Can You Forgive Her?

by Anthony Trollope

  CHAPTER LXII.

  Going Abroad.

  One morning, early in May, a full week before Alice's visit to thebankers' 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 anote for Miss Vavasor, declaring that he would wait in the cab forher answer. He had come from Lady Glencora, and had been speciallyordered to go in a cab and come back in a cab, and make himself aslike a Mercury, with wings to his feet, as may be possible to aLondon footman. Mr. Palliser had arranged his plans with his wife thatmorning,--or, I should more correctly say, had given her his orders,and she, in consequence, had sent away her Mercury in hot pressinghaste to Queen Anne Street. "Do come;--instantly if you can," thenote said. "I have so much to tell you, and so much to ask of you. Ifyou can't come, when shall I find you, and where?" Alice sent back anote, saying that she would be in Park Lane as soon as she could puton her bonnet and walk down; and then the Mercury went home in hiscab.

  Alice found her friend in the small breakfast-room up-stairs, sittingclose by the window. They had not as yet met since the evening ofLady Monk's party, nor had Lady Glencora seen Alice in the mourningwhich she now wore for her grandfather. "Oh, dear, what a change itmakes 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 aswell as I would in colours?"

  "You'll do in anything, dear. But I have so much to tell you, and Idon't know how to begin. And I've so much to ask of you, and I'm soafraid 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, forI shall be hours in doing it."

  "Hours in telling me!"

  "Yes; and in getting your consent to what I want you to do. But Ithink 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 haveasked myself on that head! I sometimes say things to myself as thoughthey were the most proper and reasonable things in the world, andthen 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 myyouth, 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 withme or not, I've got to go. To-day is Tuesday. We are to be off nextTuesday night, if you can make yourself ready. We shall breakfast inParis on Wednesday morning, and then it will be to us all just as ifwe were in a new world. Mr. Palliser will walk up and down the newcourt of the Louvre, and you will be on his left arm, and I shall beon his right,--just like English people,--and it will be the mostproper thing that ever was seen in life. Then we shall go on toBasle"--Alice shuddered as Basle was mentioned, thinking of thebalcony over the river--"and so to Lucerne--. But no; that was thefirst plan, and Mr. Palliser altered it. He spent a whole day uphere with maps and Bradshaw's and Murray's guide-books, and hescolded me so because I didn't care whether we went first to Badenor to some other place. How could I care? I told him I would goanywhere he chose to take me. Then he told me I was heartless;--andI acknowledged that I was heartless. 'I am heartless,' I said. 'Tellme something I don't know.'"

  "Oh, Cora, why did you say that?"

  "I didn't choose to contradict my husband. Besides, it's true. Thenhe threw the Bradshaw away, and all the maps flew about. So I pickedthem up again, and said we'd go to Switzerland first. I knew thatwould settle it, and of course he decided on stopping at Baden. If hehad said Jericho, it would have been the same thing to me. Wouldn'tyou 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 yourstory. Why is Mr. Palliser going abroad in the middle of Parliament inthis way?"

  "Ah; now I must go back to the beginning. And indeed, Alice, I hardlyknow how to tell you; not that I mind you knowing it, only there aresome things that won't get themselves told. You can hardly guess whatit is that he is giving up. You must swear that you won't repeat whatI'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 beChancellor of the Exchequer; you are so wise. Only you haven'tbrought 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 askedMr. 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, andabominations. Because he has been fool enough to plague himself witha wife--he who of all men ought to have kept himself free from suchtroubles. Oh, he has been so good! It is almost impossible to makeany one understand it. If you could know how he has longed for thisoffice;--how he has worked for it day and night, wearing his eyes outwith figures when everybody else has been asleep, shutting himself upwith such creatures as Mr. Bott when other men have been shooting andhunting and flirting and spending their money. He has been a slave toit for years,--all his life I believe,--in order that he might sitin the Cabinet, and be a minister and a Chancellor of the Exchequer.He has hoped and feared, and has been, I believe, sometimes half-madwith expectation. This has been his excitement,--what racing andgambling are to other men. At last, the place was there, ready forhim, and they offered it to him. They begged him to take it, almoston their knees. The Duke of St. Bungay was here all one morning aboutit; but Mr. Palliser sent him away, and refused the place. It's allover now, and the other man, whom they all hate so much, is to remainin."

  "But why did he refuse it?"

  "I keep on telling you--because of me. He found that I wanted lookingafter, 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 aboutLady Monk's ball, that you would not go to,--as you ought to havedone. If you had gone, Mr. Palliser would have been Chancellor of theExchequer at this minute; he would, indeed. Only think of that! Butthough you did not go, other people did who ought to have remained athome. 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 matterof that, so it did. Mr. Palliser was there too, but, of course, hewent away immediately. I can't tell you all the trouble there hadbeen 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 wentfor her first, and there she was when we got there; and Mr. Bott wasthere 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 presenceto 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 lookingat you. I dared them, at any rate, to do their worst, for I stood upto dance with Burgo Fitzgerald."

  "Oh, Cora!"

  "Why shouldn't I? At any rate I did; and I waltzed with him for halfan hour. Alice, I never will waltz again;--never. I have done withdancing now. I don't think, even in my maddest days, I ever kept itup so
long as I did then. And I knew that everybody was looking atme. 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 evercared two straws. It seemed as though everything had been a dreamsince the old days. Ah! how well I remember the first time I dancedwith him,--at his aunt's house in Cavendish Square. They had onlyjust brought me out in London then, and I thought that he was a god."

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

  "I know well enough that he is no god now; some people say that he isa devil, but he was like Apollo to me then. Did you ever see anyoneso 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 knowwhether 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'tthink I care much about anything now; but I don't see why handsomemen should not be run after as much as handsome women."

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

  "But they do, you know. When I saw him the other night he was just ashandsome as ever;--the same look, half wild and half tame, like ananimal you cannot catch, but which you think would love you so if youcould catch him. In a little while it was just like the old time, andI 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 aboutdancing with him, but it was right to disregard all the people gapinground. 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 wereto see a woman misbehaving herself in public, would not you look onand 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, youwere misbehaving in public."

  Lady Glencora got up from her chair near the window, on which she hadbeen crouching close to Alice's knees, and walked away towards thefireplace. "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 LadyGlencora.

  "Cora, look here. If you consider it prudery on my part to disapproveof your waltzing with Mr. Fitzgerald in the manner you havedescribed,--or, indeed, in any other manner,--you and I must differso totally about the meaning of words and the nature of things thatwe had better part."

  "Alice, you are the unkindest creature that ever lived. You are ascold 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 willleave you to find out for yourself; but I won't be called a prude byyou. You know you were wrong to dance with that man. What has come ofit? What have you told me yourself this morning? In order to preserveyou from misery and destruction, Mr. Palliser has given up all hisdearest hopes. He has had to sacrifice himself that he might saveyou. That, I take it, is about the truth of it,--and yet you tell methat 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 Iwas not wrong. Of course I was wrong. I have been so wrong throughoutthat I have never been right yet. Let me tell it on to the end, andthen you can go away if you like, and tell me that I am too wickedfor your friendship."

  "Have I ever said anything like that, Cora?"

  "But you will, I dare say, when I have done. Well; what do you thinkmy senior duenna did,--the female one, I mean? She took my owncarriage, 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 Icould, but I knew what was going on all the time as well as thoughI had heard them talking. Of course Mr. Palliser came after me. Idon't know what else he could do, unless, indeed, he had left me tomy fate. He came there, and behaved so well,--so much like a perfectgentleman. Of course I went home, and I was prepared to tell himeverything, 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 mea dozen times that night. I cannot think how it was that I did notconsent."

  "That you did not consent to your own ruin and disgrace?"

  "That I did not consent to go off with him,--anywhere. Of course itwould have been my own destruction. I'm not such a fool as not toknow that. Do you suppose I have never thought of it;--what it wouldbe to be a man's mistress instead of his wife. If I had not I shouldbe a thing to be hated and despised. When once I had done it I shouldhate 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 marryhim, instead of driving me to this? And though I might have destroyedmyself, I should have saved the man who is still my husband. Do youknow, I told him all that,--told him that if I had gone away withBurgo 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 poorfellow, for whom, as I believe, nobody else on earth cares a singlestraw."

  "And what did he say?"

  "I cannot tell you what he said, only that we are all to go to Badentogether, and then to Italy. But he did not seem a bit angry; he veryseldom is angry, unless at some trumpery thing, as when he threw thebook away. And when I told him that he might have another wife and achild, he put his arm round me and whispered to me that he did notcare so much about it as I had imagined. I felt more like loving himat 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 likemuch better. And now you know everything; but no,--there is one thingyou don't know yet. When I tell you that, you'll want to make himan archangel or a prime minister. 'We'll go abroad,' he said,--andremember, this was his own proposition, made long before I was ableto speak a word;--'We'll go abroad, and you shall get your cousinAlice to go with us.' That touched me more than anything. Only thinkif he had proposed Mrs. Marsham!"

  "But yet he does not like me."

  "You're wrong there, Alice. There has been no question of liking orof disliking. He thought you would be a kind of Mrs. Marsham, andwhen you were not, but went out flirting among the ruins with JeffreyPalliser, instead--"

  "I never went out flirting with Jeffrey Palliser."

  "He did with you, which is all the same thing. And when Plantagenetknew of that,--for, of course, Mr. Bott told him--"

  "Mr. Bott can't see everything."

  "Those men do. The worst is, they see more than everything. But, atany rate, Mr. Palliser has got over all that now. Come, Alice; thefact of the offer having come from himself should disarm you of anysuch objection as that. As he has held out his hand to you, you haveno alternative but to take it."

  "I will take his hand willingly."

  "And for my sake you will go with us? He understands himself thatI am not fit to be his companion, and to have no companion but him.Now there is a spirit of wisdom about you that will do for him, anda spirit of folly that will suit me. I can manage to put myself on apar with a girl who has played such a wild game with her lovers asyou have done."

  Alice would give no promise then. Her first objection was thatshe had undertaken to go down to Westmoreland and comfort Katein the affliction of her broken arm. "And I must go," said Alice,remembering how necessary it was that she should plead her own causewith George Vavasor's sister. But she acknowledged that she had notintended to stay long in Westmoreland, p
robably not more than a week,and it was at last decided that the Pallisers should postpone theirjourney for four or five days, and that Alice should go with themimmediately upon her return from Vavasor Hall.

  "I have no objection" said her father, speaking with that voiceof resignation which men use when they are resolved to considerthemselves injured whatever may be done. "I can get along inlodgings. I suppose we had better leave the house, as you have givenaway so much of your own fortune?" Alice did not think it worth herwhile to point out to him, in answer to this, that her contributionto their joint housekeeping should still remain the same as ever.Such, however, she knew would be the fact, and she knew also that shewould find her father in the old house when she returned from hertravels. To her, in her own great troubles, the absence from Londonwould be as serviceable as it could be to Lady Glencora. Indeed, shehad already begun to feel the impossibility of staying quietly athome. She could lecture her cousin, whose faults were open, easy tobe defined, and almost loud in their nature; but she was not on thataccount the less aware of her own. She knew that she too had cause tobe ashamed of herself. She was half afraid to show her face among herfriends, and wept grievously over her own follies. Those cruel wordsof her father rang in her ears constantly:--"Things of that sort areso often over with you." The reproach, though cruel, was true, andwhat reproach more galling could be uttered to an unmarried girl suchas was Alice Vavasor? She had felt from the first moment in which theproposition was made to her, that it would be well that she shouldfor a while leave her home, and especially that drawing-room in QueenAnne Street, which told her so many tales that she would fain forget,if it were possible.

  Mr. Palliser would not allow his wife to remain in London for the tenor twelve days which must yet elapse before they started, nor couldhe send her into the country alone. He took her down to MatchingPriory, having obtained leave to be absent from the House for theremainder of the Session, and remained with her there till withintwo days of their departure. That week down at Matching, as sheafterwards told Alice, was very terrible. He never spoke a word torebuke her. He never hinted that there had been aught in her conductof which he had cause to complain. He treated her with a respect thatwas perfect, and indeed with more outward signs of affection thanhad ever been customary with him. "But," as Lady Glencora afterwardsexpressed it, "he was always looking after me. I believe he thoughtthat Burgo Fitzgerald had hidden himself among the ruins," she saidonce to Alice. "He never suspected me, I am sure of that; but hethought that he ought to look after me." And Lady Glencora in thishad very nearly hit the truth. Mr. Palliser had resolved, from thathour in which he had walked out among the elms in Kensington Gardens,that he would neither suspect his wife, nor treat her as though hesuspected her. The blame had been his, perhaps, more than it hadbeen hers. So much he had acknowledged to himself, thinking of theconfession she had made to him before their marriage. But it wasmanifestly his imperative duty,--his duty of duties,--to save herfrom that pitfall into which, as she herself had told him, she hadbeen 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 foundhimself forced to abandon his ambition. To have his wife taken fromhim would be terrible, but the having it said all over the world thatsuch a misfortune had come upon him would be almost more terribleeven than that.

  So he went with his wife hither and thither, down at Matching,allowing himself to be driven about behind Dandy and Flirt. Hehimself proposed these little excursions. They were tedious to him,but doubly tedious to his wife, who now found it more difficult thanever to talk to him. She struggled to talk, and he struggled to talk,but the very struggles themselves made the thing impossible. He satwith her in the mornings, and he sat with her in the evenings; hebreakfasted with her, lunched with her, and dined with her. He wentto bed early, having no figures which now claimed his attention. Andso the week at last wore itself away. "I saw him yawning sometimes,"Lady Glencora said afterwards, "as though he would fall in pieces."