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Read books online » Fiction » He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📖

Book online «He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📖». Author Anthony Trollope



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and I shall always say so unless he breaks it. I

don’t care a bit about fortune. I thought I did once, but I have

changed all that.’

 

‘Because this scoundrel has talked sedition to you.’

 

‘He is not a scoundrel, papa, and he has not talked sedition. I don’t

know what sedition is. I thought it meant treason, and I’m sure he is

not a traitor. He has made me love him, and I shall be true to him.’

 

Hereupon Sir Marmaduke began almost to weep. There came first a

half-smothered oath and then a sob, and he walked about the room, and

struck the table with his fist, and rubbed his bald head impatiently

with his hand. ‘Nora,’ he said, ‘I thought you were so different from

this! If I had believed this of you, you never should have come to

England with Emily.’

 

‘It is too late for that now, papa.’

 

‘Your mamma always told me that you had such excellent ideas about

marriage.’

 

‘So I have, I think,’ said she, smiling.

 

‘She always believed that you would make a match that would be a credit

to the family.’

 

‘I tried it, papa, the sort of match that you mean. Indeed I was

mercenary enough in what I believed to be my views of life. I meant to

marry a rich man if I could, and did not think much whether I should

love him or not. But when the rich man came—’

 

‘What rich man?’

 

‘I suppose mamma has told you about Mr Glascock.’

 

‘Who is Mr Glascock? I have not heard a word about Mr Glascock.’ Then

Nora was forced to tell the story, was called upon to tell it with all

its aggravating details. By degrees Sir Marmaduke learned that this Mr

Glascock, who had desired to be his son-in-law, was in very truth the

heir to the Peterborough title and estates, would have been such a

son-in-law as almost to compensate, by the brilliance of the

connection, for that other unfortunate alliance. He could hardly

control his agony when he was made to understand that this embryo peer

had in truth been in earnest.

 

‘Do you mean that he went down after you into Devonshire?’

 

‘Yes, papa.’

 

‘And you refused him then a second time?’

 

‘Yes, papa.’

 

‘Why, why, why? You say yourself that you liked him, that you thought that

you would accept him.’

 

‘When it came to speaking the word, papa, I found that I could not

pretend to love him when I did not love him. I did not care for him, and

I liked somebody else so much better! I just told him the plain truth

and so he went away.’

 

The thought of all that he had lost, of all that might so easily have

been his, for a time overwhelmed Sir Marmaduke, and drove the very

memory of Hugh Stanbury almost out of his head; He could understand

that a girl should not marry a man whom she did not like; but he could

not understand how any girl should not love such a suitor as was Mr

Glascock. And had she accepted this pearl of men, with her position,

with her manners and beauty and appearance, such a connection would

have been as good as an assured marriage for every one of Sir

Marmaduke’s numerous daughters. Nora was just the woman to look like a

great lady, a lady of high rank such a lady as could almost command men

to come and throw themselves at her unmarried sisters’ feet. Sir

Marmaduke had believed in his daughter Nora, had looked forward to see

her do much for the family; and, when the crash had come upon the

Trevelyan household, had thought almost as much of her injured

prospects as he had of the misfortune of her sister. But now it seemed

that more than all the good things of what he had dreamed had been

proposed to this unruly girl, in spite of that great crash, and had been

rejected! And he saw more than this as he thought. These good things

would have been accepted had it not been for this rascal of a

penny-a-liner, this friend of that other rascal Trevelyan, who had come

in the way of their family to destroy the happiness of them all! Sir

Marmaduke, in speaking of Stanbury after this, would constantly call

him a penny-a-liner, thinking that the contamination of the penny

communicated itself to all transactions of the Daily Record.

 

‘You have made your bed for yourself, Nora, and you must lie upon it.’

 

‘Just so, papa.’

 

‘I mean that, as you have refused Mr Glascock’s offer, you can never

again hope for such an opening in life.’

 

‘Of course I cannot. I am not such a child as to suppose that there are

many Mr Glascocks to come and run after me. And if there were ever so

many, papa, it would be no good. As you say, I have chosen for myself,

and I must put up with it. When I see the carriages going about in the

streets, and remember how often shall have to go home in an omnibus, I

do think about it a good deal.’

 

‘I’m afraid you will think when it is too late.’

 

‘It isn’t that I don’t like carriages, papa. I do like them; and pretty

dresses, and brooches, and men and women who have nothing to do, and

balls, and the opera; but I love this man, and that is more to me than

all the rest. I cannot help myself if it were ever so. Papa, you

mustn’t be angry with me. Pray, pray, pray do not say that horrid word

again.’

 

This was the end of the interview. Sir Marmaduke found that he had

nothing further to say. Nora, when she reached her last prayer to her

father, referring to that curse with which he had threatened her, was

herself in tears, and was leaning on him with her head against his

shoulder. Of course he did not say a word which could be understood as

sanctioning her engagement with Stanbury. He was as strongly determined

as ever that it was his duty to save her from the perils of such a

marriage as that. But, nevertheless, he was so far overcome by her as

to be softened in his manners towards her. He kissed her as he left

her, and told her to go to her mother. Then he went out and thought of

it all, and felt as though Paradise had been opened to his child and

she had refused to enter the gate.

CHAPTER LXXI

SHEWING WHAT HUGH STANBURY THOUGHT ABOUT THE DUTY OF MAN

 

In the conference which took place between Sir Marmaduke and his wife

after the interview between him and Nora, it was his idea that nothing

further should be done at all. ‘I don’t suppose the man will come here

if he be told not,’ said Sir Marmaduke, ‘and if he does, Nora of course

will not see him.’ He then suggested that Nora would of course go back

with them to the Mandarins, and that when once there she would not be

able to see Stanbury any more. ‘There must be no correspondence or

anything of that sort, and so the thing will die away.’ But Lady Rowley

declared that this would not quite suffice. Mr Stanbury had made his

offer in due form, and must be held to be entitled to an answer. Sir

Marmaduke, therefore, wrote the following letter to the

‘penny-a-liner,’ mitigating the asperity of his language in compliance

with his wife’s counsels.

 

‘Manchester Street, April 20th, 186-.

 

My Dear Sir,

 

Lady Rowley has told me of your proposal to my daughter Nora; and she

has told me also what she learned from you as to your circumstances in

life. I need hardly point out to you that no father would be justified

in giving his daughter to a gentleman upon so small an income, and upon

an income so very insecure.

 

I am obliged to refuse my consent, and I must therefore ask you to

abstain from visiting and from communicating with my daughter.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

MARMADUKE ROWLEY.

 

Hugh Stanbury, Esq.’

 

This letter was directed to Stanbury at the office of the D. R., and

Sir Marmaduke, as he wrote the pernicious address, felt himself injured

in that he was compelled to write about his daughter to a man so

circumstanced. Stanbury, when he got the letter, read it hastily and

then threw it aside. He knew what it would contain before he opened it.

He had heard enough from Lady Rowley to be aware that Sir Marmaduke

would not welcome him as a son-in-law; Indeed, he had never expected

such welcome. He was half-ashamed of his own suit because of the

lowliness of his position, half-regretful that he should have induced

such a girl as Nora Rowley to give up for his sake her hopes of

magnificence and splendour. But Sir Marmaduke’s letter did not add

anything to this feeling. He read it again, and smiled as he told

himself that the father would certainly be very weak in the hands of

his daughter. Then he went to work again at his article with a

persistent resolve that so small a trifle as such a note should have no

effect upon his daily work. ‘Of course Sir Marmaduke would refuse his

consent. Of course it would be for him, Stanbury, to marry the girl he

loved in opposition to her father. Her father indeed! If Nora chose to

take him—and as to that he was very doubtful as to Nora’s wisdom—but if

Nora would take him, what was any father’s opposition to him. He wanted

nothing from Nora’s father. He was not looking for money with his wife,

nor for fashion, nor countenance. Such a Bohemian was he that he would

be quite satisfied if his girl would walk out to him, and become his

wife, with any morning-gown on and with any old hat that might come,

readiest to hand. He wanted neither cards, nor breakfast, nor

carriages, nor fine clothes. If his Nora should choose to come to him

as she was, he having had all previous necessary arrangements duly made,

such as calling of banns or procuring of licence, if possible, he

thought that a father’s opposition would almost add something to the

pleasure of the occasion. So he pitched the letter on one side, and

went on with his article. And he finished his article; but it may be

doubted whether it was completed with the full strength and pith needed

for moving the pulses of the national mind as they should be moved by

leading articles in the D. R. As he was writing he was thinking of Nora

and thinking of the letter which Nora’s father had sent to him. Trivial

as was the letter, he could not keep himself from repeating the words

of it to himself. ‘“Need hardly point out,” oh; needn’t he? Then why

does he? Refusing his consent! I wonder what the old buffers think is

the meaning of their consent, when they are speaking of daughters old

enough to manage for themselves? Abstain from visiting or communicating

with her! But if she visits and communicates with me, what then? I can’t

force my way into the house, but she can force her way out. Does he

imagine that she can be locked up in the nursery or put into the

corner?’ So he argued with himself, and by such arguments he brought

himself to the conviction that it would be well for him to answer Sir

Marmaduke’s letter. This he did at once before

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