“It’s been a deal o’ service to you, Muster Crawley,” he said. “We hears about it all. If you hadn’t a been dogged, where’d you a been now?” With Giles Hoggett and others he had remained all the day, and now he came home weary and beaten.
“You’ll tell him first,” Grace had said, “and then I’ll give him the letter.” The wife was the first to tell him of the good fortune that was coming.
He flung himself into the old chair as soon as he entered, and asked for some bread and tea. “Jane has already gone for it, dear,” said his wife. “We have had a visitor here, Josiah.”
“A visitor—what visitor?”
“Grace’s own friend—Henry Grantly.”
“Grace, come here, that I may kiss you and bless you,” he said, very solemnly. “It would seem that the world is going to be very good to you.”
“Papa, you must read this letter first.”
“Before I kiss my own darling?” Then she knelt at his feet. “I see,” he said, taking the letter; “it is from your lover’s father. Peradventure he signifies his consent, which would be surely needful before such a marriage would be seemly.”
“It isn’t about me, papa, at all.”
“Not about you? If so, that would be most unpromising. But, in any case, you are my best darling.” Then he kissed her and blessed her, and slowly opened the letter. His wife had now come close to him, and was standing over him, touching him, so that she also could read the archdeacon’s letter. Grace, who was still in front of him, could see the working of his face as he read it; but even she could not tell whether he was gratified, or offended, or dismayed. When he had got as far as the first offer of the presentation, he ceased reading for a while, and looked round about the room as though lost in thought. “Let me see what further he writes to me,” he then said; and after that he continued the letter slowly to the end. “Nay, my child, you were in error in saying that he wrote not about you. ’Tis in writing of you he has put some real heart into his words. He writes as though his home would be welcome to you.”
“And does he not make St. Ewolds welcome to you, papa?”
“He makes me welcome to accept it—if I may use the word after the ordinary and somewhat faulty parlance of mankind.”
“And you will accept it—of course?”
“I know not that, my dear. The acceptance of a cure of souls is a thing not to be decided on in a moment—as is the colour of a garment or the shape of a toy. Nor would I condescend to take this thing from the archdeacon’s hands, if I thought that he bestowed it simply that the father of his daughter-in-law might no longer be accounted poor.”
“Does he say that, papa?”
“He gives it as a collateral reason, basing his offer first on the kindly expressed judgment of one who is now no more. Then he refers to the friendship of the dean. If he believed that the judgment of his late father-in-law in so weighty a matter were the best to be relied upon of all that were at his command, then he would have done well to trust to it. But in such case he should have bolstered up a good ground for action with no collateral supports which are weak—and worse than weak. However, it shall have my best consideration, whereunto I hope that wisdom will be given me where only such wisdom can be had.”
“Josiah,” said his wife to him, when they were alone, “you will not refuse it?”
“Not willingly—not if it may be accepted. Alas! you need not urge me, when the temptation is so strong!”
LXXXIII
Mr. Crawley Is Conquered
It was more than a week before the archdeacon received a reply from Mr. Crawley, during which time the dean had been over at Hogglestock more than once, as had also Mrs. Arabin and Lady Lufton the younger—and there had been letters written without end, and the archdeacon had been nearly beside himself. “A man who pretends to conscientious scruples of that kind is not fit to have a parish,” he had said to his wife. His wife understood what he meant, and I trust that the reader may also understand it. In the ordinary cutting of blocks a very fine razor is not an appropriate instrument. The archdeacon, moreover, loved the temporalities of the Church as temporalities. The Church was beautiful to him because one man by interest might have a thousand a year, while another man equally good, but without interest, could only have a hundred. And he liked the men who had the interest a great deal better than the men who had it not. He had been willing to admit this poor perpetual curate, who had so long been kept out in the cold, within the pleasant circle which was warm with ecclesiastical good things, and the man hesitated—because of scruples, as the dean told him! “I always button up my pocket when I hear of scruples,” the archdeacon said.
But at last Mr. Crawley condescended to accept St. Ewolds. “Reverend and dear sir,” he said in his letter.
For the personal benevolence of the offer made to me in your letter of the ⸻ instant, I beg to tender you my most grateful thanks; as also for your generous kindness to me, in telling me of the high praise bestowed upon me by a gentleman who is now no more—whose character I have esteemed and whose good opinion I value. There is, methinks, something inexpressibly dear to me in the recorded praise of the dead. For the further instance of the friendship of the Dean of Barchester, I am also thankful.
Since the receipt of your letter I
