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

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nothing can be kinder and nicer than she is. We are to be married here,

some day in June, the 11th I think it will be. How I do wish you could

have been here to be my bridesmaid. It would have been so nice to have

had Hugh’s sweetheart with me. He is a friend of Hugh’s, and no doubt

you will hear all about him. The worst of it is that we must live in

London, because my husband as will be—you see I call him mine already—

is in an office there. And so poor Aunt Stanbury will be left all

alone. It will be very sad, and she is so wedded to Exeter that I fear

we shall not get her up to London.

 

I would describe Mr Burgess to you, only I do not suppose you would

care to hear about him. He is not so tall as Hugh, but he is a great

deal better looking. With you two the good looks are to be with the

wife; but, with us, with the husband. Perhaps you think Hugh is

handsome. We used to declare that he was the ugliest boy in the

country. I don’t suppose it makes very much difference. Brooke is

handsome, but I don’t think I should like him the less if he were ever

so ugly.

 

Do you remember hearing about the Miss Frenches when you were in

Devonshire? There has come up such a terrible affair about them. A Mr

Gibson, a clergyman, was going to marry the younger; but has changed

his mind and wants to take the elder. I think he was in love with her

first.’ Dorothy did not say a word about the little intermediate stage

of attachment to herself. ‘All this is making a great noise in the

city, and some people think he should be punished severely. It seems to

me that a gentleman ought not to make such a mistake; but if he does,

he ought to own it. I hope they will let him marry the eider one. Aunt

Stanbury says it all comes from their wearing chignons. I wish you knew

Aunt Stanbury, because she is so good. Perhaps you wear a chignon. I

think Priscilla said that you did. It must not be large, if you come to

see Aunt Stanbury.

 

Pray write to me and believe that I hope to be your most affectionate

sister,

 

Dorothy Stanbury.

 

P.S. I am so happy, and I do so hope that you will be the same.’

 

This was received only a day before the departure of the Rowleys for

Italy, and was answered by a short note promising that Nora would write

to her correspondent from Florence.

 

There could be no doubt that Trevelyan had started with his boy,

fearing the result of the medical or legal interference with his

affairs which was about to be made at Sir Marmaduke’s instance. He had

written a few words to his wife, neither commencing nor ending his note

after any usual fashion, telling her that he thought it expedient to

travel, that he had secured the services of a nurse for the little boy,

and that during his absence a certain income would, as heretofore, be

paid to her. He said nothing as to his probable return, or as to her

future life; nor was there anything to indicate whither he was going.

Stanbury, however, had learned from the faithless and frightened Bozzle

that Trevelyan’s letters were to be sent after him to Florence. Mr

Bozzle, in giving this information, had acknowledged that his employer

was ‘becoming no longer quite himself under his troubles,’ and had

expressed his opinion that he ought to be ‘looked after.’ Bozzle had

made his money; and now, with a grain of humanity mixed with many

grains of faithlessness, reconciled it to himself to tell his master’s

secrets to his master’s enemies. What would a counsel be able to say

about his conduct in a court of law? That was the question which Bozzle

was always asking himself as to his own business. That he should be

abused by a barrister to a jury, and exposed as a spy and a fiend, was,

he thought, a matter of course. To be so abused was a part of his

profession. But it was expedient for him in all cases to secure some

loop-hole of apparent duty by which he might in part escape from such

censures. He was untrue to his employer now, because he thought that

his employer ought to be ‘looked after.’ He did, no doubt, take a

five-pound note from Hugh Stanbury; but then it was necessary that he

should live. He must be paid for his time. In this way Trevelyan

started for Florence, and within a week afterwards the Rowleys were

upon his track.

 

Nothing had been said by Sir Marmaduke to Nora as to her lover since

that stormy interview in which both father and daughter had expressed

their opinions very strongly, and very little had been said by Lady

Rowley. Lady Rowley had spoken more than once of Nora’s return to the

Mandarins, and had once alluded to it as a certainty. ‘But I do not

know that I shall go back,’ Nora had said. ‘My dear,’ the mother had

replied, ‘unless you are married, I suppose your home must be with your

parents.’ Nora, having made her protest, did not think it necessary to

persevere, and so the matter was dropped. It was known, however, that

they must all come back to London before they started for their seat of

government, and therefore the subject did not at present assume its

difficult aspect. There was a tacit understanding among them that

everything should be done to make the journey pleasant to the young

mother who was in search of her son; and, in addition to this, Lady

Rowley had her own little understanding, which was very tacit indeed,

that in Mr Glascock might be found an escape from one of their great

family difficulties.

 

‘You had better take this, papa,’ Mrs Trevelyan had said, when she

received from the office of Mr Bideawhile a cheque payable to her order

for the money sent to her by her husband’s direction.

 

‘I do not want the man’s money,’ said Sir Marmaduke. ‘But you are going

to this place for my sake, papa and it is right that he should bear the

expense for his own wife. And, papa, you must remember always that

though his mind is distracted on this horrible business, he is not a

bad man. No one is more liberal or more just about money.’ Sir

Marmaduke’s feelings on the matter were very much the same as those

which had troubled Mr Outhouse, and he, personally, refused to touch

the money; but his daughter paid her own share of the expenses of the

journey.

 

They travelled at their ease, stopping at Paris, and at Geneva, and at

Milan. Lady Rowley thought that she was taken very fast, because she

was allowed to sleep only two nights at each of these places, and Sir

Rowley himself thought that he had achieved something of a Hannibalian

enterprise in taking five ladies and two maids over the Simplon and

down into the plains of Lombardy, with nobody to protect him but a

single courier. He had been a little nervous about it, being

unaccustomed to European travelling, and had not at first realised the

fact that the journey is to be made with less trouble than one from the

Marble Arch to Mile End. ‘My dears,’ he said to his younger daughters,

as they were rattling round the steep downward twists and turns of the

great road, ‘you must sit quite still on these descents, or you do not

know where you may go. The least thing would overset us.’ But Lucy and

Sophy soon knew better, and became so intimate with the mountain, under

the friendly guidance of their courier, that before the plains were

reached, they were in and out, and here and there, and up and down, as

though they had been bred among the valleys of the pass. There would

come a ringing laugh from some rock above their head, and Lady Rowley

looking up would see their dresses fluttering on a pinnacle which

appeared to her to be fit only for a bird; and there would be the

courier behind them, with two parasols, and a shawl, and a cloak, and

an eye-glass, and a fine pair of grizzled whiskers. They made an Alpine

club of their own, refusing to admit their father because he would not

climb up a rock, and Nora thought of the letters about it which she

would write to her lover, only that she had determined that she would

not write to him at all without telling her mother, and Mrs Trevelyan

would for moments almost forget that she had been robbed of her child.

 

From Milan they went on to Florence, and though they were by that time

quite at home in Italy, and had become critical judges of Italian inns

and Italian railways, they did not find that journey to be quite so

pleasant. There is a romance to us still in the name of Italy which a

near view of many details in the country fails to realise. Shall we say

that a journey through Lombardy is about as interesting as one through

the flats of Cambridgeshire and the fens of Norfolk? And the station of

Bologna is not an interesting spot in which to spend an hour or two,

although it may be conceded that provisions may be had there much

better than any that can be procured at our own railway stations. From

thence they went, still by rail, over the Apennines, and unfortunately

slept during the whole time. The courier had assured them that if they

would only look out they would see the castles of which they had read

in novels; but the day had been very hot, and Sir Marmaduke had been

cross, and Lady Rowley had been weary, and so not a castle was seen.

‘Pistoia, me lady, this,’ said the courier opening the door ‘to stop

half an hour.’ ‘Oh, why was it not Florence?’ Another hour and a half!

So they all went to sleep again, and were very tired when they reached

the beautiful city.

 

During the next day they rested at their inn, and sauntered through the

Duomo, and broke their necks looking up at the inimitable glories of

the campanile. Such a one as Sir Marmaduke had of course not come to

Florence without introductions. The Foreign Office is always very civil

to its next-door neighbours of the colonies, civil and cordial, though

perhaps a little patronising. A minister is a bigger man than a

governor; and the smallest of the diplomatic fry are greater swells

than even secretaries in quite important dependencies. The attache,

though he be unpaid, dwells in a capital, and flirts with a countess.

The governor’s right-hand man is confined to an island, and dances with

a planter’s daughter. The distinction is quite understood, but is not

incompatible with much excellent good feeling on the part of the

superior department. Sir Marmaduke had come to Florence fairly provided

with passports to Florentine society, and had been mentioned in more

than one letter as the distinguished Governor of the Mandarins, who had

been called home from his seat of government on a special mission of

great importance. On the second day he went out to call at the embassy

and to leave his cards. ‘Have you been able to learn whether he is

here?’ asked Lady Rowley of her husband in a whisper, as soon as they

were alone.

 

‘Who, Trevelyan?’

 

I did not suppose you could learn about him,