The Palliser Novels (154 page)

As he was thinking of all this Lady Laura stood before him where he was sitting at the top of the falls. At this moment he remembered well all the circumstances of the scene when he had been there with her at his last visit to Loughlinter. How things had changed since then! Then he had loved Lady Laura with all his heart, and he had now already brought himself to regard her as a discreet matron whom to love would be almost as unreasonable as though he were to entertain a passion for the Lord Chancellor. The reader will understand how thorough had been the cure effected by Lady Laura’s marriage and the interval of a few months, when the swain was already prepared to make this lady the depositary of his confidence in another matter of love. “You are often here, I suppose?” said Lady Laura, looking down upon him as he sat upon the rock.

“Well; — yes; not very often; I come here sometimes because the view down upon the lake is so fine.”

“It is the prettiest spot about the place. I hardly ever get here now. Indeed this is only the second time that I have been up since we have been at home, and then I came to bring papa here.” There was a little wooden seat near to the rock upon which Phineas had been lying, and upon this Lady Laura sat down. Phineas, with his eyes turned upon the lake, was considering how he might introduce the subject of his love for Violet Effingham; but he did not find the matter very easy. He had just resolved to begin by saying that Violet would certainly never accept Lord Chiltern, when Lady Laura spoke a word or two which stopped him altogether. “How well I remember,” she said, “the day when you and I were here last autumn!”

“So do I. You told me then that you were going to marry Mr. Kennedy. How much has happened since then!”

“Much indeed! Enough for a whole lifetime. And yet how slow the time has gone!”

“I do not think it has been slow with me,” said Phineas.

“No; you have been active. You have had your hands full of work. I am beginning to think that it is a great curse to have been born a woman.”

“And yet I have heard you say that a woman may do as much as a man.”

“That was before I had learned my lesson properly. I know better than that now. Oh dear! I have no doubt it is all for the best as it is, but I have a kind of wish that I might be allowed to go out and milk the cows.”

“And may you not milk the cows if you wish it, Lady Laura?”

“By no means; — not only not milk them, but hardly look at them. At any rate, I must not talk about them.” Phineas of course understood that she was complaining of her husband, and hardly knew how to reply to her. He had been sharp enough to perceive already that Mr. Kennedy was an autocrat in his own house, and he knew Lady Laura well enough to be sure that such masterdom would be very irksome to her. But he had not imagined that she would complain to him. “It was so different at Saulsby,” Lady Laura continued. “Everything there seemed to be my own.”

“And everything here is your own.”

“Yes, — according to the prayer-book. And everything in truth is my own, — as all the dainties at the banquet belonged to Sancho the Governor.”

“You mean,” said he, — and then he hesitated; “you mean that Mr. Kennedy stands over you, guarding you for your own welfare, as the doctor stood over Sancho and guarded him?”

There was a pause before she answered, — a long pause, during which he was looking away over the lake, and thinking how he might introduce the subject of his love. But long as was the pause, he had not begun when Lady Laura was again speaking. “The truth is, my friend,” she said, “that I have made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Yes, Phineas, a mistake. I have blundered as fools blunder, thinking that I was clever enough to pick my footsteps aright without asking counsel from any one. I have blundered and stumbled and fallen, and now I am so bruised that I am not able to stand upon my feet.” The word that struck him most in all this was his own Christian name. She had never called him Phineas before. He was aware that the circle of his acquaintance had fallen into a way of miscalling him by his Christian name, as one observes to be done now and again in reference to some special young man. Most of the men whom he called his friends called him Phineas. Even the Earl had done so more than once on occasions in which the greatness of his position had dropped for a moment out of his mind. Mrs. Low had called him Phineas when she regarded him as her husband’s most cherished pupil; and Mrs. Bunce had called him Mr. Phineas. He had always been Phineas to everybody at Killaloe. But still he was quite sure that Lady Laura had never so called him before. Nor would she have done so now in her husband’s presence. He was sure of that also.

“You mean that you are unhappy?” he said, still looking away from her towards the lake.

“Yes, I do mean that. Though I do not know why I should come and tell you so, — except that I am still blundering and stumbling, and have fallen into a way of hurting myself at every step.”

“You can tell no one who is more anxious for your happiness,” said Phineas.

“That is a very pretty speech, but what would you do for my happiness? Indeed, what is it possible that you should do? I mean it as no rebuke when I say that my happiness or unhappiness is a matter as to which you will soon become perfectly indifferent.”

“Why should you say so, Lady Laura?”

“Because it is natural that it should be so. You and Mr. Kennedy might have been friends. Not that you will be, because you are unlike each other in all your ways. But it might have been so.”

“And are not you and I to be friends?” he asked.

“No. In a very few months you will not think of telling me what are your desires or what your sorrows; — and as for me, it will be out of the question that I should tell mine to you. How can you be my friend?”

“If you were not quite sure of my friendship, Lady Laura, you would not speak to me as you are speaking now.” Still he did not look at her, but lay with his face supported on his hands, and his eyes turned away upon the lake. But she, where she was sitting, could see him, and was aided by her sight in making comparisons in her mind between the two men who had been her lovers, — between him whom she had taken and him whom she had left. There was something in the hard, dry, unsympathising, unchanging virtues of her husband which almost revolted her. He had not a fault, but she had tried him at every point and had been able to strike no spark of fire from him. Even by disobeying she could produce no heat, — only an access of firmness. How would it have been with her had she thrown all ideas of fortune to the winds, and linked her lot to that of the young Phœbus who was lying at her feet? If she had ever loved any one she had loved him. And she had not thrown away her love for money. So she swore to herself over and over again, trying to console herself in her cold unhappiness. She had married a rich man in order that she might be able to do something in the world; — and now that she was this rich man’s wife she found that she could do nothing. The rich man thought it to be quite enough for her to sit at home and look after his welfare. In the meantime young Phœbus, — her Phœbus as he had been once, — was thinking altogether of some one else.

“Phineas,” she said, slowly, “I have in you such perfect confidence that I will tell you the truth; — as one man may tell it to another. I wish you would go from here.”

“What, at once?”

“Not to-day, or to-morrow. Stay here now till the election; but do not return. He will ask you to come, and press you hard, and will be hurt; — for, strange to say, with all his coldness, he really likes you. He has a pleasure in seeing you here. But he must not have that pleasure at the expense of trouble to me.”

“And why is it a trouble to you?” he asked. Men are such fools; — so awkward, so unready, with their wits ever behind the occasion by a dozen seconds or so! As soon as the words were uttered, he knew that they should not have been spoken.

“Because I am a fool,” she said. “Why else? Is not that enough for you?”

“Laura — ,” he said.

“No, — no; I will have none of that. I am a fool, but not such a fool as to suppose that any cure is to be found there.”

“Only say what I can do for you, though it be with my entire life, and I will do it.”

“You can do nothing, — except to keep away from me.”

“Are you earnest in telling me that?” Now at last he had turned himself round and was looking at her, and as he looked he saw the hat of a man appearing up the path, and immediately afterwards the face. It was the hat and face of the laird of Loughlinter. “Here is Mr. Kennedy,” said Phineas, in a tone of voice not devoid of dismay and trouble.

“So I perceive,” said Lady Laura. But there was no dismay or trouble in the tone of her voice.

In the countenance of Mr. Kennedy, as he approached closer, there was not much to be read, — only, perhaps, some slight addition of gloom, or rather, perhaps, of that frigid propriety of moral demeanour for which he had always been conspicuous, which had grown upon him at his marriage, and which had been greatly increased by the double action of being made a Cabinet Minister and being garrotted. “I am glad that your headache is better,” he said to his wife, who had risen from her seat to meet him. Phineas also had risen, and was now looking somewhat sheepish where he stood.

“I came out because it was worse,” she said. “It irritated me so that I could not stand the house any longer.”

“I will send to Callender for Dr. Macnuthrie.”

“Pray do nothing of the kind, Robert. I do not want Dr. Macnuthrie at all.”

“Where there is illness, medical advice is always expedient.”

“I am not ill. A headache is not illness.”

“I had thought it was,” said Mr. Kennedy, very drily.

“At any rate, I would rather not have Dr. Macnuthrie.”

“I am sure it cannot do you any good to climb up here in the heat of the sun. Had you been here long, Finn?”

“All the morning; — here, or hereabouts. I clambered up from the lake and had a book in my pocket.”

“And you happened to come across him by accident?” Mr. Kennedy asked. There was something so simple in the question that its very simplicity proved that there was no suspicion.

“Yes; — by chance,” said Lady Laura. “But every one at Loughlinter always comes up here. If any one ever were missing whom I wanted to find, this is where I should look.”

“I am going on towards Linter forest to meet Blane,” said Mr. Kennedy. Blane was the gamekeeper. “If you don’t mind the trouble, Finn, I wish you’d take Lady Laura down to the house. Do not let her stay out in the heat. I will take care that somebody goes over to Callender for Dr. Macnuthrie.” Then Mr. Kennedy went on, and Phineas was left with the charge of taking Lady Laura back to the house. When Mr. Kennedy’s hat had first appeared coming up the walk, Phineas had been ready to proclaim himself prepared for any devotion in the service of Lady Laura. Indeed, he had begun to reply with criminal tenderness to the indiscreet avowal which Lady Laura had made to him. But he felt now, after what had just occurred in the husband’s presence, that any show of tenderness, — of criminal tenderness, — was impossible. The absence of all suspicion on the part of Mr. Kennedy had made Phineas feel that he was bound by all social laws to refrain from such tenderness. Lady Laura began to descend the path before him without a word; — and went on, and on, as though she would have reached the house without speaking, had he not addressed her. “Does your head still pain you?” he asked.

“Of course it does.”

“I suppose he is right in saying that you should not be out in the heat.”

“I do not know. It is not worth while to think about that. He sends me in, and so of course I must go. And he tells you to take me, and so of course you must take me.”

“Would you wish that I should let you go alone?”

“Yes, I would. Only he will be sure to find it out; and you must not tell him that you left me at my request.”

“Do you think that I am afraid of him?” said Phineas.

“Yes; — I think you are. I know that I am, and that papa is; and that his mother hardly dares to call her soul her own. I do not know why you should escape.”

“Mr. Kennedy is nothing to me.”

“He is something to me, and so I suppose I had better go on. And now I shall have that horrid man from the little town pawing me and covering everything with snuff, and bidding me take Scotch physic, — which seems to increase in quantity and nastiness as doses in England decrease. And he will stand over me to see that I take it.”

“What; — the doctor from Callender?”

“No; — but Mr. Kennedy will. If he advised me to have a hole in my glove mended, he would ask me before he went to bed whether it was done. He never forgot anything in his life, and was never unmindful of anything. That I think will do, Mr. Finn. You have brought me out from the trees, and that may be taken as bringing me home. We shall hardly get scolded if we part here. Remember what I told you up above. And remember also that it is in your power to do nothing else for me. Good-bye.” So he turned away towards the lake, and let Lady Laura go across the wide lawn to the house by herself.

He had failed altogether in his intention of telling his friend of his love for Violet, and had come to perceive that he could not for the present carry out that intention. After what had passed it would be impossible for him to go to Lady Laura with a passionate tale of his longing for Violet Effingham. If he were even to speak to her of love at all, it must be quite of another love than that. But he never would speak to her of love; nor, — as he felt quite sure, — would she allow him to do so. But what astounded him most as he thought of the interview which had just passed, was the fact that the Lady Laura whom he had known, — whom he had thought he had known, — should have become so subject to such a man as Mr. Kennedy, a man whom he had despised as being weak, irresolute, and without a purpose! For the day or two that he remained at Loughlinter, he watched the family closely, and became aware that Lady Laura had been right when she declared that her father was afraid of Mr. Kennedy.

“I shall follow you almost immediately,” said the Earl confidentially to Phineas, when the candidate for the borough took his departure from Loughlinter. “I don’t like to be there just when the election is going on, but I’ll be at Saulsby to receive you the day afterwards.”