Can You Forgive Her? Part 37

"But they please themselves. I don't see they are to be hated because they don't live after our fas.h.i.+on."

"Oh; it's jealousy of course. I know that. I didn't come across a cab-driver who wasn't a much better educated man than I am. And as for their women, they know everything. But I hated them, and I intend to hate them. You haven't been there?"

"Oh no."

"Then I will make bold to say that any English lady who spent a month with them and didn't hate them would have very singular tastes. I begin to think they'll eat each other up, and then there'll come an entirely new set of people of a different sort. I always regarded the States as a Sodom and Gomorrah, prospering in wickedness, on which fire and brimstone were sure to fall sooner or later."

"I think that's wicked."

"I am wicked, as Topsy used to say. Do you hunt?"

"No."

"Do you shoot?"

"Shoot! What; with a gun?"

"Yes. I was staying in a house last week with a lady who shot a good deal."

"No; I don't shoot."

"Do you ride?"

"No; I wish I did. I have never ridden because I've no one to ride with me."

"Do you drive?"

"No; I don't drive either."

"Then what do you do?"

"I sit at home, and--"

"Mend your stockings?"

"No; I don't do that, because it's disagreeable; but I do work a good deal. Sometimes I have amused myself by reading."

"Ah; they never do that here. I have heard that there is a library, but the clue to it has been lost, and n.o.body now knows the way. I don't believe in libraries. n.o.body ever goes into a library to read, any more than you would into a larder to eat. But there is this difference;--the food you consume does come out of the larders, but the books you read never come out of the libraries."

"Except Mudie's," said Alice.

"Ah, yes; he is the great librarian. And you mean to read all the time you are here, Miss Vavasor?"

"I mean to walk about the priory ruins sometimes."

"Then you must go by moonlight, and I'll go with you. Only isn't it rather late in the year for that?"

"I should think it is,--for you, Mr. Palliser."

Then the Duke spoke to her again, and she found that she got on very well during dinner. But she could not but feel angry with herself in that she had any fear on the subject;--and yet she could not divest herself of that fear. She acknowledged to herself that she was conscious of a certain inferiority to Lady Glencora and to Mr. Jeffrey Palliser, which almost made her unhappy. As regarded the Duke on the other side of her, she had no such feeling. He was old enough to be her father, and was a Cabinet Minister; therefore he was ent.i.tled to her reverence. But how was it that she could not help accepting the other people round her as being indeed superior to herself? Was she really learning to believe that she could grow upwards by their sunlight?

"Jeffrey is a pleasant fellow, is he not?" said Lady Glencora to her as they pa.s.sed back through the billiard-room to the drawing-room.

"Very pleasant;--a little sarcastic, perhaps."

"I should think you would soon find yourself able to get the better of that if he tries it upon you," said Lady Glencora; and then the ladies were all in the drawing-room together.

"It is quite deliciously warm, coming from one room to another," said the d.u.c.h.ess, putting her emphasis on the "one" and the "other."

"Then we had better keep continually moving," said a certain Mrs.

Conway Sparkes, a literary lady, who had been very handsome, who was still very clever, who was not perhaps very good-natured, and of whom the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Bungay was rather afraid.

"I hope we may be warm here too," said Lady Glencora.

"But not deliciously warm," said Mrs. Conway Sparkes.

"It makes me tremble in every limb when Mrs. Sparkes attacks her,"

Lady Glencora said to Alice in Alice's own room that night, "for I know she'll tell the Duke; and he'll tell that tall man with red hair whom you see standing about, and the tall man with red hair will tell Mr. Palliser, and then I shall catch it."

"And who is the tall man with red hair?"

"He's a political link between the Duke and Mr. Palliser. His name is Bott, and he's a Member of Parliament."

"But why should he interfere?"

"I suppose it's his business. I don't quite understand all the ins and outs of it. I believe he's to be one of Mr. Palliser's private secretaries if he becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps he doesn't tell;--only I think he does all the same. He always calls me Lady Glen-cowrer. He comes out of Lancas.h.i.+re, and made calico as long as he could get any cotton." But this happened in the bedroom, and we must go back for a while to the drawing-room.

The d.u.c.h.ess had made no answer to Mrs. Sparkes, and so nothing further was said about the warmth. Nor, indeed, was there any conversation that was comfortably general. The number of ladies in the room was too great for that, and ladies do not divide themselves nicely into small parties, as men and women do when they are mixed. Lady Glencora behaved pretty by telling the d.u.c.h.ess all about her pet pheasants; Mrs. Conway Sparkes told ill-natured tales of some one to Miss Euphemia Palliser; one of the d.u.c.h.ess's daughters walked off to a distant piano with an admiring friend and touched a few notes; while Iphigenia Palliser boldly took up a book, and placed herself at a table. Alice, who was sitting opposite to Lady Glencora, began to speculate whether she might do the same; but her courage failed her, and she sat on, telling herself that she was out of her element.

"Alice Vavasor," said Lady Glencora after a while, suddenly, and in a somewhat loud voice, "can you play billiards?"

"No," said Alice, rather startled.

"Then you shall learn to-night, and if n.o.body else will teach you, you shall be my pupil." Whereupon Lady Glencora rang the bell and ordered that the billiard-table might be got ready. "You'll play, d.u.c.h.ess, of course," said Lady Glencora.

"It is so nice and warm, that I think I will," said the d.u.c.h.ess; but as she spoke she looked suspiciously to that part of the room where Mrs. Conway Sparkes was sitting.

"Let us all play," said Mrs. Conway Sparkes, "and then it will be nicer,--and perhaps warmer, too."

The gentlemen joined them just as they were settling themselves round the table, and as many of them stayed there, the billiard-room became full. Alice had first a cue put into her hand, and making nothing of that was permitted to play with a mace. The duty of instructing her devolved on Jeffrey Palliser, and the next hour pa.s.sed pleasantly;--not so pleasantly, she thought afterwards, as did some of those hours in Switzerland when her cousins were with her. After all, she could get more out of her life with such a.s.sociates as them, than she could with any of these people at Matching. She felt quite sure of that;--though Jeffrey Palliser did take great trouble to teach her the game, and once or twice made her laugh heartily by quizzing the d.u.c.h.ess's att.i.tude as she stood up to make her stroke.

"I wish I could play billiards," said Mrs. Sparkes, on one of these occasions; "I do indeed."

"I thought you said you were coming to play," said the d.u.c.h.ess, almost majestically, and with a tone of triumph evidently produced by her own successes.

"Only to see your Grace," said Mrs. Sparkes.

"I don't know that there is anything more to see in me than in anybody else," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "Mr. Palliser, that was a cannon.

Will you mark that for our side?"