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

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thoughtful converse with thinking persons! I hope that you may find it

so, Caroline.’ So saying Wallachia Petrie walked off in great dudgeon.

 

Miss Petrie, not having learned from her many volumes and her much

converse with thoughtful persons to read human nature aright, was

convinced by this conversation that her friend Caroline was blind to

all results, and was determined to go on with this dangerous marriage,

having the rays of that sun of Monkhams so full upon her eyes that she

could not see at all. She was specially indignant at finding that her

own words had no effect. But, unfortunately, her words had had much

effect; and Caroline, though she had contested her points, had done so

only with the intention of producing her Mentor’s admonitions. Of

course it was out of the question that Mr Glascock should go and live

in Providence, Rhode Island, from which thriving town Caroline Spalding

had come; but, because that was impossible, it was not the less

probable that he might be degraded and made miserable in his own home.

That suggested jury of British matrons was a frightful conclave to

contemplate, and Caroline was disposed to believe that the verdict

given in reference to herself would be adverse to her. So she sat and

meditated, and spoke not a word further to any one on the subject till

she was alone with the man that she loved.

 

Mr Spalding at this time inhabited the ground floor of a large palace

in the city, from which there was access to a garden, which at this

period of the year was green, bright, and shady, and which, as being in

the centre of a city, was large and luxurious. From one end of the house

there projected a covered terrace, or loggia, in which there were

chairs and tables, sculptured ornaments, busts, and old monumental

relics let into the wall in profusion. It was half chamber and half

garden, such an adjunct to a house as in our climate would give only an

idea of cold, rheumatism, and a false romance, but under an Italian sky

is a luxury daily to be enjoyed during most months of the year. Here Mr

Glascock and Caroline had passed many hours and here they were now

seated, late in the evening, while all others of the family were away.

As far as regarded the rooms occupied by the American Minister, they

had the house and garden to themselves, and there never could come a

time more appropriate for the saying of a thing difficult to be said.

Mr Glascock had heard from his father’s physician, and had said that it

was nearly certain now that he need not go down to Naples again before

his marriage. Caroline was trembling, not knowing how to speak, not

knowing how to begin but resolved that the thing should be done. ‘He

will never know you, Carry,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘It is, perhaps, hardly

a sorrow to me, but it is a regret.’

 

‘It would have been a sorrow, perhaps, to him had he been able to know

me,’ said she, taking the opportunity of rushing at her subject.

 

‘Why so? Of all human beings he was the softest-hearted.’

 

‘Not softer-hearted than you, Charles. But soft hearts have to be

hardened.’

 

‘What do you mean? Am I becoming obdurate?’

 

‘I am, Charles,’ she said. ‘I have got something to say to you. What

will your uncles and aunts and your mother’s relations say of me when

they see me at Monkhams?’

 

‘They will swear to me that you are charming; and then when my back is

turned they’ll pick you to pieces a little among themselves. I believe

that is the way of the world, and I don’t suppose that we are to do

better than others.’

 

‘And if you had married an English girl, a Lady Augusta Somebody, would

they pick her to pieces?’

 

‘I guess they would, as you say.’

 

‘Just the same?’

 

‘I don’t think anybody escapes, as far as I can see. But that won’t

prevent their becoming your bosom friends in a few weeks’ time.’

 

‘No one will say that you have been wrong to marry an American girl?’

 

‘Now, Carry, what is the meaning of all this?’

 

‘Do you know any man in your position who ever did marry an American

girl, any man of your rank in England?’ Mr Glascock began to think of

the case, and could not at the moment remember any instance. ‘Charles,

I do not think you ought to be the first.’

 

‘And yet somebody must be first, if the thing is ever to be done, and I

am too old to wait on the chance of being the second.’

 

She felt that at the rate she was now progressing she would only run

from one little suggestion to another, and that he, either wilfully or

in sheer simplicity, would take such suggestions simply as jokes; and

she was aware that she lacked the skill to bring the conversation round

gradually to the point which she was bound to reach. She must make

another dash, let it be ever so sudden. Her mode of doing so would be

crude, ugly, almost vulgar, she feared; but she would attain her object

and say what she had to say. When once she had warmed herself with the

heat which argument would produce, then, she was pretty sure, she would

find herself at least as strong as he. ‘I don’t know that the thing

ought to be done at all,’ she said. During the last moment or two he

had put his arm round her waist; and she, not choosing to bid him

desist from embracing her, but unwilling in her present mood to be

embraced, got up and stood before him. ‘I have thought, and thought,

and thought, and feel that it should not be done. In marriage, like

should go to like.’ She despised herself for using Wallachia’s words,

but they fitted in so usefully, that she could not refrain from them.

‘I was wrong not to know it before, but it is better to know it now,

than not to have known it till too late. Everything that I hear and see

tells me that it would be so. If you were simply an Englishman, I would

go anywhere with you; but I am not fit to be the wife of an English

lord. The time would come when I should be a disgrace to you, and then

I should die.’

 

‘I think I should go near dying myself,’ said he, ‘if you were a

disgrace to me.’ He had not risen from his chair, and sat calmly

looking up into her face.

 

‘We have made a mistake, and let us unmake it,’ she continued. ‘I will

always be your friend. I will correspond with you. I will come and see

your wife.’

 

‘That will be very kind!’

 

‘Charles, if you laugh at me, I shall be angry with you. It is right

that you should look to your future life, as it is right that I should

do so also. Do you think that I am joking? Do you suppose that I do not

mean it?’

 

‘You have taken an extra dose this morning of Wallachia Petrie, and of

course you mean it.’

 

‘If you think that I am speaking her mind and not my own, you do not

know me.’

 

‘And what is it you propose?’ he said, still keeping his seat and

looking calmly up into her face.

 

‘Simply that our engagement should be over.’

 

‘And why?’

 

‘Because it is not a fitting one for you to have made. I did not

understand it before, but now I do. It will not be good for you to

marry an American girl. It will not add to your happiness, and may

destroy it. I have learned, at last, to know how much higher is your

position than mine.’

 

‘And I am to be supposed to know nothing about it?’

 

‘Your fault is only this that you have been too generous. I can be

generous also.’

 

‘Now, look here, Caroline, you must not be angry with me if on such a

subject I speak plainly. You must not even be angry if I laugh a

little.’

 

‘Pray do not laugh at me! not now.’

 

‘I must a little, Carry. Why am I supposed to be so ignorant of what

concerns my own happiness and my own duties? If you will not sit down,

I will get up, and we will take a turn together.’ He rose from his

seat, but they did not leave the covered terrace. They moved on to the

extremity, and then he stood hemming her in against a marble table in

the corner. ‘In making this rather wild proposition, have you

considered me at all?’

 

‘I have endeavoured to consider you, and you only.’

 

‘And how have you done it? By the aid of some misty, far-fetched ideas

respecting English society, for which you have no basis except your own

dreams, and by the fantasies of a rabid enthusiast.’

 

‘She is not rabid,’ said Caroline earnestly; ‘other people think just

the same.’

 

‘My dear, there is only one person whose thinking on this subject is of

any avail, and I am that person. Of course, I can’t drag you into

church to be married, but practically you can not help yourself from

being taken there now. As there need be no question about our marriage

which is a thing as good as done—’

 

‘It is not done at all,’ said Caroline.

 

‘I feel quite satisfied you will not jilt me, and as I shall insist on

having the ceremony performed, I choose to regard it as a certainty.

Passing that by, then, I will go on to the results. My uncles, and

aunts, and cousins, and the people you talk of, were very reasonable

folk when I last saw them, and quite sufficiently alive to the fact

that they had to regard me as the head of their family. I do not doubt

that we shall find them equally reasonable when we get home; but should

they be changed, should there be any sign shewn that my choice of a

wife had occasioned displeasure, such displeasure would not affect you.’

 

‘But it would affect you.’

 

‘Not at all. In my own house I am master, and I mean to continue to be

so. You will be mistress there, and the only fear touching such a

position is that it may be recognised by others too strongly. You have

nothing to fear, Carry.’

 

‘It is of you I am thinking.’

 

‘Nor have I. What if some old women, or even some young women, should

turn up their noses at the wife I have chosen, because she has not been

chosen from among their own countrywomen, is that to be a cause of

suffering to us? Can not we rise above that, lasting as it would do for

a few weeks, a month or two perhaps, say a year, till my Caroline shall

have made herself known? I think that we are strong enough to live down

a trouble so light.’ He had come close to her as he was speaking, and

had again put his arm round her waist.

 

She tried to escape from his embrace, not with persistency, not with the

strength which always suffices for a woman when the embrace is in truth

a thing to be avoided, but clutching at his fingers with hers, pressing

them rather than loosening their grasp. ‘No, Carry,’ he continued; ‘we

have got to go through with it now, and we