第41章

'Never mind, mother. I've no special dislike for Champion, only as you are not paid five thousand pound a year for your trouble, it is rather hard that you should have to & all the work of opposition bishop in the diocese.'

It was felt by them all--including Lord Lufton himself, who became so interested in the matter as to forgive the black coats before the evening was over--that this matter of Mr Crawley's committal was very serious, and demanded the full energies of their party. It was known to them all that the feeling at the palace was inimical to Mr Crawley.

'That she-Beelzebub hates him for his poverty, and because Arabin brought him into the diocese,' said the archdeacon, permitting himself to use very strong language in his allusion to the bishop's wife. It must be recorded on his behalf that he used the phrase in the presence only of the gentlemen of the party. I think he might have whispered the word in the ear of his confidential friend old Lady Lufton, and perhaps have given no offence; but he would not have ventured to use such words aloud in the presence of ladies.

'You forget, archdeacon,' said Dr Thorne, laughing, 'that the she-Beelzebub is my wife's particular friend.'

'Not a bit of it,' said the archdeacon. 'Your wife knows better than that. You tell her what I call her, and if she complains of the name I'll unsay it.' It may therefore be supposed that Dr Thorne, and Mrs Thorne, and the archdeacon, knew each other intimately, and understood each other's feelings on these matters.

It was quite true that the palace party was inimical to Mr Crawley. Mr Crawley undoubtedly was poor, and had not been so submissive to episcopal authority as it behoves any clergyman to be whose loaves and fishes are scanty. He had raised his back more than once against orders emanating from the palace in a manner that had made the hairs on the head of the bishop's wife to stand almost on end, and had taken as much upon himself as though his living had been worth twelve hundred a year.

Mrs Proudie, almost as energetic in her language as the archdeacon, had called him a beggarly perpetual curate. 'We must have perpetual curates, my dear,' the bishop had said. 'They should know their places then. But what can you expect of a creature from the deanery? All that ought to be altered. The dean should have no patronage in the diocese. No dean should have any patronage. It is an abuse from the beginning to the end.

Dean Arabin, if he had any conscience, would be doing the duty at Hogglestock himself.' How the bishop strove to teach his wife, with the mildest words, what really ought to be a dean's duty, and how the wife rejoined by teaching her husband, not in the mildest words, what ought to be a bishop's duty, we will not further inquire here. The fact that such dialogues took place at the palace is recorded simply to show that the palatial feeling in Barchester ran counter to Mr Crawley.

And this was cause enough, if no other cause existed, for partiality to Mr Crawley at Framley Court. But, as has been partly explained, there existed, if possible, even stronger ground than this for adherence to the Crawley cause. The younger Lady Lufton had known the Crawleys intimately, and the elder Lady Lufton had reckoned them among the neighbouring clerical families of her acquaintance. Both these ladies were therefore staunch in their defence of Mr Crawley. The archdeacon himself had his own reasons--reasons which at present he kept altogether within his own bosom--for wishing that Mr Crawley had never entered the diocese. Whether the perpetual curate should or should not be declared a thief, it would terrible to him to have to call the child of that perpetual curate his daughter-in-law. But not the less on this occasion was he true to his order, true to his side of the diocese, true to his hatred of the palace.