The Last Chronicle of Barset | Page 3

was with her son. While they were thus talking the father came in from his office, and then the subject was dropped. He was a man between fifty and sixty years of age, with grey hair, rather short, and somewhat corpulent, but still gifted with that amount of personal comeliness which comfortable position and the respect of others will generally seem to give. A man rarely carries himself meanly whom the world holds in high esteem.
'I am very tired, my dear,' said Mr Walker.
'You look tired. Come and sit down for a few minutes before you dress. Mary, get your father's slippers.' Mary instantly ran to the door.
'Thanks, my darling,' said the father. And then he whispered to his wife, as soon as Mary was out of hearing. 'I fear the unfortunate man is guilty. I fear he is! I fear he is!'
'Oh, heavens! what will become of them?'
'What indeed? She has been with me today.'
'Has she? And what could you say to her?'
'I told her at first that I could not see her, and begged her not to speak to me about it. I tried to make her understand that she should go to someone else. But it was of no use.'
'And how did it end?'
'I asked her to go in to you, but she declined. She said you could do nothing for her.'
'And does she think her husband guilty?'
'No, indeed. She think him guilty! Nothing on earth--or from heaven either, as I take it, would make her suppose it to be possible. She came simply to tell me how good he was.'
'I love her for that,' said Mrs Walker.
'So did I. But what is the good of loving her? Thank you, dearest. I'll get your slippers for you some day, perhaps.'
The whole county was astir with this matter of this alleged guilt of the Reverend Mr Crawley--the whole county almost as keenly as the family of Mr Walker, of Silverbridge. The crime laid to his charge was the theft of a cheque for twenty pounds, which he was said to have stolen out of a pocket-book left or dropped in his house, and to have passed as money into the hands of one Fletcher, a butcher of Silverbridge, to whom he was indebted. Mr Crawley was in those days the perpetual curate of Hogglestock, a pariah in the northern extremity of East Barsetshire; a man known by all who knew anything of him to be very poor--an unhappy, moody, disappointed man, upon whom the troubles of the world always seemed to come with a double weight. But he had ever been respected as a clergyman, since his old friend Mr Arabin, the dean of Barchester, had given him the small incumbency which he now held. Though moody, unhappy, and disappointed, he was a hard-working, conscientious pastor, among the poor people with whom his lot was cast; for in the parish of Hogglestock there resided only a few farmers higher in degree than field labourers, brickmakers, and such like. Mr Crawley had now passed some ten years of his life at Hogglestock; and during those years he had worked very hard to do his duty, struggling to teach the people around him perhaps too much of the mystery, but something of the comfort, of religion. That he had became popular in his parish cannot be said of him. He was not a man to make himself popular in any position. I have said that he was moody and disappointed. He was even worse than this; he was morose, sometimes almost to insanity. There had been days in which even his wife had found it impossible to deal with him otherwise than as with an acknowledged lunatic. And this was known among the farmers, who talked about their clergyman among themselves as though he were a madman. But among the very poor, among the brickmakers of Hoggle End--a lawless, drunken, terribly rough lot of humanity--he was held in high respect; for they knew that he lived hardly, as they lived; that he worked hard, as they worked; and that the outside world was hard to him, as it was to them; and there had been an apparent sincerity of godliness about the man, and a manifest struggle to do his duty in spite of the world's ill-usage, which had won its way even with the rough; so that Mr Crawley's name had stood high with many in the parish, in spite of the unfortunate peculiarity of his disposition. This was the man who was now accused of stealing a cheque for twenty pounds.
But before the circumstances of the alleged theft are stated, a word or two must be said as to Mr Crawley's family. It is declared that a good wife is a crown to her husband, but Mrs Crawley