Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (the beginning after the end read novel txt) 📕

"Alice," she said, "I expect a visitor here to-day."

Alice knew instantly who was the expected visitor. Probably any girl under such circumstances would have known equally well. "A visitor, aunt," she said, and managed to hide her knowledge admirably.

"Yes, Alice a visitor. I should have told you before, only I thought,—I thought I had better not. It is Mr.—Mr. Grey."

"Indeed, aunt! Is he coming to see you?"

"Well;—he is desirous no doubt of seeing you more especially; but he has expressed a wish to make my acquaintance, which I cannot, under the circumstances, think is unnatural. Of course, Alice, he must want to talk over this affair with your friends."

"I wish I could have spared them," said Alice,—"I wish I could."

"I have brought his letter here, and you can see it if you please. It is very nicely written, and as far as I am concerned I should not think of refusing to see him. And now comes the question. What are we to do with him? Am I to ask him to dinner? I take it for granted that he will not expect me to offer him a bed, as he knows that I live in lodgings."

"Oh no, aunt; he certainly will not expect that."

"But ought I to ask him to dinner? I should be most happy to entertain him, though you know how very scanty my means of doing so are;—but I really do not know how it might be,—between you and him, I mean."

"We should not fight, aunt."

"No, I suppose not;—but if you cannot be affectionate in your manner to him—"

"I will not answer for my manners, aunt; but you may be sure of this,—that I should be affectionate in my heart. I shall always regard him as a dearly loved friend; though for many years, no doubt, I shall be unable to express my friendship."

"That may be all very well, Alice, but it will not be what he will want. I think upon the whole that I had better not ask him to dinner."

"Perhaps not, aunt."

"It is a period of the day in which any special constraint among people is more disagreeable than at any other time, and then at dinner the servants must see it. I think there might be some awkwardness if he were to dine here."

"I really think there would," said Alice, anxious to have the subject dropped.

"I hope he won't think that I am inhospitable. I should be so happy to do the best I could for him, for I regard him, Alice, quite as though he were to be your husband. And when anybody at all connected with me has come to Cheltenham I always have asked them to dine, and then I have Gubbins's man to come and wait at table,—as you know."

"Of all men in the world Mr. Grey is the last to think about it."

"That should only make me the more careful. But I think it would perhaps be more comfortable if he were to come in the evening."

"Much more comfortable, aunt."

"I suppose he will be here in the afternoon, before dinner, and we had better wait at home for him. I dare say he'll want to see you alone, and therefore I'll retire to my own rooms,"—looking over the stables! Dear old lady. "But if you wish it, I will receive him first—and then Martha,"—Martha was Alice's maid—"can fetch you down."

This discussion as to the propriety or impropriety of giving her lover a dinner had not been pleasant to Alice, but, nevertheless, when it was over she felt grateful to Lady Macleod. There was an attempt in the arrangement to make Mr. Grey's visit as little painful as possible; and though such a discussion at such a time might as well have been avoided, the decision to which her ladyship had at last come with reference both to the dinner and the management of the visit was, no doubt, the right one.

Lady Macleod had been quite correct in all her anticipations. At three o'clock Mr. Grey was announced, and Lady Macleod, alone, received him in her drawing-room. She had intended to give him a great deal of good advice, to bid him still keep up his heart and as it were hold up his head, to confess to him how very badly Alice was behaving, and to express her entire concurrence with that theory of bodily ailment as the cause and origin of her conduct. But she found that Mr. Grey was a man to whom she could not give much advice. It was he who did the speaking at this conference, and not she. She was overawed by him after the first three minutes. Indeed her first glance at him had awed her. He was so handsome,—and then, in his beauty, he had so quiet and almost saddened an air! Strange to say that after she had seen him, Lady Macleod entertained for him an infinitely higher admiration than before, and yet she was less surprised than she had been at Alice's refusal of him. The conference was very short; and Mr. Grey had not been a quarter of an hour in the house before Martha attended upon her mistress with her summons.

Alice was ready and came down instantly. She found Mr. Grey standing in the middle of the room waiting to receive her, and the look of majesty which had cowed Lady Macleod had gone from his countenance. He could not have received her with a kinder smile, had she come to him with a promise that she would at this meeting name the day for their marriage. "At any rate it does not make him unhappy," she said to herself.

"You are not angry," he said, "that I should have followed you all the way here, to see you."

"No, certainly; not angry, Mr. Grey. All anger that there may be between us must be on your side. I feel that thoroughly."

"Then there shall be none on either side. Whatever may be done, I will not be angry with you. Your father advised me to come down here to you."

"You have seen him, then?"

"Yes, I have seen him. I was in London the day you left."

"It is so terrible to think that I should have brought upon you all this trouble."

"You will bring upon me much worse trouble than that unless—. But I have not now come down here to tell you that. I believe that according to rule in such matters I should not have come to you at all, but I don't know that I care much about such rules."

"It is I that have broken all rules."

"When a lady tells a gentleman that she does not wish to see more of him—"

"Oh, Mr. Grey, I have not told you that."

"Have you not? I am glad at any rate to hear you deny it. But you will understand what I mean. When a gentleman gets his dismissal from a lady he should accept it,—that is, his dismissal under such circumstances as I have received mine. But I cannot lay down my love in that way; nor, maintaining my love, can I give up the battle. It seems to me that I have a right at any rate to know something of your comings and goings as long as,—unless, Alice, you should take another name than mine."

"My intention is to keep my own." This she said in the lowest possible tone,—almost in a whisper,—with her eyes fixed upon the ground.

"And you will not deny me that right?"

"I cannot hinder you. Whatever you may do, I myself have sinned so against you that I can have no right to blame you."

"There shall be no question between us of injury from one to the other. In any conversation that we may have, or in any correspondence—"

"Oh, Mr. Grey, do not ask me to write."

"Listen to me. Should there be any on either side, there shall be no idea of any wrong done."

"But I have done you wrong;—great wrong."

"No, Alice; I will not have it so. When I asked you to accept my hand,—begging the greatest boon which it could ever come to my lot to ask from a fellow-mortal,—I knew well how great was your goodness to me when you told me that it should be mine. Now that you refuse it, I know also that you are good, thinking that in doing so you are acting for my welfare,—thinking more of my welfare than of your own."

"Oh yes, yes; it is so, Mr. Grey; indeed it is so."

"Believing that, how can I talk of wrong? That you are wrong in your thinking on this subject,—that your mind has become twisted by false impressions,—that I believe. But I cannot therefore love you less,—nor, so believing, can I consider myself to be injured. Nor am I even so little selfish as you are. I think if you were my wife that I could make you happy; but I feel sure that my happiness depends on your being my wife."

She looked up into his face, but it was still serene in all its manly beauty. Her cousin George, if he were moved to strong feeling, showed it at once in his eyes,—in his mouth, in the whole visage of his countenance. He glared in his anger, and was impassioned in his love. But Mr. Grey when speaking of the happiness of his entire life, when confessing that it was now at stake with a decision against him that would be ruinous to it, spoke without a quiver in his voice, and had no more sign of passion in his face than if he were telling his gardener to move a rose tree.

"I hope—and believe that you will find your happiness elsewhere, Mr. Grey."

"Well; we can but differ, Alice. In that we do differ. And now I will say one word to explain why I have come here. If I were to write to you against your will, it would seem that I were persecuting you. I cannot bring myself to do that, even though I had the right. But if I were to let you go from me, taking what you have said to me and doing nothing, it would seem that I had accepted your decision as final. I do not do so. I will not do so. I come simply to tell you that I am still your suitor. If you will let me, I will see you again early in January,—as soon as you have returned to town. You will hardly refuse to see me."

"No," she said; "I cannot refuse to see you."

"Then it shall be so," he said, "and I will not trouble you with letters, nor will I trouble you longer now with words. Tell your aunt that I have said what I came to say, and that I give her my kindest thanks." Then he took her hand and pressed it,—not as George Vavasor had pressed it,—and was gone. When Lady Macleod returned, she found that the question of the evening's tea arrangements had settled itself.

It has been said that George Vavasor had a little establishment at Roebury, down in Oxfordshire, and thither he betook himself about the middle of November. He had been long known in this county, and whether or no men spoke well of him as a man of business in London, men spoke well of him down there, as one who knew how to ride to hounds. Not that Vavasor was popular among fellow-sportsmen. It was quite otherwise. He was not a man that made himself really popular in any social meetings of men. He did not himself care for the loose little talkings, half flat and half sharp, of men when they meet together in idleness. He was not open enough in his nature for such popularity. Some men were afraid of him, and some suspected him. There were others who made up