The Last Chronicle of Barset (65 page)

‘I daresay it was very nice.'

‘It was terribly stiff, and all about a gentleman.'

‘All about a gentleman! What do you mean, my dear?'

‘Gentleman is such a frightful word to have to use to a gentleman; but I did not know what else to say. Mamma, if you please, we won't talk about it – not about the letter I mean. As for him, I'll talk about him for ever if you like it. I don't mean to be a bit broken-hearted.'

‘It seems to me that he is a gentleman.'

‘Yes, mamma, that he is; and it is that which makes me so proud. When I think of it, I can hardly hold myself. But now I've told you everything, and I'll go away, and go to bed.'

*

Mr Toogood paid another visit to Barsetshire, in order that he might get a little further information which he thought would be necessary before despatching his nephew upon the traces of Dean Arabin and his wife. He went down to Barchester after his work was over by an evening train, and put himself up at ‘The Dragon of Wantly,' intending to have the whole of the next day for his work. Mr Walker had asked him to come and take a return pot-luck dinner with Mrs Walker at Silverbridge; and this he had said that he would do. After having ‘rummaged about for tidings' in Barchester, as he called it, he would take the train for Silverbridge, and would get back to town in time for business on the third day. ‘One day won't be much, you know,' he said to his partner, as he made half an apology for absenting himself on business which was not to be in any degree remunerative. ‘That sort of thing is very well when one does it without any expense,' said Crump. ‘So it is,' said Toogood; ‘and the expense won't make it any worse.' He had made up his mind, and it was not probable that anything Mr Crump might say would deter him.

He saw John Eames before he started. ‘You'll be ready this day week, will you?' John Eames promised that he would. ‘It will cost you some forty pounds, I should say. By George – if you have to go on to Jerusalem, it will cost you more.' In answer to this, Johnny pleaded that it would be as good as any other tour to him. He would see the world. ‘I'll tell you what,' said Toogood; ‘I'll pay half. Only you mustn't tell Crump. And it will be quite as well not to tell Maria.' But Johnny would hear nothing of this scheme. He would pay the entire cost of his own journey. He had lots of money, he said, and would like nothing better. ‘Then I'll run down,' said Toogood, ‘and rummage up what tidings I can. As for writing to the dean, what's the good of writing to a man when you don't know where he is? Business letters always lie at hotels for two months, and then come back with double postage. From all I can hear, you'll stumble on her before you
find him. If we do nothing else but bring him back, it will be a great thing to have the support of such a friend in the court. A Barchester jury won't like to find a man guilty who is hand-and-glove with the dean.'

Mr Toogood reached the ‘Dragon' about eleven o'clock, and allowed the boots to give him a pair of slippers and a candlestick. But he would not go to bed just at that moment. He would go into the coffee-room first, and have a glass of hot brandy-and-water. So the hot brandy-and-water was brought to him, and a cigar, and as he smoked and drank he conversed with the waiter. The man was a waiter of the ancient class, a grey-haired waiter, with seedy clothes, and a dirty towel under his arm; not a dapper waiter, with black shiny hair, and dressed like a guest for a dinner-party. There are two distinct classes of waiters, and as far as I have been able to perceive, the special status of the waiter in question cannot be decided by observation of the class of waiter to which he belongs. In such a town as Barchester you may find the old waiter with the dirty towel in the head inn, or in the second-class inn, and so you may the dapper waiter. Or you may find both in each, and not know which is senior waiter and which junior waiter. But for service I always prefer the old waiter with the dirty towel, and I find it more easy to satisfy him in the matter of sixpences when my relations with the inn come to an end.

‘Have you been here long, John?' said Mr Toogood.

‘A goodish many years, sir.'

‘So I thought, by the look of you. One can see that you belong in a way to the place. You do a good deal of business here, I suppose, at this time of the year?'

‘Well, sir, pretty fair. The house ain't what it used to be, sir.'

‘Times are bad at Barchester – are they?'

‘I don't know much about the times. It's the people is worse than the times, I think. They used to like to have a little bit of dinner now and again at a hotel – and a drop of something to drink after it.'

‘And don't they like it now?'

‘I think they like it well enough, but they don't do it. I suppose it's their wives as don't let 'em come out and enjoy theirselves. There used to be the Goose and Glee club – that was once a month. They've
gone and clean done away with themselves – that club has. There's old Bumpter in the High Street – he's the last of the old Geese. They died off, you see, and when Mr Biddle died they wouldn't choose another president. A club for having dinner, sir, ain't nothing without a president.'

‘I suppose not.'

‘And there's the Freemasons. They must meet, you know, sir, in course, because of the dooties. But if you'll believe me, sir, they don't so much as wet their whistles. They don't indeed. It always used to be a supper, and that was once a month. Now they pays a rent for the use of the room! Who is to get a living out of that, sir? – not in the way of a waiter, that is.'

‘If that's the way things are going on I suppose the servants leave their places pretty often?'

‘I don't know about that, sir. A man may do a deal worse than “The Dragon of Wantly.” Them as goes away to better themselves, often worses themselves, as I call it. I've seen a good deal of that.'

‘And you stick to the old shop?'

‘Yes, sir; I've been here fifteen year, I think it is. There's a many goes away, as doesn't go out of their own heads, you know, sir.'

‘They get the sack, you mean?'

‘There's words between them and master – or more likely, missus. That's where it is. Servants is so foolish. I often tell 'em how wrong folks are to say that soft words butter no parsnips, and hard words break no bones.'

‘I think you've lost some of the old hands here since this time last year, John?'

‘You knows the house then, sir?'

‘Well – I've been here before.'

‘There was four of them went, I think it's just about twelve months back, sir.'

‘There was a man in the yard I used to know, and last time I was down here, I found that he was gone.'

‘There was one of 'em out of the yard, and two out of the house. Master and them had got to very high words. There was poor Scuttle, who had been post-boy at “The Compasses” before he came here.'

‘He went away to New Zealand, didn't he?'

‘B'leve he did, sir; or to some foreign parts. And Anne, as was under-chambermaid here; she went with him, fool as she was. They got theirselves married and went off, and he was well nigh as old as me. But seems he'd saved a little money, and that goes a long way with any girl.'

‘Was he the man who drove Mr Soames that day the cheque was lost?' Mr Toogood asked this question perhaps a little too abruptly. At any rate he obtained no answer to it. The waiter said he knew nothing about Mr Soames, or the cheque, and the lawyer, suspecting that the waiter was suspecting him, finished his brandy-and-water and went to bed.

Early on the following morning he observed that he was specially regarded by a shabby-looking man, dressed in black, but in a black suit that was very old, with a red nose, whom he had seen in the hotel on the preceding day; and he learned that this man was a cousin of the landlord – one Dan Stringer – who acted as a clerk in the hotel bar. He took an opportunity also of saying a word to Mr Stringer the landlord – whom he found to be a somewhat forlorn and gouty individual, seated on cushions in a little parlour behind the door. After breakfast he went out, and having twice walked round the Cathedral close and inspected the front of the palace and looked up at the windows of the prebendaries' houses, he knocked at the door of the deanery. The dean and Mrs Arabin were on the Continent, he was told. Then he asked for Mr Harding, having learned that Mr Harding was Mrs Arabin's father, and that he lived at the deanery. Mr Harding was at home, but was not very well, the servant said. Mr Toogood, however, persevered, sending up his card, and saying that he wished to have a few minutes' conversation with Mr Harding on very particular business. He wrote a word upon his card before giving it to the servant – ‘about Mr Crawley.' In a few minutes he was shown into the library, and had hardly time, while looking at the shelves, to remember what Mr Crawley had said of his anger at the beautiful bindings, before an old man, very thin and very pale, shuffled into the room. He stooped a good deal, and his black clothes were very loose about his shrunken limbs. He was not decrepit, nor did he seem
to be one who had advanced to extreme old age; but yet he shuffled rather than walked, hardly raising his feet from the ground. Mr Toogood, as he came forward to meet him, thought he had never seen a sweeter face. There was very much of melancholy in it, of that soft sadness of age which seems to acknowledge, and in some sort to regret, the waning oil of life; but the regret to be read in such faces has in it nothing of the bitterness of grief; there is no repining that the end has come, but simply a touch of sorrow that so much that is dear must be left behind. Mr Harding shook hands with his visitor, and invited him to sit down, and then seated himself, folding his hands together over his knees, and he said a few words in a very low voice as to the absence of his daughter and of the dean.

‘I hope you will excuse my troubling you,' said Mr Toogood.

‘It is no trouble at all – if I could be of any use. I don't know whether it is proper, but may I ask whether you call as – as – as a friend of Mr Crawley's?'

‘Altogether as a friend, Mr Harding.'

‘I'm glad of that; though of course I am well aware that the gentlemen engaged on the prosecution must do their duty. Still – I don't know – somehow I would rather not hear them speak of this poor gentleman before the trial.'

‘You know Mr Crawley, then?'

‘Very slightly – very slightly indeed. He is a gentleman not much given to social habits, and has been but seldom here. But he is an old friend whom my son-in-law loves dearly.'

‘I'm glad to hear you say that, Mr Harding. Perhaps before I go any further I ought to tell you that Mrs Crawley and I are first-cousins.'

‘Oh, indeed. Then you are a friend.'

‘I never saw him in my life till a few days ago. He is very queer, you know – very queer indeed. I'm a lawyer, Mr Harding, practising in London – an attorney, that is.' At each separate announcement Mr Harding bowed, and when Toogood named his special branch of his profession Mr Harding bowed lower than before, as though desirous of showing that he had great respect for attorneys. ‘And of course I'm anxious, if only out of respect for the family, that my wife's cousin should pull through this little difficulty, if possible.'

‘And for the sake of the poor man himself too, and for his wife, and his children – and for the sake of the cloth.'

‘Exactly; taking it all together it's such a pity, you know. I think, Mr Harding, he can hardly have intended to steal the money.'

‘I'm sure he did not.'

‘It's very hard to be sure of anybody, Mr Harding – very hard.'

‘I feel quite sure that he did not. He has been a most pious, hard-working clergyman. I cannot bring myself to think that he is guilty. What does the Latin proverb say? “No one of a sudden becomes most base.”'
¹

‘But the temptation, Mr Harding, was very strong. He was awfully badgered about his debts. That butcher in Silverbridge was playing the mischief with him.'

‘All the butchers in Barsetshire could not make an honest man steal money, and I think that Mr Crawley is an honest man. You'll excuse me for being a little hot about one of my own order.'

‘Why, he's my cousin – or rather, my wife's. But the fact is, Mr Harding, we must get hold of the dean as soon as possible; and I'm going to send a gentleman after him.'

‘To send a gentleman after him?' said Mr Harding, almost in dismay.

‘Yes, I think that will be best.'

‘I'm afraid he'll have to go a long way, Mr Toogood.'

‘The dean, I'm told, is in Jerusalem.'

‘I'm afraid he is – or on his journey there. He's to be there for the Easter week, and Sunday week will be Easter Sunday. But why should the gentleman want to go to Jerusalem after the dean?'

Then Mr Toogood explained as well as he was able that the dean might have something to say on the subject which would serve Mr Crawley's defence. ‘We shouldn't leave any stone unturned,' said Mr Toogood. ‘As far as I can judge, Crawley still thinks – or half thinks – that he got the cheque from your son-in-law.' Mr Harding shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I'm not saying he did, you know,' continued Mr Toogood. ‘I can't see myself how it is possible – but still, we ought not to leave any stone unturned. And Mrs Arabin – can you tell me at all where we shall find her?'

‘Has she anything to do with it, Mr Toogood?'

‘I can't quite say that she has, but it's just possible. As I said before, Mr Harding, we mustn't leave a stone unturned. They're not expected here till the end of April?'

‘About the 25th or 26th, I think.'

‘And the assizes are the 28th. The judges come into the city on that day. It will be too late to wait till then. We must have our defence ready, you know. Can you say where my friend will find Mrs Arabin?'