Books: He Knew He Was Right

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She believed in Exeter, thinking that there was no other provincial
town in England in which a maiden lady could live safely and decently.
London to her was an abode of sin; and though, as we have seen, she
delighted to call herself one of the county set, she did not love the
fields and lanes. And in Exeter the only place for a lady was the
Close. Southernhay and Northernhay might be very well, and there was,
doubtless a respectable neighbourhood on the Heavitree side of the
town; but for the new streets, and especially for the suburban villas,
she had no endurance. She liked to deal at dear shops; but would leave
any shop, either dear or cheap, in regard to which a printed
advertisement should reach her eye. She paid all her bills at the end
of each six months, and almost took a delight in high prices. She would
rejoice that bread should be cheap, and grieve that meat should be
dear, because of the poor; but in regard to other matters no reduction
in the cost of an article ever pleased her. She had houses as to which
she was told by her agent that the rents should be raised; but she
would not raise them. She had others which it was difficult to let
without lowering the rents, but she would not lower them. All change
was to her hateful and unnecessary.

She kept three maid-servants, and a man came in every day to clean the
knives and boots. Service with her was well requited, and much labour
was never exacted. But it was not every young woman who could live with
her. A rigidity as to hours, as to religious exercises, and as to
dress, was exacted, under which many poor girls altogether broke down;
but they who could stand this rigidity came to know that their places
were very valuable. No one belonging to them need want for aught, when
once the good opinion of Miss Stanbury had been earned. When once she
believed in her servant there was nobody like that servant. There was
not a man in Exeter could clean a boot except Giles Hickbody and if not
in Exeter, then where else? And her own maid Martha, who had lived with
her now for twenty years, and who had come with her to the brick house
when she first inhabited it, was such a woman that no other servant
anywhere was fit to hold a candle to her But then Martha had great
gifts was never ill, and really liked having sermons read to her.

Such was Miss Stanbury, who had now discarded her nephew Hugh. She had
never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly have
asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never really
been kind to him since he was a boy, for although she had paid for him,
she had been almost penurious, in her manner of doing so, and had
repeatedly-given him to understand, that in the event of her death not
a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter of
bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose to let
it all go back to the Burgess family. With the Burgess family she had
kept up no sustained connection, it being quite understood that she was
never to be asked to meet the only one of them now left in Exeter. Nor
was it as yet known to any one in what manner the money was to go back,
how it was to be divided, or who were to be the recipients. But she had
declared that it should go back, explaining that she had conceived it
to be a duty to let her own relations know that they would not inherit
her wealth at her death.

About a week after she had sent back poor Hugh's letter with the
endorsement on it as to unworthy bread, she summoned Martha to the back
parlour in which she was accustomed to write her letters. It was one of
the theories of her life that different rooms should be used only for
the purposes for which they were intended. She never allowed pens and
ink up into the bed-rooms, and had she ever heard that any guest in her
house was reading in bed, she would have made an instant personal
attack upon that guest, whether male or female, which would have
surprised that guest. Poor Hugh would have got on better with her had
he not been discovered once smoking in the garden. Nor would she have
writing materials in the drawing-room or dining-room. There was a
chamber behind the dining-room in which there was an inkbottle, and if
there was a letter to be written, let the writer go there and write it.
In the writing of many letters, however, she put no confidence, and
regarded penny postage as one of the strongest evidences of the coming
ruin.

'Martha,' she said, 'I want to speak to you. Sit down. I think I am
going to do something.' Martha sat down, but did not speak a word.
There had been no question asked of her, and the time for speaking had
not come. 'I am writing to Mrs Stanbury, at Nuncombe Putney; and what
do you think I am saying to her?'

Now the question had been asked, and it was Martha's duty to reply.

'Writing to Mrs Stanbury, ma'am?'

'Yes, to Mrs Stanbury.'

'It ain't possible for me to say, ma'am, unless it's to put Mr Hugh
from going on with the newspapers.'

'When. my nephew won't be controlled by me, I shan't go elsewhere to
look for control over him; you may be sure of that, Martha. And
remember, Martha, I don't want to have his name mentioned again in the
house. You will tell them all so, if you please.'

'He was a very nice gentleman, ma'am.'

'Martha, I won't have it; and there's an end of it. I won't have it.
Perhaps I know what goes to the making of a nice gentleman as well as
you do.'

'Mr Hugh, ma'am.'

'I won't have it, Martha. And when I say so, let there be an end of
it.' As she said this, she got up from her chair, and shook her head,
and took a turn about the room. 'If I'm not mistress here, I'm nobody.'

'Of course you're mistress here, ma'am.'

'And if I don't know what's fit to be done, and what's not fit, I'm too
old to learn; and, what's more, I won't be taught. I'm not going to
have my house crammed with radical incendiary stuff, printed with ink
that stinks, on paper made out of straw. If I can't live without penny
literature, at any rate I'll die without it. Now listen to me.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'I have asked Mrs Stanbury to send one of the girls over here.'

'To live, ma'am?' Martha's tone as she asked the question, showed how
deeply she felt its importance.

'Yes, Martha; to live.'

'You'll never like it, ma'am.'

'I don't suppose I shall.'

'You'll never get on with it, ma'am; never. The young lady'll be out of
the house in a week; or if she ain't, somebody else will.'

'You mean yourself.'

'I'm only a servant, ma'am, and it don't signify about me.'

'You're a fool.'

'That's true, ma'am, I don't doubt.'

'I've sent for her, and we must do the best we can. Perhaps she won't
come.'

'She'll come fast enough,' said Martha. 'But whether she'll stay,
that's a different thing. I don't see how it's possible she's to stay.
I'm told they're feckless, idle young ladies. She'll be so soft, ma'am,
and you.'

'Well; what of me?'

'You'll be so hard, ma'am!'

'I'm not a bit harder than you, Martha; nor yet so hard. I'll do my
duty, or at least I'll try. Now you know all about it, and you may go
away. There's the letter, and I mean to go out and post it myself.'

CHAPTER VIII - 'I KNOW IT WILL DO'

Miss Stanbury carried her letter all the way to the chief post-office
in the city, having no faith whatever in those little subsidiary
receiving houses which are established in different parts of the city.
As for the iron pillar boxes which had been erected of late years for
the receipt of letters, one of which a most hateful thing to her stood
almost close to her own hall door, she had not the faintest belief that
any letter put into one of them would ever reach its destination. She
could not understand why people should not walk with their letters to a
respectable post-office instead of chucking them into an iron stump as
she called it out in the middle of the street with nobody to look after
it. Positive orders had been given that no letter from her house should
ever be put into the iron post. Her epistle to her sister-in-law, of
whom she never spoke otherwise than as Mrs Stanbury, was as follows:

The Close, Exeter, 22nd April, 186

My dear Sister Stanbury,

Your son, Hugh, has taken to courses of which I do not approve, and
therefore I have put an end to my connection with him. I shall be happy
to entertain your daughter Dorothy in my house if you and she approve
of such a plan. Should you agree to this, she will be welcome to
receive you or her sister not her brother in my house any Wednesday
morning between half-past nine and half-past twelve. I will endeavour
to make my house pleasant to her and useful, and will make her an
allowance of 25 pounds per annum for her clothes as long as she may
remain with me. I shall expect her to be regular at meals, to be
constant in going to church, and not to read modern novels.

I intend the arrangement to be permanent, but of course I must retain
the power of closing it if, and when, I shall see fit. Its permanence
must be contingent on my life. I have no power of providing for any one
after my death,

Yours truly,

JEMIMA STANBURY.

I hope the young lady does not have any false hair about her.'

When this note was received at Nuncombe Putney the amazement which it
occasioned was extreme. Mrs Stanbury, the widow of the late vicar,
lived in a little morsel of a cottage on the outskirts of the village,
with her two daughters, Priscilla and Dorothy. Their whole income, out
of which it was necessary that they should pay rent for their cottage,
was less than 70 pounds per annum. During the last few months a
five-pound note now and again had found its way to Nuncombe Putney out
of the coffers of the 'D. R.'; but the ladies there were most unwilling
to be so relieved, thinking that their brother's career was of
infinitely more importance than their comforts or even than their
living. They were very poor, but they were accustomed to poverty. The
elder sister was older than Hugh, but Dorothy, the younger, to whom
this strange invitation was now made, was two years younger than her
brother, and was now nearly twenty-six. How they had lived, and dressed
themselves, and had continued to be called ladies by the inhabitants of
the village was, and is, and will be a mystery to those who have had
the spending of much larger incomes, but have still been always poor.
But they had lived, had gone to church every Sunday in decent apparel,
and had kept up friendly relations with the family of the present
vicar, and with one or two other neighbours.

When the letter had been read first by the mother, and then aloud, and
then by each of them separately, in the little sitting-room in the
cottage, there was silence among them for neither of them desired to be
the first to express an opinion. Nothing could be more natural than the
proposed arrangement, had it not been made unnatural by a quarrel
existing nearly throughout the whole life of the person most nearly
concerned. Priscilla, the elder daughter, was the one of the family who
was generally the ruler, and she at last expressed an opinion adverse
to the arrangement. 'My dear, you would never be able to bear it,' said
Priscilla.

'I suppose not,' said Mrs Stanbury, plaintively.

'I could try,' said Dorothy.

'My dear, you don't know that woman,' said Priscilla.

'Of course I don't know her,' said Dorothy.

'She has always been very good to Hugh,' said Mrs Stanbury.

'I don't think she has been good to him at all,' said Priscilla.

'But think what a saving it would be,' said Dorothy. 'And I could send
home half of what Aunt Stanbury says she would give me.'

'You must not think of that,' said Priscilla, 'because she expects you
to be dressed.'

'I should like to try,' she said, before the morning was over 'if you
and mamma don't think it would be wrong.'

The conference that day ended in a written request to Aunt Stanbury
that a week might be allowed for consideration the letter being written
by Priscilla, but signed with her mother's name and with a very long
epistle to Hugh, in which each of the ladies took a part, and in which
advice and decision were demanded. It was very evident to Hugh that his
mother and Dorothy were for compliance, and that Priscilla was for
refusal. But he never doubted for a moment. 'Of course she will go,' he
said in his answer to Priscilla; 'and she must understand that Aunt
Stanbury is a most excellent woman, as true as the sun, thoroughly
honest, with no fault but this, that she likes her own way. Of course
Dolly can go back again if she finds the house too hard for her.' Then
he sent another five-pound note, observing that Dolly's journey to
Exeter would cost money, and that her wardrobe would want some
improvement.

'I'm very glad that it isn't me,' said Priscilla, who, however, did not
attempt to oppose the decision of the man of the family. Dorothy was
greatly gratified by the excitement of the proposed change in her life,
and the following letter, the product of the wisdom of the family, was
written by Mrs Stanbury.

'Nuncombe Putney, 1st May, 186

My dear Sister Stanbury,

We are all very thankful for the kindness of your offer, which my
daughter Dorothy will accept with feelings of affectionate gratitude. I
think you will find her docile, good-tempered, and amiable; but a
mother, of course, speaks well of her own child. She will endeavour to
comply with your wishes in all things reasonable. She; of course,
understands that should the arrangement not suit, she will come back
home on the expression of your wish that it should be so. And she will,
of course, do the same, if she should find that living in Exeter does
not suit herself.' (This sentence was inserted at the instance of
Priscilla, after much urgent expostulation.) 'Dorothy will be ready to
go to you on any day you may fix after the 7th of this month.

Believe me to remain,

Your affectionate sister-in-law,

P. STANBURY.'

'She's going to come,' said Miss Stanbury to Martha, holding the letter
in her hand.

'I never doubted her coming, ma'am,' said Martha.

'And I mean her to stay, unless it's her own fault. She'll have the
small room upstairs, looking out front, next to mine. And you must go
and fetch her.'

'Go and fetch her, ma'am?'

'Yes. If you won't, I must.'

'She ain't a child, ma'am. She's twenty-five years old, and surely she
can come to Exeter by herself, with a railroad all the way from
Lessboro'.'

'There's no place a young woman is insulted in so bad as those railway
carriages, and I won't have her come by herself. If she is to live with
me, she shall begin decently at any rate.'

Martha argued the matter, but was of course beaten, and on the day
fixed started early in the morning for Nuncombe Putney, and returned in
the afternoon to the Close with her charge. By the time that she had
reached the house she had in some degree reconciled herself to the
dangerous step that her mistress had taken, partly by perceiving that
in face Dorothy Stanbury was very like her brother Hugh, and partly,
perhaps, by finding that the young woman's manner to herself was both
gentle and sprightly. She knew well that gentleness alone, without some
back-bone of strength under it, would not long succeed with Miss
Stanbury. 'As far as I can judge, ma'am, she's a sweet young lady,'
said Martha, when she reported her arrival to her mistress, who had
retired upstairs to her own room, in order that she might thus hear a
word of tidings from her lieutenant, before she showed herself on the
field of action.

'Sweet! I hate your sweets,' said Miss Stanbury.

'Then why did you send for her, ma'am?'

'Because I was an old fool. But I must go down and receive her, I
suppose.'

Then Miss Stanbury went down, almost trembling as she went The matter
to her was one of vital importance She was going to change the whole
tenor of her life for the sake as she told herself of doing her duty by
a relative whom she did not even know But we may fairly suppose that
there had in truth been a feeling beyond that, which taught her to
desire to have some one near her to whom she might not only do her duty
as guardian, but whom she might also love. She had tried this with her
nephew; but her nephew had been too strong for her, too far from her,
too unlike to herself. When he came to see her he had smoked a short
pipe which had been shocking to her and he had spoken of Reform, and
Trades' Unions, and meetings in the parks, as though they had not been
Devil's ordinances. And he was very shy of going to church utterly
refusing to be taken there twice on the same Sunday. And he had told
his aunt that owing to a peculiar and unfortunate weakness in his
constitution he could not listen to the reading of sermons. And then
she was almost certain that he had once kissed one of the maids! She
had found it impossible to manage him in any way; and when he
positively declared himself as permanently devoted to the degrading
iniquities of penny newspapers, she had thought it best to cast him off
altogether. Now, thus late in life, she was going to make another
venture, to try an altogether new mode of living in order, as she said
to herself, that she might be of some use to somebody but, no doubt,
with a further unexpressed hope in her bosom, that the solitude of her
life might be relieved by. the companionship of some one whom she might
love. She had arrayed herself in a clean cap and her evening gown, and
she went downstairs looking sternly, with a fully-developed idea that
she must initiate her new duties by assuming a mastery at once. But
inwardly she trembled, and was intensely anxious as to the first
appearance of her niece. Of course there would be a little morsel of a
bonnet. She hated those vile patches dirty dirty flat daubs of
millinery as she called them, but they had become too general for her
to refuse admittance for such a thing within her doors But a chignon a
bandbox behind the noddle she would not endure. And then there were
other details of feminine gear, which shall not be specified, as to
which she was painfully anxious almost forgetting in her anxiety that
the dress of this young woman whom she was about to see must have ever
been regulated by the closest possible economy.

The first thing she saw on entering the room was a dark straw hat, a
straw hat with a strong penthouse flap to it, and her heart was
immediately softened.

'My dear,' she said, 'I am glad to see you.'

Dorothy, who, on her part, was trembling also, whose position was one
to justify most intense anxiety, murmured some reply.

'Take off your hat,' said the aunt, 'and let me give you a kiss.'

The hat was taken off and the kiss was given. There was certainly no
chignon there. Dorothy Stanbury was light haired, with almost flaxen
ringlets, worn after the old-fashioned way which we used to think so
pretty when we were young. She had very soft grey eyes, which ever
seemed to beseech you to do something when they looked at you, and her
mouth was a beseeching mouth. There are women who, even amidst their
strongest efforts at giving assistance to others, always look as though
they were asking aid themselves, and such a one was Dorothy Stanbury.
Her complexion was pale, but there was always present in it a tint of
pink running here and there, changing with every word she spoke,
changing indeed with every pulse of her heart. Nothing ever was softer
than her cheek; but her hands were thin and hard, and almost fibrous
with the working of the thread upon them. She was rather tall than
otherwise, but that extreme look of feminine dependence which always
accompanied her, took away something even from the appearance of her
height.

'These are all real, at any rate,' said her aunt, taking hold of the
curls, 'and won't be hurt by a little cold water.'

Dorothy smiled but said nothing, and was then taken up to her bed-room.
Indeed, when the aunt and niece sat down to dinner together Dorothy had
hardly spoken. But Miss Stanbury had spoken, and things upon the whole
had gone very well.

'I hope you like roast chicken, my dear?' said Miss Stanbury.

'Oh, thank you.'

'And bread sauce? Jane, I do hope the bread sauce is hot.'

If the reader thinks that Miss Stanbury was indifferent to
considerations of the table, the reader is altogether ignorant of Miss
Stanbury's character. When Miss Stanbury gave her niece the liver-wing,
and picked out from the attendant sausages one that had been well
browned and properly broken in the frying, she meant to do a real
kindness.

'And now, my dear, there are mashed potatoes and bread sauce. As for
green vegetables, I don't know what has become of them. They tell me I
may have green peas from France at a shilling a quart; but if I can't
have English green peas, I won't have any.'

Miss Stanbury was standing up as she said this as she always did on
such occasions, liking to have a full mastery over the dish.

'I hope you like it, my dear?'

'Everything is so very nice.'

'That's right. I like to see a young woman with an appetite. Remember
that God sends the good things for us to eat; and as long as we don't
take more than our share, and give away something to those who haven't
a fair share of their own, I for one think it quite right to enjoy my
victuals. Jane, this bread sauce isn't hot. It never is hot. Don't tell
me; I know what hot is!'

Dorothy thought that her aunt was very angry; but Jane knew Miss
Stanbury better, and bore the scolding without shaking in her shoes.

'And now, my dear, you must take a glass of port wine. It will do you
good after your journey.'

Dorothy attempted to explain that she never did drink any wine, but her
aunt talked down her scruples at once.

'One glass of port wine never did anybody any harm, and as there is
port wine, it must be intended that somebody should drink it.'

Miss Stanbury, as she sipped hers out very slowly, seemed to enjoy it
very much. Although May had come, there was a fire in the grate, and
she sat with her toes on the fender, and her silk dress folded up above
her knees. She sat quite silent in this position for a quarter of an
hour, every now and then raising her glass to her lips. Dorothy sat
silent also. To her, in the newness of her condition, speech was
impossible.

'I think it will do,' said Miss Stanbury at last.

As Dorothy had no idea what would do, she could make no reply to this.

'I'm sure it will do,' said Miss Stanbury, after another short
interval. 'You're as like my poor sister as two eggs. You don't have
headaches, do you?'

Dorothy said that she was not ordinarily affected in that way.

'When girls have headaches it comes from tight-lacing, and not walking
enough, and carrying all manner of nasty smells about with them. I know
what headaches mean. How is a woman not to have a headache, when she
carries a thing on the back of her poll as big as a gardener's
wheel-barrow? Come, it's a fine evening, and we'll go out and look at
the towers. You've never even seen them yet, I suppose?'

So they went out, and finding the verger at the Cathedral door, he
being a great friend of Miss Stanbury, they walked up and down the
aisles, and Dorothy was instructed as to what would be expected from
her in regard to the outward forms of religion. She was to go to the
Cathedral service on the morning of every week-day, and on Sundays in
the afternoon. On Sunday mornings she was to attend the little church
of St. Margaret. On Sunday evenings it was the practice of Miss
Stanbury to read a sermon in the dining-room to all of whom her
household consisted. Did Dorothy like daily services? Dorothy, who was
more patient than her brother, and whose life had been much less
energetic, said that she had no objection to going to church every day
when there was not too much to do.

'There never need be too much to do to attend the Lord's house,' said
Miss Stanbury, somewhat angrily.

'Only if you've got to make the beds,' said Dorothy.

'My dear, I beg your pardon,' said Miss Stanbury. 'I beg your pardon,
heartily. I'm a thoughtless old woman, I know. Never mind. Now, we'll
go in.'

Later in the evening, when she gave her niece a candlestick to go to
bed, she repeated what she had said before.

'It'll do very well, my dear. I'm sure it'll do. But if you read in bed
either night or morning, I'll never forgive you.'

This last caution was uttered with so much energy, that Dorothy gave a
little jump as she promised obedience.

CHAPTER IX - SHEWING HOW THE QUARREL PROGRESSED AGAIN

On one Sunday morning, when the month of May was nearly over, Hugh
Stanbury met Colonel Osborne in Curzon Street, not many yards from
Trevelyan's door. Colonel Osborne had just come from the house, and
Stanbury was going to it. Hugh had not spoken to Osborne since the day,
now a fortnight since, on which both of them had witnessed the scene in
the park; but on that occasion they had been left together, and it had
been impossible for them not to say a few words about their mutual
friends. Osborne had expressed his sorrow that there should be any
misunderstanding, and had called Trevelyan a 'confounded fool.'
Stanbury had suggested that there was something in it which they two
probably did not understand, and that matters, would be sure to come
all right. 'The truth is Trevelyan bullies her,' said Osborne; 'and if
he goes on with that he'll be sure to get the worst of it.' Now on this
present occasion Stanbury asked whether he would find the ladies at
home. 'Yes, they are both there,' said Osborne. 'Trevelyan has just
gone out in a huff. She'll never be able to go on living with him.
Anybody can see that with half an eye.' Then he had passed on, and Hugh
Stanbury knocked at the door.