He Knew He Was Right Part 121

He started after a very early breakfast, and found himself walking up over the stone ridges to the house between nine and ten in the morning. He himself had sat beside the driver and had put the maid inside the carriage. He had not deemed it wise to take an undivided charge of the boy even from Casalunga to Siena. At the door of the house, as though waiting for him, he found Trevelyan, not dirty as he had been before, but dressed with much appearance of smartness. He had a brocaded cap on his head, and a shirt with a laced front, and a worked waistcoat, and a frock coat, and coloured bright trousers. Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k knew at once that all the clothes which he saw before him had been made for Italian and not for English wear; and could almost have said that they had been bought in Siena and not in Florence.

"I had not intended to impose this labour on you, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k,"

Trevelyan said, raising his cap to salute his visitor.

"For fear there might be mistakes, I thought it better to come myself," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k. "You did not wish to see Sir Marmaduke?"

"Certainly not Sir Marmaduke," said Trevelyan, with a look of anger that was almost grotesque.

"And you thought it better that Mrs. Trevelyan should not come."

"Yes;--I thought it better;--but not from any feeling of anger towards her. If I could welcome my wife here, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, without a risk of wrath on her part, I should be very happy to receive her.

I love my wife, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k. I love her dearly. But there have been misfortunes. Never mind. There is no reason why I should trouble you with them. Let us go in to breakfast. After your drive you will have an appet.i.te."

Poor Mr. Glasc.o.c.k was afraid to decline to sit down to the meal which was prepared for him. He did mutter something about having already eaten, but Trevelyan put this aside with a wave of his hand as he led the way into a s.p.a.cious room, in which had been set out a table with almost a sumptuous banquet. The room was very bare and comfortless, having neither curtains nor matting, and containing not above half a dozen chairs. But an effort had been made to give it an air of Italian luxury. The windows were thrown open, down to the ground, and the table was decorated with fruits and three or four long-necked bottles. Trevelyan waved with his hand towards an arm-chair, and Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k had no alternative but to seat himself. He felt that he was sitting down to breakfast with a madman; but if he did not sit down, the madman might perhaps break out into madness. Then Trevelyan went to the door and called aloud for Catarina. "In these remote places,"

said he, "one has to do without the civilisation of a bell. Perhaps one gains as much in quiet as one loses in comfort." Then Catarina came with hot meats and fried potatoes, and Mr. Glasc.o.c.k was compelled to help himself.

"I am but a bad trencherman myself," said Trevelyan, "but I shall lament my misfortune doubly if that should interfere with your appet.i.te." Then he got up and poured out wine into Mr. Glasc.o.c.k's gla.s.s. "They tell me that it comes from the Baron's vineyard," said Trevelyan, alluding to the wine-farm of Ricasoli, "and that there is none better in Tuscany. I never was myself a judge of the grape, but this to me is as palatable as any of the costlier French wines. How grand a thing would wine really be, if it could make glad the heart of man. How truly would one worship Bacchus if he could make one's heart to rejoice. But if a man have a real sorrow, wine will not wash it away,--not though a man were drowned in it, as Clarence was."

Mr. Glasc.o.c.k hitherto had spoken hardly a word. There was an attempt at joviality about this breakfast,--or, at any rate, of the usual comfortable luxury of hospitable entertainment,--which, coming as it did from Trevelyan, almost locked his lips. He had not come there to be jovial or luxurious, but to perform a most melancholy mission; and he had brought with him his saddest looks, and was prepared for a few sad words. Trevelyan's speech, indeed, was sad enough, but Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k could not take up questions of the worship of Bacchus at half a minute's warning. He eat a morsel, and raised his gla.s.s to his lips, and felt himself to be very uncomfortable. It was necessary, however, that he should utter a word. "Do you not let your little boy come in to breakfast?" he said.

"He is better away," said Trevelyan gloomily.

"But as we are to travel together," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, "we might as well make acquaintance."

"You have been a little hurried with me on that score," said Trevelyan. "I wrote certainly with a determined mind, but things have changed somewhat since then."

"You do not mean that you will not send him?"

"You have been somewhat hurried with me, I say. If I remember rightly, I named no time, but spoke of the future. Could I have answered the message which I received from you, I would have postponed your visit for a week or so."

"Postponed it! Why,--I am to be married the day after to-morrow.

It was just as much as I was able to do, to come here at all." Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k now pushed his chair back from the table, and prepared himself to speak up. "Your wife expects her child now, and you will break her heart by refusing to send him."

"n.o.body thinks of my heart, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k."

"But this is your own offer."

"Yes, it was my own offer, certainly. I am not going to deny my own words, which have no doubt been preserved in testimony against me."

"Mr. Trevelyan, what do you mean?" Then, when he was on the point of boiling over with pa.s.sion, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k remembered that his companion was not responsible for his expressions. "I do hope you will let the child go away with me," he said. "You cannot conceive the state of his mother's anxiety, and she will send him back at once if you demand it."

"Is that to be in good faith?"

"Certainly, in good faith. I would lend myself to nothing, Mr.

Trevelyan, that was not said and done in good faith."

"She will not break her word, excusing herself, because I am--mad?"

"I am sure that there is nothing of the kind in her mind."

"Perhaps not now; but such things grow. There is no iniquity, no breach of promise, no treason that a woman will not excuse to herself,--or a man either,--by the comfortable self-a.s.surance that the person to be injured is--mad. A hound without a friend is not so cruelly treated. The outlaw, the murderer, the perjurer has surer privileges than the man who is in the way, and to whom his friends can point as being--mad!" Mr. Glasc.o.c.k knew or thought that he knew that his host in truth was mad, and he could not, therefore, answer this tirade by an a.s.surance that no such idea was likely to prevail.

"Have they told you, I wonder," continued Trevelyan, "how it was that, driven to force and an ambuscade for the recovery of my own child, I waylaid my wife and took him from her? I have done nothing to forfeit my right as a man to the control of my own family. I demanded that the boy should be sent to me, and she paid no attention to my words. I was compelled to vindicate my own authority; and then, because I claimed the right which belongs to a father, they said that I was--mad! Ay, and they would have proved it, too, had I not fled from my country and hidden myself in this desert. Think of that, Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k! Now they have followed me here,--not out of love for me; and that man whom they call a governor comes and insults me; and my wife promises to be good to me, and says that she will forgive and forget! Can she ever forgive herself her own folly, and the cruelty that has made shipwreck of my life? They can do nothing to me here; but they would entice me home because there they have friends, and can fee doctors,--with my own money,--and suborn lawyers, and put me away,--somewhere in the dark, where I shall be no more heard of among men! As you are a man of honour, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k,--tell me; is it not so?"

"I know nothing of their plans,--beyond this, that you wrote me word that you would send them the boy."

"But I know their plans. What you say is true. I did write you word,--and I meant it. Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, sitting here alone from morning to night, and lying down from night till morning, without companionship, without love, in utter misery, I taught myself to feel that I should think more of her than of myself."

"If you are so unhappy here, come back yourself with the child. Your wife would desire nothing better."

"Yes;--and submit to her, and her father, and her mother. No,--Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k; never, never. Let her come to me."

"But you will not receive her."

"Let her come in a proper spirit, and I will receive her. She is the wife of my bosom, and I will receive her with joy. But if she is to come to me and tell me that she forgives me,--forgives me for the evil that she has done,--then, sir, she had better stay away. Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k, you are going to be married. Believe me,--no man should submit to be forgiven by his wife. Everything must go astray if that be done. I would rather encounter their mad doctors, one of them after another till they had made me mad;--I would encounter anything rather than that. But, sir, you neither eat nor drink, and I fear that my speech disturbs you."

It was like enough that it may have done so. Trevelyan, as he had been speaking, had walked about the room, going from one extremity to the other with hurried steps, gesticulating with his arms, and every now and then pushing back with his hands the long hair from off his forehead. Mr. Glasc.o.c.k was in truth very much disturbed. He had come there with an express object; but, whenever he mentioned the child, the father became almost rabid in his wrath. "I have done very well, thank you," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k. "I will not eat any more, and I believe I must be thinking of going back to Siena."

"I had hoped you would spend the day with me, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k."

"I am to be married, you see, in two days; and I must be in Florence early to-morrow. I am to meet my--wife, as she will be, and the Rowleys, and your wife. Upon my word I can't stay. Won't you just say a word to the young woman and let the boy be got ready?"

"I think not;--no, I think not."

"And am I to have had all this journey for nothing? You will have made a fool of me in writing to me."

"I intended to be honest, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k."

"Stick to your honesty, and send the boy back to his mother. It will be better for you, Trevelyan."

"Better for me! Nothing can be better for me. All must be worst. It will be better for me, you say; and you ask me to give up the last drop of cold water wherewith I can touch my parched lips. Even in my h.e.l.l I had so much left to me of a limpid stream, and you tell me that it will be better for me to pour it away. You may take him, Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k. The woman will make him ready for you. What matters it whether the fiery furnace be heated seven times, or only six;--in either degree the flames are enough! You may take him;--you may take him." So saying, Trevelyan walked out of the window, leaving Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k seated in his chair. He walked out of the window and went down among the olive trees. He did not go far, however, but stood with his arm round the stem of one of them, playing with the shoots of a vine with his hand. Mr. Glasc.o.c.k followed him to the window and stood looking at him for a few moments. But Trevelyan did not turn or move. There he stood gazing at the pale, cloudless, heat-laden, motionless sky, thinking of his own sorrows, and remembering too, doubtless, with the vanity of a madman, that he was probably being watched in his reverie.

Mr. Glasc.o.c.k was too practical a man not to make the most of the offer that had been made to him, and he went back among the pa.s.sages and called for Catarina. Before long he had two or three women with him, including her whom he had brought from Florence, and among them Louey was soon made to appear, dressed for his journey, together with a small trunk in which were his garments. It was quite clear that the order for his departure had been given before that scene at the breakfast-table, and that Trevelyan had not intended to go back from his promise. Nevertheless Mr. Glasc.o.c.k thought it might be as well to hurry his departure, and he turned back to say the shortest possible word of farewell to Trevelyan in the garden. But when he got to the window, Trevelyan was not to be found among the olive trees. Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k walked a few steps down the hill, looking for him, but seeing nothing of him, returned to the house. The elder woman said that her master had not been there, and Mr. Glasc.o.c.k started with his charge. Trevelyan was manifestly mad, and it was impossible to treat him as a sane man would have been treated. Nevertheless, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k felt much compunction in carrying the child away without a final kiss or word of farewell from its father. But it was not to be so. He had got into the carriage with the child, having the servant seated opposite to him,--for he was moved by some undefinable fear which made him determine to keep the boy close to him, and he had not, therefore, returned to the driver's seat,--when Trevelyan appeared standing by the road-side at the bottom of the hill. "Would you take him away from me without one word!" said Trevelyan bitterly.

"I went to look for you but you were gone," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k.

"No, sir, I was not gone. I am here. It is the last time that I shall ever gladden my eyes with his brightness. Louey, my love, will you come to your father?" Louey did not seem to be particularly willing to leave the carriage, but he made no loud objection when Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k held him up to the open s.p.a.ce above the door. The child had realised the fact that he was to go, and did not believe that his father would stop him now; but he was probably of opinion that the sooner the carriage began to go on the better it would be for him.

Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, thinking that his father intended to kiss him over the door, held him by his frock; but the doing of this made Trevelyan very angry. "Am I not to be trusted with my own child in my arms?"

said he. "Give him to me, sir. I begin to doubt now whether I am right to deliver him to you." Mr. Glasc.o.c.k immediately let go his hold of the boy's frock and leaned back in the carriage. "Louey will tell papa that he loves him before he goes?" said Trevelyan. The poor little fellow murmured something, but it did not please his father, who had him in his arms. "You are like the rest of them, Louey," he said; "because I cannot laugh and be gay, all my love for you is nothing;--nothing! You may take him. He is all that I have;--all that I have;--and I shall never see him again!" So saying he handed the child into the carriage, and sat himself down by the side of the road to watch till the vehicle should be out of sight. As soon as the last speck of it had vanished from his sight, he picked himself up, and dragged his slow footsteps back to the house.