He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📖

>throwing in his teeth the fact that the day had been fixed by him, and

not by her. And she added a postscript in the following momentous words

‘If you have any respect for the name of your future wife, you will

fall back upon your first arrangement.’ To this she got simply a line

of an answer, declaring that this falling back was impossible, and then

nothing was heard of him for ten days.

 

He had gone from Tuesday to Saturday week, and the first that Camilla

saw of him was his presence in the reading desk when he chaunted the

cathedral service as priest-vicar on the Sunday.

 

At this time Arabella was very ill, and was confined to her bed. Mr

Martin declared that her system had become low from over anxiety, that

she was nervous, weak, and liable to hysterics, that her feelings were

in fact too many for her, and that her efforts to overcome them, and to

face the realities of the world, had exhausted her. This was, of

course, not said openly, at the town-cross of Exeter; but such was the

opinion which Mr Martin gave in confidence to the mother.

‘Fiddle-de-dee!’ said Camilla, when she was told of feelings,

susceptibilities, and hysterics. At the present moment she had a claim

to the undivided interest of the family, and she believed that her

sister’s illness was feigned in order to defraud her of her rights. ‘My

dear, she is ill,’ said Mrs French. ‘Then let her have a dose of

salts,’ said the stern Camilla. This was on the Sunday afternoon.

Camilla had endeavoured to see Mr Gibson as he came out of the

cathedral, but had failed. Mr Gibson had been detained within the

building no doubt by duties connected with the choral services. On that

evening he got a note from Camilla, and quite early on the Monday

morning he came up to Heavitree.

 

‘You will find her in the drawing-room,’ said Mrs French, as she opened

the hall-door for him. There was a smile on her face as she spoke, but

it was a forced smile. Mr Gibson did not smile at all.

 

‘Is it all right with her?’ he asked.

 

‘Well you had better go to her. You see, Mr Gibson, young ladies, when

they are going to be married, think that they ought to have their own

way a little, just for the last time, you know.’ He took no notice of

the joke, but went with slow steps up to the drawing-room. It would be

inquiring too curiously to ask whether Camilla, when she embraced him,

discerned that he had fortified his courage that morning with a glass

of curacoa.

 

‘What does all this mean, Thomas?’ was the first question that Camilla

asked when the embrace was over.

 

‘All what mean, dear?’

 

‘This untoward delay? Thomas, you have almost broken my heart. You have

been away, and I have not heard from you.’

 

‘I wrote twice, Camilla.’

 

‘And what sort of letters? If there is anything the matter, Thomas, you

had better tell me at once.’ She paused, but Thomas held his tongue. ‘I

don’t suppose you want to kill me.’

 

‘God forbid,’ said Thomas.

 

‘But you will. What must everybody think of me in the city when they

find that it is put off. Poor mamma has been dreadful, quite dreadful!

And here is Arabella now laid up on a bed of sickness.’ This, too, was

indiscreet. Camilla should have said nothing about her sister’s

sickness.

 

‘I have been so sorry to hear about dear Bella,’ said Mr Gibson.

 

‘I don’t suppose she’s very bad,’ said Camilla, ‘but of course we all

feel it. Of course we’re upset. As for me, I bear up; because I’ve that

spirit that I won’t give way if it’s ever so; but, upon my word, it

tries me hard. What is the meaning of it, Thomas?’

 

But Thomas had nothing to say beyond what he had said before to Mrs

French. He was very particular, he said, about money; and certain money

matters made it incumbent on him not to marry before the 29th of April.

When Camilla suggested to him that as she was to be his wife, she ought

to know all about his money matters, he told her that she should some

day. When they were married, he would tell her all. Camilla talked a

great deal, and said some things that were very severe. Mr Gibson did

not enjoy his morning, but he endured the upbraidings of his fair one

with more firmness than might perhaps have been expected from him. He

left all the talking to Camilla; but when he got up to leave her, the

29th of April had been fixed, with some sort of assent from her, as the

day on which she was really to become Mrs Gibson.

 

When he left the room, he again met Mrs French on the landing-place.

She hesitated a moment, waiting to see whether the door would be shut;

but the door could not be shut, as Camilla was standing in the

entrance. ‘Mr Gibson,’ said Mrs French, in a voice that was scarcely a

whisper, ‘would you mind stepping in and seeing poor Bella for a

moment?’

 

‘Why she is in bed,’ said Camilla.

 

‘Yes she is in bed; but she thinks it would be a comfort to her. She

has seen nobody these four days except Mr Martin, and she thinks it

would comfort her to have a word or two with Mr Gibson.’ Now Mr Gibson

was not only going to be Bella’s brother-in-law, but he was also a

clergyman. Camilla in her heart believed that the half-clerical aspect

which her mother had given to the request was false and hypocritical.

There were special reasons why Bella should not have wished to see Mr

Gibson in her bedroom, at any rate till Mr Gibson had become her

brother-in-law. The expression of such a wish at the present moment was

almost indecent.

 

‘You’ll be there with them?’ said Camilla. Mr Gibson blushed up to his

ears as he heard the suggestion. ‘Of course you’ll be there with them,

mamma.’

 

‘No, my dear, I think not. I fancy she wishes him to read to her or

something of that sort.’ Then Mr Gibson, without speaking a word, but

still blushing up to his ears, was taken to Arabella’s room; and

Camilla, flouncing into the drawing-room, banged the door behind her.

She had hitherto fought her battle with considerable skill and with

great courage, but her very success had made her imprudent. She had

become so imperious in the great position which she had reached, that

she could not control her temper or wait till her power was confirmed.

The banging of that door was heard through the whole house, and every

one knew why it was banged. She threw herself on to a sofa, and then,

instantly rising again, paced the room with quick step. Could it be

possible that there was treachery? Was it on the cards that that weak,

poor creature, Bella, was intriguing once again to defraud her of her

husband? There were different things that she now remembered. Arabella,

in that moment of bliss in which she had conceived herself to be

engaged to Mr Gibson, had discarded her chignon. Then she had resumed

it in all its monstrous proportions. Since that it had been lessened by

degrees, and brought down, through various interesting but abnormal

shapes, to a size which would hardly have drawn forth any anathema from

Miss Stanbury. And now, on this very morning, Arabella had put on a

clean nightcap, with muslin frills. It is perhaps not unnatural that a

sick lady, preparing to receive a clergyman in her bedroom, should put

on a clean nightcap; but to suspicious eyes small causes suffice to

create alarm. And if there were any such hideous wickedness in the

wind, had Arabella any colleague in her villainy? Could it be that the

mother was plotting against her daughter’s happiness and

respectability? Camilla was well aware that her mamma would at first

have preferred to give Arabella to Mr Gibson, had the choice in the

matter been left to her. But now, when the thing had been settled

before all the world, would not such treatment on a mother’s part be

equal to infanticide? And then as to Mr Gibson himself! Camilla was not

prone to think little of her own charms, but she had been unable not to

perceive that her lover had become negligent in his personal attentions

to her. An accepted lover, who deserves to have been accepted, should

devote every hour at his command to his mistress. But Mr Gibson had of

late been so chary of his presence at Heavitree, that Camilla could not

but have known that he took no delight in coming thither. She had

acknowledged this to herself; but she had consoled herself with the

reflection that marriage would make this all right. Mr Gibson was not

the man to stray from his wife, and she could trust herself to obtain a

sufficient hold upon her husband hereafter, partly by the strength of

her tongue, partly by the ascendancy of her spirit, and partly, also,

by the comforts which she would provide for him. She had not doubted

but that it would be all well when they should be married; but how if,

even now, there should be no marriage for her? Camilla French had never

heard of Creusa and of Jason, but as she paced her mother’s

drawing-room that morning she was a Medea in spirit. If any plot of

that kind should be in the wind, she would do such things that all

Devonshire should hear of her wrongs and of her revenge!

 

In the meantime Mr Gibson was sitting by Arabella’s bedside, while Mrs

French was trying to make herself busy in her own chamber, next door.

There had been a reading of some chapter of the Bible or of some

portion of a chapter. And Mr Gibson, as he read, and Arabella, as she

listened, had endeavoured to take to their hearts and to make use of

the word which they heard. The poor young woman, when she begged her

mother to send to her the man who was so dear to her, did so with some

half-formed condition that it would be good for her to hear a clergyman

read to her. But now the chapter had been read, and the book was back

in Mr Gibson’s pocket, and he was sitting with his hand on the bed.‘she

is so very arrogant,’ said Bella,’ and so domineering.’ To this Mr

Gibson made no reply. ‘I’m sure I have endeavoured to bear it well,

though you must have known what I have suffered, Thomas. Nobody can

understand it so well as you do.’

 

‘I wish I had never been born,’ said Mr Gibson tragically.

 

‘Don’t say that, Thomas, because it’s wicked.’

 

‘But I do. See all the harm I have done, and yet I did not mean it.’

 

‘You must try and do the best you can now. I am not saying what that

should be. I am not dictating to you. You are a man, and, of course,

you must judge for yourself. But I will say this. You shouldn’t do

anything just because it is the easiest. I don’t suppose I should live

after it. I don’t indeed. But that should not signify to you.’

 

‘I don’t suppose that any man was ever before in such a terrible

position since the world began.’

 

‘It is difficult; I am sure of that, Thomas.’

 

‘And I have meant to be so true. I fancy sometimes that some mysterious

agency interferes with the affairs