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

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nothing to him. He was almost angry even with Mrs Trevelyan as he

arrived tired, heated, and very dusty, at Siena. It was his purpose to

sleep at Siena that night, and to go out to Casalunga early the next

morning. If the telegram had not been forwarded, he would send a

message on that evening. On inquiry, however, he found that the message

had been sent, and that the paper had been put into the Signore’s own

hand by the Sienese messenger. Then he got into some discourse with the

landlord about the strange gentleman at Casalunga. Trevelyan was

beginning to become the subject of gossip in the town, and people were

saying that the stranger was very strange indeed. The landlord thought

that if the Signore had any friends at all, it would be well that such

friends should come and look after him. Mr Glascock asked if Mr

Trevelyan was ill. It was not only that the Signore was out of health,

so the landlord heard, but that he was also somewhat—and then the

landlord touched his head. He eat nothing, and went nowhere, and spoke

to no one; and the people at the hospital to which Casalunga belonged

were beginning to be uneasy about their tenant. Perhaps Mr Glascock had

come to take him away. Mr Glascock explained that he had not come to

take Mr Trevelyan away but only to take away a little boy that was with

him. For this reason he was travelling with a maidservant, a fact for

which Mr Glascock clearly thought it necessary that he should give an

intelligible and credible explanation. The landlord seemed to think

that the people at the hospital would have been much rejoiced had Mr

Glascock intended to take Mr Trevelyan away also.

 

He started after a very early breakfast, and found himself walking up

over the stone ridges to the house between nine and ten in the morning.

He himself had sat beside the driver and had put the maid inside the

carriage. He had not deemed it wise to take an undivided charge of the

boy even from Casalunga to Siena. At the door of the house, as though

waiting for him, he found Trevelyan, not dirty as he had been before,

but dressed with much appearance of smartness. He had a brocaded cap on

his head, and a shirt with a laced front, and a worked waistcoat, and a

frockcoat, and coloured bright trowsers. Mr Glascock knew at once that

all the clothes which he saw before him had been made for Italian and

not for English wear; and could almost have said that they had been

bought in Siena and not in Florence. ‘I had not intended to impose this

labour on you, Mr Glascock,’ Trevelyan said, raising his cap to salute

his visitor.

 

‘For fear there might be mistakes, I thought it better to come myself,’

said Mr Glascock. ‘You did not wish to see Sir Marmaduke?’

 

‘Certainly not Sir Marmaduke,’ said Trevelyan, with a look of anger

that was almost grotesque.

 

‘And you thought it better that Mrs Trevelyan should not come.’

 

‘Yes, I thought it better, but not from any feeling of anger towards her.

If I could welcome my wife here, Mr Glascock, without a risk of wrath

on her part, I should be very happy to receive her. I love my wife, Mr

Glascock. I love her dearly. But there have been misfortunes. Never

mind. There is no reason why I should trouble you with them. Let us go

in to breakfast. After your drive you will have an appetite.’

 

Poor Mr Glascock was afraid to decline to sit down to the meal which

was prepared for him. He did mutter something about having already

eaten, but Trevelyan put this aside with a wave of his hand as he led

the way into a spacious room, in which had been set out a table with

almost a sumptuous banquet. The room was very bare and comfortless,

having neither curtains nor matting, and containing not above half a

dozen chairs. But an effort had been made to give it an air of Italian

luxury. The windows were thrown open, down to the ground, and the table

was decorated with fruits and three or four long-necked bottles.

Trevelyan waved with his hand towards an armchair, and Mr Glascock had

no alternative but to seat himself. He felt that he was sitting down to

breakfast with a madman; but if he did not sit down, the madman might

perhaps break out into madness. Then Trevelyan went to the door and

called aloud for Catarina. ‘In these remote places,’ said he, ‘one has

to do without the civilisation of a bell. Perhaps one gains as much in

quiet as one loses in comfort.’ Then Catarina came with hot meats and

fried potatoes, and Mr Glascock was compelled to help himself.

 

‘I am but a bad trencherman myself,’ said Trevelyan, ‘but I shall

lament my misfortune doubly if that should interfere with your

appetite.’ Then he got up and poured out wine into Mr Glascock’s glass.

‘They tell me that it comes from the Baron’s vineyard,’ said Trevelyan,

alluding to the wine-farm of Ricasoli, ‘and that there is none better

in Tuscany. I never was myself a judge of the grape, but this to me is

as palatable as any of the costlier French wines. How grand a thing

would wine really be, if it could make glad the heart of man. How truly

would one worship Bacchus if he could make one’s heart to rejoice. But

if a man have a real sorrow, wine will not wash it away, not though a

man were drowned in it, as Clarence was.’

 

Mr Glascock hitherto had spoken hardly a word. There was an attempt at

joviality about this breakfast or, at any rate, of the usual

comfortable luxury of hospitable entertainment which, coming as it did

from Trevelyan, almost locked his lips. He had not come there to be

jovial or luxurious, but to perform a most melancholy mission; and he

had brought with him his saddest looks, and was prepared for a few sad

words. Trevelyan’s speech, indeed, was sad enough, but Mr Glascock

could not take up questions of the worship of Bacchus at half a

minute’s warning. He eat a morsel, and raised his glass to his lips,

and felt himself to be very uncomfortable. It was necessary, however,

that he should utter a word. ‘Do you not let your little boy come in to

breakfast?’ he said.

 

‘He is better away,’ said Trevelyan gloomily.

 

‘But as we are to travel together,’ said Mr Glascock, ‘we might as well

make acquaintance.’

 

‘You have been a little hurried with me on that score,’ said Trevelyan.

‘I wrote certainly with a determined mind, but things have changed

somewhat since then.’

 

‘You do not mean that you will not send him?’

 

‘You have been somewhat hurried with me, I say. If I remember rightly,

I named no time, but spoke of the future. Could I have answered the

message which I received from you, I would have postponed your visit

for a week or so.’

 

‘Postponed it! Why, I am to be married the day after tomorrow. It was

just as much as I was able to do, to come here at all.’ Mr Glascock now

pushed his chair back from the table, and prepared himself to speak up.

‘Your wife expects her child now, and you will ever break her heart by

refusing to send him.’

 

‘Nobody thinks of my heart, Mr Glascock.’

 

‘But this is your own offer.’

 

‘Yes, it was my own offer, certainly. I am not going to deny my own

words, which have no doubt been preserved in testimony against me.’

 

‘Mr Trevelyan, what do you mean?’ Then, when he was on the point of

boiling over with passion, Mr Glascock remembered that his companion

was not responsible for his expressions. ‘I do hope you will let the

child go away with me,’ he said. ‘You cannot conceive the state of his

mother’s anxiety, and she will send him back at once if you demand it.’

 

‘Is that to be in good faith?’

 

‘Certainly, in good faith. I would lend myself to nothing, Mr

Trevelyan, that was not said and done in good faith.’

 

‘She will not break her word, excusing herself, because I am mad?’

 

‘I am sure that there is nothing of the kind in her mind.’

 

‘Perhaps not now; but such things grow. There is no iniquity, no breach

of promise, no treason that a woman will not excuse to herself—or a man

either—by the comfortable self-assurance that the person to be injured

is mad. A hound without a friend is not so cruelly treated. The outlaw,

the murderer, the perjurer has surer privileges than the man who is in

the way, and to whom his friends can point as being mad!’ Mr Glascock

knew or thought that he knew that his host in truth was mad, and he

could not, therefore, answer this tirade by an assurance that no such

idea was likely to prevail. ‘Have they told you, I wonder,’ continued

Trevelyan, ‘how it was that, driven to force and an ambuscade for the

recovery of my own child, I waylaid my wife and took him from her? I

have done nothing to forfeit my right as a man to the control of my own

family. I demanded that the boy should be sent to me, and she paid no

attention to my words. I was compelled to vindicate my own authority;

and then, because I claimed the right which belongs to a father, they

said that I was mad! Ay, and they would have proved it, too, had I not

fled from my country and hidden myself in this desert. Think of that,

Mr Glascock! Now they have followed me here, not out of love for me; and

that man whom they call a governor comes and insults me; and my wife

promises to be good to me, and says that she will forgive and forget!

Can she ever forgive herself her own folly, and the cruelty that has

made shipwreck of my life? They can do nothing to me here; but they

would entice me home because there they have friends, and can fee

doctors with my own money and suborn lawyers, and put me away somewhere

in the dark, where I shall be no more heard of among men! As you are a

man of honour, Mr Glascock tell me; is it not so?’

 

‘I know nothing of their plans beyond this, that you wrote me word that

you would send them the boy.’

 

‘But I know their plans. What you say is true. I did write you word, and

I meant it. Mr Glascock, sitting here alone from morning to night, and

lying down from night till morning, without companionship, without

love, in utter misery, I taught myself to feel that I should think more

of her than of myself.’

 

‘If you are so unhappy here, come back yourself with the child. Your

wife would desire nothing better.’

 

‘Yes and submit to her, and her father, and her mother. No Mr Glascock;

never, never. Let her come to me.’

 

‘But you will not receive her.’

 

‘Let her come in a proper spirit, and I will receive her. She is the

wife of my bosom, and I will receive her with joy. But if she is to

come to me and tell me that she forgives me—forgives me for the evil

that she has done—then, sir, she had better stay away. Mr Glascock, you

are going to be married. Believe me no man should submit to be forgiven

by