“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 heard, nor the sound of a human foot, and there was no shelter; but the sun blazed down full upon everything. He took off his hat, and rubbed his head with his handkerchief as he struck the door with his stick. Oh God, to what misery had a little folly brought two human beings who had had every blessing that the world could give within their reach!
In a few minutes he was conducted through the house, and found Trevelyan seated in a chair under the verandah which looked down upon the olive trees. He did not even get up from his seat, but put out his left hand and welcomed his old friend. “Stanbury,” he said, “I am glad to see you—for auld lang syne’s sake. When I found out this retreat, I did not mean to have friends round me here. I wanted to try what solitude was;—and, by heaven, I’ve tried it!” He was dressed in a bright Italian dressing-gown or woollen paletot—Italian, as having been bought in Italy, though, doubtless, it had come from France—and on his feet he had green worked slippers, and on his head a brocaded cap. He had made but little other preparation for his friend in the way of dressing. His long dishevelled hair came down over his neck, and his beard covered his face. Beneath his dressing-gown he had on a nightshirt and drawers, and was as dirty in appearance as he was gaudy in colours. “Sit down and let us two moralise,” he said. “I spend my life here doing nothing—nothing—nothing; while you cudgel your brain from day to day to mislead the British public. Which of us two is taking the nearest road to the devil?”
Stanbury seated himself in a second armchair, which there was there in the verandah, and looked as carefully as he dared to do at his friend. There could be no mistake as to the restless gleam of that eye. And then the affected air of ease, and the would-be cynicism, and the pretence of false motives, all told the same story. “They used to tell us,” said Stanbury, “that idleness is the root of all evil.”
“They have been telling us since the world began so many lies, that I for one have determined never to believe anything again. Labour leads to greed, and greed to selfishness, and selfishness to treachery, and treachery straight to the devil—straight to the devil. Ha, my friend, all your leading articles won’t lead you out of that. What’s the news? Who’s alive? Who dead? Who in? Who out? What think you of a man who has not seen a newspaper for two months; and who holds no conversation with the world further than is needed for the cooking of his polenta and the cooling of his modest wine-flask?”
“You see your wife sometimes,” said Stanbury.
“My wife! Now, my friend, let us drop that subject. Of all topics of talk it is the most distressing to man in general, and I own that I am no exception to the lot. Wives, Stanbury, are an evil, more or less necessary to humanity, and I own to being one who has not escaped. The world must be populated, though for what reason one does not see. I have helped—to the extent of one male bantling; and if you are one who consider population desirable, I will express my regret that I should have done no more.”
It was very difficult to force Trevelyan out of this humour, and it was not till Stanbury had risen apparently to take his leave that he found it possible to say a word as to his mission there. “Don’t you think you would be
