He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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I knew it then; and therefore I wouldn’t dabble in the river with you.
But it’s all over now, and we’ll go and get wet together like dear
little children, and Priscilla shall scold us when we come back.’
They were alone in the sitting-room for more than an hour, and Lady
Rowley was patient upstairs; as mothers will be patient in such
emergencies. Sophie and Lucy had gone out and left her; and there she
remained, telling herself, as the weary minutes went by, that as the
thing was to be, it was well that the young people should be together.
Hugh Stanbury could never be to her what Mr Glascock would have been—a
son-in-law to sit and think about, and dream of, and be proud of, whose
existence as her son-in-law would in itself have been a happiness to
her out in her banishment at the other side of the world; but
nevertheless it was natural to her, as a soft-hearted, loving mother
with many daughters, that any son-in-law should be dear to her. Now
that she had gradually brought herself round to believe in Nora’s
marriage, she was disposed to make the best of Hugh, to remember that
he was certainly a clever man, that he was an honest fellow, and that
she had heard of him as a good son and a kind brother, and that he had
behaved well in reference to her Emily and Trevelyan. She was quite
willing now that Hugh should be happy, and she sat there thinking that
the time was very long, but still waiting patiently till she should be
summoned. ‘You must let me go for mamma for a moment,’ Nora said. ‘I
want you to see her and make yourself a good boy before her. If you are
ever to be her son-in-law, you ought to be in her good graces.’ Hugh
declared that he would do his best, and Nora fetched her mother.
Stanbury found some difficulty in making himself a ‘good boy’ in Lady
Rowley’s presence; and Lady Rowley herself, for sometime, felt very
strongly the awkwardness of the meeting. She had never formally
recognised the young man as her daughter’s accepted suitor, and as not
yet justified in doing so by any permission from Sir Marmaduke; but, as
the young people had been for the last hour or two alone together, with
her connivance and sanction, it was indispensable that she should in
some way signify her parental adherence to the arrangement. Nora began
by talking about Emily, and Trevelyan’s condition and mode of living
were discussed. Then Lady Rowley said something about their coming
journey, and Hugh, with a lucky blunder, spoke of Nora’s intended
return to Italy. ‘We don’t know how that may be,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘Her papa still wishes her to go back with us.’
‘Mamma, you know that that is impossible,’ said Nora.
‘Not impossible, my love.’
‘But she will not go back,’ said Hugh. ‘Lady Rowley, you would not
propose to separate us by such a distance as that?’
‘It is Sir Marmaduke that you must ask.’
‘Mamma, mamma!’ exclaimed Nora, rushing to her mother’s side, ‘it is
not papa that we must ask not now. We want you to be our friend. Don’t
we, Hugh? And, mamma, if you will really be our friend, of course, papa
will come round.’
‘My dear Nora!’
‘You know he will, mamma; and you know that you mean to be good and
kind to us. Of course I can’t go back to the Islands with you. How
could I go so far and leave him behind? He might have half-a-dozen
wives before I could get back to him—’
‘If you have not more trust in him than that—’
‘Long engagements are awful bores,’ said Hugh, finding it to be
necessary that he also should press forward his argument.
‘I can trust him as far as I can see him,’ said Nora, ‘and therefore I
do not want to lose sight of him altogether.’
Lady Rowley of course gave way and embraced her accepted son-in-law.
After all it might have been worse. He saw his way clearly, he said, to
making six hundred a year, and did not at all doubt that before long he
would do better than that. He proposed that they should be married some
time in the autumn, but was willing to acknowledge that much must
depend on the position of Trevelyan and his wife. He would hold himself
ready at any moment, he said, to start to Italy, and would do all that
could be done by a brother. Then Lady Rowley gave him her blessing, and
kissed him again, and Nora kissed him too, and hung upon him, and did
not push him away at all when his arm crept round her waist. And that
feeling came upon him which must surely be acknowledged by all engaged
young men when they first find themselves encouraged by mammas in the
taking of liberties which they have hitherto regarded as mysteries to
be hidden, especially from maternal eyes, that feeling of being a fine
fat calf decked out with ribbons for a sacrifice.
FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Another week went by and Sir Marmaduke had even yet not surrendered. He
quite understood that Nora was not to go back to the Islands and had
visited Mr and Mrs Outhouse at St. Diddulph’s in order to secure a home
for her there, if it might be possible. Mr Outhouse did not refuse, but
gave the permission in such a fashion as to make it almost equal to a
refusal. ‘He was,’ he said, ‘much attached to his niece Nora, but he
had heard that there was a love affair.’ Sir Marmaduke, of course,
could not deny the love affair. There was certainly a love affair of
which he did not personally approve, as the gentleman had no fixed
income and as far as he could understand no fixed profession. ‘Such a
love affair,’ thought Mr Outhouse, ‘was a sort of thing that he didn’t
know how to manage at all. If Nora came to him, was the young man to
visit at the house, or was he not?’ Then Mrs Outhouse said something as
to the necessity of an anti-Stanbury pledge on Nora’s part, and Sir
Marmaduke found that that scheme must be abandoned. Mrs Trevelyan had
written from Florence more than once or twice, and in her last letter
had said that she would prefer not to have Nora with her. She was at
that time living in lodgings at Siena and had her boy there also. She
saw her husband every other day; but nevertheless, according to her
statements, her visits to Casalunga were made in opposition to his
wishes. He had even expressed a desire that she should leave Siena and
return to England. He had once gone so far as to say that if she would
do so, he would follow her. But she clearly did not believe him, and in
all her letters spoke of him as one whom she could not regard as being
under the guidance of reason. She had taken her child with her once or
twice to the house, and on the first occasion Trevelyan had made much
of his son, had wept over him, and professed that in losing him he had
lost his only treasure; but after that he had not noticed the boy, and
latterly she had gone alone. She thought that perhaps her visits
cheered him, breaking the intensity of his solitude; but he never
expressed himself gratified by them, never asked her to remain at the
house, never returned with her into Siena, and continually spoke of her
return to England as a step which must be taken soon, and the sooner the
better. He intended to follow her, he said; and she explained very
fully how manifest was his wish that she should go, by the temptation
to do so which he thought that he held out by this promise. He had
spoken, on every occasion of her presence with him, of Sir Marmaduke’s
attempt to prove him to be a madman; but declared that he was afraid of
no one in England, and would face all the lawyers in Chancery Lane and
all the doctors in Savile Row. Nevertheless, so said Mrs Trevelyan, he
would undoubtedly remain at Casalunga till after Sir Marmaduke should
have sailed. He was not so mad but that he knew that no one else would
be so keen to take steps against him as would Sir Marmaduke. As for his
health, her account of him was very sad. ‘He seemed,’ she said, ‘to be
withering away.’ His hand was mere skin and bone. His hair and beard so
covered his thin long cheeks, that there was nothing left of his face
but his bright, large, melancholy eyes. His legs had become so frail
and weak that they would hardly bear his weight as he walked; and his
clothes, though he had taken a fancy to throw aside all that he had
brought with him from England, hung so loose about him that they seemed
as though they would fall from him. Once she had ventured to send out
to him from Siena a doctor to whom she had been recommended in
Florence; but he had taken the visit in very bad part, had told the
gentleman that he had no need for any medical services, and had been
furious with her, because of her offence in having sent such a visitor.
He had told her that if ever she ventured to take such a liberty again,
he would demand the child back, and refuse her permission inside the
gates of Casalunga. ‘Don’t come, at any rate, till I send for you,’ Mrs
Trevelyan said in her last letter to her sister. ‘Your being here would
do no good, and would, I think, make him feel that he was being
watched. My hope is, at last, to get him to return with me. If you were
here, I think this would be less likely. And then why should you be
mixed up with such unutterable sadness and distress more than is
essentially necessary? My health stands wonderfully well, though the
heat here is very great. It is cooler at Casalunga than in the town, of
which I am glad for his sake. He perspires so profusely that it seems
to me he cannot stand the waste much longer. I know he will not go to
England as long as papa is there, but I hope that he may be induced to
do so by slow stages as soon as he knows that papa has gone. Mind you
send me a newspaper, so that he may see it stated in print that papa
has sailed.’
It followed as one consequence of these letters from Florence that Nora
was debarred from the Italian scheme as a mode of passing her time till
some house should be open for her reception. She had suggested to Hugh
that she might go for a few weeks to Nuncombe Putney, but he had
explained to her the nature of his mother’s cottage, and had told her
that there was no hole there in which she could lay her head. ‘There
never was such a forlorn young woman,’ she said. ‘When papa goes I
shall literally be without shelter.’ There had come a letter from Mrs
Glascock, at least it was signed Caroline Glascock, though another name
might have been used, dated from Milan, saying that they were hurrying
back to Naples even at that season of the year, because Lord
Peterborough was dead. ‘And she is Lady Peterborough!’ said
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