The Palliser Novels (27 page)

When the letters came Lady Macleod was not present, and I am disposed to think that one of them had been written by concerted arrangement with her. But if so she had not dared to watch the immediate effect of her own projectile. This one was from Lady Midlothian. Of the other Lady Macleod certainly knew nothing, though it also had sprung out of the discussions which had taken place as to Alice’s sins in the Auld Reekie-Midlothian set. This other letter was from Lady Glencora. Alice opened the two, one without reading the other, very slowly. Lady Midlothian’s was the first opened, and then came a spot of anger on Alice’s cheeks as she saw the signature, and caught a word or two as she allowed her eye to glance down the page. Then she opened the other, which was shorter, and when she saw her cousin’s signature, “Glencora Palliser,” she read that letter first, — read it twice before she went back to the disagreeable task of perusing Lady Midlothian’s lecture. The reader shall have both the letters, but that from the Countess shall have precedence.
 

Castle Reekie, N.B.
–– Oct. 186––.

My dear Miss Vavasor
,

I have not the pleasure of knowing you personally, though I have heard of you very often from our dear mutual friend and relative Lady Macleod, with whom I understand that you are at present on a visit. Your grandmother, — by the mother’s side, — Lady Flora Macleod, and my mother the Countess of Leith, were half-sisters; and though circumstances since that have prevented our seeing so much of each other as is desirable, I have always remembered the connection, and have ever regarded you as one in whose welfare I am bound by ties of blood to take a warm interest.
 

“‘Since that!’ — what does she mean by ‘since that’?” said Alice to herself. “She has never set eyes on me at all. Why does she talk of not having seen as much of me as is desirable?”
 

I had learned with great gratification that you were going to be married to a most worthy gentleman, Mr John Grey of Nethercoats, in Cambridgeshire. When I first heard this I made it my business to institute some inquiries, and I was heartily glad to find that your choice had done you so much credit. [If the reader has read Alice’s character as I have meant it should be read, it will thoroughly be understood that this was wormwood to her.] I was informed that Mr Grey is in every respect a gentleman, — that he is a man of most excellent habits, and one to whom any young woman could commit her future happiness with security, that his means are very good for his position, and that there was no possible objection to such a marriage. All this gave great satisfaction to me, in which I was joined by the Marchioness of Auld Reekie, who is connected with you almost as nearly as I am, and who, I can assure you, feels a considerable interest in your welfare. I am staying with her now, and in all that I say, she agrees with me.

You may feel then how dreadfully we were dismayed when we were told by dear Lady Macleod that you had told Mr Grey that you intended to change your mind! My dear Miss Vavasor, can this be true? There are things in which a young lady has no right to change her mind after it has been once made up; and certainly when a young lady has accepted a gentleman, that is one of them. He cannot legally make you become his wife, but he has a right to claim you before God and man. Have you considered that he has probably furnished his house in consequence of his intended marriage, — and perhaps in compliance with your own especial wishes? [I think that Lady Macleod must have told the Countess something that she had heard about the garden.] Have you reflected that he has of course told all his friends? Have you any reason to give? I am told, none! Nothing should ever be done without a reason; much less such a thing as this in which your own interests and, I may say, respectability are involved. I hope you will think of this before you persist in destroying your own happiness and perhaps that of a very worthy man.

I had heard, some years ago, when you were much younger, that you had become imprudently attached in another direction — with a gentleman with none of those qualities to recommend him which speak so highly for Mr Grey. It would grieve me very much, as it would also the Marchioness, who in this matter thinks exactly as I do, if I were led to suppose that your rejection of Mr Grey had been caused by
any renewal of that project
. Nothing, my dear Miss Vavasor, could be more unfortunate, — and I might almost add a stronger word.

I have been advised that a line from me as representing your poor mother’s family, especially as I have at the present moment the opportunity of expressing Lady Auld Reekie’s sentiments as well as my own, might be of service. I implore you, my dear Miss Vavasor, to remember what you owe to God and man, and to carry out an engagement made by yourself, that is in all respects comme il faut, and which will give entire satisfaction to your friends and relatives.

Margaret M. Midlothian
.
 

I think that Lady Macleod had been wrong in supposing that this could do any good. She should have known Alice better; and should also have known the world better. But her own reverence for her own noble relatives was so great that she could not understand, even yet, that all such feeling was wanting to her niece. It was to her impossible that the expressed opinion of such an one as the Countess of Midlothian, owning her relationship and solicitude, and condescending at the same time to express friendship, — she could not, I say, understand that the voice of such an one, so speaking, should have no weight whatever. But I think that she had been quite right in keeping out of Alice’s way at the moment of the arrival of the letter. Alice read it, slowly, and then replacing it in its envelope, leaned back quietly in her chair, — with her eyes fixed upon the teapot on the table. She had, however, the other letter on which to occupy her mind, and thus relieve her from the effects of too deep an animosity against the Countess.

The Lady Glencora’s letter was as follows:
 

Matching Priory,
Thursday.

Dear Cousin
,

I have just come home from Scotland, where they have been telling me something of your little troubles. I had little troubles once too, and you were so good to me! Will you come to us here for a few weeks? We shall be here till Christmas-time, when we go somewhere else. I have told my husband that you are a great friend of mine as well as a cousin, and that he must be good to you. He is very quiet, and works very hard at politics; but I think you will like him. Do come! There will be a good many people here, so that you will not find it dull. If you will name the day we will send the carriage for you at Matching Station, and I dare say I can manage to come myself.

Yours affectionately,

G. Palliser
.

P.S. I know what will be in your mind. You will say, why did not she come to me in London? She knew the way to Queen Anne Street well enough. Dear Alice, don’t say that. Believe me, I had much to do and think of in London. And if I was wrong, yet you will forgive me. Mr Palliser says I am to give you his love, — as being a cousin, — and say that you must come!
 

This letter was certainly better than the other, but Alice, on reading it, came to a resolve that she would not accept the invitation. In the first place, even that allusion to her little troubles jarred upon her feelings; and then she thought that her rejection of Mr Grey could be no special reason why she should go to Matching Priory. Was it not very possible that she had been invited that she might meet Lady Midlothian there, and encounter all the strength of a personal battery from the Countess? Lady Glencora’s letter she would of course answer, but to Lady Midlothian she would not condescend to make any reply whatever.

About eleven o’clock Lady Macleod came down to her. For half-an-hour or so Alice said nothing; nor did Lady Macleod ask any question. She looked inquisitively at Alice, eyeing the letter which was lying by the side of her niece’s workbasket, but she said no word about Mr Grey or the Countess. At last Alice spoke.

“Aunt,” she said, “I have had a letter this morning from your friend, Lady Midlothian.”

“She is my cousin, Alice; and yours as much as mine.”

“Your cousin then, aunt. But it is of more moment that she is your friend. She certainly is not mine, nor can her cousinship afford any justification for her interfering in my affairs.”

“Alice, — from her position — “

“Her position can be nothing to me, aunt. I will not submit to it. There is her letter, which you can read if you please. After that you may burn it. I need hardly say that I shall not answer it.”

“And what am I to say to her, Alice?”

“Nothing from me, aunt; — from yourself, whatever you please, of course.” Then there was silence between them for a few minutes. “And I have had another letter, from Lady Glencora, who married Mr Palliser, and whom I knew in London last spring.”

“And has that offended you, too?”

“No, there is no offence in that. She asks me to go and see her at Matching Priory, her husband’s house; but I shall not go.”

But at last Alice agreed to pay this visit, and it may be as well to explain here how she was brought to do so. She wrote to Lady Glencora, declining, and explaining frankly that she did decline, because she thought it probable that she might there meet Lady Midlothian. Lady Midlothian, she said, had interfered very unwarrantably in her affairs, and she did not wish to make her acquaintance. To this Lady Glencora replied, post haste, that she had intended no such horrid treachery as that for Alice; that neither would Lady Midlothian be there, nor any of that set; by which Alice knew that Lady Glencora referred specially to her aunt the Marchioness; that no one would be at Matching who could torment Alice, either with right or without it, “except so far as I myself may do so,” Lady Glencora said; and then she named an early day in November, at which she would herself undertake to meet Alice at the Matching Station. On receipt of this letter, Alice, after two days’ doubt, accepted the invitation.

Kate Vavasor, in writing to her cousin Alice, felt some little difficulty in excusing herself for remaining in Norfolk with Mrs Greenow. She had laughed at Mrs Greenow before she went to Yarmouth, and had laughed at herself for going there. And in all her letters since, she had spoken of her aunt as a silly, vain, worldly woman, weeping crocodile tears, for an old husband whose death had released her from the tedium of his company, and spreading lures to catch new lovers. But yet she agreed to stay with her aunt, and remain with her in lodgings at Norwich for a month.

But Mrs Greenow had about her something more than Kate had acknowledged when she first attempted to read her aunt’s character. She was clever, and in her own way persuasive. She was very generous, and possessed a certain power of making herself pleasant to those around her. In asking Kate to stay with her she had so asked as to make it appear that Kate was to confer the favour. She had told her niece that she was all alone in the world. “I have money,” she had said, with more appearance of true feeling than Kate had observed before. “I have money, but I have nothing else in the world. I have no home. Why should I not remain here in Norfolk, where I know a few people? If you’ll say that you’ll go anywhere else with me, I’ll go to any place you’ll name.” Kate had believed this to be hardly true. She had felt sure that her aunt wished to remain in the neighbourhood of her seaside admirers; but, nevertheless, she had yielded, and at the end of October the two ladies, with Jeannette, settled themselves in comfortable lodgings within the precincts of the Close at Norwich.

Mr Greenow at this time had been dead very nearly six months, but his widow made some mistakes in her dates and appeared to think that the interval had been longer. On the day of their arrival at Norwich it was evident that this error had confirmed itself in her mind. “Only think,” she said, as she unpacked a little miniature of the departed one, and sat with it for a moment in her hands, as she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, “only think, that it is barely nine months since he was with me?”

“Six, you mean, aunt,” said Kate, unadvisedly.

“Only nine months” repeated Mrs Greenow, as though she had not heard her niece. “Only nine months!” After that Kate attempted to correct no more such errors. “It happened in May, Miss,” Jeannette said afterwards to Miss Vavasor, “and that, as we reckons, it will be just a twelvemonth come Christmas.” But Kate paid no attention to this.

And Jeannette was very ungrateful, and certainly should have indulged herself in no such sarcasms. When Mrs Greenow made a slight change in her mourning, which she did on her arrival at Norwich, using a little lace among her crapes, Jeannette reaped a rich harvest in gifts of clothes. Mrs Greenow knew well enough that she expected more from a servant than mere service; — that she wanted loyalty, discretion, and perhaps sometimes a little secrecy; — and as she paid for these things, she should have had them.

Kate undertook to stay a month with her aunt at Norwich, and Mrs Greenow undertook that Mr Cheesacre should declare himself as Kate’s lover, before the expiration of the month. It was in vain that Kate protested that she wanted no such lover, and that she would certainly reject him if he came. “That’s all very well, my dear,” Aunt Greenow would say. “A girl must settle herself some day, you know; — and you’d have it all your own way at Oileymead.”

But the offer certainly showed much generosity on the part of Aunt Greenow, inasmuch as Mr Cheesacre’s attentions were apparently paid to herself rather than to her niece. Mr Cheesacre was very attentive. He had taken the lodgings in the Close, and had sent over fowls and cream from Oileymead, and had called on the morning after their arrival; but in all his attentions he distinguished the aunt more particularly than the niece. “I am all for Mr Cheesacre, Miss,” said Jeannette once. “The Captain is perhaps the nicerer-looking gentleman, and he ain’t so podgy like; but what’s good looks if a gentleman hasn’t got nothing? I can’t abide anything that’s poor; neither can’t Missus.” From which it was evident that Jeannette gave Miss Vavasor no credit in having Mr Cheesacre in her train.