"Good gracious! Lady Julia, how very odd you are!" said the countess.
"But what about the bull?" asked the Honourable George.
"It seems that the earl was knocked down in the middle of one of his own fields."
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Alexandrina. And sundry other exclamations were made by all the assembled ladies.
"But he wasn't hurt," said Crosbie. "A young man named Eames seems to have fallen from the sky and carried off the earl on his back."
"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" growled the other earl, as he heard of the discomfiture of his brother peer.
Lady Julia, who had received her own letters that day from Guestwick, knew that nothing of importance had happened to her brother; but she felt that she was foiled for that time.
"I hope that there has not really been any accident," said Mr Gazebee, with a voice of great solicitude.
"My brother was quite well last night, thank you," said she. And then the little groups again formed themselves, and Lady Julia was left alone on the corner of a sofa.
"Was that all an invention of yours, sir?" said Alexandrina to Crosbie.
"Not quite. I did get a letter this morning from my friend Bernard Dale,—that old harridan's nephew; and Lord De Guest has been worried by some of his animals. I wish I had told her that his stupid old neck had been broken."
"Fie, Mr Crosbie!"
"What business has she to interfere with me?"
"But I mean to ask the same question that she asked, and you won't put me off with a cock-and-bull story like that." But then, as she was going to ask the question, dinner was announced.
"And is it true that De Guest has been tossed by a bull?" said the earl, as soon as the ladies were gone. He had spoken nothing during dinner except what words he had muttered into the ear of Lady Dumbello. It was seldom that conversation had many charms for him in his own house; but there was a savour of pleasantry in the idea of Lord De Guest having been tossed, by which even he was tickled.
"Only knocked down, I believe," said Crosbie.
"Ha, ha, ha!" growled the earl; then he filled his glass, and allowed some one else to pass the bottle. Poor man! There was not much left to him now in the world which did amuse him.
"I don't see anything to laugh at," said Plantagenet Palliser, who was sitting at the earl's right hand, opposite to Lord Dumbello.
"Don't you?" said the earl. "Ha, ha, ha!"
"I'll be shot if I do. From all I hear De Guest is an uncommon good farmer. And I don't see the joke of tossing a farmer merely because he's a nobleman also. Do you?" and he turned round to Mr Gazebee, who was sitting on the other side. The earl was an earl, and was also Mr Gazebee's father-in-law. Mr Plantagenet Palliser was the heir to a dukedom. Therefore, Mr Gazebee merely simpered, and did not answer the question put to him. Mr Palliser said nothing more about it, nor did the earl; and then the joke died away.
Mr Plantagenet Palliser was the Duke of Omnium's heir,—heir to that nobleman's title and to his enormous wealth; and, therefore, was a man of mark in the world. He sat in the House of Commons, of course. He was about five-and-twenty years of age, and was, as yet, unmarried. He did not hunt or shoot or keep a yacht, and had been heard to say that he had never put a foot upon a race-course in his life. He dressed very quietly, never changing the colour or form of his garments; and in society was quiet, reserved, and very often silent. He was tall, slight, and not ill-looking; but more than this cannot be said for his personal appearance—except, indeed, this, that no one could mistake him for other than a gentleman. With his uncle, the duke, he was on good terms;—that is to say, they had never quarrelled. A very liberal allowance had been made to the nephew; but the two relatives had no tastes in common, and did not often meet. Once a year Mr Palliser visited the duke at his great country seat for two or three days, and usually dined with him two or three times during the season in London. Mr Palliser sat for a borough which was absolutely under the duke's command; but had accepted his seat under the distinct understanding that he was to take whatever part in politics might seem good to himself. Under these well-understood arrangements, the duke and his heir showed to the world quite a pattern of a happy family. "So different to the earl and Lord Porlock!" the people of West Barsetshire used to say. For the estates, both of the duke and of the earl, were situated in the western division of that county.
Mr Palliser was chiefly known to the world as a rising politician. We may say that he had everything at his command, in the way of pleasure, that the world could offer him. He had wealth, position, power, and the certainty of attaining the highest rank among, perhaps, the most brilliant nobility of the world. He was courted by all who could get near enough to court him. It is hardly too much to say that he might have selected a bride from all that was most beautiful and best among English women. If he would have bought race-horses, and have expended thousands on the turf, he would have gratified his uncle by doing so. He might have been the master of hounds, or the slaughterer of hecatombs of birds. But to none of these things would he devote himself. He had chosen to be a politician, and in that pursuit he laboured with a zeal and perseverance which would have made his fortune at any profession or in any trade. He was constant in committee-rooms up to the very middle of August. He was rarely absent from any debate of importance, and never from any important division. Though he seldom spoke, he was always ready to speak if his purpose required it. No man gave him credit for any great genius—few even considered that he could become either an orator or a mighty statesman. But the world said that he was a rising man, and old Nestor of the Cabinet looked on him as one who would be able, at some far future day, to come among them as a younger brother. Hitherto he had declined such inferior offices as had been offered to him, biding his time carefully; and he was as yet tied hand and neck to no party, though known to be liberal in all his political tendencies. He was a great reader—not taking up a book here, and another there, as chance brought books before him, but working through an enormous course of books, getting up the great subject of the world's history,—filling himself full of facts,—though perhaps not destined to acquire the power of using those facts otherwise than as precedents. He strove also diligently to become a linguist—not without success, as far as a competent understanding of various languages. He was a thin-minded, plodding, respectable man, willing to devote all his youth to work, in order that in old age he might be allowed to sit among the Councillors of the State.
Hitherto his name had not been coupled by the world with that of any woman whom he had been supposed to admire; but latterly it had been observed that he had often been seen in the same room with Lady Dumbello. It had hardly amounted to more than this; but when it was remembered how undemonstrative were the two persons concerned,—how little disposed was either of them to any strong display of feeling,—even this was thought matter to be mentioned. He certainly would speak to her from time to time almost with an air of interest; and Lady Dumbello, when she saw that he was in the room, would be observed to raise her head with some little show of life, and to look round as though there were something there on which it might be worth her while to allow her eyes to rest. When such innuendoes were abroad, no one would probably make more of them than Lady de Courcy. Many, when they heard that Mr Palliser was to be at the castle, had expressed their surprise at her success in that quarter. Others, when they learned that Lady Dumbello had consented to become her guest, had also wondered greatly. But when it was ascertained that the two were to be there together, her good-natured friends had acknowledged that she was a very clever woman. To have either Mr Palliser or Lady Dumbello would have been a feather in her cap; but to succeed in getting both, by enabling each to know that the other would be there, was indeed a triumph. As regards Lady Dumbello, however, the bargain was not fairly carried out; for, after all, Mr Palliser came to Courcy Castle only for two nights and a day, and during the whole of that day he was closeted with sundry large blue-books. As for Lady de Courcy, she did not care how he might
be employed. Blue-books and Lady Dumbello were all the same to her. Mr Palliser had been at Courcy Castle, and neither enemy nor friend could deny the fact.
This was his second evening; and as he had promised to meet his constituents at Silverbridge at one P.M. on the following day, with the view of explaining to them his own conduct and the political position of the world in general; and as he was not to return from Silverbridge to Courcy, Lady Dumbello, if she made any way at all, must take advantage of the short gleam of sunshine which the present hour afforded her. No one, however, could say that she showed any active disposition to monopolise Mr Palliser's attention. When he sauntered into the drawing-room she was sitting, alone, in a large, low chair, made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but hollowed and round at the back, so as to afford her the support that was necessary to her. She had barely spoken three words since she had left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her. Lady Julia had again attacked the countess about Lily Dale and Mr Crosbie, and Alexandrina, driven almost to rage, had stalked off to the farther end of the room, not concealing her special concern in the matter.
"How I do wish they were married and done with," said the countess; "and then we should hear no more about them."
All of which Lady Dumbello heard and understood; and in all of it she took a certain interest. She remembered such things, learning thereby who was who, and regulating her own conduct by what she learned. She was by no means idle at this or at other such times, going through, we may say, a considerable amount of really hard work in her manner of working. There she had sat speechless, unless when acknowledging by a low word of assent some expression of flattery from those around her. Then the door opened, and when Mr Palliser entered she raised her head, and the faintest possible gleam of satisfaction might have been discerned upon her features. But she made no attempt to speak to him; and when, as he stood at the table, he took up a book and remained thus standing for a quarter of an hour, she neither showed nor felt any impatience. After that Lord Dumbello came in, and he stood at the table without a book. Even then Lady Dumbello felt no impatience.
Plantagenet Palliser skimmed through his little book, and probably learned something. When he put it down he sipped a cup of tea, and remarked to Lady de Courcy that he believed it was only twelve miles to Silverbridge.
"I wish it was a hundred and twelve," said the countess.
"In that case I should be forced to start to-night," said Mr Palliser.
"Then I wish it was a thousand and twelve," said Lady de Courcy.
"In that case I should not have come at all," said Mr Palliser. He did not mean to be uncivil, and had only stated a fact.
"The young men are becoming absolute bears," said the countess to her daughter Margaretta.
He had been in the room nearly an hour when he did at last find himself standing close to Lady Dumbello: close to her, and without any other very near neighbour.
"I should hardly have expected to find you here," he said.
"Nor I you," she answered.
"Though, for the matter of that, we are both near our own homes."
"I am not near mine."
"I meant Plumstead; your father's place."
"Yes; that was my home once."
"I wish I could show you my uncle's place. The castle is very fine, and he has some good pictures."
"So I have heard."
"Do you stay here long?"
"Oh, no. I go to Cheshire the day after to-morrow. Lord Dumbello is always there when the hunting begins."
"Ah, yes; of course. What a happy fellow he is; never any work to do! His constituents never trouble him, I suppose?"
"I don't think they ever do, much."
After that Mr Palliser sauntered away again, and Lady Dumbello passed the rest of the evening in silence. It is to be hoped that they both were rewarded by that ten minutes of sympathetic intercourse for the inconvenience which they had suffered in coming to Courcy Castle.
But that which seems so innocent to us had been looked on in a different light by the stern moralists of that house.
"By Jove!" said the Honourable George to his cousin, Mr Gresham, "I wonder how Dumbello likes it."
"It seems to me that Dumbello takes it very easily."
"There are some men who will take anything easily," said George, who, since his own marriage, had learned to have a holy horror of such wicked things.
"She's beginning to come out a little," said Lady Clandidlem to Lady de Courcy, when the two old women found themselves together over a fire in some back sitting-room. "Still waters always run deep, you know."
"I shouldn't at all wonder if she were to go off with him," said Lady de Courcy.
"He'll never be such a fool as that," said Lady Clandidlem.
"I believe men will be fools enough for anything," said Lady de Courcy. "But, of course, if he did, it would come to nothing afterwards. I know one who would not be sorry. If ever a man was tired of a woman, Lord Dumbello is tired of her."
But in this, as in almost everything else, the wicked old woman spoke scandal. Lord Dumbello was still proud of his wife, and as fond of her as a man can be of a woman whose fondness depends upon mere pride.
There had not been much that was dangerous in the conversation between Mr Palliser and Lady Dumbello, but I cannot say the same as to that which was going on at the same moment between Crosbie and Lady Alexandrina. She, as I have said, walked away in almost open dudgeon when Lady Julia recommenced her attack about poor Lily, nor did she return to the general circle during the evening. There were two large drawing-rooms at Courcy Castle, joined together by a narrow link of a room, which might have been called a passage, had it not been lighted by two windows coming down to the floor, carpeted as were the drawing-rooms, and warmed with a separate fireplace. Hither she betook herself, and was soon followed by her married sister Amelia.
"That woman almost drives me mad," said Alexandrina, as they stood together with their toes upon the fender.
"But, my dear, you of all people should not allow yourself to be driven mad on such a subject."
"That's all very well, Amelia."
"The question is this, my dear,—what does Mr Crosbie mean to do?"
"How should I know?"
"If you don't know, it will be safer to suppose that he is going to marry this girl; and in that case—"
"Well, what in that case? Are you going to be another Lady Julia? What do I care about the girl?"
"I don't suppose you care much about the girl; and if you care as little about Mr Crosbie, there's an end of it; only in that case, Alexandrina—"
"Well, what in that case?"
"You know I don't want to preach to you. Can't you tell me at once whether you really like him? You and I have always been good friends." And the married sister put her arm affectionately round the waist of her who wished to be married.
"I like him well enough."
"And has he made any declaration to you?"
"In a sort of a way he has. Hark, here he is!" And Crosbie, coming in from the larger room, joined the sisters at the fireplace.
"We were driven away by the clack of Lady Julia's tongue," said the elder.
"I never met such a woman," said Crosbie.
"There cannot well be many like her," said Alexandrina. And after that they all stood silent for a minute or two. Lady Amelia Gazebee was considering whether or no she would do well to go and leave the two together. If it were intended that Mr Crosbie should marry her sister, it would certainly be well to give him an opportunity of expressing such a wish on his own part. But if Alexandrina was simply making a fool of herself, then it would be well for her to stay. "I suppose she would rather I should go," said the elder sister to herself; and then, obeying the rule which should guide all our actions from one to another, she went back and joined the crowd.
"Will you come on into the other room?" said Crosbie.
"I think we are very well here," Alexandri
na replied.
"But I wish to speak to you,—particularly," said he.
"And cannot you speak here?"
"No. They will be passing backwards and forwards." Lady Alexandrina said nothing further, but led the way into the other large room. That also was lighted, and there were in it four or live persons. Lady Rosina was reading a work on the Millennium, with a light to herself in one corner. Her brother John was asleep in an arm-chair, and a young gentleman and lady were playing chess. There was, however, ample room for Crosbie and Alexandrina to take up a position apart.
"And now, Mr Crosbie, what have you got to say to me? But, first, I mean to repeat Lady Julia's question, as I told you that I should do.—When did you hear last from Miss Dale?"
"It is cruel in you to ask me such a question, after what I have already told you. You know that I have given to Miss Dale a promise of marriage."
"Very well, sir. I don't see why you should bring me in here to tell me anything that is so publicly known as that. With such a herald as Lady Julia it was quite unnecessary."
"If you can only answer me in that tone I will make an end of it at once. When I told you of my engagement, I told you also that another woman possessed my heart. Am I wrong to suppose that you knew to whom I alluded?"
"Indeed, I did not, Mr Crosbie. I am no conjuror, and I have not scrutinised you so closely as your friend Lady Julia."
"It is you that I love. I am sure I need hardly say so now."
"Hardly, indeed,—considering that you are engaged to Miss Dale."
"As to that I have, of course, to own that I have behaved foolishly;—worse than foolishly, if you choose to say so. You cannot condemn me more absolutely than I condemn myself. But I have made up my mind as to one thing. I will not marry where I do not love." Oh, if Lily could have heard him as he then spoke! "It would be impossible for me to speak in terms too high of Miss Dale; but I am quite sure that I could not make her happy as her husband."
"Why did you not think of that before you asked her?" said Alexandrina. But there was very little of condemnation in her tone.
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