He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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She sat silent for fully a minute, with her hands clasped; and then she
answered him in a whisper. ‘I do not know,’ she said.
He also was silent for a while before he spoke again. He ceased to poke
with his stick, and got up from his chair, and stood a little apart
from her, not looking at her even yet.
‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘I understand. Well, Miss Rowley, I quite
perceive that I cannot press my suit any further now. But I shall not
despair altogether. I know this, that if I might possibly succeed, I
should be a very happy man. Goodbye, Miss Rowley.’
She took his offered hand and pressed it so warmly, that had he not
been manly and big-hearted, he would have taken such pressure as a sign
that she wished him to ask her again. But such was his nature.
‘God bless you,’ he said, ‘and make you happy, whatever you may choose
to do.’
Then he left her, and she heard him walk down the stairs with heavy
slow steps, and she thought that she could perceive from the sound that
he was sad at heart, but that he was resolved not to show his sadness
outwardly.
When she was alone she began to think in earnest of what she had done.
If the reader were told that she regretted the decision which she had
been forced to make so rapidly, a wrong impression would be given of
the condition of her thoughts. But there came upon her suddenly a
strange capacity for counting up and making a mental inventory of all
that might have been hers. She knew—and where is the girl so placed
that does not know?—that it is a great thing to be an English peeress.
Now, as she stood there thinking of it all, she was Nora Rowley without
a shilling in the world, and without a prospect of a shilling. She had
often heard her mother speak fearful words of future possible days,
when colonial governing should no longer be within the capacity of Sir
Marmaduke. She had been taught from a very early age that all the
material prosperity of her life must depend on matrimony. She could
never be comfortably disposed of in the world, unless some fitting man
who possessed those things of which she was so bare, should wish to
make her his wife. Now there had come a man so thoroughly fitting, so
marvellously endowed, that no worldly blessing would have been wanting.
Mr Glascock had more than once spoken to her of the glories of
Monkhams. She thought of Monkhams now more than she had ever thought of
the place before. It would have been a great privilege to be the
mistress of an old time-honoured mansion, to call oaks and elms her
own, to know that acres of gardens were submitted to her caprices, to
look at herds of cows and oxen, and be aware that they lowed on her own
pastures. And to have been the mother of a future peer of England, to
have the nursing, and sweet custody and very making of a future senator
would not that have been much? And the man himself who would have been
her husband was such a one that any woman might have trusted herself to
him with perfect confidence. Now that he was gone she almost fancied
that she did love him. Then she thought of Hugh Stanbury, sitting as he
had described himself, in a little dark closet at the office of the ‘D.
R.,’ in a very old inky shooting-coat, with a tarnished square-cut
cloth cap upon his head, with a short pipe in his mouth, writing at
midnight for the next morning’s impression, this or that article
according to the order of his master, ‘the tallowchandler’; for the
editor of the Daily Record was a gentleman whose father happened to be
a grocer in the City, and Hugh had been accustomed thus to describe the
family trade. And she might certainly have had the peer, and the acres
of garden, and the big house, and the senatorial honours; whereas the
tallowchandler’s journeyman had never been so outspoken. She told
herself from moment to moment that she had done right; that she would
do the same a dozen times, if a dozen times the experiment could be
repeated; but still, still, there was the remembrance of all that she
had lost. How would her mother look at her, her anxious, heavily-laden
mother, when the story should be told of all that had been offered to
her and all that had been refused?
As she was thinking of this Mrs Trevelyan came into the room. Nora felt
that though she might dread to meet her mother, she could be bold
enough on such an occasion before her sister. Emily had not done so
well with her own affairs, as to enable her to preach with advantage
about marriage.
‘He has gone?’ said Mrs Trevelyan, as she opened the door.
‘Yes, he has gone.’
‘Well? Do not pretend, Nora, that you will not tell me.’
‘There is nothing worth the telling, Emily.’
‘What do you mean? I am sure he has proposed. He told me in so many
words that it was his intention.’
‘Whatever has happened, dear, you may be quite sure that I shall never
be Mrs Glascock.’
‘Then you have refused him because of Hugh Stanbury!’
‘I have refused him, Emily, because I did not love him. Pray let that
be enough.’
Then she walked out of the room with something of stateliness in her
gait as might become a girl who had had it in her power to be the
future Lady Peterborough; but as soon as she reached the sacredness of
her own chamber, she gave way to an agony of tears. It would, indeed,
be much to be a Lady Peterborough. And she had, in truth, refused it
all because of Hugh Stanbury! Was Hugh Stanbury worth so great a
sacrifice?
THE CLOCK HOUSE AT NUNCOMBE PUTNEY
It was not till a fortnight had passed after the transaction recorded
in the last chapter, that Mrs Trevelyan and Nora Rowley first heard the
proposition that they should go to live at Nuncombe Putney. From bad to
worse the quarrel between the husband and the wife had gone on, till
Trevelyan had at last told his friend Lady Milborough that he had made
up his mind that they must live apart. She is so self-willed and
perhaps I am the same,’ he had said, ‘that it is impossible that we
should live together.’ Lady Milborough had implored and called to
witness all testimonies, profane and sacred, against such a step—had
almost gone down on her knees. Go to Naples; why not Naples? Or to the
quiet town in the west of France, which was so dull that a wicked
roaring lion, fond of cities and gambling, and eating and drinking,
could not live in such a place! Oh, why not go to the quiet town in the
west of France? Was not anything better than this flying in the face of
God and man? Perhaps Trevelyan did not himself like the idea of the
quiet dull French town. Perhaps he thought that the flying in the face
of God and man was all done by his wife, not by him; and that it was
right that his wife should feel the consequences. After many such
entreaties, many such arguments, it was at last decided that the house
in Curzon Street should be given up, and that he and his wife live
apart.
‘And what about Nora Rowley?’ asked Lady Milborough, who had become
aware by this time of Nora’s insane folly in having refused Mr
Glascock.
‘She will go with her sister, I suppose.’
‘And who will maintain her? Dear, dear, dear! It does seem as though
some young people were bent upon cutting their own throats, and all
their family’s.’
Poor Lady Milborough just at this time went as near to disliking the
Rowleys as was compatible with her nature. It was not possible to her
to hate anybody. She thought that she hated the Colonel Osbornes; but
even that was a mistake. She was very angry, however, with both Mrs
Trevelyan and her sister, and was disposed to speak of them as though
they had been born to create trouble and vexation.
Trevelyan had not given any direct answer to that question about Nora
Rowley’s maintenance, but he was quite prepared to bear all necessary
expense in that direction, at any rate till Sir Marmaduke should have
arrived. At first there had been an idea that the two sisters should go
to the house of their aunt, Mrs Outhouse. Mrs Outhouse was the wife as
the reader may perhaps remember of a clergyman living in the east of
London. St. Diddulph’s-in-the-East was very much in the east indeed. It
was a parish outside the City, lying near the river, very populous,
very poor, very low in character, and very uncomfortable. There was a
rectory-house, queerly situated at the end of a little blind lane, with
a gate of its own, and a so-called garden about twenty yards square.
But the rectory of St. Diddulph’s cannot be said to have been a
comfortable abode. The neighbourhood was certainly not alluring. Of
visiting society within a distance of three or four miles there was
none but what was afforded by the families of other East-end clergymen.
And then Mr Outhouse himself was a somewhat singular man. He was very
religious, devoted to his work, most kind to the poor; but he was
unfortunately a strongly-biased man, and at the same time very
obstinate withal. He had never allied himself very cordially with his
wife’s brother, Sir Marmaduke, allowing himself to be carried away by a
prejudice that people living at the West-end, who frequented clubs and
were connected in any way with fashion, could not be appropriate
companions for himself. The very title which Sir Marmaduke had acquired
was repulsive to him, and had induced him to tell his wife more than
once that Sir this or Sir that could not be fitting associates for a
poor East-end clergyman. Then his wife’s niece had married a man of
fashion, a man supposed at St. Diddulph’s to be very closely allied to
fashion; and Mr Outhouse had never been induced even to dine in the
house in Curzon Street. When, therefore, he heard that Mr and Mrs
Trevelyan were to be separated within two years of their marriage, it
could not be expected that he should be very eager to lend to the two
sisters the use of his rectory.
There had been interviews between Mr Outhouse and Trevelyan, and
between Mrs Outhouse and her niece; and then there was an interview
between Mr Outhouse and Emily, in which it was decided that Mrs
Trevelyan would not go to the parsonage of St. Diddulph’s. She had been
very outspoken to her uncle, declaring that she by no means intended to
carry herself as a disgraced woman. Mr Outhouse had quoted St. Paul to
her; ‘Wives, obey your husbands.’ Then she had got up and had spoken
very angrily. ‘I look for support from you,’ she said, ‘as the man who
is the nearest to me, till my father shall come.’ ‘But I cannot support
you in what is wrong,’ said the clergyman. Then Mrs Trevelyan had left
the room, and would not see her uncle again.
She carried things altogether with a high hand at this time. When old
Mr Bideawhile called upon her, her husband’s ancient family lawyer, she
told that gentleman that if it was her husband’s will that
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