The Last Chronicle of Barset | Page 3

way the mother and daughter went on
discussing the question of the clergyman's guilt in spite of Mrs
Walker's expressed desire that nothing more might be said about it. But
Mrs Walker, like many other mothers, was apt to be more free in
converse with her daughter than she was with her son. While they were
thus talking the father came in from his office, and then the subject was
dropped. He was a man between fifty and sixty years of age, with grey
hair, rather short, and somewhat corpulent, but still gifted with that
amount of personal comeliness which comfortable position and the

respect of others will generally seem to give. A man rarely carries
himself meanly whom the world holds in high esteem.
'I am very tired, my dear,' said Mr Walker.
'You look tired. Come and sit down for a few minutes before you dress.
Mary, get your father's slippers.' Mary instantly ran to the door.
'Thanks, my darling,' said the father. And then he whispered to his wife,
as soon as Mary was out of hearing. 'I fear the unfortunate man is guilty.
I fear he is! I fear he is!'
'Oh, heavens! what will become of them?'
'What indeed? She has been with me today.'
'Has she? And what could you say to her?'
'I told her at first that I could not see her, and begged her not to speak to
me about it. I tried to make her understand that she should go to
someone else. But it was of no use.'
'And how did it end?'
'I asked her to go in to you, but she declined. She said you could do
nothing for her.'
'And does she think her husband guilty?'
'No, indeed. She think him guilty! Nothing on earth--or from heaven
either, as I take it, would make her suppose it to be possible. She came
simply to tell me how good he was.'
'I love her for that,' said Mrs Walker.
'So did I. But what is the good of loving her? Thank you, dearest. I'll
get your slippers for you some day, perhaps.'
The whole county was astir with this matter of this alleged guilt of the

Reverend Mr Crawley--the whole county almost as keenly as the
family of Mr Walker, of Silverbridge. The crime laid to his charge was
the theft of a cheque for twenty pounds, which he was said to have
stolen out of a pocket-book left or dropped in his house, and to have
passed as money into the hands of one Fletcher, a butcher of
Silverbridge, to whom he was indebted. Mr Crawley was in those days
the perpetual curate of Hogglestock, a pariah in the northern extremity
of East Barsetshire; a man known by all who knew anything of him to
be very poor--an unhappy, moody, disappointed man, upon whom the
troubles of the world always seemed to come with a double weight. But
he had ever been respected as a clergyman, since his old friend Mr
Arabin, the dean of Barchester, had given him the small incumbency
which he now held. Though moody, unhappy, and disappointed, he was
a hard-working, conscientious pastor, among the poor people with
whom his lot was cast; for in the parish of Hogglestock there resided
only a few farmers higher in degree than field labourers, brickmakers,
and such like. Mr Crawley had now passed some ten years of his life at
Hogglestock; and during those years he had worked very hard to do his
duty, struggling to teach the people around him perhaps too much of
the mystery, but something of the comfort, of religion. That he had
became popular in his parish cannot be said of him. He was not a man
to make himself popular in any position. I have said that he was moody
and disappointed. He was even worse than this; he was morose,
sometimes almost to insanity. There had been days in which even his
wife had found it impossible to deal with him otherwise than as with an
acknowledged lunatic. And this was known among the farmers, who
talked about their clergyman among themselves as though he were a
madman. But among the very poor, among the brickmakers of Hoggle
End--a lawless, drunken, terribly rough lot of humanity--he was held in
high respect; for they knew that he lived hardly, as they lived; that he
worked hard, as they worked; and that the outside world was hard to
him, as it was to them; and there had been an apparent sincerity of
godliness about the man, and a manifest struggle to do his duty in spite
of the world's ill-usage, which had won its way even with the rough; so
that Mr Crawley's name had stood high with many in the parish,