The Palliser Novels (183 page)

“And why not?” he demanded.

“Because everything would be stiff, and cold, and uncomfortable. I suppose you do not wish to make your way into a lady’s house if she asks you not.” There was a sort of smile on her face as she said this, but he could perceive that it was a very bitter smile. “You can easily excuse yourself.”

“Yes, I can excuse myself.”

“Then do so. If you are particularly anxious to dine with Mr. Kennedy, you can easily do so at your club.” In the tone of her voice, and the words she used, she hardly attempted to conceal her dislike of her husband.

“And now tell me about Miss Effingham,” he said.

“There is nothing for me to tell.”

“Yes there is; — much to tell. You need not spare me. I do not pretend to deny to you that I have been hit hard, — so hard, that I have been nearly knocked down; but it will not hurt me now to hear of it all. Did she always love him?”

“I cannot say. I think she did after her own fashion.”

“I sometimes think women would be less cruel,” he said, “if they knew how great is the anguish they can cause.”

“Has she been cruel to you?”

“I have nothing to complain of. But if she loved Chiltern, why did she not tell him so at once? And why — “

“This is complaining, Mr. Finn.”

“I will not complain. I would not even think of it, if I could help it. Are they to be married soon?”

“In July; — so they now say.”

“And where will they live?”

“Ah! no one can tell. I do not think that they agree as yet as to that. But if she has a strong wish Oswald will yield to it. He was always generous.”

“I would not even have had a wish, — except to have her with me.”

There was a pause for a moment, and then Lady Laura answered him with a touch of scorn in her voice, — and with some scorn, too, in her eye: — “That is all very well, Mr. Finn; but the season will not be over before there is some one else.”

“There you wrong me.”

“They tell me that you are already at Madame Goesler’s feet.”

“Madame Goesler!”

“What matters who it is as long as she is young and pretty, and has the interest attached to her of something more than ordinary position? When men tell me of the cruelty of women, I think that no woman can be really cruel because no man is capable of suffering. A woman, if she is thrown aside, does suffer.”

“Do you mean to tell me, then, that I am indifferent to Miss Effingham?” When he thus spoke, I wonder whether he had forgotten that he had ever declared to this very woman to whom he was speaking, a passion for herself.

“Psha!”

“It suits you, Lady Laura, to be harsh to me, but you are not speaking your thoughts.”

Then she lost all control of herself, and poured out to him the real truth that was in her. “And whose thoughts did you speak when you and I were on the braes of Loughlinter? Am I wrong in saying that change is easy to you, or have I grown to be so old that you can talk to me as though those far-away follies ought to be forgotten? Was it so long ago? Talk of love! I tell you, sir, that your heart is one in which love can have no durable hold. Violet Effingham! There may be a dozen Violets after her, and you will be none the worse.” Then she walked away from him to the window, and he stood still, dumb, on the spot that he had occupied. “You had better go now,” she said, “and forget what has passed between us. I know that you are a gentleman, and that you will forget it.” The strong idea of his mind when he heard all this was the injustice of her attack, — of the attack as coming from her, who had all but openly acknowledged that she had married a man whom she had not loved because it suited her to escape from a man whom she did love. She was reproaching him now for his fickleness in having ventured to set his heart upon another woman, when she herself had been so much worse than fickle, — so profoundly false! And yet he could not defend himself by accusing her. What would she have had of him? What would she have proposed to him, had he questioned her as to his future, when they were together on the braes of Loughlinter? Would she not have bid him to find some one else whom he could love? Would she then have suggested to him the propriety of nursing his love for herself, — for her who was about to become another man’s wife, — for her after she should have become another man’s wife? And yet because he had not done so, and because she had made herself wretched by marrying a man whom she did not love, she reproached him!

He could not tell her of all this, so he fell back for his defence on words which had passed between them since the day when they had met on the braes. “Lady Laura,” he said, “it is only a month or two since you spoke to me as though you wished that Violet Effingham might be my wife.”

“I never wished it. I never said that I wished it. There are moments in which we try to give a child any brick on the chimney top for which it may whimper.” Then there was another silence which she was the first to break. “You had better go,” she said. “I know that I have committed myself, and of course I would rather be alone.”

“And what would you wish that I should do?”

“Do?” she said. “What you do can be nothing to me.”

“Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends?”

“I have spoken nothing about myself, sir, — only as I have been drawn to do so by your pretence of being love-sick. You can do nothing for me, — nothing, — nothing. What is it possible that you should do for me? You are not my father, or my brother.” It is not to be supposed that she wanted him to fall at her feet. It is to be supposed that had he done so her reproaches would have been hot and heavy on him; but yet it almost seemed to him as though he had no other alternative. No! — He was not her father or her brother; — nor could he be her husband. And at this very moment, as she knew, his heart was sore with love for another woman. And yet he hardly knew how not to throw himself at her feet, and swear, that he would return now and for ever to his old passion, hopeless, sinful, degraded as it would be.

“I wish it were possible for me to do something,” he said, drawing near to her.

“There is nothing to be done,” she said, clasping her hands together. “For me nothing. I have before me no escape, no hope, no prospect of relief, no place of consolation. You have everything before you. You complain of a wound! You have at least shown that such wounds with you are capable of cure. You cannot but feel that when I hear your wailings, I must be impatient. You had better leave me now, if you please.”

“And are we to be no longer friends?” he asked.

“As far as friendship can go without intercourse, I shall always be your friend.”

Then he went, and as he walked down to his office, so intent was he on that which had just passed that he hardly saw the people as he met them, or was aware of the streets through which his way led him. There had been something in the later words which Lady Laura had spoken that had made him feel almost unconsciously that the injustice of her reproaches was not so great as he had at first felt it to be, and that she had some cause for her scorn. If her case was such as she had so plainly described it, what was his plight as compared with hers? He had lost his Violet, and was in pain. There must be much of suffering before him. But though Violet were lost, the world was not all blank before his eyes. He had not told himself, even in his dreariest moments, that there was before him “no escape, no hope, no prospect of relief, no place of consolation.” And then he began to think whether this must in truth be the case with Lady Laura. What if Mr. Kennedy were to die? What in such case as that would he do? In ten or perhaps in five years time might it not be possible for him to go through the ceremony of falling upon his knees, with stiffened joints indeed, but still with something left of the ardour of his old love, of his oldest love of all?

As he was thinking of this he was brought up short in his walk as he was entering the Green Park beneath the Duke’s figure, by Laurence Fitzgibbon. “How dare you not be in your office at such an hour as this, Finn, me boy, — or, at least, not in the House, — or serving your masters after some fashion?” said the late Under-Secretary.

“So I am. I’ve been on a message to Marylebone, to find what the people there think about the Canadas.”

“And what do they think about the Canadas in Marylebone?”

“Not one man in a thousand cares whether the Canadians prosper or fail to prosper. They care that Canada should not go to the States, because, — though they don’t love the Canadians, they do hate the Americans. That’s about the feeling in Marylebone, — and it’s astonishing how like the Maryleboners are to the rest of the world.”

“Dear me, what a fellow you are for an Under-Secretary! You’ve heard the news about little Violet.”

“What news?”

“She has quarrelled with Chiltern, you know.”

“Who says so?”

“Never mind who says so, but they tell me it’s true. Take an old friend’s advice, and strike while the iron’s hot.”

Phineas did not believe what he had heard, but though he did not believe it, still the tidings set his heart beating. He would have believed it less perhaps had he known that Laurence had just received the news from Mrs. Bonteen.

Madame Max Goesler was a lady who knew that in fighting the battles which fell to her lot, in arranging the social difficulties which she found in her way, in doing the work of the world which came to her share, very much more care was necessary, — and care too about things apparently trifling, — than was demanded by the affairs of people in general. And this was not the case so much on account of any special disadvantage under which she laboured, as because she was ambitious of doing the very uttermost with those advantages which she possessed. Her own birth had not been high, and that of her husband, we may perhaps say, had been very low. He had been old when she had married him, and she had had little power of making any progress till he had left her a widow. Then she found herself possessed of money, certainly; of wit, — as she believed; and of a something in her personal appearance which, as she plainly told herself, she might perhaps palm off upon the world as beauty. She was a woman who did not flatter herself, who did not strongly believe in herself, who could even bring herself to wonder that men and women in high position should condescend to notice such a one as her. With all her ambition, there was a something of genuine humility about her; and with all the hardness she had learned there was a touch of womanly softness which would sometimes obtrude itself upon her heart. When she found a woman really kind to her, she would be very kind in return. And though she prized wealth, and knew that her money was her only rock of strength, she could be lavish with it, as though it were dirt.

But she was highly ambitious, and she played her game with great skill and great caution. Her doors were not open to all callers; — were shut even to some who find but few doors closed against them; — were shut occasionally to those whom she most specially wished to see within them. She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it. We are told by the Latin proverb that he who gives quickly gives twice; but I say that she who gives quickly seldom gives more than half. When in the early spring the Duke of Omnium first knocked at Madame Max Goesler’s door, he was informed that she was not at home. The Duke felt very cross as he handed his card out from his dark green brougham, — on the panel of which there was no blazon to tell the owner’s rank. He was very cross. She had told him that she was always at home between four and six on a Thursday. He had condescended to remember the information, and had acted upon it, — and now she was not at home! She was not at home, though he had come on a Thursday at the very hour she had named to him. Any duke would have been cross, but the Duke of Omnium was particularly cross. No; — he certainly would give himself no further trouble by going to the cottage in Park Lane. And yet Madame Max Goesler had been in her own drawing-room, while the Duke was handing out his card from the brougham below.

On the next morning there came to him a note from the cottage, — such a pretty note! — so penitent, so full of remorse, — and, which was better still, so laden with disappointment, that he forgave her.
 

My dear Duke
,

I hardly know how to apologise to you, after having told you that I am always at home on Thursdays; and I was at home yesterday when you called. But I was unwell, and I had told the servant to deny me, not thinking how much I might be losing. Indeed, indeed, I would not have given way to a silly headache, had I thought that your Grace would have been here. I suppose that now I must not even hope for the photograph.

Yours penitently,

Marie M. G.
 

The note-paper was very pretty note-paper, hardly scented, and yet conveying a sense of something sweet, and the monogram was small and new, and fantastic without being grotesque, and the writing was of that sort which the Duke, having much experience, had learned to like, — and there was something in the signature which pleased him. So he wrote a reply, —
 

Dear Madame Max Goesler
,

I will call again next Thursday, or, if prevented, will let you know.

Yours faithfully,

O.
 

When the green brougham drew up at the door of the cottage on the next Thursday, Madame Goesler was at home, and had no headache.

She was not at all penitent now. She had probably studied the subject, and had resolved that penitence was more alluring in a letter than when acted in person. She received her guest with perfect ease, and apologised for the injury done to him in the preceding week, with much self-complacency. “I was so sorry when I got your card,” she said; “and yet I am so glad now that you were refused.”

“If you were ill,” said the Duke, “it was better.”

“I was horribly ill, to tell the truth; — as pale as a death’s head, and without a word to say for myself. I was fit to see no one.”