The Chronicles of Barsetshire (351 page)

CHAPTER LXXXII

The Last Scene at Hogglestock

The fortnight following Mr. Harding’s death was passed very quietly at Hogglestock, for during that time no visitor made an appearance in the parish except Mr. Snapper on the Sundays. Mr. Snapper, when he had completed the service on the first of these Sundays, intimated to Mr. Crawley his opinion that probably that gentleman might himself wish to resume his duties on the following Sabbath. Mr. Crawley, however, courteously declined to do anything of the kind. He said that it was quite out of the question that he should do so without a direct communication made to him from the bishop, or by the bishop’s order. The assizes had, of course, gone by, and all question of the trial was over. Nevertheless—as Mr. Snapper said—the bishop had not, as yet, given any order. Mr. Snapper was of opinion that the bishop in these days was not quite himself. He had spoken to the bishop about it and the bishop had told him peevishly—”I must say quite peevishly,” Mr. Snapper had said—that nothing was to be done at present. Mr. Snapper was not the less clearly of opinion that Mr. Crawley might resume his duties. To this, however, Mr. Crawley would not assent.

But even during this fortnight Mr. Crawley had not remained altogether neglected. Two days after Mr. Harding’s death he had received a note from the dean in which he was advised not to resume the duties at Hogglestock for the present. “Of course you can understand that we have a sad house here for the present,” the dean had said. “But as soon as ever we are able to move in the matter we will arrange things for you as comfortably as we can. I will see the bishop myself.” Mr. Crawley had no ambitious idea of any comfort which might accrue to him beyond that of an honourable return to his humble preferment at Hogglestock; but, nevertheless, he was in this case minded to do as the dean counselled him. He had submitted himself to the bishop, and he would wait till the bishop absolved him from his submission.

On the day after the funeral, the bishop had sent his compliments to the dean with an expression of a wish that the dean would call upon him on any early day that might be convenient with reference to the position of Mr. Crawley of Hogglestock. The note was in the bishop’s own handwriting and was as mild and civil as a bishop’s note could be. Of course the dean named an early day for the interview; but it was necessary before he went to the bishop that he should discuss the matter with the archdeacon. If St. Ewold’s might be given to Mr. Crawley, the Hogglestock difficulties would all be brought to an end. The archdeacon, after the funeral, had returned to Plumstead, and thither the dean went to him before he saw the bishop. He did succeed—he and Mrs. Grantly between them—but with very great difficulty, in obtaining a conditional promise. They had both thought that when the archdeacon became fully aware that Grace was to be his daughter-in-law, he would at once have been delighted to have an opportunity of extricating from his poverty a clergyman with whom it was his fate to be so closely connected. But he fought the matter on twenty different points. He declared at first that as it was his primary duty to give to the people of St. Ewold’s the best clergyman he could select for them he could not give the preference to Mr. Crawley, because Mr. Crawley, in spite of all his zeal and piety, was a man so quaint in his manners and so eccentric in his mode of speech as not to be the best clergyman whom he could select. “What is my old friend Thorne to do with a man in his parish who won’t drink a glass of wine with him?”. For Ullathorne, the seat of that Mr. Wilfred Thorne who had been so guilty in the matter of the foxes, was situated in the parish of St. Ewold’s. When Mrs. Grantly proposed that Mr. Thorne’s consent should be asked, the archdeacon became very angry. He had never heard so unecclesiastical a proposition in his life. It was his special duty to the best he could for Mr. Thorne, but it was specially his duty to do so without consulting Mr. Thorne about it. As the archdeacon’s objection had been argued simply on the point of a glass of wine, both the dean and Mrs. Grantly thought that he was unreasonable. But they had their point to gain, and therefore they only flattered him. They were quite sure that Mr. Thorne would like to have a clergyman in the parish who would himself be closely connected with the archdeacon. Then Dr. Grantly alleged that he might find himself in a trap. What if he conferred the living of St. Ewold’s on Mr. Crawley and after all there should be no marriage between his son and Grace? “Of course they’ll be married,” said Mrs. Grantly. “It’s all very well for you to say that, my dear; but the whole family are so queer that there is no knowing what the girl may do. She may take up some other fad now, and refuse him point blank.” “She has never taken up any fad,” said Mrs. Grantly, who now mounted almost to wrath in defence of her future daughter-in-law, “and you are wrong to say that she has. She has behaved beautifully—as nobody knows better than you do.” Then the archdeacon gave way so far as to promise that St. Ewold’s should be offered to Mr. Crawley as soon as Grace Crawley was in truth engaged to Henry Grantly.

After that, the dean went to the palace. There had never been any quarrelling between the bishop and the dean, either direct or indirect—nor, indeed, had the dean ever quarrelled even with Mrs. Proudie. But he had belonged to the anti-Proudie faction. He had been brought into the diocese by the Grantly interest; and therefore, during Mrs. Proudie’s lifetime, he had always been accounted among the enemies. There had never been any real intimacy between the houses. Each house had always been asked to dine with the other house once a year; but it had been understood that such dinings were ecclesiastico-official, and not friendly. There had been the same outside diocesan civility between even the palace and Plumstead. But now, when the great chieftain of the palace was no more, and the strength of the palace faction was gone, peace, or perhaps something more than peace—amity, perhaps, might be more easily arranged with the dean than with the archdeacon. In preparation for such arrangements the bishop had gone to Mr. Harding’s funeral.

And now the dean went to the palace at the bishop’s behest. He found his lordship alone, and was received with almost reverential courtesy. He thought that the bishop was looking wonderfully aged since he last saw him, but did not perhaps take into account the absence of clerical sleekness which was incidental to the bishop’s private life in his private room, and perhaps in a certain measure to his recent great affliction. The dean had been in the habit of regarding Dr. Proudie as a man almost young for his age—having been in the habit of seeing him at his best, clothed in authority, redolent of the throne, conspicuous as regarded his apron and outward signs of episcopality. Much of all this was now absent. The bishop, as he rose to greet the dean, shuffled with his old slippers, and his hair was not brushed so becomingly as used to be the case when Mrs. Proudie was always near him.

It was necessary that a word should be said by each as to the loss which the other had suffered. “Mr. Dean,” said his lordship, “allow me to offer you my condolements in regard to the death of that very excellent clergyman and most worthy gentleman, your father-in-law.”

“Thank you, my lord. He was excellent and worthy. I do not suppose that I shall live to see any man who was more so. You also have a great—a terrible loss.”

“Oh, Mr. Dean, yes; yes, indeed, Mr. Dean. That was a loss.”

“And hardly past the prime of life!”

“Ah, yes—just fifty-six—and so strong! Was she not? At least everybody thought so. And yet she was gone in a minute—gone in a minute. I haven’t held up my head up since, Mr. Dean.”

“It was a great loss, my lord; but you must struggle to bear it.”

“I do struggle. I am struggling. But it makes one feel so lonely in this great house. Ah me! I often wish, Mr. Dean, that it had pleased Providence to have left me in some humble parsonage, where duty would have been easier than it is here. But I will not trouble you with all that. What are we to do, Mr. Dean, about this poor Mr. Crawley?”

“Mr. Crawley is a very old friend of mine, and a very dear friend.”

“Is he? Ah! A very worthy man, I am sure, and one who has been much tried by undeserved adversities.”

“Most severely tried, my lord.”

“Sitting among the potsherds, like Job; has he not, Mr. Dean? Well; let us hope that all that is over. When this accusation about the robbery was brought against him, I found myself bound to interfere.”

“He has no complaint to make on that score.”

“I hope not. I have not wished to be harsh, but what could I do, Mr. Dean? They told me that the civil authorities found the evidence so strong against him that it could not be withstood.”

“It was very strong.”

“And we thought that he should at least be relieved, and we sent for Dr. Tempest, who is his rural dean.” Then the bishop, remembering all the circumstances of that interview with the Dr. Tempest—as to which he had ever felt assured that one of the results of it was the death of his wife, whereby there was no longer any “we” left in the palace of Barchester—sighed piteously, looking at the dean with a hopeless face.

“Nobody doubts, my lord, that you acted for the best.”

“I hope we did. I think we did. And now what shall we do? He has resigned his living, both to you and to me, as I hear—you being the patron. It will simply be necessary, I think, that he should ask to have the letters cancelled. Then, as I take it, there need be no restitution. You cannot think, Mr. Dean, how much I have thought about it all.”

Then the dean unfolded his budget, and explained to the bishop how he hoped that the living of St. Ewold’s, which was, after some ecclesiastical fashion, attached to the rectory of Plumstead, and which was now vacant by the demise of Mr. Harding, might be conferred by the archdeacon upon Mr. Crawley. It was necessary to explain also that this could not be done quite immediately, and in doing this the dean encountered some little difficulty. The archdeacon, he said, wished to be allowed another week to think about it; and therefore perhaps provision for the duties at Hogglestock might yet be made for a few Sundays. The bishop, the dean said, might easily understand that, after what had occurred, Mr. Crawley would hardly wish to go again into that pulpit, unless he did so as resuming duties which would necessarily be permanent with him. To all this the bishop assented, but he was apparently struck with much wonder at the choice made by the archdeacon. “I should have thought, Mr. Dean,” he said, “that Mr. Crawley was the last man to have suited the archdeacon’s choice.”

“The archdeacon and I married sisters, my lord.”

“Oh, ah! yes. And he puts the nomination of St. Ewold’s at your disposition. I am sure I shall be delighted to institute so worthy a gentleman as Mr. Crawley.” Then the dean took his leave of the bishop—as we will also. Poor dear bishop! I am inclined to think that he was right in his regrets as to the little parsonage. Not that his failure at Barchester, and his present consciousness of lonely incompetence, were mainly due to any positive inefficiency on his own part. He might have been a sufficiently good bishop, had it not been that Mrs. Proudie was so much more than a sufficiently good bishop’s wife. We will now say farewell to him, with a hope that the lopped tree may yet become green again, and to some extent fruitful, although all its beautiful head and richness of waving foliage have been taken from it.

About a week after this Henry Grantly rode over from Cosby Lodge to Hogglestock. It has been just said that though the assizes had passed by and though all question of Mr. Crawley’s guilt was now set aside, no visitor had of late made his way over to Hogglestock. I fancy that Grace Crawley forgot, in the fullness of her memory as to other things, that Mr. Harding, of whose death she heard, had been her lover’s grandfather—and that therefore there might possibly be some delay. Had there been much said between the mother and the daughter about the lover, no doubt all this would have been explained; but Grace was very reticent, and there were other matters in the Hogglestock household which in those days occupied Mrs. Crawley’s mind. How were they again to begin life? for, in very truth, life as it had existed with them before, had been brought to an end. But Grace remembered well the sort of compact which existed between her and her lover—the compact which had been made in very words between herself and her lover’s father. Complete in her estimation as had been the heaven opened to her by Henry Grantly’s offer, she had refused it all—lest she should bring disgrace upon him. But the disgrace was not certain; and if her father should be made free from it, then—then—then Henry Grantly ought to come to her and be at her feet with all the expedition possible to him. That was her reading of the compact. She had once declared, when speaking of the possible disgrace which might attach itself to her family and to her name, that her poverty did not “signify a bit”. She was not ashamed of her father—only of the accusation against her father. Therefore she had hurried home when that accusation was withdrawn, desirous that her lover should tell her of his love—if he chose to repeat such telling—amidst all the poor things of Hogglestock, and not among the chairs and tables and good dinners of luxurious Framley. Mrs. Robarts had given a true interpretation to Lady Lufton of the haste which Grace had displayed. But she need not have been in so great a hurry. She had been at home already above a fortnight, and as yet he had made no sign. At last she said a word to her mother. “Might I not ask to go back to Miss Prettyman’s now, mamma?” “I think, dear, you had better wait till things are a little settled. Papa is to hear again from the dean very soon. You see they are all in a great sorrow at Barchester about poor Mr. Harding’s death.” “Grace!” said Jane, rushing into the house almost speechless, at that moment, “here he is!—on horseback.” I do not know why Jane should have talked about Major Grantly as simply “he”. There had been no conversation among the sisters to justify her in such a mode of speech. Grace had not a moment to put two and two together, so that she might realise the meaning of what her mother had said; but, nevertheless, she felt at the moment that the man, coming as he had done now, had come with all commendable speed. How foolish had she been with her wretched impatience!