Can You Forgive Her? (36 page)

‘But perhaps he will.’

‘No; he won’t do that That would be uncourteous, – and he’s the most courteous man in the world. There’s nobody here, you see,’ she said as they entered the room, ‘and I didn’t suppose there would be. It’s always proper to be first in one’s own house. I do so try to be proper, – and it is such trouble. Talking of people earning their bread, Alice; – I’m sure I earn mine. Oh dear! – what fun it would
be to be sitting somewhere in Asia, eating a chicken with one’s fingers, and lighting a big fire outside one’s tent to keep off the lions and tigers. Fancy your being on one side of the fire and the lions and tigers on the other, grinning at you through the flames!’ Then Lady Glencora strove to look like a lion, and grinned at herself in the glass.

‘That sort of grin wouldn’t frighten me,’ said
Alice.

‘I dare say not. I have been reading about it in that woman’s travels
³
. Oh, here they are, and I mustn’t make any more faces. Duchess, do come to the fire. I hope you’ve got warm again. This is my cousin, Miss Vavasor.’

The Duchess made a stiff little bow of condescension, and then declared that she was charmingly warm. ‘I don’t know how you manage in your house, but the staircases are
so comfortable. Now at Longroyston we’ve taken all the trouble in the world, – put down hot-water pipes all over the house, and everything else that could be thought of, and yet, you can’t move about the place without meeting with draughts at every corner of the passages.’ The Duchess spoke with an enormous emphasis on every other word, sometimes putting so great a stress on some special syllable,
as almost to bring her voice to a whistle. This she had done with the word ‘pipes’ to a great degree, – so that Alice never afterwards forgot the hot-water pipes of Longroyston. ‘I was telling Lady Glencora, Miss Palliser, that I never knew a house so warm as this,
–or, I’m sorry to say,’ – and here the emphasis was very strong on the word sorry, – ‘so cold as Longroyston.’ And the tone in which
Longroyston was uttered would almost have drawn tears from a critical audience in the pit of a playhouse. The Duchess was a woman of about forty, very handsome, but with no meaning in her beauty, carrying a good fixed colour in her face, which did not look like paint, but which probably had received some little assistance from art. She was a well-built, sizeable woman, with good proportions and
fine health, – but a fool. She had addressed herself to one Miss Palliser; but two Miss Pallisers, cousins of Plantagenet Palliser, had entered the room at the same time, of whom I may say, whatever other traits of character they may have possessed, that at any rate they were not fools.

‘It’s always easy to warm a small house like this,’ said Miss Palliser, whose Christian names, unfortunately
for her, were Iphigenia Theodata, and who by her cousin and sister was called Iphy – ‘and I suppose equally difficult to warm a large one such as Longroyston.’ The other Miss Palliser had been christened Euphemia.

‘We’ve got no pipes, Duchess, at any rate,’ said Lady Glencora; and Alice, as she sat listening, thought she discerned in Lady Glencora’s pronunciation of the word pipes an almost hidden
imitation of the Duchess’s whistle. It must have been so, for at the moment Lady Glencora’s eye met Alice’s for an instant, and was then withdrawn, so that Alice was compelled to think that her friend and cousin was not always quite successful in those struggles she made to be proper.

Then the gentlemen came in one after another, and other ladies, till about thirty people were assembled. Mr Palliser
came up and spoke another word to Alice in a kind voice, – meant to express some sense of connection if not cousinship. ‘My wife has been thinking so much of your coming. I hope we shall be able to amuse you.’ Alice, who had already begun to feel desolate, was grateful, and made up her mind that she would try to like Mr Palliser.

Jeffrey Palliser was almost the last in the room, but directly
he entered Lady Glencora got up from her seat, and met him as he
was coming into the crowd. ‘You must take my cousin, Alice Vavasor, in to dinner,’ she said, ‘and; – will you oblige me today?’

‘Yes; – as you ask me like that’

‘Then try to make her comfortable.’ After that she introduced them, and Jeffrey Palliser stood opposite to Alice, talking to her, till dinner was announced.

A
LICE
found herself seated near to Lady Glencora’s end of the table, and, in spite of her resolution to like Mr Palliser, she was not sorry that such an arrangement had been made. Mr Palliser had taken the Duchess out to dinner, and Alice wished to be as far removed as possible from her Grace. She found herself seated between her bespoken friend Jeffrey Palliser
and the Duke, and as soon as she was seated Lady Glencora introduced her to her second neighbour. ‘My cousin, Duke,’ Lady Glencora said, ‘and a terrible Radical’

‘Oh, indeed; I’m glad of that. We’re sadly in want of a few leading Radicals, and perhaps I may be able to gain one now.’

Alice thought of her cousin George, and wished that he, instead of herself, was sitting next to the Duke of St
Bungay. ‘But I’m afraid I never shall be a leading Radical,’ she said.

‘You shall lead me at any rate, if you will,’ said he.

‘As the little dogs lead the blind men,’ said Lady Glencora.

‘No, Lady Glencora, not so. But as the pretty women lead the men who have eyes in their head. There is nothing I want so much, Miss Vavasor, as to become a Radical; – if I only knew how.’

‘I think it’s very
easy to know how,’ said Alice.

‘Do you? I don’t. I’ve voted for every liberal measure that has come seriously before Parliament since I had a seat in either House, and I’ve not been able to get beyond Whiggery yet.’

‘Have you voted for the ballot
¹
?’ asked Alice, almost trembling at her own audacity as she put the question.

‘Well; no, I’ve not And I suppose that is the crux. But the ballot has
never been seriously brought before any House in which I have sat. I hate it with so keen a private hatred, that I doubt whether I could vote for it.’

‘But the Radicals love it,’ said Alice.

‘Palliser,’ said the Duke, speaking loudly from his end of the table, ‘I’m told you can never be entitled to call yourself a Radical till you’ve voted for the ballot’

‘I don’t want to be called a Radical,’
said Mr Palliser, – ‘or to be called anything at all.’

‘Except Chancellor of the Exchequer,’ said Lady Glencora in a low voice.

‘And that’s about the finest ambition by which a man can be moved,’ said the Duke. ‘The man who can manage the purse-strings of this country can manage anything.’ Then that conversation dropped and the Duke ate his dinner.

‘I was especially commissioned to amuse you,’
said Mr Jeffrey Palliser to Alice. ‘But when I undertook the task I had no conception that you would be calling Cabinet Ministers over the coals about their politics.’

‘I did nothing of the kind, surely, Mr Palliser. I suppose all Radicals do vote for the ballot, and that’s why I said it’

‘Your definition was perfectly just I dare say, only –’

‘Only what?’

‘Lady Glencora need not have been
so anxious to provide specially for your amusement. Not but what I’m very much obliged to her, – of course. But Miss Vavasor, unfortunately I’m not a politician. I haven’t a chance of a seat in the House, and so I despise politics.’

‘Women are not allowed to be politicians in this country.’

‘Thank God, they can’t do much in that way; – not directly, I mean. Only think where we should be if we
had a feminine House of Commons, with feminine debates, carried on, of course, with feminine courtesy. My cousins Iphy and Phemy there would of course be members. You don’t know them yet?’

‘No; not yet. Are they politicians?’

‘Not especially. They have their tendencies, which are decidedly liberal. There has never been a Tory Palliser known, you know. But they are too clever to give themselves
up to anything in which they can do nothing. Being women they live a depressed life, devoting themselves to literature, fine arts, social economy, and the abstract sciences. They write wonderful letters; but I believe their correspondence lists are quite full, so that you have no chance at present of getting on either of them.’

‘I haven’t the slightest pretension to ask for such an honour.’

‘Oh! if you mean because you don’t know them, that has nothing to do with it.’

‘But I have no claim either private or public.’

‘That has nothing to do with it either. They don’t at all seek people of note as their correspondents. Free communication with all the world is their motto, and Rowland Hill
²
is the god they worship. Only they have been forced to guard themselves against too great an
accession of paper and ink. Are you fond of writing letters, Miss Vavasor?’

‘Yes, to my friends; but I like getting them better.’

‘I shrewdly suspect they don’t read half what they get Is it possible any one should go through two sheets of paper filled by our friend the Duchess there? No; their delight is in writing. They sit each at her desk after breakfast, and go on till lunch. There is a
little rivalry between them, not expressed to each other, but visible to their friends. Iphy certainly does get off the greater number, and I’m told crosses
⁸
quite as often as Phemy, but then she has the advantage of a bolder and larger hand.’

‘Do they write to you?’

‘Oh, dear no. I don’t think they ever write to any relative. They don’t discuss family affairs and such topics as that. Architecture
goes a long way with them, and whether women ought to be clerks in public offices. Iphy has certain American correspondents that take up much of her time, but she acknowledges she does not read their letters.’

‘Then I certainly shall not write to her.’

‘But you are not American, I hope. I do hate the Americans. It’s
the only strong political feeling I have. I went there once, and found I couldn’t
live with them on any terms.’

‘But they please themselves. I don’t see they are to be hated because they don’t live after our fashion.’

‘Oh; it’s jealousy of course. I know that. I didn’t come across a cab-driver who wasn’t a much better educated man than I am. And as for their women, they know everything. But I hated them, and I intend to hate them. You haven’t been there?’

‘Oh no.’

‘Then
I will make bold to say that any English lady who spent a month with them and didn’t hate them would have very singular tastes. I begin to think they’ll eat each other up, and then there’ll come an entirely new set of people of a different sort. I always regarded the States as a Sodom and Gomorrah, prospering in wickedness, on which fire and brimstone were sure to fall sooner or later.’

‘I think
that’s wicked.’

‘I am wicked, as Topsy used to say
⁴
. Do you hunt?’

‘No.’

‘Do you shoot?’

‘Shoot! What; with a gun?’

‘Yes. I was staying in a house last week with a lady who shot a good deal.’

‘No; I don’t shoot.’

‘Do you ride?’

‘No; I wish I did. I have never ridden because I’ve no one to ride with me.’

‘Do you drive?’

‘No; I don’t drive either.’

‘Then what do you do?’

‘I sit at home,
and – ’

‘Mend your stockings?’

‘No; I don’t do that, because it’s disagreeable; but I do work a good deal. Sometimes I have amused myself by reading.’

‘Ah; they never do that here. I have heard that there is a library, but the clue to it has been lost, and nobody now knows the way. I don’t believe in libraries. Nobody ever goes into a library to read,
any more than you would into a larder to
eat. But there is this difference; – thè food you consume does come out of the larders, but the books you read never come out of the libraries.’

‘Except Mudie’s
⁵
,’ said Alice.

‘Ah, yes; he is the great librarian. And you mean to read all the time you are here, Miss Vavasor?’

‘I mean to walk about the priory ruins sometimes.’

‘Then you must go by moonlight, and I’ll go with you. Only isn’t
it rather late in the year for that?’

‘I should think it is, – for you, Mr Palliser.’

Then the Duke spoke to her again, and she found that she got on very well during dinner. But she could not but feel angry with herself in that she had any fear on the subject; – and yet she could not divest herself of that fear. She acknowledged to herself that she was conscious of a certain inferiority to
Lady Glencora and to Mr Jeffrey Palliser, which almost made her unhappy. As regarded the Duke on the other side of her, she had no such feeling. He was old enough to be her father, and was a Cabinet Minister; therefore he was entitled to her reverence. But how was it that she could not help accepting the other people round her as being indeed superior to herself? Was she really learning to believe
that she could grow upwards by their sunlight?

‘Jeffrey is a pleasant fellow, is he not?’ said Lady Glencora to her as they passed back through the billiard-room to the drawing-room.

‘Very pleasant; – a little sarcastic, perhaps.’

‘I should think you would soon find yourself able to get the better of that if he tries it upon you,’ said Lady Glencora; and then the ladies were all in the drawing-room
together.

‘It is quite deliriously warm, coming from one room to another.’ said the Duchess, putting her emphasis on the ‘one’ and the ‘other ’.

‘Then we had better keep continually moving,’ said a certain Mrs Conway Sparkes, a literary lady, who had been very handsome, who was still very clever, who was not perhaps very good-natured, and of whom the Duchess of St Bungay was rather afraid.

‘I hope we may be warm here too,’ said Lady Glencora.

‘But not deliciously warm,’ said Mrs Conway Sparkes.

‘It makes me tremble in every limb when Mrs Sparkes attacks her,’ Lady Glencora said to Alice in Alice’s own room that night, ‘for I know she’ll tell the Duke; and he’ll tell that tall man with red hair whom you see standing about, and the tall man with red hair will tell Mr Palliser, and
then I shall catch it,’