When Louis Trevelyan was twenty-four years old, he had all the world before him where to choose; and, among other things, he chose to go to the Mandarin Islands, and there fell in love with Emily Rowley, the daughter of Sir Marmaduke, the governor. Sir Marmaduke Rowley, at this period of his life, was a respectable middle-aged public servant, in good repute, who had, however, as yet achieved for himself neither an exalted position nor a large fortune. He had been governor of many islands, and had never lacked employment; and now, at the age of fifty, found himself at the Mandarins, with a salary of 3,000 pounds a year, living in a temperature at which 80 in the shade is considered to be cool, with eight daughters, and not a shilling saved. A governor at the Mandarins who is social by nature and hospitable on principle, cannot save money in the islands even on 3,000 pounds a year when he has eight daughters. And at the Mandarins, though hospitality is a duty, the gentlemen who ate Sir Rowley’s dinners were not exactly the men whom he or Lady Rowley desired to welcome to their bosoms as sons-inlaw. Nor when Mr Trevelyan came that way, desirous of seeing everything in the somewhat indefinite course of his travels, had Emily Rowley, the eldest of the flock, then twenty years of age, seen as yet any Mandariner who exactly came up to her fancy. And, as Louis Trevelyan was a remarkably handsome young man, who was well connected, who had been ninth wrangler at Cambridge, who had already published a volume of poems, and who possessed 3,000 pounds a year of his own, arising from various perfectly secure investments, he was not forced to sigh long in vain. Indeed, the Rowleys, one and all, felt that providence had been very good to them in sending young Trevelyan on his travels in that direction, for he seemed to be a very pearl among men. Both Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley felt that there might be objections to such a marriage as that proposed to them, raised by the Trevelyan family. Lady Rowley would not have liked her daughter to go to England, to be received with cold looks by strangers. But it soon appeared that there was no one to make objections. Louis, the lover, had no living relative nearer than cousins. His father, a barrister of repute, had died a widower, and had left the money which he had made to an only child. The head of the family was a first cousin who lived in Cornwall on a moderate property, a very good sort of stupid fellow, as Louis said, who would be quite indifferent as to any marriage that his cousin might make. No man could be more independent or more clearly justified in pleasing himself than was this lover. And then he himself proposed that the second daughter, Nora, should come and live with them in London. What a lover to fall suddenly from the heavens into such a dovecote!
‘I haven’t a penny-piece to give either of them,’ said Sir Rowley.
‘It is my idea that girls should not have fortunes,’ said Trevelyan. ‘At any rate, I am quite sure that men should never look for money. A man must be more comfortable, and, I think, is likely to be more affectionate, when the money has belonged to himself.’
Sir Rowley was a high-minded gentleman, who would have liked to have handed over a few thousand pounds on giving up his daughters; but, having no thousands of pounds to hand over, he could not but admire the principles of his proposed son-inlaw. As it was about time for him to have his leave of absence, he and sundry of the girls went to England with Mr Trevelyan, and the wedding was celebrated in London by the Rev. Oliphant Outhouse, of Saint Diddulph-in-the-East, who had married Sir Rowley’s sister. Then a small house was taken and furnished in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and the Rowleys went back to the seat of their government, leaving Nora, the second girl, in charge of her elder sister.
The Rowleys had found, on reaching London, that they had lighted upon a pearl indeed. Louis Trevelyan was a man of whom all people said all good things. He might have been a fellow of his college had he not been a man of fortune. He might already, so Sir Rowley was told, have been in Parliament, had he not thought it to be wiser to wait awhile. Indeed, he was very wise in many things. He had gone out on his travels thus young, not in search of excitement, to kill beasts, or to encounter he knew not what novelty and amusement, but that he might see men and know the world. He had been on his travels for more than a year when the winds blew him to the Mandarins. Oh, how blessed were the winds! And, moreover, Sir Rowley found that his son-inlaw was well spoken of at the clubs by those who had known him during his university career, as a man popular as well as wise, not a book-worm, or a dry philosopher, or a prig. He could talk on all subjects, was very generous, a man sure to be honoured and respected; and then such a handsome, manly fellow, with short brown hair, a nose divinely chiselled, an Apollo’s mouth, six feet high, with shoulders and legs and arms in proportion — a pearl of pearls! Only, as Lady Rowley was the first to find out, he liked to have his own way.
‘But his way is such a good way,’ said Sir Marmaduke. ‘He will be such a good guide for the girls!’
‘But Emily likes her way too,’ said Lady Rowley.
Sir Marmaduke argued the matter no further, but thought, no doubt, that such a husband as Louis Trevelyan was entitled to have his own way. He probably had not observed his daughter’s temper so accurately as his wife had done. With eight of them coming up around him, how should he have observed their tempers? At any rate, if there were anything amiss with Emily’s temper, it would be well that she should find her master in such a husband as Louis Trevelyan.
For nearly two years the little household in Curzon Street went on well, or if anything was the matter no one outside of the little household was aware of it. And there was a baby, a boy, a young Louis, and a baby in such a household is apt to make things go sweetly.
The marriage had taken place in July, and after the wedding tour there had been a winter and a spring in London; and then they passed a month or two at the sea-side, after which the baby had been born. And then there came another winter and another spring. Nora Rowley was with them in London, and by this time Mr Trevelyan had begun to think that he should like to have his own way completely. His baby was very nice, and his wife was clever, pretty, and attractive. Nora was all that an unmarried sister should be. But but there had come to be trouble and bitter words. Lady Rowley had been right when she said that her daughter Emily also liked to have her own way.
‘If I am suspected,’ said Mrs Trevelyan to her sister one morning, as they sat together in the little back drawing-room, ‘life will not be worth having.’
‘How can you talk of being suspected, Emily?’
‘What does he mean then by saying that he would rather not have Colonel Osborne here? A man older than my own father, who has known me since I was a baby!’
‘He didn’t mean anything of that kind, Emily. You know he did not, and you should not say so. It would be too horrible to think of.’
‘It was a great deal too horrible to be spoken, I know. If he does not beg my pardon, I shall I shall continue to live with him, of course, as a sort of upper servant, because of baby. But he shall know what I think and feel.’
‘If I were you I would forget it.’
‘How can I forget it? Nothing that I can do pleases him. He is civil and kind to you because he is not your master; but you don’t know what things he says to me. Am I to tell Colonel Osborne not to come? Heavens and earth! How should I ever hold up my head again if I were driven to do that? He will be here today I have no doubt; and Louis will sit there below in the library, and hear his step, and will not come up.’
‘Tell Richard to say you are not at home.’
‘Yes; and everybody will understand why. And for what am I to deny myself in that way to the best and oldest friend I have? If any such orders are to be given, let him give them and then see what will come of it.’
Mrs Trevelyan had described Colonel Osborne truly as far as words went, in saying that he had known her since she was a baby, and that he was an older man than her father. Colonel Osborne’s age exceeded her father’s by about a month, and as he was now past fifty, he might be considered perhaps, in that respect, to be a safe friend for a young married woman. But he was in every respect a man very different from Sir Marmaduke. Sir Marmaduke, blessed and at the same time burdened as he was with a wife and eight daughters, and condemned as he had been to pass a large portion of his life within the tropics, had become at fifty what many people call quite a middle-aged man. That is to say, he was one from whom the effervescence and elasticity and salt of youth had altogether passed away. He was fat and slow, thinking much of his wife and eight daughters, thinking much also of his dinner. Now Colonel Osborne was a bachelor, with no burdens but those imposed upon him by his position as a member of Parliament, a man of fortune to whom the world had been very easy. It was not therefore said so decidedly of him as of Sir Marmaduke, that he was a middle-aged man, although he had probably already lived more than two-thirds of his life. And he was a good-looking man of his age, bald indeed at the top of his head, and with a considerable sprinkling of grey hair through his bushy beard; but upright in his carriage, active, and quick in his step, who dressed well, and was clearly determined to make the most he could of what remained to him of the advantages of youth. Colonel Osborne was always so dressed that no one ever observed the nature of his garments, being no doubt well aware that no man after twenty-five can afford to call special attention to his coat, his hat, his cravat, or his trousers; but nevertheless the matter was one to which he paid much attention, and he was by no means lax in ascertaining what his tailor did for him. He always rode a pretty horse, and mounted his groom on one at any rate as pretty. He was known to have an excellent stud down in the shires, and had the reputation of going well with hounds. Poor Sir Marmaduke could not have ridden a hunt to save either his government or his credit. When, therefore, Mrs Trevelyan declared to her sister that Colonel Osborne was a man whom she was entitled to regard with semi-parental feelings of veneration because he was older than her father, she made a comparison which was more true in the letter than in the spirit. And when she asserted that Colonel Osborne had known her since she was a baby, she fell again into the same mistake. Colonel Osborne had indeed known her when she was a baby, and had in old days been the very intimate friend of her father; but of herself he had seen little or nothing since those baby days, till he had met her just as she was about to become Mrs Trevelyan; and though it was natural that so old a friend should come to her and congratulate her and renew his friendship, nevertheless it was not true that he made his appearance in her husband’s house in the guise of the useful old family friend, who gives silver cups to the children and kisses the little girls for the sake of the old affection which he has borne for the parents. We all know the appearance of that old gentleman, how pleasant and dear a fellow he is, how welcome is his face within the gate, how free he makes with our wine, generally abusing it, how he tells our eldest daughter to light his candle for him, how he gave silver cups when the girls were born, and now bestows tea-services as they get married — a most useful, safe, and charming fellow, not a year younger-looking or more nimble than ourselves, without whom life would be very blank. We all know that man; but such a man was not Colonel Osborne in the house of Mr Trevelyan’s young bride.
Emily Rowley, when she was brought home from the Mandarin Islands to be the wife of Louis Trevelyan, was a very handsome young woman, tall, with a bust rather full for her age, with dark eyes eyes that looked to be dark because her eye-brows and eye-lashes were nearly black, but which were in truth so varying in colour that you could not tell their hue. Her brown hair was very dark and very soft; and the tint of her complexion was brown also, though the colour of her cheeks was often so bright as to induce her enemies to say falsely of her that she painted them. And she was very strong, as are some girls who come from the tropics, and whom a tropical climate has suited. She could sit on her horse the whole day long, and would never be weary with dancing at the Government House balls. When Colonel Osborne was introduced to her as the baby whom he had known, he thought it would be very pleasant to be intimate with so pleasant a friend, meaning no harm indeed, as but few men do mean harm on such occasions, but still, not regarding the beautiful young woman whom he had seen as one of a generation succeeding to that of his own, to whom it would be his duty to make himself useful on account of the old friendship which he bore to her father.
It was, moreover, well known in London though not known at all to Mrs Trevelyan that this ancient Lothario had before this made himself troublesome in more than one family. He was fond of intimacies with married ladies, and perhaps was not averse to the excitement of marital hostility. It must be remembered, however, that the hostility to which allusion is here made was not the hostility of the pistol or the horsewhip nor indeed was it generally the hostility of a word of spoken anger. A young husband may dislike the too-friendly bearing of a friend, and may yet abstain from that outrage on his own dignity and on his wife, which is conveyed by a word of suspicion. Louis Trevelyan having taken a strong dislike to Colonel Osborne, and having failed to make his wife understand that this dislike should have induced her to throw cold water upon the Colonel’s friendship, had allowed himself to speak a word which probably he would have willingly recalled as soon as spoken. But words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret. So it was with Louis Trevelyan when he told his wife that he did not wish Colonel Osborne to come so often to his house. He had said it with a flashing eye and an angry tone; and though she had seen the eye flash before, and was familiar with the angry tone, she had never before felt herself to be insulted by her husband. As soon as the word had been spoken Trevelyan had left the room and had gone down among his books. But when he was alone he knew that he had insulted his wife. He was quite aware that he should have spoken to her gently, and have explained to her, with his arm round her waist, that it would be better for both of them that this friend’s friendship should be limited. There is so much in a turn of the eye and in the tone given to a word when such things have to be said, so much more of importance than in the words themselves. As Trevelyan thought of this, and remembered what his manner had been, how much anger he had expressed, how far he had been from having his arm round his wife’s waist as he spoke to her, he almost made up his mind to go upstairs and to apologise. But he was one to whose nature the giving of any apology was repulsive. He could not bear to have to own himself to have been wrong. And then his wife had been most provoking in her manner to him. When he had endeavoured to make her understand his wishes by certain disparaging hints which he had thrown out as to Colonel Osborne, saying that he was a dangerous man, one who did not show his true character, a snake in the grass, a man without settled principles, and such like, his wife had taken up the cudgels for her friend, and had openly declared that she did not believe a word of the things that were alleged against him. ‘But still for all that it is true,’ the husband had said. ‘I have no doubt that you think so,’ the wife had replied. ‘Men do believe evil of one another, very often. But you must excuse me if I say that I think you are mistaken. I have known Colonel Osborne much longer than you have done, Louis, and papa has always had the highest opinion of him.’ Then Mr Trevelyan had become very angry, and had spoken those words which he could not recall. As he walked to and fro among his books downstairs, he almost felt that he ought to beg his wife’s pardon. He knew his wife well enough to be sure that she would not forgive him unless he did so. He would do so, he thought, but not exactly now. A moment would come in which it might be easier than at present. He would be able to assure her when he went up to dress for dinner, that he had meant no harm. They were going out to dine at the house of a lady of rank, the Countess Dowager of Milborough, a lady standing high in the world’s esteem, of whom his wife stood a little in awe; and he calculated that this feeling, if it did not make his task easy would yet take from it some of its difficulty. Emily would be, not exactly cowed, by the prospect of Lady Milborough’s dinner, but perhaps a little reduced from her usual self-assertion. He would say a word to her when he was dressing, assuring her that he had not intended to animadvert in the slightest degree upon her own conduct.
Luncheon was served, and the two ladies went down into the dining-room. Mr Trevelyan did not appear. There was nothing in itself singular in that, as he was accustomed to declare that luncheon was a meal too much in the day, and that a man should eat nothing beyond a biscuit between breakfast and dinner. But he would sometimes come in and eat his biscuit standing on the hearth-rug, and drink what he would call half a quarter of a glass of sherry. It would probably have been well that he should have done so now; but he remained in his library behind the dining-room, and when his wife and his sister-inlaw had gone upstairs, he became anxious to learn whether, Colonel Osborne would come on that day, and, if so, whether he would be admitted. He had been told that Nora Rowley was to be called for by another lady, a Mrs Fairfax, to go out and look at pictures. His wife had declined to join Mrs Fairfax’s party, having declared that, as she was going to dine out, she would not leave her baby all the afternoon. Louis Trevelyan, though he strove to apply his mind to an article which he was writing for a scientific quarterly review, could not keep himself from anxiety as to this expected visit from Colonel Osborne. He was not in the least jealous. He swore to himself fifty times over that any such feeling on his part would be a monstrous injury to his wife. Nevertheless he knew that he would be gratified if on that special day Colonel Osborne should be informed that his wife was not at home. Whether the man were admitted or not, he would beg his wife’s pardon; but he could, he thought, do so with more thorough efficacy and affection if she should have shown a disposition to comply with his wishes on this day.
‘Do say a word to Richard,’ said Nora to her sister in a whisper 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.
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 it was the business of the committee to master. But then two governors were to come, and it might be as well to have one of the best sort, and one of the second best. No one supposed that excellent old Sir Marmaduke was a paragon of a governor, but then he had an infinity of experience! For over twenty years he had been from island to island, and had at least steered clear of great scrapes.
‘We’ll try it, at any rate,’ said the Colonel.
‘Do, Colonel Osborne. Mamma would come with him, of course?’
‘We should leave him to manage all that. It’s not very likely that he would leave Lady Rowley behind.’
‘He never has. I know he thinks more of mamma than he ever does of himself. Fancy having them here in the autumn! I suppose if he came for the end of the session, they wouldn’t send him back quite at once?’
‘I rather fancy that our foreign and colonial servants know how to stretch a point when they find themselves in England.’
‘Of course they do, Colonel Osborne; and why shouldn’t they? Think of all that they have to endure out in those horrible places. How would you like to live in the Mandarins?’
‘I should prefer London, certainly.’
‘Of course you would; and you mustn’t begrudge papa a month or two when he comes. I never cared about your being in parliament before, but I shall think so much of you now if you can manage to get papa home.’
There could be nothing more innocent than this — nothing more innocent at any rate as regarded any offence against Mr Trevelyan. But just then there came a word which a little startled Mrs Trevelyan, and made her feel afraid that she was doing wrong.
‘I must make one stipulation with you, Emily,’ said the Colonel.
‘What is that?’
‘You must not tell your husband.’
‘Oh, dear! and why not?’
‘I am sure you are sharp enough to see why you should not. A word of this repeated at any club would put an end at once to your project, and would be very damaging to me. And, beyond that, I wouldn’t wish him to know that I had meddled with it at all. I am very chary of having my name connected with anything of the kind; and, upon my word, I wouldn’t do it for any living human being but yourself. You’ll promise me, Emily?’
She gave the promise, but there were two things in the matter, as it stood at present, which she did not at all like. She was very averse to having any secret from her husband with Colonel Osborne; and she was not at all pleased at being told that he was doing for her a favour that he would not have done for any other living human being. Had he said so to her yesterday, before those offensive words had been spoken by her husband, she would not have thought much about it. She would have connected the man’s friendship for herself with his very old friendship for her father, and she would have regarded the assurance as made to the Rowleys in general, and not to herself in particular. But now, after what had occurred, it pained her to be told by Colonel Osborne that he would make, specially on her behalf, a sacrifice of his political pride which he would make for no other person living. And then, as he had called her by her Christian name, as he had exacted the promise, there had been a tone of affection in his voice that she had almost felt to be too warm. But she gave the promise; and when he pressed her hand at parting, she pressed his again, in token of gratitude for the kindness to be done to her father and mother.
Immediately afterwards Colonel Osborne went away, and Mrs Trevelyan was left alone in her drawing-room. She knew that her husband was still downstairs, and listened for a moment to hear whether he would now come up to her. And he, too, had heard the Colonel’s step as he went, and for a few moments had doubted whether or no he would at once go to his wife. Though he believed himself to be a man very firm of purpose, his mind had oscillated backwards and forwards within the last quarter of an hour between those two purposes of being round with his wife, and of begging her pardon for the words which he had already spoken. He believed that he would best do his duty by that plan of being round with her; but then it would be so much pleasanter at any rate, so much easier, to beg her pardon. But of one thing he was quite certain, he must by some means exclude Colonel Osborne from his house. He could not live and continue to endure the feelings which he had suffered while sitting downstairs at his desk, with the knowledge that Colonel Osborne was closeted with his wife upstairs. It might be that there was nothing in it. That his wife was innocent he was quite sure. But nevertheless, he was himself so much affected by some feeling which pervaded him in reference to this man, that all his energy was destroyed., and his powers of mind and body were paralysed. He could not, and would not, stand it. Rather than that, he would follow Mr Poole, and take his wife to Naples. So resolving, he put his hat on his head and walked out of the house. He would have the advantage of the afternoon’s consideration before he took either the one step or the other.
As soon as he was gone Emily Trevelyan went upstairs to her baby. She would not stir as long as there had been a chance of his coming to her. She very much wished that he would come, and had made up her mind, in spite of the fierceness of her assertion to her sister, to accept any slightest hint at an apology which her husband might offer to her. To this state of mind she was brought by the consciousness of having a secret from him, and by a sense not of impropriety on her own part, but of conduct which some people might have called improper in her mode of parting from the man against whom her husband had warned her. The warmth of that hand-pressing, and the affectionate tone in which her name had been pronounced, and the promise made to her, softened her heart towards her husband. Had he gone to her now and said a word to her in gentleness all might have been made right. But he did not go to her.
‘If he chooses to be cross and sulky, he may be cross and sulky,’ said Mrs Trevelyan to herself as she went up to her baby.
‘Has Louis been with you?’ Nora asked, as soon as Mrs Fairfax had brought her home.
‘I have not seen him since you left me,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘I suppose he went out before Colonel Osborne?’
‘No, indeed. He waited till Colonel Osborne had gone, and then he went himself; but he did not come near me. It is for him to judge of his own conduct, but I must say that I think he is very foolish.’
This the young wife said in a tone which clearly indicated that she had judged her husband’s conduct, and had found it to be very foolish indeed.
‘Do you think that papa and mamma will really come?’ said Nora, changing the subject of conversation.
‘How can I tell? How am I to know? After all that has passed I am afraid to say a word lest I should be accused of doing wrong. But remember this, Nora, you are not to speak of it to any one.’
‘You will tell Louis?’
‘No; I will tell no one.’
‘Dear, dear Emily; pray do not keep anything secret from him.’
‘What do you mean by secret? There isn’t any secret. Only in such matters as that about politics no gentleman likes to have his name talked about!’
A look of great distress came upon Nora’s face as she heard this. To her it seemed to be very bad that there should be a secret between her sister and Colonel Osborne to be kept from her brother-inlaw.
‘I suppose you will suspect me next?’ said Mrs Trevelyan, angrily.
‘Emily, how can you say anything so cruel?’
‘You look as if you did.’
‘I only mean that I think it would be wiser to tell all this to Louis.’
‘How can I tell him Colonel Osborne’s private business, when Colonel Osborne has desired me not to do so. For whose sake is Colonel Osborne doing this? For papa’s and mamma’s! I suppose Louis won’t be jealous, because I want to have papa and mamma home. It would not be a bit less unreasonable than the other.’
Louis Trevelyan went down to his club in Pall Mall, the Acrobats, and there heard a rumour that added to his anger against Colonel Osborne. The Acrobats was a very distinguished club, into which it was now difficult for a young man to find his way, and almost impossible for a man who was no longer young, and therefore known to many. It had been founded some twenty years since with the idea of promoting muscular exercise and gymnastic amusements; but the promoters had become fat and lethargic, and the Acrobats spent their time mostly in playing whist, and in ordering and eating their dinners. There were supposed to be, in some out-of-the-way part of the building, certain poles and sticks and parallel bars with which feats of activity might be practised, but no one ever asked for them now-a-days, and a man, when he became an Acrobat, did so with a view either to the whist or the cook, or possibly to the social excellences of the club. Louis Trevelyan was an Acrobat as was also Colonel Osborne.
‘So old Rowley is coming home,’ said one distinguished Acrobat to another in Trevelyan’s hearing.
‘How the deuce is he managing that? He was here a year ago?’
‘Osborne is getting it done. He is to come as a witness for this committee. It must be no end of a lounge for him. It doesn’t count as leave, and he has every shilling paid for him, down to his cab-fares when he goes out to dinner. There’s nothing like having a friend at Court.’
Such was the secrecy of Colonel Osborne’s secret! He had been so chary of having his name mentioned in connection with a political job, that he had found it necessary to impose on his young friend the burden of a secret from her husband, and yet the husband heard the whole story told openly at his club on the same day! There was nothing in the story to anger Trevelyan had he not immediately felt that there must be some plan in the matter between his wife and Colonel Osborne, of which he had been kept ignorant. Hitherto, indeed, his wife, as the reader knows, could not have told him. He had not seen her since the matter had been discussed between her and her friend. But he was angry because he first learned at his club that which he thought he ought to have learned at home. As soon as he reached his house he went at once to his wife’s room, but her maid was with her, and nothing could be said at that moment. He then dressed himself, intending to go to Emily as soon as the girl had left her; but the girl remained — was, as he believed, kept in the room purposely by his wife, so that he should have no moment of private conversation. He went downstairs, therefore, and found Nora standing by the drawing-room fire.
‘So you are dressed first today?’ he said. ‘I thought your turn always came last.’
‘Emily sent Jenny to me first today because she thought you would be home, and she didn’t go up to dress till the last minute.’
This was intended well by Nora, but it did not have the desired effect. Trevelyan, who had no command over his own features, frowned, and showed that he was displeased. He hesitated a moment, thinking whether he would ask Nora any question as to this report about her father and mother; but, before he had spoken, his wife was in the room.
‘We are all late, I fear,’ said Emily.
‘You, at any rate, are the last,’ said her husband.
‘About half a minute,’ said the wife.
Then they got into the hired brougham which was standing at the door.
Trevelyan, in the sweet days of his early confidence with his wife, had offered to keep a carriage for her, explaining to her that the luxury, though costly, would not be beyond his reach. But she had persuaded him against the carriage, and there had come to be an agreement that instead of the carriage there should always be an autumn tour. ‘One learns something from going about; but one learns nothing from keeping a carriage,’ Emily had said. Those had been happy days, in which it had been intended that everything should always be rose-coloured. Now he was meditating whether, in lieu of that autumn tour, it would not be necessary to take his wife away to Naples altogether, so that she might be removed from the influence of, of, of, of — no, not even to himself would he think of Colonel Osborne as his wife’s lover. The idea was too horrible! And yet, how dreadful was it that he should have, for any reason, to withdraw her from the influence of any man!
Lady Milborough lived ever so far away, in Eccleston Square, but Trevelyan did not say a single word to either of his companions during the journey. He was cross and vexed, and was conscious that they knew that he was cross and vexed. Mrs Trevelyan and her sister talked to each other the whole way, but they did so in that tone which clearly indicates that the conversation is made up, not for any interest attached to the questions asked or the answers given, but because it is expedient that there should not be silence. Nora said something about Marshall and Snellgrove and tried to make believe that she was very anxious for her sister’s answer. And Emily said something about the opera at Covent Garden, which was intended to show that her mind was quite at ease. But both of them failed altogether, and knew that they failed. Once or twice Trevelyan thought that he would say a word in token, as it were, of repentance. Like the naughty child who knew that he was naughty, he was trying to be good. But he could not do it. The fiend was too strong within him. She must have known that there was a proposition for her father’s return through Colonel Osborne’s influence. As that man at the club had heard it, how could she not have known it? When they got out at Lady Milborough’s door he had spoken to neither of them.
There was a large dull party, made up mostly of old people. Lady Milborough and Trevelyan’s mother had been bosom friends, and Lady Milborough had on this account taken upon herself to be much interested in Trevelyan’s wife. But Louis Trevelyan himself, in discussing Lady Milborough with Emily, had rather turned his mother’s old friend into ridicule, and Emily had, of course, followed her husband’s mode of thinking. Lady Milborough had once or twice given her some advice on small matters, telling her that this or that air would be good for her baby, and explaining that a mother during a certain interesting portion of her life, should refresh herself with a certain kind of malt liquor. Of all counsel on such domestic subjects Mrs Trevelyan was impatient, as indeed it was her nature to be in all matters, and consequently, authorized as she had been by her husband’s manner of speaking of his mother’s friend, she had taken a habit of quizzing Lady Milborough behind her back, and almost of continuing the practice before the old lady’s face. Lady Milborough, who was the most affectionate old soul alive, and good-tempered with her friends to a fault, had never resented this, but had come to fear that Mrs Trevelyan was perhaps a little flighty. She had never as yet allowed herself to say anything worse of her young friend’s wife than that. And she would always add that that kind of thing would cure itself as the nursery became full. It must be understood therefore that Mrs Trevelyan was not anticipating much pleasure from Lady Milborough’s party, and that she had accepted the invitation as a matter of duty.
There was present among the guests a certain Honourable Charles Glascock, the eldest son of Lord Peterborough, who made the affair more interesting to Nora than it was to her sister. It had been whispered into Nora’s ears, by more than one person and among others by Lady Milborough, whose own daughters were all married, that she might if she thought fit become the Honourable Mrs Charles Glascock. Now, whether she might think fit, or whether she might not, the presence of the gentleman under such circumstances, as far as she was concerned, gave an interest to the evening. And as Lady Milborough took care that Mr Glascock should take Nora down to dinner, the interest was very great. Mr Glascock was a good-looking man, just under forty, in Parliament, heir to a peerage, and known to be well off in respect to income. Lady Milborough and Mrs Trevelyan had told Nora Rowley that should encouragement in that direction come in her way, she ought to allow herself to fall in love with Mr Glascock. A certain amount of encouragement had come in her way, but she had not as yet allowed herself to fall in love with Mr Glascock.
It seemed to her that Mr Glascock was quite conscious of the advantages of his own position, and that his powers of talking about other matters than those with which he was immediately connected were limited. She did believe that he had in truth paid her the compliment of falling in love with her, and this is a compliment to which few girls are indifferent. Nora might perhaps have tried to fall in love with Mr Glascock, had she not been forced to make comparisons between him and another. This other one had not fallen in love with her, as she well knew; and she certainly had not fallen in love with him. But still the comparison was forced upon her, and it did not result in favour of Mr Glascock. On the present occasion Mr Glascock as he sat next to her almost proposed to her.
‘You have never seen Monkhams?’ he said. Monkhams was his father’s seat, a very grand place in Worcestershire. Of course he knew very well that she had never seen Monkhams. How should she have seen it?
‘I have never been in that part of England at all,’ she replied.
‘I should so like to show you Monkhams. The oaks there are the finest in the kingdom. Do you like oaks?’
‘Who does not like oaks? But we have none in the islands, and nobody has ever seen so few as I have.’
‘I’ll show you Monkhams some day. Shall I? Indeed I hope that some day I may really show you Monkhams.’
Now when an unmarried man talks to a young lady of really showing her the house in which it will be his destiny to live, he can hardly mean other than to invite her to live there with him. It must at least be his purpose to signify that, if duly encouraged, he will so invite her. But Nora Rowley did not give Mr Glascock much encouragement on this occasion.
‘I’m afraid it is not likely that anything will ever take me into that part of the country,’ she said. There was something perhaps in her tone which checked Mr Glascock, so that he did not then press the invitation.
When the ladies were upstairs in the drawing-room, Lady Milborough contrived to seat herself on a couch intended for two persons only, close to Mrs Trevelyan. Emily, thinking that she might perhaps hear some advice about Guinness’s stout, prepared herself to be saucy. But the matter in hand was graver than that. Lady Milborough’s mind was uneasy about Colonel Osborne.
‘My dear,’ said she, ‘was not your father very intimate with that Colonel Osborne?’
‘He is very intimate with him, Lady Milborough.’
‘Ah, yes; I thought I had heard so. That makes it of course natural that you should know him.’
‘We have known him all our lives,’ said Emily, forgetting probably that out of the twenty-three years and some months which she had hitherto lived, there had been a consecutive period of more than twenty years in which she had never seen this man whom she had known all her life.
‘That makes a difference, of course; and I don’t mean to say anything against him.’
‘I hope not, Lady Milborough, because we are all especially fond of him.’ This was said with so much of purpose, that poor, dear old Lady Milborough was stopped in her good work. She knew well the terrible strait to which Augustus Poole had been brought with his wife, although nobody supposed that Poole’s wife had ever entertained a wrong thought in her pretty little heart. Nevertheless he had been compelled to break up his establishment, and take his wife to Naples, because this horrid Colonel would make himself at home in Mrs Poole’s drawing-room in Knightsbridge. Augustus Poole, with courage enough to take any man by the beard, had taking by the beard been possible, had found it impossible to dislodge the Colonel. He could not do so without making a row which would have been disgraceful to himself and injurious to his wife; and therefore he had taken Mrs Poole to Naples. Lady Milborough knew the whole story, and thought that she foresaw that the same thing was about to happen in the drawing-room in Curzon Street. When she attempted to say a word to the wife, she found herself stopped. She could not go on in that quarter after the reception with which the beginning of her word had been met. But perhaps she might succeed better with the husband. After all, her friendship was with the Trevelyan side, and not with the Rowleys.
‘My dear Louis,’ she said, ‘I want to speak a word to you. Come here.’ And then she led him into a distant corner, Mrs Trevelyan watching her all the while, and guessing why her husband was thus carried away. ‘I just want to give you a little hint, which I am sure I believe is quite unnecessary,’ continued Lady Milborough. Then she paused, but Trevelyan would not speak. She looked into his face, and saw that it was black. But the man was the only child of her dearest friend, and she persevered. ‘Do you know I don’t quite like that Colonel Osborne coming so much to your house.’ The face 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.
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 never yet made a guinea. He had never made a guinea by his work as a barrister, and was beginning to doubt of himself whether he ever would do so. Not, as he knew well, that guineas are generally made with ease by barristers of four years’ standing, but because, as he said to his friends, he did not see his way to the knack of it. He did not know an attorney in the world, and could not conceive how any attorney should ever be induced to apply to him for legal aid. He had done his work of learning his trade about as well as other young men, but had had no means of distinguishing himself within his reach. He went the Western Circuit because his aunt, old Miss Stanbury, lived at Exeter, but, as he declared of himself, had he had another aunt living at York, he would have had nothing whatsoever to guide him in his choice. He sat idle in the courts, and hated himself for so sitting. So it had been with him for two years without any consolation or additional burden from other employment than that of his profession. After that, by some chance, he had become acquainted with the editor of the Daily Record, and by degrees had taken to the writing of articles. He had been told by all his friends, and especially by Trevelyan, that if he did this, he might as well sell his gown and wig. He declared, in reply, that he had no objection to sell his gown and wig. He did not see how he should ever make more money out of them than he would do by such sale. But for the articles which he wrote, he received instant payment, a process which he found to be most consolatory, most comfortable, and, as he said to Trevelyan, as warm to him as a blanket in winter.
Trevelyan, who was a year younger than Stanbury, had taken upon himself to be very angry. He professed that he did not think much of the trade of a journalist, and told Stanbury that he was sinking from the highest to almost the lowest business by which an educated man and a gentleman could earn his bread. Stanbury had simply replied that he saw some bread on the one side, but none on the other; and that bread from some side was indispensable to him. Then there had come to be that famous war between Great Britain and the republic of Patagonia, and Hugh Stanbury had been sent out as a special correspondent by the editor and proprietor of the Daily Record. His letters had been much read, and had called up a great deal of newspaper pugnacity. He had made important statements which had been flatly denied, and found to be utterly false; which again had been warmly reasserted and proved to be most remarkably true to the letter. In this way the correspondence, and he as its author, became so much talked about that, on his return to England, he did actually sell his gown and, wig and declare to his friends and to Trevelyan among the number that he intended to look to journalism for his future career.
He had been often at the house in Curzon Street in the earliest happy days of his friend’s marriage, and had thus become acquainted — intimately acquainted — with Nora Rowley. And now again, since his return from Patagonia, that acquaintance had been renewed. Quite lately, since the actual sale of that wig and gown had been effected, he had not been there so frequently as before, because Trevelyan had expressed his indignation almost too openly.
‘That such a man as you should be so faint-hearted,’ Trevelyan had said, ‘is a thing that I can not understand.’
‘Is a man faint-hearted when he finds it improbable that he shall be able to leap his horse over a house.’
‘What you had to do, had been done by hundreds before you.’
‘What I had to do has never yet been done by any man,’ replied Stanbury. ‘I had to live upon nothing till the lucky hour should strike.’
‘I think you have been cowardly,’ said Trevelyan.
Even this had made no quarrel between the two men; but Stanbury had expressed himself annoyed by his friend’s language, and partly on that account, and partly perhaps on another, had stayed away from Curzon Street. As Nora Rowley had made comparisons about him, so had he made comparisons about her. He had owned to himself that had it been possible that he should marry, he would willingly entrust his happiness to Miss Rowley. And he had thought once or twice that Trevelyan had wished that such an arrangement might be made at some future day. Trevelyan had always been much more sanguine in expecting success for his friend at the Bar than Stanbury had been for himself. It might well be that such a man as Trevelyan might think that a clever rising barrister would be an excellent husband for his sister-inlaw, but that a man who earned a precarious living as a writer for a penny paper would be by no means so desirable a connection. Stanbury, as he thought of this, declared to himself that he would not care two straws for Trevelyan in the matter, if he could see his way without other impediments. But the other impediments were there in such strength and numbers as to make him feel that it could not have been intended by Fate that he should take to himself a wife. Although those letters of his to the Daily Record had been so pre-eminently successful, he had never yet been able to earn by writing above twenty-five or thirty pounds a month. If that might be continued to him he could live upon it himself; but, even with his moderate views, it would not suffice for himself and family.
He had told Trevelyan that while living as an expectant barrister he had no means of subsistence. In this, as Trevelyan knew, he was not strictly correct. There was an allowance of 100 pounds a year coming to him from the aunt whose residence at Exeter had induced him to devote himself to the Western Circuit. His father had been a clergyman with a small living in Devonshire, and had now been dead some fifteen years. His mother and two sisters were still living in a small cottage in his late father’s parish, on the interest of the money arising from a life insurance. Some pittance from sixty to seventy pounds a year was all they had among them. But there was a rich aunt, Miss Stanbury, to whom had come considerable wealth in a manner most romantic — the little tale shall be told before this larger tale is completed — and this aunt had undertaken to educate and place out in the world her nephew Hugh. So Hugh had been sent to Harrow, and then to Oxford, where he had much displeased his aunt by not accomplishing great things, and then had been set down to make his fortune as a barrister in London, with an allowance of 100 pounds a year, his aunt having paid, moreover, certain fees for entrance, tuition, and the like. The very hour in which Miss Stanbury learned that her nephew was writing for a penny newspaper she sent off a dispatch to tell him that he must give up her or the penny paper. He replied by saying that he felt himself called upon to earn his bread in the only line from which, as it seemed to him, bread would be forthcoming. By return of post he got another letter to say that he might draw for the quarter then becoming due, but that that would be the last. And it was the last.
Stanbury made an ineffectual effort to induce his aunt to make over the allowance or at least a part of it to his mother and sisters, but the old lady paid no attention whatever to the request. She never had given, and at that moment did not intend to give, a shilling to the widow and daughters of her brother. Nor did she intend, or had she ever intended, to leave a shilling of her money to Hugh Stanbury, as she had very often told him. The money was, at her death, to go back to the people from whom it had come to her.
When Nora Rowley made those comparisons between Mr Hugh Stanbury and Mr Charles Glascock, they were always wound up very much in favour of the briefless barrister. It was not that he was the handsomer man, for he was by no means handsome, nor was he the bigger man, for Mr Glascock was six feet tall; nor was he better dressed, for Stanbury was untidy rather than otherwise in his outward person. Nor had he any air of fashion or special grace to recommend him, for he was undoubtedly an awkward-mannered man. But there was a glance of sunshine in his eye, and a sweetness in the curl of his mouth when he smiled, which made Nora feel that it would have been all up with her had she not made so very strong a law for her own guidance. Stanbury was a man about five feet ten, with shoulders more than broad in proportion, stout limbed, rather awkward of his gait, with large feet and hands, with soft wavy light hair, with light grey eyes, with a broad, but by no means ugly, nose. His mouth and lips were large, and he rarely showed his teeth. He wore no other beard than whiskers, which he was apt to cut away through heaviness of his hand in shaving, till Nora longed to bid him be more careful. ‘He doesn’t care what sort of a guy he makes of himself, she once said to her sister, almost angrily. ‘He is a plain man, and he knows it,’ Emily had replied. Mr Trevelyan was doubtless a handsome man, and it was almost on Nora’s tongue to say something ill-natured on the subject. Hugh Stanbury was reputed to be somewhat hot in spirit and manner. He would be very sage in argument, pounding down his ideas on politics, religion, or social life with his fist as well as his voice. He was quick, perhaps, at making antipathies, and quick, too, in making friendships; impressionable, demonstrative, eager, rapid in his movements sometimes to the great detriment of his shins and knuckles; and he possessed the sweetest temper that was ever given to a man for the blessing of a woman. This was the man between whom and Mr Glascock Nora Rowley found it to be impossible not to make comparisons.
On the very day after Lady Milborough’s dinner party Stanbury overtook Trevelyan in the street, and asked his friend where he was going eastward. Trevelyan was on his way to call upon his lawyer, and said so. But he did not say why he was going to his lawyer. He had sent to his wife by Nora that morning to know whether she would make to him the promise he required. The only answer which Nora could draw from her sister was a counter question, demanding whether he would ask her pardon for the injury he had done her. Nora had been most eager, most anxious, most conciliatory as a messenger; but no good had come of these messages, and Trevelyan had gone forth to tell all his trouble to his family lawyer. Old Mr Bideawhile had been his father’s ancient and esteemed friend, and he could tell things to Mr Bideawhile which he could not bring himself to tell to any other living man; and he could generally condescend to accept Mr Bideawhile’s advice, knowing that his father before him had been guided by the same.
‘But you are out of your way for Lincoln’s Inn Fields,’ said Stanbury.
‘I have to call at Twining’s. And where are you going?’
‘I have been three times round St. James’s Park to collect my thoughts,’ said Stanbury, ‘and now I’m on my way to the Daily R., 250, Fleet Street. It is my custom of an afternoon. I am prepared to instruct the British public of tomorrow on any subject, as per order, from the downfall of a European compact to the price of a London mutton chop.’
‘I suppose there is nothing more to be said about it,’ said Trevelyan, after a pause.
‘Not another word. How should there be? Aunt Jemima has already drawn tight the purse strings, and it would soon be the casual ward in earnest if it were not for the Daily R. God bless the Daily R. Only think what a thing it is to have all subjects open to one, from the destinies of France to the profit proper to a butcher.’
‘If you like it!’
‘I do like it. It may not be altogether honest. I don’t know what is. But it’s a deal honester than defending thieves and bamboozling juries. How is your wife?’
‘She’s pretty well, thank you.’
Stanbury knew at once from the tone of his friend’s voice that there was something wrong.
‘And Louis the less?’ he said, asking after Trevelyan’s child. ‘He’s all right.’
‘And Miss Rowley? When one begins one’s inquiries one is bound to go through the whole family.’
‘Miss Rowley is pretty well,’ said Trevelyan.
Previously to this, Trevelyan when speaking of his sister-inlaw to Stanbury, had always called her Nora, and had been wont to speak of her as though she were almost as much the friend of one of them as of the other. The change of tone on this occasion was in truth occasioned by the sadness of the man’s thoughts in reference to his wife, but Stanbury attributed it to another cause. ‘He need not be afraid of me,’ he said to himself, ‘and at least he should not show me that he is.’ Then they parted, Trevelyan going into Twining’s bank, and Stanbury passing on towards the office of the Daily R.
Stanbury had in truth been altogether mistaken as to the state of his friend’s mind on that morning. Trevelyan, although he had, according to his custom, put in a word in condemnation of the newspaper line of life, was at the moment thinking whether he would not tell all his trouble to Hugh Stanbury. He knew that he should not find anywhere, not even in Mr Bideawhile, a more friendly or more trustworthy listener. When Nora Rowley’s name had been mentioned, he had not thought of her. He had simply repeated the name with the usual answer. He was at the moment cautioning himself against a confidence which after all might not be necessary, and which on this occasion was not made. When one is in trouble it is a great ease to tell one’s trouble to a friend; but then one should always wash one’s dirty linen at home. The latter consideration prevailed, and Trevelyan allowed his friend to go on without burdening him with the story of that domestic quarrel. Nor did he on that occasion tell it to Mr Bideawhile; for Mr Bideawhile was not found at his chambers.
Trevelyan got back to his own house at about three, and on going into the library, found on his table a letter to him addressed in his wife’s handwriting. He opened it quickly, hoping to find that promise which he had demanded, and resolving that if it were made he would at once become affectionate, yielding, and gentle to his wife. But there was not a word written by his wife within the envelope. It contained simply another letter, already opened, addressed to her. This letter had been brought up to her during her husband’s absence from the house, and was as follows:
Acrobats, Thursday.
‘DEAR EMILY,
‘I have just come from the Colonial Office. It is all settled, and Sir M. has been sent for. Of course, you will tell T. now. Yours, F.O.
The letter was, of course, from Colonel Osborne, and Mrs Trevelyan, when she received it, had had great doubts whether she would enclose it to her husband opened or unopened. She had hitherto refused to make the promise which her husband exacted, but nevertheless, she was minded to obey him; Had he included in his demand any requirement that she should receive no letter from Colonel Osborne, she would not have opened this one. But nothing had been said about letters, and she would not shew herself to be afraid. So she read the note, and then sent it down to be put on Mr Trevelyan’s table in an envelope addressed to him.
‘If he is not altogether blinded, it will show him how cruelly he has wronged me,’ said she to her sister. She was sitting at the time with her boy in her lap, telling herself that the child’s features were in all respects the very same as his father’s, and that, come what come might, the child should always be taught by her to love and respect his father. And then there came a horrible thought. What if the child should be taken away from her? If this quarrel, out of which she saw no present mode of escape, were to lead to a separation between her and her husband, would not the law, and the judges, and the courts, and all the Lady Milboroughs of their joint acquaintance into the bargain, say that the child should go with his father? The judges, and the courts, and the Lady Milboroughs would, of course, say that she was the sinner. And what could she do without her boy? Would not any humility, any grovelling in the dust be better for her than that? ‘It is a very poor thing to be a woman,’ she said to her sister.
‘It is perhaps better than being a dog,’ said Nora; ‘but, of course, we can’t compare ourselves to men.’
‘It would be better to be a dog. One wouldn’t be made to suffer so much. When a puppy is taken away from its mother, she is bad enough for a few days, but she gets over it in a week.’ There was a pause then for a few moments. Nora knew well which way ran the current of her sister’s thoughts, and had nothing at the present moment which she could say on that subject.
‘It is very hard for a woman to know what to do,’ continued Emily, ‘but if she is to marry, I think she had better marry a fool. After all, a fool generally knows that he is a fool, and will trust some one, though he may not trust his wife.’
‘I will never wittingly marry a fool,’ said Nora.
‘You will marry Mr Glascock, of course. I don’t say that he is a fool; but I do not think he has that kind of strength which shows itself in perversity.’
‘If he asked me, I should not have him, and he will never ask me.’
‘He will ask you, and, of course, you’ll take him. Why not? You can’t be otherwise than a woman. And you must marry. And this man is a gentleman, and will be a peer. There is nothing on earth against him, except that he does not set the Thames on fire. Louis intends to set the Thames on fire some day, and see what comes of it.’
‘All the same, I shall not marry Mr Glascock. A woman can die, at any rate,’ said Nora.
‘No, she can’t. A woman must be decent; and to die of want is very indecent. She can’t die, and she mustn’t be in want, and she oughtn’t to be a burden. I suppose it was thought necessary that every man should have two to choose from; and therefore there are so many more of us than the world wants. I wonder whether you’d mind taking that downstairs to his table? I don’t like to send it by the servant; and I don’t want to go myself.’
Then Nora had taken the letter down, and left it where Louis Trevelyan would be sure to find it.
He did find it, and was sorely disappointed when he perceived that it contained no word from his wife to himself. He opened Colonel Osborne’s note, and read it, and became, as he did so, almost more angry than before. Who was this man that he should dare to address another man’s wife as ‘Dear Emily’? At the moment Trevelyan remembered well enough that he had heard the man so call his wife, that it had been done openly in his presence, and had not given him a thought. But Lady Rowley and Sir Marmaduke had then been present also; and that man on that occasion had been the old friend of the old father, and not the would-be young friend of the young daughter. Trevelyan could hardly reason about it, but felt that whereas the one was not improper, the other was grossly impertinent and even wicked. And then, again, his wife, his Emily, was to show to him, to her husband, or was not to show to him, the letter which she received from this man, the letter in which she was addressed as ‘Dear Emily,’ according to this man’s judgment and wish, and not according to his judgment and wish — not according to the judgment and wish of him who was her husband, her lord, and her master! ‘Of course, you will tell T. now.’ This was intolerable to him. It made him feel that he was to be regarded as second, and this man to be regarded as first. And then he began to recapitulate all the good things he had done for his wife, and all the causes which he had given her for gratitude. Had he not taken her to his bosom, and bestowed upon her the half of all that he had, simply for herself, asking for nothing more than her love? He had possessed money, position, a name all that makes life worth having. He had found her in a remote corner of the world, with no fortune, with no advantages of family or social standing, so circumstanced that any friend would have warned him against such a marriage; but he had given her his heart, and his hand, and his house, and had asked for nothing in return but that he should be all in all to her, that he should be her one god upon earth. And he had done more even than this. ‘Bring your sister,’ he had said. ‘The house shall be big enough for her also, and she shall be my sister as well as yours.’ Who had ever done more for a woman, or shown a more absolute confidence? And now what was the return he received? She was not contented with her one god upon earth, but must make to herself other gods — another god, and that too out of a lump of the basest clay to be found around her. He thought that he could remember to have heard it said in early days, long before he himself had had an idea of marrying, that no man should look for a wife from among the tropics, that women educated amidst the languors of those sunny climes rarely came to possess those high ideas of conjugal duty and feminine truth which a man should regard as the first requisites of a good wife. As he thought of all this, he almost regretted that he had ever visited the Mandarins, or ever heard the name of Sir Marmaduke Rowley.
He should have nourished no such thoughts in his heart. He had, indeed, been generous to his wife and to his wife’s family; but we may almost say that the man who is really generous in such matters is unconscious of his own generosity. The giver who gives the most, gives, and does not know that he gives. And had not she given too? In that matter of giving between a man and his wife, if each gives all, the two are equal, let the things given be what they may! King Cophetua did nothing for his beggar maid, unless she were to him, after he had married her, as royal a queen as though he had taken her from the oldest stock of reigning families then extant. Trevelyan knew all this himself, had said so to himself a score of times, though not probably in spoken words or formed sentences. But, that all was equal between himself and the wife of his bosom, had been a thing ascertained by him as a certainty. There was no debt of gratitude from her to him which he did not acknowledge to exist also as from him to her. But yet, in his anger, he could not keep himself from thinking of the gifts he had showered upon her. And he had been, was, would ever be, if she would only allow it, so true to her! He had selected no other friend to take her place in his councils! There was no ‘dear Mary’ or ‘dear Augusta’ with whom he had secrets to be kept from his wife. When there arose with him any question of interest such as was this of the return of Sir Marmaduke to her, he would show it in all its bearings to his wife. He had his secrets too, but his secrets had all been made secrets for her also. There was not a woman in the world in whose company he took special delight in her absence.
And if there had been, how much less would have been her ground of complaint? Let a man have any such friendships, what friendships he may, he does not disgrace his wife. He felt himself to be so true of heart that he desired no such friendships; but for a man indulging in such friendships there might be excuse. Even though a man be false, a woman is not shamed and brought unto the dust before all the world. But the slightest rumour on a woman’s name is a load of infamy on her husband’s shoulders. It was not enough for Caesar that his wife should be true; it was necessary to Caesar that she should not even be suspected. Trevelyan told himself that he suspected his wife of no sin. God forbid that it should ever come to that, both for his sake and for hers; and, above all, for the sake of that boy who was so dear to them both! But there would be the vile whispers, and dirty slanders would be dropped from envious tongues into envious ears, and minds prone to evil would think evil of him and of his. Had not Lady Milborough already cautioned him? Oh, that he should have lived to have been cautioned about his wife, that he should be told that eyes outside had looked into the sacred shrine of his heart and seen that things there were fatally amiss! And yet Lady Milborough was quite right. Had he not in his hand at this moment a document that proved her to be right? ‘Dear Emily’! He took this note and crushed it in his fist and then pulled it into fragments.
But what should he do? There was, first of all considerations, the duty which he owed to his wife, and the love which he bore her. That she was ignorant and innocent he was sure; but then she was so contumacious that he hardly knew how to take a step in the direction of guarding her from the effects of her ignorance, and maintaining for her the advantages of her innocence. He was her master, and she must know that he was her master. But how was he to proceed when she refused to obey the plainest and most necessary command which he laid upon her? Let a man be ever so much his wife’s master, he cannot maintain his masterdom by any power which the law places in his hands. He had asked his wife for a promise of obedience, and she would not give it to him! What was he to do next? He could, no doubt, at least he thought so, keep the man from her presence. He could order the servant not to admit the man, and the servant would, doubtless, obey him. But to what a condition would he then have been brought! Would not the world then be over for him over for him as the husband of a wife whom he could not love unless he respected her? Better that there should be no such world, than call in the aid of a servant to guard the conduct of his wife!
As he thought of it all it seemed to him that if she would not obey him, and give him this promise, they must be separated. He would not live with her, he would not give her the privileges of his wife, if she refused to render to him the obedience which was his privilege. The more he thought of it, the more convinced he was that he ought not to yield to her. Let her once yield to him, and then his tenderness should begin, and there should be no limit to it. But he would not see her till she had yielded. He would not see her; and if he should find that she did see Colonel Osborne, then he would tell her that she could no longer dwell under the same roof with him.
His resolution on these points was very strong, and yet there came over him a feeling that it was his duty to be gentle. There was a feeling also that that privilege of receiving obedience, which was so indubitably his own, could only be maintained by certain wise practices on his part in which gentleness must predominate. Wives are bound to obey their husbands, but obedience cannot be exacted from wives, as it may from servants, by aid of law and with penalties, or as from a horse, by punishments, and manger curtailments. A man should be master in his own house, but he should make his mastery palatable, equitable, smooth, soft to the touch, a thing almost unfelt. How was he to do all this now, when he had already given an order to which obedience had been refused unless under certain stipulations an agreement with which would be degradation to him? He had pointed out to his wife her duty, and she had said she would do her duty as pointed out, on condition that he would beg her pardon for having pointed it out! This he could not and would not do. Let the heavens fall, and the falling of the heavens in this case was a separation between him and his wife, but he would not consent to such injustice as that!
But what was he to do at this moment especially with reference to that note which he had destroyed. At last he resolved to write to his wife, and he consequently did write and send to her the following letter:
DEAREST EMILY,
May 4.
If Colonel Osborne should write to you again, it will be better that you should not open his letter. As you know his handwriting you will have no difficulty in so arranging. Should any further letter come from Colonel Osborne addressed to you, you had better put it under cover to me, and take no notice of it yourself.
I shall dine at the club today. We were to have gone to Mrs Peacock’s in the evening. You had better write a line to say that we shall not be there. I am very sorry that Nora should lose her evening. Pray think very carefully over what I have asked of you. My request to you is, that you shall give me a promise that you will not willingly see Colonel Osborne again. Of course you will understand that this is not supposed to extend to accidental meetings, as to which, should they occur, and they would be sure to occur, you would find that they would be wholly unnoticed by me.
But I must request that you will comply with my wish in this matter. If you will send for me I will go to you instantly, and after one word from you to the desired effect, you will find that there will be no recurrence by me to a subject so hateful. As I have done, and am doing what I think to be right, I cannot stultify myself by saying that I think I have been wrong.
Yours always, dearest Emily,
With the most thorough love,
Louis Trevelyan.’
This letter he himself put on his wife’s dressing-room table, and then he went out to his club.
‘Look at that,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, when her sister came into her room about an hour before dinnertime. Nora read the letter, and then asked her sister what she meant to do. ‘I have written to Mrs Peacock. I don’t know what else I can do. It is very hard upon you that you should have been kept at home. But I don’t suppose Mr Glascock would have been at Mrs Peacock’s.’
‘And what else will you do, Emily?’
‘Nothing, simply live deserted and forlorn till he shall choose to find his wits again. There is nothing else that a woman can do. If he chooses to dine at his club every day I can’t help it. We must put off all the engagements, and that will be hard upon you.’
‘Don’t talk about me. It is too terrible to think that there should be such a quarrel.’
‘What can I do? Have I been wrong?’
‘Simply do what he tells you, whether it is wrong or right. If it’s right, it ought to be done, and if it’s wrong, it will not be your fault.’
‘That’s very easily said, and it sounds logical; but you must know it’s unreasonable.’
‘I don’t care about reason. He is your husband, and if he wishes it, you should do it. And what will be the harm? You don’t mean to see Colonel Osborne any more. You have already said that he’s not to be admitted.’
‘I have said that nobody is to be admitted. Louis has driven me to that. How can I look the servant in the face and tell him that any special gentleman is not to be admitted to see me? Oh dear! oh dear! have I done anything to deserve it? Was ever so monstrous an accusation made against any woman! If it were not for my boy, I would defy him to do his worst.’
On the day following Nora again became a messenger between the husband and wife, and before dinner-time a reconciliation had been effected. Of course the wife gave way at last; and of course she gave way so cunningly that the husband received none of the gratification which he had expected in her surrender. ‘Tell him to come,’ Nora had urged. ‘Of course he can come if he pleases,’ Emily had replied. Then Nora had told Louis to come, and Louis had demanded whether, if he did so, the promise which he exacted would be given. It is to be feared that Nora perverted the truth a little; but if ever such perversion may be forgiven, forgiveness was due to her. If they could only be brought together, she was sure that there would be a reconciliation. They were brought together, and there was a reconciliation.
‘Dearest Emily, I am so glad to come to you,’ said the husband, walking up to his wife in their bed-room, and taking her in his arms.
‘I have been very unhappy, Louis, for the last two days,’ said she, very gravely returning his kiss, but returning it somewhat coldly.
‘We have both been unhappy, I am sure,’ said he. Then he paused that the promise might be made to him. He had certainly understood that it was to be made without reserve as an act on her part which she had fully consented to perform. But she stood silent, with one hand on the dressing table, looking away from him, very beautiful, and dignified too, in her manner; but not, as far as he could judge, either repentant or submissive. ‘Nora said that you would make me the promise which I ask from you.’
‘I cannot think, Louis, how you can want such a promise from me.’
‘I think it right to ask it; I do indeed.’
‘Can you imagine that I shall ever willingly see this gentleman again after what has occurred? It will be for you to tell the servant. I do not know how I can do that. But, as a matter of course, I will encourage no person to come to your house of whom you disapprove. It would be exactly the same of any man or of any woman.’ ‘That is all that I ask.’
‘I am surprised that you should have thought it necessary to make any formal request in the matter. Your word was quite sufficient. That you should find cause of complaint in Colonel Osborne’s coming here is of course a different thing.’
Quite a different thing,’ said he.
I cannot pretend to understand either your motives or your fears. I do not understand them. My own self-respect prevents me from supposing it to be possible that you have attributed an evil thought to me.’
Indeed, indeed, I never have,’ said the husband.
‘That I can assure you I regard as a matter of course,’ said the wife.
‘But you know, Emily, the way in which the world talks.’
‘The world! And do you regard the world, Louis?’
‘Lady Milborough, I believe, spoke to yourself.’
‘Lady Milborough! No, she did not speak to me. She began to do so, but I was careful to silence her at once. From you, Louis, I am bound to hear whatever you may choose to say to me; but I will not hear from any other lips a single word that may be injurious to your honour.’ This she said very quietly, with much dignity, and he felt that he had better not answer her. She had given him the promise which he had demanded, and he began to fear that if he pushed the matter further she might go back even from that amount of submission. So he kissed her again, and had the boy brought into the room, and by the time that he went to dress for dinner he was able, at any rate, to seem to be well pleased.
‘Richard,’ he said to the servant, as soon as he was downstairs, ‘when Colonel Osborne calls again, say’ that your mistress is not at home.’ He gave the order in the most indifferent tone of voice which he could assume; but as he gave it he felt thoroughly ashamed of it. Richard, who, with the other servants, had of course known that there had been a quarrel between his master and mistress for the last two days, no doubt understood all about it.
While they were sitting at dinner on the next day, a Saturday, there came another note from Colonel Osborne. The servant brought it to his mistress, and she, when she had looked at it, put it down by her plate. Trevelyan knew immediately from whom the letter had come, and understood how impossible it was for his wife to give it up in the servant’s presence. The letter lay there till the man was out of the room, and then she handed it to Nora. ‘Will you give that to Louis?’ she said. ‘It comes from the man whom he supposes to be my lover.’
‘Emily!’ said he, jumping from his seat, ‘how can you allow words so horrible and so untrue to fall from your mouth?’ ‘If it be not so, why am I to be placed in such a position as this? The servant knows, of course, from whom the letter comes, and sees that I have been forbidden to open it.’ Then the man returned to the room, and the remainder of the dinner passed off almost in silence. It was their custom when they dined without company to leave the dining-room together, but on this evening Trevelyan remained for a few minutes that he might read Colonel Osborne’s letter, He waited, standing on the rug with his face to the fire-place, till he was quite alone, and then he opened it. It ran as follows:
‘House of Commons, Saturday.
‘DEAR EMILY,’ Trevelyan, as he read this, cursed Colonel Osborne between his teeth.
‘DEAR EMILY,
I called this afternoon, but you were out. I am afraid you will be disappointed by what I have to tell you, but you should rather be glad of it. They say at the C.O. that Sir Marmaduke would not receive their letter if sent now till the middle of June, and that he could not be in London, let him do what he would, till the end of July. They hope to have the session over by that time, and therefore the committee is to be put off till next session. They mean to have Lord Bowles home from Canada, and they think that Bowles would like to be here in the winter. Sir Marmaduke will be summoned for February next, and will of course stretch his stay over the hot months. All this will, on the whole, be for the best. Lady Rowley could hardly have packed up her things and come away at a day’s notice, whatever your father might have done. I’ll call tomorrow at luncheon time.
Yours always,
F. O.’
There was nothing objectionable in this letter excepting always the ‘Dear Emily’ nothing which it was not imperative on Colonel Osborne to communicate to the person to whom it was addressed. Trevelyan must now go upstairs and tell the contents of the letter to his wife. But he felt that he had created for himself a terrible trouble. He must tell his wife what was in the letter, but the very telling of it would be a renewing of the soreness of his wound. And then what was to be done in reference to the threatened visit for the Sunday morning? Trevelyan knew very well that were his wife denied at that hour, Colonel Osborne would understand the whole matter. He had doubtless in his anger intended that Colonel Osborne should understand the whole matter; but he was calmer now than he had been then, and almost wished that the command given by him had not been so definite and imperious. He remained with his arm on the mantel-piece, thinking of it, for some ten minutes, and then went up into the drawing-room. ‘Emily,’ he said, walking up to the table at which she was sitting, ‘you had better read that letter.’
‘I would so much rather not,’ she replied haughtily.
‘Then Nora can read it. It concerns you both equally.’
Nora, with hesitating hand, took the letter and read it. ‘They are not to come after all,’ said she, ‘till next February.’
‘And why not?’ asked Mrs Trevelyan.
‘Something about the session. I don’t quite understand.’
‘Lord Bowles is to come from Canada,’ said Louis, ‘and they think he would prefer being here in the winter. I dare say he would.’
‘But what has that to do with papa?’
‘I suppose they must both be here together,’ said Nora.
‘I call that very hard indeed,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘I can’t agree with you there,’ said her husband. ‘His coming at all is so much of a favour that it is almost a job.’
‘I don’t see that it is a job at all,’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘Somebody is wanted, and nobody can know more of the service than papa does. But as the other man is a lord I suppose papa must give way. Does he say anything about mamma, Nora?’
‘You had better read the letter yourself,’ said Trevelyan, who was desirous that his wife should know of the threatened visit.
‘No, Louis, I shall not do that. You must not blow hot and cold too. Till the other day I should have thought that Colonel Osborne’s letters were as innocent as an old newspaper. As you have supposed them to be poisoned I will have nothing to do with them.’
This speech made him very angry. It seemed that his wife, who had yielded to him, was determined to take out the value of her submission in the most disagreeable words which she could utter. Nora now closed the letter and handed it back to her brother-inlaw. He laid it down on the table beside him, and sat for a while with his eyes fixed upon his book. At last he spoke again. ‘Colonel Osborne says that he will call tomorrow at luncheon time. You can admit him, if you please, and thank him for the trouble he has taken in this matter.’
‘I shall not remain in the room if he be admitted,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
There was silence again for some minutes, and the cloud upon Trevelyan’s brow became blacker than before. Then he rose from his chair and walked round to the sofa on which his wife was sitting. ‘I presume,’ said he, ‘that your wishes and mine in this matter must be the same.’
‘I cannot tell what your wishes are,’ she replied. ‘I never was more in the dark on any subject in my life. My wishes at present are confined to a desire to save you as far as may be possible from the shame which must be attached to your own suspicions.’
‘I have never had any suspicions.’
‘A husband without suspicions does not intercept his wife’s letters. A husband without suspicions does not call in the aid of his servants to guard his wife. A husband without suspicions.’
‘Emily,’ exclaimed Nora Rowley, ‘how can you say such things on purpose to provoke him?’
‘Yes; on purpose to provoke me,’ said Trevelyan.
‘And have I not been provoked? Have I not been injured? You say now that you have not suspected me, and yet in what condition do I find myself? Because an old woman has chosen to talk scandal about me, I am placed in a position in my own house which is disgraceful to you and insupportable to myself. This man has been in the habit of coming here on Sundays, and will, of course, know that we are at home. You must manage it as you please. If you choose to receive him, I will go upstairs.’
‘Why can’t you let him come in and go away, just as usual?’ said Nora.
‘Because Louis has made me promise that I will never willingly be in his company again,’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘I would have given the world to avoid a promise so disgraceful to me; but it was exacted, and it shall be kept.’ Having so spoken, she swept out of the room, and went upstairs to the nursery. Trevelyan sat for an hour with his book before him, reading or pretending to read, but his wife did not come downstairs. Then Nora went up to her, and he descended to his solitude below. So far he had hardly gained much by the enforced obedience of his wife.
On the next morning the three went to church together; as they were walking home Trevelyan’s heart was filled with returning gentleness towards his wife. He could not bear to be at wrath with her after the church service which they had just heard together. But he was softer-hearted than was she, and knowing this, was almost afraid to say anything that would again bring forth from her expressions of scorn. As soon as they were alone within the house he took her by the hand and led her apart. ‘Let all this be,’ said he, ‘as though it had never been.’
‘That will hardly be possible, Louis,’ she answered. ‘I cannot forget that I have been cautioned.’ ‘But cannot you bring yourself to believe that I have meant it all for your good?’
‘I have never doubted it, Louis never for a moment. But it has hurt me to find that you should think that such caution was needed for my good.’
It was almost on his tongue to beg her pardon, to acknowledge that he had made a mistake, and to implore her to forget that he had ever made an objection to Colonel Osborne’s visit. He remembered at this moment the painful odiousness of that ‘Dear Emily;’ but he had to reconcile himself even to that, telling himself that, after all, Colonel Osborne was an old man, a man older even than his wife’s father. If she would only have met him with gentleness, he would have withdrawn his command, and have acknowledged that he had been wrong. But she was hard, dignified, obedient, and resentful. ‘It will, I think,’ he said, ‘be better for both of us that he should be asked in to lunch today.’
‘You must judge of that,’ said Emily. ‘Perhaps, upon the whole, it will be best. I can only say that I will not be present. I will lunch upstairs with baby, and you can make what excuse for me you please.’ This was all very bad, but it was in this way that things were allowed to arrange themselves. Richard was told that Colonel Osborne was coming to lunch, and when he came something was muttered to him about Mrs Trevelyan being not quite well. It was Nora who told the innocent fib, and though she did not tell it well, she did her very best. She felt that her brother-inlaw was very wretched, and she was most anxious to relieve him. Colonel Osborne did not stay long, and then Nora went upstairs to her sister.
Louis Trevelyan felt that he had disgraced himself. He had meant to have been strong, and he had, as he knew, been very weak. He had meant to have acted in a high-minded, honest, manly manner; but circumstances had been so untoward with him, that on looking at his own conduct, it seemed to him to have been mean, and almost false and cowardly. As the order for the exclusion of this hated man from his house had been given, he should at any rate have stuck to the order. At the moment of his vacillation he had simply intended to make things easy for his wife; but she had taken advantage of his vacillation, and had now clearly conquered him. Perhaps he respected her more than he had done when he was resolving, three or four days since, that he would be the master in his own house; but it may be feared that the tenderness of his love for her had been impaired.
Late in the afternoon his wife and sister-inlaw came down dressed for walking, and, finding Trevelyan in the library, they asked him to join them; it was a custom with them to walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon, and he at once assented, and went out with them. Emily, who had had her triumph, was very gracious. There should not be a word more said by her about Colonel Osborne. She would avoid that gentleman, never receiving him in Curzon Street, and having as little to say to him as possible elsewhere; but she would not throw his name in her husband’s teeth, or make any reference to the injury which had so manifestly been done to her. Unless Louis should be indiscreet, it should be as though it had been forgotten. As they walked by Chesterfield House and Stanhope Street into the park, she began to discuss the sermon they had heard that morning, and when she found that that subject was not alluring, she spoke of a dinner to which they were to go at Mrs Fairfax’s house. Louis Trevelyan was quite aware that he was being treated as a naughty boy, who was to be forgiven.
They went across Hyde Park into Kensington Gardens, and still the same thing was going on. Nora found it to be almost impossible to say a word. Trevelyan answered his wife’s questions, but was otherwise silent. Emily worked very hard at her mission of forgiveness, and hardly ceased in her efforts at conciliatory conversation. Women can work so much harder in this way than men find it possible to do! She never flagged, but continued to be fluent, conciliatory, and intolerably wearisome. On a sudden they came across two men together, who, as they all knew, were barely acquainted with each other. These were Colonel Osborne and Hugh Stanbury. ‘I am glad to find you are able to be out,’ said the Colonel.
‘Thanks; yes. I think my seclusion just now was almost as much due to baby as to anything else. Mr Stanbury, how is it we never see you now?’
‘It is the D.R., Mrs Trevelyan nothing else. The D.R. is a most grateful mistress, but somewhat exacting. I am allowed a couple of hours on Sundays, but otherwise my time is wholly passed in Fleet Street.’
‘How very unpleasant.’
‘Well; yes. The unpleasantness of this world consists chiefly in the fact that when a man wants wages, he must earn them. The Christian philosophers have a theory about it. Don’t they call it the primeval fall, original sin, and that kind of thing?’
‘Mr Stanbury, I won’t have irreligion. I hope that doesn’t come from writing for the newspapers.’
‘Certainly not with me, Mrs Trevelyan. I have never been put on to take that branch yet. Scruby does that with us, and does it excellently. It was he who touched up the Ritualists, and then the Commission, and then the Low Church bishops, till he didn’t leave one of them a leg to stand upon.’
‘What is it, then, that the Daily Record upholds?’
‘It upholds the Daily Record. Believe in that and you will surely be saved.’ Then he turned to Miss Rowley, and they two were soon walking on together, each manifestly interested in what the other was saying, though there was no word of tenderness spoken between them.
Colonel Osborne was now between Mr and Mrs Trevelyan. She would have avoided the position had it been possible for her to do so. While they were falling into their present places, she had made a little mute appeal to her husband to take her away from the spot, to give her his arm and return with her, to save her in some way from remaining in company with the man to whose company for her he had objected; but he took no such step. It had seemed to him that he could take no such step without showing his hostility to Colonel Osborne.
They walked on along the broad path together, and the Colonel was between them.
‘I hope you think it satisfactory about Sir Rowley,’ he said.
‘Beggars must not be choosers, you know, Colonel Osborne. I felt a little disappointed when I found that we were not to see them till February next.’
‘They will stay longer then, you know, than they could now.’
‘I have no doubt when the time comes we shall all believe it to be better.’
‘I suppose you think, Emily, that a little pudding today is better than much tomorrow.’
Colonel Osborne certainly had a caressing, would-be affectionate mode of talking to women, which, unless it were reciprocated and enjoyed, was likely to make itself disagreeable. No possible words could have been more innocent than those he had now spoken; but he had turned his face down close to her face, and had almost whispered them. And then, too, he had again called her by her Christian name. Trevelyan had not heard the words. He had walked on, making the distance between him and the other man greater than was necessary, anxious to show to his wife that he had no jealousy at such a meeting as this. But his wife was determined that she would put an end to this state of things, let the cost be what it might. She did not say a word to Colonel Osborne, but addressed herself at once to her husband. ‘Louis,’ she said, ‘will you give me your arm? We will go back, if you please.’ Then she took her husband’s arm and turned herself and him abruptly away from their companion.
The thing was done in such a manner that it was impossible that Colonel Osborne should not perceive that he had been left in anger. When Trevelyan and his wife had gone back a few yards, he was obliged to return for Nora. He did so, and then rejoined his wife.
‘It was quite unnecessary, Emily,’ he said, ‘that you should behave like that.’
‘Your suspicions,’ she said, ‘have made it almost impossible for me to behave with propriety.’
‘You have told him everything now,’ said Trevelyan.
‘And it was requisite that he should be told,’ said his wife. Then they walked home without interchanging another word. When they reached their house, Emily at once went up to her own room, and Trevelyan to his. They parted as though they had no common interest which was worthy of a moment’s conversation. And she by her step, and gait, and every movement of her body showed to him that she was not his wife now in any sense that could bring to him a feeling of domestic happiness. Her compliance with his command was of no use to him unless she could be brought to comply in spirit. Unless she would be soft to him he could not be happy. He walked about his room uneasily for half-an-hour, trying to shake off his sorrow, and then he went up to her room. ‘Emily,’ he said, ‘for God’s sake let all this pass away.’
‘What is to pass away?’
‘This feeling of rancour between you and me. What is the world to us unless we can love one another? At any rate it will be nothing to me.’
‘Do you doubt my love?’ said she.
‘No; certainly not.’
‘Nor I yours. Without love, Louis, you and I can not be happy. But love alone will not make us so. There must be trust, and there must also be forbearance. My feeling of annoyance will pass away in time; and till it does, I will shew it as little as may be possible.’
He felt that he had nothing more to say, and then he left her; but he had gained nothing by the interview. She was still hard and cold, and still assumed a tone which seemed to imply that she had manifestly been the injured person.
Colonel Osborne, when he was left alone, stood for a few moments on the spot, and then with a whistle, a shake of the head, and a little low chuckle of laughter, rejoined the crowd.
Miss Jemima Stanbury, the aunt of our friend Hugh, was a maiden lady, very much respected, indeed, in the city of Exeter. It is to be hoped that no readers of these pages will be so unEnglish as to be unable to appreciate the difference between county society and town society, the society, that is, of a provincial town, or so ignorant as not to know also that there may be persons so privileged, that although they live distinctly within a provincial town, there is accorded to them, as though by brevet rank, all the merit of living in the county. In reference to persons so privileged, it is considered that they have been made free from the contamination of contiguous bricks and mortar by certain inner gifts, probably of birth, occasionally of profession, possibly of merit. It is very rarely, indeed, that money alone will bestow this acknowledged rank; and in Exeter, which by the stringency and excellence of its well-defined rules on such matters, may perhaps be said to take the lead of all English provincial towns, money alone has never availed. Good blood, especially if it be blood good in Devonshire, is rarely rejected. Clergymen are allowed within the pale though by no means as certainly as used to be the case; and, indeed, in these days of literates, clergymen have to pass harder examinations than those ever imposed upon them by bishops’ chaplains, before they are admitted ad eundem among the chosen ones of the city of Exeter. The wives and daughters of the old prebendaries see well to that. And, as has been said, special merit may prevail. Sir Peter Mancrudy, the great Exeter physician, has won his way in, not at all by being Sir Peter, which has stood in his way rather than otherwise, but by the acknowledged excellence of his book about saltzes. Sir Peter Mancrudy is supposed to have quite a metropolitan, almost a European reputation and therefore is acknowledged to belong to the county set, although he never dines out at any house beyond the limits of the city. Now, let it be known that no inhabitant of Exeter ever achieved a clearer right to be regarded as ‘county,’ in opposition to ‘town,’ than had Miss Jemima Stanbury. There was not a tradesman in Exeter who was not aware of it, and who did not touch his hat to her accordingly. The men who drove the flies, when summoned to take her out at night, would bring oats with them, knowing how probable it was that they might have to travel far. A distinct apology was made if she was asked to drink tea with people who were simply ‘town’. The Noels of Doddescombe Leigh, the Cliffords of Budleigh Salterton, the Powels of Haldon, the Cheritons of Alphington — all county persons, but very frequently in the city — were greeted by her, and greeted her, on terms of equality. Her most intimate friend was old Mrs MacHugh, the widow of the last dean but two, who could not have stood higher had she been the widow of the last bishop. And then, although Miss Stanbury was intimate with the Frenches of Heavitree, with the Wrights of Northernhay, with the Apjohns of Helion Villa, a really magnificent house, two miles out of the city on the Crediton Road, and with the Crumbies of Cronstadt House, Saint Ide’s, who would have been county people, if living in the country made the difference, although she was intimate with all these families, her manner to them was not the same, nor was it expected to be the same, as with those of her own acknowledged set. These things are understood in Exeter so well!
Miss Stanbury belonged to the county set, but she lived in a large brick house, standing in the Close, almost behind the Cathedral. Indeed it was so close to the eastern end of the edifice that a carriage could not be brought quite up to her door. It was a large brick house, very old, with a door in the middle, and five steps ascending to it between high iron rails. On each side of the door there were two windows on the ground floor, and above that there were three tiers of five windows each, and the house was double throughout, having as many windows looking out behind into a gloomy courtyard. But the glory of the house consisted in this, that there was a garden attached to it, a garden with very high walls, over which the boughs of trees might be seen, giving to the otherwise gloomy abode a touch of freshness in the summer, and a look of space in the winter, which no doubt added something to the reputation even of Miss Stanbury. The fact for it was a fact that there was no gloomier or less attractive spot in the whole city than Miss Stanbury’s garden, when seen inside, did not militate against this advantage. There were but half-a-dozen trees, and a few square yards of grass that was never green, and a damp ungravelled path on which no one ever walked. Seen from the inside the garden was not much; but, from the outside, it gave a distinct character to the house, and produced an unexpressed acknowledgment that the owner of it ought to belong to the county set.
The house and all that was in it belonged to Miss Stanbury herself, as did also many other houses in the neighbourhood. She was the owner of the ‘Cock and Bottle,’ a very decent second class inn on the other side of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of one side of a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High Street belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the houses dark, the locality is known to be good for trade. And she owned two large houses in the High Street, and a great warehouse at St. Thomas’s, and had been bought out of land by the Railway at St. David’s much to her own dissatisfaction, as she was wont to express herself, but, undoubtedly, at a very high price. It will be understood therefore, that Miss Stanbury was wealthy, and that she was bound to the city in which she lived by peculiar ties.
But Miss Stanbury had not been born to this wealth, nor can she be said to have inherited from her forefathers any of these high privileges which had been awarded to her. She had achieved them by the romance of her life and the manner in which she had carried herself amidst its vicissitudes. Her father had been vicar of Nuncombe Putney, a parish lying twenty miles west of Exeter, among the moors. And on her father’s death, her brother, also now dead, had become vicar of the same parish — her brother, whose only son, Hugh. Stanbury, we already know, working for the ‘D. R.’ up in London. When Miss Stanbury was twenty-one she became engaged to a certain Mr Brooke Burgess, the eldest son of a banker in Exeter or, it might, perhaps, be better said, a banker himself; for at the time Mr Brooke Burgess was in the firm. It need not here be told how various misfortunes arose, how Mr Burgess quarrelled with the Stanbury family, how Jemima quarrelled with her own family, how, when her father died, she went out from Nuncombe Putney parsonage, and lived on the smallest pittance in a city lodging, how her lover was untrue to her and did not marry her, and how at last he died and left her every shilling that he possessed.
The Devonshire people, at the time, had been much divided as to the merits of the Stanbury quarrel. There were many who said that the brother could not have acted otherwise than he did; and that Miss Stanbury, though by force of character and force of circumstances she had weathered the storm, had in truth been very indiscreet. The results, however, were as have been described. At the period of which we treat, Miss Stanbury was a very rich lady, living by herself in Exeter, admitted, without question, to be one of the county set, and still at variance with her brother’s family. Except to Hugh, she had never spoken a word to one of them since her brother’s death. When the money came into her hands, she at that time being over forty, and her nephew being then just ten years old, she had undertaken to educate him, and to start him in the world. We know how she had kept her word, and how and why she had withdrawn herself from any further responsibility in the matter.
And in regard to this business of starting the young man she had been careful to let it be known that she would do no more than start him. In the formal document, by means of which she had made the proposal to her brother, she had been careful to let it be understood that simple education was all that she intended to bestow upon him ‘and that only,’ she had added, ‘in the event of my surviving till his education be completed.’ And to Hugh himself she had declared that any allowance which she made him after he was called to the Bar, was only made in order to give him room for his foot, a spot of ground from whence to make his first leap. We know how he made that leap, infinitely to the disgust of his aunt, who, when he refused obedience to her in the matter of withdrawing from the Daily Record, immediately withdrew from him, not only her patronage and assistance, but even her friendship and acquaintance. This was the letter which she wrote to him:
‘I don’t think that writing radical stuff for a penny newspaper is a respectable occupation for a gentleman, and I will have nothing to do with it. If you choose to do such work, I cannot help it; but it was not for such that I sent you to Harrow and Oxford, nor yet up to London and paid 100 pounds a year to Mr Lambert. I think you are treating me badly, but that is nothing to your bad treatment of yourself. You need not trouble yourself to answer this, unless you are prepared to say that you will not write any more stuff for that penny newspaper. Only I wish to be understood. I will have no connection that I can help, and no acquaintance at all, with radical scribblers and incendiaries.
JEMIMA STANBURY. The Close, Exeter, April 15, 186 .’
Hugh Stanbury had answered this; thanking his aunt for past favours, and explaining to her or striving to do so that he felt it to be his duty to earn his bread, as a means of earning it had come within his reach. He might as well have spared himself the trouble. She simply wrote a few words across his own letter in red ink: ‘The bread of unworthiness should never be earned or eaten;’ and then’ sent the letter back under a blank envelope to her nephew.
She was a thorough Tory of the old school. Had Hugh taken to writing for a newspaper that had cost sixpence, or even threepence for its copies, she might perhaps have forgiven him. At any rate the offence would not have been so flagrant. And had the paper been conservative instead of liberal, she would have had some qualms of conscience before she gave him up. But to live by writing for a newspaper! and for a penny newspaper!! and for a penny radical newspaper!!! It was more than she could endure. Of what nature were the articles which he contributed it was impossible that she should have any idea, for no consideration would have induced her to look at a penny newspaper, or to admit it within her doors. She herself took in the John Bull and the Herald, and daily groaned deeply at the way in which those once great organs of true British public feeling were becoming demoralised and perverted. Had any reduction been made in the price of either of them, she would at once have stopped her subscription. In the matter of politics she had long since come to think that every thing good was over. She hated the name of Reform so much that she could not bring herself to believe in Mr Disraeli and his bill. For many years she had believed in Lord Derby. She would fain believe in him still if she could. It was the great desire of her heart to have some one in whom she believed. In the bishop of her diocese she did believe, and annually sent him some little comforting present from her own hand. And in two or three of the clergymen around her she believed, finding in them a flavour of the unascetic godliness of ancient days which was gratifying to her palate. But in politics there was hardly a name remaining to which she could fix her faith and declare that there should be her guide. For awhile she, thought she would cling to Mr Lowe; but, when she made inquiry, she found that there was no base there of really well-formed conservative granite. The three gentlemen who had dissevered themselves from Mr Disraeli when Mr Disraeli was passing his Reform bill, were doubtless very good in their way; but they were not big enough to fill her heart. She tried to make herself happy with General Peel, but General Peel was after all no more than a shade to her. But the untruth of others never made her untrue, and she still talked of the excellence of George III and the glories of the subsequent reign. She had a bust of Lord Eldon before which she was accustomed to stand with hands closed and to weep or to think that she wept.
She was a little woman, now nearly sixty years of age, with bright grey eyes, and a strong Roman nose, and thin lips, and a sharp-cut chin. She wore a head-gear that almost amounted to a mob-cap, and beneath it her grey hair was always frizzled with the greatest care. Her dress was invariably of black silk, and she had five gowns: one for church, one for evening parties, one for driving out, and one for evenings at home and one for mornings. The dress, when new, always went to church. Nothing, as she was wont to say, was too good for the Lord’s house. In the days of crinolines she had protested that she had never worn one — a protest, however, which was hardly true; and now, in these later days, her hatred was especially developed in reference to the head-dresses of young women. ‘Chignon’ was a word which she had never been heard to pronounce. She would talk of ‘those bandboxes which the sluts wear behind their noddles;’ for Miss Stanbury allowed herself the use of much strong language. She was very punctilious in all her habits, breakfasting ever at half-past eight, and dining always at six. Half-past five had been her time, till the bishop, who, on an occasion, was to be her guest, once signified to her that such an hour cut up the day and interfered with clerical work. Her lunch was always of bread and cheese, and they who lunched with her either eat that or the bread without the cheese. An afternoon ‘tea’ was a thing horrible to her imagination. Tea and buttered toast at half-past eight in the evening was the great luxury of her life. She was as strong as a horse, and had never hitherto known a day’s illness. As a consequence of this, she did not believe in the illness of other people, especially not in the illness of women. She did not like a girl who could not drink a glass of beer with her bread and cheese in the middle of the day, and she thought that a glass of port after dinner was good for everybody. Indeed, she had a thorough belief in port wine, thinking that it would go far to cure most miseries. But she could not put up with the idea that a woman, young or old, should want the stimulus of a glass of sherry to support her at any odd time of the day. Hot concoctions of strong drink at Christmas she would allow to everybody, and was very strong in recommending such comforts to ladies blessed, or about to be blessed, with babies. She took the sacrament every month, and gave away exactly a tenth of her income to the poor. She believed that there was a special holiness in a tithe of a thing, and attributed the commencement of the downfall of the Church of England to rent charges, and the commutation of clergymen’s incomes. Since Judas, there had never been, to her thinking, a traitor so base, or an apostate so sinful, as Colenso; and yet, of the nature of Colenso’s teaching she was as ignorant as the towers of the cathedral opposite to her.
She believed in Exeter, thinking that there was no other provincial town in England in which a maiden lady could live safely and decently. London to her was an abode of sin; and though, as we have seen, she delighted to call herself one of the county set, she did not love the fields and lanes. And in Exeter the only place for a lady was the Close. Southernhay and Northernhay might be very well, and there was, doubtless a respectable neighbourhood on the Heavitree side of the town; but for the new streets, and especially for the suburban villas, she had no endurance. She liked to deal at dear shops; but would leave any shop, either dear or cheap, in regard to which a printed advertisement should reach her eye. She paid all her bills at the end of each six months, and almost took a delight in high prices. She would rejoice that bread should be cheap, and grieve that meat should be dear, because of the poor; but in regard to other matters no reduction in the cost of an article ever pleased her. She had houses as to which she was told by her agent that the rents should be raised; but she would not raise them. She had others which it was difficult to let without lowering the rents, but she would not lower them. All change was to her hateful and unnecessary.
She kept three maid-servants, and a man came in every day to clean the knives and boots. Service with her was well requited, and much labour was never exacted. But it was not every young woman who could live with her. A rigidity as to hours, as to religious exercises, and as to dress, was exacted, under which many poor girls altogether broke down; but they who could stand this rigidity came to know that their places were very valuable. No one belonging to them need want for aught, when once the good opinion of Miss Stanbury had been earned. When once she believed in her servant there was nobody like that servant. There was not a man in Exeter could clean a boot except Giles Hickbody and if not in Exeter, then where else? And her own maid Martha, who had lived with her now for twenty years, and who had come with her to the brick house when she first inhabited it, was such a woman that no other servant anywhere was fit to hold a candle to her. But then Martha had great gifts, was never ill, and really liked having sermons read to her.
Such was Miss Stanbury, who had now discarded her nephew Hugh. She had never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly have asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never really been kind to him since he was a boy, for although she had paid for him, she had been almost penurious in her manner of doing so, and had repeatedly-given him to understand, that in the event of her death not a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter of bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose to let it all go back to the Burgess family. With the Burgess family she had kept up no sustained connection, it being quite understood that she was never to be asked to meet the only one of them now left in Exeter. Nor was it as yet known to any one in what manner the money was to go back, how it was to be divided, or who were to be the recipients. But she had declared that it should go back, explaining that she had conceived it to be a duty to let her own relations know that they would not inherit her wealth at her death.
About a week after she had sent back poor Hugh’s letter with the endorsement on it as to unworthy bread, she summoned Martha to the back parlour in which she was accustomed to write her letters. It was one of the theories of her life that different rooms should be used only for the purposes for which they were intended. She never allowed pens and ink up into the bed-rooms, and had she ever heard that any guest in her house was reading in bed, she would have made an instant personal attack upon that guest, whether male or female, which would have surprised that guest. Poor Hugh would have got on better with her had he not been discovered once smoking in the garden. Nor would she have writing materials in the drawing-room or dining-room. There was a chamber behind the dining-room in which there was an inkbottle, and if there was a letter to be written, let the writer go there and write it. In the writing of many letters, however, she put no confidence, and regarded penny postage as one of the strongest evidences of the coming ruin.
‘Martha,’ she said, ‘I want to speak to you. Sit down. I think I am going to do something.’ Martha sat down, but did not speak a word. There had been no question asked of her, and the time for speaking had not come. ‘I am writing to Mrs Stanbury, at Nuncombe Putney; and what do you think I am saying to her?’
Now the question had been asked, and it was Martha’s duty to reply.
‘Writing to Mrs Stanbury, ma’am?’
‘Yes, to Mrs Stanbury.’
‘It ain’t possible for me to say, ma’am, unless it’s to put Mr Hugh from going on with the newspapers.’
‘When. my nephew won’t be controlled by me, I shan’t go elsewhere to look for control over him; you may be sure of that, Martha. And remember, Martha, I don’t want to have his name mentioned again in the house. You will tell them all so, if you please.’
‘He was a very nice gentleman, ma’am.’
‘Martha, I won’t have it; and there’s an end of it. I won’t have it. Perhaps I know what goes to the making of a nice gentleman as well as you do.’
‘Mr Hugh, ma’am.’
‘I won’t have it, Martha. And when I say so, let there be an end of it.’ As she said this, she got up from her chair, and shook her head, and took a turn about the room. ‘If I’m not mistress here, I’m nobody.’
‘Of course you’re mistress here, ma’am.’
‘And if I don’t know what’s fit to be done, and what’s not fit, I’m too old to learn; and, what’s more, I won’t be taught. I’m not going to have my house crammed with radical incendiary stuff, printed with ink that stinks, on paper made out of straw. If I can’t live without penny literature, at any rate I’ll die without it. Now listen to me.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘I have asked Mrs Stanbury to send one of the girls over here.’
‘To live, ma’am?’ Martha’s tone as she asked the question, showed how deeply she felt its importance.
‘Yes, Martha; to live.’
‘You’ll never like it, ma’am.’
‘I don’t suppose I shall.’
‘You’ll never get on with it, ma’am; never. The young lady’ll be out of the house in a week; or if she ain’t, somebody else will.’
‘You mean yourself.’
‘I’m only a servant, ma’am, and it don’t signify about me.’
‘You’re a fool.’
‘That’s true, ma’am, I don’t doubt.’
‘I’ve sent for her, and we must do the best we can. Perhaps she won’t come.’
‘She’ll come fast enough,’ said Martha. ‘But whether she’ll stay, that’s a different thing. I don’t see how it’s possible she’s to stay. I’m told they’re feckless, idle young ladies. She’ll be so soft, ma’am, and you.’
‘Well; what of me?’
‘You’ll be so hard, ma’am!’
‘I’m not a bit harder than you, Martha; nor yet so hard. I’ll do my duty, or at least I’ll try. Now you know all about it, and you may go away. There’s the letter, and I mean to go out and post it myself.’
Miss Stanbury carried her letter all the way to the chief post-office in the city, having no faith whatever in those little subsidiary receiving houses which are established in different parts of the city. As for the iron pillar boxes which had been erected of late years for the receipt of letters, one of which — a most hateful thing to her — stood almost close to her own hall door, she had not the faintest belief that any letter put into one of them would ever reach its destination. She could not understand why people should not walk with their letters to a respectable post-office instead of chucking them into an iron stump as she called it out in the middle of the street with nobody to look after it. Positive orders had been given that no letter from her house should ever be put into the iron post. Her epistle to her sister-inlaw, of whom she never spoke otherwise than as Mrs Stanbury, was as follows:
The Close, Exeter, 22nd April, 186
My dear Sister Stanbury,
Your son, Hugh, has taken to courses of which I do not approve, and therefore I have put an end to my connection with him. I shall be happy to entertain your daughter Dorothy in my house if you and she approve of such a plan. Should you agree to this, she will be welcome to receive you or her sister, not her brother, in my house any Wednesday morning between half-past nine and half-past twelve. I will endeavour to make my house pleasant to her and useful, and will make her an allowance of 25 pounds per annum for her clothes as long as she may remain with me. I shall expect her to be regular at meals, to be constant in going to church, and not to read modern novels.
I intend the arrangement to be permanent, but of course I must retain the power of closing it if, and when, I shall see fit. Its permanence must be contingent on my life. I have no power of providing for any one after my death,
Yours truly,
JEMIMA STANBURY.
I hope the young lady does not have any false hair about her.’
When this note was received at Nuncombe Putney the amazement which it occasioned was extreme. Mrs Stanbury, the widow of the late vicar, lived in a little morsel of a cottage on the outskirts of the village, with her two daughters, Priscilla and Dorothy. Their whole income, out of which it was necessary that they should pay rent for their cottage, was less than 70 pounds per annum. During the last few months a five-pound note now and again had found its way to Nuncombe Putney out of the coffers of the ‘D. R.’; but the ladies there were most unwilling to be so relieved, thinking that their brother’s career was of infinitely more importance than their comforts or even than their living. They were very poor, but they were accustomed to poverty. The elder sister was older than Hugh, but Dorothy, the younger, to whom this strange invitation was now made, was two years younger than her brother, and was now nearly twenty-six. How they had lived, and dressed themselves, and had continued to be called ladies by the inhabitants of the village was, and is, and will be a mystery to those who have had the spending of much larger incomes, but have still been always poor. But they had lived, had gone to church every Sunday in decent apparel, and had kept up friendly relations with the family of the present vicar, and with one or two other neighbours.
When the letter had been read first by the mother, and then aloud, and then by each of them separately, in the little sitting-room in the cottage, there was silence among them for neither of them desired to be the first to express an opinion. Nothing could be more natural than the proposed arrangement, had it not been made unnatural by a quarrel existing nearly throughout the whole life of the person most nearly concerned. Priscilla, the elder daughter, was the one of the family who was generally the ruler, and she at last expressed an opinion adverse to the arrangement. ‘My dear, you would never be able to bear it,’ said Priscilla.
‘I suppose not,’ said Mrs Stanbury, plaintively.
‘I could try,’ said Dorothy.
‘My dear, you don’t know that woman,’ said Priscilla.
‘Of course I don’t know her,’ said Dorothy.
‘She has always been very good to Hugh,’ said Mrs Stanbury.
‘I don’t think she has been good to him at all,’ said Priscilla.
‘But think what a saving it would be,’ said Dorothy. ‘And I could send home half of what Aunt Stanbury says she would give me.’
‘You must not think of that,’ said Priscilla, ‘because she expects you to be dressed.’
‘I should like to try,’ she said, before the morning was over ‘if you and mamma don’t think it would be wrong.’
The conference that day ended in a written request to Aunt Stanbury that a week might be allowed for consideration, the letter being written by Priscilla, but signed with her mother’s name, and with a very long epistle to Hugh, in which each of the ladies took a part, and in which advice and decision were demanded. It was very evident to Hugh that his mother and Dorothy were for compliance, and that Priscilla was for refusal. But he never doubted for a moment. ‘Of course she will go,’ he said in his answer to Priscilla; ‘and she must understand that Aunt Stanbury is a most excellent woman, as true as the sun, thoroughly honest, with no fault but this, that she likes her own way. Of course Dolly can go back again if she finds the house too hard for her.’ Then he sent another five-pound note, observing that Dolly’s journey to Exeter would cost money, and that her wardrobe would want some improvement.
‘I’m very glad that it isn’t me,’ said Priscilla, who, however, did not attempt to oppose the decision of the man of the family. Dorothy was greatly gratified by the excitement of the proposed change in her life, and the following letter, the product of the wisdom of the family, was written by Mrs Stanbury.
‘Nuncombe Putney, 1st May, 186
My dear Sister Stanbury,
We are all very thankful for the kindness of your offer, which my daughter Dorothy will accept with feelings of affectionate gratitude. I think you will find her docile, good-tempered, and amiable; but a mother, of course, speaks well of her own child. She will endeavour to comply with your wishes in all things reasonable. She; of course, understands that should the arrangement not suit, she will come back home on the expression of your wish that it should be so. And she will, of course, do the same, if she should find that living in Exeter does not suit herself.’ (This sentence was inserted at the instance of Priscilla, after much urgent expostulation.) ‘Dorothy will be ready to go to you on any day you may fix after the 7th of this month.
Believe me to remain,
Your affectionate sister-inlaw,
P. STANBURY.’
‘She’s going to come,’ said Miss Stanbury to Martha, holding the letter in her hand.
‘I never doubted her coming, ma’am,’ said Martha.
‘And I mean her to stay, unless it’s her own fault. She’ll have the small room upstairs, looking out front, next to mine. And you must go and fetch her.’
‘Go and fetch her, ma’am?’
‘Yes. If you won’t, I must.’
‘She ain’t a child, ma’am. She’s twenty-five years old, and surely she can come to Exeter by herself, with a railroad all the way from Lessboro’.’
‘There’s no place a young woman is insulted in so bad as those railway carriages, and I won’t have her come by herself. If she is to live with me, she shall begin decently at any rate.’
Martha argued the matter, but was of course beaten, and on the day fixed started early in the morning for Nuncombe Putney, and returned in the afternoon to the Close with her charge. By the time that she had reached the house she had in some degree reconciled herself to the dangerous step that her mistress had taken, partly by perceiving that in face Dorothy Stanbury was very like her brother Hugh, and partly, perhaps, by finding that the young woman’s manner to herself was both gentle and sprightly. She knew well that gentleness alone, without some back-bone of strength under it, would not long succeed with Miss Stanbury. ‘As far as I can judge, ma’am, she’s a sweet young lady,’ said Martha, when she reported her arrival to her mistress, who had retired upstairs to her own room, in order that she might thus hear a word of tidings from her lieutenant, before she showed herself on the field of action.
‘Sweet! I hate your sweets,’ said Miss Stanbury. ‘Then why did you send for her, ma’am?’
‘Because I was an old fool. But I must go down and receive her, I suppose.’
Then Miss Stanbury went down, almost trembling as she went The matter to her was one of vital importance She was going to change the whole tenor of her life for the sake as she told herself of doing her duty by a relative whom she did not even know But we may fairly suppose that there had in truth been a feeling beyond that, which taught her to desire to have some one near her to whom she might not only do her duty as guardian, but whom she might also love. She had tried this with her nephew; but her nephew had been too strong for her, too far from her, too unlike to herself. When he came to see her he had smoked a short pipe, which had been shocking to her, and he had spoken of Reform, and Trades’ Unions, and meetings in the parks, as though they had not been Devil’s ordinances. And he was very shy of going to church, utterly refusing to be taken there twice on the same Sunday. And he had told his aunt that owing to a peculiar and unfortunate weakness in his constitution he could not listen to the reading of sermons. And then she was almost certain that he had once kissed one of the maids! She had found it impossible to manage him in any way; and when he positively declared himself as permanently devoted to the degrading iniquities of penny newspapers, she had thought it best to cast him off altogether. Now, thus late in life, she was going to make another venture, to try an altogether new mode of living in order, as she said to herself, that she might be of some use to somebody but, no doubt, with a further unexpressed hope in her bosom, that the solitude of her life might be relieved by the companionship of some one whom she might love. She had arrayed herself in a clean cap and her evening gown, and she went downstairs looking sternly, with a fully-developed idea that she must initiate her new duties by assuming a mastery at once. But inwardly she trembled, and was intensely anxious as to the first appearance of her niece. Of course there would be a little morsel of a bonnet. She hated those vile patches dirty dirty flat daubs of millinery as she called them, but they had become too general for her to refuse admittance for such a thing within her doors. But a chignon, a bandbox behind the noddle, she would not endure. And then there were other details of feminine gear, which shall not be specified, as to which she was painfully anxious, almost forgetting in her anxiety that the dress of this young woman whom she was about to see must have ever been regulated by the closest possible economy.
The first thing she saw on entering the room was a dark straw hat, a straw hat with a strong penthouse flap to it, and her heart was immediately softened.
‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I am glad to see you.’
Dorothy, who, on her part, was trembling also, whose position was one to justify most intense anxiety, murmured some reply.
‘Take off your hat,’ said the aunt, ‘and let me give you a kiss.’
The hat was taken off and the kiss was given. There was certainly no chignon there. Dorothy Stanbury was light haired, with almost flaxen ringlets, worn after the old-fashioned way which we used to think so pretty when we were young. She had very soft grey eyes, which ever seemed to beseech you to do something when they looked at you, and her mouth was a beseeching mouth. There are women who, even amidst their strongest efforts at giving assistance to others, always look as though they were asking aid themselves, and such a one was Dorothy Stanbury. Her complexion was pale, but there was always present in it a tint of pink running here and there, changing with every word she spoke, changing indeed with every pulse of her heart. Nothing ever was softer than her cheek; but her hands were thin and hard, and almost fibrous with the working of the thread upon them. She was rather tall than otherwise, but that extreme look of feminine dependence which always accompanied her, took away something even from the appearance of her height.
‘These are all real, at any rate,’ said her aunt, taking hold of the curls, ‘and won’t be hurt by a little cold water.’
Dorothy smiled but said nothing, and was then taken up to her bed-room. Indeed, when the aunt and niece sat down to dinner together Dorothy had hardly spoken. But Miss Stanbury had spoken, and things upon the whole had gone very well.
‘I hope you like roast chicken, my dear?’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘And bread sauce? Jane, I do hope the bread sauce is hot.’
If the reader thinks that Miss Stanbury was indifferent to considerations of the table, the reader is altogether ignorant of Miss Stanbury’s character. When Miss Stanbury gave her niece the liver-wing, and picked out from the attendant sausages one that had been well browned and properly broken in the frying, she meant to do a real kindness.
‘And now, my dear, there are mashed potatoes and bread sauce. As for green vegetables, I don’t know what has become of them. They tell me I may have green peas from France at a shilling a quart; but if I can’t have English green peas, I won’t have any.’
Miss Stanbury was standing up as she said this, as she always did on such occasions, liking to have a full mastery over the dish.
‘I hope you like it, my dear?’
‘Everything is so very nice.’
‘That’s right. I like to see a young woman with an appetite. Remember that God sends the good things for us to eat; and as long as we don’t take more than our share, and give away something to those who haven’t a fair share of their own, I for one think it quite right to enjoy my victuals. Jane, this bread sauce isn’t hot. It never is hot. Don’t tell me; I know what hot is!’
Dorothy thought that her aunt was very angry; but Jane knew Miss Stanbury better, and bore the scolding without shaking in her shoes.
‘And now, my dear, you must take a glass of port wine. It will do you good after your journey.’
Dorothy attempted to explain that she never did drink any wine, but her aunt talked down her scruples at once.
‘One glass of port wine never did anybody any harm, and as there is port wine, it must be intended that somebody should drink it.’
Miss Stanbury, as she sipped hers out very slowly, seemed to enjoy it very much. Although May had come, there was a fire in the grate, and she sat with her toes on the fender, and her silk dress folded up above her knees. She sat quite silent in this position for a quarter of an hour, every now and then raising her glass to her lips. Dorothy sat silent also. To her, in the newness of her condition, speech was impossible.
‘I think it will do,’ said Miss Stanbury at last.
As Dorothy had no idea what would do, she could make no reply to this.
‘I’m sure it will do,’ said Miss Stanbury, after another short interval. ‘You’re as like my poor sister as two eggs. You don’t have headaches, do you?’
Dorothy said that she was not ordinarily affected in that way.
‘When girls have headaches it comes from tight-lacing, and not walking enough, and carrying all manner of nasty smells about with them. I know what headaches mean. How is a woman not to have a headache, when she carries a thing on the back of her poll as big as a gardener’s wheel-barrow? Come, it’s a fine evening, and we’ll go out and look at the towers. You’ve never even seen them yet, I suppose?’
So they went out, and finding the verger at the Cathedral door, he being a great friend of Miss Stanbury, they walked up and down the aisles, and Dorothy was instructed as to what would be expected from her in regard to the outward forms of religion. She was to go to the Cathedral service on the morning of every week-day, and on Sundays in the afternoon. On Sunday mornings she was to attend the little church of St. Margaret. On Sunday evenings it was the practice of Miss Stanbury to read a sermon in the dining-room to all of whom her household consisted. Did Dorothy like daily services? Dorothy, who was more patient than her brother, and whose life had been much less energetic, said that she had no objection to going to church every day when there was not too much to do.
‘There never need be too much to do to attend the Lord’s house,’ said Miss Stanbury, somewhat angrily.
‘Only if you’ve got to make the beds,’ said Dorothy.
‘My dear, I beg your pardon,’ said Miss Stanbury. ‘I beg your pardon, heartily. I’m a thoughtless old woman, I know. Never mind. Now, we’ll go in.’
Later in the evening, when she gave her niece a candlestick to go to bed, she repeated what she had said before.
‘It’ll do very well, my dear. I’m sure it’ll do. But if you read in bed either night or morning, I’ll never forgive you.’
This last caution was uttered with so much energy, that Dorothy gave a little jump as she promised obedience.
On one Sunday morning, when the month of May was nearly over, Hugh Stanbury met Colonel Osborne in Curzon Street, not many yards from Trevelyan’s door. Colonel Osborne had just come from the house, and Stanbury was going to it. Hugh had not spoken to Osborne since the day, now a fortnight since, on which both of them had witnessed the scene in the park; but on that occasion they had been left together, and it had been impossible for them not to say a few words about their mutual friends. Osborne had expressed his sorrow that there should be any misunderstanding, and had called Trevelyan a ‘confounded fool.’ Stanbury had suggested that there was something in it which they two probably did not understand, and that matters would be sure to come all right. ‘The truth is Trevelyan bullies her,’ said Osborne; ‘and if he goes on with that he’ll be sure to get the worst of it.’ Now on this present occasion Stanbury asked whether he would find the ladies at home. ‘Yes, they are both there,’ said Osborne. ‘Trevelyan has just gone out in a huff. She’ll never be able to go on living with him. Anybody can see that with half an eye.’ Then he had passed on, and Hugh Stanbury knocked at the door.
He was shown up into the drawing-room, and found both the sisters there; but he could see that Mrs Trevelyan had been in tears. The avowed purpose of his visit — that is, the purpose which he had avowed to himself — was to talk about his sister Dorothy. He had told Miss Rowley, while walking in the park with her, how Dorothy had been invited over to Exeter by her aunt, and how he had counselled his sister to accept the invitation. Nora had expressed herself very interested as to Dorothy’s fate, and had said how much she wished that she knew Dorothy. We all understand how sweet it is, when two such persons as Hugh Stanbury and Nora Rowley cannot speak of their love for each other, to say these tender things in regard to some one else. Nora had been quite anxious to know how Dorothy had been received by that old conservative warrior, as Hugh Stanbury had called his aunt, and Hugh had now come to Curzon Street with a letter from Dorothy in his pocket. But when he saw that there had been some cause for trouble, he hardly knew how to introduce his subject.
‘Trevelyan is not at home?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Emily, with her face turned away. ‘He went out and left us a quarter of an hour since. Did you meet Colonel Osborne?’
‘I was speaking to him in the street not a moment since.’ As he answered he could see that Nora was making some sign to her sister. Nora was most anxious that Emily should not speak of what had just occurred, but her signs were all thrown away. ‘Somebody must tell him,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, ‘and I don’t know who can do so better than so old a friend as Mr Stanbury.’
‘Tell what, and to whom?’ he asked.
‘No, no, no,’ said Nora.
‘Then I must tell him myself,’ said she, ‘that is all. As for standing this kind of life, it is out of the question. I should either destroy myself or go mad.’
‘If I could do any good I should be so happy,’ said Stanbury.
‘Nobody can do any good between a man and wife,’ said Nora.
Then Mrs Trevelyan began to tell her story, putting aside, with an impatient motion of her hands, the efforts which her sister made to stop her. She was very angry, and as she told it, standing up, all trace of sobbing soon disappeared from her voice. ‘The fact is,’ she said, ‘he does not know his own mind, or what to fear or what not to fear. He told me that I was never to see Colonel Osborne again.
‘What is the use, Emily, of your repeating that to Mr Stanbury?’
‘Why should I not repeat it? Colonel Osborne is papa’s oldest friend, and mine too. He is a man I like very much, who is a real friend to me. As he is old enough to be my father, one would have thought that my husband could have found no objection.’
‘I don’t know much about his age,’ said Stanbury.
‘It does make a difference. It must make a difference. I should not think of becoming so intimate with a younger man. But, however, when my husband told me that I was to see him no more, though the insult nearly killed me, I determined to obey him. An order was given that Colonel Osborne should not be admitted. You may imagine how painful it was; but it was given, and I was prepared to bear it.’
‘But he had been lunching with you on that Sunday.’
‘Yes; that is just it. As soon as it was given Louis would rescind it, because he was ashamed of what he had done. He was so jealous that he did not want me to see the man; and yet he was so afraid that it should be known that he ordered me to see him. He ordered him into the house at last, and I— I went away upstairs.’
‘That was on the Sunday that we met you in the park?’ asked Stanbury.
‘What is the use of going back to all that?’ said Nora.
‘Then I met him by chance in the park,’ continued Mrs Trevelyan, ‘and because he said a word which I knew would anger my husband, I left him abruptly. Since that my husband has begged that things might go on as they were before. He could not bear that Colonel Osborne himself should think that he was jealous. Well; I gave way, and the man has been here as before. And now there has been a scene which has been disgraceful to us all. I cannot stand it, and I won’t. If he does not behave himself with more manliness I will leave him.’
‘But what can I do?’
‘Nothing, Mr Stanbury,’ said Nora.
‘Yes; you can do this. You can go to him from me, and can tell him that I have chosen you as a messenger because you are his friend. You can tell him that I am willing to obey him in anything. If he chooses, I will consent that Colonel Osborne shall be asked never to come into my presence again. It will be very absurd; but if he chooses, I will consent. Or I will let things go on as they are, and continue to receive my father’s old friend when he comes. But if I do, I will not put up with an imputation on my conduct because he does not like the way in which the gentleman thinks fit to address me. I take upon myself to say that if any man alive spoke to me as he ought not to speak, I should know how to resent it myself. But I cannot fly into a passion with an old gentleman for calling me by my Christian name, when he has done so habitually for years.’
From all this it will appear that the great godsend of a rich marriage, with all manner of attendant comforts, which had come in the way of the Rowley family as they were living at the Mandarins, had not turned out to be an unmixed blessing. In the matter of the quarrel, as it had hitherto progressed, the husband had perhaps been more in the wrong than his wife; but the wife, in spite of all her promises of perfect obedience, had proved herself to be a woman very hard to manage. Had she been earnest in her desire to please her lord and master in this matter of Colonel Osborne’s visits, to please him even after he had so vacillated in his own behests, she might probably have so received the man as to have quelled all feeling of jealousy in her husband’s bosom. But instead of doing so she had told herself that as she was innocent, and as her innocence had been acknowledged, and as she had been specially instructed to receive this man whom she had before been specially instructed not to receive, she would now fall back exactly into her old manner with him. She had told Colonel Osborne never to allude to that meeting in the park, and to ask no creature as to what had occasioned her conduct on that Sunday; thus having a mystery with him, which of course he understood as well as she did. And then she had again taken to writing notes to him and receiving notes from him — none of which she showed to her husband. She was more intimate with him than ever, and yet she hardly ever mentioned his name to her husband. Trevelyan, acknowledging to himself that he had done no good by his former interference, feeling that he had put himself in the wrong on that occasion, and that his wife had got the better of him, had borne with all this with soreness and a moody savageness of general conduct, but still without further words of anger with reference to the man himself. But now, on this Sunday, when his wife had been closeted with Colonel Osborne in the back drawing-room, leaving him with his sister-inlaw, his temper had become too hot for him, and he had suddenly left the house, declaring that he would not walk with the two women on that day. ‘Why not, Louis?’ his wife had said, coming up to him. ‘Never mind why not, but I shall not,’ he had answered; and then he left the room.
‘What is the matter with him?’ Colonel Osborne had asked.
‘It is impossible to say what is the matter with him,’ Mrs Trevelyan had replied. After that she had at once gone upstairs to her child, telling herself that she was doing all that the strictest propriety could require in leaving the man’s society as soon as her husband was gone. Then there was an awkward minute or two between Nora and Colonel Osborne, and he took his leave.
Stanbury at last promised that he would see Trevelyan, repeating, however, very frequently that often used assertion, that no task is so hopeless as that of interfering between a man and his wife. Nevertheless he promised, and undertook to look for Trevelyan at the Acrobats on that afternoon. At last he got a moment in which to produce the letter from his sister, and was able to turn the conversation for a few minutes to his own affairs. Dorothy’s letter was read and discussed by both the ladies with much zeal. ‘It is quite a strange world to me,’ said Dorothy, ‘but I am beginning to find myself more at my ease than I was at first. Aunt Stanbury is very good-natured, and when I know what she wants, I think I shall be able to please her. What you said of her disposition is not so bad to me, as of course a girl in my position does not expect to have her own way.’
‘Why shouldn’t she have her share of her own way as well as anybody else?’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘Poor Dorothy would never want to have her own way,’ said Hugh.
‘She ought to want it,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘She has spirit enough to turn if she’s trodden on,’ said Hugh.
‘That’s more than what most women have,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
Then he went on with the letter. ‘She is very generous, and has given me 6 pounds 5s in advance of my allowance. When I said I would send part of it home to mamma, she seemed to be angry, and said that she wanted me always to look nice about my clothes. She told me afterwards to do as I pleased, and that I might try my own way for the first quarter. So I was frightened, and only sent thirty shillings. We went out the other evening to drink tea with Mrs MacHugh, an old lady whose husband was once dean. I had to go, and it was all very nice. There were a great many clergymen there, but many of them were young men.’ ‘Poor Dorothy,’ exclaimed Nora. ‘One of them was the minor canon who chants the service every morning. He is a bachelor.’ ‘Then there is a hope for her,’ said Nora ‘and he always talks a little as though he were singing the Litany.’ ‘That’s very bad,’ said Nora; ‘fancy having a husband to sing the Litany to you always.’ ‘Better that, perhaps, than having him always singing something else,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
It was decided between them that Dorothy’s state might on the whole be considered as flourishing, but that Hugh was bound as a brother to go down to Exeter and look after her. He explained, however, that he was expressly debarred from calling on his sister, even between the hours of half-past nine and half-past twelve on Wednesday mornings, and that he could not see her at all unless he did so surreptitiously.
‘If I were you I would see my sister in spite of all the old viragos in Exeter,’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘I have no idea of anybody taking so much upon themselves.’
‘You must remember, Mrs Trevelyan, that she has taken upon herself much also in the way of kindness, in doing what perhaps I ought to call charity. I wonder what I should have been doing now if it were not for my Aunt Stanbury.’
He took his leave, and went at once from Curzon Street to Trevelyan’s club, and found that Trevelyan had not been there as yet. In another hour he called again, and was about to give it up, when he met the man whom he was seeking on the steps.
‘I was looking for you,’ he said.
‘Well, here I am.’
It was impossible not to see in the look of Trevelyan’s face, and not to hear in the tone of his voice, that he was, at the moment, in an angry and unhappy frame of mind. He did not move as though he were willing to accompany his friend, and seemed almost to know beforehand that the approaching interview was to be an unpleasant one.
‘I want to speak to you, and perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking a turn with me,’ said Stanbury.
But Trevelyan objected to this, and led the way into the club waiting-room. A club waiting-room is always a gloomy, unpromising place for a confidential conversation, and so Stanbury felt it to be on the present occasion. But he had no alternative. There they were together, and he must do as he had promised. Trevelyan kept on his hat and did not sit down, and looked very gloomy. Stanbury having to commence without any assistance from outward auxiliaries, almost forgot what it was that he had promised to do.
‘I have just come from Curzon Street,’ he said.
‘Well!’
‘At least I was there about two hours ago.’
‘It doesn’t matter, I suppose, whether it was two hours or two minutes,’ said Trevelyan.
‘Not in the least. The fact is this; I happened to come upon the two girls there, when they were very unhappy, and your wife asked me to come and say a word or two to you.’
‘Was Colonel Osborne there?’
‘No; I had met him in the street a minute or two before.’
‘Well, now; look here, Stanbury. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll keep your hands out of this. It is not but that I regard you as being as good a friend as I have in the world; but, to own the truth, I cannot put up with interference between myself and my wife.’
‘Of course you understand that I only come as a messenger.’
‘You had better not be a messenger in such a cause. If she has anything to say she can say it to myself.’
‘Am I to understand that you will not listen to me?’
‘I had rather not.’
‘I think you are wrong,’ said Stanbury.
‘In that matter you must allow me to judge for myself. I can easily understand that a young woman like her, especially with her sister to back her, should induce such a one as you to take her part.’
‘I am taking nobody’s part. You wrong your wife, and you especially wrong Miss Rowley.’
‘If you please, Stanbury, we will say nothing more about it.’ This Trevelyan said holding the door of the room half open in his hand, so that the other was obliged to pass out through it.
‘Good evening,’ said Stanbury, with much anger.
‘Good evening,’ said Trevelyan, with an assumption of indifference.
Stanbury went away in absolute wrath, though the trouble which he had had in the interview was much less than he had anticipated, and the result quite as favourable. He had known that no good would come of his visit. And yet he was now full of anger against Trevelyan, and had become a partisan in the matter which was exactly that which he had resolutely determined that he would not become. ‘I believe that no woman on earth could live with him,’ he said to himself as he walked away. ‘It was always the same with him — a desire for mastery, which he did not know how to use when he had obtained it. If it were Nora, instead of the other sister, he would break her sweet heart within a month.’
Trevelyan dined at his club, and hardly spoke a word to any one during the evening. At about eleven he started to walk home, but went by no means straight thither, taking a long turn through St. James’s Park, and by Pimlico. It was necessary that he should make up his mind as to what he would do. He had sternly refused the interference of a friend, and he must be prepared to act on his own responsibility. He knew well that he could not begin again with his wife on the next day as though nothing had happened. Stanbury’s visit to him, if it had done nothing else, had made this impossible. He determined that he would not go to her room to-night, but would see her as early as possible in the morning and would then talk to her with all the wisdom of which he was master.
How many husbands have come to the same resolution; and how few of them have found the words of wisdom to be efficacious!