The Last Chronicle of Barset (15 page)

It had become necessary on the Monday morning that Mrs Crawley should obtain from her husband an undertaking that he would present himself before the magistrates at Silverbridge on the Thursday. She had been made to understand that the magistrates were sinning against the strict rule of the law in not issuing a warrant at once for Mr Crawley's apprehension; and that they were so sinning at the instance of Mr Walker – at whose instance they would have committed almost any sin practicable by a board of English magistrates, so
great was their faith in him; and she knew that she was bound to answer her engagement. She had also another task to perform – that, namely, of persuading him to employ an attorney for his defence; and she was prepared with the name of an attorney, one Mr Mason, also of Silverbridge, who had been recommended to her by Mr Walker. But when she came to the performance of these two tasks on the Monday morning, she found that she was unable to accomplish either of them. Mr Crawley first declared that he would have nothing to do with any attorney. As to that he seemed to have made up his mind beforehand, and she saw at once that she had no hope of shaking him. But when she found that he was equally obstinate in the other matter, and that he declared that he would not go before the magistrates unless he were made to do so – unless the policeman came and fetched him, then she almost sank beneath the burden of her troubles, and for a while was disposed to let things go as they would. How could she strive to bear a load that was so manifestly too heavy for her shoulders?

On the Sunday the poor man had exerted himself to get through his Sunday duties, and he had succeeded. He had succeeded so well that his wife had thought that things might yet come right with him, that he would remember, before it was too late, the true history of that unhappy piece of paper, and that he was rising above that half madness which for months past had afflicted him. On the Sunday evening, when he was tired with his work, she thought it best to say nothing to him about the magistrates and the business of Thursday. But on the Monday morning she commenced her task, feeling that she owed it to Mr Walker to lose no more time. He was very decided in his manners and made her understand that he would employ no lawyer on his own behalf. ‘Why should I want a lawyer? I have done nothing wrong,' he said. Then she tried to make him understand that many who may have done nothing wrong require a lawyer's aid. ‘And who is to pay him?' he asked. To this she replied, unfortunately, that there would be no need of thinking of that at once. ‘And I am to get further into debt!' he said. ‘I am to put myself right before the world by incurring debts which I know I can never pay? When it has been a question of food for the children I have been weak, but I will not
be weak in such a matter as this. I will have no lawyer.' She did not regard this denial on his part as very material, though she would fain have followed Mr Walker's advice had she been able; but when, later in the day, he declared that the police should fetch him, then her spirit gave way. Early in the morning he had seemed to assent to the expediency of going into Silverbridge on the Thursday, and it was not till after he had worked himself into a rage about the proposed attorney, that he utterly refused to make the journey. During the whole day, however, his state was such as almost to break his wife's heart. He would do nothing. He would not go to the school, nor even stir beyond the house-door. He would not open a book. He would not eat, nor would he even sit at table or say the accustomed grace when the scanty midday meal was placed upon the table. ‘Nothing is blessed to me,' he said, when his wife pressed him to say the words for their child's sake. ‘Shall I say that I thank God when my heart is thankless? Shall I serve my child by a lie?' Then for hours he sat in the same position, in the old arm-chair, hanging over the fire speechless, sleepless, thinking ever, as she well knew, of the injustice of the world. She hardly dared to speak to him, so great was the bitterness of his words when he was goaded to reply. At last, late in the evening, feeling that it would be her duty to send to Mr Walker early on the following morning, she laid her hand gently on his shoulder and asked him for his promise. ‘I may tell Mr Walker that you will be there on Thursday?'

‘No,' he said, shouting at her. ‘No. I will have no such message sent.' She started back, trembling. Not that she was accustomed to tremble at his ways, or to show that she feared him in his paroxysms, but that his voice had been louder than she had before known it. ‘I will hold no intercourse with them at Silverbridge in this matter. Do you hear me, Mary?'

‘I hear you, Josiah; but I must keep my word to Mr Walker. I promised that I would send to him.'

‘Tell him, then, that I will not stir a foot out of this house on Thursday, of my own accord. On Thursday I shall be here; and here I will remain all day – unless they take me hence by force.'

‘But, Josiah –'

‘Will you obey me, or shall I walk into Silverbridge myself and tell the man that I will not come to him?' Then he arose from his chair and stretched forth his hand to his hat as though he were going forth immediately, on his way to Silverbridge. The night was now pitch dark, and the rain was falling, and abroad he would encounter all the severity of the pitiless winter. Still it might have been better that he should have gone. The exercise and the fresh air, even the wet and the mud, would have served to bring back his mind to reason. But his wife thought of the misery of the journey, of his scanty clothing, of his worn boots, of the need there was to preserve the raiment which he wore; and she remembered that he was fasting – that he had eaten nothing since the morning, and that he was not fit to be alone. She stopped him, therefore, before he could reach the door.

‘Your bidding shall be done,' she said – ‘of course.'

‘Tell them, then, that they must seek me here if they want me.'

‘But, Josiah, think of the parish – of the people who respect you – for their sakes let it not be said that you were taken away by policemen.'

‘Was St Paul not bound in prison?
¹
Did he think of what the people might see?'

‘If it were necessary, I would encourage you to bear it without a murmur.'

‘It is necessary, whether you murmur, or do not murmur. Murmur, indeed! Why does not your voice ascend to heaven with one loud wail against the cruelty of man?' Then he went forth from the room into an empty chamber on the other side of the passage; and his wife, when she followed him there after a few minutes, found him on his knees, with his forehead against the floor, and with his hands clutching at the scanty hairs of his head. Often before had she seen him so, on the same spot, half grovelling, half prostrate in prayer, reviling in his agony all things around him – nay, nearly all things above him – and yet striving to reconcile himself to his Creator by the humiliation of confession.

It might be better with him now, if only he could bring himself to some softness of heart. Softly she closed the door, and placing the candle on the mantel-shelf, softly she knelt beside him, and softly
touched his hand with hers. He did not stir nor utter a single word, but seemed to clutch at his thin locks more violently than before. Then she kneeling there, aloud, but with low voice, with her thin hands clasped, uttered a prayer in which she asked her God to remove from her husband the bitterness of that hour. He listened till she had finished, and then he rose slowly to his feet. ‘It is in vain,' said he. ‘It is all in vain. It is all in vain.' Then he returned back to the parlour, and seating himself again in the arm-chair, remained there without speaking till past midnight. At last, when she told him that she herself was very cold, and reminded him that for the last hour there had been no fire, still speechless, he went up with her to their bed.

Early on the following morning she contrived to let him know that she was about to send a neighbour's son over with a note to Mr Walker, fearing to urge him further to change his mind; but hoping that he might express his purpose of doing so when he heard that the letter was to be sent; but he took no notice whatever of her words. At this moment he was reading Greek with his daughter, or rather rebuking her because she could not be induced to read Greek.

‘Oh, papa,' the poor girl said, ‘don't scold me now. I am so unhappy because of all this.'

‘And am not I unhappy?' he said, as he closed the book. ‘My God, what have I done against thee, that my lines should be cast in such terrible places?'
²

The letter was sent to Mr Walker. ‘He knows himself to be innocent,' said the poor wife, writing what best excuse she knew how to make, ‘and thinks that he should take no step himself in such a matter. He will not employ a lawyer, and he says that he should prefer that he should be sent for, if the law requires his presence at Silverbridge on Thursday.' All this she wrote, as though she felt that she ought to employ a high tone in defending her husband's purpose; but she broke down altogether in the few words of the postscript. ‘Indeed, indeed I have done what I could!' Mr Walker understood it all, both the high tone and the subsequent fall.

On the Thursday morning, at about ten o'clock, a fly stopped at the gate of the Hogglestock Parsonage, and out of it there came two men. One was dressed in ordinary black clothes, and seemed from
his bearing to be a respectable man of the middle class of life. He was, however, the superintendent of police for the Silverbridge district. The other man was a policeman, pure and simple, with the helmet-looking hat which has lately become common, and all the ordinary half-military and wholly disagreeable outward adjuncts of the profession.
³
‘Wilkins,' said the superintendent, ‘likely enough I shall want you, for they tell me the gent is uncommon strange. But if I don't call you when I come out, just open the door like a servant, and mount up on the box when we're in. And don't speak nor say nothing.' Then the senior policeman entered the house.

He found Mrs Crawley sitting in the parlour with her bonnet and shawl on, and Mr Crawley in the arm-chair, leaning over the fire. ‘I suppose we had better go with you,' said Mrs Crawley directly the door was opened; for of course she had seen the arrival of the fly from the window.

‘The gentleman had better come with us if he'll be so kind,' said Thompson. ‘I've brought a close carriage for him.'

‘But I may go with him?' said the wife, with frightened voice. ‘I may accompany my husband? He is not well, sir, and wants assistance.'

Thompson thought about it for a moment before he spoke. There was room in the fly for only two, or if for three, still he knew his place better than to thrust himself inside together with his prisoner and his prisoner's wife. He had been specially asked by Mr Walker to be very civil. Only one could sit on the box with the driver, and if the request was conceded the poor policeman must walk back. The walk, however, would not kill the policeman. ‘All right, ma'am,' said Thompson – ‘that is, if the gentleman will just pass his word not to get out till I ask him.'

‘He will not! He will not!' said Mrs Crawley.

‘I will pass my word for nothing,' said Mr Crawley.

Upon hearing this, Thompson assumed a very long face, and shook his head as he turned his eyes first towards the husband and then towards the wife, and shrugged his shoulders, and compressing his lips, blew out his breath, as though in this way he might blow off some of the mingled sorrow and indignation with which the gentleman's words afflicted him.

Mrs Crawley rose and came close to him. ‘You may take my word for it, he will not stir. You may indeed. He thinks it incumbent for him not to give any undertaking himself, because he feels himself to be so harshly used.'

‘I don't know about harshness,' said Thompson, bridling up. ‘A close carriage brought, and –'

‘I will walk. If I am made to go, I will walk,' shouted Mr Crawley.

‘I did not allude to you – or to Mr Walker,' said the poor wife. ‘I know you have been most kind. I meant the harshness of the circumstances. Of course he is innocent, and you must feel for him.'

‘Yes, I feel for him, and for you too, ma'am.'

‘That is all I meant. He knows his own innocence, and therefore he is unwilling to give way in anything.'

‘Of course he knows hisself, that's certain. But he'd better come in the carriage, if only because of the dirt and slush.'

‘He will go in the carriage; and I will go with him. There will be room there for you, sir.'

Thompson looked up at the rain, and told himself that it was very cold. Then he remembered Mr Walker's injunction, and bethought himself that Mrs Crawley, in spite of her poverty, was a lady. He conceived even unconsciously the idea that something was due to her because of her poverty. ‘I'll go with the driver,' said he, ‘but he'll only give hisself a deal of trouble if he attempts to get out.'

‘He won't; he won't,' said Mrs Crawley. ‘And I thank you with all my heart.'

‘Come along, then,' said Thompson.

She went up to her husband, hat in hand, and looking round to see that she was not watched, put the hat on his head, and then lifted him as it were from the chair. He did not refuse to be led, and allowed her to throw round his shoulders the old cloak which was hanging in the passage, and then he passed out, and was the first to seat himself in the Silverbridge fly. His wife followed him, and did not hear the blandishments with which Thompson instructed his myrmidon to follow through the mud on foot. Slowly they made their way through the lanes, and it was nearly twelve when they was driven into the yard of the ‘George and Vulture' at Silverbridge.

Silverbridge, though it was blessed with a mayor and corporation, and was blessed also with a Member of Parliament all to itself, was not blessed with any courthouse. The magistrates were therefore compelled to sit in the big room at the ‘George and Vulture,' in which the county balls were celebrated, and the meeting of the West Barsetshire freemasons was held. That part of the country was, no doubt, very much ashamed of its backwardness in this respect, but as yet nothing had been done to remedy the evil. Thompson and his fly were therefore driven into the yard of the inn, and Mr and Mrs Crawley were ushered by him up into a little bed-chamber close adjoining to the big room in which the magistrates were already assembled. ‘There's a bit of fire here,' said Thompson, ‘and you can make yourselves a little warm.' He himself was shivering with the cold. ‘When the gents is ready in there, I'll just come and fetch you.'