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Read books online » Fiction » He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📖

Book online «He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📖». Author Anthony Trollope



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If he laid any command upon her, she would execute it; but she

would never cease to tell him that he had illused her. She would din

it into his ears, let him come to her as often as he might with his

wise words. Wise words!

 

What was the use of wise words when a man was such a fool in nature?

And as for Colonel Osborne she would see him if he came to her three

times a day, unless her husband gave some clearly intelligible order to

the contrary. She was fortifying her mind with this resolution when

Colonel Osborne’s letter was brought to her. She asked whether any

servant was waiting for an answer. No the servant, who had left it, had

gone at once. She read the note, and sat working, with it before her,

for a quarter of an hour; and then walked over to her desk and answered

it.

 

‘My Dear Colonel Osborne,

 

It will be best to say nothing whatever about the occurrence of

yesterday; and if possible, not to think of it. As far as I am

concerned, I wish for no change except that people should be more

reasonable. You can call of course whenever you please; and I am very

grateful for your expression of friendship.

 

Yours most sincerely,

 

Emily Trevelyan.

 

‘Thanks for the words of the opera.’

 

When she had written this, being determined that all should be open and

above board, she put a penny stamp on the envelope, and desired that

the letter should be posted. But she destroyed that which she had

received from Colonel Osborne. In all things she would act as she would

have done if her husband had not been so foolish, and there could have

been no reason why she should have kept so unimportant a communication.

 

In the course of the day Trevelyan passed through the hall to the room

which he himself was accustomed to occupy behind the parlour, and as he

did so saw the note lying ready to be posted, took it up, and read the

address.

 

He held it for a moment in his hand, then replaced it on the hall

table, and passed on. When he reached his own table he sat down

hurriedly, and took up in his hand some Review that was lying ready for

him to read. But he was quite unable to fix his mind on the words

before him. He had spoken to his wife on that morning in the strongest

language he could use as to the unseemliness of her intimacy with

Colonel Osborne; and then, the first thing she had done when his back

was turned was to write to this very Colonel Osborne, and tell him, no

doubt, what had occurred between her and her husband. He sat thinking

of it all for many minutes. He would probably have declared himself

that he had thought of it for an hour as he sat there. Then he got up,

went upstairs and walked slowly into the drawing-room. There he found

his wife sitting with her sister. ‘Nora,’ he said, ‘I want to speak to

Emily. Will you forgive me, if I ask you to leave us for a few

minutes?’ Nora, with an anxious look at Emily, got up and left the

room.

 

‘Why do you send her away?’ said Mrs Trevelyan.

 

‘Because I wish to be alone with you for a few minutes. Since what I

said to you this morning, you have written to Colonel Osborne.’

 

‘Yes I have. I do not know how you have found it out; but I suppose you

keep a watch on me.’

 

‘I keep no watch on you. As I came into the house, I saw your letter

lying in the hall.’

 

‘Very well. You could have read it if you pleased.’

 

‘Emily, this matter is becoming very serious, and I strongly advise you

to be on your guard in what you say. I will bear much for you, and much

for our boy; but I will not bear to have my name made a reproach.’

 

‘Sir, if you think your name is shamed by me, we had better part,’ said

Mrs Trevelyan, rising from her chair, and confronting him with a look

before which his own almost quailed.

 

‘It may be that we had better part,’ he said, slowly. ‘But in the first

place I wish you to tell me what were the contents of that letter.’

 

‘If it was there when you came in, no doubt it is there still. Go and

look at it.’

 

‘That is no answer to me. I have desired you to tell me what are its

contents.’

 

‘I shall not tell you. I will not demean myself by repeating anything

so insignificant in my own justification. If you suspect me of writing

what I should not write, you will suspect me also of lying to conceal

it.’

 

‘Have you heard from Colonel Osborne this morning?’

 

‘I have.’

 

‘And where is his letter?’

 

‘I have destroyed it.’

 

Again he paused, trying to think what he had better do, trying to be

calm. And she stood still opposite to him, confronting him with the

scorn of her bright angry eyes. Of course, he was not calm. He was the

very reverse of calm. ‘And you refuse to tell me what you wrote,’ he

said.

 

‘The letter is there,’ she answered, pointing away towards the door.

‘If you want to play the spy, go and look at it for yourself.’

 

‘Do you call me a spy?’

 

‘And what have you called me? Because you are a husband, is the

privilege of vituperation to be all on your side?’

 

‘It is impossible that I should put up with this,’ he said ‘quite

impossible. This would kill me. Anything is better than this. My

present orders to you are not to see Colonel Osborne, not to write to

him or have any communication with him, and to put under cover to me,

unopened, any letter that may come from him. I shall expect your

implicit obedience to these orders.’

 

‘Well go on.’

 

‘Have I your promise?’

 

‘No no. You have no promise. I will make no promise exacted from me in

so disgraceful a manner.’

 

‘You refuse to obey me?’

 

‘I will refuse nothing, and will promise nothing.’

 

‘Then we must part—that is all. I will take care that you shall hear

from me before tomorrow morning.’

 

So saying, he left the room, and, passing through the hall, saw that

the letter had been taken away.

CHAPTER XI

LADY MILBOROUGH AS AMBASSADOR

 

‘Of course, I know you are right,’ said Nora to her sister ‘right as

far as Colonel Osborne is concerned; but nevertheless you ought to give

way.’

 

‘And be trampled upon?’ said Mrs Trevelyan.

 

‘Yes; and be trampled upon, if he should trample on you, which, however,

he is the last man in the world to do.’

 

‘And to endure any insult and any names? You yourself you would be a

Griselda, I suppose.’

 

‘I don’t want to talk about myself,’ said Nora, ‘nor about Griselda.

But I know that, however unreasonable it may seem, you had better give

way to him now and tell him what there was in the note to Colonel

Osborne.’

 

‘Never! He has ordered me not to see him or to write to him, or to open

his letters having, mind you, ordered just the reverse a day or two

before; and I will obey him. Absurd as it is, I will obey him. But as

for submitting to him, and letting him suppose that I think he is right—

never! I should be lying to him then, and I will never lie to him. He

has said that we must part, and I suppose it will be better so. How can

a woman live with a man that suspects her? He cannot take my baby from

me.’

 

There were many such conversations as the above between the two sisters

before Mrs Trevelyan received from her husband the communication with

which she had been threatened. And Nora, acting on her own judgment in

the matter, made an attempt to see Mr Trevelyan, writing to him a

pretty little note, and beseeching him to be kind to her. But he

declined to see her, and the two women sat at home, with the baby

between them, holding such pleasant conversations as that above

narrated. When such tempests occur in a family, a woman will generally

suffer the least during the thick of the tempest. While the hurricane

is at the fiercest, she will be sustained by the most thorough

conviction that the right is on her side, that she is aggrieved, that

there is nothing for her to acknowledge, and no position that she need

surrender. Whereas her husband will desire a compromise, even amidst

the violence of the storm. But afterwards, when the wind has lulled,

but while the heavens around are still all black and murky, then the

woman’s sufferings begin. When passion gives way to thought and memory,

she feels the loneliness of her position, the loneliness, and the

possible degradation. It is all very well for a man to talk about his

name and his honour; but it is the woman’s honour and the woman’s name

that are, in truth, placed in jeopardy. Let the woman do what she will,

the man can, in truth, show his face in the world and, after awhile,

does show his face. But the woman may be compelled to veil hers, either

by her own fault, or by his. Mrs Trevelyan was now told that she was to

be separated from her husband, and she did not, at any rate, believe

that she had done any harm. But, if such separation did come, where

could she live, what could she do, what position in the world would she

possess? Would not her face be, in truth, veiled as effectually as

though she had disgraced herself and her husband?

 

And then there was that terrible question about the child. Mrs

Trevelyan had said a dozen times to her sister that her husband could

not take the boy away from her. Nora, however, had never assented to

this, partly from a conviction of her own ignorance, not knowing what

might be the power of a husband in such a matter, and partly thinking

that any argument would be good and fair by which she could induce her

sister to avoid a catastrophe so terrible as that which was now

threatened.

 

‘I suppose he could take him, if he chose,’ she said at last.

 

‘I don’t believe he is wicked like that,’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘He would

not wish to kill me.’

 

‘But he will say that he loves baby as well as you do.’

 

‘He will never take my child from me. He could never be so bad as

that.’

 

‘And you will never be so bad as to leave him,’ said Nora after a

pause. ‘I will not believe that it can come to that. You know that he

is good at heart, that nobody on earth loves you as he does.’

 

So they went on for two days, and on the evening the second day there

came a letter from Trevelyan to his wife. They had neither of them seen

him, although he had been in and out of the house. And on the afternoon

of the Sunday a new grievance, a very terrible grievance, was added to

those which Mrs Trevelyan was made to bear. Her husband had told one of

the servants in the house that Colonel

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