He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (books you need to read .txt) 📕

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 tomorrow?’ 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.

‘I am taking you simply as the sample Englishman, not as Mr Glascock,

who helped me and my sister over the mountains. Such of us as have to

meet in society may agree to be very courteous; but courtesy and

cordiality are not only not the same, but they are incompatible.’

‘Why so?’

‘Courtesy is an effort, and cordiality is free. I must be allowed to

contradict the friend that I love; but I assent too often falsely to

what is said to me by a passing acquaintance. In spite of what the

Scripture says, I think it is one of the greatest privileges of a

brother that he may call his brother a fool.’

‘Shall you desire to call your husband a fool?’

‘My husband!’

‘He will, I suppose, be at least as dear to you as a brother?’

‘I never had a brother.’

‘Your sister, then! It is the same, I suppose?’

‘If I were to have a husband, I hope he would be the dearest to me of

all. Unless he were so, he certainly would not be my husband. But

between a man and his wife there does not spring up that playful,

violent intimacy admitting of all liberties, which comes from early

nursery associations; and, then, there is the difference of sex.’

‘I should not like my wife to call me a fool,’ he said.

‘I hope she may never have occasion to do so, Mr Glascock. Marry an

English wife in your own class as, of course, you will and then you

will be safe.’

‘But I have set my heart fast on marrying an American wife,’ he said.

‘Then I can’t tell what may befall you. It’s like enough, if you do

that, that you may be called by some name you will think hard to bear.

But you’ll think better of it. Like should pair with like, Mr Glascock.

If you were to marry one of our young women, you would lose in dignity

as much as she would lose in comfort.’ Then they parted, and she went

off to say farewell to other guests. The manner in which she had

answered what he had said to her had certainly been of a nature to stop

any further speech of the same kind. Had she been gentle with him, then

he would certainly have told her that she was the American woman whom

he desired to take with him to his home in England.