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

>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 illused; 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.

 

But Trevelyan was still downstairs waiting for the child. At last it

was arranged that Nora should take the boy into the drawing-room, and

that Mrs Outhouse should fetch the father up from the parlour to the

room above it. Angry as was Mrs Trevelyan with her husband, not the

less was she anxious to make the boy good-looking and seemly in his

father’s eyes. She washed the child’s face, put on him a clean frill

and a pretty ribbon; and, as she did so, she bade him kiss his papa,

and speak nicely to him, and love him. ‘Poor papa is unhappy,’ she

said, ‘and Louey must be very good to him.’ The boy, child though he

was, understood much more of what was passing around him than his

mother knew. How was he to love papa when mamma did not do so? In some

shape that idea had framed itself in his mind; and, as he was taken

down, he knew it was impossible that he should speak nicely to his

papa. Nora did as she was bidden, and went down to the first-floor. Mrs

Outhouse, promising that even if she were put out of the room by Mr

Trevelyan she would not stir from the landing outside the door,

descended to the parlour and quickly returned with the unfortunate

father. Mr Outhouse, in the meantime, was still sitting in his closet,

tormented with curiosity, but yet determined not to be seen till the

intruder should have left his house.

 

‘I hope you are well, Nora,’