The Palliser Novels (88 page)

“That is nonsense, dear, and you must know that it is so. If you were to see a woman misbehaving herself in public, would not you look on and make your comments? Could you help doing so if you were to try?”

“You are very severe, Alice. Misbehaving in public!”

“Yes, Cora. I am only taking your own story. According to that, you were misbehaving in public.”

Lady Glencora got up from her chair near the window, on which she had been crouching close to Alice’s knees, and walked away towards the fireplace. “What am I to say to you, or how am I to talk to you?” said Alice. “You would not have me tell you a lie?”

“Of all things in the world, I hate a prude the most,” said Lady Glencora.

“Cora, look here. If you consider it prudery on my part to disapprove of your waltzing with Mr Fitzgerald in the manner you have described, — or, indeed, in any other manner, — you and I must differ so totally about the meaning of words and the nature of things that we had better part.”

“Alice, you are the unkindest creature that ever lived. You are as cold as stone. I sometimes think that you can have no heart.”

“I don’t mind your saying that. Whether I have a heart or not I will leave you to find out for yourself; but I won’t be called a prude by you. You know you were wrong to dance with that man. What has come of it? What have you told me yourself this morning? In order to preserve you from misery and destruction, Mr Palliser has given up all his dearest hopes. He has had to sacrifice himself that he might save you. That, I take it, is about the truth of it, — and yet you tell me that you have done no wrong.”

“I never said so.” Now she had come back to her chair by the window, and was again sitting in that crouching form. “I never said that I was not wrong. Of course I was wrong. I have been so wrong throughout that I have never been right yet. Let me tell it on to the end, and then you can go away if you like, and tell me that I am too wicked for your friendship.”

“Have I ever said anything like that, Cora?”

“But you will, I dare say, when I have done. Well; what do you think my senior duenna did, — the female one, I mean? She took my own carriage, and posted off after Mr Palliser as hard as ever she could, leaving the male duenna on the watch. I was dancing as hard as I could, but I knew what was going on all the time as well as though I had heard them talking. Of course Mr Palliser came after me. I don’t know what else he could do, unless, indeed, he had left me to my fate. He came there, and behaved so well, — so much like a perfect gentleman. Of course I went home, and I was prepared to tell him everything, if he spoke a word to me, — that I intended to leave him, and that cart-ropes should not hold me!”

“To leave him, Cora!”

“Yes, and go with that other man whose name you won’t let me mention. I had a letter from him in my pocket asking me to go. He asked me a dozen times that night. I cannot think how it was that I did not consent.”

“That you did not consent to your own ruin and disgrace?”

“That I did not consent to go off with him, — anywhere. Of course it would have been my own destruction. I’m not such a fool as not to know that. Do you suppose I have never thought of it; — what it would be to be a man’s mistress instead of his wife. If I had not I should be a thing to be hated and despised. When once I had done it I should hate and despise myself. I should feel myself to be loathsome, and, as it were, a beast among women. But why did they not let me marry him, instead of driving me to this? And though I might have destroyed myself, I should have saved the man who is still my husband. Do you know, I told him all that, — told him that if I had gone away with Burgo Fitzgerald he would have another wife, and would have children, and would — ?”

“You told your husband that you had thought of leaving him?”

“Yes; I told him everything. I told him that I dearly loved that poor fellow, for whom, as I believe, nobody else on earth cares a single straw.”

“And what did he say?”

“I cannot tell you what he said, only that we are all to go to Baden together, and then to Italy. But he did not seem a bit angry; he very seldom is angry, unless at some trumpery thing, as when he threw the book away. And when I told him that he might have another wife and a child, he put his arm round me and whispered to me that he did not care so much about it as I had imagined. I felt more like loving him at that moment than I had ever done before.”

“He must be fit to be an angel.”

“He’s fit to be a cabinet minister, which, I’m quite sure, he’d like much better. And now you know everything; but no, — there is one thing you don’t know yet. When I tell you that, you’ll want to make him an archangel or a prime minister. ‘We’ll go abroad,’ he said, — and remember, this was his own proposition, made long before I was able to speak a word; — ‘We’ll go abroad, and you shall get your cousin Alice to go with us.’ That touched me more than anything. Only think if he had proposed Mrs Marsham!”

“But yet he does not like me.”

“You’re wrong there, Alice. There has been no question of liking or of disliking. He thought you would be a kind of Mrs Marsham, and when you were not, but went out flirting among the ruins with Jeffrey Palliser,
instead — “

“I never went out flirting with Jeffrey Palliser.”

“He did with you, which is all the same thing. And when Plantagenet knew of that, — for, of course, Mr Bott told
him — “

“Mr Bott can’t see everything.”

“Those men do. The worst is, they see more than everything. But, at any rate, Mr Palliser has got over all that now. Come, Alice; the fact of the offer having come from himself should disarm you of any such objection as that. As he has held out his hand to you, you have no alternative but to take it.”

“I will take his hand willingly.”

“And for my sake you will go with us? He understands himself that I am not fit to be his companion, and to have no companion but him. Now there is a spirit of wisdom about you that will do for him, and a spirit of folly that will suit me. I can manage to put myself on a par with a girl who has played such a wild game with her lovers as you have done.”

Alice would give no promise then. Her first objection was that she had undertaken to go down to Westmoreland and comfort Kate in the affliction of her broken arm. “And I must go,” said Alice, remembering how necessary it was that she should plead her own cause with George Vavasor’s sister. But she acknowledged that she had not intended to stay long in Westmoreland, probably not more than a week, and it was at last decided that the Pallisers should postpone their journey for four or five days, and that Alice should go with them immediately upon her return from Vavasor Hall.

“I have no objection;” said her father, speaking with that voice of resignation which men use when they are resolved to consider themselves injured whatever may be done. “I can get along in lodgings. I suppose we had better leave the house, as you have given away so much of your own fortune?” Alice did not think it worth her while to point out to him, in answer to this, that her contribution to their joint housekeeping should still remain the same as ever. Such, however, she knew would be the fact, and she knew also that she would find her father in the old house when she returned from her travels. To her, in her own great troubles, the absence from London would be as serviceable as it could be to Lady Glencora. Indeed, she had already begun to feel the impossibility of staying quietly at home. She could lecture her cousin, whose faults were open, easy to be defined, and almost loud in their nature; but she was not on that account the less aware of her own. She knew that she too had cause to be ashamed of herself. She was half afraid to show her face among her friends, and wept grievously over her own follies. Those cruel words of her father rang in her ears constantly: — “Things of that sort are so often over with you.” The reproach, though cruel, was true, and what reproach more galling could be uttered to an unmarried girl such as was Alice Vavasor? She had felt from the first moment in which the proposition was made to her, that it would be well that she should for a while leave her home, and especially that drawing-room in Queen Anne Street, which told her so many tales that she would fain forget, if it were possible.

Mr Palliser would not allow his wife to remain in London for the ten or twelve days which must yet elapse before they started, nor could he send her into the country alone. He took her down to Matching Priory, having obtained leave to be absent from the House for the remainder of the Session, and remained with her there till within two days of their departure. That week down at Matching, as she afterwards told Alice, was very terrible. He never spoke a word to rebuke her. He never hinted that there had been aught in her conduct of which he had cause to complain. He treated her with a respect that was perfect, and indeed with more outward signs of affection than had ever been customary with him. “But,” as Lady Glencora afterwards expressed it, “he was always looking after me. I believe he thought that Burgo Fitzgerald had hidden himself among the ruins,” she said once to Alice. “He never suspected me, I am sure of that; but he thought that he ought to look after me.” And Lady Glencora in this had very nearly hit the truth. Mr Palliser had resolved, from that hour in which he had walked out among the elms in Kensington Gardens, that he would neither suspect his wife, nor treat her as though he suspected her. The blame had been his, perhaps, more than it had been hers. So much he had acknowledged to himself, thinking of the confession she had made to him before their marriage. But it was manifestly his imperative duty, — his duty of duties, — to save her from that pitfall into which, as she herself had told him, she had been so ready to fall. For her sake and for his this must be done. It was a duty so imperative, that in its performance he had found himself forced to abandon his ambition. To have his wife taken from him would be terrible, but the having it said all over the world that such a misfortune had come upon him would be almost more terrible even than that.

So he went with his wife hither and thither, down at Matching, allowing himself to be driven about behind Dandy and Flirt. He himself proposed these little excursions. They were tedious to him, but doubly tedious to his wife, who now found it more difficult than ever to talk to him. She struggled to talk, and he struggled to talk, but the very struggles themselves made the thing impossible. He sat with her in the mornings, and he sat with her in the evenings; he breakfasted with her, lunched with her, and dined with her. He went to bed early, having no figures which now claimed his attention. And so the week at last wore itself away. “I saw him yawning sometimes,” Lady Glencora said afterwards, “as though he would fall in pieces.”

Alice was resolved that she would keep her promise to Kate, and pay her visit to Westmoreland before she started with the Pallisers. Kate had written to her three lines with her left hand, begging her to come, and those three lines had been more eloquent than anything she could have written had her right arm been uninjured. Alice had learned something of the truth as to the accident from her father; or, rather, had heard her father’s surmises on the subject. She had heard, too, how her cousin George had borne himself when the will was read, and how he had afterwards disappeared, never showing himself again at the hall. After all that had passed she felt that she owed Kate some sympathy. Sympathy may, no doubt, be conveyed by letter; but there are things on which it is almost impossible for any writer to express himself with adequate feeling; and there are things, too, which can be spoken, but which cannot be written. Therefore, though the journey must be a hurried one, Alice sent word down to Westmoreland that she was to be expected there in a day or two. On her return she was to go at once to Park Lane, and sleep there for the two nights which would intervene before the departure of the Pallisers.

On the day before she started for Westmoreland her father came to her in the middle of the day, and told her that John Grey was going to dine with him in Queen Anne Street on that evening.

“To-day, papa?” she asked.

“Yes, to-day. Why not? No man is less particular as to what he eats than Grey.”

“I was not thinking of that, papa,” she said.

To this Mr Vavasor made no reply, but stood for some minutes looking out of the window. Then he prepared to leave the room, getting himself first as far as the table, where he lifted a book, and then on half-way to the door before Alice arrested him.

“Perhaps, papa, you and Mr Grey had better dine alone.”

“What do you mean by alone?”

“I meant without me, — as two men generally like to do.”

“If I wanted that I should have asked him to dine at the club,” said Mr Vavasor, and then he again attempted to go.

“But, papa — “

“Well, my dear! If you mean to say that because of what has passed you object to meet Mr Grey, I can only tell you it’s nonsense, — confounded nonsense. If he chooses to come there can be no reason why you shouldn’t receive him.”

“It will look as though — “

“Look what?”

“As though he were asked as my guest.”

“That’s nonsense. I saw him yesterday, and I asked him to come. I saw him again to-day, and he said he would come. He’s not such a fool as to suppose after that, that you asked him.”

“No; not that I asked him.”

“And if you run away you’ll only make more of the thing than it’s worth. Of course I can’t make you dine with me if you don’t like.”

Alice did not like it, but, after some consideration, she thought that she might be open to the imputation of having made more of the thing than it was worth if she ran away, as her father called it. She was going to leave the country for some six or eight months, — perhaps for a longer time than that, and it might be as well that she should have an opportunity of telling her plans to Mr Grey. She could do it, she thought, in such a way as to make him understand that her last quarrel with George Vavasor was not supposed to alter the footing on which she stood with him. She did not doubt that her father had told everything to Mr Grey. She knew well enough what her father’s wishes still were. It was not odd that he should be asking John Grey to his house, though such exercises of domestic hospitality were very unusual with him. But, — so she declared to herself, — such little attempts on his part would be altogether thrown away. It was a pity that he had not yet learned to know her better. She would receive Mr Grey as the mistress of her father’s house now, for the last time; and then, on her return in the following year, he would be at Nethercoats, and the whole thing would be over.