Can You Forgive Her? (57 page)

In the afternoon her father came to her, and it may be as well to explain that Mr Grey had seen him again that day. Mr Grey, when he left Queen Anne Street, had gone to his lawyer, and from thence had made his way to Mr Vavasor. It was between five and six when Mr Vavasor came back to his house,
and he then found his daughter sitting over the drawing-room fire, without lights, in the gloom of the evening. Mr Vavasor had returned with Grey to the lawyer’s chambers, and had from thence come direct to his own house. He had been startled at the precision with which all the circumstances of his daughter’s position had been explained to a mild-eyed old gentleman, with a bald head, who carried
on his business in a narrow, dark, clean street, behind Doctors’ Commons
²
. Mr Tombe was his name. ‘No;’ Mr Grey had said,
when Mr Vavasor had asked as to the peculiar nature of Mr Tombe’s business; ‘he is not specially an ecclesiastical lawyer. He had a partner at Ely, and was always employed by my father, and by most of the clergy there.’ Mr Tombe had evinced no surprise, no dismay, and certainly
no mock delicacy, when the whole affair was under discussion. George Vavasor was to get present moneys, but, – if it could be so arranged – from John Grey’s stores rather than from those belonging to Alice. Mr Tombe could probably arrange that with Mr Vavasor’s lawyer, who would no doubt be able to make difficulty as to raising ready money. Mr Tombe would be able to raise ready money without
difficulty. And then, at last, George Vavasor was to be made to surrender his bride, taking or having taken the price of his bargain. John Vavasor sat by in silence as the arrangement was being made, not knowing how to speak. He had no money with which to give assistance. ‘I wish you to understand from the lady’s father,’ Grey said to the lawyer, ‘that the marriage would be regarded by him with as
much dismay as by myself.’

‘Certainly; – it would be ruinous,’ Mr Vavasor had answered. ‘And you see, Mr Tombe,’ Mr Grey went on, ‘we only wish to try the man. If he be not such as we believe him to be, he can prove it by his conduct. If he is worthy of her, he can then take her.’

‘You merely wish to open her eyes, Mr Grey,’ said the mild-eyed lawyer.

‘I wish that he should have what money
he wants, and then we shall find what it is he really wishes.’

‘Yes; we shall know our man,’ said the lawyer. ‘He shall have the money, Mr Grey,’ and so the interview had been ended.

Mr Vavasor, when he entered the drawing-room, addressed his daughter in a cheery voice. ‘What; all in the dark?’

‘Yes, papa. Why should I have candles when I am doing nothing? I did not expect you.’

‘No; I suppose
not I came here because I want to say a few words to you about business.’

‘What business, papa?’ Alice well understood the tone of her father’s voice. He was desirous of propitiating her; but was at the
same time desirous of carrying some point in which he thought it probable that she would oppose him.

‘Well; my love, if I understood you rightly, your cousin George wants some money.’

‘I did
not say that he wants it now; but I think he will want it before the time for the election comes.’

‘If so, he will want it at once. He has not asked you for it yet?’

‘No; he has merely said that should he be in need he would take me at my word.’

‘I think there is no doubt that he wants it. Indeed, I believe that he is almost entirely without present means of his own.’

‘I can hardly think so;
but I have no knowledge about it. I can only say that he has not asked me yet, and that I should wish to oblige him whenever he may do so.’

‘To what extent, Alice?’

‘I don’t know what I have. I get about four hundred a year, but I do not know what it is worth, or how far it can all be turned into money. I should wish to keep a hundred a year and let him have the rest’

‘What; eight thousand
pounds!’ said the father who in spite of his wish not to oppose her, could not but express his dismay.

‘I do not imagine that he will want so much; but if he should, I wish that he should have it.’

‘Heaven and earth!’ said John Vavasor. ‘Of course we should have to give up the house.’ He could not suppress his trouble, or refrain from bursting out in agony at the prospect of such a loss.

‘But
he has asked me for nothing yet, papa?’

‘No, exactly; and perhaps he may not; but I wish to know what to do when the demand is made. I am not going to oppose you now; your money is your own, and you have a right to do with it as you please; – but would you gratify me in one thing?’

‘What is it, papa?’

‘When he does apply, let the amount be raised through me?’

‘How through you?’

‘Come to me;
I mean, so that I may see the lawyer, and have the
arrangements made.’ Then he explained to her that in dealing with large sums of money, it could not be right that she should do so without his knowledge, even though the property was her own. ‘I will promise you that I will not oppose your wishes,’ he said. Then Alice undertook that when such case should arise the money should be raised through
his means.

The day but one following this she received a letter from Lady Glencora, who was still at Matching Priory. It was a light-spirited, chatty, amusing letter, intended to be happy in its tone, – intended to have a flavour of happiness, but just failing through the too apparent meaning of a word here and there. ‘You will see that I am at Matching,’ the letter said, ‘whereas you will remember
that I was to have been at Monkshade. I escaped at last by a violent effort, and am now passing my time innocently, – I fear not so profitably as she would induce me to do, – with Iphy Palliser. You remember Iphy. She is a good creature, and would fain turn even me to profit, if it were possible. I own that I am thinking of them all at Monkshade, and am in truth delighted that I am not there.
My absence is entirely laid upon your shoulders. That wicked evening amidst the ruins! Poor ruins. I go there alone sometimes and fancy that I hear such voices from the walls, and see such faces through the broken windows! All the old Pallisers come and frown at me, and tell me that I am not good enough to belong to them. There is a particular window to which Sir Guy comes and makes faces at me.
I told Iphy the other day, and she answered me very gravely, that I might, if I chose, make myself good enough for the Pallisers. Even for the Pallisers! Isn’t that beautiful?’

Then Lady Glencora went on to say, that her husband intended to come up to London early in the session, and that she would accompany him. That is,’ added Lady Glencora, ‘if I am still good enough for the Pallisers at that
time.’

W
HEN
George Vavasor left Mr Scruby’s office – the attentive reader will remember that he did call upon Mr Scruby, the Parliamentary lawyer, and there recognized the necessity of putting himself in possession of a small sum of money with as little delay as possible; – when he left the attorney’s office, he was well aware that the work to be done was still before him.
And he knew also that the job to be undertaken was a very disagreeable job. He did not like the task of borrowing his cousin Alice’s money.

We all of us know that swindlers and rogues do very dirty tricks, and we are apt to picture to ourselves a certain amount of gusto and delight on the part of the swindlers in the doing of them. In this, I think we are wrong. The poor, broken, semigenteel
beggar, who borrows half-sovereigns apiece from all his old acquaintances, knowing that they know that he will never repay them, suffers a separate little agony with each petition that he makes. He does not enjoy pleasant sailing in this journey which he is making. To be refused is painful to him. To get his half sovereign with scorn is painful. To get it with apparent confidence in his honour is
almost more painful. ‘D— it,’ says to himself on such rare occasions, ‘I will pay that fellow;’ and yet, as he says it, he knows that he never will pay even that fellow. It is a comfortless unsatisfying trade, that of living upon other people’s money.

How was George Vavasor to make his first step towards getting his hand into his cousin’s purse? He had gone to her asking for her love, and she
had shuddered when he asked her. That had been the commencement of their life under their new engagement. He knew very well that the money would be forthcoming when he demanded it, – but under their present joint circumstances, how was he to make the demand? If he wrote to her, should he simply ask for money, and make no allusion to his love? If he went to her
in person, should he make his visit
a mere visit of business, – as he might call on his banker?

He resolved at last that Kate should do the work for him. Indeed, he had felt all along that it would be well that Kate should act as ambassador between him and Alice in money matters, as she had long done in other things. He could talk to Kate as he could not talk to Alice; – and then, between the women, those hard money necessities
would be softened down by a romantic phraseology which he would not himself know how to use with any effect. He made up his mind to see Kate, and with this view he went down to Westmoreland; and took himself to a small wayside inn at Shap among the fells, which had been known to him of old. He gave his sister notice that he would be there, and begged her to come over to him as early as she might
find it possible on the’ morning after his arrival. He himself reached the place late in the evening by train from London. There is a station at Shap, by which the railway company no doubt conceives that it has conferred on that somewhat rough and remote locality all the advantages of a refined civilization; but I doubt whether the Shappites have been thankful for the favour. The landlord at the inn,
for one, is not thankful. Shap had been a place owing all such life as it had possessed to coaching and posting. It had been a stage on the high road from Lancaster to Carlisle, and though it lay high and bleak among the fells, and was a cold, windy, thinly-populated place, – filling all travellers with thankfulness that they had not been made Shappites, nevertheless, it had had its glory in its
coaching and posting. I have no doubt that there are men and women who look back with a fond regret to the palmy days of Shap.

Vavasor reached the little inn about nine in the evening on a night that was pitchy dark, and in a wind which made it necessary for him to hold his hat on to his head. ‘What a beastly country to live in,’ he said to himself, resolving that he would certainly sell Vavasor
Hall in spite of all family associations, if ever the power to do so should be his. ‘What trash it is,’ he said, ‘hanging on to such a place as that without the means of living like a gentleman, simply because one’s ancestors have done so.’ And then he expressed a doubt to himself whether all the world
contained a more ignorant, opinionated, useless old man than his grandfather, – or, in short,
a greater fool.

‘Well, Mr George,’ said the landlord as soon as he saw him, ‘a sight of you’s guid for sair een. It’s o’er lang since you’ve been doon amang the fells.’ But George did not want to converse with the innkeeper, or to explain how it was that he did not visit Vavasor Hall. The innkeeper, no doubt, knew all about it, – knew that the grandfather had quarrelled with his grandson, and
knew the reason why; but George, if he suspected such knowledge, did not choose to refer to it. So he simply grunted something in reply, and getting himself in before a spark of fire which hardly was burning in a public room with a sandy floor, begged that the little sitting-room upstairs might be got ready for him. There he passed the evening in solitude, giving no encouragement to the landlord,
who, nevertheless, looked him up three or four times, – till at last George said that his head ached, and that he would wish to be alone. ‘He was always one of them cankery duels as never have a kindly word for man nor beast,’ said the landlord. ‘Seems as though that raw slash in his face had gone right through into his heart.’ After that George was left alone, and sat thinking whether it would not
be better to ask Alice for two thousand pounds at once, – so as to save him from the disagreeable necessity of a second borrowing before their marriage. He was very uneasy in his mind. He had flattered himself through it all that his cousin had loved him. He had felt sure that such was the case while they were together in Switzerland. When she had determined to give up John Grey, of course he had
told himself the same thing. When she had at once answered his first subsequent overture with an assent, he had of course been certain that it was so. Dark, selfish, and even dishonest as he was, he had, nevertheless, enjoyed something of a lover’s true pleasure in believing that Alice had still loved him through all their mischances. But his joy had in a moment been turned into gall during that
interview in Queen Anne Street. He had read the truth at a glance. A man must be very vain, or else very little used to such matters, who at George Vavasor’s age cannot understand the feelings with which a woman receives him. When Alice contrived as she had done to
escape the embrace he was so well justified in asking, he knew the whole truth. He was sore at heart, and very angry withal. He could
have readily spurned her from him, and rejected her who had once rejected him. He would have done so had not his need for her money restrained him. He was not a man who could deceive himself in such matters. He knew that this was so, and he told himself that he was a rascal.

Vavasor Hall was, by the road, about five miles from Shap, and it was not altogether an easy task for Kate to get over
to the village without informing her grandfather that the visit was to be made, and what was its purport. She could, indeed, walk, and the walk would not be so long as that she had taken with Alice to Swindale fell; – but walking to an inn on a high road, is not the same thing as walking to a point on a hill side over a lake. Had she been dirty, draggled, and wet through on Swindale fell, it would
have simply been matter for mirth; but her brother she knew would not have liked to see her enter the Lowther Arms at Shap in such a condition. It, therefore, became necessary that she should ask her grandfather to lend her the jaunting car.