The Last Chronicle of Barset

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.

“I can only say that I have heard nothing from the bishop as yet,” said Dr. Tempest, after the ladies had left the room. “Of course, if he thinks well to order it, the inquiry must be made.”

“But how long would it take?” asked Mr. Walker.

“Three months, I should think⁠—or perhaps more. Of course Crawley would do all that he could to delay us, and I am not at all sure that we should be in any very great hurry ourselves.”

“Who are the ‘we,’ doctor?” said Mr. Walker.

“I cannot make such an inquiry by myself, you know. I suppose the bishop would ask me to select two or four other clergymen to act with me. That’s the usual way of doing it. But you may be quite sure of this, Walker; the assizes will be over, and the jury have found their verdict long before we have settled our preliminaries.”

“And what will be the good of your going on after that?”

“Only this good:⁠—if the unfortunate man be convicted⁠—”

“Which he won’t,” said Mr. Toogood, who thought it expedient to put on a bolder front in talking of the matter to the rural dean, than he had assumed in his whispered conversation with Mrs. Walker.

“I hope not, with all my heart,” said the doctor. “But, perhaps, for the sake of the argument, the supposition may be allowed to pass.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Mr. Toogood. “For the sake of the argument, it may pass.”

“If he be convicted, then, I suppose, there will be an end of the question. He would be sentenced for not less, I should say, than twelve months; and after that⁠—”

“And would be as good a parson of Hogglestock when he came out of prison as when he went in,” said Mr. Walker. “The conviction and judgment in a civil court would not touch his temporality.”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Toogood.

“Of course not,” said the doctor. “We all know that; and in the event of Mr. Crawley coming back to his parish it would be open to the bishop to raise the question as to his fitness for the duties.”

“Why shouldn’t he be as fit as anyone else?” said Mr. Toogood.

“Simply because he would have been found to be a thief,” said the doctor. “You must excuse me, Mr. Toogood, but it’s only for the sake of the argument.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” said Mr. Toogood. “He would have undergone his penalty.”

“It is preferable that a man who preaches from a pulpit should not have undergone such a penalty,” said the doctor. “But in practice, under such circumstances⁠—which we none of us anticipate, Mr. Toogood⁠—the living should no doubt be vacated. Mr. Crawley would probably hardly wish to come back. The jury will do their work before we can do ours⁠—will do it on a much better base than any we can have; and, when they have done it, the thing ought to be finished. If the jury acquit him, the bishop cannot proceed any further. If he be found guilty I think that the resignation of the living must follow.”

“It is all spite, then, on the bishop’s part?” said the major.

“Not at all,” said the doctor. “The poor man is weak; that is all. He is driven to persecute because he cannot escape persecution himself. But it may really be a question whether his present proceeding is not right. If I were bishop I should wait till the trial was over; that is all.”

From this and from much more that was said during the evening on the same subject Mr. Toogood gradually learned the position which Mr. Crawley and the question of Mr. Crawley’s guilt really held in the