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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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said, slowly.

 

She sat silent for fully a minute, with her hands clasped; and then she

answered him in a whisper. ‘I do not know,’ she said.

 

He also was silent for a while before he spoke again. He ceased to poke

with his stick, and got up from his chair, and stood a little apart

from her, not looking at her even yet.

 

‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘I understand. Well, Miss Rowley, I quite

perceive that I cannot press my suit any further now. But I shall not

despair altogether. I know this, that if I might possibly succeed, I

should be a very happy man. Goodbye, Miss Rowley.’

 

She took his offered hand and pressed it so warmly, that had he not

been manly and big-hearted, he would have taken such pressure as a sign

that she wished him to ask her again. But such was his nature.

 

‘God bless you,’ he said, ‘and make you happy, whatever you may choose

to do.’

 

Then he left her, and she heard him walk down the stairs with heavy

slow steps, and she thought that she could perceive from the sound that

he was sad at heart, but that he was resolved not to show his sadness

outwardly.

 

When she was alone she began to think in earnest of what she had done.

If the reader were told that she regretted the decision which she had

been forced to make so rapidly, a wrong impression would be given of

the condition of her thoughts. But there came upon her suddenly a

strange capacity for counting up and making a mental inventory of all

that might have been hers. She knew—and where is the girl so placed

that does not know?—that it is a great thing to be an English peeress.

Now, as she stood there thinking of it all, she was Nora Rowley without

a shilling in the world, and without a prospect of a shilling. She had

often heard her mother speak fearful words of future possible days,

when colonial governing should no longer be within the capacity of Sir

Marmaduke. She had been taught from a very early age that all the

material prosperity of her life must depend on matrimony. She could

never be comfortably disposed of in the world, unless some fitting man

who possessed those things of which she was so bare, should wish to

make her his wife. Now there had come a man so thoroughly fitting, so

marvellously endowed, that no worldly blessing would have been wanting.

Mr Glascock had more than once spoken to her of the glories of

Monkhams. She thought of Monkhams now more than she had ever thought of

the place before. It would have been a great privilege to be the

mistress of an old time-honoured mansion, to call oaks and elms her

own, to know that acres of gardens were submitted to her caprices, to

look at herds of cows and oxen, and be aware that they lowed on her own

pastures. And to have been the mother of a future peer of England, to

have the nursing, and sweet custody and very making of a future senator

would not that have been much? And the man himself who would have been

her husband was such a one that any woman might have trusted herself to

him with perfect confidence. Now that he was gone she almost fancied

that she did love him. Then she thought of Hugh Stanbury, sitting as he

had described himself, in a little dark closet at the office of the ‘D.

R.,’ in a very old inky shooting-coat, with a tarnished square-cut

cloth cap upon his head, with a short pipe in his mouth, writing at

midnight for the next morning’s impression, this or that article

according to the order of his master, ‘the tallowchandler’; for the

editor of the Daily Record was a gentleman whose father happened to be

a grocer in the City, and Hugh had been accustomed thus to describe the

family trade. And she might certainly have had the peer, and the acres

of garden, and the big house, and the senatorial honours; whereas the

tallowchandler’s journeyman had never been so outspoken. She told

herself from moment to moment that she had done right; that she would

do the same a dozen times, if a dozen times the experiment could be

repeated; but still, still, there was the remembrance of all that she

had lost. How would her mother look at her, her anxious, heavily-laden

mother, when the story should be told of all that had been offered to

her and all that had been refused?

 

As she was thinking of this Mrs Trevelyan came into the room. Nora felt

that though she might dread to meet her mother, she could be bold

enough on such an occasion before her sister. Emily had not done so

well with her own affairs, as to enable her to preach with advantage

about marriage.

 

‘He has gone?’ said Mrs Trevelyan, as she opened the door.

 

‘Yes, he has gone.’

 

‘Well? Do not pretend, Nora, that you will not tell me.’

 

‘There is nothing worth the telling, Emily.’

 

‘What do you mean? I am sure he has proposed. He told me in so many

words that it was his intention.’

 

‘Whatever has happened, dear, you may be quite sure that I shall never

be Mrs Glascock.’

 

‘Then you have refused him because of Hugh Stanbury!’

 

‘I have refused him, Emily, because I did not love him. Pray let that

be enough.’

 

Then she walked out of the room with something of stateliness in her

gait as might become a girl who had had it in her power to be the

future Lady Peterborough; but as soon as she reached the sacredness of

her own chamber, she gave way to an agony of tears. It would, indeed,

be much to be a Lady Peterborough. And she had, in truth, refused it

all because of Hugh Stanbury! Was Hugh Stanbury worth so great a

sacrifice?

CHAPTER XIV

THE CLOCK HOUSE AT NUNCOMBE PUTNEY

 

It was not till a fortnight had passed after the transaction recorded

in the last chapter, that Mrs Trevelyan and Nora Rowley first heard the

proposition that they should go to live at Nuncombe Putney. From bad to

worse the quarrel between the husband and the wife had gone on, till

Trevelyan had at last told his friend Lady Milborough that he had made

up his mind that they must live apart. She is so self-willed and

perhaps I am the same,’ he had said, ‘that it is impossible that we

should live together.’ Lady Milborough had implored and called to

witness all testimonies, profane and sacred, against such a step—had

almost gone down on her knees. Go to Naples; why not Naples? Or to the

quiet town in the west of France, which was so dull that a wicked

roaring lion, fond of cities and gambling, and eating and drinking,

could not live in such a place! Oh, why not go to the quiet town in the

west of France? Was not anything better than this flying in the face of

God and man? Perhaps Trevelyan did not himself like the idea of the

quiet dull French town. Perhaps he thought that the flying in the face

of God and man was all done by his wife, not by him; and that it was

right that his wife should feel the consequences. After many such

entreaties, many such arguments, it was at last decided that the house

in Curzon Street should be given up, and that he and his wife live

apart.

 

‘And what about Nora Rowley?’ asked Lady Milborough, who had become

aware by this time of Nora’s insane folly in having refused Mr

Glascock.

 

‘She will go with her sister, I suppose.’

 

‘And who will maintain her? Dear, dear, dear! It does seem as though

some young people were bent upon cutting their own throats, and all

their family’s.’

 

Poor Lady Milborough just at this time went as near to disliking the

Rowleys as was compatible with her nature. It was not possible to her

to hate anybody. She thought that she hated the Colonel Osbornes; but

even that was a mistake. She was very angry, however, with both Mrs

Trevelyan and her sister, and was disposed to speak of them as though

they had been born to create trouble and vexation.

 

Trevelyan had not given any direct answer to that question about Nora

Rowley’s maintenance, but he was quite prepared to bear all necessary

expense in that direction, at any rate till Sir Marmaduke should have

arrived. At first there had been an idea that the two sisters should go

to the house of their aunt, Mrs Outhouse. Mrs Outhouse was the wife as

the reader may perhaps remember of a clergyman living in the east of

London. St. Diddulph’s-in-the-East was very much in the east indeed. It

was a parish outside the City, lying near the river, very populous,

very poor, very low in character, and very uncomfortable. There was a

rectory-house, queerly situated at the end of a little blind lane, with

a gate of its own, and a so-called garden about twenty yards square.

But the rectory of St. Diddulph’s cannot be said to have been a

comfortable abode. The neighbourhood was certainly not alluring. Of

visiting society within a distance of three or four miles there was

none but what was afforded by the families of other East-end clergymen.

And then Mr Outhouse himself was a somewhat singular man. He was very

religious, devoted to his work, most kind to the poor; but he was

unfortunately a strongly-biased man, and at the same time very

obstinate withal. He had never allied himself very cordially with his

wife’s brother, Sir Marmaduke, allowing himself to be carried away by a

prejudice that people living at the West-end, who frequented clubs and

were connected in any way with fashion, could not be appropriate

companions for himself. The very title which Sir Marmaduke had acquired

was repulsive to him, and had induced him to tell his wife more than

once that Sir this or Sir that could not be fitting associates for a

poor East-end clergyman. Then his wife’s niece had married a man of

fashion, a man supposed at St. Diddulph’s to be very closely allied to

fashion; and Mr Outhouse had never been induced even to dine in the

house in Curzon Street. When, therefore, he heard that Mr and Mrs

Trevelyan were to be separated within two years of their marriage, it

could not be expected that he should be very eager to lend to the two

sisters the use of his rectory.

 

There had been interviews between Mr Outhouse and Trevelyan, and

between Mrs Outhouse and her niece; and then there was an interview

between Mr Outhouse and Emily, in which it was decided that Mrs

Trevelyan would not go to the parsonage of St. Diddulph’s. She had been

very outspoken to her uncle, declaring that she by no means intended to

carry herself as a disgraced woman. Mr Outhouse had quoted St. Paul to

her; ‘Wives, obey your husbands.’ Then she had got up and had spoken

very angrily. ‘I look for support from you,’ she said, ‘as the man who

is the nearest to me, till my father shall come.’ ‘But I cannot support

you in what is wrong,’ said the clergyman. Then Mrs Trevelyan had left

the room, and would not see her uncle again.

 

She carried things altogether with a high hand at this time. When old

Mr Bideawhile called upon her, her husband’s ancient family lawyer, she

told that gentleman that if it was her husband’s will that

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