Stanbury made his journey without pause or hindrance till he reached Florence, and as the train for Siena made it necessary that he should remain there for four or five hours, he went to an inn, and dressed and washed himself, and had a meal, and was then driven to Mr Spalding’s house. He found the American Minister at home, and was received with cordiality; but Mr Spalding could tell him little or nothing about Trevelyan. They went up to Mrs Spalding’s room, and Hugh was told by her that she had seen Mrs Trevelyan once since her niece’s marriage, and that then she had represented her husband as being very feeble. Hugh, in the midst of his troubles, was amused by a second and a third, perhaps by a fourth, reference to ‘Lady Peterborough.’ Mrs Spalding’s latest tidings as to the Trevelyans had been received through ‘Lady Peterborough’ from Nora Rowley.
‘Lady Peterborough’ was at the present moment at Naples, but was expected to pass north through Florence in a day or two. They, the Spaldings themselves, were kept in Florence in this very hot weather by this circumstance. They were going up to the Tyrolese mountains for a few weeks as soon as ‘Lady Peterborough’ should have left them for England. ‘Lady Peterborough’ would have been so happy to make Mr Stanbury’s acquaintance, and to have heard something direct from her friend Nora. Then Mrs Spalding smiled archly, showing thereby that she knew all about Hugh Stanbury and his relation to Nora Rowley. From all which, and in accordance with the teaching which we got alas, now many years ago from a great master on the subject, we must conclude that poor, dear Mrs Spalding was a snob. Nevertheless, with all deference to the memory of that great master, we think that Mrs Spalding’s allusions to the success in life achieved by her niece were natural and altogether pardonable; and that reticence on the subject, a calculated determination to abstain from mentioning a triumph which must have been very dear to her, would have betrayed on the whole a condition of mind lower than that which she exhibited. While rank, wealth, and money are held to be good things by all around us, let them be acknowledged as such. It is natural that a mother should be as proud when her daughter marries an Earl’s heir as when her son becomes Senior Wrangler; and when we meet a lady in Mrs Spalding’s condition who purposely abstains from mentioning the name of her titled daughter, we shall be disposed to judge harshly of the secret workings of that lady’s thoughts on the subject. We prefer the exhibition, which we feel to be natural. Mr Spalding got our friend by the button-hole, and was making him a speech on the perilous condition in which Mrs Trevelyan was placed; but Stanbury, urged by the circumstances of his position, pulled out his watch, pleaded the hour, and escaped.
He found Mrs Trevelyan waiting for him at the station at Siena. He would hardly have known her, not from any alteration that was physically personal to herself, not that she had become older in face, or thin, or grey, or sickly, but that the trouble of her life had robbed her for the time of that brightness of apparel, of that pride of feminine gear, of that sheen of high-bred womanly bearing with which our wives and daughters are so careful to invest themselves. She knew herself to be a wretched woman, whose work in life was now to watch over a poor prostrate wretch, and who had thrown behind her all ideas of grace and beauty. It was not quickly that this condition had come upon her. She had been unhappy at Nuncombe Putney; but unhappiness had not then told upon the outward woman. She had been more wretched still at St. Diddulph’s, and all the outward circumstances of life in her uncle’s parsonage had been very wearisome to her; but she had striven against it all, and the sheen and outward brightness had still been there. After that her child had been taken from her, and the days which she had passed in Manchester Street had been very grievous, but even yet she had not given way. It was not till her child had been brought back to her, and she had seen the life which her husband was living, and that her anger — hot anger — had changed to pity, and that with pity love had returned; it was not till this point had come in her sad life that her dress became always black and sombre, that a veil habitually covered her face, that a bonnet took the place of the jaunty hat that she had worn, and that the prettinesses of her life were lain aside. ‘It is very good of you to come,’ she said; ‘very good, I hardly knew what to do, I was so wretched. On the day that I sent he was so bad that I was obliged to do something.’ Stanbury, of course, inquired after Trevelyan’s health, as they were being driven up to Mrs Trevelyan’s lodgings. On the day on which she had sent the telegram her husband had again been furiously angry with her. She had interfered, or had endeavoured to interfere, in some arrangements as to his health and comfort, and he had turned upon her with an order that the child should be at once sent back to him, and that she should immediately quit Siena. ‘When I said that Louey could not be sent — and who could send a child into such keeping?— he told me that I was the basest liar that ever broke a promise, and the vilest traitor that had ever returned evil for good. I was never to come to him again, never; and the gate of the house would be closed against me if I appeared there.’
On the next day she had gone again, however, and had seen him, and had visited him on every day since. Nothing further had been said about the child, and he had now become almost too weak for violent anger. ‘I told him you were coming, and though he would not say so, I think he is glad of it. He expects you tomorrow.’
‘I will go this evening, if he will let me.’
‘Not to-night. I think he goes to bed almost as the sun sets. I am never there myself after four or five in the afternoon. I told him that you should be there tomorrow alone. I have hired a little carriage, and you can take it. He said specially that I was not to come with you. Papa goes certainly on next Saturday?’ It was a Saturday now, this day on which Stanbury had arrived at Siena.
‘He leaves town on Friday.’
‘You must make him believe that. Do not tell him suddenly, but bring it in by degrees. He thinks that I am deceiving him. He would go back if he knew that papa were gone.’
They spent a long evening together, and Stanbury learned all that Mrs Trevelyan could tell him of her husband’s state. There was no doubt, she said, that his reason was affected; but she thought the state of his mind was diseased in a ratio the reverse of that of his body, and that when he was weakest in health, then were his ideas the most clear and rational. He never now mentioned Colonel Osborne’s name, but would refer to the affairs of the last two years as though they had been governed by an inexorable Fate which had utterly destroyed his happiness without any fault on his part. ‘You may be sure,’ she said, ‘that I never accuse him. Even when he says terrible things of me, which he does, I never excuse myself. I do not think I should answer a word if he called me the vilest thing on earth.’ Before they parted for the night many questions were of course asked about Nora, and Hugh described the condition in which he and she stood to each other. ‘Papa has consented, then?’
‘Yes, at four o’clock in the morning, just as I was leaving them.’
‘And when is it to be?’
‘Nothing has been settled, and I do not as yet know where she will go to when they leave London. I think she will visit Monkhams when the Glascock people return to England.’
‘What an episode in life to go and see the place, when it might all now have been hers!’
‘I suppose I ought to feel dreadfully ashamed of myself for having marred such promotion,’ said Hugh.
‘Nora is such a singular girl, so firm, so headstrong, so good, and so self-reliant, that she will do as well with a poor man as she would have done with a rich. Shall I confess to you that I did wish that she should accept Mr Glascock, and that I pressed it on her very strongly? You will not be angry with me?’
‘I am only the more proud of her and of myself.’
‘When she was told of all that he had to give in the way of wealth and rank, she took the bit between her teeth and would not be turned an inch. Of course she was in love.’
‘I hope she may never regret it, that is all.’
‘She must change her nature first. Everything she sees at Monkhams will make her stronger in her choice. With all her girlish ways, she is like a rock; nothing can move her.’
Early on the next morning Hugh started alone for Casalunga, having first, however, seen Mrs Trevelyan. He took out with him certain little things for the sick man’s table as to which, however, he was cautioned to say not a word to the sick man himself. And it was arranged that he should endeavour to fix a day for Trevelyan’s return to England. That was to be the one object in view. ‘If we could get him to England,’ she said, ‘he and I would, at any rate, be together, and gradually he would be taught to submit himself to advice.’ Before ten in the morning, Stanbury was walking up the hill to the house, and wondering at the dreary, hot, hopeless desolation of the spot. It seemed to him that no one could live alone in such a place, in such weather, without being driven to madness. The soil was parched and dusty, as though no drop of rain had fallen there for months. The lizards, glancing in and out of the broken walls, added to the appearance of heat. The vegetation itself was of a faded yellowish green, as though the glare of the sun had taken the fresh colour out of it. There was a noise of grasshoppers and a hum of flies in the air, hardly audible, but all giving evidence of the heat. Not a human voice was to be ............