He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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before her became still blacker, but still the man said nothing. ‘I
dare say it is a prejudice on my part, but I have always disliked
him. I think he is a dangerous friend—what I call a snake in the
grass. And though Emily’s high good sense, and love for you, and
general feelings on such a subject, are just what a husband must
desire—Indeed, I am quite sure that the possibility of anything
wrong has never entered into her head. But it is the very purity
of her innocence which makes the danger. He is a bad man, and I
would just say a word to her, if I were you, to make her understand
that his coming to her of a morning is not desirable. Upon my
word, I believe there is nothing he likes so much as going about
and making mischief between men and their wives.’
Thus she delivered herself; and Louis Trevelyan, though he was
sore and angry, could not but feel that she had taken the part of
a friend. All that she had said had been true; all that she had
said to him he had said to himself more than once. He too hated
the man. He believed him to be a snake in the grass. But it was
intolerably bitter to him that he should be warned about his wife’s
conduct by any living human being; that he, to whom the world had
been so full of good fortune, that he, who had in truth taught
himself to think that he deserved so much good fortune, should be
made the subject of care on behalf of his friend, because of danger
between himself and his wife! On the spur of the moment he did not
know what answer to make. ‘He is not a man whom I like myself,’ he
said.
‘Just be careful, Louis, that is all,’ said Lady Milborough, and
then she was gone.
To be cautioned about his wife’s conduct cannot be pleasant to
any man, and it was very unpleasant to Louis Trevelyan. He, too,
had been asked a question about Sir Marmaduke’s expected visit to
England after the ladies had left the room. All the town had heard
of it except himself. He hardly spoke another word that evening till
the brougham was announced; and his wife had observed his silence.
When they were seated in the carriage, he together with his wife and
Nora Rowley, he immediately asked a question about Sir Marmaduke.
‘Emily,’ he said, ‘is there any truth in a report I hear that your
father is coming home?’ No answer was made, and for a moment or
two there was silence. ‘You must have heard of it, then?’ he said.
‘Perhaps you can tell me, Nora, as Emily will not reply. Have you
heard anything of your father’s coming?’
‘Yes; I have heard of it,’ said Nora slowly.
‘And why have I not been told?’
‘It was to be kept a secret,’ said Mrs Trevelyan boldly.
‘A secret from me; and everybody else knows it! And why was it to
be a secret?’
‘Colonel Osborne did not wish that it should be known,’ said Mrs
Trevelyan.
‘And what has Colonel Osborne to do between you and your father
in any matter with which I may not be made acquainted? I will have
nothing more between you and Colonel Osborne. You shall not see
Colonel Osborne. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes, I hear you, Louis.’
‘And do you mean to obey me? By G—, you shall obey me. Remember
this, that I lay my positive order upon you, that you shall not
see Colonel Osborne again. You do not know it, perhaps, but you are
already forfeiting your reputation as an honest woman, and bringing
disgrace upon me by your familiarity with Colonel Osborne.’
‘Oh, Louis, do not say that!’ said Nora.
‘You had better let him speak it all at once,’ said Emily.
‘I have said what I have got to say. It is now only necessary that
you should give me your solemn assurance that you will obey me.’
‘If you have said all that you have to say, perhaps you will listen
to me,’ said his wife.
‘I will listen to nothing till you have given me your promise.’
‘Then I certainly shall not give it you.’
‘Dear Emily, pray, pray do what he tells you,’ said Nora.
‘She has yet to learn that it is her duty to do as I tell her,’
said Trevelyan. ‘And because she is obstinate, and will not learn
from those who know better than herself what a woman may do, and
what she may not, she will ruin herself, and destroy my happiness.’
‘I know that you have destroyed my happiness by your unreasonable
jealousy,’ said the wife. ‘Have you considered what I must feel
in having such words addressed to me by my husband? If I am fit
to be told that I must promise not to see any man living, I cannot
be fit to be any man’s wife.’ Then she burst out into an hysterical
fit of tears, and in this condition she got out of the carriage,
entered her house, and hurried up to her own room.
‘Indeed, she has not been to blame,’ said Nora to Trevelyan on the
staircase.
‘Why has there been a secret kept from me between her and this man;
and that too, after I had cautioned her against being intimate with
him? I am sorry that she should suffer; but it is better that she
should suffer a little now, than that we should both suffer much
by-and-by.’
Nora endeavoured to explain to him the truth about the committee,
and Colonel Osborne’s promised influence, and the reason why there
was to be a secret. But she was too much in a hurry to get to her
sister to make the matter plain, and he was too much angered to
listen to her. He shook his head when she spoke of Colonel Osborne’s
dislike to have his name mentioned in connection with the matter.
‘All the world knows it,’ he said with scornful laughter.
It was in vain that Nora tried to explain to him that though
all the world might know it, Emily herself had only heard of the
proposition as a thing quite unsettled, as to which nothing at
present should be spoken openly. It was in vain to endeavour to
make peace on that night. Nora hurried up to her sister, and found
that the hysterical tears had again given place to anger. She would
not see her husband, unless he would beg her pardon; and he would
not see her unless she would give the promise he demanded. And the
husband and wife did not see each other again on that night.
HUGH STANBURY
It has been already stated that Nora Rowley was not quite so well
disposed as perhaps she ought to have been to fall in love with the
Honourable Charles Glascock, there having come upon her the habit
of comparing him with another gentleman whenever this duty of
falling in love with Mr Glascock was exacted from her. That other
gentleman was one with whom she knew that it was quite out of the
question that she should fall in love, because he had not a shilling
in the world; and the other gentleman was equally aware that it
was not open to him to fall in love with Nora Rowley for the same
reason. In regard to such matters Nora Rowley had been properly
brought up, having been made to understand by the best and most
cautious of mothers, that in that matter of falling in love it was
absolutely necessary that bread and cheese should be considered.
‘Romance is a very pretty thing,’ Lady Rowley had been wont to say
to her daughters, ‘and I don’t think life would be worth having
without a little of it. I should be very sorry to think that either
of my girls would marry a man only because he had money. But you
can’t even be romantic without something to eat and drink.’ Nora
thoroughly understood all this, and being well aware that her
fortune in the world, if it ever was to be made at all, could only
be made by marriage, had laid down for herself certain hard lines
lines intended to be as fast as they were hard. Let what might come
to her in the way of likings and dislikings, let the temptation
to her be ever so strong, she would never allow her heart to rest
on a man who, if he should ask her to be his wife, would not have
the means of supporting her. There were many, she knew, who would
condemn such a resolution as cold, selfish, and heartless. She
heard people saying so daily. She read in books that it ought to
be so regarded. But she declared to herself that she would respect
the judgment neither of the people nor of the books. To be poor
alone, to have to live without a husband, to look forward to a life
in which there would be nothing of a career, almost nothing to do,
to await the vacuity of an existence in which she would be useful
to no one, was a destiny which she could teach herself to endure,
because it might probably be forced upon her by necessity. Were her
father to die there would hardly be bread for that female flock to
eat. As it was, she was eating the bread of a man in whose house
she was no more than a visitor. The lot of a woman; as she often
told herself, was wretched, unfortunate, almost degrading. For a
woman such as herself there was no path open to her energy, other
than that of getting a husband. Nora Rowley thought of all this till
she was almost sick of the prospect of her life—especially sick
of it when she was told with much authority by the Lady Milboroughs
of her acquaintance, that it was her bounden duty to fall in love
with Mr Glascock. As to falling in love with Mr Glascock, she had
not as yet quite made up her mind. There was so much to be said on
that side of the question, if such falling in love could only be
made possible. But she had quite made up her mind that she would
never fall in love with a poor man. In spite, however, of all that,
she felt herself compelled to make comparisons between Mr Glascock
and one Mr Hugh Stanbury, a gentleman who had not a shilling.
Mr Hugh Stanbury had been at college the most intimate friend of
Louis Trevelyan, and at Oxford had been, in spite of Trevelyan’s
successes, a bigger man than his friend. Stanbury had not taken
so high a degree as Trevelyan, indeed had not gone out in honours
at all. He had done little for the credit of his college, and had
never put himself in the way of wrapping himself up for life in
the scanty lambswool of a fellowship. But he had won for himself
reputation as a clever speaker, as a man who had learned much that
college tutors do not profess to teach, as a hard-headed, ready-witted
fellow, who, having the world as an oyster before him, which it
was necessary that he should open, would certainly find either a
knife or a sword with which to open it.
Immediately on leaving college he had come to town, and had entered
himself at Lincoln’s Inn. Now, at the time of our story, he was a
barrister of four years’ standing, but had
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