The Last Kiss.
Alice, on her return from Westmoreland, went direct to Park Lane,
whither Lady Glencora and Mr. Palliser had also returned before
her. She was to remain with them in London one entire day, and on
the morning after that they were to start for Paris. She found
Mr. Palliser in close attendance upon his wife. Not that there was
anything in his manner which at all implied that he was keeping watch
over her, or that he was more with her, or closer to her than a
loving husband might wish to be with a young wife; but the mode of
life was very different from that which Alice had seen at Matching
Priory!
On her arrival Mr. Palliser himself received her in the hall, and took
her up to his wife before she had taken off her travelling hat. "We
are so much obliged to you, Miss Vavasor," he said. "I feel it quite
as deeply as Glencora."
"Oh, no," she said; "it is I that am under obligation to you for
taking me."
He merely smiled, and shook his head, and then took her up-stairs.
On the stairs he said one other word to her: "You must forgive me if
I was cross to you that night she went out among the ruins." Alice
muttered something,--some little fib of courtesy as to the matter
having been forgotten, or never borne in mind; and then they went on
to Lady Glencora's room. It seemed to Alice that he was not so big
or so much to be dreaded as when she had seen him at Matching. His
descent from an expectant, or more than an expectant, Chancellor of
the Exchequer, down to a simple, attentive husband, seemed to affect
his gait, his voice, and all his demeanour. When he received Alice at
the Priory he certainly loomed before her as something great, whereas
now his greatness seemed to have fallen from him. We must own that
this was hard upon him, seeing that the deed by which he had divested
himself of his greatness had been so pure and good!
"Dear Alice, this is so good of you! I am all in the midst of
packing, and Plantagenet is helping me." Plantagenet winced a little
under this, as the hero of old must have winced when he was found
with the distaff. Mr. Palliser had relinquished his sword of state
for the distaff which he had assumed, and could take no glory in the
change. There was, too, in his wife's voice the slightest hint of
mockery, which, slight as it was, he perhaps thought she might have
spared. "You have nothing left to pack," continued Glencora, "and I
don't know what you can do to amuse yourself."
"I will help you," said Alice.
"But we have so very nearly done. I think we shall have to pull all
the things out, and put them up again, or we shall never get through
to-morrow. We couldn't start to-morrow;--could we, Plantagenet?"
"Not very well, as your rooms are ordered in Paris for the next day."
"As if we couldn't find rooms at every inn on the road. Men are
so particular. Now in travelling I should like never to order
rooms,--never to know where I was going or when I was going, and to
carry everything I wanted in a market-basket." Alice, who by this
time had followed her friend along the passage to her bedroom, and
had seen how widely the packages were spread about, bethought herself
that the market-basket should be a large one. "And I would never
travel among Christians. Christians are so slow, and they wear
chimney-pot hats everywhere. The further one goes from London among
Christians, the more they wear chimney-pot hats. I want Plantagenet
to take us to see the Kurds, but he won't."
"I don't think that would be fair to Miss Vavasor," said Mr. Palliser,
who had followed them.
"Don't put the blame on her head," said Lady Glencora. "Women have
always pluck for anything. Wouldn't you like to see a live Kurd,
Alice?"
"I don't exactly know where they live," said Alice.
"Nor I. I have not the remotest idea of the way to the Kurds. You see
my joke, don't you, though Plantagenet doesn't? But one knows that
they are Eastern, and the East is such a grand idea!"
"I think we'll content ourselves with Rome, or perhaps Naples, on
this occasion," said Mr. Palliser.
The notion of Lady Glencora packing anything for herself was as good
a joke as that other one of the Kurds and whey. But she went flitting
about from room to room, declaring that this thing must be taken,
and that other, till the market-basket would have become very large
indeed. Alice was astonished at the extent of the preparations, and
the sort of equipage with which they were about to travel. Lady
Glencora was taking her own carriage. "Not that I shall ever use it,"
she said to Alice, "but he insists upon it, to show that I am not
supposed to be taken away in disgrace. He is so good;--isn't he?"
"Very good," said Alice. "I know no one better."
"And so dull!" said Lady Glencora. "But I fancy that all husbands are
dull from the nature of their position. If I were a young woman's
husband, I shouldn't know what to say to her that wasn't dull."
Two women and two men servants were to be taken. Alice had received
permission to bring her own maid--"or a dozen, if you want them,"
Lady Glencora had said. "Mr. Palliser in his present mood would think
nothing too much to do for you. If you were to ask him to go among
the Kurds, he'd go at once;--or on to Crim Tartary, if you made a
point of it." But as both Lady Glencora's servants spoke French, and
as her own did not, Alice trusted herself in that respect to her
cousin. "You shall have one all to yourself," said Lady Glencora. "I
only take two for the same reason that I take the carriage,--just as
you let a child go out in her best frock, for a treat, after you've
scolded her."
When Alice asked why it was supposed that Mr. Palliser was so
specially devoted to her, the thing was explained to her. "You see,
my dear, I have told him everything. I always do tell everything.
Nobody can say I am not candid. He knows about your not letting me
come to your house in the old days. Oh, Alice!--you were wrong then;
I shall always say that. But it's done and gone; and things that are
done and gone shall be done and gone for me. And I told him all that
you said,--about you know what. I have had nothing else to do but
make confessions for the last ten days, and when a woman once begins,
the more she confesses the better. And I told him that you refused
Jeffrey."
"You didn't?"
"I did indeed, and he likes you the better for that. I think he'd
let Jeffrey marry you now if you both wished it;--and then, oh
dear!--supposing that you had a son and that we adopted it?"
"Cora, if you go on in that way I will not remain with you."
"But you must, my dear. You can't escape now. At any rate, you can't
when we once get to Paris. Oh dear! you shouldn't grudge me my little
naughtinesses. I have been so proper for the last ten days. Do you
know I got into a way of driving Dandy and Flirt at the rate of six
miles an hour, till I'm sure the poor beasts thought they were always
going to a funeral. Poor Dandy and poor Flirt! I shan't see them now
for another year."
On the following morning they breakfasted early, because Mr. Palliser
had got into an early habit. He had said that early hours would be
good for them. "But he never tells me why," said Lady Glencora.
"I think it is pleasant when people are travelling," said Alice.
"It isn't that," her cousin answered; "but we are all to be such
particularly good children. It's hardly fair, because he went to
sleep last night after dinner while you and I kept ourselves awake:
but we needn't do that another night, to be sure." After breakfast
they all three went to work to do nothing. It was ludicrous and
almost painful to see Mr. Palliser wandering about and counting the
boxes, as though he could do any good by that. At this special crisis
of his life he hated his papers and figures and statistics, and
could not apply himself to them. He, whose application had been
so unremitting, could apply himself now to nothing. His world had
been brought to an abrupt end, and he was awkward at making a new
beginning. I believe that they all three were reading novels before
one o'clock. Lady Glencora and Alice had determined that they would
not leave the house throughout the day. "Nothing has been said about
it, but I regard it as part of the bond that I'm not to go out
anywhere. Who knows but what I might be found in Gloucester Square?"
There was, however, no absolute necessity that Mr. Palliser should
remain with them; and, at about three, he prepared himself for a
solitary walk. He would not go down to the House. All interest in the
House was over with him for the present. He had the Speaker's leave
to absent himself for the season. Nor would he call on anyone. All
his friends knew, or believed they knew, that he had left town. His
death and burial had been already chronicled, and were he now to
reappear, he could reappear only as a ghost. He was being talked
of as the departed one;--or rather, such talk on all sides had now
come nearly to an end. The poor Duke of St. Bungay still thought of
him with regret when more than ordinarily annoyed by some special
grievance coming to him from Mr. Finespun; but even the Duke had
become almost reconciled to the present order of things. Mr. Palliser
knew better than to disturb all this by showing himself again in
public; and prepared himself, therefore, to take another walk under
the elms in Kensington Gardens.
He had his hat on his head in the hall, and was in the act of putting
on his gloves, when there came a knock at the front door. The
hall-porter was there, a stout, plethoric personage, not given
to many words, who was at this moment standing with his master's
umbrella in his hand, looking as though he would fain be of some use
to somebody, if any such utility were compatible with the purposes
of his existence. Now had come this knock at the door, while the
umbrella was still in his hand, and the nature of his visage changed,
and it was easy to see that he was oppressed by the temporary
multiplicity of his duties. "Give me the umbrella, John," said Mr.
Palliser. John gave up the umbrella, and opening the door disclosed
Burgo Fitzgerald standing upon the door-step. "Is Lady Glencora at
home?" asked Burgo, before he had seen the husband. John turned a
dismayed face upon his master, as though he knew that the comer ought
not to be making a morning call at that house,--as no doubt he did
know very well,--and made no instant reply. "I am not sure," said
Mr. Palliser, making his way out as he had originally purposed. "The
servant will find out for you." Then he went on his way across Park
Lane and into the Park, never once turning back his face to see
whether Burgo had effected an entrance into the house. Nor did he
return a minute earlier than he would otherwise have done. After all,
there was something chivalrous about the man.
"Yes; Lady Glencora was at home," said the porter, not stirring to
make any further inquiry. It was no business of his if Mr. Palliser
chose to receive such a guest. He had not been desired to say that
her ladyship was not at home. Burgo was therefore admitted and shown
direct up into the room in which Lady Glencora was sitting. As chance
would have it, she was alone. Alice had left her and was in her
own chamber, and Lady Glencora was sitting at the window of the
small room up-stairs that overlooked the Park. She was seated on a
footstool with her face between her hands when Burgo was admitted,
thinking of him, and of what the world might have been to her had
"they left her alone," as she was in the habit of saying to Alice and
to herself.
She rose quickly, so that he saw her only as she was rising. "Ask
Miss Vavasor to come to me," she said, as the servant left the room;
and then she came forward to greet her lover.
"Cora," he said, dashing at once into his subject--hopelessly, but
still with a resolve to do as he had said that he would do. "Cora,
I have come to you, to ask you to go with me."
"I will not go with you," said she.
"Do not answer me in that way, without a moment's thought. Everything
is arranged--"
"Yes, everything is arranged," she said. "Mr. Fitzgerald, let me
ask you to leave me alone, and to behave to me with generosity.
Everything is arranged. You can see that my boxes are all prepared
for going. Mr. Palliser and I, and my friend, are starting to-morrow.
Wish me God-speed and go, and be generous."
"And is this to be the end of everything?" He was standing close to
her, but hitherto he had only touched her hand at greeting her. "Give
me your hand, Cora," he said.
"No;--I will never give you my hand again. You should be generous to
me and go. This is to be the end of everything,--of everything that
is common to you and to me. Go, when I ask you."
"Cora; did you ever love me?"
"Yes; I did love you. But we were separated, and there was no room
for love left between us."
"You are as dear to me now,--dearer than ever you were. Do not look
at me like that. Did you not tell me when we last parted that I might
come to you again? Are we children, that others should come between
us and separate us like that?"
"Yes, Burgo; we are children. Here is my cousin coming. You must
leave me now." As she spoke the door was opened and Alice entered the
room. "Miss Vavasor, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Lady Glencora. "I have
told him to go and leave me. Now that you have come, Alice, he will
perhaps obey me."
Alice was dumbfounded, and knew not how to speak either to him or to
her; but she stood with her eyes riveted on the face of the man of
whom she had heard so much. Yes; certainly he was very beautiful. She
had never before seen man's beauty such as that. She found it quite
impossible to speak a word to him then--at the spur of the moment,
but she acknowledged the introduction with a slight inclination of
the head, and then stood silent, as though she were waiting for him
to go.
"Mr. Fitzgerald, why do you not leave me and go?" said Lady Glencora.
Poor Burgo also found it difficult enough to speak. What could he
say? His cause was one which certainly did not admit of being pleaded
in the presence of a strange lady; and he might have known from the
moment in which he heard Glencora's request that a third person
should be summoned to their meeting--and probably did know, that
there was no longer any hope for him. It was not on the cards that he
should win. But there remained one thing that he must do. He must get
himself out of that room; and how was he to effect that?
"I had hoped," said he, looking at Alice, though he addressed Lady
Glencora--"I had hoped to be allowed to speak to you alone for a few
minutes."
"No, Mr. Fitzgerald; it cannot be so. Alice do not go. I sent for my
cousin when I saw you, because I did not choose to be alone with you.
I have asked you to go--"
"You perhaps have not understood me?"
"I understand you well enough."
"Then, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Alice, "why do you not do as Lady
Glencora has asked you? You know--you must know, that you ought not
to be here."
"I know nothing of the kind," said he, still standing his ground.
"Alice," said Lady Glencora, "we will leave Mr. Fitzgerald here, since
he drives us from the room."
In such contests, a woman has ever the best of it at all points. The
man plays with a button to his foil, while the woman uses a weapon
that can really wound. Burgo knew that he must go,--felt that he
must skulk away as best he might, and perhaps hear a low titter of
half-suppressed laughter as he went. Even that might be possible.
"No, Lady Glencora," he said, "I will not drive you from the room.
As one must be driven out, it shall be I. I own I did think that you
would at any rate have been--less hard to me." He then turned to go,
bowing again very slightly to Miss Vavasor.
He was on the threshold of the door before Glencora's voice recalled
him. "Oh my God!" she said, "I am hard,--harder than flint. I am
cruel. Burgo!" And he was back with her in a moment, and had taken
her by the hand.
"Glencora," said Alice, "pray,--pray let him go. Mr. Fitzgerald, if
you are a man, do not take advantage of her folly."
"I will speak to him," said Lady Glencora. "I will speak to him,
and then he shall leave me." She was holding him by the hand now
and turning to him, away from Alice, who had taken her by the arm.
"Burgo," she said, repeating his name twice again, with all the
passion that she could throw into the word,--"Burgo, no good can come
of this. Now, you must leave me. You must go. I shall stay with my
husband as I am bound to do. Because I have wronged you, I will not
wrong him also. I loved you;--you know I loved you." She still held
him by the hand, and was now gazing up into his face, while the tears
were streaming from her eyes.
"Sir," said Alice, "you have heard from her all that you can care to
hear. If you have any feeling of honour in you, you will leave her."
"I will never leave her, while she tells me that she loves me!"
"Yes, Burgo, you will;--you must! I shall never tell you that again,
never. Do as she bids you. Go, and leave us;--but I could not bear
that you should tell me that I was hard."
"You are hard;--hard and cruel, as you said, yourself."
"Am I? May God forgive you for saying that of me!"
"Then why do you send me away?"
"Because I am a man's wife, and because I care for his honour, if not
for my own. Alice, let us go."
He still held her, but she would have been gone from him had he not
stooped over her, and put his arm round her waist. In doing this, I
doubt whether he was quicker than she would have been had she chosen
to resist him. As it was, he pressed her to his bosom, and, stooping
over her, kissed her lips. Then he left her, and making his way out
of the room, and down the stairs, got himself out into the street.
"Thank God, that he is gone!" said Alice.
"You may say so," said Lady Glencora, "for you have lost nothing!"
"And you have gained everything!"
"Have I? I did not know that I had ever gained anything, as yet. The
only human being to whom I have ever yet given my whole heart,--the
only thing that I have ever really loved, has just gone from me for
ever, and you bid me thank God that I have lost him. There is no room
for thankfulness in any of it;--either in the love or in the loss. It
is all wretchedness from first to last!"
"At any rate, he understands now that you meant it when you told him
to leave you."
"Of course I meant it. I am beginning to know myself by degrees. As
for running away with him, I have not the courage to do it. I can
think of it, scheme for it, wish for it;--but as for doing it, that
is beyond me. Mr. Palliser is quite safe. He need not try to coax me
to remain."
Alice knew that it was useless to argue with her, so she came and sat
over her,--for Lady Glencora had again placed herself on the stool
by the window,--and tried to sooth her by smoothing her hair, and
nursing her like a child.
"Of course I know that I ought to stay where I am," she said,
breaking out, almost with rage, and speaking with quick, eager voice.
"I am not such a fool as to mistake what I should be if I left my
husband, and went to live with that man as his mistress. You don't
suppose that I should think that sort of life very blessed. But
why have I been brought to such a pass as this? And, as for female
purity! Ah! What was their idea of purity when they forced me, like
ogres, to marry a man for whom they knew I never cared? Had I gone
with him,--had I now eloped with that man who ought to have been my
husband,--whom would a just God have punished worst,--me, or those
two old women and my uncle, who tortured me into this marriage?"
"Come, Cora,--be silent."
"I won't be silent! You have had the making of your own lot. You have
done what you liked, and no one has interfered with you. You have
suffered, too; but you, at any rate, can respect yourself."
"And so can you, Cora,--thoroughly, now."
"How;--when he kissed me, and I could hardly restrain myself from
giving him back his kiss tenfold, could I respect myself? But it is
all sin. I sin towards my husband, feigning that I love him; and
I sin in loving that other man, who should have been my husband.
There;--I hear Mr. Palliser at the door. Come away with me; or rather,
stay, for he will come up here, and you can keep him in talk while I
try to recover myself."
Mr. Palliser did at once as his wife had said, and came up-stairs
to the little front room, as soon as he had deposited his hat in
the hall. Alice was, in fact, in doubt what she should do, as to
mentioning, or omitting to mention, Mr. Fitzgerald's name. In an
ordinary way, it would be natural that she should name any visitor
who had called, and she specially disliked the idea of remaining
silent because that visitor had come as the lover of her host's wife.
But, on the other hand, she owed much to Lady Glencora; and there
was no imperative reason, as things had gone, why she should make
mischief. There was no further danger to be apprehended. But Mr.
Palliser at once put an end to her doubts. "You have had a visitor
here?" said he.
"Yes," said Alice.
"I saw him as I went out," said Mr. Palliser. "Indeed, I met him
at the hall door. He, of course, was wrong to come here;--so wrong,
that he deserves punishment, if there were any punishment for such
offences."
"He has been punished, I think," said Alice.
"But as for Glencora," continued Mr. Palliser, without any apparent
notice of what Alice had said, "I thought it better that she should
see him or not, as she should herself decide."
"She had no choice in the matter. As it turned out, he was shown up
here at once. She sent for me, and I think she was right to do that."
"Glencora was alone when he came in?"
"For a minute or two,--till I could get to her."
"I have no questions to ask about it," said Mr. Palliser, after
waiting for a few moments. He had probably thought that Alice would
say something further. "I am very glad that you were within reach of
her, as otherwise her position might have been painful. For her, and
for me perhaps, it may be as well that he has been here. As for him,
I can only say, that I am forced to suppose him to be a villain. What
a man does when driven by passion, I can forgive; but that he should
deliberately plan schemes to ruin both her and me, is what I can
hardly understand." As he made this little speech I wonder whether
his conscience said anything to him about Lady Dumbello, and a
certain evening in his own life, on which he had ventured to call
that lady, Griselda.
The little party of three dined together very quietly, and after
dinner they all went to work with their novels. Before long Alice saw
that Mr. Palliser was yawning, and she began to understand how much
he had given up in order that his wife might be secure. It was then,
when he had left the room for a few minutes, in order that he might
wake himself by walking about the house, that Glencora told Alice of
his yawning down at Matching. "I used to think that he would fall in
pieces. What are we to do about it?"
"Don't seem to notice it," said Alice.
"That's all very well," said the other; "but he'll set us off yawning
as bad as himself, and then he'll notice it. He has given himself up
to politics, till nothing else has any salt in it left for him. I
cannot think why such a man as that wanted a wife at all."
"You are very hard upon him, Cora."
"I wish you were his wife, with all my heart. But, of course, I know
why he got married. And I ought to feel for him as he has been so
grievously disappointed." Then Mr. Palliser having walked off his
sleep, returned to the room, and the remainder of the evening was
passed in absolute tranquillity.
Burgo Fitzgerald, when he left the house, turned back into Grosvenor
Square, not knowing, at first, whither he was going. He took himself
as far as his uncle's door, and then, having paused there for a
moment, hurried on. For half an hour, or thereabouts, something like
true feeling was at work within his heart. He had once more pressed
to his bosom the woman he had, at any rate, thought that he had
loved. He had had his arm round her, and had kissed her, and the tone
with which she had called him by his name was still ringing in his
ears, "Burgo!" He repeated his own name audibly to himself, as though
in this way he could recall her voice. He comforted himself for
a minute with the conviction that she loved him. He felt,--for
a moment,--that he could live on such consolation as that! But
among mortals there could, in truth, hardly be one with whom such
consolation would go a shorter way. He was a man who required to have
such comfort backed by patés and curaçoa to a very large extent, and
now it might be doubted whether the amount of patés and curaçoa at
his command would last him much longer.
He would not go in and tell his aunt at once of his failure, as he
could gain nothing by doing so. Indeed, he thought that he would not
tell his aunt at all. So he turned back from Grosvenor Square, and
went down to his club in St. James's Street, feeling that billiards
and brandy-and-water might, for the present, be the best restorative.
But, as he went back, he blamed himself very greatly in the matter of
those bank-notes which he had allowed Lady Monk to take from him. How
had it come to pass that he had been such a dupe in her hands? When
he entered his club in St. James's Street his mind had left Lady
Glencora, and was hard at work considering how he might best contrive
to get that spoil out of his aunt's possession.