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

then’

sent the letter back under a blank envelope to her nephew.

 

She was a thorough Tory of the old school. Had Hugh taken to

writing for a newspaper that had cost sixpence, or even threepence

for its copies, she might perhaps have forgiven him. At any rate

the offence would not have been so flagrant. And had the paper been

conservative instead of liberal, she would have had some qualms

of conscience before she gave him up. But to live by writing for

a newspaper! and for a penny newspaper!! and for a penny radical

newspaper!!! It was more than she could endure. Of what nature

were the articles which he contributed it was impossible that she

should have any idea, for no consideration would have induced her

to look at a penny newspaper, or to admit it within her doors. She

herself took in the John Bull and the Herald, and daily groaned

deeply at the way in which those once great organs of true British

public feeling were becoming demoralised and perverted. Had any

reduction been made in the price of either of them, she would at

once have stopped her subscription. In the matter of politics she

had long since come to think that every thing good was over. She

hated the name of Reform so much that she could not bring herself

to believe in Mr Disraeli and his bill. For many years she had

believed in Lord Derby. She would fain believe in him still if she

could. It was the great desire of her heart to have some one in

whom she believed. In the bishop of her diocese she did believe,

and annually sent him some little comforting present from her own

hand. And in two or three of the clergymen around her she believed,

finding in them a flavour of the unascetic godliness of ancient

days which was gratifying to her palate. But in politics there

was hardly a name remaining to which she could fix her faith and

declare that there should be her guide. For awhile she, thought

she would cling to Mr Lowe; but, when she made inquiry, she found

that there was no base there of really well-formed conservative

granite. The three gentlemen who had dissevered themselves from

Mr Disraeli when Mr Disraeli was passing his Reform bill, were

doubtless very good in their way; but they were not big enough to

fill her heart. She tried to make herself happy with General Peel,

but General Peel was after all no more than a shade to her. But

the untruth of others never made her untrue, and she still talked

of the excellence of George III and the glories of the subsequent

reign. She had a bust of Lord Eldon before which she was accustomed

to stand with hands closed and to weep or to think that she wept.

 

She was a little woman, now nearly sixty years of age, with bright

grey eyes, and a strong Roman nose, and thin lips, and a sharp-cut

chin. She wore a head-gear that almost amounted to a mob-cap, and

beneath it her grey hair was always frizzled with the greatest care.

Her dress was invariably of black silk, and she had five gowns:

one for church, one for evening parties, one for driving out, and

one for evenings at home and one for mornings. The dress, when

new, always went to church. Nothing, as she was wont to say, was

too good for the Lord’s house. In the days of crinolines she had

protested that she had never worn one—a protest, however, which

was hardly true; and now, in these later days, her hatred was

especially developed in reference to the headdresses of young women.

‘Chignon’ was a word which she had never been heard to pronounce.

She would talk of ‘those bandboxes which the sluts wear behind their

noddles;’ for Miss Stanbury allowed herself the use of much strong

language. She was very punctilious in all her habits, breakfasting

ever at half-past eight, and dining always at six. Half-past five

had been her time, till the bishop, who, on an occasion, was to be

her guest, once signified to her that such an hour cut up the day

and interfered with clerical work. Her lunch was always of bread

and cheese, and they who lunched with her either eat that or the

bread without the cheese. An afternoon ‘tea’ was a thing horrible

to her imagination. Tea and buttered toast at half-past eight in

the evening was the great luxury of her life. She was as strong

as a horse, and had never hitherto known a day’s illness. As a

consequence of this, she did not believe in the illness of other

people, especially not in the illness of women. She did not like a

girl who could not drink a glass of beer with her bread and cheese

in the middle of the day, and she thought that a glass of port after

dinner was good for everybody. Indeed, she had a thorough belief

in port wine, thinking that it would go far to cure most miseries.

But she could not put up with the idea that a woman, young or old,

should want the stimulus of a glass of sherry to support her at any

odd time of the day. Hot concoctions of strong drink at Christmas

she would allow to everybody, and was very strong in recommending

such comforts to ladies blessed, or about to be blessed, with

babies. She took the sacrament every month, and gave away exactly

a tenth of her income to the poor. She believed that there was a

special holiness in a tithe of a thing, and attributed the commencement

of the downfall of the Church of England to rent charges, and the

commutation of clergymen’s incomes. Since Judas, there had never

been, to her thinking, a traitor so base, or an apostate so sinful,

as Colenso; and yet, of the nature of Colenso’s teaching she was

as ignorant as the towers of the cathedral opposite to her.

 

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 maidservants, 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 bedrooms, 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.