With his new coats, and something, also, of new manners, he and his wife went over to Plumstead, leaving Jane at the deanery with Mrs. Arabin. The dean also went to Plumstead. They arrived there not much before dinner, and as Grace was there before them the first moments were not so bad. Before Mr. Crawley had had time to feel himself lost in the drawing-room, he was summoned away to prepare himself for dinner—for dinner, and for the coat, which at the deanery he had been allowed to leave unworn. “I would with all my heart that I might retire to rest,” he said to his wife, when the ceremony had been perfected.
“Do not say so. Go down and take your place with them, and speak your mind with them—as you so well know how. Who among them can do it so well?”
“I have been told,” said Mr. Crawley, “that you shall take a cock which is lord of the farmyard—the cock of all that walk—and when you have daubed his feathers with mud, he shall be thrashed by every dunghill coward. I say not that I was ever the cock of the walk, but I know that they have daubed my feathers.” Then he went down among the other poultry into the farmyard.
At dinner he was very silent, answering, however, with a sort of graceful stateliness any word that Mrs. Grantly addressed to him. Mr. Thorne, from Ullathorne, was there also to meet his new vicar, as was also Mr. Thorne’s very old sister, Miss Monica Thorne. And Lady Anne Grantly was there—she having come with the expressed intention that the wives of the two brothers should know each other—but with a warmer desire, I think, of seeing Mr. Crawley, of whom the clerical world had been talking much since some notice of the accusation against him had become general. There were, therefore, ten or twelve at the dinner-table, and Mr. Crawley had not made one at such a board certainly since his marriage. All went fairly smooth with him till the ladies left the room; for though Lady Anne, who sat at his left hand, had perplexed him somewhat with clerical questions, he had found that he was not called upon for much more than monosyllabic responses. But in his heart he feared the archdeacon, and he felt that when the ladies were gone the archdeacon would not leave him alone in his silence.
As soon as the door was closed, the first subject mooted was that of the Plumstead fox, which had been so basely murdered on Mr. Thorne’s ground. Mr. Thorne had confessed the iniquity, had dismissed the murderous keeper, and all was serene. But the greater on that account was the feasibility of discussing the question, and the archdeacon had a good deal to say about it. Then Mr. Thorne turned to the new vicar, and asked him whether foxes abounded in Hogglestock. Had he been asked as to the rats or the moles, he would have known more about it.
“Indeed, sir, I know not whether or no there be any foxes in the parish of Hogglestock. I do not remember me that I ever saw one. It is an animal whose habits I have not watched.”
“There is an earth at Hoggle Bushes,” said the major; “and I never knew it without a litter.”
“I think I know the domestic whereabouts of every fox in Plumstead,” said the archdeacon, with an ill-natured intention of astonishing Mr. Crawley.
“Of foxes with two legs our friend is speaking, without doubt,” said the vicar of St. Ewolds, with an attempt at grim pleasantry.
“Of them we have none at Plumstead. No—I was speaking of the dear old fellow with the brush. Pass the bottle, Mr. Crawley. Won’t you fill your glass?” Mr. Crawley passed the bottle, but would not fill his glass. Then the dean, looking up slyly, saw the vexation written in the archdeacon’s face. The parson whom the archdeacon feared most of all parsons was the parson who wouldn’t fill his glass.
Then the subject was changed. “I’m told that the bishop has at last made his reappearance on his throne,” said the archdeacon.
“He was in the cathedral last Sunday,” said the dean.
“Does he ever mean to preach again?”
“He never did preach very often,” said the dean.
“A great deal too often, from all that people say,” said the archdeacon. “I never heard him myself, and never shall, I dare say. You have heard him, Mr. Crawley?”
“I have never had that good fortune, Mr. Archdeacon. But living as I shall now do, so near to the city, I may perhaps be enabled to attend the cathedral service on some holyday of the Church, which may not require prayers in my own rural parish. I think that the clergy of the diocese should be acquainted with the opinions, and with the voice, and with the very manner and words of their bishop. As things are now done, this is not possible. I could wish that there were occasions on which a bishop might assemble his clergy, and preach to them sermons adapted to their use.”
“What do you call a bishop’s charge, then?”
“It is usually in the printed form that I have received it,” said Mr. Crawley.
“I think we have quite enough of that kind of thing,” said the
