Can You Forgive Her? (43 page)

‘So much the better for the world.’

‘No; –I say no. Things may live too long. But now I’m going to
tell you. Do you remember that night I brought you home from the play to Queen Anne Street?’

‘Indeed I do, – very well.’

Alice had occasion to remember it, for it had been in the carriage on that evening that she had positively refused to give any aid to her cousin/in that matter relating to Burgo Fitzgerald.

‘And do you remember how the moon shone then?’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

‘I know I do. As we came round the corner out of Cavendish Square he was standing there, – and a friend of yours was standing with him.’

‘What friend of mine?’

‘Never mind that; it does not matter now.’

‘Do you mean my cousin George?’

‘Yes, I do mean your cousin; and oh, Alice! dear Alice! I don’t know why I should love you, for if you had not been hardhearted that night, – stony cruel in your hard propriety, I should have gone with him then, and all this icy coldness would have been prevented.’

She was standing quite close
to Alice, and as she spake she shook with shivering and wrapped her furs closer and still closer about her.

‘You are very cold,’ said Alice. ‘We had better go in.’

‘No, I am not cold, – not in that way. I won’t go in yet. Jeffrey will come to us directly. Yes; – we should have escaped that night if you would have allowed him to come into your house. Ah, well! we didn’t, and there’s an end of
it.’

‘But Glencora, – you cannot regret it.’

‘Not regret it! Alice, where can your heart be? Or have you a heart? Not regret it! I would give everything I have in the world to have been true to him. They told me that he would spend my money. Though he should have spent every farthing of it, I regret it; though he should have made me a beggar, I regret it. They told me that he would ill-use me,
and desert me, – perhaps beat me. I do not believe it; but even though that should have been so, I regret it. It is better to have a false husband than to be a false wife,’

‘Glencora, do not speak like that. Do not try to make me think that anything could tempt you to be false to your vows.’

‘Tempt me to be false! Why, child, it has been all false throughout. I never loved him. How can you talk
in that way, when you know that I never loved him? They browbeat me and frightened me till I did as I was told; – and now; – what am I now?’

‘You are his honest wife. Glencora, listen to me.’ And Alice took hold of her arm.

‘No,’ she said, ‘no; I am not honest. By law I am his wife; but the laws are liars! I am not his wife. I will not say the thing that I am. When I went to him at the altar,
I knew that I did not love the man that was to be my husband. But him, – Burgo, – I love him with all my heart and soul. I could stoop at his feet and clean his shoes for him, and think it no disgrace!’

‘Oh, Cora, my friend, do not say such words as those! Remember what you owe your husband and yourself, and come away.’

‘I do know what I owe him, and I will pay it him. Alice, if I had a child
I think I would be true to him. Think! I know I would; – though I had no hour of happiness left to me in my life. But what now is the only honest thing that I can do? Why, leave him; – so leave him that he may have another wife and be the father of a child. What injury shall I do him by leaving him? He does not love me; you know yourself that he does not love me.’

‘I know that he does.’

‘Alice,
that is untrue. He does not; and you have seen clearly that it is so. It may be that he can love no woman. But another woman would give him a son, and he would be happy. I tell you that every day and every night, – every hour of every day and of every night, – I am thinking of the man I love. I have nothing else to think of. I have no occupation, – no friends, – no one to whom I care to say a
word. But I am always talking to Burgo in my thoughts; and he listens to me. I dream that his arm is round me –’

‘Oh, Glencora!’

‘Well! – Do you begrudge me that I should tell you the truth? You have said that you would be my friend, and you must bear the burden of my friendship. And now, – this is what I want to
tell you. – Immediately after Christmas, we are to go to Monkshade, and he will
be there. Lady Monk is his aunt’

‘You must not go. No power should take you there.’

‘That is easily said, child; but all the same I must go. I told Mr Palliser that he would be there, and he said it did not signify. He actually said that it did not signify. I wonder whether he understands what it is for people to love each other; – whether he has ever thought about it.’

‘You must tell him plainly
that you will not go.’

‘I did. I told him plainly as words could tell him. “Glencora,” he said, – and you know the way he looks when he means to be lord and master, and put on the very husband indeed, – “This is an annoyance which you must bear and overcome. It suits me that we should go to Monkshade, and it does not suit me that there should be any one whom you are afraid to meet.” Could I tell
him that he would lose his wife if I did go? Could I threaten him that I would throw myself into Burgo’s arms if that opportunity were given to me? You are very wise, and very prudent What would you have had me say?’

‘I would have you now tell him everything, rather than go to that house.’

‘Alice, look here. I know what I am, and what I am like to become. I loathe myself, and I loathe the thing
that I am thinking of. I could have clung to the outside of a man’s body, to his very trappings, and loved him ten times better than myself! – ay, even though he had ill-treated me, – if I had been allowed to choose a husband for myself. Burgo would have spent my money, – all that it would have been possible for me to give him. But there would have been something left, and I think that by that
time I could have won even him to care for me. But with that man –! Alice you are very wise. What am I to do?’

Alice had no doubt as to what her cousin should do. She should be true to her marriage-vow, whether that vow when made were true or false. She should be true to it as far as truth would now carry her. And in order that she might be true, she should tell her husband as much as might be
necessary to induce him to spare her the threatened visit to Monkshade. All that she said to lady Glencora,
as they walked slowly across the chapel. But Lady Glencora was more occupied with her own thoughts than with her friend’s advice. ‘Here’s Jeffrey!’ she said. ‘What an unconscionable time we have kept him!’

‘Don’t mention it,’ he said. ‘And I shouldn’t have come to you now, only that I thought
I should find you both freezing into marble.’

We are not such cold-blooded creatures as that, – are we, Alice?’ said Lady Glencora. ‘And now we’ll go round the outside; only we must not stay long, or we shall frighten those two delicious old duennas, Mrs Marsham and Mr Bott.’

These last words were said as it were in a whisper to Alice; but they were so whispered that there was no real attempt
to keep them from the ears of Mr Jeffrey Palliser. Glencora, Alice thought, should not have allowed the word duenna to have passed her lips in speaking to any one; but, above all, she should not have done so in the hearing of Mr Palliser’s cousin.

They walked all round the ruin, on a raised gravel-path which had been made there; and Alice, who could hardly bring herself to speak, – so full was
her mind of that which had just been said to her, – was surprised to find that Glencora could go on, in her usual light humour, chatting as though there were no weight within her to depress her spirits.

As they came in at the billiard-room door, Mr Palliser was there to meet them. ‘You must be very cold,’ he said to Glencora, who entered first. ‘No, indeed,’ said Glencora; – but her teeth were chattering, and her whole appearance gave the lie to her words. ‘Jeffrey,’ said Mr Palliser, turning to his cousin, ‘I am angry with you. You, at least, should have known
better than to have allowed her to remain so long.’ Then Mr Palliser turned away, and walked his wife off, taking no notice whatsoever of Miss Vavasor.

Alice felt the slight, and understood it all. He had told her plainly enough, though not in words, that he had trusted his wife with her, and that she had betrayed the trust She might have brought Glencora in within five or six minutes, instead
of allowing her to remain out there in the freezing night air for nearly three-quarters of an hour. That was the accusation which Mr Palliser made against her, and he made it with the utmost severity. He asked no question of her whether she were cold. He spoke no word to her, nor did he even look at her. She might get herself away to her bedroom as she pleased. Alice understood all this completely,
and though she knew that she had not deserved such severity, she was not inclined to resent it. There was so much in Mr Palliser’s position that was to be pitied, that Alice could not find it in her heart to be angry with him.

‘He is provoked with us, now,’ said Jeffrey Palliser, standing with her for a moment in the billiard-room, as he handed her a candle.

‘He is afraid that she will have
caught cold.’

‘Yes; and he thinks it wrong that she should remain out at night so long. You can easily understand, Miss Vavasor, that he has not much sympathy for romance.’

‘I dare say he is right,’ said Alice, not exactly knowing what to say, and not being able to forget what had been said about herself and Jeffrey Palliser when they first left the house. ‘Romance usually means nonsense, I
believe.’

‘That is not Glencora’s doctrine.’

‘No; but she is younger than I am. My feet are very cold, Mr Palliser, and I think I will go up to my room.’

‘Good night,’ said Jeffrey, offering her his hand. ‘I think it so hard that you should have incurred his displeasure.’

‘It will not hurt me,’ said Alice, smiling.

‘No; – but he does not forget.’

‘Even that will not hurt me. Good night,
Mr Palliser.’

‘As it is the last night, may I say good night, Alice? I shall be away tomorrow before you are up.’

He still held her hand; but it had not been in his for half a minute, and she had thought nothing of that, nor did she draw it
away even now suddenly. ‘No,’ said she, ‘Glencora was very wrong there, – doing an injury without meaning it to both of us. There can be no possible reason
why you should call me otherwise than is customary.’

‘Can there never be a reason?’

‘No, Mr Palliser. Good night; – and if I am not to see you tomorrow morning, good-bye.’

‘You will certainly not see me tomorrow morning.’

‘Good-bye. Had it not been for this folly of Glencora’s, our acquaintance would have been very pleasant.’

‘To me it has been very pleasant. Good night.’

Then she left him,
and went up alone to her own room. Whether or no other guests were still left in the drawing-room she did not know; but she had seen that Mr Palliser took his wife upstairs, and therefore she considered herself right in presuming that the party was broken up for the night. Mr Palliser, – Plantagenet Palliser, according to all rules of courtesy should have said a word to her as he went; but, as
I have said before, Alice was disposed to overlook his want of civility on this occasion. So she went up alone to her room, and was very glad to find herself able to get close to a good fire. She was, in truth, very cold – cold to her bones, in spite of what Lady Glencora had said on behalf of the moonlight. They two had been standing all but still during the greater part of the time that they had
been talking, and Alice, as she sat herself down, found that her feet were numbed with the damp that had penetrated through her boots. Certainly Mr Palliser had reason’ to be angry that his wife should have remained out in the night air so long, – though perhaps not with Alice.

And then she began to think of what had been told her; and to try to think of what, under such circumstances, it behoved
her to do. She could not doubt that Lady Glencora had intended to declare that, if opportunity offered itself, she would leave her husband, and put herself under the protection of Mr Fitzgerald; and Alice, moreover, had become painfully conscious that the poor deluded unreasoning creature had taught herself to think that she might excuse herself for this sin to her own conscience by the fact
that she was childless, and that she might thus give to the man
who had married her an opportunity of seeking another wife who might give him an heir. Alice well knew how insufficient such an excuse would be even to the wretched woman who had framed it for herself. But still it Would operate, – manifestly had already operated, on her mind, teaching her to hope that good might come out of evil.
Alice, who was perfectly clearsighted as regarded her cousin, however much impaired her vision might have been with reference to herself, saw nothing but absolute ruin, ruin of the worst and most intolerable description, in the plan which Lady Glencora seemed to have formed. To her it was black in the depths of hell; and she knew that to Glencora also it was black. ‘I loathe myself,’ Glencora had
said, ‘and the thing that I am thinking of.’

What was Alice to do under these circumstances? Mr Palliser, she was aware, had quarrelled with her; for in his silent way he had first shown that he had trusted her as his wife’s friend; and then, on this evening, he had shown that he had ceased to trust her. But she cared little for this. If she told him that she wished to speak to him, he would
listen, let his opinion of her be what it might; and having listened he would surely act in some way that would serve to save his wife. What Mr Palliser might think of herself, Alice cared but little.

But then there came to her an idea that was in every respect feminine, – that in such a matter she had no right to betray her friend. When one woman tells the story of her love to another woman,
the confidant always feels that she will be a traitor if she reveals the secret. Had Lady Glencora made Alice believe that she meditated minder, or robbery, Alice would have had no difficulty in telling the tale, and thus preventing the crime. But now she hesitated, feeling that she would disgrace herself by betraying her friend. And, after all, was it not more than probable that Glencora had no
intention of carrying out a threat the very thought of which must be terrible to herself?