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

young lady, and tells her candidly that there

will be potatoes for the two of them sufficient, as he hopes, of

potatoes, but no more. As a matter of course the young lady replies

that she for her part will be quite content to take the parings for her

own eating. Then they rush deliciously into each others arms and the

matter is settled. For, though the convictions arising from the former

line of argument may be set aside as often as need be, those reached

from the latter are generally conclusive. That such a settlement will

always be better for the young gentleman and the young lady concerned

than one founded on a sterner prudence is more than one may dare to

say; but we do feel sure that that country will be most prosperous in

which such leaps in the dark are made with the greatest freedom.

 

Our friend Hugh, as he sat smoking on the knifeboard of the omnibus,

determined that he would risk everything. If it were ordained that

prudence should prevail, the prudence should be hers. Why should he

take upon himself to have prudence enough for two, seeing that she was

so very discreet in all her bearings? Then he remembered the touch of

her hand, which he still felt upon his palm as he sat handling his

pipe, and he told himself that after that he was bound to say a word

more. And moreover he confessed to himself that he was compelled by a

feeling that mastered him altogether. He could not get through an

hour’s work without throwing down his pen and thinking of Nora Rowley.

It was his destiny to love her and there was, to his mind, a mean,

pettifogging secrecy, amounting almost to daily lying, in his thus

loving her and not telling her that he loved her. It might well be that

she should rebuke him; but he thought that he could bear that. It might

well be that he had altogether mistaken that touch of her hand. After

all it had been the slightest possible motion of no more than one

finger. But he would at any rate know the truth. If she would tell him

at once that she did not care for him, he thought that he could get

over it; but life was not worth having while he lived in this shifty,

dubious, and uncomfortable state. So he made up his mind that he would

go to St. Diddulph’s with his heart in his hand.

 

In the mean time, Mr Bozzle had been twice to St. Diddulph’s and now he

made a third journey there, two days after Stanbury’s visit. Trevelyan,

who, in truth, hated the sight of the man, and who suffered agonies in

his presence, had, nevertheless, taught himself to believe that he

could not live without his assistance. That it should be so was a part

of the cruelty of his lot. Who else was there that he could trust? His

wife had renewed her intimacy with Colonel Osborne the moment that she

had left him. Mrs Stanbury, who had been represented to him as the most

correct of matrons, had at once been false to him and to her trust, in

allowing Colonel Osborne to enter her house. Mr and Mrs Outhouse, with

whom his wife had now located herself, not by his orders, were, of

course, his enemies. His old friend, Hugh Stanbury, had gone over to

the other side, and had quarrelled with him purposely, with malice

prepense, because he would not submit himself to the caprices of the

wife who had injured him. His own lawyer had refused to act for him;

and his fast and oldest ally, the very person who had sounded in his

ear the earliest warning note against that odious villain, whose daily

work it was to destroy the peace of families, even Lady Milborough had

turned against him! Because he would not follow the stupid prescription

which she, with pigheaded obstinacy, persisted in giving, because he

would not carry his wife off to Naples, she was ill-judging and

inconsistent enough to tell him that he was wrong! Who was then left to

him but Bozzle? Bozzle was very disagreeable. Bozzle said things, and

made suggestions to him which were as bad as pins stuck into his flesh.

But Bozzle was true to his employer, and could find out facts. Had it

not been for Bozzle, he would have known nothing of the Colonel’s

journey to Devonshire. Had it not been for Bozzle, he would never have

heard of the correspondence; and, therefore, when he left London, he

gave Bozzle a roving commission; and when he went to Paris, and from

Paris onwards, over the Alps into Italy, he furnished Bozzle with his

address. At this time, in the midst of all his misery, it never

occurred to him to inquire of himself whether it might be possible that

his old friends were right, and that he himself was wrong. From morning

to night he sang to himself melancholy silent songs of inward wailing,

as to the cruelty of his own lot in life and, in the mean time, he

employed Bozzle to find out for him how far that cruelty was carried.

 

Mr Bozzle was, of course, convinced that the lady whom he was employed

to watch was no better than she ought to be. That is the usual Bozzlian

language for broken vows, secrecy, intrigue, dirt, and adultery. It was

his business to obtain evidence of her guilt. There was no question to

be solved as to her innocency. The Bozzlian mind would have regarded

any such suggestion as the product of a green softness, the possession

of which would have made him quite unfit for his profession. He was

aware that ladies who are no better than they should be are often very

clever, so clever, as to make it necessary that the Bozzles who shall at

last confound them should be first-rate Bozzles, Bozzles quite at the

top of their profession and, therefore, he went about his work with

great industry and much caution. Colonel Osborne was at the present

moment in Scotland. Bozzle was sure of that. He was quite in the north

of Scotland. Bozzle had examined his map, and had found that Wick,

which was the Colonel’s post-town, was very far north indeed. He had

half a mind to run down to Wick, as he was possessed by a certain

honest zeal, which made him long to do something hard and laborious;

but his experience told him that it was very easy for the Colonel to

come up to the neighbourhood of St. Diddulph’s, whereas the lady could

not go down to Wick, unless she were to decide upon throwing herself

into her lover’s arms, whereby Bozzle’s work would be brought to an end.

He, therefore, confined his immediate operations to St. Diddulph’s.

 

He made acquaintance with one or two important persons in and about Mr

Outhouse’s parsonage. He became very familiar with the postman. He

arranged terms of intimacy, I am sorry to say, with the housemaid; and,

on the third journey, he made an alliance with the potboy at the Full

Moon. The potboy remembered well the fact of the child being brought to

‘our ‘ouse,’ as he called the Full Moon; and he was enabled to say,

that the same ‘gent as had brought the boy backards and forrards,’ had

since that been at the parsonage. But Bozzle was quite quick enough to

perceive that all this had nothing to do with the Colonel. He was led,

indeed, to fear that his ‘governor,’ as he was in the habit of calling

Trevelyan in his half-spoken soliloquies, that his governor was not as

true to him as he was to his governor. What business had that meddling

fellow Stanbury at St. Diddulph’s? for Trevelyan had not thought it

necessary to tell his satellite that he had quarrelled with his friend.

Bozzle was grieved in his mind when he learned that Stanbury’s

interference was still to be dreaded; and wrote to his governor, rather

severely, to that effect; but, when so writing, he was able to give no

further information. Facts, in such cases, will not unravel themselves

without much patience on the part of the investigators.