Can You Forgive Her? Part 112

"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 pa.s.sed 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 pates and curacoa to a very large extent, and now it might be doubted whether the amount of pates and curacoa 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 pa.s.s 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.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

From London to Baden.

On the following morning everybody was stirring by times at Mr.

Palliser's house in Park Lane, and the master of that house yawned no more. There is some life in starting for a long journey, and the life is the stronger and the fuller if the things and people to be carried are numerous and troublesome. Lady Glencora was a little troublesome, and would not come down to breakfast in time. When rebuked on account of this manifest breach of engagement, she a.s.serted that the next train would do just as well; and when Mr. Palliser proved to her, with much trouble, that the next train could not enable them to reach Paris on that day, she declared that it would be much more comfortable to take a week in going than to hurry over the ground in one day. There was nothing she wanted so much as to see Folkestone.

"If that is the case, why did not you tell me so before?" said Mr.

Palliser, in his gravest voice. "Richard and the carriage went down yesterday, and are already on board the packet."

"If Richard and the carriage are already on board the packet," said Lady Glencora, "of course we must follow them, and we must put off the glories of Folkestone till we come back. Alice, haven't you observed that, in travelling, you are always driven on by some Richard or some carriage, till you feel that you are a slave?"

All this was trying to Mr. Palliser; but I think that he enjoyed it, nevertheless, and that he was happy when he found that he did get his freight off from the Pimlico Station in the proper train.

Of course Lady Glencora and Alice were very ill crossing the Channel; of course the two maids were worse than their mistresses; of course the men kept out of their master's way when they were wanted, and drank brandy-and-water with the steward down-stairs; and of course Lady Glencora declared that she would not allow herself to be carried beyond Boulogne that day;--but, nevertheless, they did get on to Paris. Had Mr. Palliser become Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he had once hoped, he could hardly have worked harder than he did work. It was he who found out which carriage had been taken for them, and who put, with his own hands, the ladies' dressing-cases and cloaks on to the seats,--who laid out the novels, which, of course, were not read by the road,--and made preparations as though this stage of their journey was to take them a week, instead of five hours and a half.

"Oh, dear! how I have slept!" said Lady Glencora, as they came near to Paris.

"I think you've been tolerably comfortable," said Mr. Palliser, joyfully.

"Since we got out of that horrid boat I have done pretty well. Why do they make the boats so nasty? I'm sure they do it on purpose."

"It would be difficult to make them nice, I suppose?" said Alice.

"It is the sea that makes them uncomfortable," said Mr. Palliser.

"Never mind; we shan't have any more of it for twelve months, at any rate. We can get to the Kurds, Alice, without getting into a packet again. That, to my way of thinking, is the great comfort of the Continent. One can go everywhere without being seasick."

Mr. Palliser said nothing, but he sighed as he thought of being absent for a whole year. He had said that such was his intention, and would not at once go back from what he himself had said. But how was he to live for twelve months out of the House of Commons? What was he to do with himself, with his intellect and his energy, during all these coming dreary days? And then,--he might have been Chancellor of the Exchequer! He might even now, at this very moment, have been upon his legs, making a financial statement of six hours' duration, to the delight of one-half of the House, and bewilderment of the other, instead of dragging cloaks across that dingy, dull, dirty waiting-room at the Paris Station, in which British subjects are kept in prison while their boxes are being tumbled out of the carriages.

"But we are not to stop here;--are we?" said Lady Glencora, mournfully.

"No, dear;--I have given the keys to Richard. We will go on at once."

"But can't we have our things?"

"In about half an hour," pleaded Mr. Palliser.

"I suppose we must bear it, Alice?" said Lady Glencora as she got into the carriage that was waiting for her.

Alice thought of the last time in which she had been in that room,--when George and Kate had been with her,--and the two girls had been quite content to wait patiently while their trunks were being examined. But Alice was now travelling with great people,--with people who never spoke of their wealth, or seemed ever to think of it, but who showed their consciousness of it at every turn of their lives. "After all," Alice had said to herself more than once, "I doubt whether the burden is not greater than the pleasure."

They stayed in Paris for a week, and during that time Alice found that she became very intimate with Mr. Palliser. At Matching she had, in truth, seen but little of him, and had known nothing. Now she began to understand his character, and learned how to talk to him, She allowed him to tell her of things in which Lady Glencora resolutely persisted in taking no interest. She delighted him by writing down in a little pocket-book the number of eggs that were consumed in Paris every day, whereas Glencora protested that the information was worth nothing unless her husband could tell her how many of the eggs were good, and how many bad. And Alice was glad to find that a hundred and fifty thousand female operatives were employed in Paris, while Lady Glencora said it was a great shame, and that they ought all to have husbands. When Mr. Palliser explained that that was impossible, because of the redundancy of the female population, she angered him very much by a.s.serting that she saw a great many men walking about who, she was quite sure, had not wives of their own.

"I do so wish you had married him!" Glencora said to Alice that evening. "You would always have had a pocket-book ready to write down the figures, and you would have pretended to care about the eggs, and the bottles of wine, and the rest of it. As for me, I can't do it. If I see an hungry woman, I can give her my money; or if she be a sick woman, I can nurse her; or if I hear of a very wicked man, I can hate him;--but I cannot take up poverty and crime in the lump. I never believe it all. My mind isn't big enough."

They went into no society at Paris, and at the end of a week were all glad to leave it.

"I don't know that Baden will be any better," Lady Glencora said; "but, you know, we can leave that again after a bit,--and so we shall go on getting nearer to the Kurds."

To this, Mr. Palliser demurred. "I think we had better make up our mind to stay a month at Baden."

"But why should we make up our minds at all?" his wife pleaded.

"I like to have a plan," said Mr. Palliser.

"And so do I," said his wife,--"if only for the sake of not keeping it."

"There's nothing I hate so much as not carrying out my intentions,"

said Mr. Palliser.

Upon this, Lady Glencora shrugged her shoulders, and made a mock grimace to her cousin. All this her husband bore for a while meekly, and it must be acknowledged that he behaved very well. But, then, he had his own way in everything. Lady Glencora did not behave very well,--contradicting her husband, and not considering, as, perhaps, she ought to have done, the sacrifice he was making on her behalf.

But, then, she had her own way in nothing.

She had her own way in almost nothing; but on one point she did conquer her husband. He was minded to go from Paris back to Cologne, and so down the Rhine to Baden. Lady Glencora declared that she hated the Rhine,--that, of all rivers, it was the most distasteful to her; that, of all scenery, the scenery of the Rhine was the most over-praised; and that she would be wretched all the time if she were carried that way. Upon this, Mr. Palliser referred the matter to Alice; and she, who had last been upon the Rhine with her cousins Kate and George Vavasor, voted for going to Baden by way of Strasbourg.

"We will go by Strasbourg, then," said Mr. Palliser, gallantly.

"Not that I want to see that horrid church again," said Glencora.

"Everything is alike horrid to you, I think," said her husband. "You are determined not to be contented, so that it matters very little which way we go."

"That's the truth," said his wife. "It does matter very little."

They got on to Baden,--with very little delay at Strasbourg, and found half an hotel prepared for their reception. Here the carriage was brought into use for the first time, and the mistress of the carriage talked of sending home for Dandy and Flirt. Mr. Palliser, when he heard the proposition, calmly a.s.sured his wife that the horses would not bear the journey. "They would be so out of condition," he said, "as not to be worth anything for two or three months."

"I only meant to ask for them if they could come in a balloon," said Lady Glencora.

This angered Mr. Palliser, who had really, for a few minutes, thought of pacifying his wife by sending for the horses.

"Alice," she asked, one morning, "how many eggs are eaten in Baden every morning before ten o'clock?"

Mr. Palliser, who at the moment was in the act of eating one, threw down his spoon, and pushed his plate from him.

"What's the matter, Plantagenet?" she asked.

"The matter!" he said. "But never mind; I am a fool to care for it."