He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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that when he was weakest in health, then were his ideas the most clear
and rational. He never now mentioned Colonel Osborne’s name, but would
refer to the affairs of the last two years as though they had been
governed by an inexorable Fate which had utterly destroyed his
happiness without any fault on his part. ‘You may be sure,’ she said,
‘that I never accuse him. Even when he says terrible things of me, which
he does, I never excuse myself. I do not think I should answer a word
if he called me the vilest thing on earth.’ Before they parted for the
night many questions were of course asked about Nora, and Hugh
described the condition in which he and she stood to each other. ‘Papa
has consented, then?’
‘Yes, at four o’clock in the morning, just as I was leaving them.’
‘And when is it to be?’
‘Nothing has been settled, and I do not as yet know where she will go
to when they leave London. I think she will visit Monkhams when the
Glascock people return to England.’
‘What an episode in life to go and see the place, when it might all now
have been hers!’
‘I suppose I ought to feel dreadfully ashamed of myself for having
marred such promotion,’ said Hugh.
‘Nora is such a singular girl, so firm, so headstrong, so good, and so
self-reliant, that she will do as well with a poor man as she would have
done with a rich. Shall I confess to you that I did wish that she
should accept Mr Glascock, and that I pressed it on her very strongly?
You will not be angry with me?’
‘I am only the more proud of her and of myself.’
‘When she was told of all that he had to give in the way of wealth and
rank, she took the bit between her teeth and would not be turned an
inch. Of course she was in love.’
‘I hope she may never regret it, that is all.’
‘She must change her nature first. Everything she sees at Monkhams will
make her stronger in her choice. With all her girlish ways, she is like
a rock; nothing can move her.’
Early on the next morning Hugh started alone for Casalunga, having
first, however, seen Mrs Trevelyan. He took out with him certain little
things for the sick man’s table as to which, however, he was cautioned
to say not a word to the sick man himself. And it was arranged that he
should endeavour to fix a day for Trevelyan’s return to England. That
was to be the one object in view. ‘If we could get him to England,’ she
said, ‘he and I would, at any rate, be together, and gradually he would
be taught to submit himself to advice.’ Before ten in the morning,
Stanbury was walking up the hill to the house, and wondering at the
dreary, hot, hopeless desolation of the spot. It seemed to him that no
one could live alone in such a place, in such weather, without being
driven to madness. The soil was parched and dusty, as though no drop of
rain had fallen there for months. The lizards, glancing in and out of
the broken walls, added to the appearance of heat. The vegetation
itself was of a faded yellowish green, as though the glare of the sun
had taken the fresh colour out of it. There was a noise of grasshoppers
and a hum of flies in the air, hardly audible, but all giving evidence
of the heat. Not a human voice was to be heard, nor the sound of a
human foot, and there was no shelter; but the sun blazed down full upon
everything. He took off his hat, and rubbed his head with his
handkerchief as he struck the door with his stick. Oh God, to what
misery had a little folly brought two human beings who had had every
blessing that the world could give within their reach!
In a few minutes he was conducted through the house, and found
Trevelyan seated in a chair under the verandah which looked down upon
the olive trees. He did not even get up from his seat, but put out his
left hand and welcomed his old friend. ‘Stanbury,’ he said, ‘I am glad
to see you for auld lang syne’s sake. When I found out this retreat, I
did not mean to have friends round me here. I wanted to try what
solitude was and, by heaven, I’ve tried it!’ He was dressed in a bright
Italian dressing-gown, or woollen paletot—Italian, as having been
bought in Italy, though, doubtless, it had come from France—and on his
feet he had green worked slippers, and on his head a brocaded cap. He
had made but little other preparation for his friend in the way of
dressing. His long dishevelled hair came down over his neck, and his
beard covered his face. Beneath his dressing-gown he had on a
night-shirt and drawers, and was as dirty in appearance as he was gaudy
in colours.‘sit down and let us two moralise,’ he said. ‘I spend my
life here doing nothing, nothing, nothing; while ‘you cudgel your brain
from day to day to mislead the British public. Which of us two is
taking the nearest road to the devil?’
Stanbury seated himself in a second armchair, which there was there in
the verandah, and looked as carefully as he dared to do at his friend.
There could be no mistake as to the restless gleam of that eye. And
then the affected air of ease, and the would-be cynicism, and the
pretence of false motives, all told the same story. ‘They used to tell
us,’ said Stanbury, ‘that idleness is the root of all evil.’
‘They have been telling us since the world began so many lies, that I
for one have determined never to believe anything again. Labour leads
to greed, and greed to selfishness, and selfishness to treachery, and
treachery straight to the devil, straight to the devil. Ha, my friend,
all your leading articles won’t lead you out of that. What’s the news?
Who’s alive? Who dead? Who in? Who out? What think you of a man who has
not seen a newspaper for two months; and who holds no conversation with
the world further than is needed for the cooking of his polenta and the
cooling of his modest wine-flask?’
‘You see your wife sometimes,’ said Stanbury.
‘My wife! Now, my friend, let us drop that subject. Of all topics of
talk it is the most distressing to man in general, and I own that I am
no exception to the lot. Wives, Stanbury, are an evil, more or less
necessary to humanity, and I own to being one who has not escaped. The
world must be populated, though for what reason one does not see. I
have helped to the extent of one male bantling; and if you are one who
consider population desirable, I will express my regret that I should
have done no more.’
It was very difficult to force Trevelyan out of this humour, and it was
not till Stanbury had risen apparently to take his leave that he found
it possible to say a word as to his mission there. ‘Don’t you think you
would be happier at home?’ he asked.
‘Where is my home, Sir Knight of the midnight pen?’
‘England is your home, Trevelyan.’
‘No, sir; England was my home once; but I have taken the liberty
accorded to me by my Creator of choosing a new country. Italy is now my
nation, and Casalunga is my home.’
‘Every tie you have in the world is in England.’
‘I have no tie, sir, no tie anywhere. It has been my study to untie all
the ties; and, by Jove, I have succeeded. Look at me here. I have got
rid of the trammels pretty well haven’t I? have unshackled myself, and
thrown off the paddings, and the wrappings, and the swaddling clothes.
I have got rid of the conventionalities, and can look Nature straight
in the face. I don’t even want the Daily Record, Stanbury think of
that!’
Stanbury paced the length of the terrace, and then stopped for a moment
down under the blaze of the sun, in order that he might think how to
address this philosopher. ‘Have you heard,’ he said at last, ‘that I am
going to marry your sister-in-law, Nora Rowley?’
‘Then there will be two more full-grown fools in the world certainly,
and probably an infinity of young fools coming afterwards. Excuse me,
Stanbury, but this solitude is apt to make one plain-spoken.’
‘I got Sir Marmaduke’s sanction the day before I left.’
‘Then you got the sanction of an illiterate, ignorant, self-sufficient,
and most contemptible old man; and much good may it do you.’
‘Let him be what he may, I was glad to have it. Most probably I shall
never see him again. He sails from Southampton for the Mandarins on
this day week.’
‘He does, does he? May the devil sail along with him! that is all I say.
And does my much respected and ever-to-be-beloved mother-in-law sail
with him?’
‘They all return together except Nora.’
‘Who remains to comfort you? I hope you may be comforted that is all.
Don’t be too particular. Let her choose her own friends, and go her own
gait, and have her own way, and do you be blind and deaf and dumb and
properly submissive; and it may be that she’ll give you your breakfast
and dinner in your own house so long as your hours don’t interfere with
her pleasures. If she should even urge you beside yourself by her
vanity, folly, and disobedience, so that at last you are driven to
express your feeling, no doubt she will come to you after a while and
tell you with the sweetest condescension that she forgives you. When
she has been out of your house for a twelvemonth or more, she will
offer to come back to you, and to forget everything on condition that
you will do exactly as she bids you for the future.’
This attempt at satire, so fatuous, so plain, so false, together with
the would-be jaunty manner of the speaker, who, however, failed
repeatedly in his utterances from sheer physical exhaustion, was
excessively painful to Stanbury. What can one do at any time with a
madman? ‘I mentioned my marriage,’ said he, ‘to prove my right to have
an additional interest in your wife’s happiness.’
‘You are quite welcome, whether you marry the other one or not, welcome
to take any interest you please. I have got beyond all that, Stanbury,
yes, by Jove, a long way beyond all that.’
‘You have not got beyond loving your wife, and your child, Trevelyan?’
‘Upon my word, yes I think I have. There may be a grain of weakness
left, you know. But what have you to do with my love for my wife?’
‘I was thinking more just now of her love for you. There she is at
Siena. You cannot mean that she should remain there?’
‘Certainly not. What the deuce is there to keep her there?’
‘Come with her then to England.’
‘Why should I go to England with her? Because you bid me, or because
she wishes it, or simply because England is the most damnable,
puritanical, God-forgotten, and stupid country on the face of the
globe? I know no other reason for going to England. Will you take a
glass of wine, Stanbury?’ Hugh declined
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