Can You Forgive Her? (73 page)

‘I think I’d better hang myself,’ he said.

‘Burgo, I will not have you here if you talk to me in that way. I am trying to help you once again;
but if you look like that, and talk like that, I will give it up.’

‘I think you’d-better give it up.’

‘Are you becoming cowardly at last? With all your faults I never expected that of you.’

‘No; I am not a coward. I’d go out and fight him at two paces’ distance with the greatest pleasure in the world.’

‘You know that’s nonsense, Burgo. It’s downright braggadocio. Men do not fight now; nor
at any time would a man be called upon to fight, because you simply wanted to take his wife from him. If you had done it, indeed!’

‘How am I to do it? I’d do it tomorrow if it depended on me. No one can say that I’m afraid of anybody or of anything.’

‘I suppose something in the matter depends on her?’

‘I believe she loves me, – if you mean that?’

‘Look here, Burgo,’ and the considerate aunt
gave to the impoverished and ruined nephew such counsel as she, in accordance with her lights, was enabled to bestow. ‘I think you were much wronged in that matter. After what had passed I thought that you had a right to claim Lady Glencora as your wife. Mr Palliser, in my mind, behaved very wrongly in stepping in between you and – you and such a fortune as hers, in that way. He cannot expect that
his wife should have any affection for him. There is nobody alive who has a greater horror of anything improper in married women than I have. I have always shown it When Lady Madeline Madtop left her husband, I would never allow her to come inside my doors again, – though I have no doubt he ill-used her dreadfully, and there was nothing ever proved between her and Colonel Graham. One can’t be too
particular in such matters. But here, if you, – if you can succeed, you know, I shall always regard the Palliser episode in Lady Glencora’s life as a tragical accident I shall indeed. Poor dear! It was done exactly as they make nuns of girls in Roman Catholic countries; and as I should think no harm of helping a nun out of her convent, so I should think no harm of helping her now. If you are to
say anything to her, I think you might have an opportunity at the party,’

Burgo was still looking at the fireplace; and he sat on, looking and still looking, but he said nothing.

‘You can think of what I have said, Burgo,’ continued his aunt, meaning that he should get up and go. But he did not go. ‘Have you anything more that you wish to say to me?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got no money,’ said Burgo,
still looking at the fireplace.

Lady Glencora’s property was worth not less than fifty thousand a year
¹
. He was a young man ambitious of obtaining that almost incredible amount of wealth, and who once had nearly reached it, by means of her love. His present obstacle consisted in his want of a twenty-pound note! ‘I’ve got no money.’ The words were growled out rather than spoken, and his eyes were
never turned even for a moment towards his aunt’s face.

‘You’ve never got any money,’ said she, speaking almost with passion.

‘How can I help it? I can’t make money. If I had a couple of hundred pounds, so that I could take her, I believe that she would go with me. It should not be my fault if she did not It would have been all right if she had come to Monkshade.’

‘I’ve got no money for you,
Burgo. I have not five pounds belonging to me.’

‘But you’ve got — ?’

‘What?’ said Lady Monk, interrupting him sharply.

‘Would Cosmo lend it me?’ said he, hesitating to go on with that suggestion which he had been about to make. The Cosmo of whom he spoke was not his uncle, but his cousin. No eloquence could have induced his uncle, Sir Cosmo, to lend him another shilling. But the son of the
house was a man rich with his own wealth, and Burgo had not taxed him for some years.

‘I do not know,’ said Lady Monk. ‘I never see him. Probably not.’

‘It is hard,’ said Burgo. ‘Fancy that a man should be ruined for two hundred pounds, just at such a moment of his life as this!’ He was a man bold by nature, and he did make his proposition. ‘You have jewels, aunt; — could you not raise it for
me? I would redeem them with the very first money that I got.’

Lady Monk rose in a passion when the suggestion was first made, but before the interview was over she had promised that she would endeavour to do something in the way of raising money for him yet once again. He was her favourite nephew, and the same almost to her as a child of her own. With one of her own children indeed she had quarrelled,
and of the other, a married daughter, she rarely saw much. Such love as she had to give she gave to Burgo, and she promised him the money though she knew that she must raise it by some villanous falsehood to her husband.

On the same morning Lady Glencora went to Queen Anne Street with the purpose of inducing Alice to go to Lady Monk’s party; but Alice would not accede to the proposition, though
Lady Glencora pressed it with all her eloquence. ‘I don’t know her,’ said Alice.

‘My dear,’ said Lady Glencora, ‘that’s absurd. Half the people there won’t know her.’

‘But they know her set, or know her friends, – or, at any rate, will meet their own friends at her house. I should only bother you, and should not in the least gratify myself.’

‘The fact is, everybody will go who can, and I should
have no sort of trouble in getting a card for you. Indeed I should simply write a note and say I meant to bring you.’

‘Pray don’t do any such thing, for I certainly shall not go. I can’t conceive why you should wish it’

‘Mr Fitzgerald will be there,’ said Lady Glencora, altering her voice altogether, and speaking in that low tone with which she used to win Alice’s heart down at Matching. She
was sitting close over the fire, leaning. Low, holding up her little hands as a screen to her face, and looking at her companion earnestly. ‘I’m sure that he will be there, though nobody has told me.’

‘That may be a reason for your staying away,’ said Alice, slowly, ‘but hardly a reason for my going with you.’

Lady Glencora would not condescend to tell her friend in so many words that she wanted
her protection. She could not bring herself to say that, though she wished it to be understood. ‘Ah! I thought you would have gone,’ said she.

‘It would be contrary to all my habits,’ said Alice. ‘I never go to people’s houses when I don’t know them. It’s a kind of society which I don’t like. Pray do not ask me.’

‘Oh! very well. If it must be so, I won’t press it.’ Lady Glencora had moved the
position of one of her hands so as to get it to her pocket, and there had grasped a letter, which she still carried; but when Alice said those last cold words, ‘Pray do not ask me,’ she released the grasp, and left the letter where it was. ‘I suppose he won’t bite me, at any rate,’ she said, and she assumed that look of childish drollery which she would sometimes put on, almost with a grimace, but
still with so much prettiness that no one who saw her would regret it.

‘He certainly can’t bite you, if you will not let him.’

‘Do you know, Alice, though they all say that Plantagenet is one of the wisest men in London, I sometimes think that he is one
of the greatest fools. Soon after we came to town I told him that we had better not go to that woman’s house. Of course he understood me. He
simply said that he wished that I should do so.“I hate anything out of the way,” he said. “There can be no reason why my wife should not go to Lady Monk’s house as well as to any other.” There was an end of it, you know, as far as anything I could do was concerned. But there wasn’t an end of it with him. He insists that I shall go, but he sends my duenna with me. Dear Mrs Marsham is to be there!’

‘She’ll do you no harm, I suppose?’

‘I’m not so sure of that, Alice. In the first place, one doesn’t like to be followed everywhere by a policeman, even though one isn’t going to pick a pocket. And then, the devil is so strong within me, that I should like to dodge the policeman. I can fancy a woman being driven to do wrong simply by a desire to show her policeman that she can be too many
for him’

‘Glencora, you make me so wretched when you talk like that.’

‘Will you go with me, then, so that I may have a policeman of my own choosing? He asked me if I would mind taking Mrs Marsham with me in my carriage. So I up and spoke, very boldly, like the proud young porter
²
, and told him I would not; and when he asked why not, I said that I preferred taking a friend of my own, – a young
friend, I said, and I then named you or my cousin, Lady Jane. I told him I should bring one or the other.’

‘And was he angry?’

‘No; he took it very quietly, – saying something, in his calm way, about hoping that I should get over a prejudice against one of his earliest and dearest friends. He twits at me because I don’t understand Parliament and the British Constitution, but I know more of them
than he does about a woman. You are quite sure you won’t go, then?’ Alice hesitated a moment. ‘Do,’ said Lady Glencora; and there was an amount of persuasion in her accent which should, I think, have overcome her cousin’s scruples.

‘It is against the whole tenor of my life’s way
³
’ she said, ‘And, Glencora, I am not happy myself. I am not fit for parties. I sometimes think that I shall never go
into society again.’

‘That’s nonsense, you know.’

‘I suppose it is, but I cannot go now. I would if I really thought –’

‘Oh, very well,’ said Lady Glencora, interrupting her. ‘I suppose I shall get through it If he asks me to dance, I shall stand up with him, just as though I had never seen him before.’ Then she remembered the letter in her pocket, – remembered that at this moment she bore
about with her a written proposition from this man to go off with him and leave her husband’s house. She had intended to show it to Alice on this occasion; but as Alice had refused her request, she was glad that she had not done so. ‘You’ll come to me the morning after,’ said Lady Glencora, as she went. This Alice promised to do; and then she was left alone.

Alice regretted,– regretted deeply
that she had not consented to go with her cousin. After all, of what importance had been her objection when compared with the cause for which her presence had been desired? Doubtless she would have been uncomfortable at Lady Monk’s house; but could she not have borne some hour or two of discomfort on her friend’s behalf? But, in truth, it was only after Lady Glencora had left her that she began to
understand the subject fully, and to feel that she might possibly have been of service in a great danger. But it was too late now. Then she strove to comfort herself with the reflection that a casual meeting at an evening party in London could not be perilous in the same degree as a prolonged sojourn together in a country house.

*          *          *

L
ADY
M
ONK’S
house in Gloucester Square was admirably well adapted for the giving of parties. It was a large house, and seemed to the eyes of guests to be much larger than it was. The hall was spacious, and the stairs went up in the centre, facing you as you
entered the inner hall. Round the top of the stairs there was a broad gallery, with
an ornamented railing, and from this opened the doors into the three reception-rooms. There were two on the right, the larger of which looked out backwards, and these two were connected by an archway, as though made for folding-doors; but the doors, I believe, never were there. Fronting the top of the staircase there was a smaller room, looking out backwards, very prettily furnished, and much used
by Lady Monk when alone. It was here that Burgo had held that conference with his aunt of which mention has been made. Below stairs there was the great dining-room, on which, on these occasions, a huge buffet was erected for refreshments, – what I may call a masculine buffet, as it was attended by butlers and men in livery, – and there was a smaller room looking out into the square, in which there
was a feminine battery for the dispensing of tea and such like smaller good things, and from which female aid could be attained for the arrangement or mending of dresses in a further sanctum within it For such purposes as that now on foot the house was most commodious. Lady Monk, on these occasions, was moved by a noble ambition to do something different from that done by her neighbours in similar
circumstances, and therefore she never came forward to receive her guests. She ensconced herself, early in the evening, in that room at the head of the stairs, and there they who chose to see her made their way up to her, and spoke their little speeches. They who thought her to be a great woman, – and many people did think her to be great, – were wont to declare that she never forgot those who
did come, or those who did not. And even they who desired to describe her as little, – for even Lady Monk had enemies, – would hint that though she never came out of the room, she would rise from her chair and make a step towards the door whenever any name very high in fashionable life greeted her ears. So that a mighty Cabinet Minister, or a duchess in great repute, or any special wonder of the
season, could not fail of entering her precincts and being seen there for a few moments. It would, of course, happen that the doorway of her chamber would become blocked; but there were precautions taken to avoid this inconvenience as far as possible, and one man in livery was
employed to go backwards and forwards between his mistress and the outer world, so as to keep the thread of a passage
open.

But though Lady Monk was in this way enabled to rest herself during her labours, there was much in her night’s work which was not altogether exhilarating. Ladies would come into her small room and sit there by the hour, with whom she had not the slightest wish to hold conversation. The Duchess of St Bungay would always be there,– so that there was a special seat in one corner of the room
which was called the Duchess’ stool. ‘I shouldn’t care a straw about her,’ Lady Monk had been heard to complain, ‘if she would talk to anybody. But nobody will talk to her, and then she listens to everything.’