He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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would never cease to tell him that he had illused her. She would din
it into his ears, let him come to her as often as he might with his
wise words. Wise words!
What was the use of wise words when a man was such a fool in nature?
And as for Colonel Osborne she would see him if he came to her three
times a day, unless her husband gave some clearly intelligible order to
the contrary. She was fortifying her mind with this resolution when
Colonel Osborne’s letter was brought to her. She asked whether any
servant was waiting for an answer. No the servant, who had left it, had
gone at once. She read the note, and sat working, with it before her,
for a quarter of an hour; and then walked over to her desk and answered
it.
‘My Dear Colonel Osborne,
It will be best to say nothing whatever about the occurrence of
yesterday; and if possible, not to think of it. As far as I am
concerned, I wish for no change except that people should be more
reasonable. You can call of course whenever you please; and I am very
grateful for your expression of friendship.
Yours most sincerely,
Emily Trevelyan.
‘Thanks for the words of the opera.’
When she had written this, being determined that all should be open and
above board, she put a penny stamp on the envelope, and desired that
the letter should be posted. But she destroyed that which she had
received from Colonel Osborne. In all things she would act as she would
have done if her husband had not been so foolish, and there could have
been no reason why she should have kept so unimportant a communication.
In the course of the day Trevelyan passed through the hall to the room
which he himself was accustomed to occupy behind the parlour, and as he
did so saw the note lying ready to be posted, took it up, and read the
address.
He held it for a moment in his hand, then replaced it on the hall
table, and passed on. When he reached his own table he sat down
hurriedly, and took up in his hand some Review that was lying ready for
him to read. But he was quite unable to fix his mind on the words
before him. He had spoken to his wife on that morning in the strongest
language he could use as to the unseemliness of her intimacy with
Colonel Osborne; and then, the first thing she had done when his back
was turned was to write to this very Colonel Osborne, and tell him, no
doubt, what had occurred between her and her husband. He sat thinking
of it all for many minutes. He would probably have declared himself
that he had thought of it for an hour as he sat there. Then he got up,
went upstairs and walked slowly into the drawing-room. There he found
his wife sitting with her sister. ‘Nora,’ he said, ‘I want to speak to
Emily. Will you forgive me, if I ask you to leave us for a few
minutes?’ Nora, with an anxious look at Emily, got up and left the
room.
‘Why do you send her away?’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘Because I wish to be alone with you for a few minutes. Since what I
said to you this morning, you have written to Colonel Osborne.’
‘Yes I have. I do not know how you have found it out; but I suppose you
keep a watch on me.’
‘I keep no watch on you. As I came into the house, I saw your letter
lying in the hall.’
‘Very well. You could have read it if you pleased.’
‘Emily, this matter is becoming very serious, and I strongly advise you
to be on your guard in what you say. I will bear much for you, and much
for our boy; but I will not bear to have my name made a reproach.’
‘Sir, if you think your name is shamed by me, we had better part,’ said
Mrs Trevelyan, rising from her chair, and confronting him with a look
before which his own almost quailed.
‘It may be that we had better part,’ he said, slowly. ‘But in the first
place I wish you to tell me what were the contents of that letter.’
‘If it was there when you came in, no doubt it is there still. Go and
look at it.’
‘That is no answer to me. I have desired you to tell me what are its
contents.’
‘I shall not tell you. I will not demean myself by repeating anything
so insignificant in my own justification. If you suspect me of writing
what I should not write, you will suspect me also of lying to conceal
it.’
‘Have you heard from Colonel Osborne this morning?’
‘I have.’
‘And where is his letter?’
‘I have destroyed it.’
Again he paused, trying to think what he had better do, trying to be
calm. And she stood still opposite to him, confronting him with the
scorn of her bright angry eyes. Of course, he was not calm. He was the
very reverse of calm. ‘And you refuse to tell me what you wrote,’ he
said.
‘The letter is there,’ she answered, pointing away towards the door.
‘If you want to play the spy, go and look at it for yourself.’
‘Do you call me a spy?’
‘And what have you called me? Because you are a husband, is the
privilege of vituperation to be all on your side?’
‘It is impossible that I should put up with this,’ he said ‘quite
impossible. This would kill me. Anything is better than this. My
present orders to you are not to see Colonel Osborne, not to write to
him or have any communication with him, and to put under cover to me,
unopened, any letter that may come from him. I shall expect your
implicit obedience to these orders.’
‘Well go on.’
‘Have I your promise?’
‘No no. You have no promise. I will make no promise exacted from me in
so disgraceful a manner.’
‘You refuse to obey me?’
‘I will refuse nothing, and will promise nothing.’
‘Then we must part—that is all. I will take care that you shall hear
from me before tomorrow morning.’
So saying, he left the room, and, passing through the hall, saw that
the letter had been taken away.
LADY MILBOROUGH AS AMBASSADOR
‘Of course, I know you are right,’ said Nora to her sister ‘right as
far as Colonel Osborne is concerned; but nevertheless you ought to give
way.’
‘And be trampled upon?’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘Yes; and be trampled upon, if he should trample on you, which, however,
he is the last man in the world to do.’
‘And to endure any insult and any names? You yourself you would be a
Griselda, I suppose.’
‘I don’t want to talk about myself,’ said Nora, ‘nor about Griselda.
But I know that, however unreasonable it may seem, you had better give
way to him now and tell him what there was in the note to Colonel
Osborne.’
‘Never! He has ordered me not to see him or to write to him, or to open
his letters having, mind you, ordered just the reverse a day or two
before; and I will obey him. Absurd as it is, I will obey him. But as
for submitting to him, and letting him suppose that I think he is right—
never! I should be lying to him then, and I will never lie to him. He
has said that we must part, and I suppose it will be better so. How can
a woman live with a man that suspects her? He cannot take my baby from
me.’
There were many such conversations as the above between the two sisters
before Mrs Trevelyan received from her husband the communication with
which she had been threatened. And Nora, acting on her own judgment in
the matter, made an attempt to see Mr Trevelyan, writing to him a
pretty little note, and beseeching him to be kind to her. But he
declined to see her, and the two women sat at home, with the baby
between them, holding such pleasant conversations as that above
narrated. When such tempests occur in a family, a woman will generally
suffer the least during the thick of the tempest. While the hurricane
is at the fiercest, she will be sustained by the most thorough
conviction that the right is on her side, that she is aggrieved, that
there is nothing for her to acknowledge, and no position that she need
surrender. Whereas her husband will desire a compromise, even amidst
the violence of the storm. But afterwards, when the wind has lulled,
but while the heavens around are still all black and murky, then the
woman’s sufferings begin. When passion gives way to thought and memory,
she feels the loneliness of her position, the loneliness, and the
possible degradation. It is all very well for a man to talk about his
name and his honour; but it is the woman’s honour and the woman’s name
that are, in truth, placed in jeopardy. Let the woman do what she will,
the man can, in truth, show his face in the world and, after awhile,
does show his face. But the woman may be compelled to veil hers, either
by her own fault, or by his. Mrs Trevelyan was now told that she was to
be separated from her husband, and she did not, at any rate, believe
that she had done any harm. But, if such separation did come, where
could she live, what could she do, what position in the world would she
possess? Would not her face be, in truth, veiled as effectually as
though she had disgraced herself and her husband?
And then there was that terrible question about the child. Mrs
Trevelyan had said a dozen times to her sister that her husband could
not take the boy away from her. Nora, however, had never assented to
this, partly from a conviction of her own ignorance, not knowing what
might be the power of a husband in such a matter, and partly thinking
that any argument would be good and fair by which she could induce her
sister to avoid a catastrophe so terrible as that which was now
threatened.
‘I suppose he could take him, if he chose,’ she said at last.
‘I don’t believe he is wicked like that,’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘He would
not wish to kill me.’
‘But he will say that he loves baby as well as you do.’
‘He will never take my child from me. He could never be so bad as
that.’
‘And you will never be so bad as to leave him,’ said Nora after a
pause. ‘I will not believe that it can come to that. You know that he
is good at heart, that nobody on earth loves you as he does.’
So they went on for two days, and on the evening the second day there
came a letter from Trevelyan to his wife. They had neither of them seen
him, although he had been in and out of the house. And on the afternoon
of the Sunday a new grievance, a very terrible grievance, was added to
those which Mrs Trevelyan was made to bear. Her husband had told one of
the servants in the house that Colonel
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