He Knew He Was Right Part 55

"Nothing, I should think," said he. "Nothing will, at any rate."

"And you will not get back your money?" said the elder,--who, though the elder, was probably not much above twenty.

"Well;--no. Time is money, they say. It would take thrice the value of the time in money, and then one would probably fail. They have done very well for us, and I suppose there are difficulties."

"It couldn't have taken place in our country," said the younger lady.

"All the same, we are very much obliged to you. It would not have been nice for us to have to go up into the banquette."

"They would have put you into the interior."

"And that would have been worse. I hate being put anywhere,--as if I were a sheep. It seems so odd to us, that you here should be all so tame."

"Do you mean the English or the French, or the world in general on this side of the Atlantic?"

"We mean Europeans," said the younger lady, who was better after her breakfast. "But then we think that the French have something of compensation, in their manners, and their ways of life, their climate, the beauty of their cities, and their general management of things."

"They are very great in many ways, no doubt," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k.

"They do understand living better than you do," said the elder.

"Everything is so much brighter with them," said the younger.

"They contrive to give a grace to every-day existence," said the elder.

"There is such a welcome among them for strangers," said the younger.

"Particularly in reference to places taken in the coupe," said Trevelyan, who had hardly spoken before.

"Ah, that is an affair of honesty," said the elder. "If we want honesty, I believe we must go back to the stars and stripes."

Mr. Glasc.o.c.k looked up from his plate almost aghast. He said nothing, however, but called for the waiter, and paid for his breakfast.

Nevertheless, there was a considerable amount of travelling friends.h.i.+p engendered between the ladies and our two friends before the diligence had left the railway yard. They were two Miss Spaldings, going on to Florence, at which place they had an uncle, who was minister from the States to the kingdom of Italy; and they were not at all unwilling to receive such little civilities as gentlemen can give to ladies when travelling. The whole party intended to sleep at Turin that night, and they were altogether on good terms with each other when they started on the journey from St.

Michael.

"Clever women those," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, as soon as they had arranged their legs and arms in the banquette.

"Yes, indeed."

"American women always are clever,--and are almost always pretty."

"I do not like them," said Trevelyan,--who in these days was in a mood to like nothing. "They are exigeant;--and then they are so hard.

They want the weakness that a woman ought to have."

"That comes from what they would call your insular prejudice. We are accustomed to less self-a.s.sertion on the part of women than is customary with them. We prefer women to rule us by seeming to yield.

In the States, as I take it, the women never yield, and the men have to fight their own battles with other tactics."

"I don't know what their tactics are."

"They keep their distance. The men live much by themselves, as though they knew they would not have a chance in the presence of their wives and daughters. Nevertheless they don't manage these things badly. You very rarely hear of an American being separated from his wife."

The words were no sooner out of his mouth, than Mr. Glasc.o.c.k knew, and remembered, and felt what he had said. There are occasions in which a man sins so deeply against fitness and the circ.u.mstances of the hour, that it becomes impossible for him to slur over his sin as though it had not been committed. There are certain little peccadilloes in society which one can manage to throw behind one,--perhaps with some difficulty, and awkwardness; but still they are put aside, and conversation goes on, though with a hitch. But there are graver offences, the gravity of which strikes the offender so seriously that it becomes impossible for him to seem even to ignore his own iniquity. Ashes must be eaten publicly, and sackcloth worn before the eyes of men. It was so now with poor Mr. Glasc.o.c.k. He thought about it for a moment,--whether or no it was possible that he should continue his remarks about the American ladies, without betraying his own consciousness of the thing that he had done; and he found that it was quite impossible. He knew that he was red up to his hairs, and hot, and that his blood tingled. His blushes, indeed, would not be seen in the seclusion of the banquette; but he could not overcome the heat and the tingling. There was silence for about three minutes, and then he felt that it would be best for him to confess his own fault. "Trevelyan," he said, "I am very sorry for the allusion that I made. I ought to have been less awkward, and I beg your pardon."

"It does not matter," said Trevelyan. "Of course I know that everybody is talking of it behind my back. I am not to expect that people will be silent because I am unhappy."

"Nevertheless I beg your pardon," said the other.

There was but little further conversation between them till they reached Lanslebourg, at the foot of the mountain, at which place they occupied themselves with getting coffee for the two American ladies.

The Miss Spaldings took their coffee almost with as much grace as though it had been handed to them by Frenchmen. And indeed they were very gracious,--as is the nature of American ladies in spite of that hardness of which Trevelyan had complained. They a.s.sume an intimacy readily, with no appearance of impropriety, and are at their ease easily. When, therefore, they were handed out of their carriage by Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, the bystanders at Lanslebourg might have thought that the whole party had been travelling together from New York. "What should we have done if you hadn't taken pity on us?" said the elder lady. "I don't think we could have climbed up into that high place; and look at the crowd that have come out of the interior. A man has some advantages after all."

"I am quite in the dark as to what they are," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k.

"He can give up his place to a lady, and can climb up into a banquette."

"And he can be a member of Congress," said the younger. "I'd sooner be senator from Ma.s.sachusetts than be the Queen of England."

"So would I," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k. "I'm glad we can agree about one thing."

The two gentlemen agreed to walk up the mountain together, and with some trouble induced the conductor to permit them to do so. Why conductors of diligences should object to such relief to their horses the ordinary Englishman can hardly understand. But in truth they feel so deeply the responsibility which attaches itself to their shepherding of their sheep, that they are always fearing lest some poor lamb should go astray on the mountain side. And though the road be broad and very plainly marked, the conductor never feels secure that his pa.s.senger will find his way safely to the summit. He likes to know that each of his flock is in his right place, and disapproves altogether of an erratic spirit. But Mr. Glasc.o.c.k at last prevailed, and the two men started together up the mountain. When the permission has been once obtained the walker may be sure that his guide and shepherd will not desert him.

"Of course I know," said Trevelyan, when the third twist up the mountain had been overcome, "that people talk about me and my wife.

It is a part of the punishment for the mistake that one makes."

"It is a sad affair altogether."

"The saddest in the world. Lady Milborough has no doubt spoken to you about it."

"Well;--yes; she has."

"How could she help it? I am not such a fool as to suppose that people are to hold their tongues about me more than they do about others. Intimate as she is with you, of course she has spoken to you."

"I was in hopes that something might have been done by this time."

"Nothing has been done. Sometimes I think I shall put an end to myself, it makes me so wretched."

"Then why don't you agree to forget and forgive and have done with it?"

"That is so easily said;--so easily said." After this they walked on in silence for a considerable distance. Mr. Glasc.o.c.k was not anxious to talk about Trevelyan's wife, but he did wish to ask a question or two about Mrs. Trevelyan's sister, if only this could be done without telling too much of his own secret. "There's nothing I think so grand, as walking up a mountain," he said after a while.

"It's all very well," said Trevelyan, in a tone which seemed to imply that to him in his present miserable condition all recreations, exercises, and occupations were mere leather and prunella.

"I don't mean, you know, in the Alpine Club way," said Glasc.o.c.k. "I'm too old and too stiff for that. But when the path is good, and the air not too cold, and when it is neither snowing, nor thawing, nor raining, and when the sun isn't hot, and you've got plenty of time, and know that you can stop any moment you like and be pushed up by a carriage, I do think walking up a mountain is very fine,--if you've got proper shoes, and a good stick, and it isn't too soon after dinner. There's nothing like the air of Alps." And Mr. Glasc.o.c.k renewed his pace, and stretched himself against the hill at the rate of three miles an hour.

"I used to be very fond of Switzerland," said Trevelyan, "but I don't care about it now. My eye has lost all its taste."

"It isn't the eye," said Glasc.o.c.k.

"Well; no. The truth is that when one is absolutely unhappy one cannot revel in the imagination. I don't believe in the miseries of poets."