He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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straight-laced, but I am quite sure Mr Stanbury will be grateful to me.
As you are to be married from Monkhams, it will be quite well that you
should pass thither through my house as an intermediate resting-place,
after leaving your father and mother.’ By all which, Lady Milborough
intended to express an opinion that the value of the article which Hugh
Stanbury would receive at the altar would be enhanced by the
distinguished purity of the hands through which it had passed before it
came into his possession, in which opinion she was probably right as
regarded the price put upon the article by the world at large, though
it may perhaps be doubted whether the recipient himself would be of the
same opinion.
‘I hope you know that I am grateful, whatever he may be,’ said Nora,
after a pause.
‘I think that you take it as it is meant, and that makes me quite
comfortable.’
‘Lady Milborough, I shall love you for ever and ever. I don’t think I
ever knew anybody so good as you are or so nice.’
‘Then I shall be more than comfortable,’ said Lady Milborough. After
that there was an embrace, and the thing was settled.
TREVELYAN BACK IN ENGLAND
Nora, with Lady Milborough’s carriage, and Lady Milborough’s coach and
footman, and with a cab ready for the luggage close behind the
carriage, was waiting at the railway station when the party from Dover
arrived. She soon saw Hugh upon the platform, and ran to him with her
news. They had not a word to say to each other of themselves, so
anxious were they both respecting Trevelyan. ‘We got a bed-carriage for
him at Dover,’ said Hugh; ‘and I think he has borne the journey pretty
well but he feels the heat almost as badly as in Italy. You will hardly
know him when you see him.’ Then, when the rush of passengers was gone,
Trevelyan was brought out by Hugh and the courier, and placed in Lady
Milborough’s carriage. He just smiled as his eye fell upon Nora, but he
did not even put out his hand to greet her.
‘I am to go in the carriage with him,’ said his wife.
‘Of course you are, and so will I and Louey. I think there will be room:
it is so large. There is a cab for all the things. Dear Emily, I am so
glad to see you.’
‘Dearest Nora! I shall be able to speak to you by-and-by, but you must
not be angry with me now. How good you have been.’
‘Has not she been good? I don’t understand about the cottage. It
belongs to some friend of hers; and I have not been able to say a word
about the rent. It is so nice and looks upon the river. I hope that he
will like it.’
‘You will be with us?’
‘Not just at first. Lady Milborough thinks I had better not, that he
will like it better. I will come down almost every day, and will stay
if you think he will like it.’
These few words were said while the men were putting Trevelyan into the
carriage. And then another arrangement was made. Hugh hired a second
cab, in which he and the courier made a part of the procession; and so
they all went to Twickenham together. Hugh had not yet learned that he
would be rewarded by coming back alone with Nora in the carriage.
The cottage by the River Thames, which, as far as the party knew, was
nameless, was certainly very much better than the house on the top of
the hill at Casalunga. And now, at last, the wife would sleep once more
under the same roof with her husband, and the separation would be over.
‘I suppose that is the Thames,’ said Trevelyan; and they were nearly
the only words he spoke in Nora’s hearing that evening. Before she
started on her return journey, the two sisters were together for a few
minutes, and each told her own budget of news in short, broken
fragments. There was not much to tell. ‘He is so weak,’ said Mrs
Trevelyan, ‘that he can do literally nothing. He can hardly speak. When
we give him wine, he will say a few words, and his mind seems then to
be less astray than it was. I have told him just simply that it was all
my doing, that I have been in fault all through, and every now and then
he will say a word, to shew me that he remembers that I have
confessed.’
‘My poor Emily!’
‘It was better so. What does it all matter? He had suffered so, that I
would have said worse than that to give him relief. The pride has gone
out of me so, that I do not regard what anybody may say. Of course, it
will be said that I went astray, and that he forgave me.’
‘Nobody will say that, dearest; nobody. Lady Milborough is quite aware
how it all was.’
‘What does it signify? There are things in life worse even than a bad
name.’
‘But he does not think it?’
‘Nora, his mind is a mystery to me. I do not know what is in it.
Sometimes I fancy that all facts have been forgotten, and that he
merely wants the childish gratification of being assured that he is the
master. Then, again, there come moments, in which I feel sure that
suspicion is lurking within him, that he is remembering the past, and
guarding against the future. When he came into this house, a quarter of
an hour ago, he was fearful lest there was a mad doctor lurking about
to pounce on him. I can see in his eye that he had some such idea. He
hardly notices Louey though there was a time, even at Casalunga, when
he would not let the child out of his sight.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I will try to do my duty, that is all.’
‘But you will have a doctor?’
‘Of course. He was content to see one in Paris, though he would not let
me be present. Hugh saw the gentleman afterwards, and he seemed to
think that the body was worse than the mind.’ Then Nora told her the
name of a doctor whom Lady Milborough had suggested, and took her
departure along with Hugh in the carriage.
In spite of all the sorrow that they had witnessed and just left, their
journey up to London was very pleasant. Perhaps there is no period so
pleasant among all the pleasant periods of lovemaking as that in which
the intimacy between the lovers is so assured, and the coming event so
near, as to produce and to endure conversation about the ordinary
little matters of life—what can be done with the limited means at their
mutual disposal; how that life shall be begun which they are to lead
together; what idea each has of the other’s duties; what each can do
for the other; what each will renounce for the other. There was a true
sense of the delight of intimacy in the girl who declared that she had
never loved her lover so well as when she told him how many pairs of
stockings she had got. It is very sweet to gaze at the stars together;
and it is sweet to sit out among the haycocks. The reading of poetry
together, out of the same book, with brows all close, and arms all
mingled, is very sweet. The pouring out of the whole heart in written
words, which the writer knows would be held to be ridiculous by any
eyes, and any ears, and any sense, but the eyes and ears and sense of
the dear one to whom they are sent, is very sweet; but for the girl who
has made a shirt for the man that she loves, there has come a moment in
the last stitch of it, sweeter than any that stars, haycocks, poetry,
or superlative epithets have produced. Nora Rowley had never as yet
been thus useful on behalf of Hugh Stanbury. Had she done so, she might
perhaps have been happier even than she was during this journey, but,
without the shirt, it was one of the happiest moments of her life.
There was nothing now to separate them but their own prudential
scruples and of them it must be acknowledged that Hugh Stanbury had
very few. According to his shewing, he was as well provided for
matrimony as the gentleman in the song, who came out to woo his bride
on a rainy night. In live stock he was not so well provided as the
Irish gentleman to whom we allude; but in regard to all other
provisions for comfortable married life, he had, or at a moment’s
notice could have, all that was needed. Nora could live just where she
pleased—not exactly in Whitehall Gardens or Belgrave Square; but the
New Road, Lupus Street, Montague Place, the North Bank, or Kennington
Oval, with all their surrounding crescents, terraces, and rows,
offered, according to him, a choice so wide, either for lodgings or
small houses, that their only embarrassment was in their riches. He had
already insured his life for a thousand pounds, and, after paying
yearly for that, and providing a certain surplus for saving, five
hundred a year was the income on which they were to commence the world.
‘Of course, I wish it were five thousand for your sake,’ he said; ‘and
I wish I were a Cabinet Minister, or a duke, or a brewer; but, even in
heaven, you know all the angels can’t be archangels.’ Nora assured him
that she would be quite content with virtues simply angelic. ‘I hope
you like mutton-chops and potatoes; I do,’ he said. Then she told him
of her ambition about the beefsteak, acknowledging that, as it must
now be shared between two, the glorious idea of putting a part of it
away in a cupboard must be abandoned. ‘I don’t believe in beefsteaks,’ he said. ‘A beefsteak may mean anything. At our club, a
beefsteak is a sumptuous and expensive luxury. Now, a mutton-chop
means something definite, and must be economical.’
‘Then we will have the mutton-chops at home,’ said Nora, ‘and you shall
go to your club for the beefsteak.’
When they reached Eccleston Square, Nora insisted on taking Hugh
Stanbury up to Lady Milborough. It was in vain that he pleaded that he
had come all the way from Dover on a very dusty day, all the way from
Dover, including a journey in a Hansom cab to Twickenham and back,
without washing his hands and face. Nora insisted that Lady Milborough
was such a dear, good, considerate creature, that she would understand
all that, and Hugh was taken into her presence. ‘I am delighted to see
you, Mr Stanbury,’ said the old lady, ‘and hope you will think that
Nora is in good keeping.’
‘She has been telling me how very kind you have been to her. I do not
know where she could have bestowed herself if you had not received
her.’
‘There, Nora I told you he would say so. I won’t tell tales, Mr
Stanbury; but she had all manner of wild plans which I knew you
wouldn’t approve. But she is very amiable, and if she will only submit
to you as well as she does to me.’
‘I don’t mean to submit to him at all, Lady Milborough, of course not. I
am going to marry for liberty.’
‘My dear, what you say, you say in joke; but
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