He Knew He Was Right Part 82

"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. Glasc.o.c.k, 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. Glasc.o.c.k. 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 gra.s.ses 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. Glasc.o.c.k 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. Glasc.o.c.k 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.ses 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. Glasc.o.c.k.

"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. Glasc.o.c.k 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 pa.s.sport 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. Glasc.o.c.k'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. Glasc.o.c.k 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 inst.i.tution--"

"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 a.s.serted 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. Glasc.o.c.k; but I must a.s.sert 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. Glasc.o.c.k. 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.

Glasc.o.c.k, 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 a.s.sent,--too often falsely,--to what is said to me by a pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sociations; and then, there is the difference of s.e.x."

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

"I hope she may never have occasion to do so, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k. Marry an English wife in your own cla.s.s,--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.

Glasc.o.c.k. 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.

CHAPTER LVII.

DOROTHY'S FATE.