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

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certain antagonism to men in general, and who are anxious to shew the

world that they can get on very well without male assistance; but there

are many such in America who have noble aspirations, good intellects,

much energy, and who are by no means unworthy of friendship. The hope

in regard to all such women—the hope entertained not by themselves, but

by those who are solicitous for them—is that they will be cured at last

by a husband and half-a-dozen children. In regard to Wallachia Petrie

there was not, perhaps, much ground for such hope. She was so

positively wedded to women’s rights in general, and to her own rights

in particular, that it was improbable that she should ever succumb to

any man, and where would be the man brave enough to make the effort?

From circumstances Caroline Spalding had been the beloved of her heart

since Caroline Spalding was a very little girl; and she had hoped that

Caroline would through life have borne arms along with her in that

contest which she was determined to wage against man, and which she

always waged with the greatest animosity against men of the British

race. She hated rank; she hated riches; she hated monarchy and with a

true woman’s instinct in battle, felt that she had a specially strong

point against Englishmen, in that they submitted themselves to dominion

from a woman monarch.

 

And now the chosen friend of her youth, the friend who had copied out

all her poetry, who had learned by heart all her sonnets, who had, as

she thought, reciprocated all her ideas, was going to be married and to

be married to an English lord! She had seen that it was coming for some

time, and had spoken out very plainly, hoping that she might still save

the brand from the burning. Now the evil was done; and Caroline

Spalding, when she told her news, knew well that she would have to bear

some heavy reproaches.

 

‘How many of us are there who never know whether we sell ourselves or

not?’ said Wallachia. ‘The senator who longs for office, and who votes

this way instead of that in order that he may get it, thinks that he is

voting honestly. The minister who calls himself a teacher of God’s

word, thinks that it is God’s word that he preaches when he strains his

lungs to fill his church. The question is this, Caroline would you have

loved the same man had he come to you with a woodman’s axe in his hand

or a clerk’s quill behind his ear? I guess not.’

 

‘As to the woodman’s axe, Wally, it is very well in theory; but—’

 

‘Things good in theory, Caroline, will be good also when practised. You

may be sure of that. We dislike theory simply because our intelligences

are higher than our wills. But we will let that pass.’

 

‘Pray let it pass, Wally. Do not preach me sermons tonight. I am so

happy, and you ought to wish me joy.’

 

‘If wishing you joy would get you joy, I would wish it you while I

lived. I cannot be happy that you should be taken from us whither I

shall never see you again.’

 

‘But you are to come to us. I have told him so, and it is settled.’

 

‘No, dear; I shall not do that. What should I be in the glittering

halls of an English baron? Could there be any visiting less fitting,

any admixture less appropriate? Could I who have held up my voice in

the Music Hall of Lacedaemon amidst the glories of the West, in the

great and free State of Illinois, against the corruption of an English

aristocracy, could I, who have been listened to by two thousand of my

countrywomen and men while I spurned the unmanly, inhuman errors of

primogeniture, could I, think you, hold my tongue beneath the roof of a

feudal lord!’ Caroline Spalding knew that her friend could not hold her

tongue, and hesitated to answer. There had been that fatal triumph of a

lecture on the joint rights of men and women, and it had rendered poor

Wallachia Petrie unfit for ordinary society.

 

‘You might come there without talking politics, Wally,’ said Caroline.

 

‘No, Caroline; no. I will go into the house of no man in which the free

expression of my opinion is debarred me. I will not sit even at your

table with a muzzled tongue. When you are gone, Caroline, I shall

devote myself to what, after all, must be the work of my life, and I

shall finish the biographical history of our great hero in verse which

I hope may at least be not ephemeral. From month to month I shall send

you what I do, and you will not refuse me your friendly criticism and,

perhaps, some slight meed of approbation because you are dwelling

beneath the shade of a throne. Oh, Caroline, let it not be a upas

tree!’

 

The Miss Petries of the world have this advantage, an advantage which

rarely if ever falls to the lot of a man, that they are never convinced

of error. Men, let them be ever so much devoted to their closets, let

them keep their work ever so closely veiled from public scrutiny, still

find themselves subjected to criticism, and under the necessity of

either defending themselves or of succumbing. If, indeed, a man neither

speaks, nor writes, if he be dumb as regards opinion, he passes simply as

one of the crowd, and is in the way neither of convincing nor of being

convinced; but a woman may speak, and almost write, as she likes,

without danger of being wounded by sustained conflict. Who would have

the courage to begin with such a one as Miss Petrie, and endeavour to

prove to her that she is wrong from the beginning. A little word of

half-dissent, a smile, a shrug, and an ambiguous compliment which is

misunderstood, are all the forms of argument which can be used against

her. Wallachia Petrie, in her heart of hearts, conceived that she had

fairly discussed her great projects from year to year with indomitable

eloquence and unanswerable truth and that none of her opponents had had

a leg to stand upon. And this she believed because the chivalry of men

had given to her sex that protection against which her life was one

continued protest.

 

‘Here he is,’ said Caroline, as Mr Glascock came up to them. ‘Try and

say a civil word to him, if he speaks about it. Though he is to be a

lord, still he is a man and a brother.’

 

‘Caroline,’ said the stern monitress, ‘you are already learning to

laugh at principles which have been dear to you since you left your

mother’s breast. Alas, how true it is, “You cannot touch pitch and not

be defiled.”’

 

The further progress of these friendly and feminine amenities was

stopped by the presence of the gentleman who had occasioned them. ‘Miss

Petrie,’ said the hero of the hour, ‘Caroline was to tell you of my

good fortune, and no doubt she has done so.’

 

‘I cannot wait to hear the pretty things he has to say,’ said Caroline,

‘and I must look after my aunt’s guests. There is poor Signor

Buonarosci without a soul to say a syllable to him, and I must go and

use my ten Italian words.’

 

‘You are about to take with you to your old country, Mr Glascock,’ said

Miss Petrie, ‘one of the brightest stars in our young American

firmament.’ There could be no doubt, from the tone of Miss Petrie’s

voice, that she now regarded this star, however bright, as one of a

sort which is subjected to falling.

 

‘I am going to take a very nice young woman,’ said Mr Glascock.

 

‘I hate that word woman, sir, uttered with the halfhidden sneer which

always accompanies its expression from the mouth of a man.’

 

‘Sneer, Miss Petrie!’

 

‘I quite allow that it is involuntary, and not analysed or understood

by yourselves. If you speak of a dog, you intend to do so with

affection, but there is always contempt mixed with it. The so-called

chivalry of man to woman is all begotten in the same spirit. I want no

favour, but I claim to be your equal.’

 

‘I thought that American ladies were generally somewhat exacting as to

those privileges which chivalry gives them.’

 

‘It is true, sir, that the only rank we know in our country is in that

precedence which man gives to woman. Whether we maintain that, or

whether we abandon it, we do not intend to purchase it at the price of

an acknowledgment of intellectual inferiority. For myself, I hate

chivalry—what you call chivalry. I can carry my own chair, and I claim

the right to carry it whithersoever I may please.’

 

Mr Glascock remained with her for some time, but made no opportunity

for giving that invitation to Monkhams of which Caroline had spoken. As

he said afterwards, he found it impossible to expect her to attend to

any subject so trivial; and when, afterwards, Caroline told him, with

some slight mirth, the capability of which on such a subject was coming

to her with her new ideas of life, that, though he was partly saved as a

man and a brother, still he was partly the reverse as a feudal lord, he

began to reflect that Wallachia Petrie would be a guest with whom he

would find it very difficult to make things go pleasantly at Monkhams.

 

‘Does she not bully you horribly?’ he asked.

 

‘Of course she bullies me,’ Caroline answered; ‘and I cannot expect you

to understand as yet how it is that I love her and like her; but I do.

If I were in distress tomorrow, she would give everything she has in

the world to put me right.’

 

‘So would I,’ said he.

 

‘Ah, you, that is a matter of course. That is your business now. And she

would give everything she has in the world to set the world right.

Would you do that?’

 

‘It would depend on the amount of my faith. If I could believe in the

result, I suppose I should do it.’

 

‘She would do it on the slightest hope that such giving would have any

tendency that way. Her philanthropy is all real. Of course she is a

bore to you.’

 

‘I am very patient.’

 

‘I hope I shall find you so always. And, of course, she is ridiculous

in your eyes. I have learned to see it, and to regret it; but I shall

never cease to love her.’

 

‘I have not the slightest objection. Her lessons will come from over

the water, and mine will come from where shall I say? over the table.

If I can’t talk her down with so much advantage on my side, I ought to

be made a woman’s-right man myself.’

 

Poor Lady Rowley had watched Miss Petrie and Mr Glascock during those

moments that they had been together, and had half believed the rumour,

and had half doubted, thinking in the moments of her belief that Mr

Glascock must be mad, and in the moments of unbelief that the rumours

had been set afloat by the English Minister’s wife with the express

intention of turning Mr Glascock into ridicule. It had never occurred

to her to doubt that Wallachia was the eldest of that family of nieces.

Could it be possible that a man who had known her Nora, who had

undoubtedly loved her Nora, who had travelled all the way from London to

Nuncombe Putney to ask Nora to be his wife, should