Books: He Knew He Was Right

A >> Anthony Trollope >> He Knew He Was Right

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72

'"C. G." has come back to see you,' said Olivia to her elder sister.
They had always called him 'C. G.' since the initials had been seen on
the travelling bag.

'Probably,' said Carry. 'There is so very little else to bring people
to Florence, that there can hardly be any other reason for his coming.
They do say it's terribly hot at Naples just now; but that can have had
nothing to do with it.'

'We shall see,' said Livy. 'I'm sure he's in love with you. He looked
to me just like a proper sort of lover for you, when I saw his long
legs creeping up over our heads into the banquette.'

'You ought to have been very much obliged to his long legs so sick as
you were at the time.'

'I like him amazingly,' said Livy, 'legs and all. I only hope Uncle
Jonas won't bore him, so as to prevent his coming.'

'His father is very ill,' said Carry, 'and I don't suppose we shall see
him at all.'

But the American Minister was successful. He found Mr Glascock sitting
in his dressing-gown, smoking a cigar, and reading a newspaper. The
English aristocrat seemed very glad to see his visitor, and assumed no
airs at all. The American altogether forgot his speech at Nubbly Creek,
and found the aristocrat's society to be very pleasant. He lit a cigar,
and they talked about Naples, Rome, and Florence. Mr Spalding, when the
marbles of old Rome were mentioned, was a little too keen in insisting
on the merits of Story, Miss Hosmer, and Hiram Powers, and hardly
carried his listener with him in the parallel which he drew between
Greenough and Phidias; and he was somewhat repressed by the apathetic
curtness of Mr Glascock's reply, when he suggested that the victory
gained by the gunboats at Vicksburg, on the Mississippi, was vividly
brought to his mind by an account which he had just been reading of the
battle of Actium; but he succeeded in inducing Mr Glascock to accept an
invitation to dinner for the next day but one, and the two gentlemen
parted on the most amicable terms.

Everybody meets everybody in Florence every day. Carry and Livy
Spalding had met Mr Glascock twice before the dinner at their uncle's
house, so that they met at dinner quite as intimate friends. Mrs
Spalding had very large rooms, up three flights of stairs, on the
Lungarno. The height of her abode was attributed by Mrs Spalding to her
dread of mosquitoes. She had not yet learned that people in Florence
require no excuse for being asked to walk up three flights of stairs.
The rooms, when they were reached, were very lofty, floored with what
seemed to be marble, and were of a nature almost to warrant Mrs
Spalding in feeling that nature had made her more akin to an Italian
countess than to a matron of Nubbly Creek, State of Illinois, where Mr
Spalding had found her and made her his own. There was one other
Englishman present, Mr Harris Hyde Granville Gore, from the Foreign
Office, now serving temporarily at the English Legation in Florence;
and an American, Mr Jackson Unthank, a man of wealth and taste, who was
resolved on having such a collection of pictures at his house in
Baltimore that no English private collection should in any way come
near to it; and a Tuscan, from the Italian Foreign Office, to whom
nobody could speak except Mr Harris Hyde Granville Gore who did not
indeed seem to enjoy the efforts of conversation which were expected of
him. The Italian, who had a handle to his name he was a Count
Buonarosci took Mrs Spalding into dinner. Mrs Spalding had been at
great trouble to ascertain whether this was proper, or whether she
should not entrust herself to Mr Glascock. There were different points
to be considered in the matter. She did not quite know whether she was
in Italy or in America. She had glimmerings on the subject of her
privilege to carry her own nationality into her own drawing-room. And
then she was called upon to deal between an Italian Count with an elder
brother, and an English Honourable, who had no such encumbrance. Which
of the two was possessed of the higher rank? 'I've found it all out,
Aunt Mary,' said Livy. 'You must take the Count.' For Livy wanted to
give her sister every chance. 'How have you found it out?' said the
aunt. 'You may be sure it is so,' said Livy.

And the lady in her doubt yielded the point. Mrs Spalding, as she
walked along the passage on the Count's arm, determined that she would
learn Italian. She would have given all Nubbly Creek to have been able
to speak a word to Count Buonarosci. To do her justice, it must be
admitted that she had studied a few words. But her courage failed her,
and she could not speak them. She was very careful, however, that Mr H.
H. G. Gore was placed in the chair next to the Count.

'We are very glad to see you here,' said Mr Spalding, addressing
himself especially to Mr Glascock, as he stood up at his own seat at
the round table. 'In leaving my own country, sir, there is nothing that
I value more than the privilege of becoming acquainted with those whose
historic names and existing positions are of such inestimable value to
the world at large.' In saying this, Mr Spalding was not in the least
insincere, nor did his conscience at all prick him in reference to that
speech at Nubbly Creek. On both occasions he half thought as he spoke
or thought that he thought so. Unless it be on subjects especially
endeared to us the thoughts of but few of us go much beyond this.

Mr Glascock, who sat between Mrs Spalding and her niece, was soon asked
by the elder lady whether he had been in the States. No; he had not
been in the States. 'Then you must come, Mr Glascock,' said Mrs
Spalding, 'though I will not say, dwelling as we now are in the
metropolis of the world of art, that we in our own homes have as much
of the outer beauty of form to charm the stranger as is to be found in
other lands. Yet I think that the busy lives of men, and the varied
institutions of a free country, must always have an interest peculiarly
their own.' Mr Glascock declared that he quite agreed with her, and
expressed a hope that he might some day find himself in New York.

'You wouldn't like it at all,' said Carry; 'because you are an
aristocrat. I don't mean that it would be your fault.'

'Why should that prevent my liking it even if I were an aristocrat?'

'One half of the people would run after you, and the other half would
run away from you,' said Carry.

'Then I'd take to the people who ran after me, and would not regard the
others.'

'That's all very well but you wouldn't like it. And then you would
become unfair to what you saw. When some of our speechifying people
talked to you about our institutions through their noses, you would
think that the institutions themselves must be bad. And we have nothing
to show except our institutions.'

'What are American institutions? asked Mr Glascock.

'Everything is an institution. Having iced water to drink in every room
of the house is an institution. Having hospitals in every town is an
institution. Travelling altogether in one class of railway cars is an
institution. Saying sir, is an institution. Teaching all the children
mathematics is an institution. Plenty of food is an institution.
Getting drunk is an institution in a great many towns. Lecturing is an
institution. There are plenty of them, and some are very good but you
wouldn't like it.'

'At any rate, I'll go and see,' said Mr Glascock.

'If you do, I hope we may be at home,' said Miss Spalding.

Mr Spalding, in the mean time, with the assistance of his countryman,
the man of taste, was endeavouring to explain a certain point in
American politics to the count. As, in doing this, they called upon Mr
Gore to translate every speech they made into Italian, and as Mr Gore
had never offered his services as an interpreter, and as the Italian
did not quite catch the subtle meanings of the Americans in Mr Gore's
Tuscan version, and did not in the least wish to understand the things
that were explained to him, Mr Gore and the Italian began to think that
the two Americans were bores. 'The truth is, Mr Spalding,' said Mr
Gore, 'I've got such a cold in my head, that I don't think I can
explain it any more.' Then Livy Spalding laughed aloud, and the two
American gentlemen began to eat their dinner. 'It sounds ridiculous,
don't it?' said Mr Gore, in a whisper.

'I ought not to have laughed, I know,' said Livy.

'The very best thing you could have done. I shan't be troubled any more
now. The fact is, I know just nine words of Italian. Now there is a
difficulty in having to explain the whole theory of American politics
to an Italian, who doesn't want to know anything about it, with so very
small a repertory of words at one's command.'

'How well you did it!'

'Too well. I felt that. So well that, unless I had stopped it, I
shouldn't have been able to say a word to you all through dinner. Your
laughter clenched it, and Buonarosci and I will be grateful to you for
ever.'

After the ladies went there was rather a bad half hour for Mr Glascock.
He was button-holed by the minister, and found it oppressive before he
was enabled to escape into the drawing-room. 'Mr Glascock,' said the
minister, 'an English gentleman, sir, like you, who has the privilege
of an hereditary seat in your parliament Mr Glascock was not quite sure
whether he were being accused of having an hereditary seat in the House
of Commons but he would not stop to correct any possible error on that
point 'and who has been born to all the gifts of fortune, rank, and
social eminence, should never think that his education is complete till
he has visited our great cities in the west.' Mr Glascock hinted that
he by no means conceived his education to be complete; but the minister
went on without attending to this. 'Till you have seen, sir, what men
can do who are placed upon the earth with all God's gifts of free
intelligence, free air, and a free soil, but without any of those other
good things which we are accustomed to call the gifts of fortune, you
can never become aware of the infinite ingenuity of man.' There had
been much said before, but just at this moment Mr Gore and the American
left the room, and the Italian followed them briskly. Mr Glascock at
once made a decided attempt to bolt; but the minister was on the alert,
and was too quick for him. And he was by no means ashamed of what he
was doing. He had got his guest by the coat, and openly declared his
intention of holding him. 'Let me keep you for a few minutes, sir,'
said he, 'while I dilate on this point in one direction. In the
drawing-room female spells are too potent for us male orators. In going
among us, Mr Glascock, you must not look for luxury or refinement, for
you will find them not. Nor must you hope to encounter the highest
order of erudition. The lofty summits of acquired knowledge tower in
your country with an altitude we have not reached yet.' 'It's very good
of you to say so,' said Mr Glascock. 'No, sir. In our new country and
in our new cities we still lack the luxurious perfection of fastidious
civilisation. But, sir, regard our level. That's what I say to every
unprejudiced Britisher that comes among us; look at our level. And when
you have looked at our level, I think that you will confess that we
live on the highest table-land that the world has yet afforded to
mankind. You follow my meaning, Mr Glascock?' Mr Glascock was not sure
that he did, but the minister went on to make that meaning clear. 'It
is the multitude that with us is educated. Go into their houses, sir,
and see how they thumb their books. Look at the domestic correspondence
of our helps and servants, and see how they write and spell. We haven't
got the mountains, sir, but our table-lands are the highest on which
the bright sun of our Almighty God has as yet shone with its
illuminating splendour in this improving world of ours! It is because
we are a young people, sir with nothing as yet near to us of the
decrepitude of age. The weakness of age, sir, is the penalty paid by
the folly of youth. We are not so wise, sir, but what we too shall
suffer from its effects as years roll over our heads.' There was a
great deal more, but at last Mr Glascock did escape into the
drawing-room.

'My uncle has been saying a few worlds to you perhaps,' said Carry
Spalding.

'Yes; he has,' said Mr Glascock.

'He usually does,' said Carry Spalding.

CHAPTER XLVII - ABOUT FISHING, AND NAVIGATION, AND HEAD-DRESSES

The feud between Miss Stanbury and Mr Gibson raged violently in Exeter,
and produced many complications which were very difficult indeed of
management. Each belligerent party felt that a special injury had been
inflicted upon it. Mr Gibson was quite sure that he had been grossly
misused by Miss Stanbury the elder, and strongly suspected that Miss
Stanbury the younger had had a hand in this misconduct. It had been
positively asserted to him at least so he thought, but in this was
probably in error that the lady would accept him if he proposed to her.
All Exeter had been made aware of the intended compact. He, indeed, had
denied its existence to Miss French, comforting himself, as best he
might, with the reflection that all is fair in love and war; but when
he counted over his injuries he did not think of this denial. All
Exeter, so to say, had known of it. And yet, when he had come with his
proposal, he had been refused without a moment's consideration, first
by the aunt, and then by the niece and, after that, had been violently
abused, and at last turned out of the house! Surely, no gentleman had
ever before been subjected to ill-usage so violent! But Miss Stanbury
the elder was quite as assured hat the injury had been done to her. As
to the matter of the compact itself, she knew very well that she had
been as true as steel. She had done everything in her power to bring
about the marriage. She had been generous in her offers of money. She
had used all her powers of persuasion on Dorothy, and she had given
every opportunity to Mr Gibson. It was not her fault if he had not been
able to avail himself of the good things which she had put in his way.
He had first been, as she thought, ignorant and arrogant, fancying that
the good things ought to be made his own without any trouble on his
part and then awkward, not knowing how to take the trouble when trouble
was necessary. And as to that matter of abusive language and turning
out of the house, Miss Stanbury was quite convinced that she was sinned
against, and not herself the sinner. She declared to Martha, more than
once, that Mr Gibson had used such language to her that, coming out of
a clergyman's mouth, it had quite dismayed her. Martha, who knew her
mistress, probably felt that Mr Gibson had at least received as good as
he gave; but she had made no attempt to set her mistress right on that
point.

But the cause of Miss Stanbury's sharpest anger was not to be found in
Mr Gibson's conduct either before Dorothy's refusal of his offer, or on
the occasion of his being turned out of the house. A base rumour was
spread about the city that Dorothy Stanbury had been offered to Mr
Gibson, that Mr Gibson had civilly declined the offer and that hence
had arisen the wrath of the Juno of the Close. Now this was not to be
endured by Miss Stanbury. She had felt even in the moment of her
original anger against Mr Gibson that she was bound in honour not to
tell the story against him. She had brought him into the little
difficulty, and she at least would hold her tongue. She was quite sure
that Dorothy would never boast of her triumph. And Martha had been
strictly cautioned as indeed, also, had Brooke Burgess. The man had
behaved like an idiot, Miss Stanbury said; but he had been brought into
a little dilemma, and nothing should be said about it from the house in
the Close. But when the other rumour reached Miss Stanbury's ears, when
Mrs Crumbie condoled with her on her niece's misfortune, when Mrs
MacHugh asked whether Mr Gibson had not behaved rather badly to the
young lady, then our Juno's celestial mind was filled with a divine
anger. But even then she did not declare the truth. She asked a
question of Mrs Crumbie, and was enabled, as she thought, to trace the
falsehood to the Frenches. She did not think that Mr Gibson could on a
sudden have become so base a liar. 'Mr Gibson fast and loose with my
niece?' she said to Mrs MacHugh. 'You have not got the story quite
right, my dear friend. Pray, believe me there has been nothing of that
sort.' 'I dare say not,' said Mrs MacHugh, 'and I'm sure I don't care.
Mr Gibson has been going to marry one of the French girls for the last
ten years, and I think he ought to make up his mind and do it at last.'

'I can assure you he is quite welcome as far as Dorothy is concerned,'
said Miss Stanbury.

Without a doubt the opinion did prevail throughout Exeter that Mr
Gibson, who had been regarded time out of mind as the property of the
Miss Frenches, had been angled for by the ladies in the Close, that he
had nearly been caught, but that he had slipped the hook out of his
mouth, and was now about to subside quietly into the net which had been
originally prepared for him. Arabella French had not spoken loudly on
the subject, but Camilla had declared in more than one house that she
had most direct authority for stating that the gentleman had never
dreamed of offering to the young lady. 'Why he should not do so if he
pleases, I don't know,' said Camilla. 'Only the fact is that he has not
pleased. The rumour of course has reached him, and, as we happen to be
very old friends we have authority for denying it altogether.' All this
came round to Miss Stanbury, and she was divine in her wrath.

'If they drive me to it,' she said to Dorothy, 'I'll have the whole
truth told by the bellman through the city, or I'll publish it in the
County Gazette.'

'Pray don't say a word about it, Aunt Stanbury.'

'It is those odious girls. He's there now every day.'

'Why shouldn't he go there, Aunt Stanbury?'

'If he's fool enough, let him go. I don't care where he goes. But I do
care about these lies. They wouldn't dare to say it only they think my
mouth is closed. They've no honour themselves, but they screen
themselves behind mine.'

'I'm sure they won't find themselves mistaken in what they trust to,'
said Dorothy, with a spirit that her aunt had not expected from her.
Miss Stanbury at this time had told nobody that the offer to her niece
had been made and repeated and finally rejected but she found it very
difficult to hold her tongue.

In the meantime Mr Gibson spent a good deal of his time at Heavitree.
It should not perhaps be asserted broadly that he had made up his mind
that marriage would be good for him; but he had made up his mind, at
least, to this, that it was no longer to be postponed without a balance
of disadvantage. The Charybdis in the Close drove him helpless into the
whirlpool of the Heavitree Scylla. He had no longer an escape from the
perils of the latter shore. He had been so mauled by the opposite
waves, that he had neither spirit nor skill left to him to keep in the
middle track. He was almost daily at Heavitree, and did not attempt to
conceal from himself the approach of his doom.

But still there were two of them. He knew that he must become a prey,
but was there any choice left to him as to which siren should have him?
He had been quite aware in his more gallant days, before he had been
knocked about on that Charybdis rock, that he might sip, and taste, and
choose between the sweets. He had come to think lately that the younger
young lady was the sweeter. Eight years ago indeed the passages between
him and the elder had been tender; but Camilla had then been simply a
romping girl, hardly more than a year or two beyond her teens. Now,
with her matured charms, Camilla was certainly the more engaging, as
far as outward form went. Arabella's cheeks were thin and long, and her
front teeth had come to show themselves. Her eyes were no doubt still
bright, and what she had of hair was soft and dark. But it was very
thin in front, and what there was of supplemental mass behind the
bandbox by which Miss Stanbury was so much aggrieved was worn with an
indifference to the lines of beauty, which Mr Gibson himself found to
be very depressing. A man with a fair burden on his back is not a
grievous sight; but when we see a small human being attached to a bale
of goods which he can hardly manage to move, we feel that the poor
fellow has been cruelly over-weighted. Mr Gibson certainly had that
sensation about Arabella's chignon. And as he regarded it in a nearer
and a dearer light as a chignon that might possibly become his own, as
a burden which in one sense he might himself be called upon to bear, as
a domestic utensil of which he himself might be called upon to inspect,
and, perhaps, to aid the shifting on and the shifting off, he did begin
to think that that side of the Scylla gulf ought to be avoided if
possible. And probably this propensity on his part, this feeling that
he would like to reconsider the matter dispassionately before he gave
himself up for good to his old love, may have been increased by
Camilla's apparent withdrawal of her claims. He felt mildly grateful to
the Heavitree household in general for accepting him in this time of
his affliction, but he could not admit to himself that they had a right
to decide upon him in private conclave, and allot him either to the one
or to the other nuptials without consultation with himself. To be
swallowed up by Scylla he now recognised as his doom; but he thought he
ought to be asked on which side of the gulf he would prefer to go down.
The way in which Camilla spoke of him as a thing that wasn't hers, but
another's; and the way in which Arabella looked at him, as though he
were hers and could never be another's, wounded his manly pride. He had
always understood that he might have his choice, and he could not
understand that the little mishap which had befallen him in the Close
was to rob him of that privilege.

He used to drink tea at Heavitree in those days. On one evening on
going in he found himself alone with Arabella. 'Oh, Mr Gibson,' she
said, 'we weren't sure whether you'd come. And mamma and Camilla have
gone out to Mrs Camadge's.' Mr Gibson muttered some word to the effect
that he hoped he had kept nobody at home; and, as he did so, he
remembered that he had distinctly said that he would come on this
evening. 'I don't know that I should have gone,' sad Arabella, 'because
I am not quite not quite myself at present. No, not ill; not at all.
Don't you know what it is, Mr Gibson, to be to be to be not quite
yourself?' Mr Gibson said that he had very often felt like that. 'And
one can't get over it can one?' continued Arabella. 'There comes a
presentiment that something is going to happen, and a kind of belief
that something has happened, though you don't know what; and the heart
refuses to be light, and the spirit becomes abashed, and the mind,
though it creates new thoughts, will not settle itself to its
accustomed work. I suppose it's what the novels have called
Melancholy.'

'I suppose it is,' said Mr Gibson. 'But there's generally some cause
for it. Debt for instance.'

'It's nothing of that kind with me. Its no debt, at least, that can be
written down in the figures of ordinary arithmetic. Sit down, Mr
Gibson, and we will have some tea.' Then, as she stretched forward to
ring the bell, he thought that he never in his life had seen anything
so unshapely as that huge wen at the back of her head. 'Monstrum
horrendum, informe, ingens!' He could not help quoting the words to
himself. She was dressed with some attempt at being smart, but her
ribbons were soiled, and her lace was tawdry, and the fabric of her
dress was old and dowdy. He was quite sure that he would feel no pride
in calling her Mrs Gibson, no pleasure in having her all to himself at
his own hearth. 'I hope we shall escape the bitterness of Miss
Stanbury's tongue if we drink tea tete-a-tete,' she said, with her
sweetest smile.

'I don't suppose she'll know anything about it.'

'She knows about everything, Mr Gibson. It's astonishing what she
knows. She has eyes and ears everywhere. I shouldn't care, if she
didn't see and hear so very incorrectly. I'm told now that she declares
but it doesn't signify.'

'Declares what?' asked Mr Gibson.

'Never mind. But wasn't it odd how all Exeter believed that you were
going to be married in that house, and to live there all the rest of
your life, and be one of Miss Stanbury's slaves. I never believed it,
Mr Gibson.' This she said with a sad smile, that ought to have brought
him on his knees, in spite of the chignon.

'One can't help these things,' said Mr Gibson.

'I never could have believed it not even if you had not given me an
assurance so solemn, and so sweet, that there was nothing in it.' The
poor man had given the assurance, and could not deny the solemnity and
the sweetness. 'That was a happy moment for us, Mr Gibson; because,
though we never believed it, when it was dinned into our ears so
frequently, when it was made such a triumph in the Close, it was
impossible not to fear that there might be something in it.' He felt
that he ought to make some reply, but he did not know what to say. He
was thoroughly ashamed of the lie he had told, but he could not untell
it. 'Camilla reproached me afterwards for asking you,' whispered
Arabella, in her softest, tenderest voice.'she said that it was
unmaidenly. I hope you did not think it unmaidenly, Mr Gibson?'