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

CHAPTER XXXVIII

VERDICT OF THE JURY ‘MAD, MY LORD’

 

Trevelyan was left alone at Turin when Mr Glascock went on to Florence

with his fair American friends. It was imperatively necessary that he

should remain at Turin, though he had no business there of any kind

whatever, and did not know a single person in the city. And of all

towns in Italy Turin has perhaps less of attraction to offer to the

solitary visitor than any other. It is new and parallelogrammatic as an

American town is very cold in cold weather, very hot in hot weather,

and now that it has been robbed of its life as a capital is as dull and

uninteresting as though it were German or English. There is the

Armoury, and the river Po, and a good hotel. But what are these things

to a man who is forced to live alone in a place for four days, or

perhaps a week? Trevelyan was bound to remain at Turin till he should

hear from Bozzle. No one but Bozzle knew his address; and he could do

nothing till Bozzle should have communicated to him tidings of what was

being done at St. Diddulph’s.

 

There is perhaps no great social question so imperfectly understood

among us at the present day as that which refers to the line which

divides sanity from insanity. That this man is sane and that other

unfortunately mad we do know well enough; and we know also that one man

may be subject to various hallucinations—may fancy himself to be a

teapot, or what not—and yet be in such a condition of mind as to call

for no intervention either on behalf of his friends, or of the law;

while another may be in possession of intellectual faculties capable of

lucid exertion for the highest purposes, and yet be so mad that bodily

restraint upon him is indispensable. We know that the sane man is

responsible for what he does, and that the insane man is irresponsible;

but we do not know, we only guess wildly, at the state of mind of those

who now and again act like madmen, though no court or council of

experts has declared them to be mad. The bias of the public mind is to

press heavily on such men till the law attempts to touch them, as

though they were thoroughly responsible; and then, when the law

interferes, to screen them as though they were altogether

irresponsible. The same juryman who would find a man mad who has

murdered a young woman, would in private life express a desire that the

same young man should be hung, crucified, or skinned alive, if he had

moodily and without reason broken faith to the young woman in lieu of

killing her. Now Trevelyan was, in truth, mad on the subject of his

wife’s alleged infidelity. He had abandoned everything that he valued

in the world, and had made himself wretched in every affair of life,

because he could not submit to acknowledge to himself the possibility

of error on his own part. For that, in truth, was the condition of his

mind. He had never hitherto believed that she had been false to her

vow, and had sinned against him irredeemably; but he had thought that

in her regard for another man she had slighted him; and, so thinking,

he had subjected her to a severity of rebuke which no high-spirited

woman could have borne. His wife had not tried to bear it, in her

indignation had not striven to cure the evil. Then had come his

resolution that she should submit, or part from him; and, having so

resolved, nothing could shake him. Though every friend he possessed was

now against him including even Lady Milborough he was certain that he

was right. Had not his wife sworn to obey him, and was not her whole

conduct one tissue of disobedience? Would not the man who submitted to

this find himself driven to submit to things worse? Let her own her

fault, let her submit, and then she should come back to him.

 

He had not considered, when his resolutions to this effect were first

forming themselves, that a separation between a man and his wife once

effected cannot be annulled, and as it were cured, so as to leave no

cicatrice behind. Gradually, as he spent day after day in thinking on

this one subject, he came to feel that even were his wife to submit, to

own her fault humbly, and to come back to him, this very coming back

would in itself be a new wound. Could he go out again with his wife on

his arm to the houses of those who knew that he had repudiated her

because of her friendship with another man? Could he open again that

house in Curzon Street, and let things go on quietly as they had gone

before? He told himself that it was impossible, that he and she were

ineffably disgraced, that, if reunited, they must live buried out of

sight in some remote distance. And he told himself, also, that he could

never be with her again night or day without thinking of the

separation. His happiness had been shipwrecked.

 

Then he had put himself into the hands of Mr Bozzle, and Mr Bozzle had

taught him that women very often do go astray. Mr Bozzle’s idea of

female virtue was not high, and he had opportunities of implanting his

idea on his client’s mind. Trevelyan hated the man. He was filled with

disgust by Bozzle’s words, and was made miserable by Bozzle’s presence.

Yet he came gradually to believe in Bozzle. Bozzle alone believed in

him. There were none but Bozzle who did not bid him to submit himself

to his disobedient wife. And then, as he came to believe in Bozzle, he

grew to be more and more assured that no one but Bozzle could tell him

facts. His chivalry, and love, and sense of woman’s honour, with

something of manly pride on his own part, so he told himself, had taught

him to believe it to be impossible that his wife should have sinned.

Bozzle, who knew the world, thought otherwise. Bozzle, who had no

interest in the matter, one way or the other, would find out facts.

What if his chivalry, and love, and manly pride had deceived him? There

were women who sinned. Then he prayed that his wife might not be such a

woman; and got up from his prayers almost convinced that she was a

sinner.

 

His mind was at work upon it always. Could it be that she was so base

as this, so vile a thing, so abject, such dirt, pollution, filth? But

there were such cases. Nay, were they not almost numberless? He found

himself reading in the papers records of such things from day to day,

and thought that in doing so he was simply acquiring experience

necessary for himself. If it were so, he had indeed done well to

separate himself from a thing so infamous. And if it were not so, how

could it be that that man had gone to her in Devonshire? He had

received from his wife’s hands a short note addressed to the man, in

which the man was desired by her not to go to her, or to write to her

again, because of her husband’s commands. He had shown this to Bozzle,

and Bozzle had smiled. ‘It’s just the sort of thing they does,’ Bozzle

had said. ‘Then they writes another by post.’ He had consulted Bozzle

as to the sending on of that letter, and Bozzle had been strongly of

opinion that it should be forwarded, a copy having been duly taken and

attested by himself. It might be very pretty evidence by-and-by. If the

letter were not forwarded, Bozzle thought that the omission to do so

might be given in evidence against his employer. Bozzle was very

careful, and full of ‘evidence.’ The letter therefore was sent on to

Colonel Osborne. ‘If there’s billydous going between ‘em we shall

nobble ‘em,’ said Bozzle. Trevelyan tore his hair in despair, but

believed that there would be billydous.

 

He came to believe everything; and, though he prayed fervently that his

wife might not be led astray, that she might be saved at any rate from

utter vice, yet he almost came to hope that it might be otherwise—not,

indeed, with the hope of the sane man, who desires that which he tells

himself to be for his advantage; but with the hope of the insane man,

who loves to feed his grievance, even though the grief should be his

death. They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope

that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed

with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind. Trevelyan

would have given all