Books: He Knew He Was Right

A >> Anthony Trollope >> He Knew He Was Right

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72

But there arose to dear Lady Milborough a great trouble out of this
quarrel, irrespective of the absolute horror of the separation of a
young husband from his young wife. And the excess of her trouble on
this head was great proof of the real goodness of her heart. For, in
this matter, the welfare of Trevelyan himself was not concerned but
rather that of the Rowley family. Now the Rowleys had not given Lady
Milborough any special reason for loving them. When she had first heard
that her dear young friend Louis was going to marry a girl from the
Mandarins, she had been almost in despair. It was her opinion that had
he properly understood his own position, he would have promoted his
welfare by falling in love with the daughter of some English country
gentleman or some English peer, to which honour, with his advantages,
Lady Milborough thought that he might have aspired. Nevertheless, when
the girl from the Mandarins had been brought home as Mrs Trevelyan,
Lady Milborough had received her with open arms had received even the
sister-in-law with arms partly open. Had either of them shown any
tendency to regard her as a mother, she would have showered motherly
cares upon them. For Lady Milborough was like an old hen, in her
capacity for taking many under her wings. The two sisters had hardly
done more than bear with her Nora, indeed, bearing with her more
graciously than Mrs Trevelyan; and in return, even for this, the old
dowager was full of motherly regard. Now she knew well that Mr Glascock
was over head and ears in love with Nora Rowley. It only wanted the
slightest management and the easiest discretion to bring him on his
knees, with an offer of his hand. And, then, how much that hand
contained how much, indeed, as compared with that other hand, which was
to be given in return, and which was to speak the truth completely
empty! Mr Glascock was the heir to a peer, was the heir to a rich peer,
was the heir to a very, very old peer. He was in Parliament. The world
spoke well of him. He was not, so to say, by any means an old man
himself. He was good-tempered, reasonable, easily led, and yet by no
means despicable. On all subjects connected with land, he held an
opinion that was very much respected, and was supposed to be a
thoroughly good specimen of an upper-class Englishman. Here was a
suitor! But it was not to be supposed that such a man as Mr Glascock
would be so violently in love as to propose to a girl whose nearest
known friend and female relation was misbehaving herself?

Only they who have closely watched the natural uneasinesses of human
hens can understand how great was Lady Milborough's anxiety on this
occasion. Marriage to her was a thing always delightful to contemplate.
Though she had never been sordidly a matchmaker, the course of the
world around her had taught her to regard men as fish to be caught, and
girls as the anglers who ought to catch them. Or, rather, could her
mind have been accurately analysed, it would have been found that the
girl was regarded as half-angler and half-bait. Any girl that angled
visibly with her own hook, with a manifestly expressed desire to catch
a fish, was odious to her. And she was very gentle-hearted in regard to
the fishes, thinking that every fish in the river should have the hook
and bait presented to him in the mildest, pleasantest form. But still,
when the trout was well in the basket, her joy was great; and then came
across her unlaborious mind some half-formed idea that a great
ordinance of nature was being accomplished in the teeth of
difficulties. For as she well knew there is a difficulty in the
catching of fish.

Lady Milborough, in her kind anxiety on Nora's behalf that the fish
should be landed before Nora might be swept away in her sister's ruin
hardly knew what step she might safely take. Mrs Trevelyan would not
see her again having already declared that any further interview would
be painful and useless. She had spoken to Trevelyan, but Trevelyan had
declared that he could do nothing. What was there that he could have
done? He could not, as he said, overlook the gross improprieties of his
wife's conduct, because his wife's sister had, or might possibly have,
a lover. And then as to speaking to Mr Glascock himself nobody knew
better than Lady Milborough how very apt fish are to be frightened.

But at last Lady Milborough did speak to Mr Glascock making no allusion
whatever to the hook prepared for himself, but saying a word or two as
to the affairs of that other fish, whose circumstances, as he
floundered about in the bucket of matrimony, were not as happy as they
might have been. The care, the discretion, nay, the wisdom with which
she did this were most excellent. She had become aware that Mr Glascock
had already heard of the unfortunate affair in Curzon Street. Indeed,
every one who knew the Trevelyans had heard of it, and a great many who
did not know them. No harm, therefore, could be done by mentioning the
circumstance. Lady Milborough did mention it, explaining that the only
person really in fault was that odious destroyer of the peace of
families, Colonel Osborne, of whom Lady Milborough, on that occasion,
said some very severe things indeed. Poor dear Mrs Trevelyan was
foolish, obstinate, and self-reliant but as innocent as the babe
unborn. That things would come right before long no one who knew the
affair and she knew it from beginning to end--could for a moment doubt.
The real victim would be that sweetest of all girls, Nora Rowley. Mr
Glascock innocently asked why Nora Rowley should be a victim. 'Don't
you understand, Mr Glascock, how the most remote connection with a
thing of that kind tarnishes a young woman's standing in the world?' Mr
Glascock was almost angry with the well-pleased Countess as he declared
that he could not see that Miss Rowley's standing was at all tarnished;
and old Lady Milborough, when he got up and left her, felt that she had
done a good morning's work. If Nora could have known it all, Nora ought
to have been very grateful, for Mr Glascock got into a cab in Eccleston
Square and had himself driven direct to Curzon Street. He himself
believed that he was at that moment only doing the thing which he had
for some time past resolved that he would do; but we perhaps may be
justified in thinking that the actual resolution was first fixed by the
discretion of Lady Milborough's communication. At any rate he arrived
in Curzon Street with his mind fully resolved, and had spent the
minutes in the cab considering how he had better perform the business
in hand.

He was at once shown into the drawing-room, where he found the two
sisters, and Mrs Trevelyan, as soon as she saw him, understood the
purpose of his coming. There was an air of determination about him, a
manifest intention of doing something, an absence of that vagueness
which almost always flavours a morning visit. This was so strongly
marked that Mrs Trevelyan felt that she would have been almost
justified in getting up and declaring that, as this visit was paid to
her sister, she would retire. But, any such declaration on her part was
unnecessary, as Mr Glascock had not been in the room three minutes
before he asked her to go. By some clever device of his own, he got her
into the back room and whispered to her that he wanted to say a few
words in private to her sister.

'Oh, certainly,' said Mrs Trevelyan, smiling.

'I dare say you may guess what they are,' said he. 'I don't know what
chance I may have?'

'I can tell you nothing about that,' she replied, 'as I know nothing.
But you have my good wishes.'

And then she went.

It may be presumed that gradually some idea of Mr Glascock's intention
had made its way into Nora's mind by the time that she found herself
alone with that gentleman. Why else had he brought into the room with
him that manifest air of a purpose? Why else had he taken the very
strong step of sending the lady of the house out of her own
drawing-room? Nora, beginning to understand this, put herself into an
attitude of defence. She had never told herself that she would refuse
Mr Glascock. She had never acknowledged to herself that there was
another man whom she liked better than she liked Mr Glascock. But had
she ever encouraged any wish for such an interview, her feelings at
this moment would have been very different from what they were. As it
was, she would have given much to postpone it, so that she might have
asked herself questions, and have discovered whether she could
reconcile herself to do that which, no doubt, all her friends would
commend her for doing. Of course, it was clear enough to the mind of
the girl that she had her fortune to make, and that her beauty and
youth were the capital on which she had to found it. She had not lived
so far from all taint of corruption as to feel any actual horror at the
idea of a girl giving herself to a man not because the man had already,
by his own capacities in that direction, forced her heart from her but
because he was one likely to be at all points a good husband. Had all
this affair concerned any other girl, any friend of her own, and had
she known all the circumstances of the case, she would have had no
hesitation in recommending that other girl to marry Mr Glascock. A girl
thrown out upon the world without a shilling must make her hay while
the sun shines. But, nevertheless, there was something within her bosom
which made her long for a better thing than this. She had dreamed, if
she had not thought, of being able to worship a man; but she could
hardly worship Mr Glascock. She had dreamed, if she had not thought, of
leaning upon a man all through life with her whole weight, as though
that man had been specially made to be her staff, her prop, her
support, her wall of comfort and protection. She knew that if she were
to marry Mr Glascock and become Lady Peterborough, in due course she
must stand a good deal by her own strength, and live without that
comfortable leaning. Nevertheless, when she found herself alone with
the man, she by no means knew whether she would refuse him or not. But
she knew that she must pluck up courage for an important moment, and
she collected herself, braced her muscles, as it were, for a fight, and
threw her mind into an attitude of contest.

Mr Glascock, as soon as the door was shut behind Mrs Trevelyan's back,
took a chair and placed it close beside the head of the sofa on which
Nora was sitting. 'Miss Rowley,' he said, 'you and I have known each
other now for some months, and I hope you have learned to regard me as
a friend.'

'Oh, yes, indeed,' said Nora, with some spirit.

'It has seemed to me that we have met as friends, and I can most truly
say for myself, that I have taken the greatest possible pleasure in
your acquaintance. It is not only that I admire you very much,' he
looked straight before him as he said this, and moved about the point
of the stick which he was holding in both his hands 'it is not only
that perhaps not chiefly that, though I do admire you very much; but
the truth is, that I like everything about you.'

Nora smiled, but she said nothing. It was better, she thought, to let
him tell his story; but his mode of telling it was not without its
efficacy. It was not the simple praise which made its way with her but
a certain tone in the words which seemed to convince her that they were
true. If he had really found her, or fancied her to be what he said,
there was a manliness in his telling her so in the plainest words that
pleased her much.

'I know,' continued he, 'that this is a very bald way of telling of
pleading my cause; but I don't know whether a bald way may not be the
best, if it can only make itself understood to be true. Of course, Miss
Rowley, you know what I mean. As I said before, you have all those
things which not only make me love you, but which make me like you
also. If you think that you can love me, say so; and, as long as I
live, I will do my best to make you happy as my wife.'

There was a clearness of expression in this, and a downright surrender
of himself, which so flattered her and so fluttered her that she was
almost reduced to the giving of herself up because she could not reply
to such an appeal in language less courteous than that of agreement.
After a moment or two she found herself remaining silent, with a
growing feeling that silence would be taken as conveying consent. There
floated quickly across her brain an idea of the hardness of a woman's
lot, in that she should be called upon to decide her future fate for
life in half a minute. He had had weeks to think of this weeks in which
it would have been almost unmaidenly in her so to think of it as to
have made up her mind to accept the man. Had she so made up her mind,
and had he not come to her, where would she have been then? But he had
come to her. There he was, still poking about with his stick, waiting
for her, and she must answer him. And he was the eldest son of a peer
an enormous match for her, very proper in all respects; such a man,
that if she should accept him, everybody around her would regard her
fortune in life as miraculously successful. He was not such a man that
anyone would point at her and say 'there; see another of them who has
sold herself for money and a title!' Mr Glascock was not an Apollo, not
an admirable Crichton; but he was a man whom any girl might have
learned to love Now he had asked her to be his wife, and it was
necessary that she should answer him. He sat there waiting for her very
patiently, still poking about the point of his stick.

Did she really love him? Though she was so pressed by consideration of
time, she did find a moment in which to ask herself the question. With
a quick turn of an eye she glanced at him, to see what he was like. Up
to this moment, though she knew him well, she could have given no
details of his personal appearance. He was a better-looking man than
Hugh Stanbury so she told herself with a passing thought; but he lacked
he lacked; what was it that he lacked? Was it youth, or spirit, or
strength; or was it some outward sign of an inward gift of mind? Was it
that he was heavy while Hugh was light? Was it that she could find no
fire in his eye, while Hugh's eyes were full of flashing? Or was it
that for her, especially for her, Hugh was the appointed staff and
appropriate wall of protection? Be all that as it might, she knew at
the moment that she did love, not this man, but that other who was
writing articles for the Daily Record. She must refuse the offer that
was so brilliant, and give up the idea of reigning as queen at
Monkhams.

'Oh, Mr Glascock,' she said, 'I ought to answer you more quickly.'

'No, dearest; not more quickly than suits you. Nothing ever in this
world can be more important both to you and to me. If you want more
time to think of it, take more time.'

'No, Mr Glascock; I do not. I don't know why I should have paused. Is
not the truth best?'

'Yes certainly the truth is best.'

'I do not love you. Pray, pray understand me.'

'I understand it too well, Miss Rowley.' The stick was still going, and
the eyes more intently, fixed than ever on something opposite.

'I do like you; I like you very much. And I am so grateful! I cannot
understand why such a man as you should want to make me your wife.'

'Because I love you better than all the others; simply that. That
reason, and that only, justifies a man in wanting to marry a girl.'
What a good fellow he was, and how flattering were his words! Did he
not deserve what he wanted, even though it could not be given without a
sacrifice? But yet she did not love him. As she looked at him again she
could not there recognise her staff. And she looked at him she was more
than ever convinced that that other staff ought to be her staff. 'May I
come again after a month, say?' he asked, when there had been another
short period of silence.

'No, no. Why should you trouble yourself? I am not worth it.'

'It is for me to judge of that, Miss Rowley.'

'All the same, I know that I am not worth it. And I could not tell you
to do that.'

'Then I will wait, and come again without your telling me.'

'Oh, Mr Glascock, I did not mean that; indeed I did not. Pray do not
think that. Take what I say as final. I like you more than I can say;
and I feel a gratitude to you that I cannot express which I shall never
forget I have never known any one who has seemed to be so good as you.
But It is just what I said before.' And then she fairly burst into
tears.

'Miss Rowley,' he said, very slowly, 'pray do not think that I want to
ask any question which it might embarrass you to answer. But my
happiness is so greatly at stake; and, if you will allow me to say so,
your happiness, too, is so greatly concerned, that it is most important
that we should not come to a conclusion too quickly. If I thought that
your heart were vacant I would wait patiently. I have been thinking of
you as my possible wife for weeks past for months past. Of course you
have not had such thoughts about me.' As he said this she almost loved
him for his considerate goodness. 'It has sometimes seemed to me odd
that girls should love men in such a hurry. If your heart be free, I
will wait. And if you esteem me, you can see, and try whether you
cannot learn to love me.'

'I do esteem you.'

'It depends on that question, then?' he said, slowly.

She sat silent for fully a minute, with her hands clasped; and then she
answered him in a whisper. 'I do not know,' she said.

He also was silent for a while before he spoke again. He ceased to poke
with his stick, and got up from his chair, and stood a little apart
from her, not looking al her even yet.

'I see,' he said at last. 'I understand. Well, Miss Rowley, I quite
perceive that I cannot press my suit any further now. But I shall not
despair altogether. I know this, that if I might possibly succeed, I
should be a very happy man. Good-bye, Miss Rowley.'

She took his offered hand and pressed it so warmly, that had he not
been manly and big-hearted, he would have taken such pressure as a sign
that she wished him to ask her again. But such was his nature.

'God bless you,' he said, 'and make you happy, whatever you may choose
to do.'

Then he left her, and she heard him walk down the stairs with heavy
slow steps, and she thought that she could perceive from the sound that
he was sad at heart, but that he was resolved not to show his sadness
outwardly.

When she was alone she began to think in earnest of what she had done.
If the reader were told that she regretted the decision which she had
been forced to make so rapidly, a wrong impression would be given of
the condition of her thoughts. But there came upon her suddenly a
strange capacity for counting up and making a mental inventory of all
that might have been hers. She knew and where is the girl so placed
that does not know? that it is a great thing to be an English peeress.
Now, as she stood there thinking of it all, she was Nora Rowley without
a shilling in the world, and without a prospect of a shilling. She had
often heard her mother speak fearful words of future possible days,
when colonial governing should no longer be within the capacity of Sir
Marmaduke. She had been taught from a very early age that all the
material prosperity of her life must depend on matrimony. She could
never be comfortably disposed of in the world, unless some fitting man
who possessed those things of which she was so bare, should wish to
make her his wife. Now there had come a man so thoroughly fitting, so
marvellously endowed, that no worldly blessing would have been wanting.
Mr Glascock had more than once spoken to her of the glories of
Monkhams. She thought of Monkhams now more than she had ever thought of
the place before. It would have been a great privilege to be the
mistress of an old time-honoured mansion, to call oaks and elms her
own, to know that acres of gardens were submitted to her caprices, to
look at herds of cows and oxen, and be aware that they lowed on her own
pastures. And to have been the mother of a future peer of England, to
have the nursing, and sweet custody and very making of a future senator
would not that have been much? And the man himself who would have been
her husband was such a one that any woman might have trusted herself to
him with perfect confidence. Now that he was gone she almost fancied
that she did love him. Then she thought of Hugh Stanbury, sitting as he
had described himself, in a little dark closet at the office of the 'D.
R.,' in a very old inky shooting-coat, with a tarnished square-cut
cloth cap upon his head, with a short pipe in his mouth, writing at
midnight for the next morning's impression, this or that article
according to the order of his master, 'the tallow-chandler'; for the
editor of the Daily Record was a gentleman whose father happened to be
a grocer in the City, and Hugh had been accustomed thus to describe the
family trade. And she might certainly have had the peer, and the acres
of garden, and the big house, and the senatorial honours; whereas the
tallowchandler's journeyman had never been so outspoken. She told
herself from moment to moment that she had done right; that she would
do the same a dozen times, if a dozen times the experiment could be
repeated; but still, still, there was the remembrance of all that she
had lost. How would her mother look at her, her anxious, heavily-laden
mother, when the story should be told of all that had been offered to
her and all that had been refused?

As she was thinking of this Mrs Trevelyan came into the room. Nora felt
that though she might dread to meet her mother, she could be bold
enough on such an occasion before her sister. Emily had not done so
well with her own affairs, as to enable her to preach with advantage
about marriage.

'He has gone?' said Mrs Trevelyan, as she opened the door.

'Yes, he has gone.'

'Well? Do not pretend, Nora, that you will not tell me.'

'There is nothing worth the telling, Emily.'

'What do you mean? I am sure he has proposed. He told me in so many
words that it was his intention.'

'Whatever has happened, dear, you may be quite sure that I shall never
be Mrs Glascock.'

'Then you have refused him because of Hugh Stanbury!'

'I have refused him, Emily, because I did not love him. Pray let that
be enough.'

Then she walked out of the room with something of stateliness in her
gait as might become a girl who had had it in her power to be the
future Lady Peterborough; but as soon as she reached the sacredness of
her own chamber, she gave way to an agony of tears. It would, indeed,
be much to be a Lady Peterborough. And she had, in truth, refused it
all because of Hugh Stanbury! Was Hugh Stanbury worth so great a
sacrifice?

CHAPTER XIV - THE CLOCK HOUSE AT NUNCOMBE PUTNEY

It was not till a fortnight had passed after the transaction recorded
in the last chapter, that Mrs Trevelyan and Nora Rowley first heard the
proposition that they should go to live at Nuncombe Putney. From bad to
worse the quarrel between the husband and the wife had gone on, till
Trevelyan had at last told his friend Lady Milborough that he had made
up his mind that they must live apart. She is so self-willed and
perhaps I am the same,' he had said, 'that it is impossible that we
should live together.' Lady Milborough had implored and called to
witness all testimonies, profane and sacred, against such a step had
almost gone down on her knees. Go to Naples why not Naples? Or to the
quiet town in the west of France, which was so dull that a wicked
roaring lion, fond of cities and gambling, and eating and drinking,
could not live in such a place! Oh, why not go to the quiet town in the
west of France? Was not anything better than this flying in the face of
God and man? Perhaps Trevelyan did not himself like the idea of the
quiet dull French town. Perhaps he thought that the flying in the face
of God and man was all done by his wife, not by him; and that it was
right that his wife should feel the consequences. After many such
entreaties, many such arguments, it was at last decided that the house
in Curzon Street should be given up, and that he and his wife live
apart.

'And what about Nora Rowley?' asked Lady Milborough, who had become
aware by this time of Nora's insane folly in having refused Mr
Glascock.

'She will go with her sister, I suppose.'

'And who will maintain her? Dear, dear, dear! It does seem as though
some young people were bent upon cutting their own throats, and all
their family's.'

Poor Lady Milborough just at this time went as near to disliking the
Rowleys as was compatible with her nature. It was not possible to her
to hate anybody. She thought that she hated the Colonel Osbornes; but
even that was a mistake. She was very angry, however, with both Mrs
Trevelyan and her sister, and was disposed to speak of them as though
they had been born to create trouble and vexation.

Trevelyan had not given any direct answer to that question about Nora
Rowley's maintenance, but he was quite prepared to bear all necessary
expense in that direction, at any rate till Sir Marmaduke should have
arrived. At first there had been an idea that the two sisters should go
to the house of their aunt, Mrs Outhouse. Mrs Outhouse was the wife as
the reader may perhaps remember of a clergyman living in the east of
London. St. Diddulph's-in-the-East was very much in the east indeed. It
was a parish outside the City, lying near the river, very populous,
very poor, very low in character, and very uncomfortable. There was a
rectory-house, queerly situated at the end of a little blind lane, with
a gate of its own, and a so-called garden about twenty yards square.
But the rectory of St. Diddulph's cannot be said to have been a
comfortable abode. The neighbourhood was certainly not alluring. Of
visiting society within a distance of three or four miles there was
none but what was afforded by the families of other East-end clergymen.
And then Mr Outhouse himself was a somewhat singular man. He was very
religious, devoted to his work, most kind to the poor; but he was
unfortunately a strongly-biased man, and at the same time very
obstinate withal. He had never allied himself very cordially with his
wife's brother, Sir Marmaduke, allowing himself to be carried away by a
prejudice that people living at the West-end, who frequented clubs and
were connected in any way with fashion, could not be appropriate
companions for himself. The very title which Sir Marmaduke had acquired
was repulsive to him, and had induced him to tell his wife more than
once that Sir this or Sir that could not be fitting associates for a
poor East-end clergyman. Then his wife's niece had married a man of
fashion a man supposed at St. Diddulph's to be very closely allied to
fashion; and Mr Outhouse had never been induced even to dine in the
house in Curzon Street. When, therefore, he heard that Mr and Mrs
Trevelyan were to be separated within two years of their marriage, it
could not be expected that he should be very eager to lend to the two
sisters the use of his rectory.