The Last Chronicle of Barset. Anthony Trollope
Читать онлайн книгу.
perpetual curate. “We must have perpetual curates, my dear,” the bishop had said. “They should know their places then. But what can you expect of a creature from the deanery? All that ought to be altered. The dean should have no patronage in the diocese. No dean should have any patronage. It is an abuse from the beginning to the end. Dean Arabin, if he had any conscience, would be doing the duty at Hogglestock himself.” How the bishop strove to teach his wife, with mildest words, what really ought to be a dean’s duty, and how the wife rejoined by teaching her husband, not in the mildest words, what ought to be a bishop’s duty, we will not further inquire here. The fact that such dialogues took place at the palace is recorded simply to show that the palatial feeling in Barchester ran counter to Mr. Crawley.
And this was cause enough, if no other cause existed, for partiality to Mr. Crawley at Framley Court. But, as has been partly explained, there existed, if possible, even stronger ground than this for adherence to the Crawley cause. The younger Lady Lufton had known the Crawleys intimately, and the elder Lady Lufton had reckoned them among the neighbouring clerical families of her acquaintance. Both these ladies were therefore staunch in their defence of Mr. Crawley. The archdeacon himself had his own reasons,—reasons which for the present he kept altogether within his own bosom,—for wishing that Mr. Crawley had never entered the diocese. Whether the perpetual curate should or should not be declared to be a thief, it would be terrible to him to have to call the child of that perpetual curate his daughter-in-law. But not the less on this occasion was he true to his order, true to his side in the diocese, true to his hatred of the palace.
“I don’t believe it for a moment,” he said, as he took his place on the rug before the fire in the drawing-room when the gentlemen came in from their wine. The ladies understood at once what it was that he couldn’t believe. Mr. Crawley had for the moment so usurped the county that nobody thought of talking of anything else.
“How is it, then,” said Mrs. Thorne, “that Lord Lufton, and my husband, and the other wiseacres at Silverbridge, have committed him for trial?”
“Because we were told to do so by the lawyer,” said Dr. Thorne.
“Ladies will never understand that magistrates must act in accordance with the law,” said Lord Lufton.
“But you all say he’s not guilty,” said Mrs. Robarts.
“The fact is, that the magistrates cannot try the question,” said the archdeacon; “they only hear the primary evidence. In this case I don’t believe Crawley would ever have been committed if he had employed an attorney, instead of speaking for himself.”
“Why didn’t somebody make him have an attorney?” said Lady Lufton.
“I don’t think any attorney in the world could have spoken for him better than he spoke for himself,” said Dr. Thorne.
“And yet you committed him,” said his wife. “What can we do for him? Can’t we pay the bail, and send him off to America?”
“A jury will never find him guilty,” said Lord Lufton.
“And what is the truth of it?” asked the younger Lady Lufton.
Then the whole matter was discussed again, and it was settled among them all that Mr. Crawley had undoubtedly appropriated the cheque through temporary obliquity of judgment,—obliquity of judgment and forgetfulness as to the source from whence the cheque had come to him. “He has picked it up about the house, and then has thought that it was his own,” said Lord Lufton. Had they come to the conclusion that such an appropriation of money had been made by one of the clergy of the palace, by one of the Proudeian party, they would doubtless have been very loud and very bitter as to the iniquity of the offender. They would have said much as to the weakness of the bishop and the wickedness of the bishop’s wife, and would have declared the appropriator to have been as very a thief as ever picked a pocket or opened a till;—but they were unanimous in their acquittal of Mr. Crawley. It had not been his intention, they said, to be a thief, and a man should be judged only by his intention. It must now be their object to induce a Barchester jury to look at the matter in the same light.
“When they come to understand how the land lies,” said the archdeacon, “they will be all right. There’s not a tradesman in the city who does not hate that woman as though she were—”
“Archdeacon,” said his wife, cautioning him to repress his energy.
“Their bills are all paid by this new chaplain they’ve got, and he is made to claim discount on every leg of mutton,” said the archdeacon. Arguing from which fact,—or from which assertion, he came to the conclusion that no Barchester jury would find Mr. Crawley guilty.
But it was agreed on all sides that it would not be well to trust to the unassisted friendship of the Barchester tradesmen. Mr. Crawley must be provided with legal assistance, and this must be furnished to him whether he should be willing or unwilling to receive it. That there would be a difficulty was acknowledged. Mr. Crawley was known to be a man not easy of persuasion, with a will of his own, with a great energy of obstinacy on points which he chose to take up as being of importance to his calling, or to his own professional status. He had pleaded his own cause before the magistrates, and it might be that he would insist on doing the same thing before the judge. At last Mr. Robarts, the clergyman of Framley, was deputed from the knot of Crawleian advocates assembled in Lady Lufton’s drawing-room, to undertake the duty of seeing Mr. Crawley, and of explaining to him that his proper defence was regarded as a matter appertaining to the clergy and gentry generally of that part of the country, and that for the sake of the clergy and gentry the defence must of course be properly conducted. In such circumstances the expense of the defence would of course be borne by the clergy and gentry concerned. It was thought that Mr. Robarts could put the matter to Mr. Crawley with such a mixture of the strength of manly friendship and the softness of clerical persuasion, as to overcome the recognized difficulties of the task.
Chapter XI.
The Bishop Sends His Inhibition.
Tidings of Mr. Crawley’s fate reached the palace at Barchester on the afternoon of the day on which the magistrates had committed him. All such tidings travel very quickly, conveyed by imperceptible wires, and distributed by indefatigable message boys whom Rumour seems to supply for the purpose. Barchester is twenty miles from Silverbridge by road, and more than forty by railway. I doubt whether any one was commissioned to send the news along the actual telegraph, and yet Mrs. Proudie knew it before four o’clock. But she did not know it quite accurately. “Bishop,” she said, standing at her husband’s study door. “They have committed that man to gaol. There was no help for them unless they had forsworn themselves.”
“Not forsworn themselves, my dear,” said the bishop, striving, as was usual with him, by some meek and ineffectual word to teach his wife that she was occasionally led by her energy into error. He never persisted in the lessons when he found, as was usual, that they were taken amiss.
“I say forsworn themselves!” said Mrs. Proudie; “and now what do you mean to do? This is Thursday, and of course the man must not be allowed to desecrate the church of Hogglestock by performing the Sunday services.”
“If he has been committed, my dear, and is in prison,—”
“I said nothing about prison, bishop.”
“Gaol, my dear.”
“I say they have committed him to gaol. So my informant tells me. But of course all the Plumstead and Framley set will move heaven and earth to get him out, so that he may be there as a disgrace to the diocese. I wonder how the dean will feel when he hears of it! I do, indeed. For the dean, though he is an idle, useless man, with no church principles, and no real piety, still he has a conscience. I think he has a conscience.”
“I’m sure he has, my dear.”
“Well;—let us hope so. And if he has a conscience, what must be his feelings when he hears that this creature whom he brought into the diocese has been committed to gaol along with common felons.”
“Not with felons, my