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 goodnatured, 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 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.”
“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 tonight, 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!
Chapter X.