most a whis­per.

‘He is not just my cousin, him­self,’ said Mr Too­good, ‘but of course it’s all the same thing. And as to tak­ing up his case, you see, my dear madam, he won’t let me take it up.’

‘I thought you had. I thought you were down here about it.’

‘On­ly on the sly, Mrs Walk­er. He has such queer ideas that he will not al­low a lawyer to be prop­er­ly em­ployed; and you can’t con­ceive how hard that makes it. Do you know him, Mrs Walk­er?’

‘We know his daugh­ter Grace.’ And then Mrs Walk­er whis­pered some­thing fur­ther, which we may pre­sume to have been in in­ti­ma­tion that the gen­tle­man op­po­site–Ma­jor Grant­ly–was sup­posed by some peo­ple to be very fond of Miss Grace Craw­ley.

‘Quite a child, isn’t she?’ said Too­good, whose own daugh­ter, now about to be mar­ried, was three or four years old­er than Grace.

‘She’s be­yond be­ing a child, I think. Of course she is young.’

‘But I sup­pose this af­fair will knock all that on the head,’ said the lawyer.

‘I do not know how that may be; but they do say he is very much at­tached to her. The ma­jor is a man of fam­ily, and of course it would be very dis­agree­able if Mr Craw­ley were found guilty.’

‘Very dis­agree­able in­deed; but, up­on my word, Mrs Walk­er, I don’t know what to say about it.’

‘You think it will go against him, Mr Too­good?’ Mr Too­good shook his head, and see­ing this, Mrs Walk­er sighed deeply.

‘I can on­ly say that I have noth­ing from the bish­op as yet,’ said Dr Tem­pest, af­ter the ladies had left the room. ‘Of course, if he thinks well to or­der it, the in­quiry will be made.’

‘But how long would it take?’ asked Mr Walk­er.

‘Three months, I should think–or per­haps more. Of course Craw­ley would do all that he could to de­lay us, and I am not at all sure that we should be in any great hur­ry our­selves.’

‘Who are “we”, doc­tor?’ said Mr Walk­er.

‘I can­not make such an in­quiry by my­self, you know. I sup­pose the bish­op would ask me to se­lect two or three oth­er cler­gy­men to act with me. That’s the usu­al way of do­ing it. But you may be quite sure of this, Walk­er; the as­sizes will be over, and the ju­ry have found their ver­dict long be­fore we have set­tled our pre­lim­inar­ies.’

‘And what will the be the good of your go­ing on af­ter that?’

‘On­ly this good:–if the un­for­tu­nate man be con­vict­ed–’

‘Which he won’t’ said Too­good, who thought it ex­pe­di­ent to put on a bold­er front in talk­ing of the mat­ter to the ru­ral dean, than he had as­sumed in his whis­pered con­ver­sa­tion with Mrs Walk­er.

‘I hope not, with all my heart,’ said the doc­tor. ‘But, per­haps, for the sake of the ar­gu­ment, the sup­po­si­tion may be al­lowed to pass.’

‘Cer­tain­ly, sir,’ said Mr Too­good. ‘For the sake of the ar­gu­ment, it may pass.’

‘If he be con­vict­ed, then, I sup­pose, there will be an end of the ques­tion. He would be sen­tenced for not less, I should say, than twelve months; and af­ter that–’

‘And would be as good a par­son of Hog­gle­stock when he came out of prison as when he went in,’ said Mr Walk­er. ‘The con­vic­tion and judg­ment in a civ­il court would not touch his tem­po­ral­ity.’

‘Cer­tain­ly not,’ said Mr Too­good.

‘Of course not,’ said the doc­tor. ‘We all know that; and in the event of Mr Craw­ley com­ing back to his parish it would be open to the bish­op to raise the ques­tion as to his fit­ness for the du­ties.’

‘Why shouldn’t he be as fit as any­one else?’ said Mr Too­good.

‘Sim­ply be­cause he would have been found guilty to be a thief,’ said the doc­tor. ‘You must ex­cuse me, Mr Too­good, but it’s on­ly for the sake of the ar­gu­ment.’

‘I don’t see what that has to do with it,’ said Mr Too­good. ‘He would have un­der­gone his penal­ty.’

‘It is prefer­able that a man who preach­es from a pul­pit should not have un­der­gone such a penal­ty,’ said the doc­tor. ‘But, in prac­tice, un­der such cir­cum­stances–which we none of us an­tic­ipate, Mr Too­good–the liv­ing should no doubt be va­cat­ed. Mr Craw­ley would prob­ably hard­ly wish to come back. The ju­ry will do their work be­fore we can do ours–will do it on much bet­ter base than any we can have; and, when they have done it, the thing ought to be fin­ished. If the ju­ry ac­quit him, the bish­op can­not pro­ceed any fur­ther. If he be found guilty, I think that the res­ig­na­tion of the liv­ing must fol­low.’

‘It is all spite, then, on the bish­op’s part?’ said the ma­jor.

‘Not at all,’ said the doc­tor. ‘The poor man is weak; that is all. He is driv­en to per­se­cute be­cause he can­not es­cape per­se­cu­tion him­self. But it may re­al­ly be a ques­tion whether his present pro­ceed­ing is not right. If I were a bish­op I should wait till the tri­al was over; that is all.’

From this and from much more that was said dur­ing the evening on the same sub­ject, Mr Too­good grad­ual­ly learned the po­si­tion which Mr Craw­ley and the ques­tion of Mr Craw­ley’s guilt re­al­ly held in the coun­ty, and he re­turned to town re­solved to go on with the case.

‘I’ll have a bar­ris­ter down ex­press, and I’ll de­fend him in his own teeth,’ he said to his wife. ‘There’ll be a scene in court, I dare­say, and the man will call up­on his own coun­sel to hold his tongue and shut up his brief; and, as far as I can see, coun­sel in such a case would have no al­ter­na­tive. But there would come an ex­pla­na­tion–how Craw­ley was too hon­ourable to em­ploy a man whom he could not pay, and there would be a ro­mance, and it would all go down with the ju­ry. One wants sym­pa­thy in such a case as that–not ev­idence.’

‘And how much will it cost, Tom?’ said Maria, dole­ful­ly.

‘On­ly a tri­fle. We won’t think of that yet. There’s John Eames is go­ing all the way to Jerusalem, out of his pock­et.’

‘But John­ny hasn’t got twelve chil­dren, Tom.’

‘One doesn’t have a cousin in trou­ble ev­ery day,’ said Too­good. ‘And then you see there’s some­thing very pret­ty in this case. It’s quite a plea­sure get­ting it up.’