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

CHAPTER XCV

TREVELYAN BACK IN ENGLAND

 

Nora, with Lady Milborough’s carriage, and Lady Milborough’s coach and

footman, and with a cab ready for the luggage close behind the

carriage, was waiting at the railway station when the party from Dover

arrived. She soon saw Hugh upon the platform, and ran to him with her

news. They had not a word to say to each other of themselves, so

anxious were they both respecting Trevelyan. ‘We got a bed-carriage for

him at Dover,’ said Hugh; ‘and I think he has borne the journey pretty

well but he feels the heat almost as badly as in Italy. You will hardly

know him when you see him.’ Then, when the rush of passengers was gone,

Trevelyan was brought out by Hugh and the courier, and placed in Lady

Milborough’s carriage. He just smiled as his eye fell upon Nora, but he

did not even put out his hand to greet her.

 

‘I am to go in the carriage with him,’ said his wife.

 

‘Of course you are, and so will I and Louey. I think there will be room:

it is so large. There is a cab for all the things. Dear Emily, I am so

glad to see you.’

 

‘Dearest Nora! I shall be able to speak to you by-and-by, but you must

not be angry with me now. How good you have been.’

 

‘Has not she been good? I don’t understand about the cottage. It

belongs to some friend of hers; and I have not been able to say a word

about the rent. It is so nice and looks upon the river. I hope that he

will like it.’

 

‘You will be with us?’

 

‘Not just at first. Lady Milborough thinks I had better not, that he

will like it better. I will come down almost every day, and will stay

if you think he will like it.’

 

These few words were said while the men were putting Trevelyan into the

carriage. And then another arrangement was made. Hugh hired a second

cab, in which he and the courier made a part of the procession; and so

they all went to Twickenham together. Hugh had not yet learned that he

would be rewarded by coming back alone with Nora in the carriage.

 

The cottage by the River Thames, which, as far as the party knew, was

nameless, was certainly very much better than the house on the top of

the hill at Casalunga. And now, at last, the wife would sleep once more

under the same roof with her husband, and the separation would be over.

‘I suppose that is the Thames,’ said Trevelyan; and they were nearly

the only words he spoke in Nora’s hearing that evening. Before she

started on her return journey, the two sisters were together for a few

minutes, and each told her own budget of news in short, broken

fragments. There was not much to tell. ‘He is so weak,’ said Mrs

Trevelyan, ‘that he can do literally nothing. He can hardly speak. When

we give him wine, he will say a few words, and his mind seems then to

be less astray than it was. I have told him just simply that it was all

my doing, that I have been in fault all through, and every now and then

he will say a word, to shew me that he remembers that I have

confessed.’

 

‘My poor Emily!’

 

‘It was better so. What does it all matter? He had suffered so, that I

would have said worse than that to give him relief. The pride has gone

out of me so, that I do not regard what anybody may say. Of course, it

will be said that I went astray, and that he forgave me.’

 

‘Nobody will say that, dearest; nobody. Lady Milborough is quite aware

how it all was.’

 

‘What does it signify? There are things in life worse even than a bad

name.’

 

‘But he does not think it?’

 

‘Nora, his mind is a mystery to me. I do not know what is in it.

Sometimes I fancy that all facts have been forgotten, and that he

merely wants the childish gratification of being assured that he is the

master. Then, again, there come moments, in which I feel sure that

suspicion is lurking within him, that he is remembering the past, and

guarding against the future. When he came into this house, a quarter of

an hour ago, he was fearful lest there was a mad doctor lurking about

to pounce on him. I can see in his eye that he had some such idea. He

hardly notices Louey though there was a time, even at Casalunga, when

he would not let the child out of his sight.’

 

‘What will you do now?’

 

‘I will try to do my duty, that is all.’

 

‘But you will have a doctor?’

 

‘Of course. He was content to see one in Paris, though he would not let

me be present. Hugh saw the gentleman afterwards, and he seemed to

think that the body was worse than the mind.’ Then Nora told her the

name of a doctor whom Lady Milborough had suggested, and took her

departure along with Hugh in the carriage.

 

In spite of all the sorrow that they had witnessed and just left, their

journey up to London was very pleasant. Perhaps there is no period so

pleasant among all the pleasant periods of lovemaking as that in which

the intimacy between the lovers is so assured, and the coming event so

near, as to produce and to endure conversation about the ordinary

little matters of life—what can be done with the limited means at their

mutual disposal; how that life shall be begun which they are to lead

together; what idea each has of the other’s duties; what each can do

for the other; what each will renounce for the other. There was a true

sense of the delight of intimacy in the girl who declared that she had

never loved her lover so well as when she told him how many pairs of

stockings she had got. It is very sweet to gaze at the stars together;

and it is sweet to sit out among the haycocks. The reading of poetry

together, out of the same book, with brows all close, and arms all

mingled, is very sweet. The pouring out of the whole heart in written

words, which the writer knows would be held to be ridiculous by any

eyes, and any ears, and any sense, but the eyes and ears and sense of

the dear one to whom they are sent, is very sweet; but for the girl who

has made a shirt for the man that she loves, there has come a moment in

the last stitch of it, sweeter than any that stars, haycocks, poetry,

or superlative epithets have produced. Nora Rowley had never as yet

been thus useful on behalf of Hugh Stanbury. Had she done so, she might

perhaps have been happier even than she was during this journey, but,

without the shirt, it was one of the happiest moments of her life.

There was nothing now to separate them but their own prudential

scruples and of them it must be acknowledged that Hugh Stanbury had

very few. According to his shewing, he was as well provided for

matrimony as the gentleman in the song, who came out to woo his bride

on a rainy night. In live stock he was not so well provided as the

Irish gentleman to whom we allude; but in regard to all other

provisions for comfortable married life, he had, or at a moment’s

notice could have, all that was needed. Nora could live just where she

pleased—not exactly in Whitehall Gardens or Belgrave Square; but the

New Road, Lupus Street, Montague Place, the North Bank, or Kennington

Oval, with all their surrounding crescents, terraces, and rows,

offered, according to him, a choice so wide, either for lodgings or

small houses, that their only embarrassment was in their riches. He had

already insured his life for a thousand pounds, and, after paying

yearly for that, and providing a certain surplus for saving, five

hundred a year was the income on which they were to commence the world.

‘Of course, I wish it were five thousand for your sake,’ he said; ‘and

I wish I were a Cabinet Minister, or a duke, or a brewer; but, even in

heaven, you know all the angels can’t be archangels.’ Nora assured him

that she would be quite content with virtues simply angelic. ‘I hope

you like mutton-chops and potatoes; I do,’ he said. Then she told him

of her ambition about the beefsteak, acknowledging that, as it must

now be shared between two, the glorious idea of putting a part of it

away in a cupboard must be abandoned. ‘I don’t believe in beefsteaks,’ he said. ‘A beefsteak may mean anything. At our club, a

beefsteak is a sumptuous and expensive luxury. Now, a mutton-chop

means something definite, and must be economical.’

 

‘Then we will have the mutton-chops at home,’ said Nora, ‘and you shall

go to your club for the beefsteak.’

 

When they reached Eccleston Square, Nora insisted on taking Hugh

Stanbury up to Lady Milborough. It was in vain that he pleaded that he

had come all the way from Dover on a very dusty day, all the way from

Dover, including a journey in a Hansom cab to Twickenham and back,

without washing his hands and face. Nora insisted that Lady Milborough

was such a dear, good, considerate creature, that she would understand

all that, and Hugh was taken into her presence. ‘I am delighted to see

you, Mr Stanbury,’ said the old lady, ‘and hope you will think that

Nora is in good keeping.’

 

‘She has been telling me how very kind you have been to her. I do not

know where she could have bestowed herself if you had not received

her.’

 

‘There, Nora I told you he would say so. I won’t tell tales, Mr

Stanbury; but she had all manner of wild plans which I knew you

wouldn’t approve. But she is very amiable, and if she will only submit

to you as well as she does to me.’

 

‘I don’t mean to submit to him at all, Lady Milborough, of course not. I

am going to marry for liberty.’

 

‘My dear, what you say, you say in joke; but