Read Online The Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope - Free Book Online Page B

warmth or cold, but which just seems to touch one with loving tenderness, as though the unseen spirits of the air kissed one’s forehead as they passed on their wings. The Rhine was running at her feet, so near, that in the soft half light it seemed as though she might step into its ripple. The Rhine was running by with that delicious sound of rapidly moving waters, that fresh refreshing gurgle of the river, which is so delicious to the ear at all times. If you be talking, it wraps up your speech, keeping it for yourselves, making it difficult neither to her who listens nor to him who speaks. If you would sleep, it is of all lullabies the sweetest. If you are alone and would think, it aids all your thoughts. If you are alone, and, alas! would not think, — if thinking be too painful, — it will dispel your sorrow, and give the comfort which music alone can give. Alice felt that the air kissed her, that the river sang for her its sweetest song, that the moon shone for her with its softest light, — that light which lends the poetry of half-developed beauty to everything that it touches. Why should she leave it?
    Nothing was said for some minutes after Kate’s departure, and Alice was beginning to shake from her that half feeling of danger which had come over her. Vavasor had sat back in his chair, leaning against the house, with his feet raised upon a stool; his arms were folded across his breast, and he seemed to have divided himself between his thoughts and his cigar. Alice was looking full upon the river, and her thoughts had strayed away to her future home among John Grey’s flower-beds and shrubs; but the river, though it sang to her pleasantly, seemed to sing a song of other things than such a home as that, — a song full of mystery, as are all river songs when one tries to understand their words.
    “When are you to be married, Alice?” said George at last.
    “Oh, George!” said she. “You ask me a question as though you were putting a pistol to my ear.”
    “I’m sorry the question was so unpleasant.”
    “I didn’t say that it was unpleasant; but you asked it so suddenly! The truth is, I didn’t expect you to speak at all just then. I suppose I was thinking of something.”
    “But if it be not unpleasant, — when are you to be married?”
    “I do not know. It is not fixed.”
    “But about when, I mean? This summer?”
    “Certainly not this summer, for the summer will be over when we reach home.”
    “This winter? Next spring? Next year? — or in ten years’ time?”
    “Before the expiration of the ten years, I suppose. Anything more exact than that I can’t say.”
    “I suppose you like it?” he then said.
    “What, being married? You see I’ve never tried yet.”
    “The idea of it, — the anticipation, You look forward with satisfaction to the kind of life you will lead at Nethercoats? Don’t suppose I am saying anything against it, for I have no conception what sort of a place Nethercoats is. On the whole I don’t know that there is any kind of life better than that of an English country gentleman in his own place; — that is, if he can keep it up, and not live as the old squire does, in a state of chronic poverty.”
    “Mr Grey’s place doesn’t entitle him to be called a country gentleman.”
    “But you like the prospect of it?”
    “Oh, George, how you do cross-question one! Of course I like it, or I shouldn’t have accepted it.”
    “That does not follow. But I quite acknowledge that I have no right to cross-question you. If I ever had such right on the score of cousinship, I have lost it on the score of — ; but we won’t mind that, will we, Alice?” To this she at first made no answer, but he repeated the question. “Will we, Alice?”
    “Will we what?”
    “Recur to the old days.”
    “Why should we recur to them? They are passed, and as we are again friends and dear cousins the sting of them is gone.”
    “Ah, yes! The sting of them is gone. It is for that