第43章

Tidings of Mr Crawley's fate reached the palace at Barchester on the afternoon of the day on which the magistrates had committed him. All such tidings travel very quickly, conveyed by imperceptible wires, and distributed by indefatigable message boys whom Rumour seems to supply for the purpose. Barchester is twenty miles from Silverbridge by road, and more than forty by railway. I doubt whether anyone was commissioned to send the news along the actual telegraph, and yet Mrs Proudie knew it before four o'clock. But she did not know it quite accurately. 'Bishop,' she said, standing at her husband's study door. 'They have committed that man to gaol. There was no help for them unless they had foresworn themselves.'

'Not foresworn themselves, my dear,' said the bishop, striving, as was usual with him, by some meek and ineffectual word to teach his wife that she was occasionally led by her energy into error. He never persisted in the lessons when he found, as was usual, that they were taken amiss.

'I say foresworn themselves!' said Mrs Proudie; 'and now what do you mean to do? This is Thursday, and of course the man must not be allowed to desecrate the church of Hogglestock by performing the Sunday services.'

'If he has been committed, my dear, and is in prison--'

'I said nothing about prison, bishop.'

'Gaol, my dear.'

'I said they committed him to gaol. So my informant tells me. But of course all Plumstead and Framley set will move heaven and earth to get him out, so that he may be there as a disgrace to the diocese. I wonder how the dean will feel when he hears of it! I do indeed. For the dean, though he is an idle, useless man, with no church principles, and no real piety, still he has a conscience. I think he has a conscience.'

'I'm sure he has, my dear.'

'Well;--let us hope so. And if he has a conscience, what must be his feelings when he hears that this creature whom he has brought into the diocese has been committed to gaol along with common felons.'

'Not with felons, my dear; at least, I should think not.'

'I say with common felons! A downright robbery of twenty pounds, just as though he had broken into the bank! And so he did, with sly artifice, which is worse in such hands than a crowbar. And now what are we to do?

Here is Thursday, and something must be done before Sunday for the souls of those poor benighted creatures at Hogglestock.' Mrs Proudie was ready for the battle, and was even now sniffing the blood far off. 'I believe it's a hundred and thirty pounds a year,' she said, before the bishop had collected his thought sufficiently for a reply.

'I think we must find out, first of all, whether he is really to be shut up in prison,' said the bishop.

'And suppose he is not to be shut up. Suppose they have been weak, or untrue to their duty--and from what we know of the magistrates of Barsetshire, there is too much reason to suppose they will have been so;suppose they have let him out, is he to go about like a roaring lion--among the souls of the people?'

The bishop shook in his shoes. When Mrs Proudie began to talk of the souls of the people he always shook in his shoes. She had an eloquent way of raising her voice over the word souls that was qualified to make any ordinary man shake in his shoes. The bishop was a conscientious man, and well know that poor Mr Crawley, even, would not roar at Hogglestock to the injury of any man's soul. He was aware that this poor clergyman had done his duty laboriously and efficiently, and he was also aware that though he might have been committed by the magistrates, and then let out upon bail, he should not be regarded now, in these days before trial, as a convicted thief. But to explain all this to Mrs Proudie was beyond his power. He knew well that she would not hear a word in mitigation of Mr Crawley's presumed offence. Mr Crawley belonged to the other party, and Mrs Proudie was a thorough-going partisan. I know a man--an excellent fellow, who, being himself a strong politician, constantly expressed a belief that all politicians opposed to him are thieves, child-murderers, parricides, lovers of incest, demons upon earth. He is a strong partisan, but not, I think, so strong as Mrs Proudie. He says that he believes all evil of his opponents; but she really believed the evil. The archdeacon had called Mrs Proudie a she-Beelzebub; but that was a simple ebullition of mortal hatred. He believed her to simply a vulgar, interfering, brazen-faced virago. Mrs Proudie in truth believed that the archdeacon was an actual emanation from Satan, sent to these parts to devour souls --as she would call it--and that she herself was an emanation of another sort, sent from another source expressly to Barchester, to prevent such devouring, as far as it might be prevented by a mortal agency. The bishop knew it all--understood it all. He regarded the archdeacon as a clergyman belonging to a party opposed to his party, and he disliked the man. He knew that from his first coming into the diocese he had been encountered with enmity by the archdeacon and the archdeacon's friends. If left to himself he could feel and to a certain extent could resent such enmity.

But he had no faith in his wife's doctrine of emanations. He had not faith in many things which she believed religiously;--and yet what could he do? If he attempted to explain, she would stop him before he had got through the first half of his first sentence.

'If he is out on bail--' commenced the bishop.

'Of course he will be out on bail.'

'Then I think he should feel--'

'Feel! Such men never feel! What feeling can one expect from a convicted thief?'

'Not convicted yet, my dear,' said the bishop.

'A convicted thief,' repeated Mrs Proudie; and she vociferated the words in such a tone that the bishop resolved that he would for the future let the word convicted pass without notice. After all she was only using the phrase in a peculiar sense given to it by herself.

'It won't be proper, certainly, that he should do the services,' suggested the bishop.