The Palliser Novels

by Anthony Trollope

  “Yes, I do mean that. Though I do not know why I should come and tell you so, — except that I am still blundering and stumbling, and have fallen into a way of hurting myself at every step.”

  “You can tell no one who is more anxious for your happiness,” said Phineas.

  “That is a very pretty speech, but what would you do for my happiness? Indeed, what is it possible that you should do? I mean it as no rebuke when I say that my happiness or unhappiness is a matter as to which you will soon become perfectly indifferent.”

  “Why should you say so, Lady Laura?”

  “Because it is natural that it should be so. You and Mr. Kennedy might have been friends. Not that you will be, because you are unlike each other in all your ways. But it might have been so.”

  “And are not you and I to be friends?” he asked.

  “No. In a very few months you will not think of telling me what are your desires or what your sorrows; — and as for me, it will be out of the question that I should tell mine to you. How can you be my friend?”

  “If you were not quite sure of my friendship, Lady Laura, you would not speak to me as you are speaking now.” Still he did not look at her, but lay with his face supported on his hands, and his eyes turned away upon the lake. But she, where she was sitting, could see him, and was aided by her sight in making comparisons in her mind between the two men who had been her lovers, — between him whom she had taken and him whom she had left. There was something in the hard, dry, unsympathising, unchanging virtues of her husband which almost revolted her. He had not a fault, but she had tried him at every point and had been able to strike no spark of fire from him. Even by disobeying she could produce no heat, — only an access of firmness. How would it have been with her had she thrown all ideas of fortune to the winds, and linked her lot to that of the young Phœbus who was lying at her feet? If she had ever loved any one she had loved him. And she had not thrown away her love for money. So she swore to herself over and over again, trying to console herself in her cold unhappiness. She had married a rich man in order that she might be able to do something in the world; — and now that she was this rich man’s wife she found that she could do nothing. The rich man thought it to be quite enough for her to sit at home and look after his welfare. In the meantime young Phœbus, — her Phœbus as he had been once, — was thinking altogether of some one else.

  “Phineas,” she said, slowly, “I have in you such perfect confidence that I will tell you the truth; — as one man may tell it to another. I wish you would go from here.”

  “What, at once?”

  “Not to-day, or to-morrow. Stay here now till the election; but do not return. He will ask you to come, and press you hard, and will be hurt; — for, strange to say, with all his coldness, he really likes you. He has a pleasure in seeing you here. But he must not have that pleasure at the expense of trouble to me.”

  “And why is it a trouble to you?” he asked. Men are such fools; — so awkward, so unready, with their wits ever behind the occasion by a dozen seconds or so! As soon as the words were uttered, he knew that they should not have been spoken.

  “Because I am a fool,” she said. “Why else? Is not that enough for you?”

  “Laura — ,” he said.

  “No, — no; I will have none of that. I am a fool, but not such a fool as to suppose that any cure is to be found there.”

  “Only say what I can do for you, though it be with my entire life, and I will do it.”

  “You can do nothing, — except to keep away from me.”

  “Are you earnest in telling me that?” Now at last he had turned himself round and was looking at her, and as he looked he saw the hat of a man appearing up the path, and immediately afterwards the face. It was the hat and face of the laird of Loughlinter. “Here is Mr. Kennedy,” said Phineas, in a tone of voice not devoid of dismay and trouble.

  “So I perceive,” said Lady Laura. But there was no dismay or trouble in the tone of her voice.

  In the countenance of Mr. Kennedy, as he approached closer, there was not much to be read, — only, perhaps, some slight addition of gloom, or rather, perhaps, of that frigid propriety of moral demeanour for which he had always been conspicuous, which had grown upon him at his marriage, and which had been greatly increased by the double action of being made a Cabinet Minister and being garrotted. “I am glad that your headache is better,” he said to his wife, who had risen from her seat to meet him. Phineas also had risen, and was now looking somewhat sheepish where he stood.

  “I came out because it was worse,” she said. “It irritated me so that I could not stand the house any longer.”

  “I will send to Callender for Dr. Macnuthrie.”

  “Pray do nothing of the kind, Robert. I do not want Dr. Macnuthrie at all.”

  “Where there is illness, medical advice is always expedient.”

  “I am not ill. A headache is not illness.”

  “I had thought it was,” said Mr. Kennedy, very drily.

  “At any rate, I would rather not have Dr. Macnuthrie.”

  “I am sure it cannot do you any good to climb up here in the heat of the sun. Had you been here long, Finn?”

  “All the morning; — here, or hereabouts. I clambered up from the lake and had a book in my pocket.”

  “And you happened to come across him by accident?” Mr. Kennedy asked. There was something so simple in the question that its very simplicity proved that there was no suspicion.

  “Yes; — by chance,” said Lady Laura. “But every one at Loughlinter always comes up here. If any one ever were missing whom I wanted to find, this is where I should look.”

  “I am going on towards Linter forest to meet Blane,” said Mr. Kennedy. Blane was the gamekeeper. “If you don’t mind the trouble, Finn, I wish you’d take Lady Laura down to the house. Do not let her stay out in the heat. I will take care that somebody goes over to Callender for Dr. Macnuthrie.” Then Mr. Kennedy went on, and Phineas was left with the charge of taking Lady Laura back to the house. When Mr. Kennedy’s hat had first appeared coming up the walk, Phineas had been ready to proclaim himself prepared for any devotion in the service of Lady Laura. Indeed, he had begun to reply with criminal tenderness to the indiscreet avowal which Lady Laura had made to him. But he felt now, after what had just occurred in the husband’s presence, that any show of tenderness, — of criminal tenderness, — was impossible. The absence of all suspicion on the part of Mr. Kennedy had made Phineas feel that he was bound by all social laws to refrain from such tenderness. Lady Laura began to descend the path before him without a word; — and went on, and on, as though she would have reached the house without speaking, had he not addressed her. “Does your head still pain you?” he asked.

  “Of course it does.”

  “I suppose he is right in saying that you should not be out in the heat.”

  “I do not know. It is not worth while to think about that. He sends me in, and so of course I must go. And he tells you to take me, and so of course you must take me.”

  “Would you wish that I should let you go alone?”

  “Yes, I would. Only he will be sure to find it out; and you must not tell him that you left me at my request.”

  “Do you think that I am afraid of him?” said Phineas.

  “Yes; — I think you are. I know that I am, and that papa is; and that his mother hardly dares to call her soul her own. I do not know why you should escape.”

  “Mr. Kennedy is nothing to me.”

  “He is something to me, and so I suppose I had better go on. And now I shall have that horrid man from the little town pawing me and covering everything with snuff, and bidding me take Scotch physic, — which seems to increase in quantity and nastiness as doses in England decrease. And he will stand over me to see that I take it.”

  “What; — the doctor from Callender?”

  “No; — but Mr. Kennedy will. If he advised me to have a hole in my glove mended, he would ask me before he went
to bed whether it was done. He never forgot anything in his life, and was never unmindful of anything. That I think will do, Mr. Finn. You have brought me out from the trees, and that may be taken as bringing me home. We shall hardly get scolded if we part here. Remember what I told you up above. And remember also that it is in your power to do nothing else for me. Good-bye.” So he turned away towards the lake, and let Lady Laura go across the wide lawn to the house by herself.

  He had failed altogether in his intention of telling his friend of his love for Violet, and had come to perceive that he could not for the present carry out that intention. After what had passed it would be impossible for him to go to Lady Laura with a passionate tale of his longing for Violet Effingham. If he were even to speak to her of love at all, it must be quite of another love than that. But he never would speak to her of love; nor, — as he felt quite sure, — would she allow him to do so. But what astounded him most as he thought of the interview which had just passed, was the fact that the Lady Laura whom he had known, — whom he had thought he had known, — should have become so subject to such a man as Mr. Kennedy, a man whom he had despised as being weak, irresolute, and without a purpose! For the day or two that he remained at Loughlinter, he watched the family closely, and became aware that Lady Laura had been right when she declared that her father was afraid of Mr. Kennedy.

  “I shall follow you almost immediately,” said the Earl confidentially to Phineas, when the candidate for the borough took his departure from Loughlinter. “I don’t like to be there just when the election is going on, but I’ll be at Saulsby to receive you the day afterwards.”

  Phineas took his leave from Mr. Kennedy, with a warm expression of friendship on the part of his host, and from Lady Laura with a mere touch of the hand. He tried to say a word; but she was sullen, or, if not, she put on some mood like to sullenness, and said never a word to him.

  On the day after the departure of Phineas Finn for Loughton Lady Laura Kennedy still had a headache. She had complained of a headache ever since she had been at Loughlinter, and Dr. Macnuthrie had been over more than once. “I wonder what it is that ails you,” said her husband, standing over her in her own sitting-room up-stairs. It was a pretty room, looking away to the mountains, with just a glimpse of the lake to be caught from the window, and it had been prepared for her with all the skill and taste of an accomplished upholsterer. She had selected the room for herself soon after her engagement, and had thanked her future husband with her sweetest smile for giving her the choice. She had thanked him and told him that she always meant to be happy, — so happy in that room! He was a man not much given to romance, but he thought of this promise as he stood over her and asked after her health. As far as he could see she had never been even comfortable since she had been at Loughlinter. A shadow of the truth came across his mind. Perhaps his wife was bored. If so, what was to be the future of his life and of hers? He went up to London every year, and to Parliament, as a duty; and then, during some period of the recess, would have his house full of guests, — as another duty. But his happiness was to consist in such hours as these which seemed to inflict upon his wife the penalty of a continual headache. A shadow of the truth came upon him. What if his wife did not like living quietly at home as the mistress of her husband’s house? What if a headache was always to be the result of a simple performance of domestic duties?

  More than a shadow of truth had come upon Lady Laura herself. The dark cloud created by the entire truth was upon her, making everything black and wretched around her. She had asked herself a question or two, and had discovered that she had no love for her husband, that the kind of life which he intended to exact from her was insupportable to her, and that she had blundered and fallen in her entrance upon life. She perceived that her father had already become weary of Mr. Kennedy, and that, lonely and sad as he would be at Saulsby by himself, it was his intention to repudiate the idea of making a home at Loughlinter. Yes; — she would be deserted by everyone, except of course by her husband; and then — Then she would throw herself on some early morning into the lake, for life would be insupportable.

  “I wonder what it is that ails you,” said Mr. Kennedy.

  “Nothing serious. One can’t always help having a headache, you know.”

  “I don’t think you take enough exercise, Laura. I would propose that you should walk four miles every day after breakfast. I will always be ready to accompany you. I have spoken to Dr. Macnuthrie — “

  “I hate Dr. Macnuthrie.”

  “Why should you hate Dr. Macnuthrie, Laura?”

  “How can I tell why? I do. That is quite reason enough why you should not send for him to me.”

  “You are unreasonable, Laura. One chooses a doctor on account of his reputation in his profession, and that of Dr. Macnuthrie stands high.”

  “I do not want any doctor.”

  “But if you are ill, my dear — “

  “I am not ill.”

  “But you said you had a headache. You have said so for the last ten days.”

  “Having a headache is not being ill. I only wish you would not talk of it, and then perhaps I should get rid of it.”

  “I cannot believe that. Headache in nine cases out of ten comes from the stomach.” Though he said this, — saying it because it was the common-place common-sense sort of thing to say, still at the very moment there was the shadow of the truth before his eyes. What if this headache meant simple dislike to him, and to his modes of life?

  “It is nothing of that sort,” said Lady Laura, impatient at having her ailment inquired into with so much accuracy.

  “Then what is it? You cannot think that I can be happy to hear you complaining of headache every day, — making it an excuse for absolute idleness.”

  “What is it that you want me to do?” she said, jumping up from her seat. “Set me a task, and if I don’t go mad over it, I’ll get through it. There are the account books. Give them to me. I don’t suppose I can see the figures, but I’ll try to see them.”

  “Laura, this is unkind of you, — and ungrateful.”

  “Of course; — it is everything that is bad. What a pity that you did not find it out last year! Oh dear, oh dear! what am I to do?” Then she threw herself down upon the sofa, and put both her hands up to her temples.

  “I will send for Dr. Macnuthrie at once,” said Mr. Kennedy, walking towards the door very slowly, and speaking as slowly as he walked.

  “No; — do no such thing,” she said, springing to her feet again and intercepting him before he reached the door. “If he comes I will not see him. I give you my word that I will not speak to him if he comes. You do not understand,” she said; “you do not understand at all.”

  “What is it that I ought to understand?” he asked.

  “That a woman does not like to be bothered.”

  He made no reply at once, but stood there twisting the handle of the door, and collecting his thoughts. “Yes,” said he at last; “I am beginning to find that out; — and to find out also what it is that bothers a woman, as you call it. I can see now what it is that makes your head ache. It is not the stomach. You are quite right there. It is the prospect of a quiet decent life, to which would be attached the performance of certain homely duties. Dr. Macnuthrie is a learned man, but I doubt whether he can do anything for such a malady.”

  “You are quite right, Robert; he can do nothing.”

  “It is a malady you must cure for yourself, Laura; — and which is to be cured by perseverance. If you can bring yourself to try — “

  “But I cannot bring myself to try at all,” she said.

  “Do you mean to tell me, Laura, that you will make no effort to do your duty as my wife?”

  “I mean to tell you that I will not try to cure a headache by doing sums. That is all that I mean to say at this moment. If you will leave me for awhile, so that I may lie down, perhaps I shall be able to come to dinner.” He still hesitated, standing with the door in his hand. “But if you go
on scolding me,” she continued, “what I shall do is to go to bed directly you go away.” He hesitated for a moment longer, and then left the room without another word.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Mr. Slide’s Grievance

  Our hero was elected member for Loughton without any trouble to him or, as far as he could see, to any one else. He made one speech from a small raised booth that was called a platform, and that was all that he was called upon to do. Mr. Grating made a speech in proposing him, and Mr. Shortribs another in seconding him; and these were all the speeches that were required. The thing seemed to be so very easy that he was afterwards almost offended when he was told that the bill for so insignificant a piece of work came to £247 13s. 9d. He had seen no occasion for spending even the odd forty-seven pounds. But then he was member for Loughton; and as he passed the evening alone at the inn, having dined in company with Messrs. Grating, Shortribs, and sundry other influential electors, he began to reflect that, after all, it was not so very great a thing to be a member of Parliament. It almost seemed that that which had come to him so easily could not be of much value.

  On the following day he went to the castle, and was there when the Earl arrived. They two were alone together, and the Earl was very kind to him. “So you had no opponent after all,” said the great man of Loughton, with a slight smile.

  “Not the ghost of another candidate.”

  “I did not think there would be. They have tried it once or twice and have always failed. There are only one or two in the place who like to go one way just because their neighbours go the other. But, in truth, there is no conservative feeling in the place!”

  Phineas, although he was at the present moment the member for Loughton himself, could not but enjoy the joke of this. Could there be any liberal feeling in such a place, or, indeed, any political feeling whatsoever? Would not Messrs. Grating and Shortribs have done just the same had it happened that Lord Brentford had been a Tory peer? “They all seemed to be very obliging,” said Phineas, in answer to the Earl.