The Last Chronicle of Barset (66 page)

Mr Harding began nursing his knee, patting it and being very tender to it, as he sat meditating with his head on one side – meditating not so much as to the nature of his answer as to that of the question. Could it be necessary that any emissary from a lawyer's office should be sent after his daughter? He did not like the idea of his Eleanor being disturbed by questions as to a theft. Though she had been twice married and had a son who was now nearly a man, still she was his Eleanor. But if it was necessary on Mr Crawley's behalf, of course it must be done. ‘Her last address was at Paris, sir; but I think she has gone on to Florence. She has friends there, and she purposes to meet the dean at Venice on his return.' Then Mr Harding turned to the table and wrote on a card his daughter's address.

‘I suppose Mrs Arabin must have heard of the affair?' said Mr Toogood.

‘She had not done so when she last wrote. I mentioned it to her the other day, before I knew that she had left Paris. If my letters and her sister's letters have been sent on to her, she must know it now.'

Then Mr Toogood got up to take his leave. ‘You will excuse me for troubling you, I hope, Mr Harding.'

‘Oh, sir, pray do not mention that. It is no trouble, if one could only be of any service.'

‘One can always try to be of service. In these affairs so much is to be done by rummaging about, as I always call it. There have been many theatrical managers, you know, Mr Harding, who have usually made up their pieces according to the dresses they have happened to have in their wardrobes.'

‘Have there, indeed, now? I never should have thought of that.'

‘And we lawyers have to do the same thing.'

‘Not with your clothes, Mr Toogood?'

‘Not exactly with our clothes – but with our information.'

‘I do not quite understand you, Mr Toogood.'

‘In preparing a defence we have to rummage about and get up what we can. If we can't find anything that suits us exactly, we are obliged to use what we do find as well as we can. I remember, when I was a young man, an ostler was to be tried for stealing some oats in the Borough; and he did steal them too, and sold them at a rag-shop regularly. The evidence against him was as plain as a pikestaff. All I could find out was that on a certain day a horse had trod on the fellow's foot. So we put it to the jury whether the man could walk as far as the rag-shop with a bag of oats when he was dead lame – and we got him off.'

‘Did you, though?' said Mr Harding.

‘Yes, we did.'

‘And he was guilty?'

‘He had been at it regularly for months.'

‘Dear, dear, dear! Wouldn't it have been better to have had him punished for the fault – gently; so as to warn him of the consequences of such doings?'

‘Our business was to get him off – and we got him off. It's my business to get my cousin's husband off, if I can, and we must do it, by hook or by crook. It's a very difficult piece of work, because he won't let us employ a barrister. However, I shall have one in the court and say nothing to him about it at all. Good-bye, Mr Harding. As you say, it would be a thousand pities that a clergyman should be convicted of a theft – and one so well connected too.'

Mr Harding, when he was left alone, began to turn the matter over in his mind and to reflect whether the thousand pities of which Mr Toogood had spoken appertained to the conviction of the criminal, or the doing of the crime. ‘If he did steal the money I suppose he ought to be punished, let him be ever so much a clergyman,' said Mr Harding to himself. But yet – how terrible it would be! Of clergymen convicted of fraud in London he had often heard; but nothing of the kind had ever disgraced the diocese to which he belonged since he
had known it. He could not teach himself to hope that Mr Crawley should be acquitted if Mr Crawley were guilty – but he could teach himself to believe that Mr Crawley was innocent. Something of a doubt had crept across his mind as he talked to the lawyer. Mr Toogood, though Mrs Crawley was his cousin, seemed to believe that the money had been stolen; and Mr Toogood as a lawyer ought to understand such matters better than an old secluded clergyman in Barchester. But, nevertheless, Mr Toogood might be wrong; and Mr Harding succeeded in satisfying himself at last that he could not be doing harm in thinking that Mr Toogood was wrong. When he had made up his mind on this matter he sat down and wrote the following letter, which he addressed to his daughter at the post-office in Florence: –

‘Deanery –, March, 186–

‘D
EAREST
N
ELLY
, –

‘When I wrote on Tuesday I told you about poor Mr Crawley, that he was the clergyman in Barsetshire of whose misfortune you read an account in
Galignani's Messenger
– and I think Susan must have written about it also, because everybody here is talking of nothing else, and because, of course, we know how strong a regard the dean has for Mr Crawley. But since that something has occurred which makes me write to you again – at once. A gentleman has just been here, and has indeed only this moment left me, who tells me that he is an attorney in London, and that he is nearly related to Mrs Crawley. He seems to be a very good-natured man, and I daresay he understands his business as a lawyer. His name is Toogood, and he has come down as he says to get evidence to help the poor gentleman on his trial. I cannot understand how this should be necessary, because it seems to me that the evidence should all be wanted on the other side. I cannot for a moment suppose that a clergyman and a gentleman such as Mr Crawley should have stolen money, and if he is innocent I cannot understand why all this trouble should be necessary to prevent a jury finding him guilty.

‘Mr Toogood came here because he wanted to see the dean – and you also. He did not explain, as far as I can remember, why he wanted to see you; but he said it would be necessary, and that he was going to send off a messenger to find you first, and the dean afterwards. It has something to do
with the money which was given to Mr Crawley last year, and which, if I remember right, was your present. But of course Mr Toogood could not have known anything about that. However, I gave him the address – poste restante, Florence – and I daresay that somebody will make you out before long, if you are still stopping at Florence. I did not like letting him go without telling you about it, as I thought that a lawyer's coming to you would startle you.

‘The bairns are quite well, as I told you in my other letter, and Miss Jones says that little Elly is as good as gold. They are with me every morning and evening, and behave like darling angels, as they are. Posy is my own little jewel always. You may be quite sure I do nothing to spoil them.

God bless you, dearest Nelly,     
    ‘Your most affectionate father,   
         ‘S
EPTIMUS
H
ARDING
.'

After this he wrote another letter to his other daughter, Mrs Grantly, telling her also of Mr Toogood's visit; and then he spent the remainder of the day thinking over the gravity of the occurrence. How terrible would it be if a beneficed clergyman in the diocese should really be found guilty of theft by a jury from the city! And then he had always heard so high a character of this man from his son-in-law. No – it was impossible to believe that Mr Crawley had in truth stolen a cheque for twenty pounds!

Mr Toogood could get no further information in Barchester, and went on to Silverbridge early in the afternoon. He was half disposed to go by Hogglestock and look up his cousin, whom he had never seen, and his cousin's husband, upon whose business he was now intent; but on reflection he feared that he might do more harm than good. He had quite appreciated the fact that Mr Crawley was not like other men. ‘The man's not above half-saved,' he had said to his wife – meaning thereby to insinuate that the poor clergyman was not in full possession of his wits. And, to tell the truth of Mr Toogood, he was a little afraid of his relative. There was a something in Mr Crawley's manner, in spite of his declared poverty, and in spite also of his extreme humility, which seemed to announce that he expected to be obeyed when he spoke on any point with authority. Mr Toogood had not forgotten the tone in which Mr Crawley had said to him, ‘Sir,
this thing you cannot do.' And he thought that, upon the whole, he had better not go to Hogglestock on this occasion.

When at Silverbridge, he began at once to ‘rummage about.' His chief rummaging was to be done at Mr Walker's table; but before dinner he had time to call upon the magistrate's clerk, and ask a few questions as to the proceedings at the sitting from which Mr Crawley was committed. He found a very taciturn old man, who was nearly as difficult to deal with in any rummaging process as a porcupine. But, nevertheless, at last he reached a state of conversation which was not absolutely hostile. Mr Toogood pleaded that he was the poor man's cousin – pleaded that, as the family lawyer, he was naturally the poor man's protector at such a time as the present – pleaded also that as the poor man was so very poor, no one else could come forward on his behalf – and in this way somewhat softened the hard sharpness of the old porcupine's quills. But after all this, there was very little to be learned from the old porcupine. ‘There was not a magistrate on the bench,' he said, ‘who had any doubt that the evidence was sufficient to justify them in sending the case to the assizes. They had all regretted,' – the porcupine said in his softest moment – ‘that the gentleman had come there without a legal adviser.' ‘Ah, that's been the mischief of it all!' said Mr Toogood, dashing his hand against the porcupine's mahogany table. ‘But the facts were so strong, Mr Toogood!' ‘Nobody there to soften 'em down, you know,' said Mr Toogood, shaking his head. Very little more than this was learned from the porcupine; and then Mr Toogood went away, and prepared for Mr Walker's dinner.

Mr Walker had invited Dr Tempest and Miss Anne Prettyman and Major Grantly to meet Mr Toogood, and had explained, in a manner intended to be half earnest and half jocose, that though Mr Toogood was an attorney, like himself, and was at this moment engaged in a noble way on behalf of his cousin's husband, without any idea of receiving back even the money which he would be out of pocket, still he wasn't quite – not quite, you know – ‘not quite so much of a gentleman as I am' – Mr Walker would have said, had he spoken out freely that which he insinuated. But he contented himself with the emphasis he put upon the ‘not quite,' which expressed his meaning
fully. And Mr Walker was correct in his opinion of Mr Toogood. As regards the two attorneys I will not venture to say that either of them was not a ‘perfect gentleman.' A perfect gentleman is a thing which I cannot define. But undoubtedly Mr Walker was a bigger man in his way than was Mr Toogood in his, and did habitually consort in the county of Barsetshire with men of higher standing than those with whom Mr Toogood associated in London.

It seemed to be understood that Mr Crawley was to be the general subject of conversation, and no one attempted to talk about anything else. Indeed, at this time, very little else was talked about in that part of the county – not only because of the interest naturally attaching to the question of the suspected guilt of a parish clergyman, but because much had become lately known of Mr Crawley's character, and because it was known also that an internecine feud had arisen between him and the bishop. It had undoubtedly become the general opinion that Mr Crawley had picked up and used a cheque which was not his own – that he had, in fact, stolen it; but there was, in spite of that belief, a general wish that he might be acquitted and left in his living. And when the tidings of Mr Crawley's victory over the bishop at the palace had become bruited about, popular sympathy went with the victor. The theft was, as it were, condoned, and people made excuses which were not always rational, but which were founded on the instincts of true humanity. And now the tidings of another stage in the battle, as fought against Mr Crawley by the bishop, had gone forth through the county, and men had heard that the rural dean was to be instructed to make inquiries which should be preliminary to proceedings against Mr Crawley in an ecclesiastical court. Dr Tempest, who was now about to meet Mr Toogood at Mr Walker's, was the rural dean to whom Mr Crawley would have to submit himself in any such inquiry; but Dr Tempest had not as yet received from the bishop any official order on the subject.

‘We are so delighted to think that you have taken up your cousin's case,' said Mrs Walker to Mr Toogood, almost in a whisper.

‘He is not just my cousin, himself,' said Mr Toogood, ‘but of course it's all the same thing. And as to taking up his case, you see, my dear madam, he won't let me take it up.'

‘I thought you had. I thought you were down here about it?'

‘Only on the sly, Mrs Walker. He has such queer ideas that he will not allow a lawyer to be properly employed; and you can't conceive how hard that makes it. Do you know him, Mrs Walker?'

‘We know his daughter Grace.' And then Mrs Walker whispered something further, which we may presume to have been an intimation that the gentleman opposite – Major Grantly – was supposed by some people to be very fond of Miss Grace Crawley.

‘Quite a child, isn't she?' said Toogood, whose own daughter, now about to be married, was three or four years older than Grace.

‘She's beyond being a child, I think. Of course she is young.'

‘But I suppose this affair will knock all that on the head,' said the lawyer.

‘I do not know how that may be; but they do say he is very much attached to her. The major is a man of family, and of course it would be very disagreeable if Mr Crawley were found guilty.'

‘Very disagreeable, indeed; but, upon my word, Mrs Walker, I don't know what to say about it.'

‘You think it will go against him, Mr Toogood?' Mr Toogood shook his head, and on seeing this, Mrs Walker sighed deeply.