He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (books you need to read .txt) 📕
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don’t care a bit about fortune. I thought I did once, but I have
changed all that.’
‘Because this scoundrel has talked sedition to you.’
‘He is not a scoundrel, papa, and he has not talked sedition. I don’t
know what sedition is. I thought it meant treason, and I’m sure he is
not a traitor. He has made me love him, and I shall be true to him.’
Hereupon Sir Marmaduke began almost to weep. There came first a
half-smothered oath and then a sob, and he walked about the room, and
struck the table with his fist, and rubbed his bald head impatiently
with his hand. ‘Nora,’ he said, ‘I thought you were so different from
this! If I had believed this of you, you never should have come to
England with Emily.’
‘It is too late for that now, papa.’
‘Your mamma always told me that you had such excellent ideas about
marriage.’
‘So I have, I think,’ said she, smiling.
‘She always believed that you would make a match that would be a credit
to the family.’
‘I tried it, papa, the sort of match that you mean. Indeed I was
mercenary enough in what I believed to be my views of life. I meant to
marry a rich man if I could, and did not think much whether I should
love him or not. But when the rich man came—’
‘What rich man?’
‘I suppose mamma has told you about Mr Glascock.’
‘Who is Mr Glascock? I have not heard a word about Mr Glascock.’ Then
Nora was forced to tell the story, was called upon to tell it with all
its aggravating details. By degrees Sir Marmaduke learned that this Mr
Glascock, who had desired to be his son-in-law, was in very truth the
heir to the Peterborough title and estates, would have been such a
son-in-law as almost to compensate, by the brilliance of the
connection, for that other unfortunate alliance. He could hardly
control his agony when he was made to understand that this embryo peer
had in truth been in earnest.
‘Do you mean that he went down after you into Devonshire?’
‘Yes, papa.’
‘And you refused him then a second time?’
‘Yes, papa.’
‘Why, why, why? You say yourself that you liked him, that you thought that
you would accept him.’
‘When it came to speaking the word, papa, I found that I could not
pretend to love him when I did not love him. I did not care for him, and
I liked somebody else so much better! I just told him the plain truth
and so he went away.’
The thought of all that he had lost, of all that might so easily have
been his, for a time overwhelmed Sir Marmaduke, and drove the very
memory of Hugh Stanbury almost out of his head; He could understand
that a girl should not marry a man whom she did not like; but he could
not understand how any girl should not love such a suitor as was Mr
Glascock. And had she accepted this pearl of men, with her position,
with her manners and beauty and appearance, such a connection would
have been as good as an assured marriage for every one of Sir
Marmaduke’s numerous daughters. Nora was just the woman to look like a
great lady, a lady of high rank such a lady as could almost command men
to come and throw themselves at her unmarried sisters’ feet. Sir
Marmaduke had believed in his daughter Nora, had looked forward to see
her do much for the family; and, when the crash had come upon the
Trevelyan household, had thought almost as much of her injured
prospects as he had of the misfortune of her sister. But now it seemed
that more than all the good things of what he had dreamed had been
proposed to this unruly girl, in spite of that great crash, and had been
rejected! And he saw more than this as he thought. These good things
would have been accepted had it not been for this rascal of a
penny-a-liner, this friend of that other rascal Trevelyan, who had come
in the way of their family to destroy the happiness of them all! Sir
Marmaduke, in speaking of Stanbury after this, would constantly call
him a penny-a-liner, thinking that the contamination of the penny
communicated itself to all transactions of the Daily Record.
‘You have made your bed for yourself, Nora, and you must lie upon it.’
‘Just so, papa.’
‘I mean that, as you have refused Mr Glascock’s offer, you can never
again hope for such an opening in life.’
‘Of course I cannot. I am not such a child as to suppose that there are
many Mr Glascocks to come and run after me. And if there were ever so
many, papa, it would be no good. As you say, I have chosen for myself,
and I must put up with it. When I see the carriages going about in the
streets, and remember how often shall have to go home in an omnibus, I
do think about it a good deal.’
‘I’m afraid you will think when it is too late.’
‘It isn’t that I don’t like carriages, papa. I do like them; and pretty
dresses, and brooches, and men and women who have nothing to do, and
balls, and the opera; but I love this man, and that is more to me than
all the rest. I cannot help myself if it were ever so. Papa, you
mustn’t be angry with me. Pray, pray, pray do not say that horrid word
again.’
This was the end of the interview. Sir Marmaduke found that he had
nothing further to say. Nora, when she reached her last prayer to her
father, referring to that curse with which he had threatened her, was
herself in tears, and was leaning on him with her head against his
shoulder. Of course he did not say a word which could be understood as
sanctioning her engagement with Stanbury. He was as strongly determined
as ever that it was his duty to save her from the perils of such a
marriage as that. But, nevertheless, he was so far overcome by her as
to be softened in his manners towards her. He kissed her as he left
her, and told her to go to her mother. Then he went out and thought of
it all, and felt as though Paradise had been opened to his child and
she had refused to enter the gate.
SHEWING WHAT HUGH STANBURY THOUGHT ABOUT THE DUTY OF MAN
In the conference which took place between Sir Marmaduke and his wife
after the interview between him and Nora, it was his idea that nothing
further should be done at all. ‘I don’t suppose the man will come here
if he be told not,’ said Sir Marmaduke, ‘and if he does, Nora of course
will not see him.’ He then suggested that Nora would of course go back
with them to the Mandarins, and that when once there she would not be
able to see Stanbury any more. ‘There must be no correspondence or
anything of that sort, and so the thing will die away.’ But Lady Rowley
declared that this would not quite suffice. Mr Stanbury had made his
offer in due form, and must be held to be entitled to an answer. Sir
Marmaduke, therefore, wrote the following letter to the
‘penny-a-liner,’ mitigating the asperity of his language in compliance
with his wife’s counsels.
‘Manchester Street, April 20th, 186-.
My Dear Sir,
Lady Rowley has told me of your proposal to my daughter Nora; and she
has told me also what she learned from you as to your circumstances in
life. I need hardly point out to you that no father would be justified
in giving his daughter to a gentleman upon so small an income, and upon
an income so very insecure.
I am obliged to refuse my consent, and I must therefore ask you to
abstain from visiting and from communicating with my daughter.
Yours faithfully,
MARMADUKE ROWLEY.
Hugh Stanbury, Esq.’
This letter was directed to Stanbury at the office of the D. R., and
Sir Marmaduke, as he wrote the pernicious address, felt himself injured
in that he was compelled to write about his daughter to a man so
circumstanced. Stanbury, when he got the letter, read it hastily and
then threw it aside. He knew what it would contain before he opened it.
He had heard enough from Lady Rowley to be aware that Sir Marmaduke
would not welcome him as a son-in-law; Indeed, he had never expected
such welcome. He was half-ashamed of his own suit because of the
lowliness of his position, half-regretful that he should have induced
such a girl as Nora Rowley to give up for his sake her hopes of
magnificence and splendour. But Sir Marmaduke’s letter did not add
anything to this feeling. He read it again, and smiled as he told
himself that the father would certainly be very weak in the hands of
his daughter. Then he went to work again at his article with a
persistent resolve that so small a trifle as such a note should have no
effect upon his daily work. ‘Of course Sir Marmaduke would refuse his
consent. Of course it would be for him, Stanbury, to marry the girl he
loved in opposition to her father. Her father indeed! If Nora chose to
take him—and as to that he was very doubtful as to Nora’s wisdom—but if
Nora would take him, what was any father’s opposition to him. He wanted
nothing from Nora’s father. He was not looking for money with his wife,
nor for fashion, nor countenance. Such a Bohemian was he that he would
be quite satisfied if his girl would walk out to him, and become his
wife, with any morning-gown on and with any old hat that might come,
readiest to hand. He wanted neither cards, nor breakfast, nor
carriages, nor fine clothes. If his Nora should choose to come to him
as she was, he having had all previous necessary arrangements duly made,
such as calling of banns or procuring of licence, if possible, he
thought that a father’s opposition would almost add something to the
pleasure of the occasion. So he pitched the letter on one side, and
went on with his article. And he finished his article; but it may be
doubted whether it was completed with the full strength and pith needed
for moving the pulses of the national mind as they should be moved by
leading articles in the D. R. As he was writing he was thinking of Nora
and thinking of the letter which Nora’s father had sent to him. Trivial
as was the letter, he could not keep himself from repeating the words
of it to himself. ‘“Need hardly point out,” oh; needn’t he? Then why
does he? Refusing his consent! I wonder what the old buffers think is
the meaning of their consent, when they are speaking of daughters old
enough to manage for themselves? Abstain from visiting or communicating
with her! But if she visits and communicates with me, what then? I can’t
force my way into the house, but she can force her way out. Does he
imagine that she can be locked up in the nursery or put into the
corner?’ So he argued with himself, and by such arguments he brought
himself to the conviction that it would be well for him to answer Sir
Marmaduke’s letter. This he did at once before
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