“Why should I dine alone with him? Why shouldn’t you eat your dinner with us? I hope you are not going to become fastidious, and to turn up your nose at people. Mrs. Marsham is in town, and I dare say she’ll come to you if you ask her.”
But this was too much for Lady Glencora. She was disposed to be mild, but she could not endure to have her two duennas thus brought upon her together on the first day of her arrival in London. And Mrs. Marsham would be worse than Mr. Bott. Mr. Bott would be engaged with Mr. Palliser during the greater part of the evening. “I thought,” said she, “of asking my cousin, Alice Vavasor, to spend the evening with me.”
“Miss Vavasor!” said the husband. “I must say that I thought Miss Vavasor—” He was going to make some allusion to that unfortunate hour spent among the ruins, but he stopped himself.
“I hope you have nothing to say against my cousin?” said his wife. “She is my only near relative that I really care for;—the only woman, I mean.”
“No; I don’t mean to say anything against her. She’s very well as a young lady, I dare say. I would sooner that you would ask Mrs. Marsham tomorrow.”
Lady Glencora was standing, waiting to go away to her own room, but it was absolutely necessary that this matter should be decided before she went. She felt that he was hard to her, and unreasonable, and that he was treating her like a child who should not be allowed her own way in anything. She had endeavoured to please him, and, having failed, was not now disposed to give way.
“As there will be no other ladies here tomorrow evening, Plantagenet, and as I have not yet seen Alice since I have been in town, I wish you would let me have my way in this. Of course I cannot have very much to say to Mrs. Marsham, who is an old woman.”
“I especially want Mrs. Marsham to be your friend,” said he.
“Friendships will not come by ordering, Plantagenet,” said she.
“Very well,” said he. “Of course, you will do as you please. I am sorry that you have refused the first favour I have asked you this year.” Then he left the room, and she went away to bed.
XLIII
Mrs. Marsham
But Lady Glencora was not brought to repentance by her husband’s last words. It seemed to her to be so intolerably cruel, this demand of his, that she should be made to pass the whole of her first evening in town with an old woman for whom it was impossible that she should entertain the slightest regard, that she resolved upon rebellion. Had he positively ordered Mrs. Marsham, she would have sent for that lady, and have contented herself with enduring her presence in disdainful silence; but Mr. Palliser had not given any order. He had made a request, and a request, from its very nature, admits of no obedience. The compliance with a request must be voluntary, and she would not send for Mrs. Marsham, except upon compulsion. Had not she also made a request to him, and had not he refused it? It was his prerogative, undoubtedly, to command; but in that matter of requests she had a right to expect that her voice should be as potent as his own. She wrote a line, therefore, to Alice before she went to bed, begging her cousin to come to her early on the following day, so that they might go out together, and then afterwards dine in company with Mr. Bott.
“I know that will be an inducement to you,” Lady Glencora said, “because your generous heart will feel of what service you may be to me. Nobody else will be here—unless, indeed, Mrs. Marsham should be asked, unknown to myself.”
Then she sat herself down to think—to think especially about the cruelty of husbands. She had been told over and over again, in the days before her marriage, that Burgo would ill-use her if he became her husband. The Marquis of Auld Reekie had gone so far as to suggest that Burgo might probably beat her. But what hard treatment, even what beating, could be so unendurable as this total want of sympathy, as this deadness in life, which her present lot entailed upon her? As for that matter of beating, she ridiculed the idea in her very soul. She sat smiling at the absurdity of the thing as she thought of the beauty of Burgo’s eyes, of the softness of his touch, of the loving, almost worshipping, tones of his voice. Would it not even be better to be beaten by him than to have politics explained to her at one o’clock at night by such a husband as Plantagenet Palliser? The British Constitution, indeed! Had she married Burgo they would have been in sunny Italy, and he would have told her some other tale than that as they sat together under the pale moonlight. She had a little water-coloured drawing called Raphael and Fornarina, and she was infantine enough to tell herself that the so-called Raphael was like her Burgo—no, not her Burgo, but the Burgo that was not hers. At any rate, all the romance of the picture she might have enjoyed had they allowed her to dispose as she had wished of her own hand. She might have sat in marble balconies, while the vines clustered over her head, and he would have been at her knee, hardly speaking to her, but making his presence felt by the halo of its divinity. He would have called upon her for no hard replies. With him near her she would have enjoyed the soft air, and would have sat happy, without trouble, lapped in the delight of loving. It was thus that Fornarina sat. And why should not such a lot have been hers? Her Raphael would have loved her,
