Can You Forgive Her? (82 page)

‘Have you quarrelled with him too?’ said her father, with uncontrolled surprise.

‘I should perhaps say that he has quarrelled with me. But, dear papa, pray do not question me at present. I will tell you all when you come back, but I thought it right that you should know this before you went’

‘It has been his doing then?’

‘I cannot explain it to you in a hurry like this.
Papa, you may understand something of the shame which I feel, and you should not question me now.’

‘And John Grey?’

‘There is nothing different in regard to him.’

‘I’ll be shot if I can understand you. George, you know, has had two thousand pounds of your money, – of yours or somebody else’s. Well, we can’t talk about it now, as I must be off. Thinking as I do of George, I’m glad of it, – that’s
all.’ Then he went, and Alice was left alone, to comfort herself as best she might by her own reflections.

George Vavasor had received the message on the day previous to that on which Alice’s letter had reached her, but it had not come to him till late in the day. He might have gone down by the mail train of that night, but there were one or two persons, his own attorney especially, whom he wished
to see before the reading of his grandfather’s will. He remained in town, therefore, on the following day, and went down by the same train as that which took his uncle. Walking along the platform, looking for a seat, he peered into a carriage and met his uncle’s eye. The two saw each other, but did not speak, and George passed on to another carriage. On the following morning, before the break
of day, they met again in the refreshment room, at the station at Lancaster. ‘So my father has gone, George,’ said the uncle, speaking to the nephew. They must go to the same house, and Mr Vavasor felt that it would be better that they should be on speaking terms when they reached it ‘Yes,’ said George; ‘he has gone at last I wonder what we shall find to have been his latest act of injustice.’ The
reader will remember that he had received Kate’s first letter, in which she had told him of the Squire’s altered will.
John Vavasor turned away disgusted. His finer feelings were perhaps not very strong, but he had no thoughts or hopes in reference to the matter which were mean. He expected nothing himself, and did not begrudge his nephew the inheritance. At this moment he was thinking of the
old Squire as a father who had ever been kind to him. It might be natural that George should have no such old affection at his heart, but it was unnatural that he should express himself as he had done at such a moment.

The uncle turned away, but said nothing. George followed him with a little proposition of his own. ‘We shan’t get any conveyance at Shap,’ he said. ‘Hadn’t we better go over in
a chaise from Kendal?’ To this the uncle assented, and so they finished their journey together. George smoked all the time that they were in the carriage, and very few words were spoken. As they drove up to the old house, they found that another arrival had taken place before them, – Mrs Greenow having reached the house in some vehicle from the Shap station. She had come across from Norwich to Manchester,
where she had joined the train which had brought the uncle and nephew from London.

T
HE
coming of Mrs Greenow at this very moment was a great comfort to Kate. Without her she would hardly have known how to bear herself with her uncle and her brother. As it was, they were all restrained by something of the courtesy which strangers are bound to show to each other. George had never seen his aunt since he was a child, and some sort of introduction was necessary
between them.

‘So you are George,’ said Mrs Greenow, putting out her hand and smiling.

‘Yes; I’m George,’ said he.

‘And a Member of Parliament!’ said Mrs Greenow. ‘It’s quite an honour to the family. I felt so proud when I heard it!’ She said this
pleasantly, meaning it to be taken for truth, and then turned away to her brother. ‘Papa’s time was fully come,’ she said, ‘though, to tell the truth,
I had no idea that he was so weak as Kate describes him to have been.’

‘Nor I, either,’ said John Vavasor. ‘He went to church with us here on Christmas-day.’

‘Did he, indeed? Dear, dear! He seems at last to have gone off just like poor Greenow.’ Here she put her handkerchief up to her face. ‘I think you didn’t know Greenow, John?’

‘I met him once,’ said her brother.

‘Ah! he wasn’t to be known
and understood in that way. I’m aware there was a little prejudice, because of his being in trade, but we won’t talk of that now. Where should I have been without him, tradesman or no tradesman?’

‘I’ve no doubt he was an excellent man.’

‘You may say that, John. Ah, well! we can’t keep everything in this life for ever.’ It may, perhaps, be as well to explain now that Mrs Greenow had told Captain
Bellfield at their last meeting before she left Norwich, that, under certain circumstances, if he behaved himself well, there might possibly be ground of hope. Whereupon Captain Bellfield had immediately gone to the best tailor in that city, had told the man of his coining marriage, and had given an extensive order. But the tailor had not as yet supplied the goods, waiting for more credible evidence
of the Captain’s good fortune. ‘We’re all grass of the field
¹
,’ said Mrs Greenow, lightly brushing a tear from her eye, ‘and must be cut down and put into the oven in our turns.’ Her brother uttered a slight sympathetic groan, shaking his head in testimony of the uncertainty of human affairs, and then said that he would go out and look about the place. George, in the meantime, had asked his sister
to show him his room, and the two were already together upstairs.

Kate had made up her mind that she would say nothing about Alice at the present moment, – nothing, if it could be avoided, till after the funeral. She led the way upstairs, almost trembling with fear, for she knew that that other subject of the will would also give rise to trouble and sorrow, – perhaps, also, to determined quarrelling.

‘What has brought that woman here?’ was the first question that George asked.

‘I asked her to come,’said Kate.

‘And why did you ask her to come here?’ said George, angrily. Kate immediately felt that he was speaking as though he were master of the house, and also as though he intended to be master of her. As regarded the former idea, she had no objection to it. She thoroughly and honestly wished
that he might be the master; and though she feared that he might find himself mistaken in his assumption, she herself was not disposed to deny any appearance of right that he might take upon himself in that respect. But she had already begun to tell herself that she must not submit herself to his masterdom. She had gradually so taught herself since he had compelled her to write the first letter
in which Alice had been asked to give her money.

‘I asked her, George, before my poor grandfather’s death, when I thought that he would linger perhaps for weeks. My life here alone with him, without any other woman in the house beside the servants, was very melancholy.’

‘Why did you not ask Alice to come to you?’

‘Alice could not have come,’ said Kate, after a short pause.

‘I don’t know why
she shouldn’t have come. I won’t have that woman about the place. She disgraced herself by marrying a blacksmith.—.’

‘Why, George, it was you yourself who advised me to go and stay with her.’

‘That’s a very different thing. Now that he’s dead, and she’s got his money, it’s all very well that you should go to her occasionally; but I won’t have her here.’

‘It’s natural that she should come to
her father’s house at her father’s death-bed.’

‘I hate to be told that things are natural. It always means humbug. I don’t suppose she cared for the old man any more than I did, – or than she cared for the other old man who married her. People are such intense hypocrites. There’s my uncle John, pulling a long face because he has come into this house, and he will pull it as long as the body lies
up there; and yet for the last twenty years
there’s nothing on earth he has so much hated as going to see his father. When are they going to bury him?’

‘On Saturday, the day after tomorrow.’

‘Why couldn’t they do it tomorrow, so that we could get away before Sunday?’

‘He only died on Monday, George,’said Kate, solemnly.

‘Psha! Who has got the will?’

‘Mr Gogram. He was here yesterday, and told
me to tell you and uncle John that he would have it with him when he came back from the funeral.’

‘What has my uncle John to do with it?’ said George, sharply. ‘I shall go over to Penrith this afternoon and make Gogram give it up to me.’

‘I don’t think hell do that, George.’

‘What right has he to keep it? What right has he to it at all? How do I know that he has really got the old man’s last
will? Where did my grandfather keep his papers?’

‘In that old secretary, as he used to call it; the one that stands in the dining-room. It is sealed up.’

‘Who sealed it?’

‘Mr Gogram did, – Mr Gogram and I together.’

‘What the deuce made you meddle with it?’

‘I merely assisted him. But I believe he was quite right. I think it is usual in such cases.’

‘Balderdash! You are thinking of some
old trumpery of former days. Till I know to the contrary, everything here belongs to me as heir-at-law, and I do not mean to allow of any interference till I know for certain that my rights have been taken from me. And I ‘won’t accept a death-bed will. What a man chooses to write when his fingers will hardly hold the pen, goes for nothing.’

‘You can’t suppose that I wish to interfere with your
rights?’

‘I hope not.’

‘Oh, George!’

‘Well; I say, I hope not But I know there are those who would. Do you think my uncle John would not interfere with me if he could? By –! if he does, he shall find that he does it to his cost I’ll lead him such a life through the courts, for the next two or three
years that hell wish that he had remained in Chancery Lane, and had never left it’

A message
was now brought up by the nurse, saying that Mrs Greenow and Mr Vavasor were going into the room where the old Squire was lying, ‘Would Miss Kate and Mr George go with them?’

‘Mr Vavasor?’ shouted out George, making the old woman jump. She did not understand his meaning in the least ‘Yes, sir; the old Squire,’ she said.

‘Will you come, George?’ Kate asked.

‘No; what should I go there for? Why
should I pretend an interest in the dead body of a man whom I hated and who hated me; – whose very last act, as far as I know as yet, was an attempt to rob me? I won’t go and see him.’

Kate went, and was glad of an opportunity of getting away from her brother. Every hour the idea was becoming stronger in her mind that she must in some way separate herself from him. There had come upon him of
late a hard ferocity which made him unendurable. And then he carried to such a pitch that hatred, as he called it, of conventional rules, that he allowed himself to be controlled by none of the ordinary bonds of society. She had felt this heretofore, with a nervous consciousness that she was doing wrong in endeavouring to bring about a marriage between him and Alice; but this demeanour and mode of
talking had now so grown upon him that Kate began to feel herself thankful that Alice had been saved.

Kate went up with her uncle and aunt, and saw the face of her grandfather for the last time. ‘Poor, dear old man!’ said Mrs Greenow, as the easy tears ran down her face. ‘Do you remember, John, how he used to scold me, and say that I should never come to good. He has said the same thing to you,
Kate, I dare say?’

‘He has been very kind to me,’ said Kate, standing at the foot of the bed. She was not one of those whose tears stand near their eyes.

‘He was a fine old gentleman,’ said John Vavasor; – ‘belonging to days that are now gone by, but by no means the less of a gentleman on that account. I don’t know that he ever did an unjust or ungenerous act to any one. Come, Kate, we may as
well
go down.’ Mrs Greenow lingered to say a word or two to the nurse, of the manner in which Greenow’s body was treated when Greenow was lying dead, and then she followed her brother and niece.

George did not go into Penrith, nor did he see Mr Gogram till that worthy attorney came out to Vavasor Hall on the morning of the funeral He said nothing more on the subject, nor did he break the seals
on the old upright desk that stood in the parlour. The two days before the funeral were very wretched for all the party, except, perhaps, for Mrs Greenow, who affected not to understand that her nephew was in a bad humour. She called him ‘poor George’, and treated all his incivility to herself as though it were the effect of his grief. She asked him questions about Parliament, which, of course,
he didn’t answer, and told him little stories about poor dear Greenow, not heeding his expressions of unmistakable disgust.

The two days at last went by, and the hour of the funeral came. There was the doctor and Gogram, and the uncle and the nephew, to follow the corpse, – the nephew taking upon himself ostentatiously the foremost place, as though he could thereby help to maintain his pretensions
as heir. The clergyman met them at the little wicket-gate of the churchyard, having, by some reasoning, which we hope was satisfactory to himself, overcome a resolution which he at first formed, that he would not read the burial service over an unrepentant sinner. But he did read it, having mentioned his scruples to none but one confidential clerical friend in the same diocese.

‘I’m told that
you have got my grandfather’s will,’ George said to the attorney as soon as he saw him.

‘I have it in my pocket,’ said Mr Gogram, ‘and purpose to read it as soon as we return from church.’

‘Is it usual to take a will away from a man’s house in that way?’ George asked.

‘Quite usual,’ said the attorney; ‘and in this case it was done at the express desire of the testator.’

‘I think it is the
common practice,’ said John Vavasor.

George upon this turned round at his uncle as though about to
attack him, but he restrained himself and said nothing, though he showed his teeth.