At Lucerne.
I am inclined to think that Mr. Palliser did not much enjoy this
part of his tour abroad. When he first reached Lucerne there was no
one there with whom he could associate pleasantly, nor had he any
occupation capable of making his time run easily. He did not care for
scenery. Close at his elbow was the finest to be had in Europe; but
it was nothing to him. Had he been simply journeying through Lucerne
at the proper time of the year for such a journey, when the business
of the Session was over, and a little change of air needed, he could
have enjoyed the thing in a moderate way, looking about him, passing
on, and knowing that it was good for him to be there at that moment.
But he had none of that passion for mountains and lakes, none of
that positive joy in the heather, which would have compensated many
another man for the loss of all that Mr. Palliser was losing. His mind
was ever at home in the House of Commons, or in that august assembly
which men call the Cabinet, and of the meetings of which he read from
week to week the simple records. Therein were mentioned the names of
those heroes to whom Fortune had been so much kinder than she had
been to him; and he envied them. He took short, solitary walks, about
the town, over the bridges, and along the rivers, making to himself
the speeches which he would have made to full houses, had not his
wife brought ruin upon all his hopes. And as he pictured to himself
the glorious successes which probably never would have been his had
he remained in London, so did he prophesy to himself an absolute and
irremediable downfall from all political power as the result of his
absence,--having, in truth, no sufficient cause for such despair. As
yet, he was barely thirty, and had he been able to judge his own case
as keenly as he could have judged the case of another, he would have
known that a short absence might probably raise his value in the
estimation of others rather than lower it. But his personal annoyance
was too great to allow of his making such calculations aright. So he
became fretful and unhappy; and though he spoke no word of rebuke
to his wife, though he never hinted that she had robbed him of his
glories, he made her conscious by his manner that she had brought him
to this miserable condition.
Lady Glencora herself had a love for the mountains and lakes, but it
was a love of that kind which requires to be stimulated by society,
and which is keenest among cold chickens, picnic-pies, and the flying
of champagne corks. When they first entered Switzerland she was very
enthusiastic, and declared her intention of climbing up all the
mountains, and going through all the passes. She endeavoured to
induce her husband to promise that she should be taken up Mont Blanc.
And I think she would have carried this on, and would have been taken
up Mont Blanc, had Mr. Palliser's aspirations been congenial. But they
were not congenial, and Lady Glencora soon lost all her enthusiasm.
By the time that they were settled at Lucerne she had voted the
mountains to be bores, and had almost learned to hate the lake, which
she declared always made her wet through when she got into a small
boat, and sea-sick when she put her foot in a large one. At Lucerne
they made no acquaintances, Mr. Palliser being a man not apt to new
friendships. They did not even dine at the public table, though Lady
Glencora had expressed a wish to do so. Mr. Palliser did not like it,
and of course Lady Glencora gave way. There were, moreover, some
marital passages which were not pleasant to a third person. They did
not scold each other; but Lady Glencora would make little speeches of
which her husband disapproved. She would purposely irritate him by
continuing her tone of badinage, and then Mr. Palliser would become
fretful, and would look as though the cares of the world were too
many for him. I cannot, therefore, say that Alice had much to make
the first period of her sojourn at Lucerne a period of enjoyment.
But when they had been there about a fortnight, a stranger arrived,
whose coming at any rate lent the grace of some excitement to their
lives. Their custom was to breakfast at nine,--or as near nine as
Lady Glencora could be induced to appear,--and then Mr. Palliser would
read till three. At that hour he would walk forth by himself, after
having handed the two ladies into their carriage, and they would
be driven about for two hours. "How I do hate this carriage," Lady
Glencora said one day. "I do so wish it would come to grief, and be
broken to pieces. I wonder whether the Swiss people think that we are
going to be driven about here for ever." There were moments, however,
which seemed to indicate that Lady Glencora had something to tell
her cousin, which, if told, would alter the monotony of their lives.
Alice, however, would not press her for her secret.
"If you have anything to tell, why don't you tell it?" Alice once
said.
"You are so hard," said Lady Glencora.
"So you tell me very often," Alice replied; "and it is not
complimentary. But hard or soft, I won't make a petition for your
confidence." Then Lady Glencora said something savage, and the
subject was dropped for a while.
But we must go back to the stranger. Mr. Palliser had put the ladies
into their carriage, and was standing between the front door of the
hotel and the lake on a certain day, doubting whether he would walk
up the hill to the left or turn into the town on the right, when he
was accosted by an English gentleman, who, raising his hat, said that
he believed that he spoke to Mr. Palliser.
"I am Mr. Palliser," said our friend, very courteously, returning the
salute, and smiling as he spoke. But though he smiled, and though
he was courteous, and though he raised his hat, there was something
in his look and voice which would not have encouraged any ordinary
stranger to persevere. Mr. Palliser was not a man with whom it was
easy to open an acquaintance.
"My name is John Grey," said the stranger.
Then the smile was dropped, the look of extreme courtesy disappeared,
the tone of Mr. Palliser's voice was altered, and he put out his
hand. He knew enough of Mr. John Grey's history to be aware that
Mr. John Grey was a man with whom he might permit himself to become
acquainted. After the interchange of a very few words, the two men
started off for a walk together.
"Perhaps you don't wish to meet the carriage?" said Mr. Palliser. "If
so, we had better go through the town and up the river."
They went through the town, and up the river, and when Mr. Palliser,
on his return, was seen by Alice and Lady Glencora, he was alone.
They dined together, and nothing was said. Together they sauntered
out in the evening, and together came in and drank their tea; but
still nothing was said. At last, Alice and her cousin took their
candles from Mr. Palliser's hands and left the sitting-room for the
night.
"Alice," said Lady Glencora, as soon as they were in the passage
together, "I have been dying for this time to come. I could not speak
before, or I should have made blunders, and so would you. Let us go
into your room at once. Who do you think is here, at Lucerne, in this
house, at this very moment?"
Alice knew at once who it was. She knew, immediately, that Mr. Grey
had followed her, though no word had been written to her or spoken to
her on the subject since that day on which he himself had told her
that they would meet abroad. But though she was quite sure, she did
not mention his name. "Who is it, Glencora?" she asked, very calmly.
"Whom in all the world would you best like to see?" said Glencora.
"My cousin Kate, certainly," said Alice.
"Then it is not your cousin Kate. And I don't believe you;--or else
you're a fool."
Alice was accustomed to Lady Glencora's mode of talking, and
therefore did not think much of this. "Perhaps I am a fool," she
said.
"Only I know you are not. But I am not at all so sure as to your
being no hypocrite. The person I mean is a gentleman, of course. Why
don't you show a little excitement, at any rate? When Plantagenet
told me, just before dinner, I almost jumped out of my shoes. He was
going to tell you himself after dinner, in the politest way in the
world, no doubt, and just as the servants were carrying away the
apples. I thought it best to save you from that; but, I declare, I
believe I might have left him to do it; it would have had no effect
upon you. Who is it that has come, do you suppose?"
"Of course I know now," said Alice, very calmly, "that Mr. John Grey
has come."
"Yes, Mr. John Grey has come. He is here in this house at this
minute;--or, more probably, waiting outside by the lake till he shall
see a light in your bedroom." Then Lady Glencora paused for a moment,
waiting that Alice might say something. But Alice said nothing.
"Well?" said Lady Glencora, rising up from her chair. "Well?"
"Well?" said Alice.
"Have you nothing to say? Is it the same to you as though Mr. Smith
had come?"
"No; not exactly the same. I am quite alive to the importance of Mr.
Grey's arrival, and shall probably lie awake all night thinking about
it,--if it will do you any good to know that; but I don't feel that I
have much to say about it."
"I wish I had let Mr. Palliser tell you, in an ordinary way, before
all the servants. I do indeed."
"It would not have made much difference."
"Not the least, I believe. I wonder whether you ever did care for
anybody in your life,--for him, or for that other one, or for
anybody. For nobody, I believe;--except your cousin Kate. Still
waters, they say, run deep; and sometimes I think your waters run
too deep for me to fathom. I suppose I may go now, if you have got
nothing more to say?"
"What do you want me to say? Of course I know why he has come here.
He told me he should come."
"And you have never said a word about it."
"He told me he should come, and I thought it better not to say a word
about it. He might change his mind, or anything might happen. I told
him not to come; and it would have been much better that he should
have remained away."
"Why;--why;--why would it be better?"
"Because his being here will do no good to any one."
"No good! It seems to me impossible but that it should do all the
good in the world. Look here, Alice. If you do not altogether make
it up with him before to-morrow evening, I shall believe you to be
utterly heartless. Had I been you I should have been in his arms
before this. I'll go now, and leave you to lie awake, as you say
you will." Then she left the room, but returned in a moment to ask
another question. "What is Plantagenet to say to him about seeing you
to-morrow? Of course he has asked permission to come and call."
"He may come if he pleases. You don't think I have quarrelled with
him, or would refuse to see him!"
"And may we ask him to dine with us?"
"Oh, yes."
"And make up a picnic, and all the rest of it. In fact, he is to
be regarded as only an ordinary person. Well;--good night. I don't
understand you, that's all."
It may be doubted whether Alice understood herself. As soon as her
friend was gone, she put out her candle and seated herself at the
open window of her room, looking out upon the moonlight as it played
upon the lake. Would he be there, thinking of her, looking up,
perhaps, as Glencora had hinted, to see if he could distinguish her
light among the hundred that would be flickering across the long
front of the house. If it were so, at any rate he should not see her,
so she drew the curtain, and sat there watching the lake. It was
a pity that he should have come, and yet she loved him dearly for
coming. It was a pity that he should have come, as his coming could
lead to no good result. Of this she assured herself over and over
again, and yet she hardly knew why she was so sure of it. Glencora
had called her hard; but her conviction on that matter had not come
from hardness. Now that she was alone, her heart was full of love, of
the soft romance of love towards this man; and yet she felt that she
ought not to marry him, even though he might still be willing to take
her. That he was still willing to take her, that he desired to have
her for his wife in spite of all the injury she had done him, there
could be no doubt. Why else had he followed her to Switzerland? And
she remembered, now at this moment, how he had told her at Cheltenham
that he would never consider her to be lost to him, unless she
should, in truth, become the wife of another man. Why, then, should
it not be as he wished it?
[Illustration: Alice.]
She asked herself the question, and did not answer it; but still she
felt that it might not be so. She had no right to such happiness
after the evil that she had done. She had been driven by a frenzy to
do that which she herself could not pardon; and having done it, she
could not bring herself to accept the position which should have been
the reward of good conduct. She could not analyse the causes which
made her feel that she must still refuse the love that was proffered
to her; she could not clearly read her own thoughts; but the causes
were as I have said, and such was the true reading of her thoughts.
Had she simply refused his hand after she had once accepted it,--had
she refused it, and then again changed her mind, she could have
brought herself to ask him to forgive her. But she had done so much
more than this, and so much worse! She had affianced herself to
another man since she had belonged to him,--since she had been his,
as his future wife. What must he not think of her, and what not
suspect? Then she remembered those interviews which she had had with
her cousin since she had written to him, accepting his offer. When
he had been with her in Queen Anne Street she had shrunk from all
outward signs of a love which she did not feel. There had been no
caress between them. She had not allowed him to touch her with his
lips. But it was impossible that the nature of that mad engagement
between her and her cousin George should ever be made known to Mr.
Grey. She sat there wiping the tears from her eyes as she looked for
his figure among the figures by the lake-side; but, as she sat there,
she promised herself no happiness from his coming. Oh! reader, can
you forgive her in that she had sinned against the softness of her
feminine nature? I think that she may be forgiven, in that she had
never brought herself to think lightly of her own fault.
If he were there, by the lake-side, she did not see him. I think we
may say that John Grey was not a man to console himself in his love
by looking up at his lady's candle. He was one who was capable of
doing as much as most men in the pursuit of his love,--as he proved
to be the case when he followed Alice to Cheltenham, and again to
London, and now again to Lucerne; but I doubt whether a glimmer from
her bedroom-window, had it been unmistakably her own glimmer, and not
that of some ugly old French woman who might chance to sleep next to
her, would have done him much good. He had come to Lucerne with a
purpose, which purpose, if it might be possible, he meant to carry
out; but I think he was already in bed, being tired with long travel,
before Lady Glencora had left Alice's room.
At breakfast the next morning nothing was said for a while about the
new arrival. At last Mr. Palliser ventured to speak. "Glencora has
told you, I think, that Mr. Grey is here? Mr. Grey is an old friend of
yours, I believe?"
Alice, keeping her countenance as well as she was able, said Mr. Grey
had been, and, indeed, was, a very dear friend of hers. Mr. Palliser
knew the whole story, and what was the use of any little attempt at
dissimulation? "I shall be glad to see him,--if you will allow me?"
she went on to say.
"Glencora suggests that we should ask him to dinner," said Mr.
Palliser; and then that matter was settled.
But Mr. Grey did not wait till dinner-time to see Alice. Early in the
morning his card was brought up, and Lady Glencora, as soon as she
saw the name, immediately ran away.
"Indeed you need not go," said Alice.
"Indeed I shall go," said her ladyship. "I know what's proper on
these occasions, if you don't."
So she went, whisking herself along the passages with a little run;
and Mr. Grey, as he was shown into her ladyship's usual sitting-room,
saw the skirt of her ladyship's dress as she whisked herself off
towards her husband.
"I told you I should come," he said, with his ordinary sweet smile.
"I told you that I should follow you, and here I am."
He took her hand, and held it, pressing it warmly. She hardly knew
with what words first to address him, or how to get her hand back
from him.
"I am very glad to see you,--as an old friend," she said; "but I
hope--"
"Well;--you hope what?"
"I hope you have had some better cause for travelling than a desire
to see me?"
"No, dearest; no. I have had no better cause, and, indeed, none
other. I have come on purpose to see you; and had Mr. Palliser
taken you off to Asia or Africa, I think I should have felt myself
compelled to follow him. You know why I follow you?"
"Hardly," said she,--not finding at the moment any other word that
she could say.
"Because I love you. You see what a plain-spoken John Bull I am, and
how I come to the point at once. I want you to be my wife; and they
say that perseverance is the best way when a man has such a want as
that."
"You ought not to want it," she said, whispering the words as though
she were unable to speak them out loud.
"But I do, you see. And why should I not want it?"
"I am not fit to be your wife."
"I am the best judge of that, Alice. You have to make up your mind
whether I am fit to be your husband."
"You would be disgraced if you were to take me, after all that has
passed;--after what I have done. What would other men say of you when
they knew the story?"
"Other men, I hope, would be just enough to say, that when I had made
up my mind, I was tolerably constant in keeping to it. I do not think
they could say much worse of me than that."
"They would say that you had been jilted, and had forgiven the jilt."
"As far as the forgiveness goes, they would tell the truth. But,
indeed, Alice, I don't very much care what men do say of me."
"But I care, Mr. Grey;--and though you may forgive me, I cannot
forgive myself. Indeed I know now, as I have known all along, that
I am not fit to be your wife. I am not good enough. And I have done
that which makes me feel that I have no right to marry anyone."
These words she said, jerking out the different sentences almost in
convulsions; and when she had come to the end of them, the tears
were streaming down her cheeks. "I have thought about it, and I
will not. I will not. After what has passed, I know that it will be
better,--more seemly, that I should remain as I am."
Soon after that she left him, not, however, till she had told him
that she would meet him again at dinner, and had begged him to treat
her simply as a friend. "In spite of everything, I hope that we may
always be friends,--dear friends," she said.
"I hope we may," he answered;--"the very dearest." And then he left
her.
In the afternoon he again encountered Mr. Palliser, and having thought
over the matter since his interview with Alice, he resolved to tell
his whole story to his new acquaintance,--not in order that he might
ask for counsel from him, for in this matter he wanted no man's
advice,--but that he might get some assistance. So the two men
walked off together, up the banks of the clear-flowing Reuss, and Mr.
Palliser felt the comfort of having a companion.
"I have always liked her," said Mr. Palliser, "though, to tell the
truth, I have twice been very angry with her."
"I have never been angry with her," said the lover.
"And my anger was in both instances unjust. You may imagine how
great is my confidence in her, when I have thought she was the
best companion my wife could have for a long journey, taken under
circumstances that were--that were--; but I need not trouble you with
that."
So great had been the desolation of Mr. Palliser's life since his
banishment from London that he almost felt tempted to tell the story
of his troubles to this absolute stranger. But he bethought himself
of the blood of the Pallisers, and refrained. There are comforts
which royalty may never enjoy, and luxuries in which such men as
Plantagenet Palliser may not permit themselves to indulge.
"About her and her character I have no doubt in the world," said
Grey. "In all that she has done I think that I have seen her motives;
and though I have not approved of them, I have always known them to
be pure and unselfish. She has done nothing that I did not forgive as
soon as it was done. Had she married that man, I should have forgiven
her even that,--though I should have known that all her future life
was destroyed, and much of mine also. I think I can make her happy if
she will marry me, but she must first be taught to forgive herself.
Living as she is with you, and with your wife, she may, perhaps,
just now be more under your influence and your wife's than she can
possibly be under mine." Whereupon, Mr. Palliser promised that he
would do what he could. "I think she loves me," said Mr. Grey.
Mr. Palliser said that he was sure she did, though what ground he
had for such assurance I am quite unable to surmise. He was probably
desirous of saying the most civil thing which occurred to him.
The little dinner-party that evening was pleasant enough, and nothing
more was said about love. Lady Glencora talked nonsense to Mr. Grey,
and Mr. Palliser contradicted all the nonsense which his wife talked.
But this was all done in such a way that the evening passed away
pleasantly. It was tacitly admitted among them that Mr. Grey was to be
allowed to come among them as a friend, and Lady Glencora managed to
say one word to him aside, in which she promised to give him her most
cordial cooperation.