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 upstairs 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
