He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗

a great many young women

of the present day do, I really believe, go up to the altar and

pronounce their marriage vows, with the simple idea that as soon as

they have done so, they are to have their own way in everything. And

then people complain that young men won’t marry! Who can wonder at it?’

 

‘I don’t think the young men think much about the obedience,’ said

Nora.‘Some marry for money, and some for love. But I don’t think they

marry to get a slave.’

 

‘What do you say, Mr Stanbury?’ asked the old lady.

 

‘I can only assure you that I shan’t marry for money,’ said he.

 

Two or three days after this Nora left her friend in Eccleston Square,

and domesticated herself for awhile with her sister. Mrs Trevelyan

declared that such an arrangement would be comfortable for her, and

that it was very desirable now, as Nora would so soon be beyond her

reach. Then Lady Milborough was enabled to go to Dorsetshire, which she

did not do, however, till she had presented Nora with the veil which

she was to wear on the occasion of her wedding. ‘Of course I cannot see

it, my dear, as it is to take place at Monkhams; but you must write

and tell me the day and I will think of you. And you, when you put on

the veil, must think of me.’ So they parted, and Nora knew that she had

made a friend for life.

 

When she first took her place in the house at Twickenham as a resident,

Trevelyan did not take much notice of her but, after awhile, he would

say a few words to her, especially when it might chance that she was

with him in her sister’s absence. He would speak of dear Emily, and

poor Emily, and shake his head slowly, and talk of the pity of it. ‘The

pity of it, Iago; oh, the pity of it,’ he said once. The allusion to

her was so terrible that she almost burst out in anger, as she would

have done formerly. She almost told him that he had been as wrong

throughout as was the jealous husband in the play whose words he

quoted, and that his jealousy, if continued, was likely to be as

tragical. But she restrained herself, and kept close to her needle,

making, let us hope, an auspicious garment for Hugh Stanbury. ‘She has

seen it now,’ he continued; ‘she has seen it now.’ Still she went on

with her hemming in silence. It certainly could not be her duty to

upset at a word all that her sister had achieved. ‘You know that she

has confessed?’ he asked.

 

‘Pray, pray do not talk about it, Louis.’

 

‘I think you ought to know,’ he said. Then she rose from her seat and

left the room. She could not stand it, even though he were mad, even

though he were dying!

 

She went to her sister and repeated what had been said. ‘You had better

not notice it,’ said Emily. ‘It is only a proof of what I told you.

There are times in which his mind is as active as ever it was, but it

is active in so terrible a direction!’

 

‘I cannot sit and hear it. And what am I to say when he asks me a

question as he did just now? He said that you had confessed.’

 

‘So I have. Do none confess but the guilty? What is all that we have

read about the Inquisition and the old tortures? I have had to learn

that torturing has not gone out of the world, that is all.’

 

‘I must go away if he says the same thing to me so again.’

 

‘That is nonsense, Nora. If I can bear it, cannot you? Would you have

me drive him into violence again by disputing with him on such a

subject?’

 

‘But he may recover and then he will remember what you have said.’

 

‘If he recovers altogether he will suspect nothing. I must take my

chance of that. You cannot suppose that I have not thought about it. I

have often sworn to myself that though the world should fall around me,

nothing should make me acknowledge that I had ever been untrue to my

duty as a married woman, either in deed, or word, or thought. I have no

doubt that the poor wretches who were tortured in their cells used to

make the same resolutions as to their confessions. But yet, when their

nails were dragged out of them, they would own to anything. My nails

have been dragged out, and I have been willing to confess anything.

When he talks of the pity of it, of course I know what he means. There

has been something, some remainder of a feeling, which has still kept

him from asking me that question. May God, in his mercy, continue to

him that feeling!’

 

‘But you would answer truly?’

 

‘How can I say what I might answer when the torturer is at my nails? If

you knew how great was the difficulty to get him away from that place

in Italy and bring him here; and what it was to feel that one was bound

to stay near him, and that yet one was impotent, and to know that even

that refuge must soon cease for him, and that he might have gone out

and died on the roadside, or have done anything which the momentary

strength of madness might have dictated—if you could understand all

this, you would not be surprised at my submitting to any degradation

which would help to bring him here.’

 

Stanbury was often down at the cottage, and Nora could discuss the

matter better with him than with her sister. And Stanbury could learn

more thoroughly from the physician who was now attending Trevelyan what

was the state of the sick man, than Emily could do. According to the

doctor’s idea there was more of ailment in the body than in the mind.

He admitted that his patient’s thoughts had been forced to dwell on one

subject till they had become distorted, untrue, jaundiced, and perhaps

mono-maniacal; but he seemed to doubt whether there had ever been a

time at which it could have been decided that Trevelyan was so mad as

to make it necessary that the law should interfere to take care of him.

A man, so argued the doctor, need not be mad because he is jealous, even

though his jealousy be ever so absurd. And Trevelyan, in his jealousy,

had done nothing cruel, nothing wasteful, nothing infamous. In all this

Nora was very little inclined to agree with the doctor, and thought

nothing could be more infamous than Trevelyan’s conduct at the present

moment unless, indeed, he could be screened from infamy by that plea of

madness. But then there was more behind. Trevelyan had been so wasted

by the kind of life which he had led, and possessed by nature stamina

so insufficient to resist such debility, that it was very doubtful

whether he would not sink altogether before he could be made to begin

to rise. But one thing was clear. He should be contradicted in nothing.

If he chose to say that the moon was made of green cheese, let it be

conceded to him that the moon was made of green cheese. Should he make

any other assertion equally removed from the truth, let it not be

contradicted. Who would oppose a man with one foot in the grave?

 

‘Then, Hugh, the sooner I am at Monkhams the better,’ said Nora, who

had again been subjected to inuendoes which had been unendurable to

her. This was on the 7th of August, and it still wanted three days to

that on which the journey to Monkhams was to be made.

 

‘He never says anything to me on the subject,’ said Hugh.

 

‘Because you have made him afraid of you. I almost think that Emily and

the doctor are wrong in their treatment, and that it would be better to

stand up to him and tell him the truth.’ But the three days passed

away, and Nora was not driven to any such vindication of her sister’s

character towards her sister’s husband.