“It was a narrow squeak—a very narrow squeak,” Mr. Crawley had said when his friend congratulated him on his escape. The dean felt at the moment that not for many years had he heard the incumbent of Hogglestock speak either of himself or of anything else with so manifest an attempt at jocularity. Arabin had expected to find the man broken down by the weight of his sorrows, and lo! at the first moment of their first interview he himself began to ridicule them! Crawley having thus alluded to the narrow squeak had asked his visitor to enter the house and see his wife.
“Of course I will,” said Arabin, “but I will speak just a word to you first.” Jane, who had accompanied the dean from the school, now left them, and went into the house to her mother. “My wife cannot forgive herself about the cheque,” continued he.
“There is nothing to be forgiven,” said Mr. Crawley; “nothing.”
“She feels that what she did was awkward and foolish. She ought never to have paid a cheque away in such a manner. She knows that now.”
“It was given—not paid,” said Crawley; and as he spoke something of the black cloud came back upon his face. “And I am well aware how hard Mrs. Arabin strove to take away from the alms she bestowed the bitterness of the sting of eleemosynary aid. If you please, Arabin, we will not talk any more of that. I can never forget that I have been a beggar, but I need not make my beggary the matter of conversation. I hope the Holy Land has fulfilled your expectation?”
“It has more than done so,” said the dean, bewildered by the sudden change.
“For myself, it is, of course, impossible that I should ever visit any scenes except those to which my immediate work may call me—never in this world. The new Jerusalem is still within my reach—if it be not forfeited by pride and obstinacy; but the old Jerusalem I can never behold. Methinks, because it is so, I would sooner stand with my foot on Mount Olivet, or drink a cup of water in the village of Bethany, than visit any other spot within the traveller’s compass. The sources of the Nile, of which men now talk so much—I see it in the papers and reviews which the ladies at Framley are so good as to send to my wife—do not interest me much. I have no ambition to climb Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn; Rome makes my mouth water but little, nor even Athens much. I can realize without seeing all that Athens could show me, and can fancy that the existing truth would destroy more than it would build up. But to have stood on Calvary!”
“We don’t know where Calvary was,” said the dean.
“I fancy that I should know—should know enough,” said the illogical and unreasonable Mr. Crawley. “Is it true that you can look over from the spot on which He stood as He came across the brow of the hill, and see the huge stones of the Temple placed there by Solomon’s men—as He saw them;—right across the brook Cedron, is it not?”
“It is all there, Crawley—just as your knowledge of it tells you.”
“In the privilege of seeing those places I can almost envy a man his—money.” The last word he uttered after a pause. He had been about to say that under such temptation he could almost envy a man his promotion; but he bethought himself that on such an occasion as this it would be better that he should spare the dean. “And now, if you wish it, we will go in. I fancy that I see my wife at the window, as though she were waiting for us.” So saying, he strode on along the little path, and the dean was fain to follow him, even though he had said so little of all that he had intended to say.
As soon as he was with Mrs. Crawley he repeated his apology about the cheque, and found himself better able to explain himself than he could do when alone with her husband. “Of course, it has been our fault,” he said.
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Crawley, “how can you have been in fault when your only object was to do us good?” But, nevertheless, the dean took the blame upon his own shoulders, or, rather upon those of his wife, and declared himself to be responsible for all the trouble about the cheque.
“Let it go,” said Crawley, after sitting for awhile in silence; “let it pass.”
“You cannot wonder, Crawley,” said the dean, “that I should have felt myself obliged to speak of it.”
“For the future it will be well that it should be forgotten,” said Crawley; “or, if not forgotten, treated as though forgotten. And now, dean, what must I do about the living?”
“Just resume it, as though nothing had happened.”
“But that may hardly be done without the bishop’s authority. I speak, of course, with deference to your higher and better information on such subjects. My experience in the taking up and laying down of livings has not been extended. But it seemeth to me that though it may certainly be in your power to nominate me again to the perpetual curacy of this parish—presuming your patronage to be unlimited and not to reach you in rotation only—yet the bishop may demand to institute again, and must so demand, unless he pleases to permit that my letter to him shall be revoked and cancelled.”
“Of course he will do anything of that kind. He must know the circumstances as well as you and I do.”
“At present they tell me that he is much afflicted by the death of his wife, and, therefore, can hardly be expected
