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

CHAPTER XXII

SHEWING HOW MISS STANBURY BEHAVED TO HER TWO NIECES

 

The triumph of Miss Stanbury when she received her niece’s letter was

certainly very great—so great that in its first flush she could not

restrain herself from exhibiting it to Dorothy. ‘Well well what do you

think, Dolly?’

 

‘About what, aunt? I don’t know who the letter is from.’

 

‘Nobody writes to me now so constant as your sister Priscilla. The

letter is from Priscilla. Colonel Osborne has been at the Clock House,

after all. I knew that he would be there. I knew it! I knew it!’

 

Dorothy, when she heard this, was dumbfounded. She had rested her

defence of her mother and sister on the impossibility of any such visit

being admitted. According to her lights the coming of Colonel Osborne,

after all that had been said, would be like the coming of Lucifer

himself. The Colonel was, to her imagination, a horrible roaring lion.

She had no idea that the erratic manoeuvres of such a beast might be

milder and more innocent than the wooing of any turtle-dove. She would

have asked whether the roaring lion had gone away again, and, if so,

whether he had taken his prey with him, were it not that she was too

much frightened at the moment to ask any question. That her mother and

sister should have been wilfully concerned in such iniquity was quite

incredible to her, but yet she did not know how to defend them. ‘But

are you quite sure of it, Aunt Stanbury? May there not be another

mistake?’

 

‘No mistake this time, I think, my dear. Any way, Priscilla says that

he is there.’ Now in this there was a mistake. Priscilla had said

nothing of the kind.

 

‘You don’t mean that he is staying at the Clock House, Aunt Stanbury?’

 

‘I don’t know where he is now. I’m not his keeper. And, I’m glad to

say, I’m not the lady’s keeper either. Ah, me! It’s a bad business. You

can’t touch pitch and not be defiled, my dear. If your mother wanted

the Clock House, I would sooner have taken it for her myself than that

all this should have happened for the family’s sake.’

 

But Miss Stanbury, when she was alone, and when she had read her

niece’s three letters again and again, began to understand something of

Priscilla’s honesty, and began also to perceive that there might have

been a great difficulty respecting the Colonel, for which neither her

niece nor her sister-in-law could fairly be held to be responsible. It

was perhaps the plainest characteristic of all the Stanburys that they

were never wilfully dishonest. Ignorant, prejudiced, and passionate

they might be. In her anger Miss Stanbury, of Exeter, could be almost

malicious; and her niece at Nuncombe Putney was very like her aunt.

Each could say most cruel things, most unjust things, when actuated by

a mistaken consciousness of perfect right on her own side. But neither

of them could lie even by silence. Let an error be brought home to

either of them so as to be acknowledged at home and the error would be

assuredly confessed aloud. And, indeed, with differences in the shades,

Hugh and Dorothy were of the same nature. They were possessed of

sweeter tempers than their aunt and sister, but they were filled with

the same eager readiness to believe themselves to be right and to own

themselves to others to be wrong, when they had been constrained to

make such confession to themselves. The chances of life, and something

probably of inner nature, had made Dorothy mild and obedient; whereas,

in regard to Hugh, the circumstances of his life and disposition had

made him obstinate and self-reliant. But in all was to be found the

same belief in self which amounted almost to conceit, the same warmth of

affection, and the same love of justice.

 

When Miss Stanbury had again perused the correspondence, and had come

to see, dimly, how things had gone at Nuncombe Putney, when the

conviction came upon her mind that Priscilla had entertained a horror

as to the coming of this Colonel equal to that which she herself had

felt when her imagination painted to her all that her niece had

suffered, her heart was softened somewhat. She had declared to Dorothy

that pitch, if touched, would certainly defile; and she had, at first,

intended to send the same opinion, couched in very forcible words, to

her correspondents at the Clock House. They should not continue to go

astray for want of being told that they were going astray. It must be

acknowledged, too, that there was a certain amount of ignoble wrath in

the bosom of Miss Stanbury because her sister-in-law had taken the

Clock House. She had never been told, and had not even condescended to

ask Dorothy, whether the house was taken and paid for by her nephew on

behalf of his mother, or whether it was paid for by Mr Trevelyan on

behalf of his wife. In the latter case, Mrs Stanbury would, she

thought, be little more than an upper servant, or keeper as she

expressed it to herself. Such an arrangement appeared to her to be

quite disgraceful in a Stanbury; but yet she believed that such must be

the existing arrangement, as she could not bring herself to conceive

that Hugh Stanbury could keep such an establishment over his mother’s

head out of money earned by writing for a penny newspaper. There would

be a triumph of democracy in this which would vanquish her altogether.

She had, therefore, been anxious enough to trample on Priscilla and

upon all the affairs of the Clock House; but yet she had been unable to

ignore the nobility of Priscilla’s truth, and having acknowledged it to

herself she found herself compelled to acknowledge it aloud. She sat

down to think in silence, and it was not till she had fortified herself

by her first draught of beer, and till she had finished her first

portion of bread and cheese, that she spoke. ‘I have written to your

sister herself, this time,’ she said. ‘I don’t know that I ever wrote a

line to her before in my life.’

 

‘Poor Priscilla!’ Dorothy did not mean to be severe on her aunt, either

in regard to the letters which had not been written, or to the one

letter which now had been written. But Dorothy pitied her sister, whom

she felt to be in trouble.

 

‘Well; I don’t know about her being so poor. Priscilla, I’ll be bound,

thinks as well of herself as any of us do.’

 

‘She’d cut her fingers off before she’d mean to do wrong,’ said

Dorothy.

 

‘But what does that come to? What’s the good of that? It isn’t meaning

to do right that will save us. For aught I know, the Radicals may mean

to do right. Mr Beales means to do right perhaps.’

 

‘But, aunt if everybody did the best they could?’

 

‘Tush, my dear! you are getting beyond your depth. There are such

things still, thank God! as spiritual pastors and masters. Entrust

yourself to them. Do what they think right.’ Now if aught were known in

Exeter of Miss Stanbury, this was known that if any clergyman

volunteered to give to her, unasked and uninvited, counsel, either

ghostly or bodily, that clergyman would be sent from her presence with

a wigging which he would not soon forget. The thing had been tried more

than once, and the wigging had been complete. There was no more

attentive listener in church than Miss Stanbury; and she would, now and

again, appeal to a clergyman on some knotty point. But for the ordinary

authority of spiritual pastors and masters she shewed more of abstract

reverence than of practical obedience.

 

‘I’m sure Priscilla does the best she can,’ said Dorothy, going back to

the old subject.

 

‘Ah well yes. What I want to say about Priscilla is this. It is a

thousand pities she is so obstinate, so pigheaded, so certain that she

can manage everything for herself better than anybody else can for

her.’ Miss Stanbury was striving to say something good of her niece,

but found the task to be difficult and distasteful to her.

 

‘She has managed for mamma ever so many years; and since she took it we

have hardly ever been in debt,’ said Dorothy.

 

‘She’ll do all that, I don’t doubt. I don’t suppose she cares much for

ribbons and false hair for herself.’

 

‘Who? Priscilla! The idea of Priscilla with false hair!’

 

‘I dare say not, I dare say not. I do not think she’d spend her mother’s

money on things of that kind.’

 

‘Aunt Stanbury, you don’t know her.’

 

‘Ah; very well. Perhaps I don’t. But, come, my dear, you are very hard

upon me, and very anxious to take your sister’s part. And what is it

all about? I’ve just written to her as civil a letter as one woman ever

wrote to another. And if I had chosen, I could have could have h m m.’

Miss Stanbury, as she hesitated for words in which to complete her

sentence, revelled in the strength of the vituperation which she could

have poured upon her niece’s head, had she chosen to write her last

letter about Colonel Osborne in her severe strain.

 

‘If you have written kindly to her, I am so much obliged to you,’ said

Dorothy.

 

‘The truth is, Priscilla has meant to be right. Meaning won’t go for

much when the account is taken, unless the meaning comes from a proper

source. But the poor girl has done as well as she has known how. I

believe it is Hugh’s fault more than anybody else’s.’ This accusation

was not pleasant to Dorothy, but she was too intent just now on

Priscilla’s case to defend her brother, ‘That man never ought to have

been there; and that woman never ought to have been there. There cannot

be a doubt about that. If Priscilla were sitting there opposite to me,

she would own as much. I am sure she would.’ Miss Stanbury was quite

right if she meant to assert that Priscilla had owned as much to

herself. ‘And because I think so, I am willing to forgive her part in

the matter. To me, personally, she has always been rude—most

uncourteous and, and, and unlike a younger woman to an older one, and an

aunt, and all that. I suppose it is because she hates me.’

 

‘Oh, no, Aunt Stanbury!’

 

‘My dear, I suppose it is. Why else should she treat me in such a way?

But I do believe of her that she would rather eat an honest, dry crust,

than dishonest cake and ale.’

 

‘She would rather starve than pick up a crumb that was dishonest,’ said

Dorothy, fairly bursting out into tears.

 

‘I believe it. I do believe it. There; what more can I say? Clock

House, indeed! What matter what house you live in, so that you can pay

the rent of it honestly?’

 

‘But the rent is paid honestly,’ said Dorothy, amidst her sobs.

 

‘It’s paid, I don’t doubt. I dare say the woman’s husband and your

brother see to that among them. Oh, that my boy, Hugh, as he used to

be, should have brought us all to this! But there’s no knowing what

they won’t do among them. Reform, indeed!