Books: He Knew He Was Right

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'Why can't you let him come in and go away, just as usual?' said Nora.

'Because Louis has made me promise that I will never willingly be in
his company again,' said Mrs Trevelyan. 'I would have given the world
to avoid a promise so graceful to me; but it was exacted, and it shall
be kept.' Having so spoken, she swept out of the room, and went
upstairs to the nursery. Trevelyan sat for an hour with his book before
him, reading or pretending to read, but his wife did not come
downstairs. Then Nora went up to her, and he descended to his solitude
below. So far he had hardly gained much by the enforced obedience of
his wife.

On the next morning the three went to church together, as they were
walking home Trevelyan's heart was filled with returning gentleness
towards his wife. He could not bear to be at wrath with her after the
church service which they had just heard together. But he was
softer-hearted than was she, and knowing this, was almost afraid to say
anything that would again bring forth from her expressions of scorn. As
soon as they were alone within the house he took her by the hand and
led her apart. 'Let all this be,' said he, 'as though it had never
been.'

'That will hardly be possible, Louis,' she answered. 'I cannot forget
that I have been cautioned.'

'But cannot you bring yourself to believe that I have meant it all for
your good?'

'I have never doubted it, Louis never for a moment. But it has hurt me
to find that you should think that such caution was needed for my
good.'

It was almost on his tongue to beg her pardon, to acknowledge that he
had made a mistake, and to implore her to forget that he had ever made
an objection to Colonel Osborne's visit. He remembered at this moment
the painful odiousness of that 'Dear Emily;' but he had to reconcile
himself even to that, telling himself that, after all, Colonel Osborne
was an old man a man older even than his wife's father. If she would
only have met him with gentleness, he would have withdrawn his command,
and have acknowledged that he had been wrong. But she was hard,
dignified, obedient, and resentful. 'It will, I think,' he said, 'be
better for both of us that he should be asked in to lunch today.'

'You must judge of that,' said Emily. 'Perhaps, upon the whole, it will
be best. I can only say that I will not be present. I will lunch
upstairs with baby, and you can make what excuse for me you please.'
This was all very bad, but it was in this way that things were allowed
to arrange themselves. Richard was told that Colonel Osborne was coming
to lunch, and when he came something was muttered to him about Mrs
Trevelyan being not quite well. It was Nora who told the innocent fib,
and though she did not tell it well, she did her very best. She felt
that her brother-in-law was very wretched, and she was most anxious to
relieve him. Colonel Osborne did not stay long, and then Nora went
upstairs to her sister.

Louis Trevelyan felt that he had disgraced himself. He had meant to
have been strong, and he had, as he knew, been very weak. He had meant
to have acted in a high-minded, honest, manly manner; but circumstances
had been so untoward with him, that on looking at his own conduct, it
seemed to him to have been mean, and almost false and cowardly. As the
order for the exclusion of this hated man from his house had been
given, he should at any rate have stuck to the order. At the moment of
his vacillation he had simply intended to make things easy for his
wife; but she had taken advantage of his vacillation, and had now
clearly conquered him. Perhaps he respected her more than he had done
when he was resolving, three or four days since, that he would be the
master in his own house; but it may be feared that the tenderness of
his love for her had been impaired.

Late in the afternoon his wife and sister-in-law came down dressed for
walking, and, finding Trevelyan in the library, they asked him to join
them it was a custom with them to walk in the park on a Sunday
afternoon and he at once assented, and went out with them. Emily, who
had had her triumph, was very gracious. There should not be a word more
said by her about Colonel Osborne. She would avoid that gentleman,
never receiving him in Curzon Street, and having as little to say to
him as possible elsewhere; but she would not throw his name in her
husband's teeth, or make any reference to the injury which had so
manifestly been done to her. Unless Louis should be indiscreet, it
should be as though it had been forgotten. As they walked by
Chesterfield House and Stanhope Street into the park, she began to
discuss the sermon they had heard that morning, and when she found that
that subject was not alluring, she spoke of a dinner to which they were
to go at Mrs Fairfax's house. Louis Trevelyan was quite aware that he
was being treated as a naughty boy, who was to be forgiven.

They went across Hyde Park into Kensington Gardens, and still the same
thing was going on. Nora found it to be almost impossible to say a
word. Trevelyan answered his wife's questions, but was otherwise
silent. Emily worked very hard at her mission of forgiveness, and
hardly ceased in her efforts at conciliatory conversation. Women can
work so much harder in this way than men find it possible to do! She
never flagged, but continued to be fluent, conciliatory, and
intolerably wearisome. On a sudden they came across two men together,
who, as they all knew, were barely acquainted with each other. These
were Colonel Osborne and Hugh Stanbury.

'I am glad to find you are able to be out,' said the Colonel.

'Thanks; yes. I think my seclusion just now was almost as much due to
baby as to anything else. Mr Stanbury, how is it we never see you now?'

'It is the D.R., Mrs Trevelyan nothing else. The D.R. is a most
grateful mistress, but somewhat exacting. I am allowed a couple of
hours on Sundays, but otherwise my time is wholly passed in Fleet
Street.'

'How very unpleasant.'

'Well; yes. The unpleasantness of this world consists chiefly in the
fact that when a man wants wages, he must earn them. The Christian
philosophers have a theory about it. Don't they call it the primeval
fall, original sin, and that kind of thing?'

'Mr Stanbury, I won't have irreligion. I hope that doesn't come from
writing for the newspapers.'

'Certainly not with me, Mrs Trevelyan. I have never been put on to take
that branch yet. Scruby does that with us, and does it excellently. It
was he who touched up the Ritualists, and then the Commission, and then
the Low Church bishops, till he didn't leave one of them a leg to stand
upon.'

'What is it, then, that the Daily Record upholds?'

'It upholds the Daily Record. Believe in that and you will surely be
saved.' Then he turned to Miss Rowley, and they two were soon walking
on together, each manifestly interested in what the other was saying,
though there was no word of tenderness spoken between them.

Colonel Osborne was now between Mr and Mrs Trevelyan. She would have
avoided the position had it been possible for her to do so. While they
were falling into their present places, she had made a little mute
appeal to her husband to take her away from the spot, to give her his
arm and return with her, to save her in some way from remaining in
company with the man to whose company for her he had objected; but he
took no such step. It had seemed to him that he could take no such step
without showing his hostility to Colonel Osborne.

They walked on along the broad path together, and the Colonel was
between them.

'I hope you think it satisfactory about Sir Rowley,' he said.

'Beggars must not be choosers, you know, Colonel Osborne. I felt a
little disappointed when I found that we were not to see them till
February next.'

'They will stay longer then, you know, than they could now.'

'I have no doubt when the time comes we shall all believe it to be
better.'

'I suppose you think, Emily, that a little pudding today is better than
much tomorrow.'

Colonel Osborne certainly had a caressing, would-be affectionate mode
of talking to women, which, unless it were reciprocated and enjoyed,
was likely to make itself disagreeable. No possible words could have
been more innocent than those he had now spoken; but he had turned his
face down close to her face, and had almost whispered them. And then,
too, he had again called her by her Christian name. Trevelyan had not
heard the words. He had walked on, making the distance between him and
the other man greater than was necessary, anxious to show to his wife
that he had no jealousy at such a meeting as this. But his wife was
determined that she would put an end to this state of things, let the
cost be what it might. She did not say a word to Colonel Osborne, but
addressed herself at once to her husband.

'Louis,' she said, 'will you give me your arm? We will go back, if you
please.' Then she took her husband's arm and turned herself and him
abruptly away from their companion.

The thing was done in such a manner that it was impossible that Colonel
Osborne should not perceive that he had been left in anger. When
Trevelyan and his wife had gone back a few yards, he was obliged to
return for Nora. He did so, and then rejoined his wife.

'It was quite unnecessary, Emily,' he said, 'that you should behave
like that.'

'Your suspicions,' she said, 'have made it almost impossible for me to
behave with propriety.'

'You have told him everything now,' said Trevelyan.

'And it was requisite that he should be told,' said his wife. Then they
walked home without interchanging another word. When they reached their
house, Emily at once went up to her own room, and Trevelyan to his.
They parted as though they had no common interest which was worthy of a
moment's conversation. And she by her step, and gait, and every
movement of her body showed to him that she was not his wife now in any
sense that could bring to him a feeling of domestic happiness. Her
compliance with his command was of no use to him unless she could be
brought to comply in spirit. Unless she would be soft to him he could
not be happy. He walked about his room uneasily for half-an-hour,
trying to shake off his sorrow, and then he went up to her room.
'Emily,' he said, 'for God's sake let all this pass away.'

'What is to pass away?'

'This feeling of rancour between you and me. What is the world to us
unless we can love one another? At any rate it will be nothing to me.'

'Do you doubt my love?' said she.

'No; certainly not.'

'Nor I yours. Without love, Louis, you and I can not be happy. But love
alone will not make us so. There must be trust, and there must also be
forbearance. My feeling of annoyance will pass away in time; and till
it does, I will shew it as little as may be possible.'

He felt that he had nothing more to say, and then he left her; but he
had gained nothing by the interview. She was still hard and cold, and
still assumed a tone which seemed to imply that she had manifestly been
the injured person.

Colonel Osborne, when he was left alone, stood for a few moments on the
spot, and then with a whistle, a shake of the head, and a little low
chuckle of laughter, rejoined the crowd.

CHAPTER VII - MISS JEMIMA STANBURY, OF EXETER

Miss Jemima Stanbury, the aunt of our friend Hugh, was a maiden lady,
very much respected, indeed, in the city of Exeter. It is to be hoped
that no readers of these pages will be so un-English as to be unable to
appreciate the difference between county society and town society the
society, that is, of a provincial town, or so ignorant as not to know
also that there may be persons so privileged, that although they live
distinctly within a provincial town, there is accorded to them, as
though by brevet rank, all the merit of living in the county. In
reference to persons so privileged, it is considered that they have
been made free from the contamination of contiguous bricks and mortar
by certain inner gifts, probably of birth, occasionally of profession,
possibly of merit. It is very rarely, indeed, that money alone will
bestow this acknowledged rank; and in Exeter, which by the stringency
and excellence of its well-defined rules on such matters, may perhaps
be said to take the lead of all English provincial towns, money alone
has never availed. Good blood, especially if it be blood good in
Devonshire, is rarely rejected. Clergymen are allowed within the pale
though by no means as certainly as used to be the case; and, indeed, in
these days of literates, clergymen have to pass harder examinations
than those ever imposed upon them by bishops' chaplains, before they
are admitted ad eundem among the chosen ones of the city of Exeter. The
wives and daughters of the old prebendaries see well to that. And, as
has been said, special merit may prevail. Sir Peter Mancrudy, the great
Exeter physician, has won his way in not at all by being Sir Peter,
which has stood in his way rather than otherwise but by the
acknowledged excellence of his book about saltzes. Sir Peter Mancrudy
is supposed to have quite a metropolitan, almost a European reputation
and therefore is acknowledged to belong to the county set, although he
never dines out at any house beyond the limits of the city. Now, let it
be known that no inhabitant of Exeter ever achieved a clearer right to
be regarded as 'county,' in opposition to 'town,' than had Miss Jemima
Stanbury. There was not a tradesman in Exeter who was not aware of it,
and who did not touch his hat to her accordingly. The men who drove the
flies, when summoned to take her out at night, would bring oats with
them, knowing how probable it was that they might have to travel far. A
distinct apology was made if she was asked to drink tea with people who
were simply 'town'. The Noels of Doddescombe Leigh, the Cliffords of
Budleigh Salterton, the Powels of Haldon, the Cheritons of Alphington
all county persons, but very frequently in the city were greeted by
her, and greeted her, on terms of equality. Her most intimate friend
was old Mrs MacHugh, the widow of the last dean but two, who could not
have stood higher had she been the widow of the last bishop. And then,
although Miss Stanbury was intimate with the Frenches of Heavitree,
with the Wrights of Northernhay, with the Apjohns of Helion Villa a
really magnificent house, two miles out of the city on the Crediton
Road, and with the Crumbies of Cronstadt House, Saint Ide's who would
have been county people, if living in the country made the difference
although she was intimate with all these families, her manner to them
was not the same, nor was it expected to be the same, as with those of
her own acknowledged set. These things are understood in Exeter so
well!

Miss Stanbury belonged to the county set, but she lived in a large
brick house, standing in the Close, almost behind the Cathedral. Indeed
it was so close to the eastern end of the edifice that a carriage could
not be brought quite up to her door. It was a large brick house, very
old, with a door in the middle, and five steps ascending to it between
high iron rails. On each side of the door there were two windows on the
ground floor, and above that there were three tiers of five windows
each, and the house was double throughout, having as many windows
looking out behind into a gloomy courtyard. But the glory of the house
consisted in this, that there was a garden attached to it, a garden
with very high walls, over which the boughs of trees might be seen,
giving to the otherwise gloomy abode a touch of freshness in the
summer, and a look of space in the winter, which no doubt added
something to the reputation even of Miss Stanbury. The fact for it was
a fact that there was no gloomier or less attractive spot in the whole
city than Miss Stanbury's garden, when seen inside, did not militate
against this advantage. There were but half-a-dozen trees, and a few
square yards of grass that was never green, and a damp ungravelled path
on which no one ever walked. Seen from the inside the garden was not
much; but, from the outside, it gave a distinct character to the house,
and produced an unexpressed acknowledgment that the owner of it ought
to belong to the county set.

The house and all that was in it belonged to Miss Stanbury herself, as
did also many other houses in the neighbourhood. She was the owner of
the 'Cock and Bottle,' a very decent second class inn on the other side
of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which made
it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer there,
and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of one side of
a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High Street
belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the houses dark,
the locality is known to be good for trade. And she owned two large
houses in the High Street, and a great warehouse at St. Thomas's, and
had been bought out of land by the Railway at St. David's much to her
own dissatisfaction, as she was wont to express herself, but,
undoubtedly, at a very high price. It will be understood therefore,
that Miss Stanbury was wealthy, and that she was bound to the city in
which she lived by peculiar ties.

But Miss Stanbury had not been born to this wealth, nor can she be said
to have inherited from her forefathers any of these high privileges
which had been awarded to her. She had achieved them by the romance of
her life and the manner in which she had carried herself amidst its
vicissitudes. Her father had been vicar of Nuncombe Putney, a parish
lying twenty miles west of Exeter, among the moors. And on her father's
death, her brother, also now dead, had become vicar of the same parish
her brother, whose only son, Hugh. Stanbury, we already know, working
for the 'D. R.' up in London. When Miss Stanbury was twenty-one she
became engaged to a certain Mr Brooke Burgess, the eldest son of a
banker in Exeter or, it might, perhaps, be better said, a banker
himself; for at the time Mr Brooke Burgess was in the firm. It need not
here be told how various misfortunes arose, how Mr Burgess quarrelled
with the Stanbury family, how Jemima quarrelled with her own family,
how, when her father died, she went out from Nuncombe Putney parsonage,
and lived on the smallest pittance in a city lodging, how her lover was
untrue to her and did not marry her, and how at last he died and left
her every shilling that he possessed.

The Devonshire people, at the time, had been much divided as to the
merits of the Stanbury quarrel. There were many who said that the
brother could not have acted otherwise than he did; and that Miss
Stanbury, though by force of character and force of circumstances she
had weathered the storm, had in truth been very indiscreet. The
results, however, were as have been described. At the period of which
we treat, Miss Stanbury was a very rich lady, living by herself in
Exeter, admitted, without question, to be one of the county set, and
still at variance with her brother's family. Except to Hugh, she had
never spoken a word to one of them since her brother's death. When the
money came into her hands, she at that time being over forty, and her
nephew being then just ten years old, she had undertaken to educate
him, and to start him in the world. We know how she had kept her word,
and how and why she had withdrawn herself from any further
responsibility in the matter.

And in regard to this business of starting the young man she had been
careful to let it be known that she would do no more than start him. In
the formal document, by means of which she had made the proposal to her
brother, she had been careful to let it be understood that simple
education was all that she intended to bestow upon him 'and that only,'
she had added, 'in the event of my surviving till his education be
completed.' And to Hugh himself she had declared that any allowance
which she made him after he was called to the Bar, was only made in
order to give him room for his foot, a spot of ground from whence to
make his first leap. We know how he made that leap, infinitely to the
disgust of his aunt, who, when he refused obedience to her in the
matter of withdrawing from the Daily Record, immediately withdrew from
him, not only her patronage and assistance, but even her friendship and
acquaintance. This was the letter which she wrote to him:

'I don't think that writing radical stuff for a penny newspaper is a
respectable occupation for a gentleman, and I will have nothing to do
with it. If you choose to do such work, I cannot help it; but it was
not for such that I sent you to Harrow and Oxford, nor yet up to London
and paid 100 pounds a year to Mr Lambert. I think you are treating me
badly, but that is nothing to your bad treatment of yourself. You need
not trouble yourself to answer this, unless you are prepared to say
that you will not write any more stuff for that penny newspaper. Only I
wish to be understood. I will have no connection that I can help, and
no acquaintance at all, with radical scribblers and incendiaries.

JEMIMA STANBURY.

The Close, Exeter, April 15, 186 .'

Hugh Stanbury had answered this; thanking his aunt for past favours,
and explaining to her or striving to do so that he felt it to be his
duty to earn his bread, as a means of earning it had come within his
reach. He might as well have spared himself the trouble. She simply
wrote a few words across his own letter in red ink: 'The bread of
unworthiness should never be earned or eaten;' and then' sent the
letter back under a blank envelope to her nephew.

She was a thorough Tory of the old school. Had Hugh taken to writing
for a newspaper that had cost sixpence, or even threepence for its
copies, she might perhaps have forgiven him. At any rate the offence
would not have been so flagrant. And had the paper been conservative
instead of liberal, she would have had some qualms of conscience before
she gave him up. But to live by writing for a newspaper! and for a
penny newspaper!! and for a penny radical newspaper!!! It was more than
she could endure. Of what nature were the articles which he contributed
it was impossible that she should have any idea, for no consideration
would have induced her to look at a penny newspaper, or to admit it
within her doors. She herself took in the John Bull and the Herald, and
daily groaned deeply at the way in which those once great organs of
true British public feeling were becoming demoralised and perverted.
Had any reduction been made in the price of either of them, she would
at once have stopped her subscription. In the matter of politics she
had long since come to think that every thing good was over. She hated
the name of Reform so much that she could not bring herself to believe
in Mr Disraeli and his bill. For many years she had believed in Lord
Derby. She would fain believe in him still if she could. It was the
great desire of her heart to have some one in whom she believed. In the
bishop of her diocese she did believe, and annually sent him some
little comforting present from her own hand. And in two or three of the
clergymen around her she believed, finding in them a flavour of the
unascetic godliness of ancient days which was gratifying to her palate.
But in politics there was hardly a name remaining to which she could
fix her faith and declare that there should be her guide. For awhile
she, thought she would cling to Mr Lowe; but, when she made inquiry,
she found that there was no base there of really well-formed
conservative granite. The three gentlemen who had dissevered themselves
from Mr Disraeli when Mr Disraeli was passing his Reform bill, were
doubtless very good in their way; but they were not big enough to fill
her heart. She tried to make herself happy with General Peel, but
General Peel was after all no more than a shade to her. But the untruth
of others never made her untrue, and she still talked of the excellence
of George III and the glories of the subsequent reign. She had a bust
of Lord Eldon before which she was accustomed to stand with hands
closed and to weep or to think that she wept.

She was a little woman, now nearly sixty years of age, with bright grey
eyes, and a strong Roman nose, and thin lips, and a sharp-cut chin. She
wore a head-gear that almost amounted to a mob-cap, and beneath it her
grey hair was always frizzled with the greatest care. Her dress was
invariably of black silk, and she had five gowns one for church, one
for evening parties, one for driving out, and one for evenings at home
and one for mornings. The dress, when new, always went to church.
Nothing, as she was wont to say, was too good for the Lord's house. In
the days of crinolines she had protested that she had never worn one a
protest, however, which was hardly true; and now, in these later days,
her hatred was especially developed in reference to the head-dresses of
young women. 'Chignon' was a word which she had never been heard to
pronounce. She would talk of 'those bandboxes which the sluts wear
behind their noddles;' for Miss Stanbury allowed herself the use of
much strong language. She was very punctilious in all her habits,
breakfasting ever at half-past eight, and dining always at six.
Half-past five had been her time, till the bishop, who, on an occasion,
was to be her guest, once signified to her that such an hour cut up the
day and interfered with clerical work. Her lunch was always of bread
and cheese, and they who lunched with her either eat that or the bread
without the cheese. An afternoon 'tea' was a thing horrible to her
imagination. Tea and buttered toast at half-past eight in the evening
was the great luxury of her life. She was as strong as a horse, and had
never hitherto known a day's illness. As a consequence of this, she did
not believe in the illness of other people especially not in the
illness of women. She did not like a girl who could not drink a glass
of beer with her bread and cheese in the middle of the day, and she
thought that a glass of port after dinner was good for everybody.
Indeed, she had a thorough belief in port wine, thinking that it would
go far to cure most miseries. But she could not put up with the idea
that a woman, young or old, should want the stimulus of a glass of
sherry to support her at any odd time of the day. Hot concoctions of
strong drink at Christmas she would allow to everybody, and was very
strong in recommending such comforts to ladies blessed, or about to be
blessed, with babies. She took the sacrament every month, and gave away
exactly a tenth of her income to the poor. She believed that there was
a special holiness in a tithe of a thing, and attributed the
commencement of the downfall of the Church of England to rent charges,
and the commutation of clergymen's incomes. Since Judas, there had
never been, to her thinking, a traitor so base, or an apostate so
sinful, as Colenso; and yet, of the nature of Colenso's teaching she
was as ignorant as the towers of the cathedral opposite to her.