The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume). Anthony Trollope
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wanted to go with him, then?”
“Would it not have been the best for you? Plantagenet, I do not love you;—not as women love their husbands when they do love them. But, before God, my first wish is to free you from the misfortune that I have brought on you.” As she made this attestation she started up from her chair, and coming close to him, took him by the coat. He was startled, and stepped back a pace, but did not speak; and then stood looking at her as she went on.
“What matters it whether I drown myself, or throw myself away by going with such a one as him, so that you might marry again, and have a child? I’d die;—I’d die willingly. How I wish I could die! Plantagenet, I would kill myself if I dared.”
He was a tall man and she was short of stature, so that he stood over her and looked upon her, and now she was looking up into his face with all her eyes. “I would,” she said. “I would—I would! What is there left for me that I should wish to live?”
Softly, slowly, very gradually, as though he were afraid of what he was doing, he put his arm round her waist. “You are wrong in one thing,” he said. “I do love you.”
She shook her head, touching his breast with her hair as she did so.
“I do love you,” he repeated. “If you mean that I am not apt at telling you so, it is true, I know. My mind is running on other things.”
“Yes,” she said; “your mind is running on other things.”
“But I do love you. If you cannot love me, it is a great misfortune to us both. But we need not therefore be disgraced. As for that other thing of which you spoke,—of our having, as yet, no child”—and in saying this he pressed her somewhat closer with his arm—”you allow yourself to think too much of it;—much more of it than I do. I have made no complaints on that head, even within my own breast.”
“I know what your thoughts are, Plantagenet.”
“Believe me that you wrong my thoughts. Of course I have been anxious, and have, perhaps, shown my anxiety by the struggle I have made to hide it. I have never told you what is false, Glencora.”
“No; you are not false!”
“I would rather have you for my wife, childless,—if you will try to love me,—than any other woman, though another might give me an heir. Will you try to love me?”
She was silent. At this moment, after the confession that she had made, she could not bring herself to say that she would even try. Had she said so, she would have seemed to have accepted his forgiveness too easily.
“I think, dear,” he said, still holding her by her waist, “that we had better leave England for a while. I will give up politics for this season. Should you like to go to Switzerland for the summer, or perhaps to some of the German baths, and then on to Italy when the weather is cold enough?” Still she was silent. “Perhaps your friend, Miss Vavasor, would go with us?”
He was killing her by his goodness. She could not speak to him yet; but now, as he mentioned Alice’s name, she gently put up her hand and rested it on the back of his.
At that moment there came a knock at the door;—a sharp knock, which was quickly repeated.
“Come in,” said Mr Palliser, dropping his arm from his wife’s waist, and standing away from her a few yards.
Chapter LIX.
The Duke of St Bungay in Search of a Minister
It was the butler who had knocked,—showing that the knock was of more importance than it would have been had it been struck by the knuckles of the footman in livery. “If you please, sir, the Duke of St Bungay is here.”
“The Duke of St Bungay!” said Mr Palliser, becoming rather red as he heard the announcement.
“Yes, sir, his grace is in the library. He bade me tell you that he particularly wanted to see you; so I told him that you were with my lady.”
“Quite right; tell his grace that I will be with him in two minutes.” Then the butler retired, and Mr Palliser was again alone with his wife.
“I must go now, my dear,” he said; “and perhaps I shall not see you again till the evening.”
“Don’t let me put you out in any way,” she answered.
“Oh no;—you won’t put me out. You will be dressing, I suppose, about nine.”
“I did not mean as to that,” she answered. “You must not think more of Italy. He has come to tell you that you are wanted in the Cabinet.”
Again he turned very red. “It may be so,” he answered, “but though I am wanted, I need not go. But I must not keep the duke waiting. Goodbye.” And he turned to the door.
She followed him and took hold of him as he went, so that he was forced to turn to her once again. She managed to get hold of both his hands, and pressed them closely, looking up into his face with her eyes laden with tears. He smiled at her gently, returned the pressure of the hands, and then left her,—without kissing her. It was not that he was minded not to kiss her. He would have kissed her willingly enough had he thought that the occasion required it. “He says that he loves me,” said Lady Glencora to herself, “but he does not know what love means.”
But she was quite aware that he had behaved to her with genuine, true nobility. As soon as she was alone and certain of her solitude, she took out that letter from her pocket, and tearing it into very small fragments, without reading it, threw the pieces on the fire. As she did so, her mind seemed to be fixed, at any rate, to one thing,—that she would think no more of Burgo Fitzgerald as her future master. I think, however, that she had arrived at so much certainty as this, at that moment in which she had been parting with Burgo Fitzgerald, in Lady Monk’s dining-room. She had had courage enough,—or shall we rather say sin enough,—to think of going with him,—to tell herself that she would do so; to put herself in the way of doing it; nay, she had had enough of both to enable her to tell her husband that she had resolved that it would be good for her to do so. But she was neither bold enough nor wicked enough to do the thing. As she had said of her own idea of destroying herself,—she did not dare to take the plunge. Therefore, knowing now that it was so, she tore up the letter that she had carried so long, and burnt it in the fire.
She had in truth told him everything, believing that in doing so she was delivering her own death-warrant as regarded her future position in his house. She had done this, not hoping thereby for any escape; not with any purpose as regarded herself, but simply because deceit had been grievous to her, and had become unendurable as soon as his words and manner had in them any feeling of kindness. But her confession had no sooner been made than her fault had been forgiven. She had told him that she did not love him. She had told him, even, that she had thought of leaving him. She had justified by her own words any treatment of his, however harsh, which he might choose to practise. But the result had been—the immediate result—that he had been more tender to her than she had ever remembered him to be before. She knew that he had conquered her. However cold and heartless his home might be to her, it must be her home now. There could be no further thought of leaving him. She had gone out into the tiltyard and had tilted with him, and he had been the victor.
Mr Palliser himself had not time for much thought before he found himself closeted with the Duke; but as he crossed the hall and went up the stairs, a thought or two did pass quickly across his mind. She had confessed to him, and he had forgiven her. He did not feel quite sure that he had been right, but he did feel quite sure that the thing had been done. He recognized it for a fact that, as regarded the past, no more was to be said. There were to be no reproaches, and there must be some tacit abandoning of Mrs Marsham’s close attendance. As to Mr Bott;—he had begun to hate Mr Bott, and had felt cruelly ungrateful, when that gentleman endeavoured to