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

CHAPTER LXXXI

MR GLASCOCK IS MASTER

 

Caroline Spalding, when she received Nora’s letter, was not disposed to

give much weight to it. She declared to herself that the girl’s

unpremeditated expression of opinion was worth more than her studied

words. But she was not the less grateful or the less loving towards her

new friend. She thought how nice it would be to have Nora at that

splendid abode in England of which she had heard so much, but she

thought also that in that splendid abode she herself ought never to

have part or share. If it were the case that this were an unfitting

match, it was clearly her duty to decide that there should be no

marriage. Nora had been quite right in bidding her speak to Mr Glascock

himself, and to Mr Glascock she would go. But it was very difficult for

her to determine on the manner in which she would discuss the subject

with him. She thought that she could be firm if her mind were once made

up. She believed that perhaps she was by nature more firm than he. In

all their intercourse together he had ever yielded to her; and though

she had been always pleased and grateful, there had grown upon her an

idea that he was perhaps too easy, that he was a man as to whom it was

necessary that they who loved him should see that he was not led away

by weakness into folly. But she would want to learn something from him

before her decision was finally reached, and in this she foresaw a

great difficulty. In her trouble she went to her usual counsellor, the

Republican Browning. In such an emergency she could hardly have done

worse. ‘Wally,’ she said, ‘we talk about England, and Italy, and

France, as though we knew all about them; but how hard it is to realise

the difference between one’s own country and others.’

 

‘We can at least learn a great deal that is satisfactory,’ said

Wallachia. ‘About one out of every five Italians can read a book, about

two out of every five Englishmen can read a book. Out of every five New

Englanders four and four-fifths can read a book. I guess that is

knowing a good deal.’

 

‘I don’t mean in statistics.’

 

‘I cannot conceive how you are to learn anything about any country

except by statistics. I have just discovered that the number of

illegitimate children—’

 

‘Oh, Wally, I can’t talk about that—not now, at least. What I cannot

realise is this, what sort of a life it is that they will lead at

Monkhams.’

 

‘Plenty to eat and drink, I guess; and you’ll always have to go around

in fine clothes.’

 

‘And that will be all?’

 

‘No not all. There will be carriages and horses, and all manner of

people there who won’t care much about you. If he is firm, very firm, if

he have that firmness which one does not often meet, even in an

American man, he will be able, after a while, to give you a position as

an English woman of rank.’ It is to be feared that Wallachia Petrie had

been made aware of Caroline’s idea as to Mr Glascock’s want of purpose.

 

‘And that will be all?’

 

‘If you have a baby, they’ll let you go and see it two or three times a

day. I don’t suppose you will be allowed to nurse it, because they

never do in England. You have read what the Saturday Review says. In

every other respect the Saturday Review has been the falsest of all

false periodicals, but I guess it has been pretty true in what it has

said about English women.’

 

‘I wish I knew more about it really.’

 

‘When a man has to leap through a window in the dark, Caroline, of

course he doubts whether the feather bed said to be below will be soft

enough for him.’

 

‘I shouldn’t fear the leap for myself, if it wouldn’t hurt him. Do you

think it possible that society can be so formed that a man should lose

caste because he doesn’t marry just one of his own set?’

 

‘It has been so all over the world, my dear. If like to like is to be

true anywhere, it should be true in marriage.’

 

‘Yes but with a difference. He and I are like to like. We come of the

same race, we speak the same language, we worship the same God, we have

the same ideas of culture and of pleasures. The difference is one that

is not patent to the eye or to the ear. It is a difference of

accidental incident, not of nature or of acquirement.’

 

‘I guess you would find, Caroline, that a jury of English matrons sworn

to try you fairly, would not find you to be entitled to come among them

as one of themselves.’

 

‘And how will that affect him?’

 

‘Less powerfully than many others, because he is not impassioned. He

is, perhaps, lethargic.’

 

‘No, Wally, he is not lethargic.’

 

‘If you ask me I must speak. It would harass some men almost to death;

it will not do so with him. He would probably find his happiness best

in leaving his old country and coming among your people.’

 

The idea of Mr Glascock, the future Lord Peterborough, leaving England,

abandoning Monkhams, deserting his duty in the House of Lords, and

going away to live in an American town, in order that he might escape

the miseries which his wife had brought upon him in his own country,

was more than Caroline could bear. She knew that, at any rate, it would

not come to that. The lord of Monkhams would live at Monkhams, though

the heavens should fall in regard to domestic comforts. It was clear to

Caroline that Wallachia Petrie had in truth never brought home to her

own imagination the position of an English peer. ‘I don’t think you

understand the people at all,’ she said angrily.

 

‘You think that you can understand them better because you are engaged

to this man!’ said Miss Petrie, with well-pronounced irony. ‘You have

found generally that when the sun shines in your eyes your sight is

improved by it! You think that the love-talk of a few weeks gives

clearer instruction than the laborious reading of many