bookssland.com » Fiction » He Knew He Was Right - Anthony Trollope (rainbow fish read aloud txt) 📗

Book online «He Knew He Was Right - Anthony Trollope (rainbow fish read aloud txt) 📗». Author Anthony Trollope



1 ... 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 ... 176
Go to page:
the bride and bridegroom were

whisked away with a pair of grey horses to the railway station, and

before the last toast of the day had been proposed by the Belgian

Councillor of Legation, they were half way up the Apennines on their

road to Bologna. Mr Spalding behaved himself like a man on the

occasion. Nothing was spared in the way of expense, and when he made

that celebrated speech, in which he declared that the republican virtue

of the New World had linked itself in a happy alliance with the

aristocratic splendour of the Old, and went on with a simile about the

lion and the lamb, everybody accepted it with good humour in spite of

its being a little too long for the occasion.

 

‘It has gone off very well, mamma; has it not?’ said Nora, as she

returned home with her mother to her lodgings.

 

‘Yes, my dear; much, I fancy, as these things generally do.’

 

‘I thought it was so nice. And she looked so very well. And he was so

pleasant, and so much like a gentleman—not noisy, you know, and yet not

too serious.’

 

‘I dare say, my love.’

 

‘It is easy enough, mamma, for a girl to be married, for she has

nothing to do but to wear her clothes and look as pretty as she can.

And if she cries and has a red nose it is forgiven her. But a man has

so difficult a part to play! If he tries to carry himself as though it

were not a special occasion, he looks like a fool that way; and if he

is very special, he looks like a fool the other way. I thought Mr

Glascock did it very well.’

 

‘To tell you the truth, my dear, I did not observe him.’

 

‘I did narrowly. He hadn’t tied his cravat at all nicely.’

 

‘How could you think of his cravat, Nora, with such memories as you

must have, and such regrets, I cannot understand.’

 

‘Mamma, my memories of Mr Glascock are pleasant memories, and as for

regrets, I have not one. Can I regret, mamma, that I did not marry a man

whom I did not love and that I rejected him when I knew that I loved

another? You cannot mean that, mamma.’

 

‘I know this, that I was thinking all the time how proud I should have

been, and how much more fortunate he would have been, had you been

standing there instead of that American young woman.’ As she said this

Lady Rowley burst into tears, and Nora could only answer her mother by

embracing her. They were alone together, their party having been too

large for one carriage, and Sir Marmaduke having taken his two younger

daughters. ‘Of course, I feel it,’ said Lady Rowley, through her tears.

‘It would have been such a position for my child! And that young man

without a shilling in the world; and writing in that way, just for bare

bread!’ Nora had nothing more to say. A feeling that in herself would

have been base, was simply affectionate and maternal in her mother. It

was impossible that she should make her mother see it as she saw it.

 

There was but one intervening day and then the Rowleys returned to

England. There had been, as it were, a tacit agreement among them that,

in spite of all their troubles, their holiday should be a holiday up to

the time of the Glascock marriage. Then must commence at once the stern

necessity of their return home home, not only to England, but to those

antipodean islands from which it was too probable that some of them

might never come back. And the difficulties in their way seemed to be

almost insuperable. First of all there was to be the parting from Emily

Trevelyan. She had determined to remain in Florence, and had written to

her husband saying that she would do so, and declaring her willingness

to go out to him, or to receive him in Florence at any time and in any

manner that he might appoint. She had taken this as a first step,

intending to go to Casalunga very shortly, even though she should

receive no answer from him. The parting between her and her mother and

father and sisters was very bitter. Sir Marmaduke, as he had become

estranged from Nora, had grown to be more and more gentle and loving

with his eldest daughter, and was nearly overcome at the idea of

leaving her in a strange land, with a husband near her, mad, and yet

not within her custody. But he could do nothing could hardly say a word

toward opposing her. Though her husband was mad, he supplied her with

the means of living; and when she said that it was her duty to be near

him, her father could not deny it.

 

The parting came. ‘I will return to you the moment you send to me,’

were Nora’s last words to her sister. ‘I don’t suppose I shall send,’

said Emily. ‘I shall try to bear it without assistance.’

 

Then the journey from Italy to England was made without much

gratification or excitement, and the Rowley family again found

themselves at Gregg’s Hotel.

CHAPTER LXXXVIII

CROPPER AND BURGESS

 

We must now go back to Exeter and look after Mr Brooke Burgess and Miss

Dorothy Stanbury. It is rather hard upon readers that they should be

thus hurried from the completion of hymeneals at Florence to the

preparations for other hymeneals in Devonshire; but it is the nature of

a complex story to be entangled with many weddings towards its close.

In this little history there are, we fear, three or four more to come.

We will not anticipate by alluding prematurely to Hugh Stanbury’s

treachery, or death, or the possibility that he after all may turn out

to be the real descendant of the true Lord Peterborough and the actual

inheritor of the title and estate of Monkhams, nor will we speak of

Nora’s certain fortitude under either of these emergencies. But the

instructed reader must be aware that Camilla French ought to have a

husband found for her; that Colonel Osborne should be caught in some

matrimonial trap, as how otherwise should he be fitly punished? and

that something should be at least attempted for Priscilla Stanbury, who

from the first has been intended to be the real heroine of these pages.

That Martha should marry Giles Hickbody, and Barty Burgess run away

with Mrs MacHugh, is of course evident to the meanest novel-expounding

capacity; but the fate of Brooke Burgess and of Dorothy will require to

be evolved with some delicacy and much detail.

 

There was considerable difficulty in fixing the day. In the first place

Miss Stanbury was not very well and then she was very fidgety. She must

see Brooke again before the day was fixed, and after seeing Brooke she

must see her lawyer. ‘To have a lot of money to look after is more

plague than profit, my dear,’ she said to Dorothy one day;

‘particularly when you don’t quite know what you ought to do with it.’

Dorothy had always avoided any conversation with her aunt about money

since the first moment in which she had thought of accepting Brooke

Burgess as her husband. She knew that her aunt had some feeling which

made her averse to the idea that any portion of the property which she

had inherited should be enjoyed by a Stanbury after her death, and

Dorothy, guided by this knowledge, had almost convinced herself that

her love for Brooke was treason either against him or against her aunt.

If, by engaging herself to him, she would rob him of his inheritance,

how bitter a burden to him would her love have been! If, on the other

hand, she should reward her aunt for all that had been done for her by

forcing herself, a Stanbury, into a position not intended for her, how

base would be her ingratitude! These thoughts had troubled her much,

and had always prevented her from answering any of her aunt’s chance

allusions to the property. For her, things had at last gone very right.

She did not quite know how it had come about, but she was engaged to

marry the man she loved. And her aunt was, at any rate, reconciled to

the marriage. But when Miss Stanbury declared that she did not know

what to do about the property, Dorothy could only hold her tongue. She

had had plenty to say when it had been suggested to her that the

marriage should be put off yet for a short while, and that, in the

meantime, Brooke should come again to Exeter. She swore that she did

not care for how long it was put off, only that she hoped it might not

be put off altogether. And as for Brooke’s coming, that, for the

present, would be very much nicer than being married out of hand at

once. Dorothy, in truth, was not at all in a hurry to be married, but

she would have liked to have had her lover always coming and going.

Since the courtship had become a thing permitted, she had had the

privilege of welcoming him twice at the house in the Close; and that

running down to meet him in the little front parlour, and the getting

up to make his breakfast for him as he started in the morning, were

among the happiest epochs of her life. And then, as soon as ever the

breakfast was eaten, and he was gone, she would sit down to write him a

letter. Oh, those letters, so beautifully crossed, more than one of

which was copied from beginning to end because some word in it was not

thought to be sweet enough—what a heaven of happiness they were to her!

The writing of the first had disturbed her greatly, and she had almost

repented of the privilege before it was ended; but with the first and

second the difficulties had disappeared; and, had she not felt somewhat

ashamed of the occupation, she could have sat at her desk and written

him letters all day. Brooke would answer them, with fair regularity,

but in a most cursory manner, sending seven or eight lines in return for

two sheets fully crossed; but this did not discompose her in the least.

He was worked hard at his office, and had hundreds of other things to

do. He, too, could say, so thought Dorothy, more in eight lines than she

could put into as many pages.

 

She was quite happy when she was told that the marriage could not take

place till August, but that Brooke must come again in July. Brooke did

come in the first week of July, and somewhat horrified Dorothy by

declaring to her that Miss Stanbury was unreasonable.

 

‘If I insist upon leaving London so often for a day or two,’ said he,

‘how am I to get anything like leave of absence when the time comes?’

In answer to this Dorothy tried to make him understand that business

should not be neglected, and that, as far as she was concerned, she

could do very well without that trip abroad which he had proposed for

her. ‘I’m not going to be done in that way,’ said Brooke. ‘And now that

I am here she has nothing to say to me. I’ve told her a dozen times

that I don’t want to know anything about her will, and that I’ll take

it all for granted. There is something to be settled on you, that she

calls her own.’

 

‘She is so generous, Brooke.’

 

‘She is generous enough, but she is very whimsical. She is going to

make

1 ... 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 ... 176
Go to page:

Free e-book «He Knew He Was Right - Anthony Trollope (rainbow fish read aloud txt) 📗» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment