Books: He Knew He Was Right

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'You mean the Colonel, sir. He up in town, sir, a minding of his
parliamentary duties. He have been up all this month, sir.'

'They haven't met?'

Bozzle paused a moment before he replied, and then smiled as he spoke.
'It is so hard, to say, sir. Ladies is so cute and cunning. I've
watched as sharp as watching can go, pretty near. I've put a youngster
on at each bend, and both of 'em'd hear a mouse stirring in his sleep.
I ain't got no evidence, Mr Trevelyan. But if you ask me my opinion,
why in course they've been together somewhere. It stands to reason, Mr
Trevelyan; don't it?' And Bozzle as he said this smiled almost aloud.

'D n and b t it all for ever!' said Trevelyan, gnashing his teeth, and
moving away into Union Street as fast as he could walk. And he did go
away, leaving Bozzle standing in the middle of Stony Walk.

'He's disturbed in his mind quite 'orrid,' Bozzle said when he got back
to his wife. 'He cursed and swore as made even me feel bad.'

'B.,' said is wife, 'do you listen to me. Get in what's a howing and
don't you have any more to do with it.'

CHAPTER LX - ANOTHER STRUGGLE

Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley were to reach England about the end of
March or the beginning of April, and both Mrs Trevelyan and Nora Rowley
were almost sick for their arrival. Both their uncle and aunt had done
very much for them, had been true to them in their need, and had
submitted to endless discomforts in order that their nieces might have
respectable shelter in their great need; but nevertheless their conduct
had not been of a kind to produce either love or friendship. Each of
the sisters felt that she had been much better off at Nuncombe Putney;
and that either the weakness of Mrs Stanbury, or the hardness of
Priscilla, was preferable to the repulsive forbearance of their
clerical host. He did not scold them. He never threw it in Mrs
Trevelyan's teeth that she had been separated from her husband by her
own fault; he did not tell them of his own discomfort. But he showed it
in every gesture, and spoke of it in every tone of his voice so that
Mrs Trevelyan could not refrain from apologising for the misfortune of
her presence.

'My dear,' he said, 'things can't be pleasant and unpleasant at the
same time. You were quite right to come here. I am glad for all our
sakes that Sir Marmaduke will be with us so soon.'

She had almost given up in her mind the hope that she had long
cherished, that she might some day be able to live again with her
husband. Every step which he now took in reference to her seemed to be
prompted by so bitter an hostility, that she could not but believe that
she was hateful to him. How was it possible that a husband and his wife
should again come together, when there had been between them such an
emissary as a detective policeman? Mrs Trevelyan had gradually come to
learn that Bozzle had been at Nuncombe Putney, watching her, and to be
aware that she was still under the surveillance of his eye. For some
months past now she had neither seen Colonel Osborne, nor heard from
him. He had certainly by his folly done much to produce the ruin which
had fallen upon her; but it never occurred to her to blame him. Indeed
she did not know that he was liable to blame. Mr Outhouse always spoke
of him with indignant scorn, and Nora had learned to think that much of
their misery was due to his imprudence. But Mrs Trevelyan would not see
this, and, not seeing it, was more widely separated from her husband
than she would have been had she acknowledged that any excuse for his
misconduct had been afforded by the vanity and folly of the other man.

Lady Rowley had written to have a furnished house taken for them from
the first of April, and a house had been secured in Manchester Street.
The situation in question is not one which is of itself very charming,
nor is it supposed to be in a high degree fashionable; but Nora looked
forward to her escape from St. Diddulph's to Manchester Street as
though Paradise were to be re-opened to her as soon as she should be
there with her father and mother. She was quite clear now as to her
course about Hugh Stanbury. She did not doubt that that she could so
argue the matter as to get the consent of her father and mother. She
felt herself to be altogether altered in her views of life, since
experience had come upon her, first at Nuncombe Putney, and after that,
much more heavily and seriously, at St. Diddulph's. She looked back as
though to a childish dream to the ideas which had prevailed with her
when she had told herself, as she used to do so frequently, that she
was unfit to be a poor man's wife. Why should she be more unfit for
such a position than another? Of course there were many thoughts in her
mind, much of memory if nothing of regret, in regard to Mr Glascock and
the splendour that had been offered to her. She had had her chance of
being a rich man's wife, and had rejected it had rejected it twice,
with her eyes open. Readers will say that if she loved Hugh Stanbury
with all her heart, there could be nothing of regret in her
reflections. But we are perhaps accustomed in judging for ourselves and
of others to draw the lines too sharply, and to say that on this side
lie vice, folly, heartlessness, and greed and on the other honour,
love, truth, and wisdom the good and the bad each in its own domain.
But the good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts,
even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in
overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence. There had
been many moments of regret with Nora but none of remorse. At the very
moment in which she had sent Mr Glascock away from her, and had felt
that he had now been sent away for always, she had been full of regret.
Since that there had been many hours in which she had thought of her
own self-lesson, of that teaching by which she had striven to convince
herself that she could never fitly become a poor man's wife. But the
upshot of it all was a healthy pride in what she had done, and a strong
resolution that she would make shirts and hem towels for her husband if
he required it. It had been given her to choose, and she had chosen.
She had found herself unable to tell a man that she loved him when she
did not love him and equally unable to conceal the love which she did
feel. 'If he wheeled a barrow of turnips about the street, I'd marry
him tomorrow,' she said to her sister one afternoon as they were
sitting together in the room which ought to have been her uncle's
study.

'If he wheeled a big barrow, you'd have to wheel a little one,' said
her sister.

'Then I'd do it. I shouldn't mind. There has been this advantage in St.
Diddulph's, that nothing can be triste, nothing dull, nothing ugly
after it.'

'It may be so with you, Nora that is in imagination.'

'What I mean is that living here has taught me much that I never could
have learned in Curzon Street. I used to think myself such a fine young
woman but, upon my word, I think myself a finer one now.'

'I don't quite know what you mean.'

'I don't quite know myself; but I nearly know. I do know this, that
I've made up my own mind about what I mean to do.'

'You'll change it, dear, when mamma is here, and things are comfortable
again. It's my belief that Mr Glascock would come to you again tomorrow
if you would let him.' Mrs Trevelyan was, naturally, in complete
ignorance of the experience of transatlantic excellence which Mr
Glascock had encountered in Italy.

'But I certainly should not let him. How would it be possible after
what I wrote to Hugh?'

'All that might pass away,' said Mrs Trevelyan slowly, after a long
pause.

'All what might pass away? Have I not given him a distinct promise?
Have I not told him that I loved him, and sworn that I would be true to
him? Can that be made to pass away. even if one wished it?'

'Of course it can. Nothing need be fixed for you till you have stood at
the altar with a man and been made his wife. You may choose still. I
can never choose again.'

'I never will, at any rate,' said Nora.

Then there was another pause. 'It seems strange to me, Nora,' said the
elder sister, 'that after what you have seen you should be so keen to
be married to any one.'

'What is a girl to do?'

'Better drown herself than do as I have done. Only think what there is
before me. What I have gone through is nothing to it. Of course I must
go back to the Islands. Where else am I to live? Who else will take
me?'

'Come to us,' said Nora.

'Us, Nora! Who are the us? But in no way would that be possible. Papa
will be here, perhaps, for six months.' Nora thought it quite possible
that she might have a home of her own before six months were passed
even though she might be wheeling the smaller barrow but she would not
say so. 'And by that time everything must be decided.'

'I suppose it must.'

'Of course papa and mamma must go back,' said Mrs Trevelyan.

'Papa might take a pension. He's entitled to a pension now.'

'He'll never do that as long as he can have employment. They'll go
back, and I must go with them. Who else would take me in?'

'I know who would take you in, Emily.'

'My darling, that is romance. As for myself, I should not care where I
went. If it were even to remain here, I could bear it.'

'I could not,' said Nora, decisively.

'It is so different with you, dear. I don't suppose it is possible I
should take my boy with me to the Islands; and how am I to go anywhere
without him?' Then she broke down, and fell into a paroxysm of sobs,
and was in very truth a broken-hearted woman.

Nora was silent for some minutes, but at last she spoke. 'Why do you
not go back to him, Emily?'

'How am I to go back to him? What am I to do to make him take me back?'
At this very moment Trevelyan was in the house, but they did not know
it.

'Write to him,' said Nora.

'What am I to say? In very truth I do believe that he is mad. If I
write to him, should I defend myself or accuse myself? A dozen times I
have striven to write such a letter not that I might send it, but that
I might find what I could say should I ever wish to send it. And it is
impossible. I can only tell him how unjust he has been, how cruel, how
mad, how wicked!'

'Could you not say to him simply this? "Let us be together, wherever it
may be; and let bygones be bygones."'

'While he is watching me with a policeman? While he is still thinking
that I entertain a lover? While he believes that I am the base thing
that he has dared to think me?'

'He has never believed it.'

'Then how can he be such a villain as to treat me like this? I could
not go to him, Nora not unless I went to him as one who was known to be
mad, over whom in his wretched condition it would be my duty to keep
watch. In no other way could I overcome my abhorrence of the outrages
to which he has subjected me.'

'But for the child's sake, Emily.'

'Ah, yes! If it were simply to grovel in the dust before him it should
be done. If humiliation would suffice or any self-abasement that were
possible to me! But I should be false if I said that I look forward to
any such possibility. How can he wish to have me back again after what
he has said and done? I am his wife, and he has disgraced me before all
men by his own words. And what have I done, that I should not have done
what left undone on his behalf that I should have done? It is hard that
the foolish workings of a weak man's mind should be able so completely
to ruin the prospects of a woman's life!'

Nora was beginning to answer this by attempting to shew that the
husband's madness was, perhaps, only temporary, when there came a knock
at the door, and Mrs Outhouse was at once in the room. It will be well
that the reader should know what had taken place at the parsonage while
the two sisters had been together upstairs, so that the nature of Mrs
Outhouse's mission to them may explain itself. Mr Outhouse had been in
his closet downstairs, when the maid-servant brought word to him that
Mr Trevelyan was in the parlour, and was desirous of seeing him.

'Mr Trevelyan!' said the unfortunate clergyman, holding up both his
hands. The servant understood the tragic importance of the occasion
quite as well as did her master, and simply shook her head. 'Has your
mistress seen him?' said the master. The girl again shook her head.
'Ask your mistress to come to me,' said the clergyman. Then the girl
disappeared; and in a few minutes Mrs Outhouse, equally imbued with the
tragic elements of the day, was with her husband.

Mr Outhouse began by declaring that no consideration should induce him
to see Trevelyan, and commissioned his wife to go to the man and tell,
him that he must leave the house. When the unfortunate woman expressed
an opinion that Trevelyan had some legal rights upon which he might
probably insist, Mr Outhouse asserted roundly that he could have no
legal right to remain in that parsonage against the will of the rector.
'If he wants to claim his wife and child, he must do it by law not by
force; and thank God, Sir Marmaduke will be here before he can do
that.' 'But I can't make him go,' said Mrs Outhouse. 'Tell him that
you'll send for a policeman,' said the clergyman.

It had come to pass that there had been messages backwards and forwards
between the visitor and the master of the house, all carried by that
unfortunate lady.

Trevelyan did not demand that his wife and child should be given up to
him did not even, on this occasion, demand that his boy should be
surrendered to him now, at once. He did say, very repeatedly, that of
course he must have his boy, but seemed to imply that, under certain
circumstances, he would be willing to take his wife to live with him
again. This appeared to Mrs Outhouse to be so manifestly the one thing
that was desirable to be the only solution of the difficulty that could
be admitted as a solution at all that she went to work on that hint,
and ventured to entertain a hope that a reconciliation might be
effected. She implored her husband to lend a hand to the work by which
she intended to imply that he should not only see Trevelyan, but
consent to meet the sinner on friendly terms. But Mr Outhouse was on
the occasion ever more than customarily obstinate. His wife might co
what she liked. He would neither meddle nor make. He would not
willingly see Mr Trevelyan in his own house unless, indeed, Mr
Trevelyan should attempt to force his way up into the nursery. Then he
said that which left no doubt on his wife's mind that, should any
violence be attempted, her husband would manfully join the melee.

But it soon became evident that no such attempt was to be made on that
day. Trevelyan was lachrymose, heartbroken, and a sight pitiable to
behold. When Mrs Outhouse loudly asserted that his wife had not sinned
against him in the least 'not in a tittle, Mr Trevelyan,' she repeated
over and over again he began to assert himself, declaring that she had
seen the man in Devonshire, and corresponded with him since she had
been at St. Diddulph's; and when the lady had declared that the latter
assertion was untrue, he had shaken his head, and had told her that
perhaps she did not know all. But the misery of the man had its effect
upon her, and at last she proposed to be the bearer of a message to his
wife. He had demanded to see his child, offering his promise that he
would not attempt to take the boy by force on this occasion saying,
also, that his claim by law was so good, that no force could be
necessary. It was proposed by Mrs Outhouse that he should first see the
mother and to this he at last assented. How blessed a thing would it be
if these two persons could be induced to forget the troubles of the
last twelve months, and once more to love and trust each other! 'But,
sir,' said Mrs Outhouse, putting her hand upon his arm 'you must not
upbraid her, for she will not bear it.'she knows nothing of what is due
to a husband,' said Trevelyan, gloomily. The task was not hopeful; but,
nevertheless, the poor woman resolved to do her best.

And now Mrs Outhouse was in her niece's room, asking her to go down and
see her husband. Little Louis had at the time been with the nurse, and
the very moment that the mother heard that the child's father was in
the house, she jumped up and rushed away to get possession of her
treasure. 'Has he come for baby?' Nora asked in dismay. Then Mrs
Outhouse, anxious to obtain a convert to her present views, boldly
declared that Mr Trevelyan had no such intention. Mrs Trevelyan came
back at once with the boy, and then listened to all her aunt's
arguments. 'But I will not take baby with me,' she said. At last it was
decided that she should go down alone, and that the child should
afterwards be taken to his father in the drawing-room; Mrs Outhouse
pledging herself that the whole household should combine in her defence
if Mr Trevelyan should attempt to take the child out of that room. 'But
what am I to say to him?' she asked.

'Say as little as possible,' said Mrs Outhouse 'except to make him
understand that he has been in error in imputing fault to you.'

'He will never understand that,' said Mrs Trevelyan.

A considerable time elapsed after that before she could bring herself
to descend the stairs. Now that her husband was so near her, and that
her aunt had assured her that she might reinstate herself in her
position, if she could only abstain from saying hard words to him, she
wished that he was away from her again, in Italy. She knew that she
could not refrain from hard words.

How was it possible that she should vindicate her own honour, without
asserting with all her strength that she had been ill-used; and, to
speak truth on the matter, her love for the man, which had once been
true and eager, had been quelled by the treatment she had received. She
had clung to her love in some shape, in spite of the accusations made
against her, till she had heard that the policeman had been set upon
her heels. Could it be possible that any woman should love a man, or at
least that any wife should love a husband, after such usage as that? At
last she crept gently down the stairs, and stood at the parlour-door.
She listened, and could hear his steps, as he paced backwards and
forwards through the room. She looked back, and could see the face of
the servant peering round from the kitchen-stairs. She could not endure
to be watched in her misery, and, thus driven, she opened the
parlour-door.' 'Louis,' she said, walking into the room, 'Aunt Mary has
desired me to come to you.'

'Emily!' he exclaimed, and ran to her and embraced her. She did not
seek to stop him, but she did not return the kiss which he gave her.
Then he held her by her hands, and looked into her face, and she could
see how strangely he was altered. She thought that she would hardly
have known him, had she not been sure that it was he. She herself was
also changed. Who can bear sorrow without such change, till age has
fixed the lines of the face, or till care has made them hard and
unmalleable? But the effect on her was as nothing to that which grief,
remorse, and desolation had made on him. He had had no child with him,
no sister, no friend. Bozzle had been his only refuge a refuge not
adapted to make life easier to such a man as Trevelyan; and he in spite
of the accusations made by himself against his wife, within his own
breast hourly since he had left her had found it to be very difficult
to satisfy his own conscience. He told himself from hour to hour that
he knew that he was right but in very truth he was ever doubting his
own conduct.

'You have been ill, Louis,' she said, looking at him.

'Ill at ease, Emily very ill at ease! A sore heart will make the face
thin, as well as fever or ague. Since we parted I have not had much to
comfort me.' 'Nor have I nor any of us,' said she. 'How was comfort to
come from such a parting?'

Then they both stood silent together He was still holding her by the
hand, but she was careful not to return his pressure. She would not
take her hand away from him; but she would show him no sign of softness
till he should have absolutely acquitted her of the accusation he had
made against her. 'We are man and wife,' he said after awhile. 'In
spite of all that has come and gone I am yours, and you are mine.'

'You should have remembered that always, Louis.'

'I have never forgotten it never. In no thought have I been untrue to
you. My heart has never changed since first I gave it you.' There came
a bitter frown upon her face, of which she was so conscious herself,
that she turned her face away from him. She still remembered her
lesson, that she was not to anger him, and, therefore, she refrained
from answering him at all.

But the answer was there, hot within her bosom. Had he loved her and
yet suspected that she was false to him and to her vows, simply because
she had been on terms of intimacy with an old friend? Had he loved her,
and yet turned her from his house? Had he loved her and set a policeman
to watch her? Had he loved her, and yet spoken evil of her to all their
friends? Had he loved her, and yet striven to rob her of her child?
'Will you come to me?' he said.

'I suppose it will be better so,' she answered slowly.

'Then you will promise me--' He paused, and attempted to turn her
towards him, so that he might look her in the face.

'Promise what?' she said, quickly glancing round at him, and drawing
her hand away from him as she did so.

'That all intercourse with Colonel Osborne shall be at an end.'

'I will make no promise. You come to me to add one insult to another.
Had you been a man, you would not have named him to me after what you
have done to me.'

'That is absurd. I have a right to demand from you such a pledge. I am
willing to believe that you have not--'

'Have not what?'

'That you have not utterly disgraced me.'

'God in heaven, that I should hear this!' she exclaimed. 'Louis
Trevelyan, I have not disgraced you at all in thought, in word, in
deed, in look, or in gesture. It is you that have disgraced yourself,
and ruined me, and degraded even your own child.'

'Is this the way in which you welcome me?'

'Certainly it is in this way and in no other if you speak to me of what
is past, without acknowledging your error.' Her brow became blacker and
blacker as she continued to speak to him. 'It would be best that
nothing should be said not a word. That it all should be regarded as an
ugly dream. But, when you come to me and at once go back to it all, and
ask me for a promise'

'Am I to understand then that all idea of submission to your husband is
to be at an end?'

'I will submit to no imputation on my honour even from you. One would
have thought that it would have been for you to preserve it
untarnished.'

'And you will give me no assurance as to your future life?'

'None certainly none. If you want promises from me, there can be no
hope for the future. What am I to promise? That I will not have a
lover? What respect can I enjoy as your wife if such a promise be
needed? If you should choose to fancy that it had been broken you would
set your policeman to watch me again! Louis, we can never live together
again ever with comfort, unless you acknowledge in your own heart that
you have used me shamefully.'

'Were you right to see him in Devonshire?'

'Of course I was right. Why should I not see him or any one?'

'And you will see him again?'

'When papa comes, of course I shall see him.'

'Then it is hopeless,' said he, turning away from her.

'If that man is to be a source of disquiet to you, it is hopeless,' she
answered. 'If you cannot so school yourself that he shall be the same
to you as other men, it is quite hopeless. You must still be mad as you
have been mad hitherto.'

He walked about the room restlessly for a time, while she stood with
assumed composure near the window.'send me my child,' he said at last.

'He shall come to you, Louis for a little; but he is not to be taken
out from hence. Is that a promise?'

'You are to exact promises from me, where my own rights are concerned,
while you refuse to give me any, though I am entitled to demand them! I
order you to send the boy to me. Is he not my own?'

'Is he not mine too? And is he not all that you have left to me?'

He paused again, and then gave the promise. 'Let him be brought to me.
He shall not be removed now. I intend to have him. I tell you so
fairly. He shall be taken from you unless you come back to me with such
assurances as to your future conduct as I have a right to demand. There
is much that the law cannot give me. It cannot procure wife-like
submission, love, gratitude, or even decent matronly conduct. But that
which it can give me, I will have.'

She walked off to the door, and then as she was quitting the room she
spoke to him once again. 'Alas, Louis,' she said, 'neither can the law,
nor medicine, nor religion, restore to you that fine intellect which
foolish suspicions have destroyed.' Then she left him and returned to
the room in which her aunt, and Nora, and the child were all clustered
together, waiting to learn the effects of the interview. The two women
asked their questions with their eyes, rather than with spoken words.
'It is all over,' said Mrs Trevelyan. 'There is nothing left for me but
to go back to papa. I only hear the same accusations, repeated again
and again, and make myself subject to the old insults.' Then Mrs
Outhouse knew that she could interfere no further, and that in truth
nothing could be done till the return of Sir Marmaduke should relieve
her and her husband from all further active concern in the matter.