Books: He Knew He Was Right

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Trevelyan held the door open for her as she went, and kept it open
during her absence. There was hardly a word said between him and Lady
Rowley, but he paced from the passage into the room and from the room
into the passage with his hands behind his back. 'It is cruel,' he said
once. 'It is very cruel.'

'It is you that are cruel,' said Lady Rowley.

'Of course of course. That is natural from you. I expect that from
you.' To this she made no answer, and he did not open his lips again.

After a while Mrs Trevelyan called to her mother, and Lady Rowley was
allowed to go upstairs. The quarter of an hour was of course greatly
stretched, and all the time Trevelyan continued to pace in and out of
the room. He was patient, for he did not summon them; but went on
pacing backwards and forwards, looking now and again to see that the
cab was at its place that no deceit was being attempted, no second act
of kidnapping being perpetrated. At last the two ladies came down the
stairs, and the boy was with them and the woman of the house.

'Louis,' said the wife, going quickly up to her husband, 'I will do
anything, if you will give me my child.'

'What will you do?'

'Anything say what you want. He is all the world tome, and I cannot
live if he be taken from me.'

'Acknowledge that you have been wrong.'

'But how in what words how am I to speak it?'

'Say that you have sinned and that you will sin no more.'

'Sinned, Louis as the woman did in the Scripture?

'He cannot think that it is so,' said Lady Rowley.

But Trevelyan had not understood her. 'Lady Rowley, I should have
fancied that my thoughts at any rate were my own. But this is useless
now. The child cannot go with you to-day, nor can you remain here. Go
home and think of what I have said. If then you will do as I would have
you, you shall return.'

With many embraces, with promises of motherly love, and with prayers
for love in return, the poor woman did at last leave the house, and
return to the cab. As she went there was a doubt on her own mind
whether she should ask to kiss her husband; but he made no sign, and
she at last passed out without any mark of tenderness. He stood by the
cab as they entered it, and closed the door upon them, and then went
slowly back to his room. 'My poor bairn,' he said to the boy; 'my poor
bairn.'

'Why for mamma go?' sobbed the child.

'Mamma goes; oh, heaven and earth, why should she go? She goes because
her spirit is obstinate, and she will not bend. She is stiff-necked,
and will not submit herself. But Louey must love mamma always and mamma
some day will come back to him, and be good to him.'

'Mamma is good always,' said the child. Trevelyan had intended on this
very afternoon to have gone up to town to transact business with
Bozzle; for he still believed, though the aspect of the man was bitter
to him as wormwood, that Bozzle was necessary to him in all his
business. And he still made appointments with the man, sometimes at
Stony Walk, in the Borough, and sometimes at the tavern in Poulter's
Court, even though Bozzle not unfrequently neglected to attend the
summons of his employer. And he would go to his banker's and draw out
money, and then walk about the crowded lanes of the City, and
afterwards return to his desolate lodgings at Willesden, thinking that
he had been transacting business and that this business was exacted
from him by the unfortunate position of his affairs. But now he gave up
his journey. His retreat had been discovered; and there came upon him
at once a fear that if he left the house his child would be taken. His
landlady told him on this very day that the boy ought to be sent to his
mother, and had made him understand that it would not suit her to find
a home any longer for one who was so singular in his proceedings. He
believed that his child would be given up at once, if he were not there
to guard it. He stayed at home, therefore, turning in his mind many
schemes. He had told his wife that he should go either to Italy or to
America at once; but in doing so he had had no formed plan in his head.
He had simply imagined at the moment that such a threat would bring her
to submission. But now it became a question whether he would do better
than go to America. He suggested to himself that he should go to
Canada, and fix himself with his boy on some remote farm far away from
any city; and would then invite his wife to join him if she would. She
was too obstinate, as he told himself, ever to yield, unless she should
be absolutely softened and brought down to the ground by the loss of
her child. What would do this so effectually as the interposition of
the broad ocean between him and her? He sat thinking of this for the
rest of the day, and Louey was left to the charge of the mistress of
River's Cottage.

'Do you think he believes it, mamma?' Mrs Trevelyan said to her mother
when they had already made nearly half their journey home in the cab.
There had been nothing spoken hitherto between them, except some
half-formed words of affection intended for consolation to the young
mother in her great affliction.

'He does not know what he believes, dearest.'

'You heard what he said. I was to own that I had sinned.'

'Sinned yes; because you will not obey him like a slave. That is sin to
him.'

'But I asked him, mamma. Did you not hear me? I could not say the word
plainer but I asked him whether he meant that sin. He must have known,
and he would not answer me. And he spoke of my transgression. Mamma, if
he believed that, he would not let me come back at all.'

'He did not believe it, Emily.'

'Could he possibly then so accuse me the mother of his child! If his
heart be utterly hard and false towards me, if it is possible that he
should be cruel to me with such cruelty as that still he must love his
boy. Why did he not answer me, and say that he did not think it?'

'Simply because his reason has left him.'

'But if he be mad, mamma, ought we to leave him like that? And, then,
did you see his eyes, and his face, and his hands? Did you observe how
thin he is and his back, how bent? And his clothes how they were torn
and soiled. It cannot be right that he should be left like that.'

'We will tell papa when we get home,' said Lady Rowley, who was herself
beginning to be somewhat frightened by what she had seen. It is all
very well to declare that a friend is mad when one simply desires to
justify one's self in opposition to that friend but the matter becomes
much more serious when evidence of the friend's insanity becomes true
and circumstantial. 'I certainly think that a physician should see
him,' continued Lady Rowley. On their return home Sir Marmaduke was
told of what had occurred, and there was a long family discussion in
which it was decided that Lady Milborough should be consulted, as being
the oldest friend of Louis Trevelyan himself with whom they were
acquainted. Trevelyan had relatives of his own name living in Cornwall;
but Mrs Trevelyan herself had never even met one of that branch of the
family.

Sir Marmaduke, however, resolved that he himself would go out to see
his son-in-law. He too had called Trevelyan mad, but he did not believe
that the madness was of such a nature as to interfere with his own
duties in punishing the man who had ill used his daughter. He would at
any rate see Trevelyan himself but of this he said nothing either to
his wife or to his child.

CHAPTER LXVIII - MAJOR MAGRUDER'S COMMITTEE

Sir Marmaduke could not go out to Willesden on the morning after Lady
Rowley's return from River's Cottage, because on that day he was
summoned to attend at twelve o'clock before a Committee of the House of
Commons, to give his evidence and, the fruit of his experience as to
the government of British colonies generally; and as he went down to
the House in a cab from Manchester Street he thoroughly wished that his
friend Colonel Osborne had not been so efficacious in bringing him
home. The task before him was one which he thoroughly disliked, and of
which he was afraid. He dreaded the inquisitors before whom he was to
appear, and felt that though he was called there to speak as a master
of his art of governing, he would in truth be examined as a servant and
probably as a servant who did not know his business. Had his sojourn at
home been in other respects happy, he might have been able to balance
the advantage against the inquiry but there was no such balancing for
him now. And, moreover, the expense of his own house in Manchester
Street was so large that this journey, in a pecuniary point of view,
would be of but little service to him. So he went down to the House in
an unhappy mood; and when he shook hands in one of the passages with
his friend! Osborne who was on the Committee, there was very little
cordiality in his manner. 'This is the most ungrateful thing I ever
knew,' said the Colonel to himself; 'I have almost disgraced myself by
having this fellow brought home; and now he quarrels with me because
that idiot, his son-in-law, has quarrelled with his wife.' And Colonel
Osborne really did feel that he was a martyr to the ingratitude of his
friend.

The Committee had been convoked by the House in compliance with the
eager desires of a certain ancient pundit of the constitution, who had
been for many years a member, and who had been known as a stern critic
of our colonial modes of government. To him it certainly seemed that
everything that was, was bad as regarded our national dependencies. But
this is so usually the state of mind of all parliamentary critics, it
is so much a matter of course that the members who take up the army or
the navy, guns, India, our relations with Spain, or workhouse
management, should find everything to be bad, rotten, and dishonest,
that the wrath of the member for Killicrankie against colonial
peculation and idleness, was not thought much of in the open House. He
had been at the work for years, and the Colonial Office were so used to
it that they rather liked him. He had made himself free of the office,
and the clerks were always glad to see him. It was understood that he
said bitter things in the House that was Major Magruder's line of
business; but he could be quite pleasant when he was asking questions
of a private secretary, or telling the news of the day to a senior
clerk. As he was now between seventy and eighty, and had been at the
work for at least twenty years, most of those concerned had allowed
themselves to think that he would ride his hobby harmlessly to the day
of his parliamentary death. But the drop from a house corner will
hollow a stone by its constancy, and Major Magruder at last persuaded
the House to grant him a Committee of Inquiry. Then there came to be
serious faces at the Colonial Office, and all the little pleasantries
of a friendly opposition were at an end. It was felt that the battle
must now become a real fight, and Secretary and Under-Secretary girded
up their loins.

Major Magruder was chairman of his own committee, and being a man of a
laborious turn of mind, much given to blue-books, very patient,
thoroughly conversant with the House, and imbued with a strong belief
in the efficacy of parliamentary questionings to carry a point, if not
to elicit a fact, had a happy time of it during this session. He was a
man who always attended the House from 4 p.m. to the time of its
breaking up, and who never missed a division. The slight additional
task of sitting four hours in a committee-room three days a week, was
only a delight the more especially as during those four hours he could
occupy the post of Chairman. Those who knew Major Magruder well did not
doubt but that the Committee would sit for many weeks, and that the
whole theory of colonial government, or rather of imperial control
supervising such government, would be tested to the very utmost. Men
who had heard the old Major maunder on for years past on his pet
subject, hardly knew how much vitality would be found in him when his
maundering had succeeded in giving him a committee.

A Governor from one of the greater colonies had. already been under
question for nearly a week, and was generally thought to have come out
of the fire unscathed by the flames of the Major's criticism. This
Governor had been a picked man, and he had made it appear that the
control of Downing Street was never more harsh and seldom less
refreshing and beautifying than a spring shower in April. No other
lands under the sun were so blest, in the way of government, as were
the colonies with which he had been acquainted; and, as a natural
consequence, their devotion and loyalty to the mother country were
quite a passion with them. Now the Major had been long of a mind that
one or two colonies had better simply be given up to other nations,
which were more fully able to look after them than was England, and
that three or four more should be allowed to go clear costing England
nothing, and owing England nothing. But the well-chosen Governor who
had now been before the Committee, had rather staggered the Major and
things altogether were supposed to be looking up for the Colonial
Office.

And now had come the day of Sir Marmaduke's martyrdom. He was first
requested, with most urbane politeness, to explain the exact nature of
the government which he exercised in the Mandarins. Now it certainly
was the case that the manner in which the legislative and executive
authorities were intermingled in the affairs of these islands, did
create a complication which it was difficult for any man to understand,
and very difficult indeed for a man to explain to others. There was a
Court of Chancery, so called, which Sir Marmaduke described as a little
parliament. When he was asked whether the court exercised legislative
or executive functions, he said at first that it exercised both, and
then that it exercised neither. He knew that it consisted of nine men,
of whom five were appointed by the colony and four by the Crown. Yet he
declared that the Crown had the control of the court which, in fact,
was true enough no doubt, as the five open members were not perhaps,
all of them, immaculate patriots but on this matter poor Sir Marmaduke
was very obscure. When asked who exercised the patronage of the Crown
in nominating the four members, he declared that the four members
exercised it themselves. Did he appoint them? No he never appointed
anybody himself. He consulted the Court of Chancery for everything. At
last it came out that the chief justice of the islands, and three other
officers, always sat in the court but whether it was required by the
constitution of the islands that this should be so, Sir Marmaduke did
not know. It had worked well that is to say, everybody had complained
of it, but he, Sir Marmaduke, would not recommend any change. What he
thought best was that the Colonial Secretary should send out his
orders, and that the people in the colonies should mind their business
and grow coffee. When asked what would be the effect upon the islands,
under his scheme of government, if an incoming Colonial Secretary
should change the policy of his predecessor, he said that he didn't
think it would matter much if the people did not know anything about
it.

In this way the Major had a field day, and poor Sir Marmaduke was much
discomfited. There was present on the Committee a young Parliamentary
Under-Secretary, who with much attention had studied the subject of the
Court of Chancery in the Mandarins, and who had acknowledged to his
superiors in the office that it certainly was of all legislative
assemblies the most awkward and complicated. He did what he could, by
questions judiciously put, to pull Sir Marmaduke through his
difficulties; but the unfortunate Governor had more than once lost his
temper in answering the chairman; and in his heavy confusion was past
the power of any Under-Secretary, let him be ever so clever, to pull
him through. Colonel Osborne sat by the while and asked no questions.
He had been put on the Committee as a respectable dummy; but there was
not a member sitting there who did not know that Sir Marmaduke had been
brought home as his friend and some of them, no doubt, had whispered
that this bringing home of Sir Marmaduke was part of the payment made
by the Colonel for the smiles of the Governor's daughter. But no one
alluded openly to the inefficiency of the evidence given. No one asked
why a Governor so incompetent had been sent to them. No one suggested
that a job had been done. There are certain things of which opposition
members of Parliament complain loudly and there are certain other
things as to which they are silent. The line between these things is
well known; and should an ill-conditioned, a pig-headed, an underbred,
or an ignorant member not understand this line and transgress it, by
asking questions which should not be asked, he is soon put down from
the Treasury bench, to the great delight of the whole House.

Sir Marmaduke, after having been questioned for an entire afternoon,
left the House with extreme disgust. He was so convinced of his own
failure, that he felt that his career as a Colonial Governor must be
over. Surely they would never let him go back to his islands after such
an exposition as he had made of his own ignorance. He hurried off into
a cab, and was ashamed to be seen of men. But the members of the
Committee thought little or nothing about it. The Major, and those who
sided with him, had been anxious to entrap their witness into
contradictions and absurdities, for the furtherance of their own
object; and for the furtherance of theirs, the Under-Secretary from the
Office and the supporters of Government had endeavoured to defend their
man. But, when the affair was over, if no special admiration had been
elicited for Sir Marmaduke, neither was there expressed any special
reprobation. The Major carried on his Committee over six weeks, and
succeeded in having his blue-book printed; but, as a matter of course,
nothing further came of it; and the Court of Chancery in the Mandarin
Islands still continues to hold its own, and to do its work, in spite
of the absurdities displayed in its construction. Major Magruder has
had his day of success, and now feels that Othello's occupation is
gone. He goes no more to the Colonial Office, lives among his friends
on the memories of his Committee not always to their gratification and
is beginning to think that as his work is done he may as well resign
Killicrankie to some younger politician. Poor Sir Marmaduke remembered
his defeat with soreness long after it had been forgotten by all others
who had been present, and was astonished when he found that the
journals of the day, though they did in some curt fashion report the
proceedings of the Committee, never uttered a word of censure against
him, as they had not before uttered a word of praise for that pearl of
a Governor who had been examined before him.

On the following morning he went to the Colonial Office by appointment,
and then he saw the young Irish Under-Secretary whom he had so much
dreaded. Nothing could be more civil than was the young Irish
Under-Secretary, who told him that he had better of course stay in town
till the Committee was over, though it was not probable that he would
be wanted again. When the Committee had done its work he would be
allowed to remain six weeks on service to prepare for his journey back.
If he wanted more time after that he could ask for leave of absence. So
Sir Marmaduke left the Colonial Office with a great weight off his
mind, and blessed that young Irish Secretary as he went.

CHAPTER LXIX - SIR MARMADUKE AT WILLESDEN

On the next day Sir Marmaduke purposed going to Willesden. He was in
great doubt whether or no he would first consult that very eminent man
Dr Trite Turbury, as to the possibility, and if possible as to the
expediency, of placing Mr Trevelyan under some control. But Sir
Marmaduke, though he would repeatedly declare that his son-in-law was
mad, did not really believe in this madness. He did not, that is,
believe that Trevelyan was so mad as to be fairly exempt from the
penalties of responsibility; and he was therefore desirous of speaking
his own mind out fully to the man, and, as it were, of having his own
personal revenge, before he might be deterred by the interposition of
medical advice. He resolved therefore that he would not see Sir Trite
Turbury, at any rate till he had come back from Willesden. He also went
down in a cab, but he left the cab at the public-house at the corner of
the road, and walked to the cottage.

When he asked whether Mr Trevelyan was at home, the woman of the house
hesitated and then said that her lodger was out. 'I particularly wish
to see him,' said Sir Marmaduke, feeling that the woman was lying to
him. 'But he ain't to be seen, sir,' said the woman. 'I know he is at
home,' said Sir Marmaduke. But the argument was soon cut short by the
appearance of Trevelyan behind the woman's shoulder.

'I am here, Sir Marmaduke Rowley,' said Trevelyan. 'If you wish to see
me you may come in. I will not say that you are welcome, but you can
come in.' Then the woman retired, and Sir Marmaduke followed Trevelyan
into the room in which Lady Rowley and Emily had been received but the
child was not now in the chamber.

'What are these charges that I hear against my daughter?' said Sir
Marmaduke, rushing at once into the midst of his indignation.

'I do not know what charges you have heard.'

'You have put her away.'

'In strict accuracy that is not correct, Sir Marmaduke.'

'But she is put away. She is in my house now because you have no house
of your own for her. Is not that so? And when I came home she was
staying with her uncle, because you had put her away. And what was the
meaning of her being sent down into Devonshire? What has she done? I am
her father, and I expect to have an answer.'

'You shall have an answer, certainly.'

'And a true one. I will have no hocus-pocus, no humbug, no Jesuitry.'

'Have you come here to insult me, Sir Marmaduke? Because, if so, there
shall be an end to this interview at once.'

'There shall not be an end--by G--, no, not till I have heard what is the
meaning of all this. Do you know what people are saying of you that you
are mad, and that you must be locked up, and your child taken away from
you, and your property?'

'Who are the people that say so? Yourself and, perhaps, Lady Rowley?
Does my wife say so? Does she think that I am mad? She did not think so
on Thursday, when she prayed that she might be allowed to come back and
live with me.'

'And you would not let her come?'

'Pardon me,' said Trevelyan. 'I would wish that she should come but it
must be on certain conditions.'

'What I want to know is why she was turned out of your house?'

'She was not turned out.'

'What has she done that she should be punished?' urged Sir Marmaduke,
who was unable to arrange his questions with the happiness which had
distinguished Major Magruder. 'I insist upon knowing what it is that
you lay to her charge. I am her father, and I have a right to know. She
has been barbarously, shamefully ill-used, and by G I will know.'

'You have come here to bully me, Sir Marmaduke Rowley.'

'I have come here, sir, to do the duty of a parent to his child; to
protect my poor girl against the cruelty of a husband who in an
unfortunate hour was allowed to take her from her home. I will know the
reason why my daughter has been treated as though--as though--as though--'

'Listen to me for a minute,' said Trevelyan.

'I am listening.'

'I will tell you nothing; I will answer you not a word.'

'You will not answer me?'

'Not when you come to me in this fashion. My wife is my wife, and my
claim to her is nearer and closer than is yours, who are her father.
She is the mother of my child, and the only being in the world except
that child whom I love. Do you think that with such motives on my part
for tenderness towards her, for loving care, for the most anxious
solicitude, that I can be made more anxious, more tender, more loving
by coarse epithets from you? I am the most miserable being under the
sun because our happiness has been interrupted, and is it likely that
such misery should be cured by violent words and gestures? If your
heart is wrung for her, so is mine. If she be much to you, she is more
to me. She came here the other day, almost as a stranger, and I thought
that my heart would have burst beneath its weight of woe. What can you
do that can add an ounce to the burden that I bear? You may as well
leave me or at least be quiet.'

Sir Marmaduke had stood and listened to him, and he, too, was so struck
by the altered appearance of the man that the violence of his
indignation was lessened by the pity which he could not suppress. When
Trevelyan spoke of his wretchedness, it was impossible not to believe
him. He was as wretched a being to look at as it might have been
possible to find. His contracted cheeks, and lips always open, and eyes
glowing in their sunken caverns, told a tale which even Sir Marmaduke,
who was not of nature quick in deciphering such stories, could not fail
to read. And then the twitching action of the man's hands, and the
restless shuffling of his feet, produced a nervous feeling that if some
remedy were not applied quickly, some alleviation given to the misery
of the suffering wretch, human power would be strained too far, and the
man would break to pieces or else the mind of the man. Sir Marmaduke,
during his journey in the cab, had resolved that, old as he was, he
would, take this sinner by the throat, this brute who had striven to
stain his daughter's name--and would make him there and then
acknowledge his own brutality. But it was now very manifest to Sir
Marmaduke that there could be no taking by the throat in this case. He
could not have brought himself to touch the poor, weak, passionate
creature before him. Indeed, even the fury of his words was stayed, and
after that last appeal he stormed no more. 'But what is to be the end
of it?' he said.