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THE AMERICAN SENATOR
“And a man is to do just as he pleases?”
“I am afraid so. If a man is known to have behaved badly to
a girl, public opinion will condemn him.”
“Can anything be worse than this treatment of me?” Lord
Mistletoe could not tell her that he had alluded to absolute
knowledge and that at present he had no more than her version of the story; — or that the world would require more than
that before the general condemnation of which he had spoken
would come. So he sat in silence and shook his head. “And you
think that I should put up with it quietly!”
“I think that your father should see the man.” Arabella
shook her head contemptuously. “If you wish it I will write to
my mother.”
“I would rather trust to my uncle.”
“I don’t know what he could do; — but I will write to him
if you please.”
“And you won’t see Lord Rufford?”
He sat silent for a minute or two during which she pressed
him over and over again to have an interview with her recreant lover, bringing up all the arguments that she knew, reminding him of their former affection for each other, telling
him that she had no brother of her own, and that her own
father was worse than useless in such a matter. A word or two
she said of the nature of the prize to be gained, and many
words as to her absolute right to regard that prize as her own.
But at last he refused. “I am not the person to do it,” he said.
“Even if I were your brother I should not be so, — unless with
the view of punishing him for his conduct; — in which place
the punishment to you would be worse than any I could inflict
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
on him. It cannot be good that any young lady should have her
name in the mouths of all the lovers of gossip in the country.”
She was going to burst out at him in her anger, but before the words were out of her mouth she remembered herself. She could not afford to make enemies and certainly not
an enemy of him. “Perhaps, then,” she said, “you had better tell your mother all that I have told you. I will write to
the Duke myself.”
And so she left him, and as she returned to Orchard
Street in the brougham, she applied to him every term of reproach she could bring to mind. He was selfish, and a coward, and utterly devoid of all feeling of family honour. He was
a prig, and unmanly, and false. A real cousin would have burst
out into a passion and have declared himself ready to seize
Lord Rufford by the throat and shake him into instant matrimony. But this man, through whose veins water was running
instead of blood, had no feeling, no heart, no capability for
anger! Oh, what a vile world it was! A little help, — so very little, — would have made everything straight for her! If her aunt
had only behaved at Mistletoe as aunts should behave, there
would have been no difficulty. In her misery she thought that
the world was more cruel to her than to any other person in it.
On her arrival at home, she was astounded by a letter
that she found there, — a letter of such a nature that it altogether drove out of her head the purpose which she had of
writing to the Duke on that evening. The letter was from John
Morton and now reached her through the lawyer to whom it
had been sent by private hand for immediate delivery. It ran
as follows:
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THE AMERICAN SENATOR
DEAREST ARABELLA,
I am very ill, — so ill that Dr. Fanning who has come down
from London, has, I think, but a poor opinion of my case.
He does not say that it is hopeless, — and that is all. I think
it right to tell you this, as my affection for you is what it always has been. If you wish to see me, you and your mother had
better come to Bragton at once. You can telegraph. I am too
weak to write more.
Yours most affectionately,
OHN MORTON.
J
There is nothing infectious.
“John Morton is dying,” she almost screamed out to her
mother.
“Dying!”
“So he says. Oh, what an unfortunate wretch I am! Everything that touches me comes to grief.” Then she burst out into
a flood of true unfeigned tears.
“It won’t matter so much,” said Lady Augustus, “if you
mean to write to the Duke, and go on with this other — affair.”
“Oh, mamma, how can you talk in that way?”
“Well; my dear; you know —”
“I am heartless. I know that. But you are ten times worse.
Think how I have treated him!”
“I don’t want him to die, my dear; but what can I say? I can’t
do him any good. It is all in God’s hands, and if he must die —
why, it won’t make so much difference to you. I have looked
upon all that as over for a long time.”
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
“It is not over. After all he has liked me better than any of
them. He wants me to go to Bragton.”
“That of course is out of the question.”
“It is not out of the question at all. I shall go.”
“Arabella!”
“And you must go with me, mamma.”
“I will do no such thing,” said Lady Augustus, to whom
the idea of Bragton was terrible.
“Indeed you must. He has asked me to go, and I shall do it.
You can hardly let me go alone.”
“And what will you say to Lord Rufford?”
“I don’t care for Lord Rufford. Is he to prevent my going
where I please?”
“And your father, — and the Duke, — and the Duchess!
How can you go there after all that you have been doing since
you left?”
“What do I care for the Duke and the Duchess. It has
come to that, that I care for no one. They are all throwing me
over. That little wretch Mistletoe will do nothing. This man
really loved me. He has never treated me badly. Whether he
live or whether he die, he has been true to me.” Then she
sat and thought of it all. What would Lord Rufford care for
her father’s letter? If her cousin Mistletoe would not stir in
her behalf what chance had she with her uncle? And, though
she had thoroughly despised her cousin, she had understood
and had unconsciously believed much that he had said to her.
“In these days one can’t make a man marry!” What horrid
days they were! But John Morton would marry her to-morrow
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THE AMERICAN SENATOR
if he were well, — in spite of all her ill usage! Of course he
would die and so she would again be overwhelmed; — but
yet she would go and see him. As she determined to do so
there was something even in her hard callous heart softer
than the love of money and more human than the dream of
an advantageous settlement in life.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SENATOR’S SECOND
LETTER
In the mean time our friend the Senator, up in London,
was much distracted in his mind, finding no one to sympathise
with him in his efforts, conscious of his own rectitude of purpose, always brave against others, and yet with a sad doubt in
his own mind whether it could be possible that he should always be right and everybody around him wrong.
Coming away from Mr. Mainwaring’s dinner he had almost quarrelled with John Morton, or rather John Morton
had altogether quarrelled with him. On their way back from
Dillsborough to Bragton the minister elect to Patagonia had
told him, in so many words, that he had misbehaved himself at
the clergyman’s house. “Did I say anything that was untrue?”
asked the Senator —” Was I inaccurate in my statements?
If so no man alive will be more ready to recall what he has
said and to ask for pardon.” Mr. Morton endeavoured to explain to him that it was not his statements which were at fault
so much as the opinions based on them and the language in
which those opinions were given. But the Senator could not
be made to understand that a man had not a right to his opin-
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THE AMERICAN SENATOR
ions, and a right also to the use of forcible language as long as
he abstained from personalities. “It was extremely personal, —
all that you said about the purchase of livings,” said Morton.
“How was I to know that?” rejoined the Senator. “When in
private society I inveigh against pickpockets I cannot imagine, sir, that there should be a pickpocket in the company.” As
the Senator said this he was grieving in his heart at the trouble he had occasioned, and was almost repenting the duties
he had imposed on himself; but, yet, his voice was bellicose
and antagonistic. The conversation was carried on till Morton
found himself constrained to say that though he entertained
great personal respect for his guest he could not go with him
again into society. He was ill at the time, — though neither he
himself knew it nor the Senator. On the next morning Mr. Gotobed returned to London without seeing his host, and before
the day was over Mr. Nupper was at Morton’s bedside. He was
already suffering from gastric fever.
The Senator was in truth unhappy as he returned to town.
The intimacy between him and the late Secretary of Legation
at his capital had arisen from a mutual understanding between them that each was to be allowed to see the faults and to
admire the virtues of their two countries, and that conversation between them was to be based on the mutual system. But
nobody can, in truth, endure to be told of shortcomings, — either on his own part or on that of his country. He himself can
abuse himself, or his country; but he cannot endure it from
alien lips. Mr. Gotobed had hardly said a word about England which Morton himself might not have said, — but such
words coming from an American had been too much even for
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
the guarded temper of an unprejudiced and phlegmatic Englishman. The Senator as he returned alone to London understood something of this, — and when a few days later he heard
that the friend who had quarrelled with him was ill, he was
discontented with himself and sore at heart.
But he had his task to perform, and he meant to perform
it to the best of his ability. In his own country he had heard
vehement abuse of the old land from the lips of politicians,
and had found at the same time almost on all sides great social
admiration for the people so abused. He had observed that every Englishman of distinction was received in the States as
a demigod, and that some who were not very great in their
own land had been converted into heroes in his. English
books were read there; English laws were obeyed there; English habits were cultivated, often at the expense of American
comfort. And yet it was the fashion among orators to speak of
the English as a worn-out, stupid and enslaved people. He was
a thoughtful man and all this had perplexed him; — so that he
had obtained leave from his State and from Congress to be absent during a part of a short Session, and had come over determined to learn as much as he could. Everything he heard and
almost everything he saw offended him at some point. And,
yet in the midst of it all, he was conscious that he was surrounded by people who claimed and made good their claims to
superiority. What was a lord, let him be ever so rich and have
ever so many titles? And yet, even with such a popinjay as Lord
Rufford, he himself felt the lordship. When that old farmer at
the hunt breakfast had removed himself and his belongings to
the other side of the table the Senator, though aware of the jus-
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THE AMERICAN SENATOR
tice of his cause, had been keenly alive to the rebuke. He had
expressed himself very boldly at the rector’s house at Dillsborough, and had been certain that not a word of real argument
had been possible in answer to him. But yet he left the house
with a feeling almost of shame, which had grown into real
penitence before he reached Bragton. He knew that he had
already been condemned by Englishmen as ill-mannered, illconditioned and absurd. He was as much alive as any man to
the inward distress of heart which such a conviction brings
with it to all sensitive minds. And yet he had his purpose and
would follow it out. He was already hard at work on the lecture which he meant to deliver somewhere in London before
he went back to his home duties, and had made it known to
the world at large that he meant to say some sharp things of
the country he was visiting.
Soon after his return to town he was present at the opening of Parliament, Mr. Mounser Green of the Foreign Office
having seen that he was properly accommodated with a seat.
Then he went down to the election of a member of Parliament in the little borough of Quinborough. It was unfortunate for Great Britain, which was on its trial, and unpleasant
also for the poor Senator who had appointed himself judge,
that such a seat should have fallen vacant at that moment.
Quinborough was a little town of 3,000 inhabitants clustering round the gates of a great Whig Marquis, which had been
spared, — who can say why? — at the first Reform Bill, and
having but one member had come out scatheless from the second. Quinborough still returned its one member with something less than 500 constituents, and in spite of household
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
suffrage and the ballot had always returned the member favoured by the Marquis. This nobleman, driven no doubt by
his conscience to make some return to the country for the favour shown to his family, had always sent to Parliament some
useful and distinguished man who without such patronage
might have been unable to serve his country. On the present occasion a friend of the people, — so called, — an unlettered demagogue such as is in England in truth distasteful to all classes, had taken himself down to Quinborough as
a candidate in opposition to the nobleman’s nominee. He had
been backed by all the sympathies of the American Senator who knew nothing of him or his unfitness, and nothing
whatever of the patriotism of the Marquis. But he did know
what was the population and what the constituency of Liverpool, and also what were those of Quinborough. He supposed
that he knew what was the theory of representation in England, and he understood correctly that hitherto the member
for Quinborough had been the nominee of that great lord.
These things were horrid to him. There was to his thinking
a fiction, — more than fiction, a falseness, — about all this
which not only would but ought to bring the country prostrate to the dust. When the working-man’s candidate, whose
political programme consisted of a general disbelief in all religions, received — by ballot! — only nine votes from those
500 voters, the Senator declared to himself that the country
must be rotten to the core. It was not only that Britons were
slaves, — but that they “hugged their chains.” To the gentleman who assured him that the Right Honble. — — — —
would make a much better member of Parliament than Tom
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