Can You Forgive Her? (110 page)

‘Probably never again,’ said Alice. ‘And
yet I have been here now two years running.’

She shuddered as she remembered that in that former year George Vavasor had been with her. As she thought of it all she hated herself. Over and over again she had told herself that she had so mismanaged the latter years of her life that it was impossible for her not to hate herself. No woman had a clearer idea of feminine constancy than she had, and
no woman had sinned against that idea more deeply. He gave her time to think of all this as he sat there looking down upon the water.

‘And yet I would sooner live in Cambridgeshire,’ were the first words he spoke.’

‘Why so?’

‘Partly because all beauty is best enjoyed when it is sought for with some trouble and difficulty, and partly because such beauty, and the romance which is attached to
it, should not make up the staple of one’s life. Romance, if it is to come at all, should always come by fits and starts.’

‘I should like to live in a pretty country.’

‘And would like to live a romantic life, – no doubt; but all those things lose their charm if they are made common. When a man has to go to Vienna or St Petersburg two or three times a month, you don’t suppose he enjoys travelling?’

‘All the same, I should like to live in a pretty country,’ said Alice.

‘And I want you to come and live in a very ugly country.’ Then he paused for a minute or two, not looking at her, but gazing still on the mountain opposite. She did not speak a word, but looked as he was looking. She knew that the request was coming, and had been thinking about it all night; but now that it had come she did
not know how to bear herself. ‘I don’t think,’ he went on to say, ‘that you would let that consideration stand in your way, if on other grounds you were willing to become my wife.’

‘What consideration?’

‘Because Nethercoats is not so pretty as Lucerne.’

‘It would have nothing to do with it,’ said Alice.

‘It should have nothing to do with it.’

‘Nothing; nothing at all,’ repeated Alice.

‘Will
you come, then? Will you come and be my wife, and help me to be happy amidst all that ugliness? Will you come and be my one beautiful thing, my treasure, my joy, my comfort, my counsellor?’

‘You want no counsellor, Mr Grey.’

‘No man ever wanted one more. Alice, this has been a bad year to me, and I do not think that it has been a happy one for you.’

‘Indeed, no.’

‘Let us forget it, – or rather,
let us treat it as though it were forgotten. Twelve months ago you were mine. You were, at any rate, so much mine that I had a right to boast of my possession among my friends.’

‘It was a poor boast’

‘They did not seem to think so. I had but one or two to whom I could speak of you, but they told me that I was going to be a happy man. As to myself, I was sure that I was to be so. No man was ever
better contented with his bargain than I was with mine. Let us go back to it, and the last twelve months shall be as though they had never been.’

‘That cannot be, Mr Grey. If it could, I should be worse even than I am.’

‘Why cannot it be?’

‘Because I cannot forgive myself what I have done, and because you ought not to forgive me.’

‘But I do. There has never been an hour with me in which there
has been an offence of yours rankling in my bosom unforgiven. I think you have been foolish, misguided, – led away by a vain ambition, and that in the difficulty to which these things brought you, you endeavoured to constrain yourself to do an act, which, when it came near to you, – when the doing of it had to be more closely considered, you found to be contrary to your nature.’ Now, as he spoke
thus, she turned her eyes upon him, and looked at him, wondering that he should have had power to read her heart so accurately. ‘I never believed that you would marry your cousin. When I was told of it, I knew that trouble had blinded you for awhile. You had driven yourself to revolt against me, and Upon that your heart misgave you, and you said to yourself that it did
not matter then how you
might throw away all your sweetness. You see that I speak of your old love for me with the frank conceit of a happy lover.’

‘No; – no, no!’ she ejaculated.

‘But the storm passes over the tree and does not tear it up by the roots or spoil it of all its symmetry. When we hear the winds blowing, and see how the poor thing is shaken, we think that its days are numbered and its destruction at hand.
Alice, when the winds were shaking you, and you were torn and buffeted, I never thought so. There may be some who will forgive you slowly. Your own self-forgiveness will be slow. But I, who have known you better than any one, – yes, better than any one, – I have forgiven you everything, have forgiven you instantly. Come to me, Alice, and comfort me. Come to me, for I want you sorely.’ She sat quite
still, looking at the lake and the mountain beyond, but she said nothing. What could she say to him? ‘My need of you is much greater now,’ he went on to say, ‘than when I first asked you to share the world with me. Then I could have borne to lose you, as I had never boasted to myself that you were my own, – had never pictured to myself the life that might be mine if you were always to be with
me. But since that day I have had no other hope, – no other hope but this for which I plead now. Am I to plead in vain?’

‘You do not know me,’ she said; ‘how vile I have been! You do not think what it is, – for a woman to have promised herself to one man while she loved another.’

‘But it was me you loved. Ah! Alice, I can forgive that. Do I not tell you that I did forgive it the moment that
I heard it? Do you not hear me say that I never for a moment thought that you would marry him? Alice, you should scold me for my vanity, for I have believed all through that you loved me, and me only. Come to me, dear, and tell me that it is so, and the past shall be only as a dream.’

‘I am dreaming it always,’ said Alice.

‘They will cease to be bitter dreams if your head be upon my shoulder.
You will cease to reproach yourself when you know that you have made me happy.’

‘I shall never cease to reproach myself. I have done that which no woman can do and honour herself afterwards. I have been – a jilt’

‘The noblest jilt that ever yet halted between two minds! There has been no touch of selfishness in your fickleness. I think I could be hard enough upon a woman who had left me for
greater wealth, for a higher rank, – who had left me even that she might be gay and merry. It has not been so with you.’

‘Yes, it has. I thought you were too firm in your own will, and–’

‘And you think so still. Is that it?’

‘It does not matter what I think now. I am a fallen creature, and have no longer a right to such thoughts. It will be better for us both that you should leave me, – and
forget me. There are things which, if a woman does them, should never be forgotten; – which she should never permit herself to forget.’

‘And am I to be punished, then, because of your fault? Is that your sense of justice?’ He got up, and standing before her, looked down upon her. ‘Alice, if you will tell me that you do not love me, I will believe you, and will trouble you no more. I know that
you will say nothing to me that is false. Through it all you have spoken no word of falsehood. If you love me, after what has passed, I have a right to demand your hand. My happiness requires it, and I have a right to expect your compliance. I do demand it. If you love me, Alice, I tell you that you dare not refuse me. If you do so, you will fail hereafter to reconcile it to your conscience before
God.’

Then he stopped his speech, and waited for a reply; but Alice sat silent beneath his gaze, with her eyes turned upon the tombstones beneath her feet. Of course she had no choice but to yield. He, possessed of power and force infinitely greater than hers, had left her no alternative but to be happy. But there still clung to her what I fear we must call a perverseness of obstinacy, a desire
to maintain the resolution she had made, – a wish that she might be allowed to undergo the punishment she had deserved. She was as a prisoner who would fain cling to his prison after pardon has reached him, because he is conscious that the pardon is undeserved. And it may be that there was still left within her bosom
some remnant of that feeling of rebellion which his masterful spirit had ever
produced in her. He was so imperious in his tranquillity, he argued his question of love with such a manifest preponderance of right on his side, that she had always felt that to yield to him would be to confess the omnipotence of his power. She knew now that she must yield to him, – that his power over her was omnipotent She was pressed by him as in some countries the prisoner is pressed by the
judge, – so pressed that she acknowledged to herself silently that any further antagonism to him was impossible. Nevertheless, the word which she had to speak still remained unspoken, and he stood over her, waiting for her answer. Then slowly he sat down beside her, and gradually he put his arm round her waist She shrank from him, back against the stonework of the embrasure, but she could not shrink
away from his grasp. She put up her hand to impede his, but his hand, like his character and his words, was full of power. It would not be impeded. ‘Alice,’ he said, as he pressed her close with his arm, ‘the battle is over now, and I have won it’

‘You win everything, – always,’ she said, whispering to him, as she still shrank from his embrace.

‘In whinning you I have won everything.’ Then he
put his face over her and pressed his lips to hers. I wonder whether he was made happier when he knew that no other touch had profaned those lips since last he had pressed them?

A
LICE
insisted on being left up in the churchyard, urging that she wanted to ‘think about it all,’ but, in truth, fearing that she might not be able to carry herself well, if she were to walk down with her lover to the hotel To this he made no objection, and, on reaching the inn, met Mr Palliser hi the hall. Mr Palliser was already inspecting the arrangement of certain
large trunks which had been brought downstairs, and was preparing for their departure.
He was going about the house, with a nervous solicitude to do something, and was flattering himself that he was of use. As he could not be Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as, by the nature of his disposition, some employment was necessary to him, he was looking to the cording of the boxes. ‘Good morning! good
morning!’ he said to Grey, hardly looking at him, as though time were too precious with him to allow of his turning his eyes upon his friend. ‘I am going up to the station to see after a carriage for tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll come with me.’ To this proposition Mr Grey assented. ‘Sometimes, you know,’ continued Mr Palliser, ‘the springs of the carriages are so very rough.’ Then, in a very few words,
Mr Grey told him what had been his own morning’s work. He hated secrets and secrecy, and as the Pallisers knew well what had brought him upon their track, it was, he thought, well that they should know that he had been successful. Mr Palliser congratulated him very cordially, and then, running upstairs for his gloves or his stick, or, more probably, that he might give his wife one other caution
as to her care of herself, he told her also that Alice had yielded at last. ‘Of course she has,’ said Lady Glencora.

‘I really didn’t think she would,’ said he.

‘That’s because you don’t understand things of that sort,’ said his wife. Then the caution was repeated, the mother of the future duke was kissed, and Mr Palliser went off on his mission about the carriage, its cushions, and its springs.
In the course of their walk Mr Palliser suggested that, as things were settled so pleasantly, Mr Grey might as well return with them to England, and to this suggestion Mr Grey assented.

Alice remained alone for nearly an hour, looking out upon the rough sides and gloomy top of Mount Pilate. No one disturbed her in the churchyard, – no steps were heard along the tombstones, – no voice sounded
through the cloisters. She was left in perfect solitude to think of the past, and form her plans of the future. Was she happy, now that the manner of her life to come was thus settled for her; that all further question as to the disposal of herself was taken out of her hands, and that her marriage with a man she loved was so firmly arranged that no further folly of her own could disarrange it? She
was happy, though she was slow to
confess her happiness to herself. She was happy, and she was resolute in this, – that she would now do all she could to make him happy also. And there must now, she acknowledged, be an end to her pride, – to that pride which had hitherto taught her to think that she could more wisely follow her own guidance than that of any other who might claim to guide her.
She knew now that she must follow his guidance. She had found her master, as we sometimes say, and laughed to herself with a little inward laughter as she confessed that it was so. She was from henceforth altogether in his hands. If he chose to tell her that they were to be married at Michaelmas, or at Christmas, or on Lady Day, they would, of course, be married accordingly. She had taken her fling
at having her own will, and she and all her friends had seen what had come of it She had assumed the command of the ship, and had thrown it upon the rocks, and she felt that she never ought to take the captain’s place again. It was well for her that he who was to be captain was one whom she respected as thoroughly as she loved him.

She would write to her father at once, – to her father and Lady
Madeod, – and would confess everything. She felt that she owed it to them that they should be told by herself that they had been right and that she had been wrong. Hitherto she had not mentioned to either of them the fact that Mr Grey was with them in Switzerland, And, then, what must she do as to Lady Midlothian? As to Lady Midlothian, she would do nothing. Lady Midlothian, of course, would triumph;
– would jump upon her, as Lady Glencora had once expressed it, with very triumphant heels, – would try to patronize her, or, which would be almost worse, would make a parade of her forgiveness. But she would have nothing to do with Lady Midlothian, unless, indeed, Mr Grey should order it. Then she laughed at herself again with that inward laughter, and, rising from her seat, proceeded to walk
down the hill to the hotel.