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

Spaldings, going on to

Florence, at which place they had an uncle, who was minister from the

States to the kingdom of Italy; and they were not at all unwilling to

receive such little civilities as gentlemen can give to ladies when

travelling. The whole party intended to sleep at Turin that night, and

they were altogether on good terms with each other when they started on

the journey from St. Michael.

 

‘Clever women those,’ said Mr Glascock, as soon as they had arranged

their legs and arms in the banquette.

 

‘Yes, indeed.’

 

‘American women always are clever and are almost always pretty.’

 

‘I do not like them,’ said Trevelyan who in these days was in a mood to

like nothing. ‘They are exigent and then they are so hard. They want

the weakness that a woman ought to have.’

 

‘That comes from what they would call your insular prejudice. We are

accustomed to less self-assertion on the part of women than is

customary with them. We prefer women to rule us by seeming to yield. In

the States, as I take it, the women never yield, and the men have to

fight their own battles with other tactics.’

 

‘I don’t know what their tactics are.’

 

‘They keep their distance. The men live much by themselves, as though

they knew they would not have a chance in the presence of their wives

and daughters. Nevertheless they don’t manage these things badly. You

very rarely hear of an American being separated from his wife.’

 

The words were no sooner out of his mouth, than Mr Glascock knew, and

remembered, and felt what he had said. There are occasions in which a

man sins so deeply against fitness and the circumstances of the hour,

that it becomes impossible for him to slur over his sin as though it

had not been committed. There are certain little peccadilloes in

society which one can manage to throw behind one perhaps with some

difficulty, and awkwardness; but still they are put aside, and

conversation goes on, though with a hitch. But there are graver

offences, the gravity of which strikes the offender so seriously that

it becomes impossible for him to seem even to ignore his own iniquity.

Ashes must be eaten publicly, and sackcloth worn before the eyes of

men. It was so now with poor Mr Glascock. He thought about it for a

moment whether or no it was possible that he should continue his

remarks about the American ladies, without betraying his own

consciousness of the thing that he had done; and he found that it was

quite impossible. He knew that he was red up to his hairs, and hot, and

that his blood tingled. His blushes, indeed, would not be seen in the

seclusion of the banquette; but he could not overcome the heat and the

tingling. There was silence for about three minutes, and then he felt

that it would be best for him to confess his own fault. ‘Trevelyan,’ he

said, ‘I am very sorry for the allusion that I made. I ought to have

been less awkward, and I beg your pardon.’

 

‘It does not matter,’ said Trevelyan. ‘Of course I know that everybody

is talking of it behind my back. I am not to expect that people will be

silent because I am unhappy.’

 

‘Nevertheless I beg your pardon,’ said the other.

 

There was but little further conversation between them till they

reached Lanslebourg, at the foot of the mountain, at which place they

occupied themselves with getting coffee for the two American ladies.

The Miss Spaldings took their coffee almost with as much grace as

though it had been handed to them by Frenchmen. And indeed they were

very gracious, as is the nature of American ladies in spite of that

hardness of which Trevelyan had complained. They assume an intimacy

readily, with no appearance of impropriety, and are at their ease

easily. When, therefore, they were handed out of their carriage by Mr

Glascock, the bystanders at Lanslebourg might have thought that the

whole party had been travelling together from New York. ‘What should

we have done if you hadn’t taken pity on us?’ said the elder lady. ‘I

don’t think we could have climbed up into that high place; and look at

the crowd that have come out of the interior. A man has some advantages

after all.’

 

‘I am quite in the dark as to what they are,’ said Mr Glascock.

 

‘He can give up his place to a lady, and can climb up into a

banquette.’

 

‘And he can be a member of Congress,”said the younger. ‘I’d sooner be

senator from Massachusetts than be the Queen of England.’

 

‘So would I,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘I’m glad we can agree about one

thing.’

 

The two gentlemen agreed to walk up the mountain together, and with

some trouble induced the conductor to permit them to do so. Why

conductors of diligences should object to such relief to their horses

the ordinary Englishman can hardly understand. But in truth they feel

so deeply the responsibility which attaches itself to their shepherding

of their sheep, that they are always fearing lest some poor lamb should

go astray on the mountain side. And though the road be broad and very

plainly marked, the conductor never feels secure that his passenger

will find his way safely to the summit. He likes to know that each of

his flock is in his right place, and disapproves altogether of an

erratic spirit. But Mr Glascock at last prevailed, and the two men

started together up the mountain. When the permission has been once

obtained the walker may be sure that his guide and shepherd will not

desert him.

 

‘Of course I know,’ said Trevelyan, when the third twist up the

mountain had been overcome, ‘that people talk about me and my wife. It

is a part of the punishment for the mistake that one makes.’

 

‘It is a sad affair altogether.’

 

‘The saddest in the world. Lady Milborough has no doubt spoken to you

about it.’

 

‘Well yes; she has.’

 

‘How could she help it? I am not such a fool as to suppose that people

are to hold their tongues about me more than they do about others.

Intimate as she is with you, of course she has spoken to you.’

 

‘I was in hopes that something might have been done by this time.’

 

‘Nothing has been done. Sometimes I think I shall put an end to myself,

it makes me so wretched.’

 

‘Then why don’t you agree to forget and forgive and have done with it?’

 

‘That is so easily said, so easily said.’ After this they walked on in

silence for a considerable distance. Mr Glascock was not anxious to

talk about Trevelyan’s wife, but he did wish to ask a question or two

about Mrs Trevelyan’s sister, if only this could be done without

telling too much of his own secret. ‘There’s nothing I think so grand

as walking up a mountain,’ he said after a while.

 

‘It’s all very well,’ said Trevelyan, in a tone which seemed to imply

that to him in his present miserable condition all recreations,

exercises, and occupations were mere leather and prunella.

 

‘I don’t mean, you know, in the Alpine Club way, said Glascock. ‘I’m

too old and too stiff for that. But when the path is good, and the air

not too cold, and when it is neither snowing, nor thawing, nor raining,

and when the sun isn’t hot, and you’ve got plenty of time, and know

that you can stop any moment you like and be pushed up by a carriage, I

do think walking up a mountain is very fine if you’ve got proper shoes,

and a good stick, and it isn’t too soon after dinner. There’s nothing

like the air of Alps.’ And Mr Glascock renewed his pace, and stretched

himself against the hill at the rate of three miles an hour.

 

‘I used to be very fond of Switzerland,’ said Trevelyan, ‘but I don’t

care about it now. My eye has lost all its taste.’

 

‘It isn’t the eye,’ said Glascock.

 

‘Well; no. The truth is that when one is absolutely unhappy one cannot

revel in the imagination. I don’t believe in the miseries of poets.’

 

‘I think myself,’ said Glascock, ‘that a poet should have a good

digestion. By-the-bye, Mrs Trevelyan and her sister went down to

Nuncombe Putney, in Devonshire.’

 

‘They did go there.’

 

‘Have they moved since? A very pretty place is Nuncombe Putney.’

 

‘You have been there, then?’

 

Mr Glascock blushed again. He was certainly an awkward man, saying

things that he ought not to say, and telling secrets which ought not to

have been told. ‘Well yes. I have been there as it happens.’

 

‘Just lately do you mean?’

 

Mr Glascock paused, hoping to find his way out of the scrape, but soon

perceived that there was no way out. He could not lie, even in an

affair of love, and was altogether destitute of those honest

subterfuges, subterfuges honest in such position of which a dozen would

have been at once at the command of any woman, and with one of which,

sufficient for the moment, most men would have been able to arm

themselves. ‘Indeed, yes,’ he said, almost stammering as he spoke. ‘It

was lately since your wife went there.’ Trevelyan, though he had been

told of the possibility of Mr Glascock’s courtship, felt himself almost

aggrieved by this man’s intrusion on his wife’s retreat. Had he not

sent her there that she might be private; and what right had any one to

invade such privacy? ‘I suppose I had better tell the truth at once,’

said Mr Glascock. ‘I went to see Miss Rowley.’

 

‘Oh, indeed.’

 

‘My secret will be safe with you, I know.’

 

‘I did not know that there was a secret,’ said Trevelyan. ‘I should

have thought that they would have told me.’

 

‘I don’t see that. However, it doesn’t matter much. I got nothing by my

journey. Are the ladies still at Nuncombe Putney?’

 

‘No, they have moved from there to London.’

 

‘Not back to Curzon Street?’

 

‘Oh dear, no. There is no house in Curzon Street for them now.’ This

was said in a tone so sad that it almost made Mr Glascock weep. ‘They

are staying with an aunt of theirs out to the east of the city.’

 

‘At St. Diddulph’s?’

 

‘Yes with Mr Outhouse, the clergyman there. You can’t conceive what it

is not to be able to see your own child; and yet, how can I take the

boy from her?’

 

‘Of course not. He’s only a baby.’

 

‘And yet all this is brought on me solely by her obstinacy. God knows,

however, I don’t want to say a word against her. People choose to say

that I am to blame, and they may say so for me. Nothing that any one

may say can add anything to the weight that I have to bear.’ Then they

walked to the top of the mountain in silence, and in due time were

picked up by their proper shepherd and carried down to Susa at a pace

that would give an English coachman a concussion of the brain.

 

Why passengers for Turin, who reach Susa dusty, tired, and sleepy,

should be detained at that place for an hour and a half instead of

being forwarded to their beds in the great city, is never made very

apparent. All travelling officials on the continent of Europe are very

slow in their manipulation of luggage; but as they are equally correct

we