Books: He Knew He Was Right

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'I think your uncle is wrong, dear,' said Miss Petrie early in the day
to her friend.

'But why? He has done nothing more than what is just civil.'

'If Mr Glascock kept a store in Broadway he would not have thought it
necessary to shew the same civility.'

'Yes if we all liked the Mr Glascock who kept the store.'

'Caroline,' said the poetess with severe eloquence, 'can you put your
hand upon your heart and say that this inherited title, this tinkling
cymbal as I call it, has no attraction for you or yours? Is it the
unadorned simple man that you welcome to your bosom, or a thing of
stars and garters, a patch of parchment, the minion of a throne, the
lordling of twenty descents, in which each has been weaker than that
before it, the hero of a scutcheon, whose glory is in his quarterings,
and whose worldly wealth comes from the sweat of serfs whom the
euphonism of an effete country has learned to decorate with the name of
tenants?'

But Caroline Spalding had a spirit of her own, and had already made up
her mind that she would not be talked down by Miss Petrie. 'Uncle
Jonas,' said she, 'asks him because we like him; and would do so too if
he kept the store in Broadway. But if he did keep the store perhaps we
should not like him.'

'I trow not,' said Miss Petrie.

Livy was much more comfortable in her tactics, and without consulting
anybody sent for a hairdresser. 'It's all very well for Wallachia,'
said Livy Miss Petrie's name was Wallachia 'but I know a nice sort of
man when I see him, and the ways of the world are not to be altered
because Wally writes poetry.'

When Mr Glascock was announced, Mrs Spalding's handsome rooms were
almost filled, as rooms in Florence are filled obstruction in every
avenue, a crowd in every corner, and a block at every doorway, not
being among the customs of the place. Mr Spalding immediately caught
him intercepting him between the passages and the ladies and engaged
him at once in conversation.

'Your John S. Mill is a great man,' said the minister.

'They tell me so,' said Mr Glascock. 'I don't read what he writes
myself.'

This acknowledgment seemed to the minister to be almost disgraceful,
and yet he himself had never read a word of Mr Mill's writings. 'He is
a far-seeing man,' continued the minister. 'He is one of the few
Europeans who can look forward, and see how the rivers of civilization
are running on. He has understood that women must at last be put upon
an equality with men.'

'Can he manage that men shall have half the babies?' said Mr Glascock,
thinking to escape by an attempt at playfulness.

But the minister was down upon him at once had him by the lappet of his
coat, though he knew how important it was for his dear niece that he
should allow Mr Glascock to amuse himself this evening after another
fashion. 'I have an answer ready, sir, for that difficulty,' he
said.'step aside with me for a moment. The question is important, and I
should be glad if you would communicate my ideas to your great
philosopher. Nature, sir, has laid down certain laws, which are
immutable; and, against them--'

But Mr Glascock had not come to Florence for this. There were
circumstances in his present position which made him feel that he would
be gratified in escaping, even at the cost of some seeming incivility.
'I must go in to the ladies at once,' he said, 'or I shall never get a
word with them.' There came across the minister's brow a momentary
frown of displeasure, as though he felt that he were being robbed of
that which was justly his own. For an instant his grasp fixed itself
more tightly to the coat. It was quite within the scope of his courage
to hold a struggling listener by physical strength but he remembered
that there was a purpose, and he relaxed his hold.

'I will take another opportunity,' said the minister. 'As you have
raised that somewhat trite objection of the bearing of children, which
we in our country, sir, have altogether got over, I must put you in
possession of my views on that subject; but I will find another
occasion.' Then Mr Glascock began to reflect whether an American lady,
married in England, would probably want to see much of her uncle in her
adopted country.

Mrs Spalding was all smiles when her guest reached her. 'We did not
mean to have such a crowd of people,' she said, whispering; 'but you
know how one thing leads to another, and people here really like short
invitations.' Then the minister's wife bowed very low to an Italian
lady, and for the moment wished herself in Beacon Street. It was a
great trouble to her that she could not pluck up courage to speak a
word in Italian. 'I know more about it than some that are glib enough,'
she would say to her niece Livy, 'but these Tuscans are so particular
with their Bocca Tostana.'

It was almost spiteful on the part of Miss Petrie the manner in which,
on this evening, she remained close to her friend Caroline Spalding. It
is hardly possible to believe that it came altogether from high
principle from a determination to save her friend from an impending
danger. One's friend has no right to decide for one what is, and what
is not dangerous. Mr Glascock after awhile found himself seated on a
fixed couch, that ran along the wall, between Carry Spalding and Miss
Petrie; but Miss Petrie was almost as bad to him as had been the
minister himself. 'I am afraid,' she said, looking up into his face
with some severity, and rushing upon her subject with audacity, 'that
the works of your Browning have not been received in your country with
that veneration to which they are entitled.'

'Do you mean Mr or Mrs Browning?' asked Mr Glascock perhaps with some
mistaken idea that the lady was out of her depth, and did not know the
difference.

'Either both; for they are one, the same, and indivisible. The spirit
and germ of each is so reflected in the outcome of the other, that one
sees only the result of so perfect a combination, and one is tempted to
acknowledge that here and there a marriage may have been arranged in
Heaven. I don't think that in your country you have perceived this, Mr
Glascock.'

'I am not quite sure that we have,' said Mr Glascock. 'Yours is not
altogether an inglorious mission,' continued Miss Petrie.

'I've got no mission,' said Mr Glascock 'either from the Foreign
Office, or from my own inner convictions.'

Miss Petrie laughed with a scornful laugh. 'I spoke, sir, of the
mission of that small speck on the earth's broad surface, of which you
think so much, and which we call Great Britain.'

'I do think a good deal of it,' said Mr Glascock.

'It has been more thought of than any other speck of the same size,'
said Carry Spalding.

'True,' said Miss Petrie, sharply 'because of its iron and coal. But
the mission I spoke of was this.' And she put forth her hand with an
artistic motion as she spoke. 'It utters prophecies, though it cannot
read them. It sends forth truth, though it cannot understand it. Though
its own ears are deaf as adder's, it is the nursery of poets, who sing
not for their own countrymen, but for the higher sensibilities and
newer intelligences of lands, in which philanthropy has made education
as common as the air that is breathed.'

'Wally,' said Olivia, coming up to the poetess, in anger that was
almost apparent, 'I want to take you, and introduce you to the Marchesa
Pulti.'

But Miss Petrie no doubt knew that the eldest son of an English lord
was at least as good as an Italian marchesa. 'Let her come here,' said
the poetess, with her grandest smile.

CHAPTER LVI - WITHERED GRASS

When Caroline Spalding perceived how direct an attempt had been made by
her sister to take the poetess away, in order that she might thus be
left alone with Mr Glascock, her spirit revolted against the manoeuvre,
and she took herself away amidst the crowd. If Mr Glascock should wish
to find her again he could do so. And there came across her mind
something of a half-formed idea that, perhaps after all her friend
Wallachia was right. Were this man ready to take her and she ready to
be taken, would such an arrangement be a happy one for both of them?
His high-born, wealthy friends might very probably despise her, and it
was quite possible that she also might despise them. To be Lady
Peterborough, and have the spending of a large fortune, would not
suffice for her happiness. She was sure of that. It would be 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
love-making 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, and Mr Glascock made his escape. 'I hold it to be the
holiest duty which I owe to my country never to spare one of them when
I meet him.'

'They are all very well in their way,' said the American gentleman.

'Down with them, down with them!' exclaimed the poetess, with a
beautiful enthusiasm. In the meantime Mr Glascock had made up his mind
that he could not dare to ask Caroline Spalding to be his wife. There
were certain forms of the American female so dreadful that no wise man
would wilfully come in contact with them. Miss Petrie's ferocity was
distressing to him, but her eloquence and enthusiasm were worse even
than her ferocity. The personal incivility of which she had been guilty
in calling him a withered grass was distasteful to him, as being
opposed to his ideas of the customs of society; but what would be his
fate if his wife's chosen friend should be for ever dinning her
denunciation of withered grasses into his ear?

He was still thinking of all this when he was accosted by Mrs Spalding.
'Are you going to dear Lady Banbury's to-morrow?' she asked. Lady
Banbury was the wife of the English Minister.

'I suppose I shall be there in the course of the evening.'

'How very nice she is; is she not? I do like Lady Banbury so soft, and
gentle, and kind.'

'One of the pleasantest old ladies I know,' said Mr Glascock.

'It does not strike you so much as it does me,' said Mrs Spalding, with
one of her sweetest smiles. 'The truth is, we all value what we have
not got. There are no Lady Banburys in our country, and therefore we
think the more of them when we meet them here. She is talking of going
to Rome for the Carnival, and has asked Caroline to go with her. I am
so pleased to find that my dear girl is such a favourite.'

Mr Glascock immediately told himself that he saw the hook. If he were
to be fished for by this American aunt as he had been fished for by
English mothers, all his pleasure in the society of Caroline Spalding
would be at once over. It would be too much, indeed, if in this
American household he were to find the old vices of an aristocracy
superadded to young republican sins! Nevertheless Lady Banbury was, as
he knew well, a person whose opinion about young people was supposed to
be very good. She noticed those only who were worthy of notice; and to
have been taken by the hand by Lady Banbury was acknowledged to be a
passport into good society. If Caroline Spalding was in truth going to
Rome with Lady Banbury, that fact was in itself a great confirmation of
Mr Glascock's good opinion of her. Mrs Spalding had perhaps understood
this; but had not understood that having just hinted that it was so,
she should have abstained from saying a word more about her dear girl.
Clever and well-practised must, indeed, be the hand of the fisherwoman
in matrimonial waters who is able to throw her fly without showing any
glimpse of the hook to the fish for whom she angles. Poor Mrs Spalding,
though with kindly instincts towards her niece she did on this occasion
make some slight attempt at angling, was innocent of any concerted
plan. It seemed to her to be so natural to say a good word in praise of
her niece to the man whom she believed to be in love with her niece.

Caroline and Mr Glascock did not meet each other again till late in the
evening, and just as he was about to take his leave. As they came
together each of them involuntarily looked round to see whether Miss
Petrie was near. Had she been there nothing would have been said beyond
the shortest farewell greeting. But Miss Petrie was afar off,
electrifying some Italian by the vehemence of her sentiments, and the
audacious volubility of a language in which all arbitrary restrictions
were ignored. 'Are you going?' she asked.

'Well I believe I am. Since I saw you last I've encountered Miss Petrie
again, and I'm rather depressed.'

'Ah you don't know her. If you did you wouldn't laugh at her.'

'Laugh at her! Indeed I do not do that; but when I'm told that I'm to
be thrown into the oven and burned because I'm such a worn-out old
institution--'

'You don't mean to say that you mind that!'

'Not much, when it comes up in the ordinary course of conversation; but
it palls upon one when it is asserted for the fourth or fifth time in
an evening.'

'Alas, alas!' exclaimed Miss. Spalding, with mock energy.

'And why, alas?'

'Because it is so impossible to make the oil and vinegar of the old
world and of the new mix together and suit each other.'

'You think it is impossible, Miss Spalding?'

'I fear so. We are so terribly tender, and you are always pinching us
on our most tender spot. And we never meet you without treading on your
gouty toes.'

'I don't think my toes are gouty,' said he.

'I apologise to your own, individually, Mr Glascock; but I must assert
that nationally you are subject to the gout.'

'That is, when I'm told over and over again that I'm to be cut down and
thrown into the oven--'

'Never mind the oven now, Mr Glascock. If my friend has been
over-zealous I will beg pardon for her. But it does seem to me, indeed
it does, with all the reverence and partiality I have for everything
European,' the word European was an offence to him, and he shewed that
it was so by his countenance 'that the idiosyncrasies of you and of us
are so radically different, that we cannot be made to amalgamate and
sympathise with each other thoroughly.'

He paused for some seconds before he answered her, but it was so
evident by his manner that he was going to speak, that she could
neither leave him nor interrupt him. 'I had thought that it might have
been otherwise,' he said at last, and the tone of his voice was so
changed as to make her know that he was in earnest.

But she did not change her voice by a single note. 'I'm afraid it
cannot be so,' she said, speaking after her old fashion half in
earnest, half in banter. 'We may make up our minds to be very civil to
each other when we meet. The threats of the oven may no doubt be
dropped on our side, and you may abstain from expressing in words your
sense of our inferiority.'

'I never expressed anything of the kind,' he said, quite in anger.