It was at last arranged that the five clergymen selected should meet at Dr Tempest's house at Silverbridge to make inquiry and report to the bishop whether the circumstances connected with the cheque for twenty pounds were of such a nature as to make it incumbent on him to institute proceedings against Mr Crawley in the Court of Arches. Dr Tempest had acted upon the letter which he had received from the bishop, exactly as though there had been no meeting at the palace, no quarrel to the death between him and Mrs Proudie. He was a prudent man, gifted with the great power of holding his tongue, and had not spoken a word, even to his wife, of what had occurred. After such a victory our old friend the archdeacon would have blown his own trumpet loudly among his friends.
Plumstead would have heard of it instantly, and the paean would have been sung out in the neighbouring parishes of Eiderdown, Stogpingum, and St Ewolds. The High Street of Barchester would have known of it, and the very bedesmen in Hiram's Hospital would have told among themselves the terrible discomfiture of the bishop and his lady. But Dr Tempest spoke no word of it to anybody. He wrote letters to the two clergymen named by the bishop, and himself selected two others out of his own rural deanery, and suggested to them all a day at which a preliminary meeting should be held at his own house. The two who were invited by him were Mr Oriel, the rector of Greshamsbury, and Mr Robarts, the vicar of Framley.
They all assented to the proposition, and on the day named assembled themselves at Silverbridge.
It was now April, and the judges were to come into Barchester before the end of the month. What then could be the use of this ecclesiastical inquiry exactly at the same time? Men and women declared that it was a double prosecution, and that a double prosecution for the same offence was a course of action opposed to the feelings and the traditions of the country. Miss Anne Prettyman went so far as to say that it was unconstitutional, and Mary Walker declared that no human being except Mrs Proudie would ever have been guilty of such cruelty. 'Don't tell me about the bishop, John,' she said, 'the bishop is a cypher.' 'You may be sure Dr Tempest would not have a hand in it if it were not right,' said John Walker. 'My dear Mr John,' said Miss Anne Prettyman, 'Dr Tempest is as hard as a bar of iron, and always was. But I am surprised that Mr Robarts should take a part in it.'
In the meantime, at the palace, Mrs Proudie had been reduced to learn what was going on from Mr Thumble. The bishop had never spoke a word to her respecting Mr Crawley since that terrible day on which Dr Tempest had witnessed his imbecility--having absolutely declined to answer when his wife had mentioned the subject. 'You won't speak to me about it, my dear?' she had said to him, when he had thus declined, remonstrating more in sorrow than in anger. 'No; I won't,' the bishop had replied;'there has been a great deal too much talking about it. It has broken my heart already, I know.' These were very bad days in the palace. Mrs Proudie affected to be satisfied with what was being done. She talked to Mr Thumble about Mr Crawley and the cheque, as though everything were arranged quite to her satisfaction--as though everything, indeed, had been arranged by herself. But everybody about the house could see that the manner of the woman was altogether altered. She was milder than usual with the servants and was almost too gentle in her usage of her husband. It seemed as though something had happened to frighten her and break her spirit, and it was whispered about through the palace that she was afraid that the bishop was dying. As for him, he hardly left his own sitting-room in these days, except when he joined the family at breakfast and at dinner. And in his study he did little or nothing. He would smile when his chaplain went to him, and give some trifling verbal directions; but for days he scarcely ever took a pen in his hands, and though he took up many books he read hardly a page. How often he told his wife in those days that he was broken-hearted, no one but his wife ever knew.
'What has happened that you should speak like that?' she said to him once. 'What has broken your heart?'
'You,' he replied. 'You; you have done it.'
'Oh, Tom,' she said, going back into the memory of very far distant days in her nomenclature, 'how can you speak to me so cruelly as that! That it should come to that between you and me after all!'
'Why did you not go away and leave me that day when I told you?'
'Did you ever know a woman who liked to be turned out of a room in her own house?' said Mrs Proudie. When Mrs Proudie had condescended so far as this, it must be admitted that in those days there was a great deal of trouble in the palace.
Mr Thumble, on the day before he went to Silverbridge, asked for an audience with the bishop in order that he might receive instructions. He had been strictly desired to do this by Mrs Proudie, and had not dared to disobey her injunctions--thinking, however, himself, that his doing so was inexpedient. 'I have got nothing to say to you about it; not a word,' said the bishop crossly. 'I thought that perhaps you might like to see me before I started,' pleaded Mr Thumble very humbly. 'I don't want to see you at all,' said the bishop; 'you are going there to exercise your own judgment--if you have got any; and you ought not to come to me.' After that Mr Thumble began to think that Mrs Proudie was right, and that the bishop was near dissolution.