The Palliser Novels Part 45

"But how if she never becomes your wife? I'm beginning to think she'll never do anything like any other woman."

"I'm not quite sure that you understand her," said Grey; "though of course you ought to do so better than any one else."

"n.o.body can understand her," said the angry father. "She told me the other day, as you know, that she was going to have nothing more to do with her cousin - "

"Has she - has she become friends with him again?" said Grey. As he asked the question there came a red spot on each cheek, showing the strong mental anxiety which had prompted it.

"No; I believe not; - that is, certainly not in the way you mean. I think that she is beginning to know that he is a rascal."

"It is a great blessing that she has learned the truth before it was too late."

"But would you believe it; - she has given him her name to bills for two thousand pounds, payable at two weeks' sight? He sent to her only this morning a fellow that he called his clerk, and she has been fool enough to accept them. Two thousand pounds! That comes of leaving money at a young woman's own disposal."

"But we expected that, you know," said Grey, who seemed to take the news with much composure.

"Expected it?"

"Of course we did. You yourself did not suppose that what he had before would have been the last."

"But after she had quarrelled with him!"

"That would make no difference with her. She had promised him her money, and as it seems that he will be content with that, let her keep her promise."

"And give him everything! Not if I can help it. I'll expose him. I will indeed. Such a pitiful rascal as he is!"

"You will do nothing, Mr Vavasor, that will injure your daughter. I'm very sure of that."

"But, by heavens - . Such sheer robbery as that! Two thousand pounds more in fourteen days!" The shortness of the date at which the bills were drawn seemed to afflict Mr Vavasor almost as keenly as the amount. Then he described the whole transaction as accurately as he could do so, and also told how Alice had declared her purpose of going to Mr Round the lawyer, if her father would not undertake to procure the money for her by the time the bills should become due. "Mr Round, you know, has heard nothing about it," he continued. "He doesn't dream of any such thing. If she would take my advice, she would leave the bills, and let them be dishonoured. As it is, I think I shall call at Drummonds', and explain the whole transaction."

"You must not do that," said Grey. "I will call at Drummonds', instead, and see that the money is all right for the bills. As far as they go, let him have his plunder."

"And if she won't take you, at last, Grey? Upon my word, I don't think she ever will. My belief is she'll never get married. She'll never do anything like any other woman."

"The money won't be missed by me if I never get married," said Grey, with a smile. "If she does marry me, of course I shall make her pay me."

"No, by George! that won't do," said Vavasor. "If she were your daughter you'd know that she could not take a man's money in that way."

"And I know it now, though she is not my daughter. I was only joking. As soon as I am certain, - finally certain, - that she can never become my wife, I will take back my money. You need not be afraid. The nature of the arrangement we have made shall then be explained to her."

In this way it was settled; and on the following morning the father informed the daughter that he had done her bidding, and that the money would be placed to her credit at the bankers' before the bills came due. On that Sat.u.r.day, the day which her cousin had named in his letter, she trudged down to Drummonds', and was informed by a very courteous senior clerk in that establishment, that due preparation for the bills had been made.

So far, I think we may say that Mr George Vavasor was not unfortunate.

CHAPTER LXII.

Going Abroad One morning, early in May, a full week before Alice's visit to the bankers' at Charing Cross, a servant in grand livery, six feet high, got out of a cab at the door in Queen Anne Street, and sent up a note for Miss Vavasor, declaring that he would wait in the cab for her answer. He had come from lady Glencora, and had been specially ordered to go in a cab and come back in a cab, and make himself as like a Mercury, with wings to his feet, as may be possible to a London footman. Mr Palliser had arranged his plans with his wife that morning, - or, I should more correctly say, had given her his orders, and she, in consequence, had sent away her Mercury in hot pressing haste to Queen Anne Street. "Do come; - instantly if you can," the note said. "I have so much to tell you, and so much to ask of you. If you can't come, when shall I find you, and where?" Alice sent back a note, saying that she would be in Park Lane as soon as she could put on her bonnet and walk down; and then the Mercury went home in his cab.

Alice found her friend in the small breakfast-room up-stairs, sitting close by the window. They had not as yet met since the evening of Lady Monk's party, nor had Lady Glencora seen Alice in the mourning which she now wore for her grandfather. "Oh, dear, what a change it makes in you," she said. "I never thought of your being in black."

"I don't know what it is you want, but shan't I do in mourning as well as I would in colours?"

"You'll do in anything, dear. But I have so much to tell you, and I don't know how to begin. And I've so much to ask of you, and I'm so afraid you won't do it."

"You generally find me very complaisant."

"No I don't, dear. It is very seldom you will do anything for me. But I must tell you everything first. Do take your bonnet off, for I shall be hours in doing it."

"Hours in telling me!"

"Yes; and in getting your consent to what I want you to do. But I think I'll tell you that first. I'm to be taken abroad immediately."

"Who is to take you?"

"Ah, you may well ask that. If you could know what questions I have asked myself on that head! I sometimes say things to myself as though they were the most proper and reasonable things in the world, and then within an hour or two I hate myself for having thought of them."

"But why don't you answer me? Who is going abroad with you?"

"Well; you are to be one of the party."

"I!"

"Yes; you. When I have named so very respectable a chaperon for my youth, of course you will understand that my husband is to take us."

"But Mr Palliser can't leave London at this time of the year?"

"That's just it. He is to leave London at this time of the year. Don't look in that way, for it's all settled. Whether you go with me or not, I've got to go. To-day is Tuesday. We are to be off next Tuesday night, if you can make yourself ready. We shall breakfast in Paris on Wednesday morning, and then it will be to us all just as if we were in a new world. Mr Palliser will walk up and down the new court of the Louvre, and you will be on his left arm, and I shall be on his right, - just like English people, - and it will be the most proper thing that ever was seen in life. Then we shall go on to Basle" - Alice shuddered as Basle was mentioned, thinking of the balcony over the river - "and so to Lucerne - . But no; that was the first plan, and Mr Palliser altered it. He spent a whole day up here with maps and Bradshaw's and Murray's guide-books, and he scolded me so because I didn't care whether we went first to Baden or to some other place. How could I care? I told him I would go anywhere he chose to take me. Then he told me I was heartless; - and I acknowledged that I was heartless. 'I am heartless,' I said. 'Tell me something I don't know.'"

"Oh, Cora, why did you say that?"

"I didn't choose to contradict my husband. Besides, it's true. Then he threw the Bradshaw away, and all the maps flew about. So I picked them up again, and said we'd go to Switzerland first. I knew that would settle it, and of course he decided on stopping at Baden. If he had said Jericho, it would have been the same thing to me. Wouldn't you like to go to Jericho?"

"I should have no special objection to Jericho."

"But you are to go to Baden instead."

"I've said nothing about that yet. But you have not told me half your story. Why is Mr Palliser going abroad in the middle of Parliament in this way?"

"Ah; now I must go back to the beginning. And indeed, Alice, I hardly know how to tell you; not that I mind you knowing it, only there are some things that won't get themselves told. You can hardly guess what it is that he is giving up. You must swear that you won't repeat what I'm going to tell you now?"

"I'm not a person apt to tell secrets, but I shan't swear anything."

"What a woman you are for discretion! it is you that ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer; you are so wise. Only you haven't brought your own pigs to the best market, after all."

"Never mind my own pigs now, Cora."

"I do mind them, very much. But the secret is this. They have asked Mr Palliser to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he has - refused. Think of that!"

"But why?"

"Because of me, - of me, and my folly, and wickedness, and abominations. Because he has been fool enough to plague himself with a wife - he who of all men ought to have kept himself free from such troubles. Oh, he has been so good! It is almost impossible to make any one understand it. If you could know how he has longed for this office; - how he has worked for it day and night, wearing his eyes out with figures when everybody else has been asleep, shutting himself up with such creatures as Mr Bott when other men have been shooting and hunting and flirting and spending their money. He has been a slave to it for years, - all his life I believe, - in order that he might sit in the Cabinet, and be a minister and a Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has hoped and feared, and has been, I believe, sometimes half-mad with expectation. This has been his excitement, - what racing and gambling are to other men. At last, the place was there, ready for him, and they offered it to him. They begged him to take it, almost on their knees. The Duke of St Bungay was here all one morning about it; but Mr Palliser sent him away, and refused the place. It's all over now, and the other man, whom they all hate so much, is to remain in."

"But why did he refuse it?"

"I keep on telling you - because of me. He found that I wanted looking after, and that Mrs Marsham and Mr Bott between them couldn't do it."

"Oh, Cora! how can you talk in that way?"

"If you knew all, you might well ask how I could. You remember about Lady Monk's ball, that you would not go to, - as you ought to have done. If you had gone, Mr Palliser would have been Chancellor of the Exchequer at this minute; he would, indeed. Only think of that! But though you did not go, other people did who ought to have remained at home. I went for one, - and you know who was there for another."

"What difference could that make to you?" said Alice, angrily.

"It might have made a great deal of difference. And, for the matter of that, so it did. Mr Palliser was there too, but, of course, he went away immediately. I can't tell you all the trouble there had been about Mrs Marsham, - whether I was to take her with me or not. However, I wouldn't take her, and didn't take her. The carriage went for her first, and there she was when we got there; and Mr Bott was there too. I wonder whether I shall ever make you understand it all."

"There are some things I don't want to understand."

"There they both were watching me, - looking at me the whole evening; and, of course, I resolved that I would not be put down by them."

"I think, if I had been you, I would not have allowed their presence to make any difference to me."

"That is very easily said, my dear, but by no means so easily done. You can't make yourself unconscious of eyes that are always looking at you. I dared them, at any rate, to do their worst, for I stood up to dance with Burgo Fitzgerald."

"Oh, Cora!"

"Why shouldn't I? At any rate I did; and I waltzed with him for half an hour. Alice, I never will waltz again; - never. I have done with dancing now. I don't think, even in my maddest days, I ever kept it up so long as I did then. And I knew that everybody was looking at me. It was not only Mrs Marsham and Mr Bott, but everybody there. I felt myself to be desperate, - mad, like a wild woman. There I was, going round and round and round with the only man for whom I ever cared two straws. It seemed as though everything had been a dream since the old days. Ah! how well I remember the first time I danced with him, - at his aunt's house in Cavendish Square. They had only just brought me out in London then, and I thought that he was a G.o.d."

"Cora! I cannot bear to hear you talk like that."

"I know well enough that he is no G.o.d now; some people say that he is a devil, but he was like Apollo to me then. Did you ever see anyone so beautiful as he is?"

"I never saw him at all."

"I wish you could have seen him; but you will some day. I don't know whether you care for men being handsome." Alice thought of John Grey, who was the handsomest man that she knew, but she made no answer. "I do; or, rather, I used to do," continued Lady Glencora. "I don't think I care much about anything now; but I don't see why handsome men should not be run after as much as handsome women."

"But you wouldn't have a girl run after any man, would you; whether handsome or ugly?"

"But they do, you know. When I saw him the other night he was just as handsome as ever; - the same look, half wild and half tame, like an animal you cannot catch, but which you think would love you so if you could catch him. In a little while it was just like the old time, and I had made up my mind to care nothing for the people looking at me."

"And you think that was right?"

"No, I don't. Yes, I do; that is. It wasn't right to care about dancing with him, but it was right to disregard all the people gaping round. What was it to them? Why should they care who I danced with?"

"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, n.o.body 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."