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

with her husband

in the cottage at Twickenham. Her life was dreary enough, and there was

but very little of hope in it to make its dreariness supportable. As

often happens in periods of sickness, the single friend who could now

be of service to the one or to the other was the doctor. He came daily

to them, and with that quick growth of confidence which medical

kindness always inspires, Trevelyan told to this gentleman all the

history of his married life and all that Trevelyan told to him he

repeated to Trevelyan’s wife. It may therefore be understood that

Trevelyan, between them, was treated like a child.

 

Dr. Nevill had soon been able to tell Mrs Trevelyan that her husband’s

health had been so shattered as to make it improbable that he should

ever again be strong, either in body or in mind. He would not admit,

even when treating his patient like a child, that he had ever been mad,

and spoke of Sir Marmaduke’s threat as unfortunate. ‘But what could

papa have done?’ asked the wife.

 

‘It is often, no doubt, difficult to know what to do: but threats are

seldom of avail to bring a man back to reason. Your father was angry

with him, and yet declared that he was mad. That in itself was hardly

rational. One does not become angry with a madman.’

 

One does not become angry with a madman; but while a man has power in

his hands over others, and when he misuses that power grossly and

cruelly, who is there that will not be angry? The misery of the insane

more thoroughly excites our pity than any other suffering to which

humanity is subject; but it is necessary that the madness should be

acknowledged to be madness before the pity can be felt. One can

forgive, or, at any rate, make excuses for any injury when it is done;

but it is almost beyond human nature to forgive an injury when it is

a-doing, let the condition of the doer be what it may. Emily Trevelyan

at this time suffered infinitely. She was still willing to yield in all

things possible, because her husband was ill, because perhaps he was

dying; but she could no longer satisfy herself with thinking that all

that she had admitted, all that she was still ready to admit, had been

conceded in order that her concessions might tend to soften the

afflictions of one whose reason was gone. Dr. Nevill said that her

husband was not mad, and indeed Trevelyan seemed now to be so clear in

his mind that she could not doubt what the doctor said to her. She

could not think that he was mad, and yet he spoke of the last two years

as though he had suffered from her almost all that a husband could

suffer from a wife’s misconduct. She was in doubt about his health. ‘He

may recover,’ the doctor said; ‘but he is so weak that the slightest

additional ailment would take him off.’ At this time Trevelyan could

not raise himself from his bed, and was carried, like a child, from one

room to another. He could eat nothing solid, and believed himself to be

dying. In spite of his weakness, and of his savage memories in regard

to the past he treated his wife on all ordinary subjects with

consideration. He spoke much of his money, telling her that he had not

altered, and would not alter, the will that he had made immediately on

his marriage. Under that will all his property would be hers for her

life, and would go to their child when she was dead. To her this will

was more than just, it was generous in the confidence which it placed in

her; and he told his lawyer, in her presence, that, to the best of his

judgment, he need not change it. But still there passed hardly a day in

which he did not make some allusion to the great wrong which he had

endured, throwing in her teeth the confessions which she had made and

almost accusing her of that which she certainly never had confessed,

even when, in the extremity of her misery at Casalunga, she had thought

that it little mattered what she said, so that for the moment he might

be appeased. If he died, was he to die in this belief? If he lived, was

he to live in this belief? And if he did so believe, was it possible

that he should still trust her with his money and with his child?

 

‘Emily,’ he said one day, ‘it has been a terrible tragedy, has it not?’

She did not answer his question, sitting silent as it was her custom to

do when he addressed her after such fashion as this. At such times she

would not answer him; but she knew that he would press her for an

answer. ‘I blame him more than I do you,’ continued Trevelyan,

‘infinitely more. He was a serpent intending to sting me from the first,

not knowing perhaps how deep the sting would go.’ There was no question

in this, and the assertion was one which had been made so often that

she could let it pass. ‘You are young, Emily, and it may be that you

will marry again.

 

‘Never,’ she said, with a shudder. It seemed to her then that marriage

was so fearful a thing that certainly she could never venture upon it

again.

 

‘All I ask of you is, that should you do so, you will be more careful

of your husband’s honour.’

 

‘Louis,’ she said, getting up and standing close to him, ‘tell me what

it is that you mean.’ It was now his turn to remain silent, and hers to

demand an answer. ‘I have borne much,’ she continued, ‘because I would

not vex you in your illness.’

 

‘You have borne much?’

 

‘Indeed and indeed, yes. What woman has ever borne more!’

 

‘And I?’ said he.

 

‘Dear Louis, let us understand each other at last. Of what do you

accuse me? Let us, at any rate, know each other’s thoughts on this

matter, of which each of us is ever thinking.’

 

‘I make no new accusation.’

 

‘I must protest then against your using words which seem to convey

accusation. Since marriages were first known upon earth, no woman has

ever been truer to her husband than I have been to you.’

 

‘Were you lying to me then at Casalunga when you acknowledged that you

had been false to your duties?’

 

‘If I acknowledged that, I did lie. I never said that; but yet I did

lie, believing it to be best for you that I should do so. For your

honour’s sake, for the child’s sake, weak as you are, Louis, I must

protest that it was so. I have never injured you by deed or thought.’

 

‘And yet you have lied to me! Is a lie no injury—and such a lie! Emily,

why did you lie to me! You will tell me tomorrow that you never lied,

and never owned that you had lied.’

 

Though it should kill him, she must tell him the truth now. ‘You were

very ill at Casalunga,’ she said, after a pause.

 

‘But not so ill as I am now. I could breathe that air. I could live

there. Had I remained I should have been well now; but what of that?’

 

‘Louis, you were dying there. Pray, pray listen to me. We thought that

you were dying; and we knew also that you would be taken from that

house.’

 

‘That was my affair. Do you mean that I could not keep a house over my

head?’ At this moment he was half lying, half sitting, in a large easy

chair in the little drawing-room of their cottage, to which he had been

carried from the adjoining bedroom. When not excited, he would sit for

hours without moving, gazing through the open window, sometimes with

some pretext of a book lying within the reach of his hand; but almost

without strength to lift it, and certainly without power to read it.

But now he had worked himself up to so much energy that he almost

raised himself up in his chair, as he turned towards his wife. ‘Had I

not the world before me, to choose a house in?’

 

‘They would have put you somewhere, and I could not have reached you.’

 

‘In a madhouse, you mean. Yes if you had told them.’

 

‘Will you listen, dear Louis? We knew that it was our duty to bring you

home; and as you would not let me come to you, and serve you, and

assist you to come here where you are safe unless I owned that you had

been right, I said that you had been right.’

 

‘And it was a lie you say now?’

 

‘All that is nothing. I can not go through it; nor should you. There is

the only question. You do not think that I have been? I need not say

the thing. You do not think that?’ As she asked the question, she knelt

beside him, and took his hand in hers, and kissed it.‘say that you do

not think that, and I will never trouble you further about the past.’

 

‘Yes, that is it. You will never trouble me!’ She glanced up into his

face and saw there the old look which he used to wear when he was at

Willesden and at Casalunga; and there had come again the old tone in

which he had spoken to her in the bitterness of his wrath, the look and

the tone, which had made her sure that he was a madman. ‘The craft and

subtlety of women passes everything!’ he said. ‘And so at last I am to

tell you that from the beginning it has been my doing. I will never say

so, though I should die in refusing to do it.’

 

After that there was no possibility of further conversation, for there

came upon him a fit of coughing, and then he swooned; and in

half-an-hour he was in bed, and Dr. Nevill was by his side. ‘You must

not speak to him at all on this matter,’ said the doctor. ‘But if he

speaks to me?’ she asked. ‘Let it pass,’ said the doctor. ‘Let the

subject be got rid of with as much ease as you can. He is very ill now,

and even this might have killed him.’ Nevertheless, though this seemed

to be stern, Dr. Nevill was very kind to her, declaring that the

hallucination in her husband’s mind did not really consist of a belief

in her infidelity, but arose from an obstinate determination to yield

nothing. ‘He does not believe it; but he feels that were he to say as

much, his hands would be weakened and yours strengthened.’

 

‘Can he then be in his sane mind?’

 

‘In one sense all misconduct is proof of insanity,’ said the doctor.

‘In his case the weakness of the mind has been consequent upon the

weakness of the body.’

 

Three days after that Nora visited Twickenham from Monkhams in

obedience to a telegram from her sister. ‘Louis,’ she said, ‘had become

so much weaker, that she hardly dared to be alone with him. Would Nora

come to her?’ Nora came of course, and Hugh met her at the station, and

brought her with him to the cottage. He asked whether he might see

Trevelyan, but was told that it would be better that he should not. He

had been almost continually silent since the last dispute which he had

with his wife; but he had given little signs that he was