DINNER AT FRAMLEY COURT.
Lord Lufton, as he drove home to Framley after the meeting of
the magistrates at Silverbridge, discussed the matter with his
brother-in-law, Mark Robarts, the clergyman. Lord Lufton was driving
a dog-cart, and went along the road at the rate of twelve miles
an hour. "I'll tell you what it is, Mark," he said, "that man is
innocent; but if he won't employ lawyers at his trial, the jury will
find him guilty."
"I don't know what to think about it," said the clergyman.
"Were you in the room when he protested so vehemently that he didn't
know where he got the money?"
"I was in the room all the time."
"And did you not believe him when he said that?"
"Yes,--I think I did."
"Anybody must have believed him,--except old Tempest, who never
believes anybody, and Fothergill, who always suspects everybody. The
truth is, that he had found the cheque and put it by, and did not
remember anything about it."
"But, Lufton, surely that would amount to stealing it."
"Yes, if it wasn't that he is such a poor, cracked, crazy creature,
with his mind all abroad. I think Soames did drop his book in
his house. I'm sure Soames would not say so unless he was quite
confident. Somebody has picked it up, and in some way the cheque has
got into Crawley's hand. Then he has locked it up and has forgotten
all about it; and when that butcher threatened him, he has put his
hand upon it, and he has thought, or believed, that it had come from
Soames or from the dean, or from heaven, if you will. When a man is
so crazy as that, you can't judge of him as you do of others."
"But a jury must judge of him as it would of others."
"And therefore there should be a lawyer to tell the jury what to do.
They should have somebody up out of the parish to show that he is
beside himself half his time. His wife would be the best person, only
it would be hard lines on her."
"Very hard. And after all he would only escape by being shown to be
mad."
"And he is mad."
"Mrs. Proudie would come upon him in such a case as that, and
sequester his living."
"And what will Mrs. Proudie do when he's a convicted thief? Simply
unfrock him, and take away his living altogether. Nothing on earth
should induce me to find him guilty if I were on a jury."
"But you have committed him."
"Yes,--I've been one, at least, in doing so. I simply did that which
Walker told us we must do. A magistrate is not left to himself as a
juryman is. I'd eat the biggest pair of boots in Barchester before I
found him guilty. I say, Mark, you must talk it over with the women,
and see what can be done for them. Lucy tells me that they're so
poor, that if they have bread to eat, it's as much as they have."
On this evening Archdeacon Grantly and his wife dined and slept at
Framley Court, there having been a very long family friendship
between old Lady Lufton and the Grantlys, and Dr. Thorne with his
wife, from Chaldicotes, also dined at Framley. There was also there
another clergyman from Barchester, Mr. Champion, one of the prebends
of the cathedral. There were only three now who had houses in the
city since the retrenchments of the ecclesiastical commission had
come into full force. And this Mr. Champion was dear to the Dowager
Lady Lufton, because he carried on worthily the clerical war against
the bishop which had raged in Barsetshire ever since Dr. Proudie had
come there,--which war old Lady Lufton, good and pious and charitable
as she was, considered that she was bound to keep up, even to the
knife, till Dr. Proudie and all his satellites should have been
banished into outer darkness. As the light of the Proudies still
shone brightly, it was probable that poor old Lady Lufton might die
before her battle was accomplished. She often said that it would be
so, but when so saying, always expressed a wish that the fight might
be carried on after her death. "I shall never, never rest in my
grave," she had once said to the archdeacon, "while that woman sits
in your father's palace." For the archdeacon's father had been Bishop
of Barchester before Dr. Proudie. What mode of getting rid of the
bishop or his wife Lady Lufton proposed to herself, I am unable to
say; but I think she lived in hopes that in some way it might be
done. If only the bishop could have been found to have stolen a
cheque for twenty pounds instead of poor Mr. Crawley, Lady Lufton
would, I think, have been satisfied.
In the course of these battles Framley Court would sometimes assume a
clerical aspect,--have a prevailing hue, as it were, of black coats,
which was not altogether to the taste of Lord Lufton, and as to which
he would make complaint to his wife, and to Mark Robarts, himself a
clergyman. "There's more of this than I can stand," he'd say to the
latter. "There's a deuced deal more of it than you like yourself, I
know."
"It's not for me to like or dislike. It's a great thing having your
mother in the parish."
"That's all very well; and of course she'll do as she likes. She may
ask whom she pleases here, and I shan't interfere. It's the same as
though it was her own house. But I shall take Lucy to Lufton." Now
Lord Lufton had been building his house at Lufton for the last seven
years, and it was not yet finished,--or nearly finished, if all that
his wife and mother said was true. And if they could have their
way, it never would be finished. And so, in order that Lord Lufton
might not be actually driven away by the turmoils of ecclesiastical
contest, the younger Lady Lufton would endeavour to moderate both the
wrath and the zeal of the elder one, and would struggle against the
coming clergymen. On this day, however, three sat at the board at
Framley, and Lady Lufton, in her justification to her son, swore that
the invitation had been given by her daughter-in-law. "You know, my
dear," the dowager said to Lord Lufton, "something must be done for
these poor Crawleys; and as the dean is away, Lucy wants to speak to
the archdeacon about them."
"And the archdeacon could not subscribe his ten-pound note without
having Mr. Champion to back him?"
"My dear Ludovic, you do put it in such a way."
"Never mind, mother. I've no special dislike to Champion; only as you
are not paid five thousand a year for your trouble, it is rather hard
that you should have to do all the work of opposition bishop in the
diocese."
It was felt by them all,--including Lord Lufton himself, who became
so interested in the matter as to forgive the black coats before the
evening was over,--that this matter of Mr. Crawley's committal was
very serious, and demanded the full energies of their party. It was
known to them all that the feeling at the palace was inimical to Mr.
Crawley. "That she-Beelzebub hates him for his poverty, and because
Arabin brought him into the diocese," said the archdeacon, permitting
himself to use very strong language in his allusion to the bishop's
wife. It must be recorded on his behalf that he used the phrase in
the presence only of the gentlemen of the party. I think he might
have whispered the word into the ear of his confidential friend old
Lady Lufton, and perhaps have given no offence; but he would not have
ventured to use such words aloud in the presence of ladies.
"You forget, archdeacon," said Dr. Thorne, laughing, "that the
she-Beelzebub is my wife's particular friend."
"Not a bit of it," said the archdeacon. "Your wife knows better than
that. You tell her what I call her, and if she complains of the name,
I'll unsay it." It may therefore be supposed that Dr. Thorne, and
Mrs. Thorne, and the archdeacon, knew each other intimately, and
understood each other's feelings on these matters.
It was quite true that the palace party was inimical to Mr. Crawley.
Mr. Crawley undoubtedly was poor, and had not been so submissive to
episcopal authority as it behoves any clergyman to be whose loaves
and fishes are scanty. He had raised his back more than once against
orders emanating from the palace in a manner that had made the hairs
on the head of the bishop's wife to stand almost on end, and had
taken as much upon himself as though his living had been worth twelve
hundred a year. Mrs. Proudie, almost as energetic in her language as
the archdeacon, had called him a beggarly 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.