Can You Forgive Her? (37 page)

‘And who is the tall man with red hair?’

‘He’s a political link between the Duke and Mr Palliser. His name is Bott, and he’s a Member of Parliament’

‘But why should he interefere?’

‘I suppose it’s his business. I don’t quite understand all the ins and outs of it. I believe he’s to be one of Mr Palliser’s private secretaries if he becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Perhaps he doesn’t tell; – only I think he does all the same. He always calls me Lady Glen-cowrer. He comes out of Lancashire, and made calico as long as he could get any cotton
⁶
.’ But this happened in the bedroom, and we must go back for a while to the drawing-room.

The Duchess had made no answer to Mrs Sparkes, and so nothing further was said about the warmth. Nor, indeed, was there any conversation
that was comfortably general. The number of ladies in the room was too great for that, and ladies do not divide themselves nicely into small parties, as men and women do when they are mixed. Lady Glencora behaved pretty by telling the Duchess all about her pet pheasants; Mrs Conway Sparkes told ill-natured tales of some one to Miss Euphemia Palliser; one of the Duchess’s daughters walked
off to a distant piano with an admiring friend and touched a few notes; while Iphigenia Palliser boldly took up a book, and placed herself at a table. Alice, who was sitting opposite to Lady Glencora, began to speculate whether she might do the same; but her courage failed her, and she sat on, telling herself that she was out of her element ‘Alice Vavasor,’ said Lady Glencora after a while, suddenly,
and in a somewhat loud voice, ‘can you play billiards?’

‘No,’ said Alice, rather startled.

‘Then you shall learn tonight, and if nobody else will teach you, you shall be my pupil.’ Whereupon Lady Glencora rang the bell
and ordered that the billiard-table might be got ready. ‘You’ll play, Duchess, of course,’ said Lady Glencora.

‘It is so nice and warm, that I think I will,’ said the Duchess;
but as she spoke she looked suspiciously to that part of the room where Mrs Conway Sparkes was sitting.

‘Let us all play,’ said Mrs Conway Sparkes, ‘and then it will be nicer, – and perhaps warmer, too.’

The gentlemen joined them just as they were settling themselves round the table, and as many of them stayed there, the billiard-room became full. Alice had first a cue put into her hand, and
making nothing of that was permitted to play with a mace
⁷
. The duty of instructing her devolved on Jeffrey Palliser, and the next hour passed pleasantly; – not so pleasantly, she thought afterwards, as did some of those hours in Switzerland when her cousins were with her. After all, she could get more out of her life with such associates as them, than she could with any of these people at Matching.
She felt quite sure of that; – though Jeffrey Palliser did take great trouble to teach her the game, and once or twice made her laugh heartily by quizzing the Duchess’s attitude as she stood up to make her stroke.

‘I wish I could play billiards,’ said Mrs Sparkes, on one of these occasions; ‘I do indeed.’

‘I thought you said you were coming to play,’ said the Duchess, almost majestically, and
with a tone of triumph evidently produced by her own successes.

‘Only to see your Grace,’ said Mrs Sparkes.

‘I don’t know that there is anything more to see in me than in anybody else,’ said the Duchess. ‘Mr Palliser, that was a cannon. Will you mark that for our side?’

‘Oh no, Duchess, you hit the same ball twice.’

‘Very well; – then I suppose Miss Vavasor plays now. That was a miss. Will
you mark that, if you please?’ This latter demand was made with great stress, as though she had been defrauded in the matter of the cannon, and was obeyed. Before long, the Duchess, with her partner, Lady Glencora, won the game, – which fact, however, was, I think, owing rather to Alice’s ignorance than to her Grace’s skill. The Duchess, however, was very triumphant,
and made her way back into
the drawing-room with a step which seemed to declare loudly that she had trumped Mrs Sparkes at last.

Not long after this the ladies went upstairs on their way to bed. Many of them, perhaps, did not go to their pillows at once, as it was as yet not eleven o’clock, and it was past ten when they all came down to breakfast. At any rate, Alice, who had been up at seven, did not go to bed then, nor
for the next two hours. ‘I’ll come into your room just for one minute,’ Lady Glencora said as she passed on from the door to her own room; and in about five minutes she was back with her cousin. ‘Would you mind going into my room – it’s just there, and sitting with Ellen for a minute?’ This Lady Glencora said in the sweetest possible tone to the girl who was waiting on Alice; and then, when they
were alone together, she got into a little chair by the fireside and prepared herself for conversation.

‘I must keep you up for a quarter of an hour while I tell you something. But first of all, how do you like the people? Will you be able to be comfortable with them?’ Alice of course said that she thought she would; and then there came that little discussion in which the duties of Mr Bott, the
man with the red hair, were described.

‘But I’ve got something to tell you,’ said Lady Glencora, when they had already been there some twenty minutes. ‘Sit down opposite to me, and look at the fire while I look at you.’

‘Is it anything terrible?’

‘It’s nothing wrong.’

‘Oh, Lady Glencora, if it’s – ’

‘I won’t have you call me Lady Glencora. Don’t I call you Alice? Why are you so unkind to
me? I have not come to you now asking you to do for me anything that you ought not to do.’

‘But you are going to tell me something.’ Alice felt sure that the thing to be told would have some reference to Mr Fitzgerald, and she did not wish to hear Mr Fitzgerald’s name from her cousin’s lips.

‘Tell you something; – of course I am. I’m going to tell you that, – that in writing to you the other
day I wrote a fib. But it wasn’t
that I wished to deceive you; – only I couldn’t say it all in a letter.’

‘Say all what?’

‘You know I confessed that I had been very bad in not coming to you in London last year.’

‘I never thought of it for a moment.’

‘You did not care whether I came or not: was that it? But never mind. Why should you have cared? But I cared. I told you in my letter that I didn’t
come because I had so many things on hand. Of course that was a fib.’

‘Everybody makes excuses of that kind,’ said Alice.

‘But they don’t make them to the very people of all others whom they want to know and love. I was longing to come to you every day. But I feared I could not come without speaking of him; – and I had determined never to speak of him again.’ This she said in that peculiar low
voice which she assumed at times.

‘Then why do it now, Lady Glencora?’

‘I won’t be called Lady Glencora. Call me Cora. I had a sister once, older than I, and she used to call me Cora. If she had lived –. But never mind that now. She didn’t live. I’ll tell you why I do it now. Because I cannot help it. Besides, I’ve met him. I’ve been in the same room with him, and have spoken to him. What’s
the good of any such resolution now?’

‘And you have met him?’

‘Yes; he – Mr Palliser, – knew all about it. When he talked of taking me to the house, I whispered to him that I thought Burgo would be there.’

‘Do not call him by his Christian name,’ said Alice, almost with a shudder.

‘Why not? – why not his Christian name? I did when I told my husband. Or perhaps I said Burgo Fitzgerald.’

‘Well.’

‘And he bade me go. He said it didn’t signify, and that I had better learn to bear it. Bear it, indeed! If I am to meet him, and speak to him, and look at him, surely I may mention his name.’ And then she paused for an answer. ‘May I not?’

‘What am I to say?’ exclaimed Alice.

‘Anything you please, that’s not a falsehood. But I’ve got you here because I don’t think you will tell a falsehood.
Oh, Alice, I do so want to go right, and it is so hard!’

Hard, indeed, poor creature, for one so weighted as she had been, and sent out into the world with so small advantages of previous training or of present friendship! Alice began to feel now that she had been enticed to Matching Priory because her cousin wanted a friend, and of course she could not refuse to give the friendship that was
asked from her. She got up from her chair, and kneeling down at the other’s feet put up her face and kissed her.

‘I knew you would be good to me,’ said Lady Glencora. ‘I knew you would. And you may say whatever you like. But I could not bear that you should not know the real reason why I neither came to you nor sent for you after we went to London. You’ll come to me now; won’t you, dear?’

‘Yes;
– and you’ll come to me,’ said Alice, making in her mind a sort of bargain that she was not to be received into Mr Palliser’s house after the fashion in which Lady Midlothian had proposed to receive her. But it struck her at once that this was unworthy of her, and ungenerous. ‘But I’ll come to you,’ she added, ‘Whether you come to me or not’

‘I will go to you,’ said Lady Glencora, ‘of course,
– why shouldn’t I? But you know what I mean. We shall have dinners and parties and lots of people.’

‘And we shall have none,’ said Alice, smiling.

‘And therefore there is so much more excuse for your coming to me; – or rather I mean so much more reason, for I don’t want excuses. Well, dear, I’m so glad I’ve told you. I was afraid to see you in London. I should hardly have known how to look at
you then. But I’ve got over that now.’ Then she smiled and returned the kiss which Alice had given her. It was singular to see her standing on the bedroom rug with all her magnificence of dress, but with her hair pushed back behind her ears, and her eyes red with tears, – as though the burden of the magnificence remained to her after its purpose was over.

‘I declare it’s ever so much past twelve.
Good night, now, dear. I wonder whether he’s come up. But I should have heard his step if
he had. He never treads lightly. He seldom gives over work till after one, and sometimes goes on till three. It’s the only thing he likes, I believe. God bless you! good night. I’ve such a deal more to say to you; and Alice, you must tell me something about yourself, too; won’t you, dear?’ Then without waiting
for an answer Lady Glencora went, leaving Alice in a maze of bewilderment She could hardly believe that all she had heard, and all she had done, had happened since she left Queen Anne Street that morning.

M
R
P
ALLISER
was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future. He could afford to learn to be a statesman, and had the industry wanted for
such training. He was born in the purple, noble himself, and heir to the highest rank as well as one of the greatest fortunes of the country, already very rich, surrounded by all the temptations of luxury and pleasure; and yet he devoted himself to work with the grinding energy of a young penniless barrister labouring for a penniless wife, and did so without any motive more selfish than that of being
counted in the roll of the public servants of England. He was not a brilliant man, and understood well that such was the case. He was now listened to in the House, as the phrase goes; but he was listened to as a laborious man, who was in earnest in what he did, who got up his facts with accuracy, and who, dull though he be, was worthy of confidence. And he was very dull. He rather prided himself
on being dull, and on conquering in spite of his dullness. He never allowed himself a joke in his speeches, nor attempted even the smallest flourish of rhetoric. He was very careful in his language, labouring night and day to learn to express himself with accuracy, with no needless repetition of words, perspicuously
with regard to the special object he might have in view. He had taught himself
to believe that oratory, as oratory, was a sin against that honesty in politics by which he strove to guide himself. He desired to use words for the purpose of teaching things which he knew and which others did not know; and he desired also to be honoured for his knowledge. But he had no desire to be honoured for the language in which his knowledge was conveyed. He was an upright, thin, laborious
man; who by his parts alone could have served no political party materially, but whose parts were sufficient to make his education, integrity, and industry useful in the highest degree. It is the trust which such men inspire which makes them so serviceable; – trust not only in their labour, – for any man rising from the mass of the people may be equally laborious; nor yet simply in their honesty
and patriotism. The confidence is given to their labour, honesty, and patriotism joined to such a personal stake in the country as gives them a weight and ballast which no politician in England can possess without it.

If he was dull as a statesman he was more dull in private life, and it may be imagined that such a woman as his wife would find some difficulty in making his society the source
of her happiness. Their marriage, in a point of view regarding business, had been a complete success, – and a success, too, when on the one side, that of Lady Glencora, there had been terrible dangers of shipwreck, and when on his side also there had been some little fears of a mishap. As regards her it has been told how near she went to throwing herself, with all her vast wealth, into the arms of
a young man, whom no father, no guardian could have regarded as a well-chosen husband for any girl; – one who as yet had shown no good qualities, who had been a spendthrift, unprincipled, and debauched. Alas, she had loved him! It is possible that her love and her wealth might have turned him from evil to good. But who would have ventured to risk her, –I will not say her and her vast inheritances,
– on such a chance? That evil, however, had been prevented, and those about her had managed to marry her to a young man, very steady by nature, with worldly prospects as brilliant as her own, and with a station than which the world
offers nothing higher. His little threatened mischance, – a passing fancy for a married lady who was too wise to receive vows which were proffered not in the most ardent
manner, – had, from special reasons, given some little alarm to his uncle, which had just sufficed at the time to make so very judicious a marriage doubly pleasant to that noble duke. So that all things and all people had conspired to shower substantial comforts on the heads of this couple, when they were joined together, and men and women had not yet ceased to declare how happy were both in
the accumulated gifts of fortune.