Can You Forgive Her? (93 page)

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.’

A
LICE
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 har 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 sentword 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.

‘Today, papa?’ she asked.

‘Yes, today. 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 today, 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.

She dressed herself very plainly, simply changing one black frock for another, and then sat herself in her drawing-room awaiting the two gentlemen. It was already past the hour of dinner before her father came upstairs. She knew that he was in the house, and in her heart she accused him of keeping out of the way, in order that John Grey might be alone with her. Whether or no she were right in
her suspicions John Grey did not take advantage of the opportunity offered to him. Her father came up first, and had seated himself silently in his arm-chair before the visitor was announced.

As Mr Grey entered the room Alice knew that she was flurried, but still she managed to carry herself with some dignity. His bearing was perfect. But then, as she declared to herself afterwards, no possible
position in life would put him beside himself. He came up to her with his usual quiet smile, – a smile that was genial even in its quietness, and took her hand. He took it fairly and fully into his; but there was no squeezing, no special pressure, no love-making. And when he spoke to her he called her Alice, as though his doing so was of all things the most simply a matter of course. There was
no tell-tale hesitation in his voice. When did he ever hesitate at anything? ‘I hear you are going abroad,’ he said, ‘with your cousin, Lady Glencora Palliser.’

‘Yes,’ said Alice; ‘I am going with them for a long tour. We shall not return, I fancy, till the end of next winter.’

‘Plans of that sort are as easily broken as they are made,’ said
her father. ‘You won’t be your own mistress; and I
advise you not to count too surely upon getting further than Baden.’

‘If Mr Palliser changes his mind of course I shall come home,’ said Alice, with a little attempt at a smile.

‘I should think him a man not prone to changes,’ said Grey. ‘But all London is talking about his change of mind at this moment They say at the clubs that he might have been in the Cabinet if he would, but that he has
taken up this idea of going abroad at the moment when he was wanted.’

‘It’s his wife’s doing, I take it,’ said Mr Vavasor.

‘That’s the worst of being in Parliament,’ said Grey. ‘A man can’t do anything without giving a reason for it. There must be men for public life, of course; but, upon my word, I think we ought to be very much obliged to them.’

Alice, as she took her old lover’s arm, and
walked down with him to dinner, thought of all her former quarrels with him on this very subject. On this very point she had left him. He had never argued the matter with her. He had never asked her to argue with him. He had not condescended so far as that. Had he done so, she thought that she would have brought herself to think as he thought. She would have striven, at any rate, to do so. But she
could not become unambitious, tranquil, fond of retirement, and philosophic, without an argument on the matter, – without being allowed even the poor grace of owning herself to be convinced. If a man takes a dog with him from the country up to town, the dog must live a town life without knowing the reason why; – must live a town life or the a town death. But a woman should not be treated like a
dog. ‘Had he deigned to discuss it with me!’ Alice had so often said. ‘But, no; he will read his books, and I am to go there to fetch him his slippers, and make his tea for him.’ All this came upon her again as she walked downstairs by his side; and with it there came a consciousness that she had been driven by this usage into the terrible engagement which she had made with her cousin. That, no doubt,
was now over. There was no longer to her any question of her marrying George Vavasor. But the fact that she had been mad enough to think and talk of such a marriage, had of itself been enough to ruin her. ‘Things of that sort are so
often over with you!’ After such a speech as that to her from her father, Alice told herself that there could be no more ‘things of that sort’ for her. But all her
misery had been brought about by this scornful superiority to the ordinary pursuits of the world, – this looking down upon humanity. ‘It seems to me,’ she said, very quietly, while her hand was yet upon his arm, ‘that your pity is hardly needed. I should think that no persons can be happier than those whom you call our public men.’

‘Ah!’ said he, ‘that is our old quarrel.’ He said it as though
the quarrel had simply been an argument between them, or a dozen arguments, – as arguments do come up between friends; not as though it had served to separate for life two persons who had loved each other dearly. ‘It’s the old story of the town mouse and the country mouse, – as old as the hills. Mice may be civil for a while, and compliment each other; but when they come to speak their minds freely,
each likes his own life best’ She said nothing more at the moment, and the three sat down to their small dinner-table. It was astonishing to Alice that he should be able to talk in this way, to hint at such things, to allude to their former hopes and present condition, without a quiver in his voice, or, as far as she could perceive, without any feeling in his heart.

‘Alice,’ said her father,
‘I can’t compliment your cook upon her soup.’

‘You don’t encourage her, papa, by eating it often enough. And then you only told me at two o’clock today.’

‘If a cook can’t make soup between two and seven, she can’t make it in a week.’

‘I hope Mr Grey will excuse it,’ said Alice.

‘Isn’t it good?’ said he. ‘I won’t say that it is, because I should be pretending to have an opinion; but I should
not have found out anything against it of myself.’

‘Where do you dine usually, now you are in London?’ Mr Vavasor asked.

‘At the old club, at the comer of Suffolk Street. It’s the oldest club in London, I believe. I never belonged to any other, and therefore can’t compare them; but I can’t imagine anything much nicer.’

‘They give you better soup than ours?’ said Alice.

‘You’ve an excellent
cook,’ said Mr Vavasor, with great gravity; ‘one of the best second-class cooks in London. We were very nearly getting him, but you nicked him just in time. I know him well.’

‘It’s a great deal more than I do, or hope to do. There’s another branch of public life for which I’m quite unfitted. I’d as soon be called on to choose a Prime Minister for the country, as I would a cook for a club.’

‘Of course you would,’ said Mr Vavasor. There may be as many as a dozen cooks about London to be looked up, but there are never more than two possible Prime Ministers about And as one of them must be going out when the other is coming in, I don’t see that there can be any difficulty. Moreover, now-a-days, people do their politics for themselves, but they expect to have their dinners cooked for them.’

The little dinner went on quietly and very easily. Mr Vavasor found fault with nearly everything. But as, on this occasion, the meat and the drink, with the manner of the eating and drinking, did not constitute the difficulty, Alice was indifferent to her father’s censures. The thing needed was that she and Mr Grey should be able to sit together at the same table without apparent consciousness
of their former ties. Alice felt that she was succeeding indifferently well while she was putting in little mock defences for the cook. And as for John Grey, he succeeded so well that his success almost made Alice angry with him. It required no effort with him at all to be successful in this matter. ‘If he can forget all that has passed, so much the better,’ said Alice to herself when she got up
into the drawing-room. Then she sat herself down on the sofa, and cried. Oh! what had she not lost! Had any woman ever been so mad, so reckless, so heartless as she had been! And she had done it, knowing that she loved him! She cried bitterly, and then went away to wash her eyes, that she might be ready to give him his coffee when he should come upstairs.