第83章

'And presuming an innocent man to have the ability and not the will to do so, he is to be punished, to be ruined root and branch, self and family, character and pocket, simply because, knowing his own innocence, he does not choose to depend on the mercenary skill of a man whose trade he abhors for the establishment of that which should be clear as sun at noonday! You say I am innocent, and yet you tell me I am to be condemned as a guilty man, have my gown taken from me, be torn from my wife and children, be disgraced before the eyes of all men, and made a byword and a thing horrible to be mentioned, because I will not fee an attorney to fee another man to come and lie on my behalf, to browbeat witnesses, to make false appeals, and perhaps shed false tears in defending me. You have come to me asking me to do this, if I understand you, telling me that the archdeacon would so advise me.'

'That is my object.' Mr Crawley, as he had spoken, had in his vehemence, risen from his seat, and Mr Robarts was also standing.

'Then tell the archdeacon,' said Mr Crawley, 'that I will have none of his advice. I will have no one there paid by me to obstruct the course of justice or to hoodwink a jury. I have been in the courts of law, and know what is the work for which these gentlemen are hired. I will have none of it, and I will thank you to tell the archdeacon so, with my respectful acknowledgements of his consideration and condescension. Isay nothing as to my own innocence, or my own guilt. But I do say that if I am dragged before that tribunal, an innocent man, and am falsely declared to be guilty, because I lack money to bribe a lawyer to speak for me, then the laws of this country deserve but little of that reverence which we are accustomed to pay them. And if I be guilty--'

'Nobody supposes you to be guilty.'

'And if I be guilty,' continued Mr Crawley, altogether ignoring the interruption, except by the repetition of his words, and a slight raising of his voice, 'I will not add to my guilt by hiring anyone to prove a falsehood or to disprove a truth.'

'I'm sorry that you should say so, Mr Crawley.'

'I speak according to what light I have, Mr Robarts; and if I have been over-warm with you--and I am conscious that I have been at fault in that direction--I must pray you to remember that I am somewhat hardly tried.

My sorrows and troubles are so great that they rise against me and disturb me, and drive me on--whither I would not be driven.'

'But, my friend, is not that just the reason why you should trust in this matter to someone who can be more calm than yourself?'

'I cannot trust to anyone--in a matter of conscience. To do as you would have me is to me wrong. Shall I do wrong because I am unhappy?'

'You should cease to think it wrong when so advised by persons you can trust.'

'I can trust no one with my own conscience;--not even the archdeacon, great as he is.'

'The archdeacon has meant only well by you.'

'I will presume so. I will believe so. I do think so. Tell the archdeacon from me that I humbly thank him;--that in a matter of church question, I might probably submit my judgment to his; even though he might have no authority over me, knowing as I do that in such matters his experience has been great. Tell him also, that though I would fain that this unfortunate affair might burden the tongue of none of my neighbours--at least till I shall have stood before the judge to receive the verdict of the jury, and, if needful, his lordship's sentence--still I am convinced that in what he has spoken, as also in what he has done, he has not yielded to the idleness of gossip, but has exercised his judgment with intended kindness.'

'He has certainly intended to do you a service; and as for its not being talked about, that is out of the question.'

'And for yourself, Mr Robarts, whom I have ever regarded as a friend since circumstances brought me into your neighbourhood--for you, whose sister I love tenderly in memory of past kindness, though now she is removed so far above my sphere, as to make it unfit I should call her my friend--'

'She does not think so at all.'

'For yourself, as I was saying, pray believe me that though from the roughness of my manner, being now unused to social intercourse, I seem to be ungracious and forbidding, I am grateful and mindful, and that in the tablets of my heart I have written you down as one in whom I could trust--were it given to me to trust in men and women.' Then he turned round with his face to the wall and his back to his visitor, and so remained till Mr Robarts had left him. 'At any rate, I wish you well through your trouble,' said Robarts; and as he spoke he found that his own words were nearly choked by a sob that was rising in this throat.

He went away without another word, and got out to his gig without seeing Mrs Crawley. During one period of the interview he had been very angry with the man--so angry as to make him almost declare to himself that he would take no more trouble on his behalf. Then he had been brought to acknowledge that Mr Walker was right, and that Crawley was certainly mad. He was so mad, so far removed from the dominion of sound sense, that no jury could say that he was guilty and that he ought to be punished for his guilt. And, as he so resolved, he could not but ask himself the question, whether the charge of the parish ought to be left in the hands of such a man? But, at last, just before he went, these feelings and these convictions gave way to pity, and he remembered simply the troubles which seemed to have been heaped on the head of this poor victim to misfortune. As he drove home he resolved that there was nothing left for him to do, but to write to the dean. It was known by all who knew them both, that the dean and Mr Crawley had lived together on the closest intimacy at college, and that the friendship had been maintained through life;--though, from the peculiarity of Mr Crawley's character, the two had not been much together of late years. Seeing how things were going now, and hearing how pitiful was the plight in which Mr Crawley was placed, the dean would, no doubt, feel it to be his duty to hasten his return to England. He was believed to be at this moment in Jerusalem, and it would be long before a letter could reach him; but there still wanted three months to the assizes, and his return might be probably effected before the end of February.

'I was never so distressed in my life,' Mark Robarts said to his wife.

'And you think you have done no good?'

'Only this, that I have convinced myself that the poor man is to responsible for what he does, and that for her sake as well as for his own, some person should be enabled to interfere for his protection.'

Then he told Mrs Robarts what Mr Walker had said; also the message which Mr Crawley had sent to the archdeacon. But the both agreed that that message need not be sent any further.