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

a leap in

the dark’ and all such leaps must needs be dangerous, and therefore

should be avoided. But she did like the man. Her friend was untrue to

her and cruel in those allusions to tinkling cymbals. It might be well

for her to get over her liking, and to think no more of one who was to

her a foreigner and a stranger, of whose ways of living in his own home

she knew so little, whose people might be antipathetic to her, enemies

instead of friends, among whom her life would be one long misery; but

it was not on that ground that Miss Petrie had recommended her to start

for Rome as soon as Mr Glascock had reached Florence. ‘There is no

reason,’ she said to herself, ‘why I should not marry a man if I like

him, even though he be a lord. And of him I should not be the least

afraid. It’s the women that I fear.’ And then she called to mind all

that she had ever heard of English countesses and duchesses. She

thought that she knew that they were generally cold and proud, and very

little given to receive outsiders graciously within their ranks. Mr

Glascock had an aunt who was a Duchess, and a sister who would be a

Countess. Caroline Spalding felt how her back would rise against these

new relations, if it should come to pass that they should look unkindly

upon her when she was taken to her own home; how she would fight with

them, giving them scorn for scorn; how unutterably miserable she would

be; how she would long to be back among her own equals, in spite even

of her love for her husband. ‘How grand a thing it is,’ she said, ‘to

be equal with those whom you love!’ And yet she was to some extent

allured by the social position of the man. She could perceive that he

had a charm of manner which her countrymen lacked. He had read,

perhaps, less than her uncle knew, perhaps, less than most of those men

with whom she had been wont to associate in her own city life at home,

was not braver, or more virtuous, or more self-denying than they; but

there was a softness and an ease in his manner which was palatable to

her, and an absence of that too visible effort of the intellect which

is so apt to mark and mar the conversation of Americans. She almost

wished that she had been English, in order that the man’s home and

friends might have suited her. She was thinking of all this as she

stood pretending to talk to an American lady, who was very eloquent on

the delights of Florence.

 

In the meantime Olivia and Mr Glascock had moved away together, and

Miss Petrie was left alone. This was no injury to Miss Petrie, as her

mind at once set itself to work on a sonnet touching the frivolity of

modern social gatherings; and when she complained afterwards to

Caroline that it was the curse of their mode of life that no moment

could be allowed for thought, in which she referred specially to a few

words that Mr Gore had addressed to her at this moment of her

meditations, she was not wilfully a hypocrite. She was painfully turning

her second set of rhymes, and really believed that she had been

subjected to a hardship. In the meantime Olivia and Mr Glascock were

discussing her at a distance.

 

‘You were being put through your facings, Mr Glascock,’ Olivia had

said.

 

‘Well; yes; and your dear friend, Miss Petrie, is rather a stern

examiner.’

 

‘She is Carry’s ally, not mine,’ said Olivia. Then she remembered that

by saying this she might be doing her sister an injury. Mr Glascock

might object to such a bosom friend for his wife. ‘That is to say, of

course we are all intimate with her? but just at this moment Carry is

most in favour.’

 

‘She is very clever, I am quite sure,’ said he.

 

‘Oh yes she’s a genius. You must not doubt that on the peril of making

every American in Italy your enemy.’

 

‘She is a poet is she not?’

 

‘Mr Glascock!’

 

‘Have I said anything wrong?’ he asked.

 

‘Do you mean to look me in the face and tell me that you are not

acquainted with her works, that you don’t know pages of them by heart,

that you don’t sleep with them under your pillow, don’t travel about

with them in your dressing-bag? I’m afraid we have mistaken you, Mr

Glascock.’

 

‘Is it so great a sin?’

 

‘If you’ll own up honestly, I’ll tell you something in a whisper. You

have not read a word of her poems?’

 

‘Not a word.’

 

‘Neither have I. Isn’t it horrible? But, perhaps, if I heard Tennyson

talking every day, I shouldn’t read Tennyson. Familiarity does breed

contempt, doesn’t it? And then poor dear Wallachia is such a bore. I

sometimes wonder, when English people are listening to her, whether

they think that American girls generally talk like that.’

 

‘Not all, perhaps, with that perfected eloquence.’

 

‘I dare say you do,’ continued Olivia, craftily. ‘That is just the way

in which people form their opinions about foreigners. Some specially

self-asserting American speaks his mind louder than other people, and

then you say that all Americans are self-asserting.’

 

‘But you are a little that way given, Miss Spalding.’

 

‘Because we are always called upon to answer accusations against us,

expressed or unexpressed. We don’t think ourselves a bit better than

you; or, if the truth were known, half as good. We are always

struggling to be as polished and easy as the French, or as sensible and

dignified as the English; but when our defects are thrown in our

teeth—’

 

‘Who throws them in your teeth, Miss Spalding?’

 

‘You look it, all of you, if you do not speak it out. You do assume a

superiority, Mr Glascock; and that we cannot endure.’

 

‘I do not feel that I assume anything,’ said Mr Glascock, meekly.

 

‘If three gentlemen be together, an Englishman, a Frenchman, and an

American, is not the American obliged to be on his mettle to prove that

he is somebody among the three? I admit that he is always claiming to

be the first; but he does so only that he may not be too evidently the

last. If you knew us, Mr Glascock, you would find us to be very mild,

and humble, and nice, and good, and clever, and kind, and charitable,

and beautiful—in short, the finest people that have as yet been created

on the broad face of God’s smiling earth.’ These last words she

pronounced with a nasal twang, and in a tone of voice which almost

seemed to him to be a direct mimicry of the American Minister. The

upshot of the conversation, however, was that the disgust against

Americans which, to a certain degree, had been excited in Mr Glascock’s

mind by the united efforts of Mr Spalding and the poetess, had been

almost entirely dispelled. From all of which the reader ought to

understand that Miss Olivia Spalding was a very clever young woman.

 

But nevertheless Mr Glascock had not quite made up his mind to ask the

elder sister to be his wife. He was one of those men to whom

lovemaking does not come very easy, although he was never so much at

his ease as when he was in company with ladies. He was sorely in want

of a wife, but he was aware that at different periods during the last

fifteen years he had been angled for as a fish. Mothers in England had

tried to catch him, and of such mothers he had come to have the

strongest possible detestation. He had seen the hooks or perhaps had

fancied that he saw them when they were not there. Lady Janes and Lady

Sarahs had been hard upon him, till he learned to buckle himself into

triple armour when he went amongst them, and yet he wanted a wife; no

man more sorely wanted one. The reader will perhaps remember how he

went down to Nuncombe Putney in quest of a wife, but all in vain. The

lady in that case had been so explicit with him that he could not hope

for a more favourable answer; and, indeed, he would not have cared to

marry a girl who had told him that she preferred another man to

himself, even if it had been possible for him to do so. Now he had met

a lady very different from those with whom he had hitherto associated

but not the less manifestly a lady. Caroline Spalding was bright,

pleasant, attractive, very easy to talk to, and yet quite able to hold

her own. But the American Minister was a bore; and Miss Petrie was

unbearable. He had often told himself that in this matter of marrying a

wife he would please himself altogether, that he would allow himself to

be tied down by no consideration of family pride, that he would consult

nothing but his own heart and feelings.

 

As for rank, he could give that to his wife. As for money, he had

plenty of that also. He wanted a woman that was not blasee with the

world, that was not a fool, and who would respect him. The more he

thought of it, the more sure he was that he had seen none who pleased

him so well as Caroline Spalding; and yet he was a little afraid of

taking a step that would be irrevocable. Perhaps the American Minister

might express a wish to end his days at Monkhams, and might think it

desirable to have Miss Petrie always with him as a private secretary in

poetry!

 

‘Between you and us, Mr Glascock, the spark of sympathy does not pass

with a strong flash,’ said a voice in his ear. As he turned round

rapidly to face his foe, he was quite sure, for the moment, that under

no possible circumstances would he ever take an American woman to his

bosom as his wife.

 

‘No,’ said he; ‘no, no. I rather think that I agree with you.’

 

‘The antipathy is one,’ continued Miss Petrie, ‘which has been common

on the face of the earth since the clown first trod upon the courtier’s

heels. It is the instinct of fallen man to hate equality, to desire

ascendancy, to crush, to oppress, to tyrannise, to enslave. Then, when

the slave is at last free, and in his freedom demands equality, man is

not great enough to take his enfranchised brother to his bosom.’

 

‘You mean negroes,’ said Mr Glascock, looking round and planning for

himself a mode of escape.

 

‘Not negroes only, not the enslaved blacks, who are now enslaved no more,

but the rising nations of white men wherever they are to be seen. You

English have no sympathy with a people who claim to be at least your

equals. The clown has trod upon the courtier’s heels till the clown is

clown no longer, and the courtier has hardly a court in which he may

dangle his sword-knot.’

 

‘If so the clown might as well spare the courtier,’ not meaning the

rebuke which his words implied.

 

‘Ah h but the clown will not spare the courtier, Mr Glascock. I

understand the gibe, and I tell you that the courtier shall be spared

no longer because he is useless. He shall be cut down together with the

withered grasses and thrown into the oven, and there shall be an end of

him.’ Then she turned round to appeal to an American gentleman who had

joined them,