The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume)
continued. “He doesn’t dream of any such thing. If she would take my advice, she would leave the bills, and let them be dishonoured. As it is, I think I shall call at Drummonds’, and explain the whole transaction.”
“You must not do that,” said Grey. “I will call at Drummonds’, instead, and see that the money is all right for the bills. As far as they go, let him have his plunder.”
“And if she won’t take you, at last, Grey? Upon my word, I don’t think she ever will. My belief is she’ll never get married. She’ll never do anything like any other woman.”
“The money won’t be missed by me if I never get married,” said Grey, with a smile. “If she does marry me, of course I shall make her pay me.”
“No, by George! that won’t do,” said Vavasor. “If she were your daughter you’d know that she could not take a man’s money in that way.”
“And I know it now, though she is not my daughter. I was only joking. As soon as I am certain,—finally certain,—that she can never become my wife, I will take back my money. You need not be afraid. The nature of the arrangement we have made shall then be explained to her.”
In this way it was settled; and on the following morning the father informed the daughter that he had done her bidding, and that the money would be placed to her credit at the bankers’ before the bills came due. On that Saturday, the day which her cousin had named in his letter, she trudged down to Drummonds’, and was informed by a very courteous senior clerk in that establishment, that due preparation for the bills had been made.
So far, I think we may say that Mr George Vavasor was not unfortunate.
Chapter LXII.
Going Abroad
One morning, early in May, a full week before Alice’s visit to the bankers’ at Charing Cross, a servant in grand livery, six feet high, got out of a cab at the door in Queen Anne Street, and sent up a note for Miss Vavasor, declaring that he would wait in the cab for her answer. He had come from Lady Glencora, and had been specially ordered to go in a cab and come back in a cab, and make himself as like a Mercury, with wings to his feet, as may be possible to a London footman. Mr Palliser had arranged his plans with his wife that morning,—or, I should more correctly say, had given her his orders, and she, in consequence, had sent away her Mercury in hot pressing haste to Queen Anne Street. “Do come;—instantly if you can,” the note said. “I have so much to tell you, and so much to ask of you. If you can’t come, when shall I find you, and where?” Alice sent back a note, saying that she would be in Park Lane as soon as she could put on her bonnet and walk down; and then the Mercury went home in his cab.
Alice found her friend in the small breakfast-room upstairs, sitting close by the window. They had not as yet met since the evening of Lady Monk’s party, nor had Lady Glencora seen Alice in the mourning which she now wore for her grandfather. “Oh, dear, what a change it makes in you,” she said. “I never thought of your being in black.”
“I don’t know what it is you want, but shan’t I do in mourning as well as I would in colours?”
“You’ll do in anything, dear. But I have so much to tell you, and I don’t know how to begin. And I’ve so much to ask of you, and I’m so afraid you won’t do it.”
“You generally find me very complaisant.”
“No I don’t, dear. It is very seldom you will do anything for me. But I must tell you everything first. Do take your bonnet off, for I shall be hours in doing it.”
“Hours in telling me!”
“Yes; and in getting your consent to what I want you to do. But I think I’ll tell you that first. I’m to be taken abroad immediately.”
“Who is to take you?”
“Ah, you may well ask that. If you could know what questions I have asked myself on that head! I sometimes say things to myself as though they were the most proper and reasonable things in the world, and then within an hour or two I hate myself for having thought of them.”
“But why don’t you answer me? Who is going abroad with you?”
“Well; you are to be one of the party.”
“I!”
“Yes; you. When I have named so very respectable a chaperon for my youth, of course you will understand that my husband is to take us.”
“But Mr Palliser can’t leave London at this time of the year?”
“That’s just it. He is to leave London at this time of the year. Don’t look in that way, for it’s all settled. Whether you go with me or not, I’ve got to go. To-day is Tuesday. We are to be off next Tuesday night, if you can make yourself ready. We shall breakfast in Paris on Wednesday morning, and then it will be to us all just as if we were in a new world. Mr Palliser will walk up and down the new court of the Louvre, and you will be on his left arm, and I shall be on his right,—just like English people,—and it will be the most proper thing that ever was seen in life. Then we shall go on to Basle”—Alice shuddered as Basle was mentioned, thinking of the balcony over the river—”and so to Lucerne—. But no; that was the first plan, and Mr Palliser altered it. He spent a whole day up here with maps and Bradshaw’s and Murray’s guide-books, and he scolded me so because I didn’t care whether we went first to Baden or to some other place. How could I care? I told him I would go anywhere he chose to take me. Then he told me I was heartless;—and I acknowledged that I was heartless. ‘I am heartless,’ I said. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’“
“Oh, Cora, why did you say that?”
“I didn’t choose to contradict my husband. Besides, it’s true. Then he threw the Bradshaw away, and all the maps flew about. So I picked them up again, and said we’d go to Switzerland first. I knew that would settle it, and of course he decided on stopping at Baden. If he had said Jericho, it would have been the same thing to me. Wouldn’t you like to go to Jericho?”
“I should have no special objection to Jericho.”
“But you are to go to Baden instead.”
“I’ve said nothing about that yet. But you have not told me half your story. Why is Mr Palliser going abroad in the middle of Parliament in this way?”
“Ah; now I must go back to the beginning. And indeed, Alice, I hardly know how to tell you; not that I mind you knowing it, only there are some things that won’t get themselves told. You can hardly guess what it is that he is giving up. You must swear that you won’t repeat what I’m going to tell you now?”
“I’m not a person apt to tell secrets, but I shan’t swear anything.”
“What a woman you are for discretion! it is you that ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer; you are so wise. Only you haven’t brought your own pigs to the best market, after all.”
“Never mind my own pigs now, Cora.”
“I do mind them, very much. But the secret is this. They have asked Mr Palliser to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he has—refused. Think of that!”
“But why?”
“Because of me,—of me, and my folly, and wickedness, and abominations. Because he has been fool enough to plague himself with a wife—he who of all men ought to have kept himself free from such troubles. Oh, he has been so good! It is almost impossible to make any one understand it. If you could know how he has longed for this office;—how he has worked for it day and night, wearing his eyes out with figures when everybody else has been asleep, shutting himself up with such creatures as Mr Bott when other men have been shooting and hunting and flirting and spending