He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📖

CHAPTER I

SHEWING HOW WRATH BEGAN

 

When Louis Trevelyan was twenty-four years old, he had all the

world before him where to choose; and, among other things, he chose

to go to the Mandarin Islands, and there fell in love with Emily

Rowley, the daughter of Sir Marmaduke, the governor. Sir Marmaduke

Rowley, at this period of his life, was a respectable middle-aged

public servant, in good repute, who had, however, as yet achieved

for himself neither an exalted position nor a large fortune. He

had been governor of many islands, and had never lacked employment;

and now, at the age of fifty, found himself at the Mandarins, with

a salary of 3,000 pounds a year, living in a temperature at which

80 in the shade is considered to be cool, with eight daughters,

and not a shilling saved. A governor at the Mandarins who is social

by nature and hospitable on principle, cannot save money in the

islands even on 3,000 pounds a year when he has eight daughters.

And at the Mandarins, though hospitality is a duty, the gentlemen

who ate Sir Rowley’s dinners were not exactly the men whom he or

Lady Rowley desired to welcome to their bosoms as sons-in-law. Nor

when Mr Trevelyan came that way, desirous of seeing everything in

the somewhat indefinite course of his travels, had Emily Rowley,

the eldest of the flock, then twenty years of age, seen as yet any

Mandariner who exactly came up to her fancy. And, as Louis Trevelyan

was a remarkably handsome young man, who was well connected, who

had been ninth wrangler at Cambridge, who had already published a

volume of poems, and who possessed 3,000 pounds a year of his own,

arising from various perfectly secure investments, he was not forced

to sigh long in vain. Indeed, the Rowleys, one and all, felt that

providence had been very good to them in sending young Trevelyan

on his travels in that direction, for he seemed to be a very pearl

among men. Both Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley felt that there might

be objections to such a marriage as that proposed to them, raised

by the Trevelyan family. Lady Rowley would not have liked her daughter

to go to England, to be received with cold looks by strangers. But

it soon appeared that there was no one to make objections. Louis,

the lover, had no living relative nearer than cousins. His father,

a barrister of repute, had died a widower, and had left the money

which he had made to an only child. The head of the family was a

first cousin who lived in Cornwall on a moderate property, a very

good sort of stupid fellow, as Louis said, who would be quite

indifferent as to any marriage that his cousin might make. No man

could be more independent or more clearly justified in pleasing

himself than was this lover. And then he himself proposed that the

second daughter, Nora, should come and live with them in London.

What a lover to fall suddenly from the heavens into such a dovecote!

 

‘I haven’t a penny-piece to give either of them,’ said Sir Rowley.

 

‘It is my idea that girls should not have fortunes,’ said Trevelyan.

‘At any rate, I am quite sure that men should never look for money.

A man must be more comfortable, and, I think, is likely to be more

affectionate, when the money has belonged to himself.’

 

Sir Rowley was a high-minded gentleman, who would have liked to

have handed over a few thousand pounds on giving up his daughters;

but, having no thousands of pounds to hand over, he could not but

admire the principles of his proposed son-in-law. As it was about

time for him to have his leave of absence, he and sundry of the girls

went to England with Mr Trevelyan, and the wedding was celebrated

in London by the Rev. Oliphant Outhouse, of Saint Diddulph-in-the-East,

who had married Sir Rowley’s sister. Then a small house was taken

and furnished in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and the Rowleys went back

to the seat of their government, leaving Nora, the second girl, in

charge of her elder sister.

 

The Rowleys had found, on reaching London, that they had lighted

upon a pearl indeed. Louis Trevelyan was a man of whom all people

said all good things. He might have been a fellow of his college

had he not been a man of fortune. He might already, so Sir Rowley

was told, have been in Parliament, had he not thought it to be

wiser to wait awhile. Indeed, he was very wise in many things. He

had gone out on his travels thus young, not in search of excitement,

to kill beasts, or to encounter he knew not what novelty and

amusement, but that he might see men and know the world. He had

been on his travels for more than a year when the winds blew him

to the Mandarins. Oh, how blessed were the winds! And, moreover,

Sir Rowley found that his son-in-law was well spoken of at the

clubs by those who had known him during his university career, as

a man popular as well as wise, not a book-worm, or a dry philosopher,

or a prig. He could talk on all subjects, was very generous, a

man sure to be honoured and respected; and then such a handsome,

manly fellow, with short brown hair, a nose divinely chiselled, an

Apollo’s mouth, six feet high, with shoulders and legs and arms in

proportion—a pearl of pearls! Only, as Lady Rowley was the first

to find out, he liked to have his own way.

 

‘But his way is such a good way,’ said Sir Marmaduke. ‘He will be

such a good guide for the girls!’

 

‘But Emily likes her way too,’ said Lady Rowley.

 

Sir Marmaduke argued the matter no further, but thought, no doubt,

that such a husband as Louis Trevelyan was entitled to have his

own way. He probably had not observed his daughter’s temper so

accurately as his wife had done. With eight of them coming up around

him, how should he have observed their tempers? At any rate, if

there were anything amiss with Emily’s temper, it would be well

that she should find her master in such a husband as Louis Trevelyan.

 

For nearly two years the little household in Curzon Street went on

well, or if anything was the matter no one outside of the little

household was aware of it. And there was a baby, a boy, a young

Louis, and a baby in such a household is apt to make things go

sweetly.

 

The marriage had taken place in July, and after the wedding tour

there had been a winter and a spring in London; and then they passed

a month or two at the sea-side, after which the baby had been born.

And then there came another winter and another spring. Nora Rowley

was with them in London, and by this time Mr Trevelyan had begun

to think that he should like to have his own way completely. His

baby was very nice, and his wife was clever, pretty, and attractive.

Nora was all that an unmarried sister should be. But but there had

come to be trouble and bitter words. Lady Rowley had been right

when she said that her daughter Emily also liked to have her own

way.

 

‘If I am suspected,’ said Mrs Trevelyan to her sister one morning,

as they sat together in the little back drawing-room, ‘life will

not be worth having.’

 

‘How can you talk of being suspected, Emily?’

 

‘What does he mean then by saying that he would rather not have

Colonel Osborne here? A man older than my own father, who has known

me since I was a baby!’

 

‘He didn’t mean anything of that kind, Emily. You know he did not,

and you should not say so. It would be too horrible to think of.’

 

‘It was a great deal too horrible to be spoken, I know. If he does

not beg my pardon, I shall I shall continue to live with him, of

course, as a sort of upper servant, because of baby. But he shall

know what I think and feel.’

 

‘If I were you I would forget it.’

 

‘How can I forget it? Nothing that I can do pleases him. He is civil

and kind to you because he is not your master; but you don’t know

what things he says to me. Am I to tell Colonel Osborne not to

come? Heavens and earth! How should I ever hold up my head again

if I were driven to do that? He will be here today I have no doubt;

and Louis will sit there below in the library, and hear his step,

and will not come up.’

 

‘Tell Richard to say you are not at home.’

 

‘Yes; and everybody will understand why. And for what am I to deny

myself in that way to the best and oldest friend I have? If any

such orders are to be given, let him give them and then see what

will come of it.’

 

Mrs Trevelyan had described Colonel Osborne truly as far as words

went, in saying that he had known her since she was a baby, and

that he was an older man than her father. Colonel Osborne’s age

exceeded her father’s by about a month, and as he was now past

fifty, he might be considered perhaps, in that respect, to be a

safe friend for a young married woman. But he was in every respect

a man very different from Sir Marmaduke. Sir Marmaduke, blessed and

at the same time burdened as he was with a wife and eight daughters,

and condemned as he had been to pass