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

sister was now

knocking.

 

‘Nora, dear, will you not come down?’

 

‘Not yet, Emily. Very soon I will.’

 

‘And what has happened, dearest?’

 

‘There is nothing to tell, Emily.’

 

‘There must be something to tell. What did he say to you?’

 

‘Of course you know what he said.’

 

‘And what answer did you make?’

 

‘I told him that it could not be.’

 

‘And did he take that as final, Nora?’

 

‘Of course not. What man ever takes a No as final?’

 

‘When you said No to Mr Glascock he took it.’

 

‘That was different, Emily.’

 

‘But how different? I don’t see the difference, except that if you

could have brought yourself to like Mr Glascock, it would have been the

greatest thing in the world for you, and for all of them.’

 

‘Would you have me take a man, Emily, that I didn’t care one straw for,

merely because he was a lord? You can’t mean that.’

 

‘I’m not talking about Mr Glascock now, Nora.’

 

‘Yes, you are. And what’s the use. He is gone, and there’s an end of

it.’

 

‘And is Mr Stanbury gone?’

 

‘Of course.’

 

‘In the same way?’ asked Mrs Trevelyan.

 

‘How can I tell about his ways? No; it is not in the same way. There!

He went in a very different way.’

 

‘How was it different, Nora?’

 

‘Oh, so different. I can’t tell you how. Mr Glascock will never come

back again.’

 

‘And Mr Stanbury will?’ said the elder sister. Nora made no reply, but

after a while nodded her head. ‘And you want him to come back?’ She

paused again, and again nodded her head. ‘Then you have accepted him?’

 

‘I have not accepted him. I have refused him. I have told him that it

was impossible.’

 

‘And yet you wish him back again!’ Nora again nodded her head. ‘That is

a state of things I cannot at all understand,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, ‘and

would not believe unless you told me so yourself.’

 

‘And you think me very wrong, of course. I will endeavour to do nothing

wrong, but it is so. I have not said a word of encouragement to Mr

Stanbury; but I love him with all my heart. Ought I to tell you a lie

when you question me? Or is it natural that I should never wish to see

again a person whom I love better than all the world? It seems to me

that a girl can hardly be right if she have any choice of her own. Here

are two men, one rich and the other poor. I shall fall to the ground

between them. I know that. I have fallen to the ground already. I like

the one I can’t marry. I don’t care a straw for the one who could give

me a grand house. That is falling to the ground. But I don’t see that

it is hard to understand, or that I have disgraced myself.’

 

‘I said nothing of disgrace, Nora.’

 

‘But you looked it.’

 

‘I did not intend to look it, dearest.’

 

He knew he was right.

 

‘And remember this, Emily, I have told you everything because you asked

me. I do not mean to tell anybody else, at all. Mamma would not

understand me. I have not told him, and I shall not.’

 

‘You mean Mr Stanbury?’

 

‘Yes; I mean Mr Stanbury. As to Mr Glascock, of course I shall tell

mamma that. I have no secret there. That is his secret, and I suppose

mamma should know it. But I will have nothing told about the other.

Had I accepted him, or even hinted to him that I cared for him, I would

tell mamma at once.’

 

After that there came something of a lecture, or something, rather, of

admonition, from Mrs Outhouse. That lady did not attempt to upbraid, or

to find any fault; but observed that as she understood that Mr Stanbury

had no means whatever, and as Nora herself had none, there had better

be no further intercourse between them, till, at any rate, Sir

Marmaduke and Lady Rowley should be in London.‘so I told him that he

must not come here any more, my dear,’ said Mrs Outhouse.

 

‘You are quite right, aunt. He ought not to come here.’

 

‘I am so glad that you agree with me.’

 

‘I agree with you altogether. I think I was bound to see him when he

asked to see me; but the thing is altogether out of the question. I

don’t think he’ll come any more, aunt.’ Then Mrs Outhouse was quite

satisfied that no harm had been done.

 

A month had now passed since anything had been heard at St. Diddulph’s

from Mr Trevelyan, and it seemed that many months might go on in the

same dull way. When Mrs Trevelyan first found herself in her uncle’s

house, a sum of two hundred pounds had been sent to her; and since that

she had received a letter from her husband’s lawyer saying that a

similar amount would be sent to her every three months, as long as she

was separated from her husband. A portion of this she had given over to

Mr Outhouse; but this pecuniary assistance by no means comforted that

unfortunate gentleman in his trouble. ‘I don’t want to get into debt,’

he said, ‘by keeping a lot of people whom I haven’t the means to feed.

And I don’t want to board and lodge my nieces and their family at so

much a head. It’s very hard upon me either way.’ And so it was. All the

comfort of his home was destroyed, and he was driven to sacrifice his

independence by paying his tradesmen with a portion of Mrs Trevelyan’s

money. The more he thought of it all, and the more he discussed the

matter with his wife, the more indignant they became with the truant

husband. ‘I can’t believe,’ he said, ‘but what Mr Bideawhile could make

him come back, if he chose to do his duty.’

 

‘But they say that Mr Trevelyan is in Italy, my dear.’

 

‘And if I went to Italy, might I leave you to starve, and take my

income with me?’

 

‘He doesn’t leave her quite to starve, my dear.’

 

‘But isn’t a man bound to stay with his wife? I never heard of such a

thing never. And I’m sure that there must be something wrong. A man

can’t go away and leave his wife to live with her uncle and aunt. It

isn’t right.’

 

‘But what can we do?’

 

Mr Outhouse was forced to acknowledge that nothing could be done. He

was a man to whom the quiescence of his own childless house was the one

pleasure of his existence. And of that he was robbed because this

wicked madman chose to neglect all his duties, and leave his wife

without a house to shelter her.‘supposing that she couldn’t have come

here, what then?’ said Mr Outhouse. ‘I did tell him, as plain as words

could speak, that we couldn’t receive them.’ ‘But here they are,’ said

Mrs Outhouse, ‘and here they must remain till my brother comes to

England.’ ‘It’s the most monstrous thing that I ever heard of in all my

life,’ said Mr Outhouse. ‘He ought to be locked up, that’s what he

ought.’

 

It was hard, and it became harder, when a gentleman, whom Mr Outhouse

certainly did not wish to see, called upon him about the latter end of

September. Mr Outhouse was sitting alone, in the gloomy parlour of his

parsonage, for his own study had been given up to other things, since

this great inroad had been made upon his family; he was sitting alone on

one Saturday morning, preparing for the duties of the next day, with

various manuscript sermons lying on the table around him, when he was

told that a gentleman had called to see him. Had Mr Outhouse been an

incumbent at the West-end of London, or had his maid been a West-end

servant, in all probability the gentleman’s name would have been

demanded; but Mr Outhouse was a man who was not very ready in

foreseeing and preventing misfortunes, and the girl who opened the door

was not trained to discreet usages in such matters. As she announced

the fact that there was a gentleman, she pointed to the door, to show

that the gentleman was there; and before Mr Outhouse had been able to

think whether it would be prudent for him to make some preliminary

inquiry, Colonel Osborne was in the room. Now, as it happened, these

two men had never hitherto met each other, though one was the

brother-in-law of Sir Marmaduke Rowley, and the other had been his very

old friend. ‘My name, Mr Outhouse, is Colonel Osborne,’ said the

visitor, coming forward, with his hand out. The clergyman, of course,

took his hand, and asked him to be seated. ‘We have known each other’s

names very long,’ continued the Colonel, ‘though I do not think we have

ever yet had an opportunity of becoming acquainted.’

 

‘No,’ said Mr Outhouse; ‘we have never been acquainted, I believe.’ He

might have added, that he had no desire whatever to make such

acquaintance; and his manner, over which he himself had no control, did

almost say as much. Indeed, this coming to his house of the suspected

lover of his niece appeared to him to be a heavy addition to his

troubles; for, although he was disposed to take his niece’s part

against her husband to any possible length, even to the locking up of

the husband as a madman, if it were possible, nevertheless he had almost

as great a horror of the Colonel, as though the husband’s allegations

as to the lover had been true as gospel. Because Trevelyan had been

wrong altogether, Colonel Osborne was not the less wrong. Because

Trevelyan’s suspicions were to Mr Outhouse wicked and groundless, he

did not the less regard the presumed lover to be an iniquitous roaring

lion, going about seeking whom he might devour. Elderly, unmarried men

of fashion generally, and especially colonels, and majors, and members

of parliament, and such like, were to him as black sheep or roaring

lions. They were fruges consumere nati; men who stood on club doorsteps

talking naughtily and doing nothing, wearing sleek clothing, for which

they very often did not pay, and never going to church. It seemed to

him in his ignorance that such men had none of the burdens of this

world upon their shoulders, and that, therefore, they stood in great

peril of the burdens of the next. It was, doubtless, his special duty

to deal with men in such peril; but those wicked ones with whom he was

concerned were those whom he could reach. Now, the Colonel Osbornes of

the earth were not to be got at by any clergyman, or, as far as Mr

Outhouse could see, by any means of grace. That story of the rich man

and the camel seemed to him to be specially applicable to such people.

How was such a one as Colonel Osborne to be shewn the way through the

eye of a needle? To Mr Outhouse, his own brother-in-law, Sir Marmaduke,

was almost of the same class for he frequented clubs when in London,

and played whist, and talked of the things of the world such as the

Derby, and the levees, and West-end dinner parties as though they were

all in all to him. He, to be sure, was weighted with so large a family

that there might be hope for him. The eye of the needle could not be

closed against him as