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 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 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, nobody 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."
"Those men do. The worst is, they see more than everything. But, at
any rate, Mr. Palliser has got over all that now. Come, Alice; the
fact of the offer having come from himself should disarm you of any
such objection as that. As he has held out his hand to you, you have
no alternative but to take it."
"I will take his hand willingly."
"And for my sake you will go with us? He understands himself that
I 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, and
a spirit of folly that will suit me. I can manage to put myself on a
par with a girl who has played such a wild game with her lovers as
you have done."
Alice would give no promise then. Her first objection was that
she had undertaken to go down to Westmoreland and comfort Kate
in the affliction of her broken arm. "And I must go," said Alice,
remembering how necessary it was that she should plead her own cause
with George Vavasor's sister. But she acknowledged that she had not
intended to stay long in Westmoreland, probably not more than a week,
and it was at last decided that the Pallisers should postpone their
journey for four or five days, and that Alice should go with them
immediately upon her return from Vavasor Hall.
"I have no objection;" said her father, speaking with that voice
of resignation which men use when they are resolved to consider
themselves injured whatever may be done. "I can get along in
lodgings. I suppose we had better leave the house, as you have given
away so much of your own fortune?" Alice did not think it worth her
while to point out to him, in answer to this, that her contribution
to their joint housekeeping should still remain the same as ever.
Such, however, she knew would be the fact, and she knew also that she
would find her father in the old house when she returned from her
travels. To her, in her own great troubles, the absence from London
would be as serviceable as it could be to Lady Glencora. Indeed, she
had already begun to feel the impossibility of staying quietly at
home. She could lecture her cousin, whose faults were open, easy to
be defined, and almost loud in their nature; but she was not on that
account the less aware of her own. She knew that she too had cause to
be ashamed of herself. She was half afraid to show her face among her
friends, and wept grievously over her own follies. Those cruel words
of her father rang in her ears constantly:--"Things of that sort are
so often over with you." The reproach, though cruel, was true, and
what reproach more galling could be uttered to an unmarried girl such
as was Alice Vavasor? She had felt from the first moment in which the
proposition was made to her, that it would be well that she should
for a while leave her home, and especially that drawing-room in Queen
Anne 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 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."