第299章

'Say something to your father about the property after dinner,' said Mrs Grantly to her son when they were alone together.

'About what property?'

'About this property, or any property; you know what I mean;--something to show that you are interested about his affairs. He is doing the best he can to make things right.' After dinner, over the claret, Mr Thorne's terrible sin in reference to the trapping of foxes was accordingly again brought up, and the archdeacon became beautifully irate, and expressed his animosity --which he did not in the least feel--against an old friend with an energy which would have delighted his wife, if she could have heard him. 'I shall tell Thorne my mind, certainly. He and I are very old friends; we have known each other all our lives; but I cannot put up with this kind of thing--and I will not. It's all because he's afraid of his own gamekeeper.' And yet the archdeacon had never ridden after a fox in his life, and never meant to do so; nor had in truth been always so very anxious that foxes should be found in his covers. That fox which had been so fortunately trapped just outside the Plumstead property afforded a most pleasant escape for the steam of his anger.

When he began to talk to his wife about Mr Thorne's wicked gamekeeper, she was so sure that all was right, that she said a word of her extreme desire to see Grace Crawley.

'If he's to marry her, we might as well have her over here,' said the archdeacon.

'That's just what I was thinking,' said Mrs Grantly. And thus things at the rectory got themselves arranged.

On the Sunday morning the expected letter from Venice came to hand, and was read on that morning very anxiously, not only by Mrs Grantly and the major, but by the archdeacon also, in spite of the sanctity of the day.

Indeed the archdeacon had been very stoutly anti-sabbatarial when the question of stopping the Sunday post to Plumstead had been mooted in the village, giving those who on that occasion were the special friends of the postman to understand that he considered them to be numbskulls, and little better than idiots. The postman, finding the parson to be against him, had seen that there was no chance for him, and had allowed the matter to drop. Mrs Arabin's letter was long and eager, and full of repetitions, but it did explain clearly to him the exact manner in which the cheque had found its way into Mr Crawley's hand. 'Francis came up to me,' she said in her letter--Francis being her husband, the dean--'and asked me for the money, which I had promised to make up in a packet. The packet was not ready, and he would not wait, declaring that Mr Crawley was in such a flurry that he did not like to leave him. I was therefore to bring it down to the door. I went to my desk, and thinking that Icould spare the twenty pounds as well as the fifty, I put the cheque into the envelope, together with the notes, and handed the packet to Francis at the door. I think I told Francis afterwards that I put seventy pounds into the envelope, instead of fifty, but of this I will not be sure. At any rate Mr Crawley got Mr Soames's cheque from me.'

These last words she underscored, and then went on to explain how the cheque had been paid to her a short time before by Dan Stringer.

'Then Toogood was right about the fellow,' said the archdeacon.

'I hope they'll hang him,' said Mrs Grantly. 'He must have known all the time what dreadful misery he was bringing upon this unfortunate family.'

'I don't suppose Dan Stringer cared much about that,' said the major.

'Not a straw,' said the archdeacon, and then all hurried off to church;and the archdeacon preached the sermon in the fabrication of which he had been interrupted by his son, and which therefore barely enabled him to turn a quarter of an hour from the giving out of his text. It was his constant practice to preach for a full twenty minutes.

As Barchester lay on the direct road from Plumstead to Hogglestock, it was thought well that word should be sent to Mr Toogood, desiring him not to come out to Plumstead on the Monday morning. Major Grantly proposed to call for him at the 'Dragon', and to take him from thence to Hogglestock. 'You had better take your mother's horses all through,' said the archdeacon. The distance was very nearly twenty miles, and it was felt by both the mother and the son, that the archdeacon must be in a good humour when he made such a proposition as that. It was not often that the rectory carriage-horses were allowed to make long journeys. Arun into Barchester and back, which was altogether under ten miles, was generally the extent of their work. 'I meant to have posted from Barchester,' said the major. 'You may as well take the horses through,' said the archdeacon. 'Your mother will not want them. And I suppose you might as well bring your friend Toogood back to dinner. We'll give him a bed.'

'He must be a good sort of man,' said Mrs Grantly; 'for I suppose he has done this all for love?'

'Yes; and spent a lot of money out of his own pocket too!' said the major enthusiastically. 'And the joke of it is, that he has been defending Crawley in Crawley's teeth. Mr Crawley had refused to employ counsel; but Toogood had made up his mind to have a barrister, on purpose that there might be a fuss about it in court. He thought that it would tell with the jury in Crawley's favour.'

'Bring him here, and we'll hear all about that from himself,' said the archdeacon. The major, before he started, told his mother that he should call at Framley Parsonage on his way back; but he said nothing on this subject to his father.

'I'll write to her in a day or two,' said Mrs Grantly, 'and we'll have things settled pleasantly.'