The Small House at Allington, Anthony Trollope [best ebook reader for chromebook .txt] 📗

“but I cannot say that my visit will be influenced one way or the other by such a rumour as that.”

“No; probably not. But it may perhaps be influenced by my request.” And the duke, as he spoke, looked a little savage.

“You wouldn’t ask me to regard a report that has no foundation.”

“I am not asking about its foundation. Nor do I in the least wish to interfere with your manner in life.” By which last observation the duke intended his nephew to understand that he was quite at liberty to take away any other gentleman’s wife, but that he was not at liberty to give occasion even for a surmise that he wanted to take Lord Dumbello’s wife. “The fact is this, Plantagenet. I have for many years been intimate with that family. I have not many intimacies, and shall probably never increase them. Such friends as I have, I wish to keep, and you will easily perceive that any such report as that which I have mentioned, might make it unpleasant for me to go to Hartlebury, or for the Hartlebury people to come here.” The duke certainly could not have spoken plainer, and Mr. Palliser understood him thoroughly. Two such alliances between the two families could not be expected to run pleasantly together, and even the rumour of any such second alliance might interfere with the pleasantness of the former one.

“That’s all,” said the duke.

“It’s a most absurd slander,” said Mr. Palliser.

“I dare say. Those slanders always are absurd; but what can we do? We can’t tie up people’s tongues.” And the duke looked as though he wished to have the subject considered as finished, and to be left alone.

“But we can disregard them,” said the nephew, indiscreetly.

“You may. I have never been able to do so. And yet, I believe, I have not earned for myself the reputation of being subject to the voices of men. You think that I am asking much of you; but you should remember that hitherto I have given much and have asked nothing. I expect you to oblige me in this matter.”

Then Mr. Plantagenet Palliser left the room, knowing that he had been threatened. What the duke had said amounted to this.⁠—If you go on dangling after Lady Dumbello, I’ll stop the seven thousand a year which I give you. I’ll oppose your next return at Silverbridge, and I’ll make a will and leave away from you Matching and The Horns⁠—a beautiful little place in Surrey, the use of which had been already offered to Mr. Palliser in the event of his marriage; all the Littlebury estate in Yorkshire, and the enormous Scotch property. Of my personal goods, and money invested in loans, shares, and funds, you shall never touch a shilling, or the value of a shilling. And, if I find that I can suit myself, it may be that I’ll leave you plain Mr. Plantagenet Palliser, with a little first cousin for the head of your family.

The full amount of this threat Mr. Palliser understood, and, as he thought of it, he acknowledged to himself that he had never felt for Lady Dumbello anything like love. No conversation between them had ever been warmer than that of which the reader has seen a sample. Lady Dumbello had been nothing to him. But now⁠—now that the matter had been put before him in this way, might it not become him, as a gentleman, to fall in love with so very beautiful a woman, whose name had already been linked with his own? We all know that story of the priest, who, by his question in the confessional, taught the ostler to grease the horses’ teeth. “I never did yet,” said the ostler, “but I’ll have a try at it.” In this case, the duke had acted the part of the priest, and Mr. Palliser, before the night was over, had almost become as ready a pupil as the ostler. As to the threat, it would ill become him, as a Palliser and a Plantagenet, to regard it. The duke would not marry. Of all men in the world he was the least likely to spite his own face by cutting off his own nose; and, for the rest of it, Mr. Palliser would take his chance. Therefore he went down to Hartlebury early in February, having fully determined to be very particular in his attentions to Lady Dumbello.

Among a houseful of people at Hartlebury, he found Lord Porlock, a slight, sickly, worn-out looking man, who had something about his eye of his father’s hardness, but nothing in his mouth of his father’s ferocity.

“So your sister is going to be married?” said Mr. Palliser.

“Yes. One has no right to be surprised at anything they do, when one remembers the life their father leads them.”

“I was going to congratulate you.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I met him at Courcy, and rather liked him.”

Mr. Palliser had barely spoken to Mr. Crosbie at Courcy, but then in the usual course of his social life he seldom did more than barely speak to anybody.

“Did you?” said Lord Porlock. “For the poor girl’s sake I hope he’s not a ruffian. How any man should propose to my father to marry a daughter out of his house, is more than I can understand. How was my mother looking?”

“I didn’t see anything amiss about her.”

“I expect that he’ll murder her some day.” Then that conversation came to an end.

Mr. Palliser himself perceived⁠—as he looked at her he could not but perceive⁠—that a certain amount of social energy seemed to enliven Lady Dumbello when he approached her. She was given to smile when addressed, but her usual smile was meaningless, almost leaden, and never in any degree flattering to the person to whom it was accorded. Very many women smile as they answer the words which are spoken to them, and most who do so flatter by their smile. The thing is so common that no one thinks of it. The flattering pleases, but means nothing. The impression unconsciously taken simply conveys a