He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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as they were going upstairs after luncheon.
‘I will not,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘May I do it?’
‘Certainly not, Nora. I should feel that I were demeaning myself
were I to allow what was said to me in such a manner to have any
effect upon me.’
‘I think you are so wrong, Emily. I do indeed.’
‘You must allow me to be the best judge what to do in my own house,
and with my own husband.’
‘Oh, yes; certainly.’
‘If he gives me any command I will obey it. Or if he had expressed
his wish in any other words I would have complied. But to be told
that he would rather not have Colonel Osborne here! If you had seen
his manner and heard his words, you would not have been surprised
that I should feel it as I do. It was a gross insult and it was
not the first.’
As she spoke the fire flashed from her eye, and the bright red
colour of her cheek told a tale of her anger which her sister well
knew how to read. Then there was a knock at the door, and they both
knew that Colonel Osborne was there. Louis Trevelyan, sitting in
his library, also knew of whose coming that knock gave notice.
COLONEL OSBORNE
It has been already said that Colonel Osborne was a bachelor, a man
of fortune, a member of Parliament, and one who carried his half
century of years lightly on his shoulders. It will only be necessary
to say further of him that he was a man popular with those among
whom he lived, as a politician, as a sportsman, and as a member
of society. He could speak well in the House, though he spoke but
seldom, and it was generally thought of him that he might have been
something considerable, had it not suited him better to be nothing
at all. He was supposed to be a Conservative, and generally voted
with the conservative party; but he could boast that he was altogether
independent, and on an occasion would take the trouble of proving
himself to be so. He was in possession of excellent health; had all
that the world could give; was fond of books, pictures, architecture,
and china; had various tastes, and the means of indulging them,
and was one of those few men on whom it seems that every pleasant
thing has been lavished. There was that little slur on his good
name to which allusion has been made; but those who knew Colonel
Osborne best were generally willing to declare that no harm was
intended, and that the evils which arose were always to be attributed
to mistaken jealousy. He had, his friends said, a free and pleasant
way with women which women like, a pleasant way of free friendship;
that there was no more, and that the harm which had come had always
come from false suspicion. But there were certain ladies about the
town—good, motherly, discreet women—who hated the name of Colonel
Osborne, who would not admit him within their doors, who would not
bow to him in other people’s houses, who would always speak of him
as a serpent, a hyena, a kite, or a shark. Old Lady Milborough was
one of these, a daughter of a friend of hers having once admitted
the serpent to her intimacy.
‘Augustus Poole was wise enough to take his wife abroad,’ said old
Lady Milborough, discussing about this time with a gossip of hers
the danger of Mrs Trevelyan’s position, ‘or there would have been
a breakup there; and yet there never was a better girl in the world
than Jane Marriott.’
The reader may be quite certain that Colonel Osborne had no
premeditated evil intention when he allowed himself to become the
intimate friend of his old friend’s daughter. There was nothing
fiendish in his nature. He was not a man who boasted of his
conquests. He was not a ravening wolf going about seeking whom he
might devour, and determined to devour whatever might come in his
way; but he liked that which was pleasant; and of all pleasant things
the company of a pretty clever woman was to him the pleasantest.
At this exact period of his life no woman was so pleasantly pretty
to him, and so agreeably clever, as Mrs Trevelyan.
When Louis Trevelyan heard on the stairs the step of the dangerous
man, he got up from his chair as though he too would have gone into
the drawing-room, and it would perhaps have been well had he done
so. Could he have done this, and kept his temper with the man, he
would have paved the way for an easy reconciliation with his wife.
But when he reached the door of his room, and had placed his hand
upon the lock, he withdrew again. He told himself he withdrew because
he would not allow himself to be jealous; but in truth he did so
because he knew he could not have brought himself to be civil to
the man he hated. So he sat down, and took up his pen, and began
to cudgel his brain about the scientific article. He was intent
on raising a dispute with some learned pundit about the waves of
sound, but he could think of no other sound than that of the light
steps of Colonel Osborne as he had gone upstairs. He put down his
pen, and clenched his fist, and allowed a black frown to settle
upon his brow. ‘What right had the man to come there, unasked by
him, and disturb his happiness? And then this poor wife of his,
who knew so little of English life, who had lived in the Mandarin
Islands almost since she had been a child, who had lived in one
colony or another almost since she had been born, who had had so
few of those advantages for which he should have looked in marrying
a wife, how was the poor girl to conduct herself properly when
subjected to the arts and practised villanies of this viper? And
yet the poor girl was so stiff in her temper, had picked up such a
trick of obstinacy in those tropical regions, that Louis Trevelyan
felt that he did not know how to manage her. He too had heard how
Jane Marriott had been carried off to Naples after she had become
Mrs Poole. Must he too carry off his wife to Naples in order to
place her out of the reach of this hyena? It was terrible to him
to think that he must pack up everything and run away from such
a one as Colonel Osborne. And even were he to consent to do this,
how could he explain it all to that very wife for whose sake he
would do it? If she got a hint of the reason she would, he did not
doubt, refuse to go. As he thought of it, and as that visit upstairs
prolonged itself, he almost thought it would be best for him to be
round with her! We all know what a husband means when he resolves
to be round with his wife. He began to think that he would not
apologise at all for the words he had spoken but would speak them
again somewhat more sharply than before. She would be very wrathful
with him; there would be a silent enduring indignation, which,
as he understood well, would be infinitely worse than any torrent
of words. But was he, a man, to abstain from doing that which he
believed to be his duty because he was afraid of his wife’s anger?
Should he be deterred from saying that which he conceived it would
be right that he should say, because she was stiff-necked? No. He
would not apologise, but would tell her again that it was necessary,
both for his happiness and for hers, that all intimacy with Colonel
Osborne should be discontinued.
He was brought to this strongly marital resolution by the length
of the man’s present visit; by that and by the fact that, during
the latter portion of it, his wife was alone with Colonel Osborne.
Nora had been there when the man came, but Mrs Fairfax had called,
not getting out of her carriage, and Nora had been constrained to
go down to her. She had hesitated a moment, and Colonel Osborne
had observed and partly understood the hesitation. When he saw it,
had he been perfectly well-minded in the matter, he would have gone
too. But he probably told himself that Nora Rowley was a fool, and
that in such matters it was quite enough for a man to know that he
did not intend any harm.
‘You had better go down, Nora,’ said Mrs Trevelyan; ‘Mrs Fairfax
will be ever so angry if you keep her waiting.’
Then Nora had gone and the two were alone together. Nora had gone,
and Trevelyan had heard her as she was going and knew that Colonel
Osborne was alone with his wife.
‘If you can manage that it will be so nice,’ said Mrs Trevelyan,
continuing the conversation.
‘My dear Emily,’ he said, ‘you must not talk of my managing it, or
you will spoil it all.’
He had called them both Emily and Nora when Sir Marmaduke and Lady
Rowley were with them before the marriage, and, taking the liberty
of a very old family friend, had continued the practice. Mrs Trevelyan
was quite aware that she had been so called by him in the presence
of her husband and that her husband had not objected. But that was
now some months ago, before baby was born; and she was aware also
that he had not called her so latterly in presence of her husband.
She thoroughly wished that she knew how to ask him not to do so
again; but the matter was very difficult, as she could not make
such a request without betraying some fear on her husband’s part.
The subject which they were now discussing was too important to
her to allow her to dwell upon this trouble at the moment, and so
she permitted him to go on with his speech.
‘If I were to manage it, as you call it, which I can’t do at all,
it would be a gross job.’
‘That’s all nonsense to us, Colonel Osborne. Ladies always like
political jobs, and think that they and they only make politics
bearable. But this would not be a job at all. Papa could do it
better than anybody else. Think how long he has been at it!’
The matter in discussion was the chance of an order being sent
out to Sir Marmaduke to come home from his islands at the public
expense, to give evidence, respecting colonial government in general,
to a committee of the House of Commons which was about to sit on
the subject. The committee had been voted, and two governors were
to be brought home for the purpose of giving evidence. What arrangement
could be so pleasant to a governor living in the Mandarin Islands,
who had had a holiday lately, and who could but ill afford to
take any holidays at his own expense? Colonel Osborne was on this
committee, and, moreover, was on good terms at the Colonial Office.
There were men in office who would be glad to do Colonel Osborne
a service, and then if this were a job, it would be so very little
of a job! Perhaps Sir Marmaduke might not be the very best man for
the purpose. Perhaps the government of the Mandarins did not afford
the best specimen of that colonial lore which
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