Can You Forgive Her? Part 36

"No; he won't do that. That would be uncourteous,--and he's the most courteous man in the world. There's n.o.body here, you see," she said as they entered the room, "and I didn't suppose there would be. It's always proper to be first in one's own house. I do so try to be proper,--and it is such trouble. Talking of people earning their bread, Alice;--I'm sure I earn mine. Oh dear!--what fun it would be to be sitting somewhere in Asia, eating a chicken with one's fingers, and lighting a big fire outside one's tent to keep off the lions and tigers. Fancy your being on one side of the fire and the lions and tigers on the other, grinning at you through the flames!" Then Lady Glencora strove to look like a lion, and grinned at herself in the gla.s.s.

"That sort of grin wouldn't frighten me," said Alice.

"I dare say not. I have been reading about it in that woman's travels. Oh, here they are, and I mustn't make any more faces.

d.u.c.h.ess, do come to the fire. I hope you've got warm again. This is my cousin, Miss Vavasor."

The d.u.c.h.ess made a stiff little bow of condescension, and then declared that she was charmingly warm. "I don't know how you manage in your house, but the staircases are so comfortable. Now at Longroyston we've taken all the trouble in the world,--put down hot-water pipes all over the house, and everything else that could be thought of, and yet, you can't move about the place without meeting with draughts at every corner of the pa.s.sages." The d.u.c.h.ess spoke with an enormous emphasis on every other word, sometimes putting so great a stress on some special syllable, as almost to bring her voice to a whistle. This she had done with the word "pipes" to a great degree,--so that Alice never afterwards forgot the hot-water pipes of Longroyston. "I was telling Lady Glencora, Miss Palliser, that I never knew a house so warm as this,--or, I'm sorry to say,"--and here the emphasis was very strong on the word sorry,--"so cold as Longroyston." And the tone in which Longroyston was uttered would almost have drawn tears from a critical audience in the pit of a playhouse. The d.u.c.h.ess was a woman of about forty, very handsome, but with no meaning in her beauty, carrying a good fixed colour in her face, which did not look like paint, but which probably had received some little a.s.sistance from art. She was a well-built, sizeable woman, with good proportions and fine health,--but a fool. She had addressed herself to one Miss Palliser; but two Miss Pallisers, cousins of Plantagenet Palliser, had entered the room at the same time, of whom I may say, whatever other traits of character they may have possessed, that at any rate they were not fools.

"It's always easy to warm a small house like this," said Miss Palliser, whose Christian names, unfortunately for her, were Iphigenia Theodata, and who by her cousin and sister was called Iphy--"and I suppose equally difficult to warm a large one such as Longroyston." The other Miss Palliser had been christened Euphemia.

"We've got no pipes, d.u.c.h.ess, at any rate," said Lady Glencora; and Alice, as she sat listening, thought she discerned in Lady Glencora's p.r.o.nunciation of the word pipes an almost hidden imitation of the d.u.c.h.ess's whistle. It must have been so, for at the moment Lady Glencora's eye met Alice's for an instant, and was then withdrawn, so that Alice was compelled to think that her friend and cousin was not always quite successful in those struggles she made to be proper.

Then the gentlemen came in one after another, and other ladies, till about thirty people were a.s.sembled. Mr. Palliser came up and spoke another word to Alice in a kind voice,--meant to express some sense of connection if not cousins.h.i.+p. "My wife has been thinking so much of your coming. I hope we shall be able to amuse you." Alice, who had already begun to feel desolate, was grateful, and made up her mind that she would try to like Mr. Palliser.

Jeffrey Palliser was almost the last in the room, but directly he entered Lady Glencora got up from her seat, and met him as he was coming into the crowd. "You must take my cousin, Alice Vavasor, in to dinner," she said, "and;--will you oblige me to-day?"

"Yes;--as you ask me like that."

"Then try to make her comfortable." After that she introduced them, and Jeffrey Palliser stood opposite to Alice, talking to her, till dinner was announced.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Dinner at Matching Priory.

Alice found herself seated near to Lady Glencora's end of the table, and, in spite of her resolution to like Mr. Palliser, she was not sorry that such an arrangement had been made. Mr. Palliser had taken the d.u.c.h.ess out to dinner, and Alice wished to be as far removed as possible from her Grace. She found herself seated between her bespoken friend Jeffrey Palliser and the Duke, and as soon as she was seated Lady Glencora introduced her to her second neighbour. "My cousin, Duke," Lady Glencora said, "and a terrible Radical."

"Oh, indeed; I'm glad of that. We're sadly in want of a few leading Radicals, and perhaps I may be able to gain one now."

Alice thought of her cousin George, and wished that he, instead of herself, was sitting next to the Duke of St. Bungay. "But I'm afraid I never shall be a leading Radical," she said.

"You shall lead me at any rate, if you will," said he.

"As the little dogs lead the blind men," said Lady Glencora.

"No, Lady Glencora, not so. But as the pretty women lead the men who have eyes in their head. There is nothing I want so much, Miss Vavasor, as to become a Radical;--if I only knew how."

"I think it's very easy to know how," said Alice.

"Do you? I don't. I've voted for every liberal measure that has come seriously before Parliament since I had a seat in either House, and I've not been able to get beyond Whiggery yet."

"Have you voted for the ballot?" asked Alice, almost trembling at her own audacity as she put the question.

"Well; no, I've not. And I suppose that is the crux. But the ballot has never been seriously brought before any House in which I have sat. I hate it with so keen a private hatred, that I doubt whether I could vote for it."

"But the Radicals love it," said Alice.

"Palliser," said the Duke, speaking loudly from his end of the table, "I'm told you can never be ent.i.tled to call yourself a Radical till you've voted for the ballot."

"I don't want to be called a Radical," said Mr. Palliser,--"or to be called anything at all."

"Except Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Lady Glencora in a low voice.

"And that's about the finest ambition by which a man can be moved,"

said the Duke. "The man who can manage the purse-strings of this country can manage anything." Then that conversation dropped and the Duke ate his dinner.

"I was especially commissioned to amuse you," said Mr. Jeffrey Palliser to Alice. "But when I undertook the task I had no conception that you would be calling Cabinet Ministers over the coals about their politics."

"I did nothing of the kind, surely, Mr. Palliser. I suppose all Radicals do vote for the ballot, and that's why I said it."

"Your definition was perfectly just, I dare say, only--"

"Only what?"

"Lady Glencora need not have been so anxious to provide specially for your amus.e.m.e.nt. Not but what I'm very much obliged to her,--of course. But Miss Vavasor, unfortunately I'm not a politician. I haven't a chance of a seat in the House, and so I despise politics."

"Women are not allowed to be politicians in this country."

"Thank G.o.d, they can't do much in that way;--not directly, I mean.

Only think where we should be if we had a feminine House of Commons, with feminine debates, carried on, of course, with feminine courtesy.

My cousins Iphy and Phemy there would of course be members. You don't know them yet?"

"No; not yet. Are they politicians?"

"Not especially. They have their tendencies, which are decidedly liberal. There has never been a Tory Palliser known, you know. But they are too clever to give themselves up to anything in which they can do nothing. Being women they live a depressed life, devoting themselves to literature, fine arts, social economy, and the abstract sciences. They write wonderful letters; but I believe their correspondence lists are quite full, so that you have no chance at present of getting on either of them."

"I haven't the slightest pretension to ask for such an honour."

"Oh! if you mean because you don't know them, that has nothing to do with it."

"But I have no claim either private or public."

"That has nothing to do with it either. They don't at all seek people of note as their correspondents. Free communication with all the world is their motto, and Rowland Hill is the G.o.d they wors.h.i.+p.

Only they have been forced to guard themselves against too great an accession of paper and ink. Are you fond of writing letters, Miss Vavasor?"

"Yes, to my friends; but I like getting them better."

"I shrewdly suspect they don't read half what they get. Is it possible any one should go through two sheets of paper filled by our friend the d.u.c.h.ess there? No; their delight is in writing. They sit each at her desk after breakfast, and go on till lunch. There is a little rivalry between them, not expressed to each other, but visible to their friends. Iphy certainly does get off the greater number, and I'm told crosses quite as often as Phemy, but then she has the advantage of a bolder and larger hand."

"Do they write to you?"

"Oh, dear no. I don't think they ever write to any relative. They don't discuss family affairs and such topics as that. Architecture goes a long way with them, and whether women ought to be clerks in public offices. Iphy has certain American correspondents that take up much of her time, but she acknowledges she does not read their letters."

"Then I certainly shall not write to her."

"But you are not American, I hope. I do hate the Americans. It's the only strong political feeling I have. I went there once, and found I couldn't live with them on any terms."