The Last Chronicle of Barset. Anthony Trollope
do you think that Mr. Crawley stole the cheque?” Mary, as she asked the question, came and stood over her mother, looking at her with anxious eyes.
“I would rather give no opinion, my dear.”
“But you must think something when everybody is talking about it, mamma.”
“Of course my mother thinks he did,” said John, going back to his book. “It is impossible that she should think otherwise.”
“That is not fair, John,” said Mrs. Walker; “and I won’t have you fabricate thoughts for me, or put the expression of them into my mouth. The whole affair is very painful, and as your father is engaged in the inquiry, I think that the less said about the matter in this house the better. I am sure that that would be your father’s feeling.”
“Of course I should say nothing about it before him,” said Mary. “I know that papa does not wish to have it talked about. But how is one to help thinking about such a thing? It would be so terrible for all of us who belong to the Church.”
“I do not see that at all,” said John. “Mr. Crawley is not more than any other man just because he’s a clergyman. I hate all that kind of claptrap. There are a lot of people here in Silverbridge who think the matter shouldn’t be followed up, just because the man is in a position which makes the crime more criminal in him than it would be in another.”
“But I feel sure that Mr. Crawley has committed no crime at all,” said Mary.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Walker, “I have just said that I would rather you would not talk about it. Papa will be in directly.”
“I won’t, mamma;—only—”
“Only! yes; just only!” said John. “She’d go on till dinner if any one would stay to hear her.”
“You’ve said twice as much as I have, John.” But John had left the room before his sister’s last words could reach him.
“You know, mamma, it is quite impossible not to help thinking of it,” said Mary.
“I dare say it is, my dear.”
“And when one knows the people it does make it so dreadful.”
“But do you know them? I never spoke to Mr. Crawley in my life, and I do not think I ever saw her.”
“I knew Grace very well,—when she used to come first to Miss Prettyman’s school.”
“Poor girl. I pity her.”
“Pity her! Pity is no word for it, mamma. My heart bleeds for them. And yet I do not believe for a moment that he stole the cheque. How can it be possible? For though he may have been in debt because they have been so very, very poor; yet we all know that he has been an excellent clergyman. When the Robartses were dining here last, I heard Mrs. Robarts say that for piety and devotion to his duties she had hardly ever seen any one equal to him. And the Robartses know more of them than anybody.”
“They say that the dean is his great friend.”
“What a pity it is that the Arabins should be away just now when he is in such trouble.” And in this way the mother and daughter went on discussing the question of the clergyman’s guilt in spite of Mrs. Walker’s previously expressed desire that nothing more might be said about it. But Mrs. Walker, like many other mothers, was apt to be more free in converse with her daughter than she was with her son. While they were thus talking the father came in from his office, and then the subject was dropped. He was a man between fifty and sixty years of age, with grey hair, rather short, and somewhat corpulent, but still gifted with that amount of personal comeliness which comfortable position and the respect of others will generally seem to give. A man rarely carries himself meanly, whom the world holds high in esteem.
“I am very tired, my dear,” said Mr. Walker.
“You look tired. Come and sit down for a few minutes before you dress. Mary, get your father’s slippers.” Mary instantly ran to the door.
“Thanks, my darling,” said the father. And then he whispered to his wife, as soon as Mary was out of hearing, “I fear that unfortunate man is guilty. I fear he is! I fear he is!”
“Oh, heavens! what will become of them?”
“What indeed? She has been with me to-day.”
“Has she? And what could you say to her?”
“I told her at first that I could not see her, and begged her not to speak to me about it. I tried to make her understand that she should go to some one else. But it was of no use.”
“And how did it end?”
“I asked her to go in to you, but she declined. She said you could do nothing for her.”
“And does she think her husband guilty?”
“No, indeed. She think him guilty! Nothing on earth,—or from heaven either, as I take it, would make her suppose it to be possible. She came to me simply to tell me how good he was.”
“I love her for that,” said Mrs. Walker.
“So did I. But what is the good of loving her? Thank you, dearest. I’ll get your slippers for you some day, perhaps.”
The whole county was astir in this matter of this alleged guilt of the Reverend Josiah Crawley,—the whole county, almost as keenly as the family of Mr. Walker, of Silverbridge. The crime laid to his charge was the theft of a cheque for twenty pounds, which he was said to have stolen out of a pocketbook left or dropped in his house, and to have passed as money into the hands of one Fletcher, a butcher of Silverbridge, to whom he was indebted. Mr. Crawley was in those days the perpetual curate of Hogglestock, a parish in the northern extremity of East Barsetshire; a man known by all who knew anything of him to be very poor,—an unhappy, moody, disappointed man, upon whom the troubles of the world always seemed to come with a double weight. But he had ever been respected as a clergyman, since his old friend Mr. Arabin, the dean of Barchester, had given him the small incumbency which he now held. Though moody, unhappy, and disappointed, he was a hardworking, conscientious pastor among the poor people with whom his lot was cast; for in the parish of Hogglestock there resided only a few farmers higher in degree than field labourers, brickmakers, and such like. Mr. Crawley had now passed some ten years of his life at Hogglestock; and during those years he had worked very hard to do his duty, struggling to teach the people around him perhaps too much of the mystery, but something also of the comfort, of religion. That he had become popular in his parish cannot be said of him. He was not a man to make himself popular in any position. I have said that he was moody and disappointed. He was even worse than this; he was morose, sometimes almost to insanity. There had been days in which even his wife had found it impossible to deal with him otherwise than as with an acknowledged lunatic. And this was known among the farmers, who talked about their clergyman among themselves as though he were a madman. But among the very poor, among the brickmakers of Hoggle End,—a lawless, drunken, terribly rough lot of humanity,—he was held in high respect; for they knew that he lived hardly, as they lived; that he worked hard, as they worked; and that the outside world was hard to him, as it was to them; and there had been an apparent sincerity of godliness about the man, and a manifest struggle to do his duty in spite of the world’s ill-usage, which had won its way even with the rough; so that Mr. Crawley’s name had stood high with many in his parish, in spite of the unfortunate peculiarity of his disposition. This was the man who was now accused of stealing a cheque for twenty pounds.
But before the circumstances of the alleged theft are stated, a word or two must be said as to Mr. Crawley’s family. It is declared that a good wife is a crown to her husband, but Mrs. Crawley had been much more than a crown to him. As had regarded all the inner life of the man,—all that portion of his life which had not been passed in the pulpit or in pastoral teaching,—she had been crown, throne, and sceptre all in one. That she had endured with him and on his behalf the miseries of poverty, and the troubles of a life which had known no smiles, is perhaps not to