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

encountered face to face. It is certain that Mr Gibson’s position had

been one most trying to the nerves. He had speculated on various modes

of escape; a curacy in the north of England would be welcome, or the

duties of a missionary in New Zealand, or death. To tell the truth, he

had, during the last week or two, contemplated even a return to the

dominion of Camilla. That there should ever again be things pleasant

for him in Exeter seemed to be quite impossible. And yet, on the

evening of the day but one after the departure of Camilla, he was

seated almost comfortably with his own Arabella! There is nothing that

a man may not do, nothing that he may not achieve, if he have only

pluck enough to go through with it.

‘You do love me?’ Bella said to him. It was natural that she should ask

him; but it would have been better perhaps if she had held her tongue.

Had she spoken to him about his house, or his income, or the servants,

or the duties of his parish church, it would have been easier for him

to make a comfortable reply.

‘Yes I love you,’ he replied; ‘of course I love you. We have always

been friends, and I hope things will go straight now. I have had a

great deal to go through, Bella, and so have you, but God will temper

the wind to the shorn lambs.’ How was the wind to be tempered for the

poor lamb who had gone forth shorn down to the very skin!

Soon after this Mrs French returned to the room, and then there was no

more romance. Mrs French had by no means forgiven Mr Gibson all the

trouble he had brought into the family, and mixed a certain amount of

acrimony with her entertainment of him. She dictated to him, treated

him with but scant respect, and did not hesitate to let him understand

that he was to be watched very closely till he was actually and

absolutely married. The poor man had in truth no further idea of

escape. He was aware that he had done that which made it necessary that

he should bear a great deal, and that he had no right to resent

suspicion. When a day was fixed in June on which he should be married

at the church of Heavitree, and it was proposed that he should be

married by banns, he had nothing to urge to the contrary. And when it

was also suggested to him by one of the prebendaries of the Cathedral

that it might be well for him to change his clerical duties for a

period with the vicar of a remote parish in the north of Cornwall so as

to be out of the way of remark from those whom he had scandalised by

his conduct, he had no objection to make to that arrangement. When Mrs

MacHugh met him in the Close, and told him that he was a gay Lothario,

he shook his head with a melancholy self-abasement, and passed on

without even a feeling of anger. ‘When they smite me on the right

cheek, I turn unto them my left,’ he said to himself, when one of the

cathedral vergers remarked to him that after all he was going to be

married at last. Even Bella became dominant over him, and assumed with

him occasionally the air of one who had been injured.

Bella wrote a touching letter to her sister, a letter that ought to have

touched Camilla, begging for forgiveness, and for one word of sisterly

love. Camilla answered the letter, but did not send a word of sisterly

love. ‘According to my way of thinking, you have been a nasty sly

thing, and I don’t believe you’ll ever be happy. As for him, I’ll never

speak to him again.’ That was nearly the whole of her letter. ‘You must

leave it to time,’ said Mrs French wisely;‘she’ll come round some day.’

And then Mrs French thought how bad it would be for her if the daughter

who was to be her future companion did not ‘come round’ some day.

And so it was settled that they should be married in Heavitree Church,

Mr Gibson and his first love, and things went on pretty much as though

nothing had been done amiss. The gentleman from Cornwall came down to

take Mr Gibson’s place at St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin, while his duties in

the Cathedral were temporarily divided among the other priest-vicars

-with some amount of grumbling on their part. Bella commenced her

modest preparations without any of the eclat which had attended

Camilla’s operations, but she felt more certainty of ultimate success

than had ever fallen to Camilla’s lot. In spite of all that had come

and gone, Bella never feared again that Mr Gibson would be untrue to

her. In regard to him, it must be doubted whether Nemesis ever fell

upon him with a hand sufficiently heavy to punish him for the great

sins which he had manifestly committed. He had encountered a bad week

or two, and there had been days in which, as has been said, he thought

of Natal, of ecclesiastical censures, and even of annihilation; but no

real punishment seemed to fall upon him. It may be doubted whether,

when the whole arrangement was settled for him, and when he heard that

Camilla had yielded to the decrees of Fate, he did not rather flatter

himself on being a successful man of intrigue, whether he did not take

some glory to himself for his good fortune with women, and pride

himself amidst his self-reproaches for the devotion which had been

displayed for him by the fair sex in general. It is quite possible that

he taught himself to believe that at one time Dorothy Stanbury was

devotedly in love with him, and that when he reckoned up his sins she

was one of those in regard to whom he accounted himself to have been a

sinner. The spirit of intrigue with women, as to which men will flatter

themselves, is customarily so vile, so mean, so vapid a reflection of a

feeling, so aimless, resultless, and utterly unworthy! Passion exists

and has its sway. Vice has its votaries and there is, too, that

worn-out longing for vice, ‘prurient, yet passionless, cold-studied

lewdness’, which drags on a feeble continuance with the aid of money.

But the commonest folly of man in regard to women is a weak taste for

intrigue, with little or nothing on which to feed it a worse than

feminine aptitude for male coquetry, which never ascends beyond a

desire that somebody shall hint that there is something peculiar; and

which is shocked and retreats backwards into its boots when anything

like a consequence forces itself on the apprehension. Such men have

their glory in their own estimation. We remember how Falstaff flouted

the pride of his companion whose victory in the fields of love had been

but little glorious. But there are victories going now-a-days so

infinitely less glorious, that Falstaff’s page was a Lothario, a very

Don Juan, in comparison with the heroes whose praises are too often

sung by their own lips. There is this recompense: that their defeats are

always sung by lips louder than their own. Mr Gibson, when he found

that he was to escape apparently unscathed, that people standing

respectably before the world absolutely dared to whisper words to him

of congratulation on this third attempt at marriage within little more

than a year, took pride to himself, and bethought himself that he was a

gay deceiver. He believed that he had selected his wife and that he had

done so in circumstances of peculiar difficulty! Poor Mr Gibson—we

hardly know whether most to pity him, or the unfortunate, poor woman

who ultimately became Mrs Gibson.

‘And so Bella French is to be the fortunate woman after all,’ said Miss

Stanbury to her niece.

‘It does seem to me to be so odd,’ said Dorothy. ‘I wonder how he

looked when he proposed it.’

‘Like a fool, as he always does.’

Dorothy refrained from remarking that Miss Stanbury had not always

thought that Mr Gibson looked like a fool, but the idea occurred to her

mind. ‘I hope they will be happy at last,’ she said.

‘Pshaw! Such people can’t be happy, and can’t be unhappy. I don’t

suppose it much matters which he marries, or whether he marries them

both, or neither. They are to be married by banns, they say at

Heavitree.’

‘I don’t see anything bad in that.’

‘Only Camilla might step out and forbid them,’ said Aunt Stanbury. ‘I

almost wish she would.’

‘She has gone away, aunt, to an uncle who lives at Gloucester.’

‘It was well to get her out of the way, no doubt. They’ll be married

before you now, Dolly.’

‘That won’t break my heart, aunt.’

‘I don’t suppose there’ll be much of a wedding. They haven’t anybody

belonging to them, except that uncle at Gloucester.’ Then there was a

pause. ‘I think it is a nice thing for friends to collect together at a

wedding,’ continued Aunt Stanbury.

‘I think it is,’ said Dorothy, in the mildest, softest voice.

‘I suppose we must make room for that black sheep of a brother of

yours, Dolly or else you won’t be contented.’

‘Dear, dear, dearest aunt!’ said Dorothy, falling down on her knees at

her aunt’s feet.