The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume). Anthony Trollope
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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 dinnertime 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 plainspoken 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