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

her? And why was

he there so long? ‘No doubt he has brought a message from Mr

Trevelyan,’ said her sister. ‘I dare say he will send word that I ought

not to have come to my uncle’s house.’ Then, at last, both Mr Outhouse

and Hugh Stanbury came into the room in which they were all sitting.

The greetings were cold and unsatisfactory, and Nora barely allowed

Hugh to touch the tip of her fingers. She was very angry with him, and

yet she knew that her anger was altogether unreasonable. That he had

caused her to refuse a marriage that had so much to attract her was not

his sin, not that; but that, having thus overpowered her by his

influence, he should then have stopped. And yet Nora had told herself

twenty times that it was quite impossible that she should become Hugh

Stanbury’s wife and that, were Hugh Stanbury to ask her, it would

become her to be indignant with him, for daring to make a proposition

so outrageous. And now she was sick at heart, because he did not speak

to her!

 

He had, of course, come to St. Diddulph’s with a message from

Trevelyan, and his secret was soon told to them all. Trevelyan himself

was upstairs in the sanded parlour of the Full Moon public-house, round

the corner. Mrs Trevelyan, when she heard this, clasped her hands and

bit her lips. What was he there for? If he wanted to see her, why did

he not come boldly to the parsonage? But it soon appeared that he had

no desire to see his wife. ‘I am to take Louey to him,’ said Hugh

Stanbury, ‘if you will allow me.’

 

‘What to be taken away from me!’ exclaimed the mother. But Hugh assured

her that no such idea had been formed; that he would have concerned

himself in no such stratagem, and that he would himself undertake to

bring the boy back again within an hour. Emily was, of course, anxious

to be informed what other message was to be conveyed to her; but there

was no other message—no message either of love or of instruction.

 

‘Mr Stanbury,’ said the parson, ‘has left me something in my hands for

you.’ This ‘something’ was given over to her as soon as Stanbury had

left the house, and consisted of cheques for various small sums,

amounting in all to 200 pounds. ‘And he hasn’t said what I am to do

with it?’ Emily asked of her uncle. Mr Outhouse declared that the

cheques had been given to him without any instructions on that head. Mr

Trevelyan had simply expressed his satisfaction that his wife should be

with her uncle and aunt, had sent the money, and had desired to see the

child.

 

The boy was got ready, and Hugh walked with him in his arms round the

corner, to the Full Moon. He had to pass by the bar, and the barmaid

and the potboy looked at him very hard. ‘There’s a young ‘ooman has to

do with that ere little game,’ said the potboy ‘And it’s two to one the

young ‘ooman has the worst of it,’ said the barmaid. ‘They mostly

does,’ said the potboy, not without some feeling of pride in the

immunities of his sex. ‘Here he is,’ said Hugh, as he entered the

parlour. ‘My boy, there’s papa.’ The child at this time was more than a

year old, and could crawl about and use his own legs with the

assistance of a finger to his little hand, and could utter a sound

which the fond mother interpreted to mean papa; for with all her hot

anger against her husband, the mother was above all things anxious that

her child should be taught to love his father’s name. She would talk of

her separation from her husband as though it must be permanent; she

would declare to her sister how impossible it was that they should ever

again live together; she would repeat to herself over and over the tale

of the injustice that had been done to her, assuring herself that it

was out of the question that she should ever pardon the man; but yet,

at the bottom of her heart, there was a hope that the quarrel should be

healed before her boy would be old enough to understand the nature of

quarrelling. Trevelyan took the child on to his knee, and kissed him;

but the poor little fellow, startled by his transference from one male

set of arms to another, confused by the strangeness of the room, and by

the absence of things familiar to his sight, burst out into loud tears.

He had stood the journey round the corner in Hugh’s arms manfully, and,

though he had looked about him with very serious eyes, as he passed

through the bar, he had borne that, and his carriage up the stairs; but

when he was transferred to his father, whose air, as he took the boy,

was melancholy and lugubrious in the extreme, the poor little fellow

could endure no longer a mode of treatment so unusual, and, with a

grimace which for a moment or two threatened the coming storm, burst

out with an infantile howl. ‘That’s how he has been taught,’ said

Trevelyan.

 

‘Nonsense,’ said Stanbury. ‘He’s not been taught at all. It’s Nature.’

 

‘Nature that he should be afraid of his own father! He did not cry when

he was with you.’

 

‘No as it happened, he did not. I played with him when I was at

Nuncombe; but, of course, one can’t tell when a child will cry, and

when it won’t.’

 

‘My darling, my dearest, my own son!’ said Trevelyan, caressing the

child, and trying to comfort him; but the poor little fellow only cried

the louder. It was now nearly two months since he had seen his father,

and, when age is counted by months only, almost everything may be

forgotten in six weeks. ‘I suppose you must take him back again,’ said

Trevelyan, sadly.

 

‘Of course, I must take him back again. Come along, Louey, my boy.’

 

‘It is cruel very cruel,’ said Trevelyan. ‘No man living could love his

child better than I love mine or, for the matter of that, his wife. It

is very cruel.’

 

‘The remedy is in your own hands, Trevelyan,’ said Stanbury, as he

marched off with the boy in his arms.

 

Trevelyan had now become so accustomed to being told by everybody that

he was wrong, and was at the same time so convinced that he was right,

that he regarded the perversity of his friends as a part of the

persecution to which he was subjected. Even Lady Milborough, who

objected to Colonel Osborne quite as strongly as did Trevelyan himself,

even she blamed him now, telling him that he had done wrong to separate

himself from his wife. Mr Bideawhile, the old family lawyer, was of the

same opinion. Trevelyan had spoken to Mr Bideawhile as to the

expediency of making some lasting arrangement for a permanent

maintenance for his wife; but the attorney had told him that nothing of

the kind could be held to be lasting. It was clearly the husband’s duty

to look forward to a reconciliation, and Mr Bideawhile became quite

severe in the tone of rebuke which he assumed. Stanbury treated him

almost as though he were a madman. And as for his wife herself when she

wrote to him she would not even pretend to express any feeling of

affection. And yet, as he thought, no man had ever done more for a

wife. When Stanbury had gone with the child, he sat waiting for him in

the parlour of the public-house, as miserable a man as one could find.

 

He had promised himself something that should be akin to pleasure in

seeing his boy but it had been all disappointment and pain. What was it

that they expected him to do? What was it that they desired? His wife

had behaved with such indiscretion as almost to have compromised his

honour; and in return for that he was to beg her pardon, confess

himself to have done wrong, and allow her to return in triumph! That

was the light in which he regarded his own position; but he promised to

himself that let his own misery be what it might he would never so

degrade him. The only person who had been true to him was Bozzle. Let

them all look to it. If there were any further intercourse between his

wife and Colonel Osborne, he would take the matter into open court, and

put her away publicly, let Mr Bideawhile say what he might. Bozzle

should see to that and as to himself, he would take himself out of

England and hide himself abroad. Bozzle should know his address, but he

would give it to no one else. Nothing on earth should make him yield to

a woman who had ill-treated him nothing but confession and promise of

amendment on her part. If she would acknowledge and promise, then he

would forgive all, and the events of the last four months should never

again be mentioned by him. So resolving he sat and waited till Stanbury

should return to him.

 

When Stanbury got back to the parsonage with the boy he had nothing to

do but to take his leave. He would fain have asked permission to come

again, could he have invented any reason for doing so. But the child

was taken from him at once by its mother, and he was left alone with Mr

Outhouse. Nora Rowley did not even show herself, and he hardly knew how

to express sympathy and friendship for the guests at the parsonage,

without seeming to be untrue to his friend Trevelyan. ‘I hope all this

may come to an end soon,’ he said.

 

‘I hope it may, Mr Stanbury,’ said the clergyman; ‘but to tell you the

truth, it seems to me that Mr Trevelyan is so unreasonable a man, so

much like a madman indeed, that I hardly know how to look forward to

any future happiness for my niece.’ This was spoken with the utmost

severity that Mr Outhouse could assume.

 

‘And yet no man loves his wife more tenderly.’

 

‘Tender love should show itself by tender conduct, Mr Stanbury. What

has he done to his wife? He has blackened her name among all his

friends and hers, he has turned her out of his house, he has reviled

her and then thinks to prove how good he is by sending her money. The

only possible excuse is that he must be mad.’

 

Stanbury went back to the Full Moon, and retraced his steps with his

friend towards Lincoln’s Inn. Two minutes took him from the parsonage

to the public-house, but during these two minutes he resolved that he

would speak his mind roundly to Trevelyan as they returned home.

Trevelyan should either take his wife back again at once, or else he,

Stanbury, would have no more to do with him. He said nothing till they

had threaded together the maze of streets which led them from the

neighbourhood of the Church of St. Diddulph’s into the straight way of

the Commercial Road. Then he began. ‘Trevelyan,’ said he, ‘you are

wrong in all this from beginning to end.’

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

‘Just what I say. If there was anything in what your wife did to offend

you, a soft word from you would have put it all right.’

 

‘A soft word! How do you know what soft words I used?’

 

‘A soft word now would do it. You have only to bid her come back to

you, and let bygones be bygones, and all would be right.