The Last Chronicle of Barset

CHAPTER IV

THE CLER­GY­MAN’S HOUSE AT HOG­GLE­STOCK

Mrs Craw­ley had walked from Hog­gle­stock to Sil­ver­bridge on the oc­ca­sion of her vis­it to Mr Walk­er, the at­tor­ney, and had been kind­ly sent back by that gen­tle­man in his wife’s lit­tle open car­riage. The tid­ings which she brought home with her to her hus­band were very grievous. The mag­is­trates would sit on the next Thurs­day–it was then Fri­day–and Mr Craw­ley had bet­ter ap­pear be­fore them to an­swer the charge made by Mr Soames. He would be served with a sum­mons, which he would obey of his own ac­cord. There had been many points very close­ly dis­cussed be­tween Walk­er and Mrs Craw­ley, as to which there had been great dif­fi­cul­ty in the choice of words which should be ten­der enough to con­vey to her the very facts as they stood. Would Mr Craw­ley come, or must a po­lice­man be sent to fetch him? The mag­is­trate had al­ready is­sued a war­rant for his ap­pre­hen­sion. Such in truth was the fact, but they had agreed with Mr Walk­er, that as there was no rea­son­able ground for an­tic­ipat­ing any at­tempt at es­cape on the part of the rev­erend gen­tle­man, the lawyer might use what gen­tle means he could for en­sur­ing the cler­gy­man’s at­ten­dance. Could Mrs Craw­ley un­der­take to say that he would ap­pear? Mrs Craw­ley did un­der­take ei­ther that her hus­band should ap­pear on the Thurs­day, or else that she would send over in the ear­ly part of the week and de­clare her in­abil­ity to en­sure his ap­pear­ance. In that case it was un­der­stood the po­lice­man must come. Then Mr Walk­er had sug­gest­ed that Mr Craw­ley had bet­ter em­ploy a lawyer. Up­on this Mrs Craw­ley had looked be­seech­ing­ly up in­to Mr Walk­er’s face, and had asked him to un­der­take the du­ty. He was of course obliged to ex­plain that he was al­ready em­ployed on the oth­er side. Mr Soames had se­cured his ser­vices, and though he was will­ing to do all in his pow­er to mit­igate the suf­fer­ings of the fam­ily, he could not aban­don the du­ty he had un­der­tak­en. He named an­oth­er at­tor­ney, how­ev­er, and then sent the poor wom­an home in his wife’s car­riage. ‘I fear that un­for­tu­nate man is guilty. I fear he is,’ Mr Walk­er had said to his wife with­in ten min­utes of the de­par­ture of the vis­itor.

Mrs Craw­ley would not al­low her­self to be driv­en up to the gar­den gate be­fore her own house, but had left the car­riage some three hun­dred yards off down the road and from thence she walked home. It was now quite dark. It was near­ly six in the evening on a wet De­cem­ber night, and al­though cloaks and shawls had been sup­plied to her, she was wet and cold when she reached her home. But at such a mo­ment, anx­ious as she was to pre­vent the ad­di­tion­al evil which would come to them from ill­ness to her­self she could not pass through to her room till she had spo­ken to her hus­band. He was sit­ting in the one sit­ting-​room on the left side of the pas­sage as the house was en­tered, and with him was their daugh­ter Jane, a girl now near­ly six­teen years of age. There was no light in the room, and hard­ly more than a spark of fire showed in the grate. The fa­ther was sit­ting on one side of the hearth, in an old arm-​chair, and there he had sat for the last hour with­out speak­ing. His daugh­ter had been in and out of the room, and had en­deav­oured to gain his at­ten­tion now and again by a word, but he had nev­er an­swered her, and had not even no­ticed her pres­ence. At the mo­ment when Mrs Craw­ley’s step was heard up­on the grav­el which led to the door, Jane was kneel­ing be­fore the fire with a hand up­on her fa­ther’s arm. She had tried to get her hand in­to his, but he had ei­ther been un­aware of the at­tempt, or re­ject­ed it.

‘Here is mam­ma, at last,’ said Jane, ris­ing to her feet as her moth­er en­tered the house.

‘Are you all in the dark,’ said Mrs Craw­ley, striv­ing to speak in a voice that should not sound sor­row­ful.

‘Yes, mam­ma; we are in the dark. Pa­pa is here. Oh, mam­ma, how wet you are!’

‘Yes, dear. It is rain­ing. Get a light out of the kitchen, Jane, and I will go up­stairs in two min­utes.’ Then when Jane was gone, the wife made her way in the dark over to her hus­band’s side, and spoke a word to him. ‘Josi­ah,’ she said, ‘will you not speak to me?’

‘What should I speak about? Where have you been?’

‘I have been to Sil­ver­bridge. I have been to Mr Walk­er. He, at any rate, is very kind’

‘I don’t want his kind­ness. I want no man’s kind­ness. Mr Walk­er is the at­tor­ney, I be­lieve. Kind in­deed!’

‘I mean con­sid­er­ate. Josi­ah, let us do the best we can in this trou­ble. We have had oth­ers as heavy be­fore.’

‘But none to crush me as this will crush me. Well; what am I to do? Am I to go to prison–tonight?’ At this mo­ment his daugh­ter re­turned with a can­dle, and the moth­er could not make her an­swer at once. It was a wretched, pover­ty-​strick­en room. By de­grees the car­pet had dis­ap­peared, which had been laid down some nine or ten years since, when they had first come to Hog­gle­stock, and which even then had not been new. Now noth­ing but a poor frag­ment of it re­mained in front of the fire-​place. In the mid­dle of the room there was a ta­ble which had once been large; but one flap of it was gone al­to­geth­er, and the oth­er flap sloped grievous­ly to­wards the floor, the weak­ness of old age hav­ing fall­en in­to its legs. There were two or three small­er ta­bles about, but they stood propped against walls, thence ob­tain­ing a se­cu­ri­ty which their own strength would not give them. At the fur­ther end of the room there was an an­cient piece of fur­ni­ture, which was al­ways called ‘pa­pa’s sec­re­tary’, at which Mr Craw­ley cus­tom­ar­ily sat and wrote his ser­mons, and did all work that was done by him with­in the house. The man who had made it, some time in the last cen­tu­ry, had in­tend­ed it to be a locked guardian for do­mes­tic doc­uments, and the re­cep­ta­cle for all that was most pri­vate in the house of some pa­ter­fa­mil­ias. But be­neath the hands of Mr Craw­ley it al­ways stood open; and with the ex­cep­tion of the small space at which he wrote, was cov­ered with dog’s-​eared books, from near­ly all of which the cov­ers had dis­ap­peared.

There were there two odd vol­umes of Eu­ripi­des, a Greek Tes­ta­ment, an Odyssey, a duodec­imo Pin­dar, and a minia­ture Anacre­on. There was half a Ho­race–the two first books of the Odes at the be­gin­ning and the De Arte Po­et­ica at the end hav­ing dis­ap­peared. There was a lit­tle bit of a vol­ume of Ci­cero, and there were Cae­sar’s ‘Com­men­taries’ in two vol­umes, so stout­ly bound that they had de­fied the com­bined ill-​us­age of time and the Craw­ley fam­ily. All these were piled up­on the sec­re­tary, with many oth­ers–odd vol­umes of ser­mons and the like; but the Greek and Latin lay at the top, and showed signs of fre­quent use. There was one arm-​chair in the room–a Wind­sor chair, as such used to be called, made soft by an old cush­ion in the back, in which Mr Craw­ley sat when both he and his wife were in the room, and Mrs Craw­ley when he was ab­sent. And there was an old horse­hair so­fa–now al­most de­nud­ed of its horse­hair–but that, like the ta­bles re­quired the as­sis­tance of a friend­ly wall. Then there was a half a dozen of oth­er chairs–all of dif­fer­ent sorts–and they com­plet­ed the fur­ni­ture of the room. It was not such a room as one would wish to see in­hab­it­ed by an beneficed cler­gy­man of the Church of Eng­land; but they who know what mon­ey will do and what it will not, will un­der­stand how eas­ily a man with a fam­ily, and with a hun­dred and thir­ty pounds a year, may be brought to the need of in­hab­it­ing such a cham­ber. When it is re­mem­bered that three pounds of meat a day, at ninepence a pound, will cost over forty pounds a year, there need be no dif­fi­cul­ty in un­der­stand­ing that it may be so. Bread for such a fam­ily must cost at least twen­ty-​five pounds. Clothes for five per­sons of whom one must at any rate wear the rai­ment of a gen­tle­man, can hard­ly be found for less than ten pounds a year a head. Then there re­mains fif­teen pounds for tea, sug­ar, beer, wages, ed­uca­tion, amuse­ments and the like. In such cir­cum­stances a gen­tle­man can hard­ly pay much for the re­new­al of fur­ni­ture!

Mrs Craw­ley could not an­swer her hus­band’s ques­tion be­fore her daugh­ter, and was there­fore obliged to make an­oth­er ex­cuse for again send­ing her out of the room. ‘Jane, dear,’ she said, ‘bring my things down to the kitchen and I will change them by the fire. I will be there in two min­utes, when I have had a word with your pa­pa.’ The girl went im­me­di­ate­ly and then Mrs Craw­ley an­swered her hus­band’s ques­tion. ‘No, my dear; there is no ques­tion of you go­ing to prison.’

‘But there will be.’

‘I have un­der­tak­en that you shall at­tend be­fore the mag­is­trates at Sil­ver­bridge in Thurs­day next, at twelve o’clock. You will do that?’

‘Do it! You mean, I sup­pose, to say that I must go there. Is any­body to come and fetch me?’

‘No­body will come. On­ly you must promise that you will be there. I have promised for you. You will go; will you not?’ She stood lean­ing over him, half em­brac­ing him, wait­ing for an an­swer; but for a while he gave none. ‘You will tell me that you will do what I have un­der­tak­en for you, Josi­ah?’

‘I think I would rather that they fetched me. I think that I will not go my­self.’

‘And have po­lice­men come for you in the parish! Mr Walk­er has promised that he will send over his phaeton. He sent me home in it to­day.’

‘I want no­body’s phaeton. If I go I will walk. If it were ten times the dis­tance, and though I had not a shoe left to my feet I would walk. If I go there at all, of my own ac­cord, I will walk there.’

‘But you will go?’

‘What do I care for the parish? What mat­ters who sees me now? I can­not be de­grad­ed as worse than I am. Ev­ery­body knows it.’

‘There is no dis­grace with­out guilt,’ said his wife.

‘Ev­ery­body thinks me guilty. I see it in their eyes. The chil­dren know of it, and I hear whis­pers in the school. “Mr Craw­ley has tak­en some mon­ey.” I heard the girl say it my­self.’

‘What mat­ters what the girl says?’

‘And yet you would have me go in a fine car­riage to Sil­ver­bridge, as though to a wed­ding. If I am want­ed let them take me as they would an­oth­er. I shall be here for them–un­less I am dead.’

At this mo­ment Jane ap­peared, press­ing her moth­er to take off her wet clothes, and Mrs Craw­ley went with her daugh­ter to the kitchen. The one red-​armed young girl who was their on­ly ser­vant was sent away, and then the moth­er and the child dis­cussed how best they might pre­vail on the head of the fam­ily. ‘But, mam­ma, it must come right; must it not?’

‘I trust it will; I think it will. But I can­not see my way as yet.’

‘Pa­pa can­not have done any­thing wrong.’

‘No, my dear; he has done noth­ing wrong. He has made great mis­takes, it is hard to make peo­ple un­der­stand that he has not in­ten­tion­al­ly spo­ken un­truths. He is ev­er think­ing of oth­er things, about the school, and his ser­mons, and he does not re­mem­ber.’

‘And about how poor we are, mam­ma.’

‘He has much to oc­cu­py his mind, and he for­gets things which dwell in the mem­ory of oth­er peo­ple. He said that he had got this mon­ey from Mr Soames, and of course he thought it was so.’

‘And where did he get it, mam­ma?’

‘Ah–I wish I knew. I should have said that I had seen ev­ery shilling that came in­to the house; but I know noth­ing of this cheque–whence it came.’

‘But will not pa­pa tell you?’

‘He would tell me if he knew. He thinks it came from the dean.’

‘And are you sure that it did not?’

‘Yes; quite sure; as sure as I can be of any­thing. The dean told me he would give him fifty pounds, and the fifty pounds came. I had them in my own hands. And he was writ­ten to say that it was so.’

‘But couldn’t it be part of the fifty pounds?’

‘No, dear, no.’

‘Then where did pa­pa get it? Per­haps he picked it up and has for­got­ten?’

To this Mrs Craw­ley made no re­ply. The idea that the cheque had been found by her hus­band–had been picked up as Jane had said–had oc­curred al­so to Jane’s moth­er. Mr Soames was con­fi­dent that he had dropped the pock­et-​book at the par­son­age. Mrs Craw­ley had al­ways dis­liked Mr Soames, think­ing him to be hard, cru­el and vul­gar. She would not have hes­itat­ed to be­lieve him guilty of a false­hood, or even of di­rect dis­hon­esty, if by so be­liev­ing she could in her own mind have found the means of rec­on­cil­ing her hus­band’s pos­ses­sion of the cheque with ab­so­lute truth on his part. But she could not do so. Even though Soames had, with dev­il­ish pre­med­itat­ed mal­ice, slipped the cheque in­to her hus­band’s pock­et, his hav­ing done so would not ac­count for her hus­band’s hav­ing used the cheque when he found it there. She was driv­en to make ex­cus­es for him which, valid as they might be with her­self, could not be valid with oth­ers. He had said that Soames had paid the cheque to him. That was clear­ly a mis­take. He had said that the cheque had been giv­en to him by the dean. That was clear­ly an­oth­er mis­take. She knew, or thought she knew, that he, be­ing such as he was, might make blun­ders such as these, and yet be true. She be­lieved that such state­ments might be blun­ders and not false­hoods–so con­vinced was she that her hus­band’s mind would not act at all times as do the minds of oth­er men. But hav­ing such a con­vic­tion she was driv­en to be­lieve al­so that al­most any­thing might be pos­si­ble. Soames may have been right, or he might have dropped, not the book, but the cheque. She had no dif­fi­cul­ty in pre­sum­ing Soames to be wrong in any de­tail, if by so sup­pos­ing she could make the ex­cul­pa­tion of her hus­band eas­ier to her­self. If vil­lainy on the part of Soames was need­ful to her the­ory, Soames would be­come to her a vil­lain at once–of the black­est die. Might it not be pos­si­ble that the cheque hav­ing thus fall­en in­to her hus­band’s hands, he had come, af­ter a while, to think that it had been sent to him by his friend, the dean? And if it were so, would it be pos­si­ble to make oth­ers so be­lieve? That there was some mis­take which would be eas­ily ex­plained were her hus­band’s mind lu­cid at all points, but which she could not ex­plain be­cause of the dark­ness of his mind, she was thor­ough­ly con­vinced. But were she her­self to put for­ward such a de­fence on her hus­band’s part, she would in do­ing so be driv­en to say that he was a lu­natic–that he was in­ca­pable of man­ag­ing the af­fairs of him­self or his fam­ily. It seemed to her that she would be com­pelled to have him proved to be ei­ther a thief or a mad­man. And yet she knew that he was nei­ther. That he was not a thief was as clear to her as the sun at noon­day. Could she have lain on this man’s bo­som for twen­ty years, and not yet have learned the se­crets of the heart be­neath? The whole mind of the man was, as she told her­self, with­in her grasp. He might have tak­en the twen­ty pounds; he might have tak­en it and spent it, though it was not his own; but yet he was no thief. Nor was he a mad­man. No man more sane in preach­ing the gospel of his Lord, in mak­ing in­tel­li­gi­ble to the ig­no­rant the promis­es of his Saviour, ev­er got in­to a parish pul­pit, or taught in a parish school. The in­tel­lect of the man was as clear as run­ning wa­ter in all things not ap­per­tain­ing to his dai­ly life, and its dif­fi­cul­ties. He could be log­ical with a vengeance–so log­ical as to cause in­fi­nite trou­ble to his wife, who, with all her good sense, was not log­ical. And he had Greek at his fin­gers’ ends–as his daugh­ter very well knew. And even to this day he would some­times re­cite to them En­glish po­et­ry, lines af­ter lines, stan­zas up­on stan­zas, in a sweet low melan­choly voice, on long win­ter evenings when oc­ca­sion­al­ly the bur­den of his trou­bles would be lighter to him than was usu­al. Books in Latin and in French he read with as much ease as in En­glish, and took de­light in such as came to him, when he would con­de­scend to ac­cept such loans from the dean­ery. And there was at times a light­ness of heart about the man. In the course of the last win­ter he had trans­lat­ed in­to Greek ir­reg­ular verse the very no­ble bal­lad of Lord Bate­man, main­tain­ing the rhythm and the rhyme, and had re­peat­ed it with un­couth glee till his daugh­ter knew it all by heart. And when there had come to him a five-​pound note from some ad­mir­ing mag­azine ed­itor as the price of the same–still through the dean’s hands–he had bright­ened up his heart and had thought for an hour or two that even yet the world would smile up­on him. His wife knew well that he was not mad; but yet she knew that there were dark mo­ments with him, in which his mind was so much astray that he could not just­ly be called to ac­count as to what he might re­mem­ber and what he might for­get. How would it be pos­si­ble to ex­plain all this to a judge and ju­ry, so that they might nei­ther say that he was dis­hon­est, nor yet that he was mad?

‘Per­haps he picked it up, and had for­got­ten,’ her daugh­ter said to her. Per­haps it was so, but she might not as yet ad­mit as much even to her child.

‘It is a mys­tery, dear, as yet, which, with God’s aid, will be un­rav­elled. Of one thing we at least may be sure; that your pa­pa has not wil­ful­ly done any­thing wrong.’

‘Of course we are sure of that, mam­ma.’

Mrs Craw­ley had many trou­bles dur­ing the next four or five days, of which the worst, per­haps, had ref­er­ence to the ser­vices of the Sun­day which in­ter­vened be­tween the day of her vis­it to Sil­ver­bridge and the sit­ting of the mag­is­trates. On the Sat­ur­day it was nec­es­sary that he should pre­pare his ser­mons, of which he preached two ev­ery Sun­day, though his con­gre­ga­tion con­sist­ed on­ly of farm­ers, brick­mak­ers, and agri­cul­tur­al labour­ers, who would will­ing­ly have dis­pensed with the sec­ond. Mrs Craw­ley pro­posed to send over to Mr Ro­barts, a neigh­bour­ing cler­gy­man, for the loan of a cu­rate. Mr Ro­barts was a warm friend to the Craw­leys, and in such an emer­gen­cy would prob­ably have come him­self; but Mr Craw­ley would not hear of it. The dis­cus­sion took place ear­ly on the Sat­ur­day morn­ing, be­fore it was as yet day­light, for the poor wom­an was think­ing day and night of her hus­band’s trou­bles, and it had this good ef­fect, that im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter break­fast he seat­ed him­self at his desk, and worked at his task as though he had for­got­ten all else in the world.

And on the Sun­day morn­ing he went in­to his school be­fore the hour of the church ser­vice, as had been his wont, and taught there as though ev­ery­thing with him was as usu­al. Some of the chil­dren were ab­sent, hav­ing heard of their teach­er’s tribu­la­tion, and hav­ing been told prob­ably that he would re­mit his work; and for these ab­sent ones he sent in great anger. The poor bairns came creep­ing in, for he was a man who by his man­ners had been able to se­cure their obe­di­ence in spite of his pover­ty. And he preached to the peo­ple of his parish on that Sun­day, as he had al­ways preached; ea­ger­ly, clear­ly, and with an elo­quence fit­ted for the hearts of such an au­di­ence. No one would have guessed from his tones and ges­tures and ap­pear­ance on that oc­ca­sion, that there was aught wrong with him–un­less there had been some ob­serv­er keen enough to per­ceive that the greater care which he used, and the spe­cial ea­ger­ness of his words, de­not­ed a spe­cial frame of mind.

Af­ter that, af­ter those church ser­vices were over, he sank again and nev­er roused him­self till the dread­ed day had come.