Mr Harding's curate at St Ewold's was nominated to Hogglestock, and the dean urged upon his friend Crawley the expediency of giving up the house as quickly as he could do so. Gradually at this time Mr Crawley had been forced into a certain amount of intimacy with the haunts of men. He had been twice or thrice at Barchester, and had lunched with the dean. He had been at Framley for an hour or two, and had been forced into some communication with old Mr Thorne, the squire of his new parish. The end of this had been that he had at last consented to transfer himself and wife and daughter to the deanery for a fortnight. He had preached one farewell sermon at Hogglestock--not, as he told his audience, as their pastor, which he had ceased to be now for some two or three months--but as their old and loving friend, to whom the use of his former pulpit had been lent, that he might express himself thus among them for the last time. His sermon was very short, and was preached without book or notes--but he never once paused for a word or halted in the string or rhythm of his discourse. The dean was there and declared afterwards that he had not given him credit for such powers of utterance. 'Any man can utter out of a full heart,' Crawley had answered. 'In this trumpery affair about myself, my heart is full! If we could only have our hearts full in other matters, our utterances thereanent would receive more attention.' To all of this the dean made no reply.
On the day after this the Crawleys took their final departure from Hogglestock, all the brickmakers from Hoggle End having assembled on the occasion, with a purse containing seventeen pounds seven shillings and sixpence, which they insisted on presenting to Mr Crawley, and as to which there was a little difficulty. And at the deanery they remained for a fortnight. How Mrs Crawley, under the guidance of Mrs Arabin, had there so far trenched upon the revenues of St Ewold's as to provide for her husband and herself raiment fitting for the worldly splendour of Plumstead, need not here be told in detail. Suffice to say, the raiment was forthcoming, and Mr Crawley found himself to be the perplexed possessor of a black dress coat, in addition to the long frock, coming nearly to his feet, which was provided for his daily wear. Touching this garment, there had been some discussion between the dean and the new vicar. The dean had desired that it should be curtailed in length. The vicar had remonstrated--but still with something of the weakness of compliance in his eye. Then the dean had persisted. 'Surely the price of the cloth wanted to perfect the comeliness of the garment cannot be much,' said the vicar, almost woefully. After that, the dean relented, and the comeliness of the coat was made perfect. The new black long frock, I think, Mr Crawley liked; but the dress coat, with the suit complete, perplexed him sorely.
With his new coat, and something also, of new manners, he and his wife went over to Plumstead, leaving Jane at the deanery with Mrs Arabin. The dean also went to Plumstead. They arrived there not much before dinner, and as Grace was there before them the first moments were not so bad.
Before Mr Crawley had had time to feel himself lost in the drawing-room, he was summoned away to prepare himself for dinner--for dinner, and for the coat, which at the deanery he had been allowed to leave unworn. 'Iwould with all my heart that I might retire to rest,' he said to his wife, when the ceremony had been perfected.
'Do not say so. Go down and take your place with them, and speak your mind with them--as you so well know how. Who among them can do it so well?'
'I have been told,' said Mr Crawley, 'that you shall take a cock which is lord of the farmyard--the cock of all that walk--and when you have daubed his feathers with mud, he shall be thrashed by every dunghill coward. I say not that I was ever the cock of the walk, but I know that they have daubed my feathers.' Then he went down among the other poultry in the farmyard.
At dinner he was very silent, answering, however, with a sort of graceful stateliness any word that Mrs Grantly addressed to him. Mr Thorne, of Ullathorne, was there also to meet his new vicar, as was also Mr Thorne's very old sister, Miss Monica Thorne. And Lady Anne Grantly was there--she having come with the expressed intention that the wives of the two brothers should know each other--but with a warmer desire, Ithink, of seeing Mr Crawley, of whom the clerical world had been talking since some notice of the accusations against him had become general.
There were, therefore, ten or twelve at the dinner-table, and Mr Crawley had not made one at such a board certainly since his marriage. All went fairly smooth with him till the ladies left the room; for though Lady Anne, who sat at his left hand, had perplexed him somewhat with clerical questions, he had found that he was not called upon for much more than monosyllabic responses. But in his heart he feared the archdeacon and he felt that when the ladies were gone the archdeacon would not leave him alone in his silence.
As soon as the door was closed, the first subject mooted was that of the Plumstead fox, which had been so basely murdered on Mr Thorne's ground.
