“He’s got hold of a regular scamp then. I never knew any good of Dan Stringer,” said the archdeacon.
Then Mrs. Grantly was told, and the whole story was repeated again, with many expressions of commiseration in reference to all the Crawleys. The archdeacon did not join in these at first, being rather shy on that head. It was very hard for him to have to speak to his son about the Crawleys as though they were people in all respects estimable and well-conducted, and satisfactory. Mrs. Grantly understood this so well, that every now and then she said some half-laughing word respecting Mr. Crawley’s peculiarities, feeling that in this way she might ease her husband’s difficulties.
“He must be the oddest man that ever lived,” said Mrs. Grantly, “not to have known where he got the cheque.” The archdeacon shook his head, and rubbed his hands as he walked about the room.
“I suppose too much learning has upset him,” said the archdeacon. “They say he’s not very good at talking English, but put him on in Greek and he never stops.”
The archdeacon was perfectly aware that he had to admit Mr. Crawley to his goodwill, and that as for Grace Crawley—it was essentially necessary that she should be admitted to his heart of hearts. He had promised as much. It must be acknowledged that Archdeacon Grantly always kept his promises, and especially such promises as these. And indeed it was the nature of the man that when he had been very angry with those he loved, he should be unhappy until he had found some escape from his anger. He could not endure to have to own himself to have been in the wrong, but he could be content with a very incomplete recognition of his having been in the right. The posters had been pulled down and Mr. Crawley, as he was now told, had not stolen the cheque. That was sufficient. If his son would only drink a glass or two of wine with him comfortably, and talk dutifully about the Plumstead foxes, all should be held to be right, and Grace Crawley should be received with lavish paternal embraces. The archdeacon had kissed Grace once, and felt that he could do so again without an unpleasant strain upon his feelings.
“Say something to your father about the property after dinner,” said Mrs. Grantly to her son when they were alone together.
“About what property?”
“About this property, or any property; you know what I mean;—something to show that you are interested about his affairs. He is doing the best he can to make things right.”
After dinner, over the claret, Mr. Thorne’s terrible sin in reference to the trapping of foxes was accordingly again brought up, and the archdeacon became beautifully irate, and expressed his animosity—which he did not in the least feel—against an old friend with an energy which would have delighted his wife, if she could have heard him. “I shall tell Thorne my mind, certainly. He and I are very old friends; we have known each other all our lives; but I cannot put up with this kind of thing—and I will not. It’s all because he’s afraid of his own gamekeeper.” And yet the archdeacon had never ridden after a fox in his life, and never meant to do so. Nor had he in truth been always so very anxious that foxes should be found in his covers. That fox which had been so fortunately trapped just outside the Plumstead property afforded a most pleasant escape for the steam of his anger. When he began to talk to his wife that evening about Mr. Thorne’s wicked gamekeeper, she was so sure that all was right, that she said a word of her extreme desire to see Grace Crawley.
“If he is to marry her, we might as well have her over here,” said the archdeacon.
“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Mrs. Grantly. And thus things at the rectory got themselves arranged.
On the Sunday morning the expected letter from Venice came to hand, and was read on that morning very anxiously, not only by Mrs. Grantly and the major, but by the archdeacon also, in spite of the sanctity of the day. Indeed the archdeacon had been very stoutly anti-sabbatarial when the question of stopping the Sunday post to Plumstead had been mooted in the village, giving those who on that occasion were the special friends of the postman to understand that he considered them to be numskulls, and little better than idiots. The postman, finding the parson to be against him, had seen that there was no chance for him, and had allowed the matter to drop. Mrs. Arabin’s letter was long and eager, and full of repetitions, but it did explain clearly to them the exact manner in which the cheque had found its way into Mr. Crawley’s hand.
“Francis came up to me,” she said in her letter—Francis being her husband, the dean—“and asked me for the money, which I had promised to make up in a packet. The packet was not ready, and he would not wait, declaring that Mr. Crawley was in such a flurry that he did not like to leave him. I was therefore to bring it down to the door. I went to my desk, and thinking that I could spare the twenty pounds as well as the fifty, I put the cheque into the envelope, together with the notes, and handed the packet to Francis at the door. I think I told Francis afterwards that I put seventy pounds into the envelope, instead of fifty, but of this I will not be sure. At any rate, Mr. Crawley got Mr. Soames’s cheque from me.” These last words she underscored, and then went on to explain how the cheque had been paid to her a short time before by Dan Stringer.
“Then Toogood has been right about the fellow,”
