MR. CRAWLEY SEEKS FOR SYMPATHY.
[Illustration]
Matters went very badly indeed in the parsonage house at Hogglestock.
On the Friday morning, the morning of the day after his committal,
Mr. Crawley got up very early, long before the daylight, and dressing
himself in the dark, groped his way downstairs. His wife having
vainly striven to persuade him to remain where he was, followed
him into the cold room below with a lighted candle. She found him
standing with his hat on and with his old cloak, as though he were
prepared to go out. "Why do you do this?" she said. "You will make
yourself ill with the cold and the night air; and then you, and I
too, will be worse than we now are."
"We cannot be worse. You cannot be worse, and for me it does not
signify. Let me pass."
"I will not let you pass, Josiah. Be a man and bear it. Ask God for
strength, instead of seeking it in an over-indulgence of your own
sorrow."
"Indulgence!"
"Yes, love;--indulgence. It is indulgence. You will allow your mind
to dwell on nothing for a moment but your own wrongs."
"What else have I that I can think of? Is not all the world against
me?"
"Am I against you?"
"Sometimes I think you are. When you accuse me of self-indulgence you
are against me,--me, who for myself have desired nothing but to be
allowed to do my duty, and to have bread enough to keep me alive, and
clothes enough to make me decent."
"Is it not self-indulgence, this giving way to grief? Who would know
so well as you how to teach the lesson of endurance to others? Come,
love. Lay down your hat. It cannot be fitting that you should go out
into the wet and cold of the raw morning."
For a moment he hesitated, but as she raised her hand to take his
cloak from him he drew back from her, and would not permit it. "I
shall find those up whom I want to see," he said. "I must visit my
flock, and I dare not go through the parish by daylight lest they
hoot after me as a thief."
"Not one in Hogglestock would say a word to insult you."
"Would they not? The very children in the school whisper at me. Let
me pass, I say. It has not as yet come to that, that I should be
stopped in my egress and ingress. They have--bailed me; and while
their bail lasts, I may go where I will."
"Oh, Josiah, what words to me! Have I ever stopped your liberty?
Would I not give my life to secure it?"
"Let me go, then, now. I tell you that I have business in hand."
"But I will go with you? I will be ready in an instant."
"You go! Why should you go? Are there not the children for you to
mind?"
"There is only Jane."
"Stay with her, then. Why should you go about the parish?" She
still held him by the cloak, and looked anxiously up into his face.
"Woman," he said, raising his voice, "what is it that you dread? I
command you to tell me what is it that you fear?" He had now taken
hold of her by the shoulder, slightly thrusting her from him, so that
he might see her face by the dim light of the single candle. "Speak,
I say. What is that you think that I shall do?"
"Dearest, I know that you will be better at home, better with me,
than you can be on such a morning as this out in the cold damp air."
"And is that all?" He looked hard at her, while she returned his gaze
with beseeching loving eyes. "Is there nothing behind, that you will
not tell me?"
She paused for a moment before she replied. She had never lied to
him. She could not lie to him. "I wish you knew my heart towards
you," she said, "with all and everything in it."
"I know your heart well, but I want to know your mind. Why would you
persuade me not to go out among my poor?"
"Because it will be bad for you to be out alone in the dark lanes, in
the mud and wet, thinking of your sorrow. You will brood over it till
you will lose your senses through the intensity of your grief. You
will stand out in the cold air, forgetful of everything around you,
till your limbs will be numbed, and your blood chilled,--"
"And then--?"
"Oh, Josiah, do not hold me like that, and look at me so angrily."
"And even then I will bear my burden till the Lord in His mercy shall
see fit to relieve me. Even then I will endure, though a bare bodkin
or a leaf of hemlock would put an end to it. Let me pass on; you need
fear nothing."
She did let him pass without another word, and he went out of the
house, shutting the door after him noiselessly, and closing the
wicket-gate of the garden. For a while she sat herself down on the
nearest chair, and tried to make up her mind how she might best treat
him in his present state of mind. As regarded the present morning
her heart was at ease. She knew that he would do now nothing of that
which she had apprehended. She could trust him not to be false in
his word to her, though she could not before have trusted him not
to commit so much heavier a sin. If he would really employ himself
from morning till night among the poor, he would be better so,--his
trouble would be easier of endurance,--than with any other employment
which he could adopt. What she most dreaded was that he should sit
idle over the fire and do nothing. When he was so seated she could
read his mind, as though it was open to her as a book. She had been
quite right when she had accused him of over-indulgence in his grief.
He did give way to it till it became a luxury to him,--a luxury which
she would not have had the heart to deny him, had she not felt it
to be of all luxuries the most pernicious. During these long hours,
in which he would sit speechless, doing nothing, he was telling
himself from minute to minute that of all God's creatures he was
the most heavily afflicted, and was revelling in the sense of the
injustice done to him. He was recalling all the facts of his life,
his education, which had been costly, and, as regarded knowledge,
successful; his vocation to the church, when in his youth he
had determined to devote himself to the service of his Saviour,
disregarding promotion or the favour of men; the short, sweet days
of his early love, in which he had devoted himself again,--thinking
nothing of self, but everything of her; his diligent working, in
which he had ever done his very utmost for the parish in which he was
placed, and always his best for the poorest; the success of other
men who had been his compeers, and, as he too often told himself,
intellectually his inferiors; then of his children, who had been
carried off from his love to the churchyard,--over whose graves he
himself had stood, reading out the pathetic words of the funeral
service with unswerving voice and a bleeding heart; and then of his
children still living, who loved their mother so much better than
they loved him. And he would recall all the circumstances of his
poverty,--how he had been driven to accept alms, to fly from
creditors, to hide himself, to see his chairs and tables seized
before the eyes of those over whom he had been set as their spiritual
pastor. And in it all, I think, there was nothing so bitter to the
man as the derogation from the spiritual grandeur of his position
as priest among men, which came as one necessary result from his
poverty. St. Paul could go forth without money in his purse or shoes
to his feet or two suits to his back, and his poverty never stood in
the way of his preaching, or hindered the veneration of the faithful.
St. Paul, indeed, was called upon to bear stripes, was flung into
prison, encountered terrible dangers. But Mr. Crawley,--so he told
himself,--could have encountered all that without flinching. The
stripes and scorn of the unfaithful would have been nothing to him,
if only the faithful would have believed in him, poor as he was, as
they would have believed in him had he been rich! Even they whom he
had most loved treated him almost with derision, because he was now
different from them. Dean Arabin had laughed at him because he had
persisted in walking ten miles through the mud instead of being
conveyed in the dean's carriage; and yet, after that, he had been
driven to accept the dean's charity! No one respected him. No one!
His very wife thought that he was a lunatic. And now he had been
publicly branded as a thief; and in all likelihood would end his
days in a gaol! Such were always his thoughts as he sat idle, silent,
moody, over the fire; and his wife well knew their currents. It would
certainly be better that he should drive himself to some employment,
if any employment could be found possible to him.
When she had been alone for a few minutes, Mrs. Crawley got up from
her chair, and going into the kitchen, lighted the fire there, and
put the kettle over it, and began to prepare such breakfast for
her husband as the means in the house afforded. Then she called
the sleeping servant-girl, who was little more than a child, and
went into her own girl's room, and then she got into bed with her
daughter.
"I have been up with your papa, dear, and I am cold."
"Oh, mamma, poor mamma! Why is papa up so early?"
"He has gone out to visit some of the brickmakers before they go to
their work. It is better for him to be employed."
"But, mamma, it is pitch dark."
"Yes, dear, it is still dark. Sleep again for a while, and I will
sleep too. I think Grace will be here to-night, and then there will
be no room for me here."
Mr. Crawley went forth and made his way with rapid steps to a portion
of his parish nearly two miles distant from his house, through which
was carried a canal, affording water communication in some intricate
way both to London and Bristol. And on the brink of this canal there
had sprung up a colony of brickmakers, the nature of the earth in
those parts combining with the canal to make brickmaking a suitable
trade. The workmen there assembled were not, for the most part,
native-born Hogglestockians, or folk descended from Hogglestockian
parents. They had come thither from unknown regions, as labourers of
that class do come when they are needed. Some young men from that and
neighbouring parishes had joined themselves to the colony, allured by
wages, and disregarding the menaces of the neighbouring farmers; but
they were all in appearance and manners nearer akin to the race of
navvies than to ordinary rural labourers. They had a bad name in the
country; but it may be that their name was worse than their deserts.
The farmers hated them, and consequently they hated the farmers.
They had a beershop, and a grocer's shop, and a huxter's shop for
their own accommodation, and were consequently vilified by the small
old-established tradesmen around them. They got drunk occasionally,
but I doubt whether they drank more than did the farmers themselves
on market-day. They fought among themselves sometimes, but they
forgave each other freely, and seemed to have no objection to black
eyes. I fear that they were not always good to their wives, nor
were their wives always good to them; but it should be remembered
that among the poor, especially when they live in clusters, such
misfortunes cannot be hidden as they may be amidst the decent
belongings of more wealthy people. That they worked very hard was
certain; and it was certain also that very few of their number ever
came upon the poor rates. What became of the old brickmakers no one
knew. Who ever sees a worn-out aged navvie?
Mr. Crawley, ever since his first coming into Hogglestock, had been
very busy among these brickmakers, and by no means without success.
Indeed the farmers had quarrelled with him because the brickmakers
had so crowded the narrow parish church, as to leave but scant room
for decent people. "Doo they folk pay tithes? That's what I want
'un to tell me?" argued one farmer,--not altogether unnaturally,
believing as he did that Mr. Crawley was paid by tithes out of his
own pocket. But Mr. Crawley had done his best to make the brickmakers
welcome at the church, scandalizing the farmers by causing them
to sit or stand in any portion of the church which was hitherto
unappropriated. He had been constant in his personal visits to them,
and had felt himself to be more a St. Paul with them than with any
other of his neighbours around him.
It was a cold morning, but the rain of the preceding evening had
given way to frost, and the air, though sharp, was dry. The ground
under the feet was crisp, having felt the wind and frost, and was no
longer clogged with mud. In his present state of mind the walk was
good for our poor pastor, and exhilarated him; but still, as he went,
he thought always of his injuries. His own wife believed that he was
about to commit suicide, and for so believing he was very angry with
her; and yet, as he well knew, the idea of making away with himself
had flitted through his own mind a dozen times. Not from his own wife
could he get real sympathy. He would see what he could do with a
certain brickmaker of his acquaintance.
"Are you here, Dan?" he said, knocking at the door of a cottage which
stood alone, close to the towing-path of the canal, and close also to
a forlorn corner of the muddy, watery, ugly, disordered brickfield.
It was now just past six o'clock, and the men would be rising, as
in midwinter they commenced their work at seven. The cottage was an
unalluring, straight brick-built tenement, seeming as though intended
to be one of a row which had never progressed beyond Number One. A
voice answered from the interior, inquiring who was the visitor, to
which Mr. Crawley replied by giving his name. Then the key was turned
in the lock, and Dan Morris, the brickmaker, appeared with a candle
in his hand. He had been engaged in lighting the fire, with a view to
his own breakfast. "Where is your wife, Dan?" asked Mr. Crawley. The
man answered by pointing with a short poker, which he held in his
hand, to the bed, which was half screened from the room by a ragged
curtain, which hung from the ceiling half-way down to the floor. "And
are the Darvels here?" asked Mr. Crawley. Then Morris, again using
the poker, pointed upwards, showing that the Darvels were still in
their own allotted abode upstairs.
"You're early out, Muster Crawley," said Morris, and then he went on
with his fire. "Drat the sticks, if they bean't as wet as the old
'un hisself. Get up, old woman, and do you do it, for I can't. They
wun't kindle for me, nohow." But the old woman, having well noted the
presence of Mr. Crawley, thought it better to remain where she was.
Mr. Crawley sat himself down by the obstinate fire, and began to
arrange the sticks. "Dan, Dan," said a voice from the bed, "sure you
wouldn't let his reverence trouble himself with the fire."
"How be I to keep him from it, if he chooses? I didn't ax him." Then
Morris stood by and watched, and after a while Mr. Crawley succeeded
in his attempt.
"How could it burn when you had not given the small spark a current
of air to help it?" said Mr. Crawley.
"In course not," said the woman, "but he be such a stupid."
The husband said no word in acknowledgment of this compliment, nor
did he thank Mr. Crawley for what he had done, nor appear as though
he intended to take any notice of him. He was going on with his work
when Mr. Crawley again interrupted him.
"How did you get back from Silverbridge yesterday, Dan?"
"Footed it,--all the blessed way."
"It's only eight miles."
"And I footed it there, and that's sixteen. And I paid
one-and-sixpence for beer and grub;--s'help me, I did."
"Dan!" said the voice from the bed, rebuking him for the impropriety
of his language.
"Well; I beg pardon, but I did. And they guv' me two bob;--just two
plain shillings, by ----"
"Dan!"
"And I'd 've arned three-and-six here at brickmaking easy; that's
what I would. How's a poor man to live that way? They'll not cotch me
at Barchester 'Sizes at that price; they may be sure of that. Look
there,--that's what I've got for my day." And he put his hand into
his breeches'-pocket and fetched out a sixpence. "How's a man to fill
his belly out of that? Damnation!"
"Dan!"
"Well, what did I say? Hold your jaw, will you, and not be halloaing
at me that way? I know what I'm a saying of, and what I'm a doing
of."
"I wish they'd given you something more with all my heart," said
Crawley.
"We knows that," said the woman from the bed. "We is sure of that,
your reverence."
"Sixpence!" said the man, scornfully. "If they'd have guv me nothing
at all but the run of my teeth at the public-house, I'd 've taken it
better. But sixpence!"
Then there was a pause. "And what have they given to me?" said Mr.
Crawley, when the man's ill-humour about his sixpence had so far
subsided as to allow of his busying himself again about the premises.
"Yes, indeed;--yes, indeed," said the woman. "Yes, yes, we feel that;
we do indeed, Mr. Crawley."
"I tell you what, sir; for another sixpence I'd 've sworn you'd
never guv' me the paper at all; and so I will now, if it bean't too
late;--sixpence or no sixpence. What do I care? d---- them."
"Dan!"
"And why shouldn't I? They hain't got brains enough among them to
winny the truth from the lies,--not among the lot of 'em. I'll swear
afore the judge that you didn't give it me at all, if that'll do any
good."
"Man, do you think I would have you perjure yourself, even if that
would do me a service? And do you think that any man was ever served
by a lie?"
"Faix, among them chaps it don't do to tell them too much of the
truth. Look at that!" And he brought out the sixpence again from his
breeches'-pocket. "And look at your reverence. Only that they've let
you out for a while, they've been nigh as hard on you as though you
were one of us."
"If they think that I stole it, they have been right," said Mr.
Crawley.
"It's been along of that chap, Soames," said the woman. "The lord
would 've paid the money out of his own pocket and never said not a
word."
"If they think that I've been a thief, they've done right," repeated
Mr. Crawley. "But how can they think so? How can they think so? Have
I lived like a thief among them?"
"For the matter o' that, if a man ain't paid for his work by them as
is his employers, he must pay hisself. Them's my notions. Look at
that!" Whereupon he again pulled out the sixpence, and held it forth
in the palm of his hand.
"You believe, then," said Mr. Crawley, speaking very slowly, "that I
did steal the money. Speak out, Dan; I shall not be angry. As you go
you are honest men, and I want to know what such of you think about
it."
"He don't think nothing of the kind," said the woman, almost getting
out of bed in her energy. "If he'd athought the like o' that in his
head, I'd read 'un such a lesson he'd never think again the longest
day he had to live."
"Speak out, Dan," said the clergyman, not attending to the woman.
"You can understand that no good can come of a lie." Dan Morris
scratched his head. "Speak out, man, when I tell you," said Crawley.
[Illustration: "Speak out, Dan."]
"Drat it all," said Dan, "where's the use of so much jaw about it?"
"Say you know his reverence is as innocent as the babe as isn't
born," said the woman.
"No; I won't,--say nothing of the kind," said Dan.
"Speak out the truth," said Crawley.
"They do say, among 'em," said Dan, "that you picked it up, and then
got a woolgathering in your head till you didn't rightly know where
it come from." Then he paused. "And after a bit you guv' it me to get
the money. Didn't you, now?"
"I did."
"And they do say if a poor man had done it, it'd been stealing, for
sartain."
"And I'm a poor man,--the poorest in all Hogglestock; and, therefore,
of course, it is stealing. Of course I am a thief. Yes; of course I
am a thief. When did not the world believe the worst of the poor?"
Having so spoken, Mr. Crawley rose from his chair and hurried out of
the cottage, waiting no further reply from Dan Morris or his wife.
And as he made his way slowly home, not going there by the direct
road, but by a long circuit, he told himself that there could be no
sympathy for him anywhere. Even Dan Morris, the brickmaker, thought
that he was a thief.
"And am I a thief?" he said to himself, standing in the middle of the
road, with his hands up to his forehead.