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

high; but they had been depressed gradually; and, in the slow, dull

routine of her daily life, she had learned to bear disappointment by

degrees, without sign of outward suffering, without consciousness of

acute pain. The task of her life had been weary, and the wished-for

goal was ever becoming more and more distant; but there had been still

a chance, and she had fallen away into a lethargy of lessening

expectation, from which joy, indeed, had been banished, but in which

there had been nothing of agony. Then had come upon the whole house at

Heavitree the great Stanbury peril, and, arising out of that, had

sprung new hopes to Arabella, which made her again capable of all the

miseries of a foiled ambition. She could again be patient, if patience

might be of any service; but in such a condition an eternity of

patience is simply suicidal. She was willing to work hard, but how

could she work harder than she had worked. Poor young woman perishing

beneath an incubus which a false idea of fashion had imposed on her!

‘I hope I have said nothing that makes you unhappy,’ pleaded Mr Gibson.

‘I’m sure I haven’t meant it.’

‘But you have,’ she said. ‘You make me very unhappy. You condemn me. I

see you do. And if I have done wrong it had been all because—Oh dear,

oh dear, oh dear!’

‘But who says you have done wrong?’

‘You won’t call me Bella because you say the little birds will hear it.

If I don’t care for the little birds, why should you?’

There is no question more difficult than this for a gentleman to

answer. Circumstances do not often admit of its being asked by a lady

with that courageous simplicity which had come upon Miss French in this

moment of her agonising struggle; but nevertheless it is one which, in

a more complicated form, is often put, and to which some reply, more or

less complicated, is expected. ‘If I, a woman, can dare, for your sake,

to encounter the public tongue, will you, a man, be afraid?’ The true

answer, if it could be given, would probably be this; ‘I am afraid,

though a man, because I have much to lose and little to get. You are

not afraid, though a woman, because you have much to get and little to

lose.’ But such an answer would be uncivil, and is not often given.

Therefore men shuffle and lie, and tell themselves that in love—love

here being taken to mean all antenuptial contests between man and woman—

everything is fair. Mr Gibson had the above answer in his mind, though

he did not frame it into words. He was neither sufficiently brave nor

sufficiently cruel to speak to her in such language. There was nothing

for him, therefore, but that he must shuffle and lie.

‘I only meant,’ said he, ‘that I would not for worlds do anything to

make you uneasy.’

She did not see how she could again revert to the subject of her own

Christian name. She had made her little tender, loving request, and it

had been refused. Of course she knew that it had been refused as a

matter of caution. She was not angry with him because of his caution,

as she had expected him to be cautious. The barriers over which she had

to climb were no more than she had expected to find in her way, but they

were so very high and so very difficult! Of course she was aware that

he would escape if he could. She was not angry with him on that

account. Anger could not have helped her. Indeed, she did not price

herself highly enough to make her feel that she would be justified in

being angry. It was natural enough that he shouldn’t want her. She knew

herself to be a poor, thin, vapid, tawdry creature, with nothing to

recommend her to any man except a sort of second-rate, provincial-town

fashion which, infatuated as she was, she attributed in a great degree to

the thing she carried on her head. She knew nothing. She could do

nothing. She possessed nothing. She was not angry with him because he

so evidently wished to avoid her. But she thought that if she could

only be successful she would be good and loving and obedient and that

it was fair for her at any rate to try. Each created animal must live

and get its food by the gifts which the Creator has given to it, let

those gifts be as poor as they may, let them be even as distasteful as

they may to other members of the great created family. The rat, the

toad, the slug, the flea, must each live according to its appointed

mode of existence. Animals which are parasites by nature can only live

by attaching themselves to life that is strong. To Arabella, Mr Gibson

would be strong enough, and it seemed to her that it she could fix

herself permanently upon his strength, that would be her proper mode of

living. She was not angry with him because he resisted the attempt, but

she had nothing of conscience to tell her that she should spare him as

long as there remained to her a chance of success. And should not her

plea of excuse, her justification be admitted? There are tormentors as

to which no man argues that they are iniquitous, though they be very

troublesome. He either rids himself of them, or suffers as quiescently

as he may.

‘We used to be such great friends, she said, still crying, ‘and I am

afraid you don’t like me a bit now.’

‘Indeed, I do I have always liked you. But—’

‘But what? Do tell me what the but means. I will do anything that you

bid me.’

Then it occurred to him that if, after such a promise, he were to

confide to her his feeling that the chignon which she wore was ugly and

unbecoming, she would probably be induced to change her mode of

headdress. It was a foolish idea, because, had he followed it out, he

would have seen that compliance on her part in such a matter could only

be given with the distinct understanding that a certain reward should

be the consequence. When an unmarried gentleman calls upon an unmarried

lady to change the fashion of her personal adornments, the unmarried

lady has a right to expect that the unmarried gentleman means to make

her his wife. But Mr Gibson had no such meaning; and was led into error

by the necessity for sudden action. When she offered to do anything

that he might bid her do, he could not take up his hat and go away he

looked up into his face, expecting that he would give her some order

and he fell into the temptation that was spread for him.

‘If I might say a word,’ he began.

‘You may say anything,’ she exclaimed.

‘If I were you I don’t think—’

‘You don’t think what, Mr Gibson?’

He found it to be a matter very difficult of approach. ‘Do you know, I

don’t think the fashion that has come up about wearing your hair quite

suits you—not so well as the way you used to do it.’ She became on a

sudden very red in the face, and he thought that she was angry. Vexed

she was, but still, accompanying her vexation, there was a remembrance

that she was achieving victory even by her own humiliation. She loved

her chignon; but she was ready to abandon even that for him.

Nevertheless she could not speak for a moment or two, and he was forced

to continue his criticism. ‘I have no doubt those things are very

becoming and all that, and I dare say they are comfortable.’

‘Oh, very,’ she said.

‘But there was a simplicity that I liked about the other.’

Could it be then that for the last five years he had stood aloof from

her because she had arrayed herself in fashionable attire? She was

still very red in the face, still suffering from wounded vanity, still

conscious of that soreness which affects us all when we are made to

understand that we are considered to have failed there, where we have

most thought that we excelled. But her womanly art enabled her quickly to

conceal the pain. ‘I have made a promise,’ she said, ‘and you will find

that I will keep it.’

‘What promise?’ asked Mr Gibson.

‘I said that I would do as you bade me, and so I will. I would have

done it sooner if I had known that you wished it. I would never have

worn it at all if I had thought that you disliked it.’

‘I think that a little of them is very nice,’ said Mr Gibson. Mr Gibson

was certainly an awkward man. But there are men so awkward that it

seems to be their especial province to say always the very worst thing

at the very worst moment.

She became redder than ever as she was thus told of the hugeness of her

favourite ornament. She was almost angry now. But she restrained

herself, thinking perhaps of how she might teach him taste in days to

come as he was teaching her now. ‘I will change it tomorrow,’ she said

with a smile. ‘You come and see tomorrow.’

Upon this he got up and took his hat and made his escape, assuring her

that he would come and see her on the morrow. She let him go now

without any attempt at further tenderness. Certainly she had gained

much during the interview. He had as good as told her in what had been

her offence, and of course, when she had remedied that offence, he

could hardly refuse to return to her. She got up as soon as she was

alone, and looked at her head in the glass, and told herself that the

pity would be great. It was not that the chignon was in itself a thing

of beauty, but that it imparted so unmistakable an air of fashion! It

divested her of that dowdiness which she feared above all things, and

enabled her to hold her own among other young women, without feeling

that she was absolutely destitute of attraction. There had been a

certain homage paid to it, which she had recognised and enjoyed. But it

was her ambition to hold her own, not among young women, but among

clergymen’s wives, and she would certainly obey his orders. She could

not make the attempt now because of the complications; but she

certainly would make it before she laid her head on the pillow—and

would explain to Camilla that it was a little joke between herself and

Mr Gibson.