The Last Chronicle of Barset

CHAPTER LXXIII

THERE IS COM­FORT AT PLUM­STEAD

Hen­ry Grant­ly had writ­ten the fol­low­ing short let­ter to Mrs Grant­ly when he had made up his mind to pull down the auc­tion­eer’s bills. ‘DEAR MOTH­ER–I have post­poned the sale, not lik­ing to refuse you any­thing. As far as I can see, I shall be forced to leave Cos­by Lodge, as I cer­tain­ly shall do all I can to make Grace Craw­ley my wife. I say this that there may be no mis­un­der­stand­ing with my fa­ther. The auc­tion­eer has promised to have the bills re­moved.–Your af­fec­tion­ate son, HEN­RY GRANT­LY’

This had been writ­ten by the ma­jor on the Fri­day be­fore Mr Walk­er had brought up to him the tid­ings of Mr Too­good and Mrs Ara­bin’s so­lu­tion of the Craw­ley dif­fi­cul­ty; but it did not reach Plum­stead till the fol­low­ing morn­ing. Mrs Grant­ly im­me­di­ate­ly took the glad news about the sale to her hus­band–not of course show­ing him the let­ter, be­ing far too wise for that, and giv­ing him cred­it for be­ing too wise to ask for it. ‘Hen­ry has ar­ranged with the auc­tion­eer,’ she said joy­ful­ly; ‘and the bills have been all pulled down.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve just heard from him. He has told me so. Come, my dear, let me have the plea­sure of hear­ing you say that things shall be pleas­ant again be­tween you and him. He has yield­ed.’

‘I don’t see much yield­ing in it.’

‘He has done what you want­ed. What more can he do?’

‘I want him to come over here, and take an in­ter­est in things, and not treat me as though I were a no­body.’ With­in an hour of this the ma­jor had ar­rived at Plum­stead, laden with the sto­ry of Mrs Ara­bin and the cheque, and of Mr Craw­ley’s in­no­cence–laden not on­ly with such tid­ings as he had re­ceived from Mr Walk­er, but al­so with fur­ther de­tails, which had re­ceived from Mr Too­good. For he had come through Barch­ester, and had seen Mr Too­good on his way. This was on the Sat­ur­day morn­ing, and he had break­fast­ed with Mr Too­good at ‘The Drag­on of Want­ly’. Mr Too­good had told him of his sus­pi­cions–how the red-​nosed man had been stopped and had been sum­moned as a wit­ness for Mr Craw­ley’s tri­al–and how he was now un­der surveil­lance of the po­lice. Grant­ly had not cared very much about the red-​nosed man, con­fin­ing his present so­lic­itude to the ques­tion whether Grace Craw­ley’s fa­ther would cer­tain­ly be shown to have been in­no­cent of the theft. ‘There’s not a doubt about it, ma­jor,’ said Mr Too­good; ‘no a doubt on earth. But we’d bet­ter be a lit­tle qui­et till your aunt comes home–just a lit­tle qui­et.’ In spite of his de­sire for qui­es­cence Mr Too­good con­sent­ed to a rev­ela­tion be­ing at once made to the archdea­con and Mrs Grant­ly. ‘And I’ll tell you what, ma­jor; as soon as ev­er Mrs Ara­bin is here, and has giv­en us her own word to act on, you and I will go over to Hog­gle­stock and as­ton­ish them. I should like to go my­self, be­cause, you see, Mrs Craw­ley is my cousin, and we have tak­en a lit­tle trou­ble about this mat­ter.’ To this the ma­jor as­sent­ed; but he al­to­geth­er de­clined to as­sist in Mr Too­good’s spec­ula­tions re­spect­ing the un­for­tu­nate Dan Stringer. It was agreed be­tween them that for the present no vis­it should be made to the palace, as it was thought that Mr Thum­ble had bet­ter be al­lowed to go to Hog­gle­stock du­ties on the next Sun­day. As mat­ters went, how­ev­er, Mr Thum­ble did not do so. He had paid his last vis­it to Hog­gle­stock.

It may be as well to ex­plain here that the un­for­tu­nate Mr Snap­per was con­strained to go out to Hog­gle­stock on the Sun­day which was now ap­proach­ing–which fell out as fol­lows. It might be all very well for Mr Too­good to ar­range that he would not tell this per­son or that per­son of the news which he had brought down from Lon­don; but as he had told the po­lice at Barch­ester, of course the tale found its way to the palace. Mr Thum­ble heard it, and hav­ing come by this time thor­ough­ly to hate Hog­gle­stock and all that be­longed to it, he plead­ed to Mr Snap­per that this re­port of­fered am­ple rea­son why he need not again vis­it that de­test­ed parish. Mr Snap­per did not see it in the same light. ‘You may be sure Mr Craw­ley will not get in­to the pul­pit af­ter his res­ig­na­tion, Mr Thum­ble.’

‘His res­ig­na­tion means noth­ing,’ said Thum­ble.

‘It means a great deal,’ said Snap­per; ‘and the du­ties must be pro­vid­ed for.’

‘I won’t pro­vide for them,’ said Thum­ble; ‘and so you may tell the bish­op.’ In these days Mr Thum­ble was very an­gry with the bish­op, for the bish­op had not yet seen him since the death of Mrs Proudie.

Mr Snap­per had no al­ter­na­tive but to go to the bish­op. The bish­op in these days was very mild to those whom he saw, giv­en but to few words, and a lit­tle astray–as though he had had one of his limbs cut off–as Mr Snap­per ex­pressed it to Mrs Snap­per. ‘I shouldn’t won­der if he felt as though all his limbs were cut off,’ said Mrs Snap­per; ‘you must give him time, and he’ll come round by-​and-​by.’ I am in­clined to think that Mrs Snap­per’s opin­ion of the bish­op’s feel­ings and con­di­tion was cor­rect. In his dif­fi­cul­ty re­spect­ing Hog­gle­stock and Mr Thum­ble, Mr Snap­per went to the bish­op, and spoke per­haps a lit­tle too harsh­ly of Mr Thum­ble.

‘I think, up­on the whole, Snap­per, that you had bet­ter go your­self,’ said the bish­op.

‘Do you think so, my lord?’ said Snap­per. ‘It will be in­con­ve­nient.’

‘Ev­ery­thing is in­con­ve­nient; but you’d bet­ter go. And look here, Snap­per, if I were you, I wouldn’t say any­thing out at Hog­gle­stock about the cheque. We don’t know what it may come to yet.’ Mr Snap­per, with a heavy heart, left his pa­tron, not at all lik­ing the task that was be­fore him. But his wife en­cour­aged him to be obe­di­ent. He was the own­er of a one-​horse car­riage, and the work was not, there­fore, so hard to him as it would have been and had been to poor Mr Thum­ble. And, more­over, his wife promised to go with him. Mr Snap­per and Mrs Snap­per did go over to Hog­gle­stock, and the du­ty was done. Mrs Snap­per spoke a word or two to Mrs Craw­ley, and Mr Snap­per spoke a word or two to Mr Craw­ley; but not a word was said about the news as to Mr Soames’s cheque, which was now al­most cur­rent in Barch­ester. In­deed, no whis­per about it had as yet reached Hog­gle­stock.

‘One word with you, rev­erend sir,’ said Mr Craw­ley to the chap­lain, as the lat­ter was com­ing out of the church, ‘as to the parish work, sir, dur­ing the week–I should be glad if you would favour me with your opin­ion.’

‘About what Mr Craw­ley?’

‘Whether you think that I may be al­lowed, with­out scan­dal, to vis­it the sick–and to give in­struc­tion in the school.’

‘Sure­ly–sure­ly, Mr Craw­ley. Why not?’

‘Mr Thum­ble gave me to un­der­stand that the bish­op was very ur­gent that I should in­ter­fere in no way in the min­is­tra­tions of the parish. Twice he did en­join on me that I should not in­ter­fere–un­nec­es­sar­ily, as it seemed to me.’

‘Quite un­nec­es­sary,’ said Mr Snap­per. ‘And the bish­op will be obliged to you, Mr Craw­ley, if you’ll just see that things go on all straight.’

‘I wish it were pos­si­ble to know with ac­cu­ra­cy what his idea of straight­ness is,’ said Mr Craw­ley to his wife. ‘It may be that things are straight to him when they are buried as it were out of sight, and put away with­out trou­ble. I hope it be not so with the bish­op.’ When he went in­to his school and re­mem­bered–as he did re­mem­ber through ev­ery minute of his teach­ing–that he was to re­ceive no por­tion of the poor stipend which was al­lot­ted for the cler­ical du­ties of the parish, he told him­self that there was gross in­jus­tice in the way in which things were be­ing made straight at Hog­gle­stock.

But we must go back to the ma­jor and the archdea­con at Plum­stead–in which com­fort­able parish things were gen­er­al­ly made straight more eas­ily than at Hog­gle­stock. Hen­ry Grant­ly went over from Barch­ester to Plum­stead in a gig from the ‘The Drag­on’, and made his way at once in­to his fa­ther’s study. The archdea­con was seat­ed there with sundry manuscripts be­fore him, and with one half-​fin­ished manuscript–as was his wont on ev­ery Sat­ur­day morn­ing. ‘Hal­lo, Har­ry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ex­pect you in the least.’ It was bare­ly an hour since he had told Mrs Grant­ly that his com­plaint against his son was that he wouldn’t come and make him­self com­fort­able at the rec­to­ry.

‘Fa­ther,’ said he, giv­ing the archdea­con his hand, ‘you have heard noth­ing yet about Mr Craw­ley?’

‘No,’ said the archdea­con, jump­ing up; ‘noth­ing new;–what is it?’ Many ideas about Mr Craw­ley at that mo­ment flit­ted across the archdea­con’s mind. Could it be that the un­for­tu­nate man had com­mit­ted sui­cide, over­come by his trou­bles?

‘It has all come out. He got the cheque from my aunt.’

‘From your aunt Eleanor?’

‘Yes; from my aunt Eleanor. She has tele­graphed over from Venice to say that she gave the iden­ti­cal cheque to Craw­ley. That is all we know at present–ex­cept that she has writ­ten an ac­count of the mat­ter to you, and that she will be here her­self as quick as she can come.’

‘Who got the mes­sage, Hen­ry?’

‘Craw­ley’s lawyer–a fel­low named Too­good, a cousin of his wife’s–a very de­cent fel­low,’ added the ma­jor, re­mem­ber­ing how nec­es­sary it was that he should rec­on­cile his fa­ther to all the Craw­ley be­long­ings. ‘He’s to be over here on Mon­day, and then will ar­range what is to be done.’

‘Done in what way, Hen­ry?’

‘There’s a great deal to be done yet. Craw­ley does not know him­self at this mo­ment how the cheque got in­to his hands. He must be told and some­thing must be set­tled about the liv­ing. They’ve tak­en the liv­ing away from him among them. And then the in­dict­ment must be quashed, or some­thing of that kind done. Too­good has got hold of the scoundrel at Barch­ester who re­al­ly stole the cheque from Soames;–or thinks he has. It’s that Dan Stringer.’

‘He’s got hold of a reg­ular scamp, then. I nev­er knew any good of Dan Stringer,’ said the archdea­con.

Then Mrs Grant­ly was told, and the whole sto­ry was re­peat­ed again, with many ex­pres­sions of com­mis­er­ation in ref­er­ence to all the Craw­leys. The archdea­con did not join in these at first, be­ing rather shy on that head. It was very hard for him to have to speak to his son about the Craw­leys as though they were peo­ple in all re­spects es­timable and well-​con­duct­ed, and sat­is­fac­to­ry. Mrs Grant­ly un­der­stood this so well, that ev­ery now and then she said some half-​laugh­ing word re­spect­ing Mr Craw­ley’s pe­cu­liar­ities, feel­ing that in this way she might ease her hus­band’s dif­fi­cul­ties. ‘He must be the odd­est man that ev­er lived,’ said Mrs Grant­ly, ‘not to have known where he got the cheque.’ The archdea­con shook his head, and rubbed his hands as he walked about the room. ‘I sup­pose too much learn­ing has up­set him,’ said the archdea­con. ‘They say he’s not very good at talk­ing En­glish, but put him in Greek and he nev­er stops.’

The archdea­con was per­fect­ly aware that he had to ad­mit Mr Craw­ley to his good­will, and that as for Grace Craw­ley–it was es­sen­tial­ly nec­es­sary that she should be ad­mit­ted to his heart of hearts. He had promised as much. It must be ac­knowl­edged that Archdea­con Grant­ly al­ways kept his promis­es, and es­pe­cial­ly such promis­es as these. And in­deed it was the na­ture of the man that when he had been an­gry with those he loved, he should be un­hap­py till he had found some es­cape from his anger. He could not en­dure to have to own to him­self that he had been wrong, but he could be con­tent with a very in­com­plete recog­ni­tion of his hav­ing been in the right. The posters had been pulled down and Mr Craw­ley, as he was now told, had not stolen the cheque. That was suf­fi­cient. If his son would on­ly drink a glass or two of wine with him com­fort­ably, and talk du­ti­ful­ly about the Plum­stead fox­es, all should be held to be right, and Grace Craw­ley should be re­ceived with lav­ish pa­ter­nal em­braces. The archdea­con had kissed Grace once, and he felt that he could do so again with­out an un­pleas­ant strain up­on his feel­ings.

‘Say some­thing to your fa­ther about the prop­er­ty af­ter din­ner,’ said Mrs Grant­ly to her son when they were alone to­geth­er.

‘About what prop­er­ty?’

‘About this prop­er­ty, or any prop­er­ty; you know what I mean;–some­thing to show that you are in­ter­est­ed about his af­fairs. He is do­ing the best he can to make things right.’ Af­ter din­ner, over the claret, Mr Thorne’s ter­ri­ble sin in ref­er­ence to the trap­ping of fox­es was ac­cord­ing­ly again brought up, and the archdea­con be­came beau­ti­ful­ly irate, and ex­pressed his an­imos­ity–which he did not in the least feel–against an old friend with an en­er­gy which would have de­light­ed his wife, if she could have heard him. ‘I shall tell Thorne my mind, cer­tain­ly. He and I are very old friends; we have known each oth­er all our lives; but I can­not put up with this kind of thing–and I will not. It’s all be­cause he’s afraid of his own game­keep­er.’ And yet the archdea­con had nev­er rid­den af­ter a fox in his life, and nev­er meant to do so; nor had in truth been al­ways so very anx­ious that fox­es should be found in his cov­ers. That fox which had been so for­tu­nate­ly trapped just out­side the Plum­stead prop­er­ty af­ford­ed a most pleas­ant es­cape for the steam of his anger. When he be­gan to talk to his wife about Mr Thorne’s wicked game­keep­er, she was so sure that all was right, that she said a word of her ex­treme de­sire to see Grace Craw­ley.

‘If he’s to mar­ry her, we might as well have her over here,’ said the archdea­con.

‘That’s just what I was think­ing,’ said Mrs Grant­ly. And thus things at the rec­to­ry got them­selves ar­ranged.

On the Sun­day morn­ing the ex­pect­ed let­ter from Venice came to hand, and was read on that morn­ing very anx­ious­ly, not on­ly by Mrs Grant­ly and the ma­jor, but by the archdea­con al­so, in spite of the sanc­ti­ty of the day. In­deed the archdea­con had been very stout­ly an­ti-​sab­batar­ial when the ques­tion of stop­ping the Sun­day post to Plum­stead had been moot­ed in the vil­lage, giv­ing those who on that oc­ca­sion were the spe­cial friends of the post­man to un­der­stand that he con­sid­ered them to be numb­skulls, and lit­tle bet­ter than id­iots. The post­man, find­ing the par­son to be against him, had seen that there was no chance for him, and had al­lowed the mat­ter to drop. Mrs Ara­bin’s let­ter was long and ea­ger, and full of rep­eti­tions, but it did ex­plain clear­ly to him the ex­act man­ner in which the cheque had found its way in­to Mr Craw­ley’s hand. ‘Fran­cis came up to me,’ she said in her let­ter–Fran­cis be­ing her hus­band, the dean–’and asked me for the mon­ey, which I had promised to make up in a pack­et. The pack­et was not ready, and he would not wait, declar­ing that Mr Craw­ley was in such a flur­ry that he did not like to leave him. I was there­fore to bring it down to the door. I went to my desk, and think­ing that I could spare the twen­ty pounds as well as the fifty, I put the cheque in­to the en­ve­lope, to­geth­er with the notes, and hand­ed the pack­et to Fran­cis at the door. I think I told Fran­cis af­ter­wards that I put sev­en­ty pounds in­to the en­ve­lope, in­stead of fifty, but of this I will not be sure. At any rate Mr Craw­ley got Mr Soames’s cheque from me.’ These last words she un­der­scored, and then went on to ex­plain how the cheque had been paid to her a short time be­fore by Dan Stringer.

‘Then Too­good was right about the fel­low,’ said the archdea­con.

‘I hope they’ll hang him,’ said Mrs Grant­ly. ‘He must have known all the time what dread­ful mis­ery he was bring­ing up­on this un­for­tu­nate fam­ily.’

‘I don’t sup­pose Dan Stringer cared much about that,’ said the ma­jor.

‘Not a straw,’ said the archdea­con, and then all hur­ried off to church; and the archdea­con preached the ser­mon in the fab­ri­ca­tion of which he had been in­ter­rupt­ed by his son, and which there­fore bare­ly en­abled him to turn a quar­ter of an hour from the giv­ing out of his text. It was his con­stant prac­tice to preach for a full twen­ty min­utes.

As Barch­ester lay on the di­rect road from Plum­stead to Hog­gle­stock, it was thought well that word should be sent to Mr Too­good, de­sir­ing him not to come out to Plum­stead on the Mon­day morn­ing. Ma­jor Grant­ly pro­posed to call for him at the ‘Drag­on’, and to take him from thence to Hog­gle­stock. ‘You had bet­ter take your moth­er’s hors­es all through,’ said the archdea­con. The dis­tance was very near­ly twen­ty miles, and it was felt by both the moth­er and the son, that the archdea­con must be in a good hu­mour when he made such a propo­si­tion as that. It was not of­ten that the rec­to­ry car­riage-​hors­es were al­lowed to make long jour­neys. A run in­to Barch­ester and back, which was al­to­geth­er un­der ten miles, was gen­er­al­ly the ex­tent of their work. ‘I meant to have post­ed from Barch­ester,’ said the ma­jor. ‘You may as well take the hors­es through,’ said the archdea­con. ‘Your moth­er will not want them. And I sup­pose you might as well bring your friend Too­good back to din­ner. We’ll give him a bed.’

‘He must be a good sort of man,’ said Mrs Grant­ly; ‘for I sup­pose he has done this all for love?’

‘Yes; and spent a lot of mon­ey out of his own pock­et too!’ said the ma­jor en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. ‘And the joke of it is, that he has been de­fend­ing Craw­ley in Craw­ley’s teeth. Mr Craw­ley had re­fused to em­ploy coun­sel; but Too­good had made up his mind to have a bar­ris­ter, on pur­pose that there might be a fuss about it in court. He thought that it would tell with the ju­ry in Craw­ley’s favour.’

‘Bring him here, and we’ll hear all about that from him­self,’ said the archdea­con. The ma­jor, be­fore he start­ed, told his moth­er that he should call at Fram­ley Par­son­age on his way back; but he said noth­ing on this sub­ject to his fa­ther.

‘I’ll write to her in a day or two,’ said Mrs Grant­ly, ‘and we’ll have things set­tled pleas­ant­ly.’