The person I mean is a gentleman, of course. Why don’t you show a little excitement, at any rate? When Plantagenet told me, just before dinner, I almost jumped out of my shoes. He was going to tell you himself after dinner, in the politest way in the world, no doubt, and just as the servants were carrying away the apples. I thought it best to save you from that; but, I declare, I believe I might have left him to do it; it would have had no effect upon you. Who is it that has come, do you suppose?”
“Of course I know now,” said Alice, very calmly, “that Mr John Grey has come.”
“Yes, Mr John Grey has come. He is here in this house at this minute;—or, more probably, waiting outside by the lake till he shall see a light in your bedroom.” Then Lady Glencora paused for a moment, waiting that Alice might say something. But Alice said nothing. “Well?” said Lady Glencora, rising up from her chair. “Well?”
“Well?” said Alice.
“Have you nothing to say? Is it the same to you as though Mr Smith had come?”
“No; not exactly the same. I am quite alive to the importance of Mr Grey’s arrival, and shall probably lie awake all night thinking about it,—if it will do you any good to know that; but I don’t feel that I have much to say about it.”
“I wish I had let Mr Palliser tell you, in an ordinary way, before all the servants. I do indeed.”
“It would not have made much difference.”
“Not the least, I believe. I wonder whether you ever did care for anybody in your life,—for him, or for that other one, or for anybody. For nobody, I believe;—except your cousin Kate. Still waters, they say, run deep; and sometimes I think your waters run too deep for me to fathom. I suppose I may go now, if you have got nothing more to say?”
“What do you want me to say? Of course I know why he has come here. He told me he should come.”
“And you have never said a word about it.”
“He told me he should come, and I thought it better not to say a word about it. He might change his mind, or anything might happen. I told him not to come; and it would have been much better that he should have remained away.”
“Why;—why;—why would it be better?”
“Because his being here will do no good to any one.”
“No good! It seems to me impossible but that it should do all the good in the world. Look here, Alice. If you do not altogether make it up with him before tomorrow evening, I shall believe you to be utterly heartless. Had I been you I should have been in his arms before this. I’ll go now, and leave you to lie awake, as you say you will.” Then she left the room, but returned in a moment to ask another question. “What is Plantagenet to say to him about seeing you tomorrow? Of course he has asked permission to come and call.”
“He may come if he pleases. You don’t think I have quarrelled with him, or would refuse to see him!”
“And may we ask him to dine with us?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And make up a picnic, and all the rest of it. In fact, he is to be regarded as only an ordinary person. Well;—good night. I don’t understand you, that’s all.”
It may be doubted whether Alice understood herself. As soon as her friend was gone, she put out her candle and seated herself at the open window of her room, looking out upon the moonlight as it played upon the lake. Would he be there, thinking of her, looking up, perhaps, as Glencora had hinted, to see if he could distinguish her light among the hundred that would be flickering across the long front of the house. If it were so, at any rate he should not see her, so she drew the curtain, and sat there watching the lake. It was a pity that he should have come, and yet she loved him dearly for coming. It was a pity that he should have come, as his coming could lead to no good result. Of this she assured herself over and over again, and yet she hardly knew why she was so sure of it. Glencora had called her hard; but her conviction on that matter had not come from hardness. Now that she was alone, her heart was full of love, of the soft romance of love towards this man; and yet she felt that she ought not to marry him, even though he might still be willing to take her. That he was still willing to take her, that he desired to have her for his wife in spite of all the injury she had done him, there could be no doubt. Why else had he followed her to Switzerland? And she remembered, now at this moment, how he had told her at Cheltenham that he would never consider her to be lost to him, unless she should, in truth, become the wife of another man. Why, then, should it not be as he wished it?
She asked herself the question, and did not answer it; but still she felt that it might not be so. She had no right to such happiness after the evil that she had done. She had been driven by a frenzy to do that which she herself could not pardon; and having done it, she could not bring herself to accept the position which should have been the reward of good conduct. She could not analyse the causes which made her feel that she must still refuse the love that was proffered to her; she could not clearly read her own thoughts; but the causes were as I have said, and such was the true reading of her thoughts. Had she simply refused his hand after she had once accepted it,—had she refused it, and then again changed her mind, she could have brought herself to ask him to forgive her. But she had done so much more than this, and so much worse! She had affianced herself to another man since she had belonged to him,—since she had been his, as his future wife. What must he not think of her, and what not suspect? Then she remembered those interviews which she had had with her cousin since she had written to him, accepting his offer. When he had been with her in Queen Anne Street she had shrunk from all outward signs of a love which she did not feel. There had been no caress between them. She had not allowed him to touch her with his lips. But it was impossible that the nature of that mad engagement between her and her cousin George should ever be made known to Mr Grey. She sat there wiping the tears from her eyes as she looked for his figure among the figures by the lake-side; but, as she sat there, she promised herself no happiness from his coming. Oh! reader, can you forgive her in that she had sinned against the softness of her feminine nature? I think that she may be forgiven, in that she had never brought herself to think lightly of her own fault.
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