The Last Chronicle of Barset (73 page)

Even Mrs Walker and her daughter, and the Miss Prettymans, had so far given way that they had ceased to asseverate their belief in Mr Crawley's innocence. They contented themselves now with simply expressing a hope that he would be acquitted by a jury, and that when he should be so acquitted the thing might be allowed to rest. If he had sinned, no doubt he had repented. And then there were serious debates whether he might not have stolen the money without much sin, being mad or half-mad – touched with madness when he took it; and whether he might not, in spite of such temporary touch of madness, be well fitted for his parish duties. Sorrow had afflicted him grievously; but that sorrow, though it had incapacitated him for the management of his own affairs, had not rendered him unfit for the ministrations of his parish. Such were the arguments now used in his favour by the women around him; and the men were not keen to contradict them. The wish that he should be acquitted and allowed to remain in his parsonage was very general.

When therefore it became known that the bishop had decided to put on foot another investigation, with the view of bringing Mr Crawley's conduct under ecclesiastical condemnation, almost everybody accused the bishop of persecution. The world of the diocese declared that Mrs Proudie was at work, and that the bishop himself was no better than a puppet. It was in vain that certain clear-headed men among the clergy, of whom Dr Tempest himself was one, pointed out that the bishop after all might perhaps be right – that if Mr Crawley were guilty, and if he should be found to have been so by a jury, it might be absolutely necessary that an ecclesiastical court should take some cognisance of the crime beyond that taken by the civil law. ‘The jury,' said Dr Tempest, discussing the case with Mr Robarts and other clerical neighbours – ‘the jury may probably find him guilty and recommend him to mercy. The judge will have heard his character, and will have been made acquainted with his manner of life, and will deal as lightly with the case as the law will allow him. For aught I know he may be imprisoned for a month. I wish it might
be for no more than a day – or an hour. But when he comes out from this month's imprisonment – how then? Surely it should be a case for ecclesiastical inquiry, whether a clergyman who has committed a theft should be allowed to go into his pulpit directly he comes out of prison?' But the answer to this was that Mr Crawley always had been a good clergyman, was a good clergyman at this moment, and would be a good clergyman when he did come out of prison.

But Dr Tempest, though he had argued in this way, was by no means eager for the commencement of the commission over which he was to be called upon to preside. In spite of such arguments as the above, which came from the man's head when his head was brought to bear upon the matter, there was a thorough desire within his heart to oppose the bishop. He had no strong sympathy with Mr Crawley, as had others. He would have had Mr Crawley silenced without regret, presuming Mr Crawley to have been guilty. But he had a much stronger feeling with regard to the bishop. Had there been any question of silencing the bishop – could it have been possible to take any steps in that direction – he would have been very active. It may therefore be understood that in spite of his defence of the bishop's present proceedings as to the commission, he was anxious that the bishop should fail, and anxious to put impediments in the bishop's way, should it appear to him that he could do so with justice. Dr Tempest was well known among his parishioners to be hard and unsympathetic, some said unfeeling also, and cruel; but it was admitted by those who disliked him the most that he was both practical and just, and that he cared for the welfare of many, though he was rarely touched by the misery of one. Such was the man who was rector of Silverbridge and rural dean in the district, and who was now called upon by the bishop to assist him in making further inquiry as to this wretched cheque for twenty pounds.

Once at this period Archdeacon Grantly and Dr Tempest met each other and discussed the question of Mr Crawley's guilt. Both these men were inimical to the present bishop of the diocese, and both had perhaps respected the old bishop beyond all other men. But they were different in this, that the archdeacon hated Dr Proudie as a partisan – whereas Dr Tempest opposed the bishop on certain
principles which he endeavoured to make clear, at any rate to himself. ‘Wrong!' said the archdeacon, speaking of the bishop's intention of issuing a commission – ‘of course he is wrong. How could anything right come from him or from her? I should be sorry to have to do his bidding.'

‘I think you are a little hard upon Bishop Proudie,' said Dr Tempest.

‘One cannot be hard upon him,' said the archdeacon. ‘He is so scandalously weak, and she is so radically vicious, that they cannot but be wrong together. The very fact that such a man should be a bishop among us is to me terribly strong evidence of evil days coming.'

‘You are more impulsive than I am,' said Dr Tempest. ‘In this case I am sorry for the poor man, who is, I am sure, honest in the main. But I believe that in such a case your father would have done just what the present bishop is doing – that he could have done nothing else; and as I think that Dr Proudie is right I shall do all that I can to assist him in the commission.'

The bishop's secretary had written to Dr Tempest, telling him of the bishop's purpose; and now, in one of the last days of March, the bishop himself wrote to Dr Tempest, asking him to come over to the palace. The letter was worded most courteously, and expressed very feelingly the great regret which the writer felt at being obliged to take these proceedings against a clergyman in his diocese. Bishop Proudie knew how to write such a letter. By the writing of such letters, and by the making of speeches in the same strain, he had become Bishop of Barchester. Now, in this letter, he begged Dr Tempest to come over to him, saying how delighted Mrs Proudie would be to see him at the palace. Then he went on to explain the great difficulty which he felt, and great sorrow also, in dealing with this matter of Mr Crawley. He looked, therefore, confidently for Dr Tempest's assistance. Thinking to do the best for Mr Crawley, and anxious to enable Mr Crawley to remain in quiet retirement till the trial should be over, he had sent a clergyman over to Hogglestock, who would have relieved Mr Crawley from the burden of the church-services – but Mr Crawley would have none of this relief. Mr Crawley had been obstinate and overbearing, and had persisted in claiming
his right to his own pulpit. Therefore was he the bishop obliged to interfere legally, and therefore was he under the necessity of asking Dr Tempest to assist him. Would Dr Tempest come over on the Monday, and stay till the Wednesday?

The letter was a very good letter, and Dr Tempest was obliged to do as he was asked. He so far modified the bishop's proposition that he reduced the sojourn at the palace by one night. He wrote to say that he would have the pleasure of dining with the bishop and Mrs Proudie on the Monday, but would return home on the Tuesday, as soon as the business in hand would permit him. ‘I shall get on very well with him,' he said to his wife before he started; ‘but I am afraid of the woman. If she interferes, there will be a row.' ‘Then, my dear,' said his wife, ‘there will be a row, for I am told that she always interferes.' On reaching the palace half-an-hour before dinner-time, Dr Tempest found that other guests were expected, and on descending to the great yellow drawing-room, which was used only on state occasions, he encountered Mrs Proudie and two of her daughters arrayed in a full panoply of female armour. She received him with her sweetest smiles, and if there had been any former enmity between Silverbridge and the palace, it was now all forgotten. She regretted greatly that Mrs Tempest had not accompanied the doctor – for Mrs Tempest also had been invited. But Mrs Tempest was not quite as well as she might have been, the doctor had said, and very rarely slept away from home. And then the bishop came in and greeted his guest with his pleasantest good-humour. It was quite a sorrow to him that Silverbridge was so distant, and that he saw so little of Dr Tempest; but he hoped that that might be somewhat mended now, and that leisure might be found for social delights – to all which Dr Tempest said but little, bowing to the bishop at each separate expression of his lordship's kindness.

There were guests there that evening who did not often sit at the bishop's table. The archdeacon and Mrs Grantly had been summoned from Plumstead, and had obeyed the summons. Great as was the enmity between the bishop and the archdeacon, it had never quite taken the form of open palpable hostility. Each, therefore, asked the other to dinner perhaps once every year; and each went to the other,
perhaps, once in two years. And Dr Thorne from Chaldicotes was there, but without his wife, who in these days was up in London. Mrs Proudie always expressed a warm friendship for Mrs Thorne, and on this occasion loudly regretted her absence. ‘You must tell her, Dr Thorne, how exceedingly much we miss her.' Dr Thorne, who was accustomed to hear his wife speak of her dear friend Mrs Proudie with almost unmeasured ridicule, promised that he would do so. ‘We are sorry the Luftons couldn't come to us,' said Mrs Proudie – not alluding to the dowager, of whom it was well known that no earthly inducement would have sufficed to make her put her foot within Mrs Proudie's room – ‘but one of the children is ill, and she could not leave him.' But the Greshams were there from Boxall Hill, and the Thornes from Ullathorne, and, with the exception of a single chaplain, who pretended to carve, Dr Tempest and the archdeacon were the only clerical guests at the table. From all which Dr Tempest knew that the bishop was anxious to treat him with special consideration on the present occasion.

The dinner was rather long and ponderous, and occasionally almost dull. The archdeacon talked a good deal, but a bystander with an acute ear might have understood from the tone of his voice that he was not talking as he would have talked among friends. Mrs Proudie felt this, and understood it, and was angry. She could never find herself in the presence of the archdeacon without becoming angry. Her accurate ear would always appreciate the defiance of episcopal authority, as now existing in Barchester, which was concealed, or only half concealed, by all the archdeacon's words. But the bishop was not so keen, nor so easily roused to wrath; and though the presence of his enemy did to a certain degree cow him, he strove to fight against the feeling with renewed good-humour.

‘You have improved so upon the old days,' said the archdeacon, speaking of some small matter with reference to the cathedral, ‘that one hardly knows the old place.'

‘I hope we have not fallen off,' said the bishop, with a smile.

‘We have improved, Dr Grantly,' said Mrs Proudie, with great emphasis on her words. ‘What you say is true. We have improved.'

‘Not a doubt about that,' said the archdeacon. Then Mrs Grantly
interposed, strove to change the subject, and threw oil upon the waters.

‘Talking of improvements,' said Mrs Grantly, ‘what an excellent row of houses they have built at the bottom of High Street. I wonder who is to live in them?'

‘I remember when that was the very worst part of the town,' said Dr Thorne.

‘And now they're asking seventy pounds apiece for houses which did not cost above six hundred each to build,' said Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, with that seeming dislike of modern success which is evinced by most of the elders of the world.

‘And who is to live in them?' asked Mrs Grantly.

‘Two of them have been already taken by clergymen,' said the bishop, in a tone of triumph.

‘Yes,' said the archdeacon, ‘and the houses in the Close which used to be the residences of the prebendaries have been leased out to tallow-chandlers and retired brewers. That comes of the working of the Ecclesiastical Commission.'

‘And why not?' demanded Mrs Proudie.

‘Why not, indeed, if you like to have tallow-chandlers next door to you?' said the archdeacon. ‘In the old days, we would sooner have had our brethren near to us.'

‘There is nothing, Dr Grantly, so objectionable in a cathedral town as a lot of idle clergymen,' said Mrs Proudie.

‘It is beginning to be a question to me,' said the archdeacon, ‘whether there is any use in clergymen at all for the present generation.'

‘Dr Grantly, those cannot be your real sentiments,' said Mrs Proudie. Then Mrs Grantly, working hard in her vocation as a peacemaker, changed the conversation again and began to talk of the American war.
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But even that was made matter of discord on church matters – the archdeacon professing an opinion that the Southerners were Christian gentlemen, and the Northerners infidel snobs; whereas Mrs Proudie had an idea that the Gospel was preached with geniune zeal in the Northern States. And at each such outbreak the poor bishop would laugh uneasily, and say a word or two to which no one
paid much attention. And so the dinner went on, not always in the most pleasant manner for those who preferred continued social good-humour to the occasional excitement of a half-suppressed battle.

Not a word was said about Mr Crawley. When Mrs Proudie and the ladies left the dining-room, the bishop strove to get up a little lay conversation. He spoke to Mr Thorne about his game, and to Dr Thorne about his timber, and even to Mr Gresham about his hounds. ‘It is not so very many years, Mr Gresham,' said he, ‘since the Bishop of Barchester was expected to keep hounds himself,' and the bishop laughed at his own joke.

‘Your lordship shall have them back at the palace next season,' said young Frank Gresham, ‘if you will promise to do the county justice.'

‘Ha, ha, ha!' laughed the bishop. ‘What do you say, Mr Tozer?' Mr Tozer was the chaplain on duty.

‘I have not the least objection in the world, my lord,' said Mr Tozer, ‘to act as second whip.'

‘I'm afraid you'll find them an expensive adjunct to the episcopate,' said the archdeacon. And then the joke was over; for there had been a rumour, now for some years prevalent in Barchester, that Bishop Proudie was not liberal in his expenditure. As Mr Thorne said afterwards to his cousin the doctor, the archdeacon might have spared that sneer. ‘The archdeacon will never spare the man who sits in his father's seat,' said the doctor. ‘The pity of it is that men who are so thoroughly different in all their sympathies should ever be brought into contact.' ‘Dear, dear,' said the archdeacon, as he stood afterwards on the rug before the drawing-room fire, ‘how many rubbers of whist I have seen played in this room.' ‘I sincerely hope that you will never see another played here,' said Mrs Proudie. ‘I'm quite sure that I shall not,' said the archdeacon. For this last sally his wife scolded him bitterly on their way home. ‘You know very well,' she said, ‘that the times are changed, and that if you were Bishop of Barchester yourself you would not have whist played in the palace.' ‘I only know,' said he, ‘that when we had the whist we had some true religion along with it, and some good sense and good feeling also.' ‘You cannot be right to sneer at others for doing what you would do yourself,' said his
wife. Then the archdeacon threw himself sulkily into the corner of his carriage, and nothing more was said between him and his wife about the bishop's dinner-party.