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

at her sister’s success, and heard with rapture the

description of Monkhams, which came to her second-hand through her

sister. It was already settled that she was to spend her next Christmas

at Monkhams, and perhaps there might be an idea in her mind that there

were other eldest sons of old lords who would like American brides.

Everything around Caroline Spalding was pleasant except the words of

Wallachia Petrie.

 

Everything around her was pleasant till there came to her a touch of a

suspicion that the marriage which Mr Glascock was going to make would

be detrimental to her intended husband in his own country. There were

many in Florence who were saying this besides the wife of the English

Minister and Lady Rowley. Of course Caroline Spalding herself was the

last to hear it, and to her the idea was brought by Wallachia Petrie.

‘I wish I could think you would make yourself happy, or him,’ Wallachia

had said, croaking.

 

‘Why should I fail to make him happy?’

 

‘Because you are not of the same blood, or race, or manners as himself.

They say that he is very wealthy in his own country, and that those who

live around him will look coldly on you.’

 

‘So that he does not look coldly, I do not care how others may look,’

said Caroline proudly.

 

‘But when he finds that he has injured himself by such a marriage in

the estimation of all his friends, how will it be then?’

 

This set Caroline Spalding thinking of what she was doing. She began to

realise the feeling that perhaps she might not be a fit bride for an

English lord’s son, and in her agony she came to Nora Rowley for

counsel. After all, how little was it that she knew of the home and the

country to which she was to be carried! She might not, perhaps, get

adequate advice from Nora, but she would probably learn something on

which she could act. There was no one else among the English at

Florence to whom she could speak with freedom. When she mentioned her

fears to her aunt, her aunt of course laughed at her. Mrs Spalding told

her that Mr Glascock might be presumed to know his own business best,

and that she, as an American lady of high standing—the niece of a

minister!—was a fitting match for any Englishman, let him be ever so

much a lord. But Caroline was not comforted by this, and in her

suspense she went to Nora Rowley. She wrote a line to Nora, and when

she called at the hotel, was taken up to her friend’s bedroom. She

found great difficulty in telling her story, but she did tell it. ‘Miss

Rowley,’ she said, ‘if this is a silly thing that he is going to do, I

am bound to save him from his own folly. You know your own country

better than I do. Will they think that he has disgraced himself?’

 

‘Certainly not that,’ said Nora.

 

‘Shall I be a load round his neck? Miss Rowley, for my own sake I would

not endure such a position as that, not even though I love him. But for

his sake! Think of that. If I find that people think ill of him because

of me!’

 

‘No one will think ill of him.’

 

‘Is it esteemed needful that such a one as he should marry a woman of

his own rank. I can bear to end it all now; but I shall not be able to

bear his humiliation, and my own despair, if I find that I have injured

him. Tell me plainly, is it a marriage that he should not make?’ Nora

paused for a while before she answered, and as she sat silent the other

girl watched her face carefully. Nora on being thus consulted, was very

careful that her tongue should utter nothing that was not her true

opinion as best she knew how to express it. Her sympathy would have

prompted her to give such an answer as would at once have made Caroline

happy in her mind. She would have been delighted to have been able to

declare that these doubts were utterly groundless, and this hesitation

needless. But she conceived that she owed it as a duty from one woman

to another to speak the truth as she conceived it on so momentous an

occasion, and she was not sure but that Mr Glascock would be considered

by his friends in England to be doing badly in marrying an American

girl. What she did not remember was this that her very hesitation was

in fact an answer, and such an answer as she was most unwilling to

give. ‘I see that it would be so,’ said Caroline Spalding.

 

‘No, not that.’

 

‘What then? Will they despise him and me?’

 

‘No one who knows you can despise you. No one who sees you can fail to

admire you.’ Nora, as she said this, thought of her mother, but told

herself at once that in this matter her mother’s judgment had been

altogether destroyed by her disappointment. ‘What I think will take

place will be this. His family, when first they hear of it, will be

sorry.’

 

‘Then,’ said Caroline, ‘I will put an end to it.’

 

‘You can’t do that, dear. You are engaged, and you haven’t a right. I

am engaged to a man, and all my friends object to it. But I shan’t put

an end to it. I don’t think I have a right. I shall not do it any way,

however.’

 

‘But if it were for his good?’

 

‘It couldn’t be for his good. He and I have got to go along together

somehow.’

 

‘You wouldn’t hurt him,’ said Caroline.

 

‘I won’t if I can help it, but he has got to take me along with him any

how; and Mr Glascock has got to take you. If I were you, I shouldn’t

ask any more questions.’

 

‘It isn’t the same. You said that you were to be poor, but he is very

rich. And I am beginning to understand that these titles of yours are

something like kings’ crowns. The man who has to wear them can’t do

just as he pleases with them. Noblesse oblige. I can see the meaning of

that, even when the obligation itself is trumpery in its nature. If it

is a man’s duty to marry a Talbot because he’s a Howard, I suppose he

ought to do his duty.’ After a pause she went on again. ‘I do believe

that I have made a mistake. It seemed to be absurd at the first to

think of it, but I do believe it now. Even what you say to me makes me

think it.’

 

‘At any rate you can’t go back,’ said Nora enthusiastically.

 

‘I will try.’

 

‘Go to himself and ask him. You must leave him to decide it at last. I

don’t see how a girl when she is engaged, is to throw a man over unless

he consents. Of course you can throw yourself into the Arno.’

 

‘And get the water into my shoes, for it wouldn’t do much more at

present.’

 

‘And you can jilt him,’ said Nora.

 

‘It would not be jilting him.’

 

‘He must decide that. If he so regards it, it will be so. I advise you

to think no more about it; but if you speak to anybody it should be to

him.’ This was at last the result of Nora’s wisdom, and then the two

girls descended together to the room in which Lady Rowley was sitting

with her other daughters. Lady Rowley was very careful in asking after

Miss Spalding’s sister, and Miss Spalding assured her that Olivia was

quite well. Then Lady Rowley made some inquiry about Olivia and Mr

Glascock, and Miss Spalding assured her that no two persons were ever

such allies, and that she believed that they were together at this

moment investigating some old church. Lady Rowley simpered, and

declared that nothing could be more proper, and expressed a hope that

Olivia would like England. Caroline Spalding, having still in her mind

the trouble that had brought her to Nora, had not much to say about

this. ‘If she goes again to England I am sure she will like it,’

replied Miss Spalding.

 

‘But of course she is going,’ said Lady Rowley.

 

‘Of course she will some day, and of course she’ll like it,’ said Miss

Spalding. ‘We both of us have been there already.’

 

‘But I mean Monkhams,’ said Lady Rowley, still simpering.

 

‘I declare I believe mamma thinks that your sister is to be married to

Mr Glascock!’ said Lucy.

 

‘And so she is, isn’t she?’ said Lady Rowley.

 

‘Oh, mamma!’ said Nora, jumping up. ‘It is Caroline, this one, this one,

this one,’ and Nora took her friend by the arm as she spoke ‘it is this

one that is to be Mrs Glascock.’

 

‘It is a most natural mistake to make,’ said Caroline. Lady Rowley

became very red in the face, and was unhappy. ‘I declare,’ she said,

‘that they told me it was your elder sister.’

 

‘But I have no elder sister,’ said Caroline, laughing. ‘Of course she

is oldest,’ said Nora ‘and looks to be so, ever so much. Don’t you,

Miss Spalding?’

 

‘I have always supposed so.’

 

‘I don’t understand it at all,’ said Lady Rowley, who had no image

before her mind’s eye but that of Wallachia Petrie, and who was

beginning to feel that she had disgraced her own judgment by the

criticisms she had expressed everywhere as to Mr Glascock’s bride. ‘I

don’t understand it at all. Do you mean that both your sisters are

younger than you, Miss Spalding?’

 

‘I have only got one, Lady Rowley.’

 

‘Mamma, you are thinking of Miss Petrie,’ said Nora, clapping both her

hands together.

 

‘I mean the lady that wears the black bugles.’

 

‘Of course you do, Miss Petrie. Mamma has all along thought that Mr

Glascock was going to carry away with him the republican Browning!’

 

‘Oh, mamma, how can you have made such a blunder!’ said Sophie Rowley.

‘Mamma does make such delicious blunders.’

 

‘Sophie, my dear, that is not a proper way of speaking.’

 

‘But, dear mamma, don’t you?’

 

‘If somebody has told me wrong, that has not been my fault,’ said Lady

Rowley.

 

The poor woman was so evidently disconcerted that Caroline Spalding was

quite unhappy.

 

‘My dear Lady Rowley, there has been no fault. And why shouldn’t it

have been so. Wallachia is so clever, that it is the most natural thing

in the world to have thought.’

 

‘I cannot say that I agree with you there,’ said Lady Rowley, somewhat

recovering herself.

 

‘You must know the whole truth now,’ said Nora, turning to her friend,

‘and you must not be angry with us if we laugh a little at your

poetess. Mamma has been frantic with Mr Glascock because he has been

going to marry—whom shall I say—her edition of you. She has sworn that

he must be insane. When we have sworn how beautiful you were, and how

nice, and how jolly, and all the rest of it she has sworn that you were

at least a hundred and that you had a red nose. You must admit that

Miss Petrie has a red nose.’

 

‘Is that a sin?’

 

‘Not at all in the woman who has it; but in the man who is going to

marry it, yes. Can’t you see how we have all been at cross-purposes, and

what mamma has been thinking and