The Last Chronicle of Barset. Anthony Trollope

how wet you are!”

      “Yes, dear. It is raining. Get a light out of the kitchen, Jane, and I will go upstairs in two minutes.” Then, when Jane was gone, the wife made her way in the dark over to her husband’s side, and spoke a word to him. “Josiah,” she said, “will you not speak to me?”

      “What should I speak about? Where have you been?”

      “I have been to Silverbridge. I have been to Mr. Walker. He, at any rate, is very kind.”

      “I don’t want his kindness. I want no man’s kindness. Mr. Walker is the attorney, I believe. Kind, indeed!”

      “I mean considerate. Josiah, let us do the best we can in this trouble. We have had others as heavy before.”

      “But none to crush me as this will crush me. Well; what am I to do? Am I to go to prison—tonight?” At this moment his daughter returned with a candle, and the mother could not make her answer at once. It was a wretched, poverty-stricken room. By degrees the carpet had disappeared, which had been laid down some nine or ten years since, when they had first come to Hogglestock, and which even then had not been new. Now nothing but a poor fragment of it remained in front of the fireplace. In the middle of the room there was a table which had once been large; but one flap of it was gone altogether, and the other flap sloped grievously towards the floor, the weakness of old age having fallen into its legs. There were two or three smaller tables about, but they stood propped against walls, thence obtaining a security which their own strength would not give them. At the further end of the room there was an ancient piece of furniture, which was always called “papa’s secretary,” at which Mr. Crawley customarily sat and wrote his sermons, and did all work that was done by him within his house. The man who had made it, some time in the last century, had intended it to be a locked guardian for domestic documents, and the receptacle for all that was most private in the house of some paterfamilias. But beneath the hands of Mr. Crawley it always stood open; and with the exception of the small space at which he wrote, was covered with dog’s-eared books, from nearly all of which the covers had disappeared. There were there two odd volumes of Euripides, a Greek Testament, an Odyssey, a duodecimo Pindar, and a miniature Anacreon. There was half a Horace,—the two first books of the Odes at the beginning, and the De Arte Poetica at the end having disappeared. There was a little bit of a volume of Cicero, and there were Cæsar’s Commentaries, in two volumes, so stoutly bound that they had defied the combined ill-usage of time and the Crawley family. All these were piled upon the secretary, with many others,—odd volumes of sermons and the like; but the Greek and Latin lay at the top, and showed signs of most frequent use. There was one armchair in the room,—a Windsor-chair, as such used to be called, made soft by an old cushion in the back, in which Mr. Crawley sat when both he and his wife were in the room, and Mrs. Crawley when he was absent. And there was an old horsehair sofa,—now almost denuded of its horsehair,—but that, like the tables, required the assistance of a friendly wall. Then there was half a dozen of other chairs,—all of different sorts,—and they completed the furniture of the room. It was not such a room as one would wish to see inhabited by a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England; but they who know what money will do and what it will not, will understand how easily a man with a family, and with a hundred and thirty pounds a year, may be brought to the need of inhabiting such a chamber. When it is remembered that three pounds of meat a day, at ninepence a pound, will cost over forty pounds a year, there need be no difficulty in understanding that it may be so. Bread for such a family must cost at least twenty-five pounds. Clothes for five persons, of whom one must at any rate wear the raiment of a gentleman, can hardly be found for less than ten pounds a year a head. Then there remains fifteen pounds for tea, sugar, beer, wages, education, amusements, and the like. In such circumstances a gentleman can hardly pay much for the renewal of his furniture!

      Mrs. Crawley could not answer her husband’s question before her daughter, and was therefore obliged to make another excuse for again sending her out of the room. “Jane, dear,” she said, “bring my things down to the kitchen and I will change them by the fire. I will be there in two minutes, when I have had a word with your papa.” The girl went immediately and then Mrs. Crawley answered her husband’s question. “No, my dear; there is no question of your going to prison.”

      “But there will be.”

      “I have undertaken that you shall attend before the magistrates at Silverbridge on Thursday next, at twelve o’clock. You will do that?”

      “Do it! You mean, I suppose, to say that I must go there. Is anybody to come and fetch me?”

      “Nobody will come. Only you must promise that you will be there. I have promised for you. You will go; will you not?” She stood leaning over him, half embracing him, waiting for an answer; but for a while he gave none. “You will tell me that you will do what I have undertaken for you, Josiah?”

      “I think I would rather that they fetched me. I think that I will not go myself.”

      “And have policemen come for you into the parish! Mr. Walker has promised that he will send over his phaeton. He sent me home in it to-day.”

      “I want nobody’s phaeton. If I go I will walk. If it were ten times the distance, and though I had not a shoe left to my feet I would walk. If I go there at all, of my own accord, I will walk there.”

      “But you will go?”

      “What do I care for the parish? What matters it who sees me now? I cannot be degraded worse than I am. Everybody knows it.”

      “There is no disgrace without guilt,” said his wife.

      “Everybody thinks me guilty. I see it in their eyes. The children know of it, and I hear their whispers in the school, ‘Mr. Crawley has taken some money.’ I heard the girl say it myself.”

      “What matters what the girl says?”

      “And yet you would have me go in a fine carriage to Silverbridge, as though to a wedding. If I am wanted there let them take me as they would another. I shall be here for them,—unless I am dead.”

      At this moment Jane reappeared, pressing her mother to take off her wet clothes, and Mrs. Crawley went with her daughter to the kitchen. The one red-armed young girl who was their only servant was sent away, and then the mother and child discussed how best they might prevail with the head of the family. “But, mamma, it must come right; must it not?”

      “I trust it will. I think it will. But I cannot see my way as yet.”

      “Papa cannot have done anything wrong.”

      “No, my dear; he has done nothing wrong. He has made great mistakes, and it is hard to make people understand that he has not intentionally spoken untruths. He is ever thinking of other things, about the school, and his sermons, and he does not remember.”

      “And about how poor we are, mamma.”

      “He has much to occupy his mind, and he forgets things which dwell in the memory with other people. He said that he had got this money from Mr. Soames, and of course he thought that it was so.”

      “And where did he get it, mamma?”

      “Ah,—I wish I knew. I should have said that I had seen every shilling that came into the house; but I know nothing of this cheque,—whence it came.”

      “But will not papa tell you?”

      “He would tell me if he knew. He thinks it came from the dean.”

      “And are you sure it did not?”

      “Yes; quite sure; as sure as I can be of anything. The dean told me he would give him fifty pounds, and the fifty pounds came. I had them in my own hands. And he has written to say that it was so.”

      “But couldn’t this be part of the fifty pounds?”

      “No, dear, no.”

      “Then where did papa get it? Perhaps he picked it up and has forgotten?”

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