HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT. Anthony Trollope
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look at Emily, got up and left the room.
“Why do you send her away?” said Mrs. Trevelyan.
“Because I wish to be alone with you for a few minutes. Since what I said to you this morning, you have written to Colonel Osborne.”
“Yes;—I have. I do not know how you have found it out; but I suppose you keep a watch on me.”
“I keep no watch on you. As I came into the house, I saw your letter lying in the hall.”
“Very well. You could have read it if you pleased.”
“Emily, this matter is becoming very serious, and I strongly advise you to be on your guard in what you say. I will bear much for you, and much for our boy; but I will not bear to have my name made a reproach.”
“Sir, if you think your name is shamed by me, we had better part,” said Mrs. Trevelyan, rising from her chair, and confronting him with a look before which his own almost quailed.
“It may be that we had better part,” he said, slowly. “But in the first place I wish you to tell me what were the contents of that letter.”
“If it was there when you came in, no doubt it is there still. Go and look at it.”
“That is no answer to me. I have desired you to tell me what are its contents.”
“I shall not tell you. I will not demean myself by repeating anything so insignificant in my own justification. If you suspect me of writing what I should not write, you will suspect me also of lying to conceal it.”
“Have you heard from Colonel Osborne this morning?”
“I have.”
“And where is his letter?”
“I have destroyed it.”
Again he paused, trying to think what he had better do, trying to be calm. And she stood still opposite to him, confronting him with the scorn of her bright angry eyes. Of course, he was not calm. He was the very reverse of calm. “And you refuse to tell me what you wrote,” he said.
“The letter is there,” she answered, pointing away towards the door. “If you want to play the spy, go and look at it for yourself.”
“Do you call me a spy?”
“And what have you called me? Because you are a husband, is the privilege of vituperation to be all on your side?”
“It is impossible that I should put up with this,” he said;—”quite impossible. This would kill me. Anything is better than this. My present orders to you are not to see Colonel Osborne, not to write to him or have any communication with him, and to put under cover to me, unopened, any letter that may come from him. I shall expect your implicit obedience to these orders.”
“Well;—go on.”
“Have I your promise?”
“No;—no. You have no promise. I will make no promise exacted from me in so disgraceful a manner.”
“You refuse to obey me?”
“I will refuse nothing, and will promise nothing.”
“Then we must part;—that is all. I will take care that you shall hear from me before tomorrow morning.”
So saying, he left the room, and, passing through the hall, saw that the letter had been taken away.
Chapter XI.
Lady Milborough as Ambassador
“Of course, I know you are right,” said Nora to her sister;—”right as far as Colonel Osborne is concerned; but nevertheless you ought to give way.”
“And be trampled upon?” said Mrs. Trevelyan.
“Yes; and be trampled upon, if he should trample on you;—which, however, he is the last man in the world to do.”
“And to endure any insult and any names? You yourself—you would be a Griselda, I suppose.”
“I don’t want to talk about myself,” said Nora, “nor about Griselda. But I know that, however unreasonable it may seem, you had better give way to him now and tell him what there was in the note to Colonel Osborne.”
“Never! He has ordered me not to see him or to write to him, or to open his letters,—having, mind you, ordered just the reverse a day or two before; and I will obey him. Absurd as it is, I will obey him. But as for submitting to him, and letting him suppose that I think he is right;—never! I should be lying to him then, and I will never lie to him. He has said that we must part, and I suppose it will be better so. How can a woman live with a man that suspects her? He cannot take my baby from me.”
There were many such conversations as the above between the two sisters before Mrs. Trevelyan received from her husband the communication with which she had been threatened. And Nora, acting on her own judgment in the matter, made an attempt to see Mr. Trevelyan, writing to him a pretty little note, and beseeching him to be kind to her. But he declined to see her, and the two women sat at home, with the baby between them, holding such pleasant conversations as that above narrated. When such tempests occur in a family, a woman will generally suffer the least during the thick of the tempest. While the hurricane is at the fiercest, she will be sustained by the most thorough conviction that the right is on her side, that she is aggrieved, that there is nothing for her to acknowledge, and no position that she need surrender. Whereas her husband will desire a compromise, even amidst the violence of the storm. But afterwards, when the wind has lulled, but while the heavens around are still all black and murky, then the woman’s sufferings begin. When passion gives way to thought and memory, she feels the loneliness of her position,—the loneliness, and the possible degradation. It is all very well for a man to talk about his name and his honour; but it is the woman’s honour and the woman’s name that are, in truth, placed in jeopardy. Let the woman do what she will, the man can, in truth, show his face in the world;—and, after awhile, does show his face. But the woman may be compelled to veil hers, either by her own fault, or by his. Mrs. Trevelyan was now told that she was to be separated from her husband, and she did not, at any rate, believe that she had done any harm. But, if such separation did come, where could she live, what could she do, what position in the world would she possess? Would not her face be, in truth, veiled as effectually as though she had disgraced herself and her husband?
And then there was that terrible question about the child. Mrs. Trevelyan had said a dozen times to her sister that her husband could not take the boy away from her. Nora, however, had never assented to this, partly from a conviction of her own ignorance, not knowing what might be the power of a husband in such a matter, and partly thinking that any argument would be good and fair by which she could induce her sister to avoid a catastrophe so terrible as that which was now threatened.
“I suppose he could take him, if he chose,” she said at last.
“I don’t believe he is wicked like that,” said Mrs. Trevelyan. “He would not wish to kill me.”
“But he will say that he loves baby as well as you do.”
“He will never take my child from me. He could never be so bad as that.”
“And you will never be so bad as to leave him,” said Nora after a pause. “I will not believe that it can come to that. You know that he is good at heart,—that nobody on earth loves you as he does.”
So they went on for two days, and on the evening of the second day there came a letter from Trevelyan to his wife. They had neither of them seen him, although he had been in and out of the house. And on the afternoon of the Sunday a new grievance, a very terrible grievance, was added to those which Mrs. Trevelyan was made to bear. Her husband had told one