And then, in the days which followed, that friend of Mr Crawley’s, whose name, by the by, is yet to be mentioned, received quick and great promotion. Mr Arabin by name he was then; Dr Arabin afterwards, when that quick and great promotion reached its climax. He had been simply a Fellow of Lazarus in those former years. Then he became vicar of St Ewold’s, in East Barsetshire, and had not yet got himself settled there when he married the widow Bold, a widow with belongings in land and funded money, and with but one small baby as an encumbrance. Nor had he even yet married her, had only engaged himself so to do, when they made him Dean of Barchester — all of which may be read in the diocesan and county chronicles. And now that he was wealthy, the new dean did contrive to pay the debts of his poor friend, some lawyer of Camelford assisting him. It was but a paltry schedule after all, amounting in the total to something not much above a hundred pounds. And then, in the course of eighteen months, this poor piece of preferment fell the dean’s way, this incumbency of Hogglestock with its stipend reaching one hundred and thirty pounds a year. Even that was worth double the Cornish curacy, and there was, moreover, a house attached to it. Poor Mrs Crawley, when she heard of it, thought that their struggles of poverty were now well-nigh over. What might not be done with a hundred and thirty pounds by people who had lived for ten years on seventy?
And so they moved away out of that cold, bleak country, carrying with them their humble household goods, and settled themselves in another country, cold and bleak also, but less terribly so than the former. They settled themselves, and again began their struggles against man’s hardness and the devil’s zeal. I have said that Mr Crawley was a stern, unpleasant man; and it certainly was so. The man must be made of very sterling stuff, whom continued and undeserved misfortune does not make unpleasant. This man had so far succumbed to grief, that it had left upon him its marks, palpable and not to be effaced. He cared little for society, judging men to be doing evil who did care for it. He knew as a fact, and believed with all his heart, that these sorrows had come to him from the hand of God, and that they would work for his weal in the long run; but not the less did they make him morose, silent and dogged. He had always at his heart a feeling that he and his had been ill-used, and too often solaced himself, at the devil’s bidding, with the conviction that eternity would make equal that which life in this world had made so unequal; the last bait that with which the devil angles after those who are struggling to elude his rod and line.
The Framley property did not run into the parish of Hogglestock; but nevertheless Lady Lufton did what she could in the way of kindness to these new-comers. Providence had not supplied Hogglestock with a Lady Lufton, or with any substitute in the shape of lord or lady, squire or squiress. The Hogglestock farmers, male and female, were a rude, rough set, not bordering in their social rank on the farmer gentle; and Lady Lufton, knowing this, and hearing something of these Crawleys from Mrs Arabin the dean’s wife, trimmed her lamps, so that they should shed a wider light, and pour forth some of their influence on that forlorn household. And as regards Mrs Crawley, Lady Lufton by no means found that her work was thrown away. Mrs Crawley accepted her kindness with thankfulness, and returned to some of the softness of life under her hand. As for dining at Framley Court, that was out of the question. Mr Crawley, she knew, would not hear of it, even if other things were fitting and appliances were at command. Indeed Mrs Crawley at once said that she felt herself unfit to go through such a ceremony with anything like comfort. The dean, she said, would talk of their going to stay at the deanery; but she thought it quite impossible that either of them should endure even that. But, all the same, Lady Lufton was a comfort to her; and the poor woman felt that it was well to have a lady near her in case of need.
The task was much harder with Mr Crawley, but even with him it was not altogether unsuccessful. Lady Lufton talked to him of his parish and of her own; made Mark Robarts go to him, and by degrees did something towards civilizing him. Between him and Robarts too there grew up an intimacy rather than a friendship. Robarts would submit his opinion on matters of ecclesiastical and even theological law, would listen to him with patience, would agree with him where he could, and differ with him mildly when he could not. For Robarts was a man who made himself pleasant to all men. And thus, under Lady Lufton’s wing, there grew up a connexion between Framley and Hogglestock, in which Mrs Robarts also assisted. And now that Lady Lufton was looking about her, to see how she might best bring proper clerical influence to bear upon her own recreant fox-hunting parson, it occurred to her that she might use Mr Crawley in the matter. Mr Crawley would certainly be on her side as far as opinion went, and would have no fear in expressing his opinion to his brother clergyman. So she sent for Mr Crawley. In appearance he was the very opposite of Mark Robarts. He was a lean, slim, meagre man, with shoulders slightly curved, and pale, lank locks of ragged hair; his forehead was high, but his face was narrow; his small grey eyes were deeply sunken in his head, his nose was well-formed, his lips thin, and his mouth expressive. Nobody could look at him without seeing that there was a purpose and a meaning in his countenance. He always wore, in summer and winter, a long dusky grey coat, which buttoned close up to his neck and descended almost to his heels. He was full six feet high, but being so slight in build, he looked as though he were taller. He came at once at Lady Lufton’s bidding, putting himself into the gig beside the servant, to whom he spoke no single word during the journey. And the man, looking into his face, was struck with taciturnity. Now Mark Robarts would have talked with him the whole way from Hogglestock to Framley Court; discoursing partly as to horses and land, but partly also as to higher things. And then Lady Lufton opened her mind and told her griefs to Mr Crawley, urging, however, through the whole length of her narrative, that Mr Robarts was an excellent parish clergyman,—‘just such a clergyman in his church as I would wish him to be,’ she explained, with the view of saving herself from an expression of any of Mr Crawley’s special ideas as to church teaching, and of confining him to the one subject-matter in hand; ‘but he got his living so young, Mr Crawley, that he is hardly quite as steady as I should wish him to be. It has been as much my fault as his own in placing him in such a position so early in life.’
‘I think it has,’ said Mr Crawley, who might perhaps be a little sore on the subject.
‘Quite so, quite so,’ continued her ladyship, swallowing down a certain sense of anger. ‘But that is done now, and is past cure. That Mr Robarts will become a credit to his profession, I do not doubt, for his heart is in the right place and his sentiments are good; but I fear that at present he is succumbing to temptation.’
‘I am told that he hunts two or three times a week. Everybody is talking about it.’
‘No, Mr Crawley; not two or three times a week; very seldom above once, I think. And then I do believe he does it more with the view of being with Lord Lufton than anything else.’
‘I cannot see that that would make the matter better,’ said Mr Crawley.
‘It would show that he was not strongly imbued with a taste which I cannot but regard as vicious in a clergyman.’
‘It must be vicious in all men,’ said Mr Crawley. ‘It is in itself cruel, and leads to idleness and profligacy.’ Again Lady Lufton made a gulp. She had called Mr Crawley thither to her aid, and felt that it would be inexpedient to quarrel with him. But she did not like to be told that her son’s amusement was idle and profligate. She had always regarded hunting as a proper pursuit for a country gentleman. It was, indeed, in her eyes one of the peculiar institutions of country life in England, and it may be almost said that she looked upon the Barsetshire Hunt as something sacred. She could not endure to hear that a fox was trapped, and allowed her turkeys to be purloined without a groan. Such being the case, she did not like being told that it was vicious, and had by no means wished to consult Mr Crawley on that matter. But nevertheless she swallowed her wrath.
‘It is at any rate unbecoming in a clergyman,’ she said; ‘and as I know that Mr Robarts places a high value on your opinion, perhaps you will not object to advise him to discontinue it. He might possibly feel aggrieved were I to interfere personally on such a question.’
‘I have no doubt he would,’ said Mr Crawley. ‘It is not within a woman’s province to give counsel to a clergyman on such a subject, unless she be very near and very dear to him — his wife, or mother, or sister.’
‘As living in the same parish, you know, and being, perhaps —’ the leading person in it, and the one who naturally rules the others. Those would have been the fitting words for the expression of her ladyship’s ideas; but she remembered herself, and did not use them. She had made up her mind that, great as her influence ought to be, she was not the proper person to speak to Mr Robarts as to his pernicious, unclerical habits, and she would not now depart from her resolve by attempting to prove that she was the proper person.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Crawley, ‘just so. All that would entitle him to offer you his counsel if he thought that your mode of life was such as to require it, but could by no means justify in addressing yourself to him.’ This was very hard upon Lady Lufton. She was endeavouring with all her woman’s strength to do her best, and endeavouring s............