Early in that conversation which Mr Vavasor had with his daughter, and which was recorded a few pages back, he implored her to pause a while before she informed Mr Grey of her engagement with her cousin. Nothing, however, on that point had been settled between them. Mr Vavasor had wished her to say that she would not write till he should have assented to her doing so. She had declined to bind herself in this way, and then they had gone off to other things — to George Vavasor’s character and the disposition of her money. Alice, however, had felt herself bound not to write to Mr Grey quite at once. Indeed, when her cousin left her she had no appetite for writing such a letter as hers was to be. A day or two passed by her in this way, and nothing more was said by her or her father. It was now the middle of January, and the reader may remember that Mr Grey had promised that he would come to her in London in that month, as soon as he should know that she had returned from Westmoreland. She must at any rate do something to prevent that visit. Mr Grey would not come without giving her notice. She knew enough of the habits of the man to be sure of that. But she desired that her letter to him should be in time to prevent his to her; so when those few days were gone, she sat down to write without speaking to her father again upon the subject.
It was a terrible job — perhaps the most difficult of all the difficult tasks which her adverse fate had imposed upon her. She found when she did attempt it, that she could have done it better if she had done it at the moment when she was writing the other letter to her cousin George. Then Kate had been near her, and she had been comforted by Kate’s affectionate happiness. She had been strengthened at that moment by a feeling that she was doing the best in her power, if not for herself, at any rate for others. All that comfort and all that strength had left her now. The atmosphere of the fells had buoyed her up, and now the thick air of London depressed her. She sat for hours with the pen in her hand, and could not write the letter. She let a day go by and a night, and still it was not written. She hardly knew herself in her unnatural weakness. As the mental photographs of the two men forced themselves upon her, she could not force herself to forget those words — “Look here, upon this picture — and on this.” How was it that she now knew how great was the difference between the two men, how immense the pre-eminence of him whom she had rejected — and that she had not before been able to see this on any of those many previous occasions on which she had compared the two together? As she thought of her cousin George’s face when he left her room a few days since, and remembered Mr Grey’s countenance when last he held her hand at Cheltenham, the quiet dignity of his beauty which would submit to show no consciousness of injury, she could not but tell herself that when Paradise had been opened to her, she had declared herself to be fit only for Pandemonium. In that was her chief misery; that now — now when it was too late — she could look at it aright.
But the letter must be written, and on the second day she declared to herself that she would not rise from her chair till it was done. The letter was written on that day and was posted. I will now ask the reader to go down with me to Nethercoats that we may be present with John Grey when he received it. He was sitting at breakfast in his study there, and opposite to him, lounging in an armchair, with a Quarterly in his hand, was the most intimate of his friends, Frank Seward, a fellow of the college to which they had both belonged. Mr Seward was a clergyman, and the tutor of his college, and a man who worked very hard at Cambridge. In the days of his leisure he spent much of his time at Nethercoats, and he was the only man to whom Grey had told anything of his love for Alice and of his disappointment. Even to Seward he had not told the whole story. He had at first informed his friend that he was engaged to be married, and as he had told this as no secret, having even said that he hated secrets on such matters — the engagement had been mentioned in the common room of their college, and men at Cambridge knew that Mr Grey was going to take to himself a wife. Then Mr Seward had been told that trouble had come, and that it was not improbable that there would be no such marriage. Even when saying this Mr Grey told none of the particulars, though he owned to his friend that a heavy blow had struck him. His intimacy with Seward was of that thorough kind which is engendered only out of such young and lasting friendship as had existed between them; but even to such a friend as this Mr Grey could not open his whole heart. It was only to a friend who should also be his wife that he could do that — as he himself thoroughly understood. He had felt that such a friend was wanting to him, and he had made the attempt.
“Don’t speak of this as yet,” he had said to Mr Seward. “Of course when the matter is settled, those few people who know me must know it. But perhaps there may be a doubt as yet, and as long as there is a doubt, it is better that it should not be discussed.”
He had said no more than this — had imputed no blame to Alice — had told none of the circumstances; but Seward had known that the girl had jilted his friend, and had made up his mind that she must be heartless and false. He had known also that his friend would never look for any other such companion for his home.
Letters were brought to each of them on this morning, and Seward’s attention was of course occupied by those which he received. Grey, as soon as the envelopes had touched his hand, became aware that one of them was from Alice, and this he at once opened. He did it very calmly, but without any of that bravado of indifference with which George Vavasor had received Alice’s letter from Westmoreland. “It is right that I should tell you at once,” said Alice, rushing into the middle of her subject without even the formality of the customary address — “It is right that I should tell you at once that — .” Oh, the difficulty which she had encountered when her words had carried her as far as this! — “that my cousin, George Vavasor, has repeated to me his offer of marriage, and that I have accepted it. I tell you, chiefly in order that I may save you from the trouble which you purposed to take when I last saw you at Cheltenham. I will not tell you any of the circumstances of this engagement, because I have no right to presume that you will care to hear them. I hardly dare to ask you to believe of me that in all that I have done, I have endeavoured to act with truth and honesty. That I have been very ignorant, foolish — what you will that is bad, I know well; otherwise there could not have been so much in the last few years of my life on which I am utterly ashamed to look back. For the injury that I have done you, I can only express deep contrition. I do not dare to ask you to forgive me. — ALICE VAVASOR.” She had tormented herself in writing this — had so nearly driven herself distracted with attempts which she had destroyed, that she would not even read over to herself these last words. “He’ll know it, and that is all that is necessary,” she said to herself as she sent the letter away from her.
Mr Grey read it twice over, leaving the other letters unnoticed on the table by his teacup. He read it twice over, and the work of reading it was one to him of intense agony. Hitherto he had fed himself with hope. That Alice should have been brought to think of her engagement with him in a spirit of doubt, and with a mind so troubled that she had been inclined to attempt an escape from it, had been very grievous to him; but it had been in his mind a fantasy, a morbid fear of himself, which might be cured by time. He, at any rate, would give all his energies towards achieving such a cure. There had been one thing, however, which he most feared — which he had chiefly feared, though he had forbidden himself to think that it could be probable, and this thing had now happened.
He had ever disliked and feared George Vavasor — not from any effect which the man had upon himself, for as we know his acquaintance with Vavasor was of the slightest — but he had feared and disliked his influence upon Alice. He had also feared the influence of her cousin Kate. To have cautioned Alice against her cousins would have been to him impossible. It was not his nature to express suspicion to one he loved. Is the tone of that letter remembered in which he had answered Alice when she informed him that her cousin George was to go with Kate and her to Switzerland? He had written, with a pleasant joke, words which Alice had been able to read with some little feeling of triumph to her two friends. He had not so written because he liked what he knew of the man. He disliked all that he knew of him. But it had not been possible for him to show that he distrusted the prudence of her, whom, as his future wife, he was prepared to trust in all things.
I have said that he read Alice’s letter with an agony of sorrow; as he sat with it in his hand he suffered as, probably, he had never suffered before. But there was nothing in his countenance to show that he was in pain. Seward had received some long epistle, crossed from end to end — indicative, I should say, of a not far distant termination to that college tutorship — and was reading it with placid contentment. It did not occur to him to look across at Grey, but had he done so, I doubt whether he would have seen anything to attract his attention. But Grey, though he was wounded, would not allow himself to be dismayed. There was less hope now than before, but there might still be hope — hope for her, even though there might be none for him. Tidings had reached his ears also as to George Vavasor, which had taught him to believe that the man was needy, reckless, and on the brink of ruin. Such a marriage to Alice Vavasor would be altogether ruinous. Whatever might be his own ultimate fate he would still seek to save her from that. Her cousin, doubtless, wanted her money. Might it not be possible that he would be satisfied with her money, and that thus the woman might be saved?
“Seward,” he said at last, addressing his friend, who had not yet come to the end of the last crossed page.
“Is there anything wrong?” said Seward.
“Well — yes; there is something a little wrong. I fear I must leave you, and go up to town today.”
“Nobody ill, I hope?”
“No — nobody is ill. But I must go up to London. Mrs Bole will take care of you, and you must not be angry with me for leaving you.”
Seward assured him that he would not be in the least angry, and that he was thoroughly conversant with the capabilities and good intentions of Mrs Bole the housekeeper; but added, that as he was so near his own college, he would of course go back to Cambridge. He longed to say some word as to the purpose of Grey’s threatened journey; to make some inquiry as to this new trouble; but he knew that Grey was a man who did not well bear close inquiries, and he was silent.
“Why not stay here?” said Grey, after a minute’s pause. “I wish you would, old fellow; I do, indeed.” There was a tone of special affection in his voice which struck Seward at once. “If I can be of the slightest service or comfort to you, I will of course.”
Grey again sat silent for a little while. “I wish you would; I do, indeed.”
“Then I will.” And again there was a pause.
“I have got a letter here from — Miss Vavasor,” said Grey.
“May I hope that — ”
“No — it does not bring good news to me. I do not know that I can tell it you all. I would if I could, but the whole story is one not to be told in a hurry. I should leave false impressions. There are things which a man cannot tell.”
“Indeed there are,” said Seward.
“I wish with all my heart that you knew it all as I know it; but that is impossible. There are things which happen in a day which it would take a lifetime to explain.” Then there was another pause. “I have heard bad news this morning, and I must go up to London at once. I shall go into Ely so as to be there by twelve; and if you will, you shall drive me over. I may be back in a day; certainly in less than a week; but it will be a comfort to me to know that I shall find you here.”
The matter was so arranged, and at eleven they started. During the first two miles not a word was spoken between them. “Seward,” Grey said at last, “if I fail in what I am going to attempt, it is probable that you will never hear Alice Vavasor’s name mentioned by me again; but I want you always to bear this in mind — that at no moment has my opinion of her ever been changed, nor must you in such case imagine from my silence that it has changed. Do you understand me?”
“I think I do.”
“To my thinking she is the finest of God’s creatures that I have known. It may be that in her future life she will be severed from me altogether; but I shall not, therefore, think the less well of her; and I wish that you, as my friend, should know that I so esteem her, even though her name should never be mentioned between us.” Seward, in some few words, assured him that it should be so, and then they finished their journey in silence.
From the station at Ely, Grey sent a message by the wires up to John Vavasor, saying that he would call on him that afternoon at his office in Chancery Lane. The chances were always much against finding Mr Vavasor at his office; but on this occasion the telegram did reach him there, and he remained till the unaccustomed hour of half past four to meet the man who was to have been his son-in-law.
“Have you heard from her?” he asked as soon as Grey entered the dingy little room, not in Chancery Lane, but in its neighbourhood, which was allocated to him for his signing purposes.
“Yes,’ — said Grey; she has written to me.”
“And told you about her cousin George, I tried to hinder her from writing, but she is very wilful.”
“Why should you have hindered her? If the thing was to be told, it is better that it should be done at once.”
“But I hoped that there might be an escape. I don’t know what you think of all this, Grey, but to me it is the bitterest misfortune that I have known. And I’ve had some bitter things, too,” he added — thinking of that period of his life, when the work of which he was ashamed was first ordained as his future task.
“What is the escape that you hoped?” asked Grey,
“I hardly know. The whole thing seems to me to be so mad, that I partly trusted that she would see the madness of it. I am not sure whether you know anything of my nephew George?” asked Mr Vavasor.
“Very little,” said Grey.
“I believe him to be utterly an adventurer — a man without means and without principle — upon the whole about as bad a man as you may meet. I give you my word, Grey, that I don’t think I know a worse man. He’s going to marry her for her money; then he will beggar her, after that he’ll ill-treat her, and yet what can I do?”
“Prevent the marriage.”
“But how, my dear fellow? Prevent it! It’s all very well to say that, and it’s the very thing I want to do. But how am I to prevent it? She’s as much her own master as you are yours. She can give him every shilling of her fortune tomorrow. How am I to prevent her from marrying him?”
“Let her give him every shilling of her fortune tomorrow,” said Grey.
“And what is she to do then?” asked Mr Vavasor.
“Then — then — then — then let her come to me,” said John Grey; and as he spoke there was the fragment of a tear in his eye, and the hint of quiver in his voice.
Even the worldly, worn-out, unsympathetic nature of John Vavasor was struck, and, as it were, warmed by this.
“God bless you; God bless you, my dear fellow. I heartily wish for her sake that I could look forward to any such an end to this affair.”
“And why not look forward to it? You say that he merely wants her money. As he wants it let him have it!”
“But Grey, you do not know Alice; you do not understand my girl. When she had lost her fortune nothing would induce her to become your wife.”
“Leave that to follow as it may,” said John Grey. “Our first object must be to sever her from a man, who is, as you say, himself on the verge of ruin; and who would certainly make her wretched. I am here now, not because I wish her to be my own wife, but because I wish that she should not become the wife of such a one as your nephew. If I were you I would let him have her money.”
“If you were I, you would have nothing more to do with it than the man that is as yet unborn. I know that she will give him her money because she has said so; but I have no power as to her giving it or as to her withholding it. That’s the hardship of my position — but it is of no use to think of that now.”
John Grey certainly did not think about it. He knew well that Alice was independent, and that she was not inclined to give up that independence to anyone. He had not expected that her father would be able to do much towards hindering his daughter from becoming the wife of George Vavasor, but he had wished that he himself and her father should be in accord in their views, and he found that this was so. When he left Mr Vavasor’s room nothing had been said about the period of the marriage. Grey thought it improbable that Alice would find herself able to give herself in marriage to her cousin immediately — so soon after her breach with him; but as to this he had no assurance, and he determined to have the facts from her own lips, if she would see him. So he wrote to her, naming a day on which he would call upon her early in the morning; and having received from her no prohibition, he was in Queen Anne Street at the hour appointed.
He had conceived a scheme which he had not made known to Mr Vavasor, and as to the practicability of which he had much doubt; but which, nevertheless, he was resolved to try if he should find the attempt possible. He himself would buy off George Vavasor. He had ever been a prudent man, and he had money at command. If Vavasor was such a man as they who knew him best represented him, such a purchase might be possible. But then, before this was attempted, he must be quite sure that he knew his man, and he must satisfy himself also that in doing so he would not, in truth, add to Alice’s misery. He could hardly bring himself to think it possible that she did, in truth, love her cousin with passionate love. It seemed to him, as he remembered what Alice had been to himself, that this must be impossible. But if it were so, that of course must put an end to his interference. He thought that if he saw her he might learn all this, and therefore he went to Queen Anne Street.
“Of course he must come if he will,” she said to herself when she received his note. “It can make no matter. He will say nothing half so hard to me as what I say to myself all day long.” But when the morning came, and the hour came, and the knock at the door for which her ears were on the alert, her heart misgave her, and she felt that the present moment of her punishment, though not the heaviest, would still be hard to bear.
He came slowly upstairs — his step was ever slow — and gently opened the door for himself. Then, before he even looked at her, he closed it again. I do not know how to explain that it was so; but it was this perfect command of himself at all seasons which had in part made Alice afraid of him, and drove her to believe that they were not fitted for each other. She, when he thus turned for a moment from her, and then walked slowly towards her, stood with both her hands leaning on the centre table of the room, and with her eyes fixed upon its surface.
“Alice,” he said, walking up to her very slowly.
Her whole frame shuddered as she heard the sweetness of his voice. Had I not better tell the truth of her at once? Oh, if she could only have been his again! What madness during these last six months had driven her to such a plight as this! The old love came back upon her. Nay; it had never gone. But that trust in his love returned to her — that trust which told her that such love and such worth would have sufficed to make her happy. But this confidence in him was worthless now! Even though he should desire it, she could not change again.
“Alice,” he said again. And then, as slowly she looked up at him, he asked her for her hand. “You may give it me,” he said, “as to an old friend.” She put her hand in his hand, and then, withdrawing it, felt that she must never trust herself to do so again.
“Alice,” he continued, “I do not expect you to say much to me; but there is a question or two which I think you will answer. Has a day been fixed for this marriage?”
“No,” she said.
“Will it be in a month?”
“Oh, no — not for a year,” she replied hurriedly — and he knew at once by her voice that she already dreaded this new wedlock. Whatever of anger he might before have felt for her was banished. She had brought herself by her ill-judgment, by her ignorance, as she had confessed — to a sad pass; but he believed that she was still worthy of his love.
“And now one other question, Alice — but if you are silent, I will not ask it again. Can you tell me why you have again accepted your cousin’s offer?”
“Because — ” she said very quickly, looking up as though she were about to speak with all her old courage. “But you would never understand me,” she said — “and there can be no reason why I should dare to hope that you should ever think well of me again.”
He knew that there was no love — no love for that man to whom she had pledged her hand. He did not know, on the other hand, how strong, how unchanged, how true was her love for himself. Indeed, of himself he was thinking not at all. He desired to learn whether she would suffer, if by any scheme he might succeed in breaking off this marriage. When he had asked her whether she were to be married at once, she had shuddered at the thought. When he asked her why she had accepted her cousin, she had faltered, and hinted at some excuse which he might fail to understand. Had she loved George Vavasor, he could have understood that well enough.
“Alice,” he said, speaking still very slowly, “nothing has ever yet been done which need to a certainty separate you and me. I am a persistent man, and I do not even yet give up all hope. A year is a long time. As you say yourself, I do not as yet quite understand you. But, Alice — and I think that the position in which we stood a few months since justifies me in saying so without offence — I love you now as well as ever, and should things change with you, I cannot tell you with how much joy and eagerness I should take you back to my bosom. My heart is yours now as it has been since I knew you.”
Then he again just touched her hand, and left her before she had been able to answer a word.
Alice sat alone for an hour without moving when John Grey had left her, and the last words which he had uttered were sounding in her ears all the time, “My heart is still yours, as it has been since I knew you.” There had been something in his words which had soothed her spirits, and had, for the moment, almost comforted her. At any rate, he did not despise her. He could not have spoken such words as these to her had he not still held her high in his esteem. Nay — had he not even declared that he would yet take her as his own if she would come to him? “I cannot tell you with how much joy I would take you back to my bosom!” Ah! That might never be. But yet the assurance had been sweet to her — dangerously sweet, as she soon told herself. She knew that she had lost her Eden, but it was something to her that the master of the garden had not himself driven her forth. She sat there, thinking of her fate, as though it belonged to some other one — not to herself; as though it were a tale that she had read. Herself she had shipwrecked altogether; but though she might sink, she had not been thrust from the ship by hands which she loved.
But would it not have been better that he should have scorned her and reviled her? Had he been able to do so, he at least would have escaped the grief of disappointed love. Had he learned to despise her, he would have ceased to regret her. She had no right to feel consolation in the fact that his sufferings were equal to her own. But when she thought of this, she told herself that it could not be that it was so. He was a man, she said, not passionate by nature. Alas! It was the mistake she had ever made when summing up the items of his character! He might be persistent, she thought, in still striving to do that upon which he had once resolved. He had said so, and that which he said was always true to the letter. But, nevertheless, when this thing which he still chose to pursue should have been put absolutely beyond his reach, he would not allow his calm bosom to be harassed by a vain regret. He was a man too whole at every point — so Alice told herself — to allow his happiness to be marred by such an accident.
But must the accident occur? Was there no chance that he might be saved, even from such trouble as might follow upon such a loss? Could it not be possible that he might be gratified — since it would gratify him — and that she might be saved! Over and over again she considered this — but always as though it were another woman whom she would fain save, and not herself.
But she knew that her own fate was fixed. She had been mad when she had done the thing, but the thing was not on that account the less done. She had been mad when she had trusted herself abroad with two persons, both of whom, as she had well known, were intent on wrenching her happiness from out of her grasp. She had been mad when she had told herself, whilst walking over the Westmoreland fells, that after all she might as well marry her cousin, since that other marriage was then beyond her reach! Her two cousins had succeeded in blighting all the hopes of her life — but what could she now think of herself in that she had been so weak as to submit to such usage from their hands? Alas! — she told herself, admitting in her misery all her weakness — alas, she had had no mother. She had gloried in her independence, and this had come of it! She had scorned the prudence of Lady Macleod, and her scorn had brought her to this pass!
Was she to give herself bodily — body and soul, as she said aloud in her solitary agony — to a man whom she did not love? Must she submit to his caresses — lie on his bosom — turn herself warmly to his kisses? “No,” she said, no,’ — speaking audibly, as she walked about the room; “no — it was not in my bargain; I never meant it.” But if so what had she meant; what had been her dream? Of what marriage had she thought, when she was writing that letter back to George Vavasor? How am I to analyse her mind, and make her thoughts and feelings intelligible to those who may care to trouble themselves with the study? Any sacrifice she would make for her cousin which one friend could make for another. She would fight his battles with her money, with her words, with her sympathy. She would sit with him if he needed it, and speak comfort to him by the hour. His disgrace should be her disgrace — his glory her glory — his pursuits her pursuits. Was not that the marriage to which she had consented? But he had come to her and asked her for a kiss, and she had shuddered before him, when he made the demand. Then that other one had come and had touched her hand, and the fibres of her body had seemed to melt within her at the touch, so that she could have fallen at his feet.
She had done very wrong. She knew that she had done wrong. She knew that she had sinned with that sin which specially disgraces a woman. She had said that she would become the wife of a man to whom she could not cleave with a wife’s love; and, mad with a vile ambition, she had given up the man for whose modest love her heart was longing. She had thrown off from her that wondrous aroma of precious delicacy, which is the greatest treasure of womanhood. She had sinned against her sex; and, in an agony of despair, as she crouched down upon the floor with her head against her chair, she told herself that there was no pardon for her. She understood it now, and knew that she could not forgive herself.
But can you forgive her, delicate reader? Or am I asking the question too early in my story? For myself, I have forgiven her. The story of the struggle has been present to my mind for many years — and I have learned to think that even this offence against womanhood may, with deep repentance, be forgiven. And you also must forgive her before we close the book, or else my story will have been told amiss.
But let us own that she had sinned — almost damnably, almost past forgiveness. What — think that she knew what love meant, and not know which of two she loved! What — doubt, of two men for whose arms she longed; of which the kisses would be sweet to bear; on which side lay the modesty of her maiden love! Faugh! She had submitted to pollution of head and feeling before she had brought herself to such a pass as this. Come — let us see if it be possible that she may be cleansed by the fire of her sorrow.
“What am I to do?” She passed that whole day in asking herself that question. She was herself astounded at the rapidity with which the conviction had forced itself upon her that a marriage with her cousin would be to her almost impossible; and could she permit it to be said of her that she had thrice in her career jilted a promised suitor — that three times she would go back from her word because her fancy had changed? Where could she find the courage to tell her father, to tell Kate, to tell even George himself, that her purpose was again altered? But she had a year at her disposal. If only during that year he would take her money and squander it, and then require nothing further of her hands, might she not thus escape the doom before her? Might it not be possible that the refusal should this time come from him? But she succeeded in making one resolve. She thought at least that she succeeded. Come what come might, she would never stand with him at the altar. While there was a cliff from which she might fall, water that would cover her, a death-dealing grain that might be mixed in her cup, she could not submit herself to be George Vavasor’s wife. To no ear could she tell of this resolve. To no friend could she hint her purpose. She owed her money to the man after what had passed between them. It was his right to count upon such assistance as that would give him, and he should have it. Only as his betrothed she could give it him, for she understood well that if there were any breach between them, his accepting of such aid would be impossible. He should have her money, and then, when the day came, some escape should be found.
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. 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.”
When George Vavasor left Mr Scruby’s office — the attentive reader will remember that he did call upon Mr Scruby, the Parliamentary lawyer, and there recognised 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, semi-genteel 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,” he 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 chiels 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.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked sharply. In such establishments as that at Vavasor Hall the family horse is generally used for double duties. Though he draws the lady of the house one day, he is not too proud to draw manure on the next. And it will always be found that the master of the house gives a great preference to the manure over the lady. The Squire at Vavasor had come to do so to such an extent that he regarded any application for the animal’s services as an encroachment.
“Only to Shap, grandpapa.”
“To Shap! what on earth can take you to Shap? There are no shops at Shap.”
“I am not going to do shopping, I want to see someone there.”
“Whom can you want to see at Shap?” Then it occurred to Kate on the spur of the moment that she might as well tell her grandfather the fact. “My brother has come down,” she said; “and is at the inn there. I had not intended to tell you, as I did not wish to mention his name till you had consented to receive him here.”
“And he expects to come here now — does he?” said the Squire.
“Oh, no, sir. I think he has no expectation of the kind. He has come down simply to see me — about business I believe.”
“Business! what business? I suppose he wants to get your money from you?”
“I think it is with reference to his marriage. I think he wants me to use my influence with Alice that it may not be delayed.”
“Look here, Kate; if ever you lend him your money, or any of it — that is, of the principal I mean — I will never speak to him again under any circumstance. And more than that! Look here, Kate. In spite of all that has passed and gone, the property will become his for his life when I die — unless I change my will. If he gets your money from you, I will change it, and he shall not be a shilling richer at my death than he is now. You can have the horse to go to Shap.”
What unlucky chance had it been which had put this idea into the old Squire’s head on this especial morning? Kate had resolved that she would entreat her brother to make use of her little fortune. She feared that he was now coming with some reference to his cousin’s money — that something was to be done to enable him to avail himself of his cousin’s offer; and Kate, almost blushing in the solitude of her chamber at the thought, was determined that her brother must be saved from such temptation. She knew that money was necessary to him. She knew that he could not stand a second contest without assistance. With all their confidences, he had never told her much of his pecuniary circumstances in the world, but she was almost sure that he was a poor man. He had said as much as that to her, and in his letter desiring her to come to him at Shap, he had inserted a word or two purposely intended to prepare her mind for monetary considerations.
As she was jogged along over the rough road to Shap, she made up her mind that Aunt Greenow would be the proper person to defray the expense of the coming election. To give Kate her due, she would have given up every shilling of her own money without a moment’s hesitation, or any feeling that her brother would be wrong to accept it. Nor would she, perhaps, have been unalterably opposed to his taking Alice’s money, had Alice simply been his cousin. She felt that as Vavasors they were bound to stand by the future head of the family in an attempt which was to be made, as she felt, for the general Vavasor interest. But she could not endure to think that her brother should take the money of the girl whom he was engaged to marry. Aunt Greenow’s money she thought was fair game. Aunt Greenow herself had made various liberal offers to herself which Kate had declined, not caring to be under pecuniary obligations even to Aunt Greenow without necessity; but she felt that for such a purpose as her brother’s contest, she need not hesitate to ask for assistance, and she thought also that such assistance would be forthcoming.
“Grandpapa knows that you are here, George,” said Kate, when their first greeting was over.
“The deuce he does! And why did you tell him?”
“I could not get the car to come in without letting him know why I wanted it.”
“What nonsense! as if you couldn’t have made any excuse! I was particularly anxious that he should not guess that I am here.”
“I don’t see that it can make any difference, George.”
“But I see that it can — a very great difference. It may prevent my ever being able to get near him again before he dies. What did he say about my coming?”
“He didn’t say much.”
“He made no offer as to my going there?”
“No.”
“I should not have gone if he had. I don’t know now that I ever shall go. To be there to do any good — so as to make him alter his will, and leave me in the position which I have a right to expect, would take more time than the whole property is worth. And he would endeavour to tie me down in some way.”
“He might ask you, but he would not make it ground for another quarrel, if you refused.”
“He is so unreasonable and ignorant that I am better away from him. But, Kate, you have not congratulated me on my matrimonial prospects.”
“Indeed I did, George, when I wrote to you.”
“Did you? well; I had forgotten. I don’t know that any very strong congratulatory tone is necessary. As things go, perhaps it may be as well for all of us, and that’s about the best that can be said for it.”
“Oh, George!”
“You see I’m not romantic, Kate, as you are. Half a dozen children with a small income do not generally present themselves as being desirable to men who wish to push their way in the world.”
“You know you have always longed to make her your wife.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind. You have always been under a match-making hallucination on that point. But in this case you have been so far successful, and are entitled to your triumph.”
“I don’t want any triumph; you ought to know that.”
“But I’ll tell you what I do want, Kate. I want some money.” Then he paused, but as she did not answer immediately, he was obliged to go on speaking. “I’m not at all sure that I have not been wrong in making this attempt to get into Parliament — that I’m not struggling to pick fruit which is above my reach.”
“Don’t say that, George.”
“Ah, but I can’t help feeling it. I need hardly tell you that I am ready to risk anything of my own. If I know myself I would toss up tomorrow, or for the matter of that today, between the gallows and a seat in the House. But I cannot go on with this contest by risking what is merely my own. Money, for immediate use, I have none left, and my neck, though I were ever so willing to risk it, is of no service.”
“Whatever I have can be yours tomorrow,” said Kate in a hesitating voice, which too plainly pronounced her misery as she made the offer. She could not refrain herself from making it. Though her grandfather’s threat was ringing in her ears — though she knew that she might be ruining her brother by proposing such a loan, she had no alternative. When her brother told her of his want of money, she could not abstain from tendering to him the use of what was her own.
“No;” said he. “I shall not take your money.”
“You would not scruple, if you knew how welcome you are.”
“At any rate, I shall not take it. I should not think it right. All that you have would only just suffice for my present wants, and I should not choose to make you a beggar. There would, moreover, be a difficulty about readjusting the payment.”
“There would be no difficulty, because no one need be consulted but us two.”
“I should not think it right, and therefore let there be an end of it,” said George in a tone of voice which had in it something of magniloquence.
“What is it you wish, then?” said Kate, who knew too well what he did wish.
“I will explain to you. When Alice and I are married, of course there will be a settlement made on her, and as we are both the grandchildren of the old Squire I shall propose that the Vavasor property shall be hers for life in the event of her outliving me.”
“Well,” said Kate.
“And if this be done, there can be no harm in my forestalling some of her property, which, under the circumstances of such a settlement, would of course become mine when we are married.”
“But the Squire might leave the property to whom he pleases.”
“We know very well that he won’t, at any rate, leave it out of the family. In fact, he would only be too glad to consent to such an agreement as that I have proposed, because he would thereby rob me of all power in the matter.”
“But that could not be done till you are married.”
“Look here, Kate — don’t you make difficulties.” And now, as he looked at her, the cicature on his face seemed to open and yawn at her. “If you mean to say that you won’t help me, do say so, and I will go back to London.”
“I would do anything in my power to help you — that was not wrong!”
“Yes; anybody could say as much as that. That is not much of an offer if you are to keep to yourself the power of deciding what is wrong. Will you write to Alice — or better still, go to her, and explain that I want the money.”
“How can I go to London now?”
“You can do it very well, if you choose. But if that be too much, then write to her. It will come much better from you than from me; write to her, and explain that I must pay in advance the expenses of this contest, and that I cannot look for success unless I do so. I did not think that the demand would come so quick on me; but they know that I am not a man of capital, and therefore I cannot expect them to carry on the fight for me, unless they know that the money is sure. Scruby has been bitten two or three times by these metropolitan fellows, and he is determined that he will not be bitten again.” Then he paused for Kate to speak.
“George,” she said, slowly.
“Well.”
“I wish you would try any other scheme but that.”
“There is no other scheme! That’s so like a woman — to quarrel with the only plan that is practicable.”
“I do not think you ought to take Alice’s money.”
“My dear Kate, you must allow me to be the best judge of what I ought to do, and what I ought not to do. Alice herself understands the matter perfectly. She knows that I cannot obtain this position, which is as desirable for her as it is for me — ”
“And for me as much as for either,” said Kate, interrupting him.
“Very well. Alice, I say, knows that I cannot do this without money, and has offered the assistance which I want. I would rather that you should tell her how much I want, and that I want it now, than that I should do so. That is all. If you are half the woman that I take you to be, you will understand this well enough.”
Kate did understand it well enough. She was quite awake to the fact that her brother was ashamed of the thing he was about to do — so much ashamed of it that he was desirous of using her voice instead of his own. “I want you to write to her quite at once,” he continued; “since you seem to think that it is not worth while to take the trouble of a journey to London.”
“There is no question about the trouble,” said Kate. “I would walk to London to get the money for you, if that were all.”
“Do you think that Alice will refuse to lend it me?” said he, looking into her face.
“I am sure that she would not, but I think that you ought not to take it from her. There seems to me to be something sacred about property that belongs to the girl you are going to marry.”
“If there is anything on earth I hate,” said George, walking about the room, “it is romance. If you keep it for reading in your bedroom, it’s all very well for those who like it, but when it comes to be mixed up with one’s business it plays the devil. If you would only sift what you have said, you would see what nonsense it is. Alice and I are to be man and wife. All our interests, and all our money, and our station in life, whatever it may be, are to be joint property. And yet she is the last person in the world to whom I ought to go for money to improve her prospects as well as my own. That’s what you call delicacy. I call it infernal nonsense.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, George. I’ll ask Aunt Greenow to lend you the money — or to lend it to me.”
“I don’t believe she’d give me a shilling. Moreover, I want it quite immediately, and the time taken up in letter-writing and negotiations would be fatal to me. If you won’t apply to Alice, I must. I want you to tell me whether you will oblige me in this matter.”
Kate was still hesitating as to her answer, when there came a knock at the door, and a little crumpled note was brought up to her. A boy had just come with it across the fell from Vavasor Hall, and Kate, as soon as she saw her name on the outside, knew that it was from her grandfather. It was as follows:“If George wishes to come to the Hall, let him come. If he chooses to tell me that he regrets his conduct to me, I will see him.”
“What is it?” said George. Then Kate put the note into her brother’s hand.
“I’ll do nothing of the kind,” he said. “What good should I get by going to the old man’s house?”
“Every good,” said Kate. “If you don’t go now you never can do so.”
“Never till it’s my own,” said George,
“If you show him that you are determined to be at variance with him, it never will be your own — unless, indeed, it should some day come to you as part of Alice’s fortune. Think of it, George; you would not like to receive everything from her.”
He walked about the room, muttering maledictions between his teeth, and balancing, as best he was able at such a moment, his pride against his profit. “You haven’t answered my question,” said he. “If I go to the Hall, will you write to Alice?”
“No, George; I cannot write to Alice asking her for the money.”
“You won’t?”
“I could not bring myself to do it.”
“Then, Kate, you and my grandfather may work together for the future. You may get him to leave you the place if you have skill enough.”
“That is as undeserved a reproach as any woman ever encountered,” said Kate, standing her ground boldly before him. “If you have either heart or conscience, you will feel that it is so.”
“I’m not much troubled with either one or the other, I fancy. Things are being brought to such a pass with me, that I am better without them.”
“Will you take my money, George; just for the present?”
“No. I haven’t much conscience; but I have a little left.”
“Will you let me write to Mrs Greenow?”
“I have not the slightest objection; but it will be of no use whatsoever.”
“I will do so, at any rate. And now will you come to the Hall?”
“To beg that old fool’s pardon? No; I won’t. In the mood I am in at present, I couldn’t do it. I should only anger him worse than ever. Tell him that I’ve business which calls me back to London at once.”
“It is a thousand pities.”
“It can’t be helped.”
“It may make so great a difference to you for your whole life!” urged Kate.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said George. “I’ll go to Vavasor and put up with the old Squire’s insolence, if you’ll make this application for me to Alice.” I wonder whether it occurred to him that his sister desired his presence at the Hall solely on his own behalf. The same idea certainly did not occur to Kate. She hesitated, feeling that she would almost do anything to achieve a reconciliation between her grandfather and her brother.
“But you’ll let me write to Aunt Greenow first?” said she. “It will take only two days — or at the most three.”
To this George consented as though he were yielding a great deal; and Kate, with a sore conscience, with a full knowledge that she was undertaking to do wrong, promised that she would apply to Alice for her money, if sufficient funds should not be forthcoming from Mrs Greenow. Thereupon, George graciously consented to proceed to his bedroom, and put together his clothes with a view to his visit to the Hall.
“I thank Providence, Kate, that circumstances make it impossible for me to stay above two days. I have not linen to last me longer.”
“We’ll manage that for you at the Hall.”
“Indeed you won’t do anything of the kind. And look, Kate, when I make that excuse don’t you offer to do so. I will stay there over tomorrow night, and shall go into Kendal early, so as to catch the express train up on Thursday morning. Don’t you throw me over by any counter proposition.”
Then they started together in the car, and very few words were said till they reached the old lodge, which stood at the entrance to the place. “Eh, Mr George; be that you?” said the old woman, who came out to swing back for them the broken gate. “A sight of you is good for sair een.” It was the same welcome that the innkeeper had given him, and equally sincere. George had never made himself popular about the place, but he was the heir.
“I suppose you had better go into the drawing-room,” said Kate; “while I go to my grandfather. You won’t find a fire there.”
“Manage it how you please; but don’t keep me in the cold very long. Heavens, what a country house! The middle of January, and no fires in the rooms.”
“And remember, George, when you see him you must say that you regret that you ever displeased him. Now that you are here, don’t let there be any further misunderstanding.”
“I think it very probable that there will be,” said George. “I only hope he’ll let me have the old horse to take me back to Shap if there is. There he is at the front door, so I shan’t have to go into the room without a fire.”
The old man was standing at the Hall steps when the car drove up, as though to welcome his grandson. He put out his hand to help Kate down the steps, keeping his eye all the time on George’s face.
“So you’ve come back,” the Squire said to him.
“Yes, sir — I’ve come back — like the prodigal son in the parable.”
“The prodigal son was contrite. I hope you are so.”
“Pretty well for that, sir. I’m sorry there has been any quarrel, and all that, you know.”
“Go in,” said the Squire, very angrily. “Go in. To expect anything gracious from you would be to expect pearls from swine. Go in.”
George went in, shrugging his shoulders as his eyes met his sister’s. It was in this fashion that the reconciliation took place between Squire Vavasor and his heir.
As the winter wore itself away, Mr Cheesacre, happy as he was amidst the sports of Norfolk, and prosperous as he might be with the augean spoils of Oileymead, fretted himself with an intense anxiety to bring to a close that affair which he had on his hands with the widow Greenow. There were two special dangers which disturbed him. She would give herself and all her money to that adventurer, Bellfield; or else she would spend her own money so fast before he got hold upon it, that the prize would be greatly damaged. “I’m — if she hasn’t been and set up a carriage!” he said to himself one day, as, standing on the pavement of Tombland, in Norwich, he saw Mrs Greenow issue forth from the Close in a private brougham, accompanied by one of the Fairstairs girls. “She’s been and set up her carriage as sure as my name’s Cheesacre!”
Whatever reason he might have to fear the former danger, we may declare that he had none whatever as to the latter. Mrs Greenow knew what she was doing with her money as well as any lady in England. The private carriage was only a hired brougham taken by the month, and as to that boy in buttons whom she had lately established, why should she not keep a young servant, and call him a page, if it gave her any comfort to do so? If Mr Cheesacre had also known that she had lent the Fairstairs family fifty pounds to help them through with some difficulty which Joe had encountered with the Norwich tradespeople, he would have been beside himself with dismay. He desired to obtain the prize unmutilated — in all its fair proportions. Any such clippings he regarded as robberies against himself.
But he feared Bellfield more than he feared the brougham. That all is fair in love and war was no doubt, at this period, Captain Bellfield’s maxim, and we can only trust that he found in it some consolation, or ease to his conscience, in regard to the monstrous lies which he told his friend. In war, no doubt, all stratagems are fair. The one general is quite justified in making the other believe that he is far to the right, when in truth he is turning his enemy’s left flank. If successful, he will be put upon a pedestal for his clever deceit, and crowned with laurels because of his lie. If Bellfield could only be successful, and achieve for himself the mastery over those forty thousand pounds, the world would forgive him and place, on his brow also, some not uncomfortable crown. In the mean time, his stratagems were as deep and his lies as profound as those of any general.
It must not be supposed that Cheesacre ever believed him. In the first place, he knew that Bellfield was not a man to be believed in any way. Had he not been living on lies for the last ten years? But then a man may lie in such a way as to deceive, though no one believe him. Mr Cheesacre was kept in an agony of doubt while Captain Bellfield occupied his lodgings in Norwich. He fee’d Jeannette liberally. He even fee’d Charlie Fairstairs — Miss Fairstairs I mean — with gloves, and chickens from Oileymead, so that he might know whether that kite fluttered about his dovecote, and of what nature were the flutterings. He went even further than this, and fee’d the Captain himself — binding him down not to flutter as value given in return for such fees. He attempted even to fee the widow, cautioning her against the fluttering, as he tendered to her — on his knees, a brooch as big as a breast-plate. She waved aside the breast-plate, declaring that the mourning ring which contained poor Greenow’s final grey lock of hair, was the last article from a jeweller’s shop which should ever find a place about her person. At the same time she declared that Captain Bellfield was nothing to her; Mr Cheesacre need have no fears in that quarter. But then, she added, neither was he to have any hope. Her affections were all buried under the cold sod. This was harassing. Nevertheless, though no absolute satisfaction was to be attained in the wooing of Mrs Greenow, there was a pleasantness in the occupation which ought to have reconciled her suitors to their destiny. With most ladies, when a gentleman has been on his knees before one of them in the morning, with outspoken protestations of love, with clearly defined proffers of marriage, with a minute inventory of the offerer’s worldly wealth — down even to the “mahogany-furnitured” bed-chambers, as was the case with Mr Cheesacre, and when all these overtures have been peremptorily declined — a gentleman in such a case, I say, would generally feel some awkwardness in sitting down to tea with the lady at the close of such a performance. But with Mrs Greenow there was no such awkwardness. After an hour’s work of the nature above described she would play the hostess with a genial hospitality, that eased off all the annoyance of disappointment; and then at the end of the evening, she would accept a squeeze of the hand, a good, palpable, long-protracted squeeze, with that sort of “don’t — have done now,” by which Irish young ladies allure their lovers. Mr Cheesacre, on such occasions, would leave the Close, swearing that she should be his on the next market day — or at any rate, on the next Saturday. Then, on the Monday, tidings would reach him that Bellfield had passed all Sunday afternoon with his lady-love — Bellfield, to whom he had lent five pound on purpose that he might be enabled to spend that very Sunday with some officers of the Suffolk volunteers at Ipswich. And hearing this, he would walk out among those rich heaps, at the back of his farmyard, uttering deep curses against the falsehood of men and the fickleness of women.
Driven to despair, he at last resolved to ask Bellfield to come to Oileymead for a month. That drilling at Norwich, or the part of it which was supposed to be profitable, was wearing itself out. Funds were low with the Captain — as he did not scruple to tell his friend Cheesacre, and he accepted the invitation. “I’ll mount you with the harriers, old fellow,” Cheesacre had said; “and give you a little shooting. Only I won’t have you go out when I’m not with you.” Bellfield agreed. Each of them understood the nature of the bargain; though Bellfield, I think, had somewhat the clearer understanding in the matter. He would not be so near the widow as he had been at Norwich, but he would not be less near than his kind host. And his host would no doubt watch him closely — but then he also could watch his host. There was a railway station not two miles from Oileymead, and the journey thence into Norwich was one of half an hour. Mr Cheesacre would doubtless be very jealous of such journeys, but with all his jealousy he could not prevent them. And then, in regard to this arrangement, Mr Cheesacre paid the piper, whereas Captain Bellfield paid nothing. Would it not be sweet to him if he could carry off his friend’s prize from under the very eaves of his friend’s house?
And Mrs Greenow also understood the arrangement. “Going to Oileymead; are you?” she said when Captain Bellfield came to tell her of his departure. Charlie Fairstairs was with her, so that the Captain could not utilize the moment in any special way. “It’s quite delightful,” continued the widow, “to see how fond you two gentlemen are of each other.”
“I think gentlemen always like to go best to gentlemen’s houses where there are no ladies,” said Charlie Fairstairs, whose career in life had not as yet been satisfactory to her.
“As for that,” said Bellfield, “I wish with all my heart that dear old Cheesy would get a wife. He wants a wife badly, if ever a man did, with all that house full of blankets and crockery. Why don’t you set your cap at him, Miss Fairstairs?”
“What — at a farmer!” said Charlie who was particularly anxious that her dear friend, Mrs Greenow, should not marry Mr Cheesacre, and who weakly thought to belittle him accordingly.
“Give him my kind love,” said Mrs Greenow, thereby resenting the impotent interference. “And look here, Captain Bellfield, suppose you both dine with me next Saturday. He always comes in on Saturday, and you might as well come too.”
Captain Bellfield declared that he would only be too happy.
“And Charlie shall come to set her cap at Mr Cheesacre,” said the widow, turning a soft and gracious eye on the Captain.
“I shall be happy to come,” — said Charlie, quite delighted; “but not with that object. Mr Cheesacre is very respectable, I’m sure.” Charlie’s mother had been the daughter of a small squire who had let his land to tenants, and she was, therefore, justified by circumstances in looking down upon a farmer.
The matter was so settled — pending the consent of Mr Cheesacre; and Bellfield went out to Oileymead. He knew the ways of the house, and was not surprised to find himself left alone till after dusk; nor was he much surprised when he learned that he was not put into one of the mahogany-furnitured chambers, but into a back room looking over the farmyard in which there was no fire-place. The Captain had already endured some of the evils of poverty, and could have put up with this easily had nothing been said about it. As it was, Cheesacre brought the matter forward, and apologized, and made the thing difficult.
“You see, old fellow,” he said, “there are the rooms, and of course they’re empty. But it’s such a bore hauling out all the things and putting up the curtains. You’ll be very snug where you are.”
“I shall do very well,” said Bellfield rather sulkily.
“Of course you’ll do very well. It’s the warmest room in the house in one way.” He did not say in what way. Perhaps the near neighbourhood of the stables may have had a warming effect.
Bellfield did not like it; but what is a poor man to do under such circumstances? So he went upstairs and washed his hands before dinner in the room without a fire-place, flattering himself that he would yet be even with his friend Cheesacre.
They dined together not in the best humour, and after dinner they sat down to enjoy themselves with pipes and brandy and water. Bellfield, having a taste for everything that was expensive, would have preferred cigars; but his friend put none upon the table. Mr Cheesacre, though he could spend his money liberally when occasion required such spending, knew well the value of domestic economy. He wasn’t going to put himself out, as he called it, for Bellfield! What was good enough for himself was good enough for Bellfield. “A beggar, you know; just a regular beggar!” as he was betrayed into saying to Mrs Greenow on some occasion just at this period. “Poor fellow! He only wants money to make him almost perfect,” Mrs Greenow had answered — and Mr Cheesacre had felt that he had made a mistake.
Both the men became talkative, if not good humoured, under the effects of the brandy and water, and the Captain then communicated Mrs Greenow’s invitation to Mr Cheesacre. He had had his doubts as to the propriety of doing so — thinking that perhaps it might be to his advantage to forget the message. But he reflected that he was at any rate a match for Cheesacre when they were present together, and finally came to the conclusion that the message should be delivered. “I had to go and just wish her goodbye, you know,” he said apologetically, as he finished his little speech.
“I don’t see that at all,” said Cheesacre.
“Why, my dear fellow, how foolishly jealous you are. If I were to be downright uncivil to her, as you would have me be, it would only call attention to the thing.”
“I’m not a bit jealous. A man who sits upon his own ground as I do hasn’t any occasion to be jealous.”
“I don’t know what your own ground has to do with it — but we’ll let that pass.”
“I think it has a great deal to do with it. If a man does intend to marry he ought to have things comfortable about him; unless he wants to live on his wife, which I look upon as about the meanest thing a man can do. By George, I’d sooner break stones than that.”
This was hard for any captain to bear — even for Captain Bellfield; but he did bear it — looking forward to revenge.
“There’s no pleasing you, I know,” said he. “But there’s the fact. I went to say goodbye to her, and she asked me to give you that message. Shall we go or not?”
Cheesacre sat for some time silent, blowing out huge clouds of smoke while he meditated a little plan. “I’ll tell you what it is, Bellfield,” he said at last. “She’s nothing to you, and if you won’t mind it, I’ll go. Mrs Jones shall get you anything you like for dinner — and — and — I’ll stand you a bottle of the 34 port!”
But Captain Bellfield was not going to put up with this. He had not sold himself altogether to work Mr Cheesacre’s will. “No, old fellow,” said he; “that cock won’t fight. She has asked me to dine with her on Saturday, and I mean to go. I don’t intend that she shall think that I’m afraid of her — or of you either.”
“You don’t — don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” said the Captain stoutly.
“I wish you’d pay me some of that money you owe me,” said Cheesacre.
“So I will — when I’ve married the widow. Ha — ha — ha.”
Cheesacre longed to turn him out of the house. Words to bid him go, were, so to say, upon his tongue. But the man would only have taken himself to Norwich, and would have gone without any embargo upon his suit; all their treaties would then be at an end. “She knows a trick worth two of that,” said Cheesacre at last.
“I dare say she does; and if so, why shouldn’t I go and dine with her next Saturday?”
“I’ll tell you why — because you’re in my way. The deuce is in it if I haven’t made the whole thing clear enough. I’ve told you all my plans because I thought you were my friend, and I’ve paid you well to help me, too; and yet it seems to me you’d do anything in your power to throw me over — only you can’t.”
“What an ass you are,” said the Captain after a pause; “just you listen to me. That scraggy young woman, Charlie Fairstairs, is to be there of course.”
“How do you know?”
“I tell you that I do know. She was present when the whole thing was arranged, and I heard her asked, and heard her say that she would come — and for the matter of that I heard her declare that she wouldn’t set her cap at you, because you’re a farmer.”
“Upon my word she’s kind. Upon my word she is,” said Cheesacre, getting very angry and very red. “Charlie Fairstairs, indeed! I wouldn’t pick her out of a gutter with a pair of tongs. She ain’t good enough for my bailiff, let alone me.”
“But somebody must take her in hand on Saturday, if you’re to do any good,” said the crafty Bellfield.
“What the deuce does she have that nasty creature there for?” said Cheesacre, who thought it very hard that everything should not be arranged exactly as he would desire.
“She wants a companion, of course. You can get rid of Charlie, you know, when you make her Mrs Cheesacre.”
“Get rid of her! You don’t suppose she’ll ever put her foot in this house. Not if I know it. I’ve detested that woman for the last ten years.” Cheesacre could forgive no word of slight respecting his social position, and the idea of Miss Fairstairs having pretended to look down upon him, galled him to the quick.
“You’ll have to dine with her at any rate,” said Bellfield, “and I always think that four are better company than three on such occasions.”
Mr Cheesacre grunted an unwilling assent, and after this it was looked upon as an arranged thing that they two should go into Norwich on the Saturday together, and that they should both dine with the widow. Indeed, Mrs Greenow got two notes, one from each of them, accepting the invitation. Cheesacre wrote in the singular number, altogether ignoring Captain Bellfield, as he might have ignored his footman had he intended to take one. The Captain condescended to use the plural pronoun. “We shall be so happy to come,” said he. “Dear old Cheesy is out of his little wits with delight,” he added, “and has already begun to polish off the effects of the farmyard.”
“Effects of the farmyard,” said Mrs Greenow aloud, in Jeannette’s hearing, when she received the note. “It would be well for Captain Bellfield if he had a few such effects himself.”
“You can give him enough, ma’am,” said Jeannette, “to make him a better man than Mr Cheesacre any day. And for a gentleman — of course I say nothing, but if I was a lady, I know which should be the man for me.”
How deep and cunning are the wiles of love! When that Saturday morning arrived not a word was said by Cheesacre to his rival as to his plans for the day. “You’ll take the dogcart in?” Captain Bellfield had asked overnight. “I don’t know what I shall do as yet,” replied he who was master of the house, of the dogcart, and, as he fondly thought, of the situation. But Bellfield knew that Cheesacre must take the dogcart, and was contented. His friend would leave him behind, if it were possible, but Bellfield would take care that it should not be possible.
Before breakfast Mr Cheesacre surreptitiously carried out into the yard a bag containing all his apparatus for dressing — his marrow oil for his hair, his shirt with the wondrous worked front upon an under-stratum of pink to give it colour, his shiny boots, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. When dining in Norwich on ordinary occasions, he simply washed his hands there, trusting to the chambermaid at the inn to find him a comb; and now he came down with his bag surreptitiously, and hid it away in the back of the dogcart with secret, but alas, not unobserved hands, hoping that Bellfield would forget his toilet. But when did such a Captain ever forget his outward man? Cheesacre, as he returned through the kitchen from the yard into the front hall, perceived another bag lying near the door, apparently filled almost as well as his own.
“What the deuce are you going to do with all this luggage?” said he, giving the bag a kick.
“Put it where I saw you putting yours when I opened my window just now,” said Bellfield.
“D— the window,” exclaimed Cheesacre, and then they sat down to breakfast. “How you do hack that ham about,” he said. “If you ever cured hams yourself you’d be more particular in cutting them.” This was very bad. Even Bellfield could not bear it with equanimity, and feeling unable to eat the ham under such circumstances, made his breakfast with a couple of fresh eggs. “If you didn’t mean to eat the meat, why the mischief did you cut it?” said Cheesacre,
“Upon my word, Cheesacre, you’re too bad — upon my word you are,” said Bellfield, almost sobbing.
“What’s the matter now?” said the other.
“Who wants your ham?”
“You do, I suppose, or you wouldn’t cut it.”
“No, I don’t — nor anything else either that you’ve got. It isn’t fair to ask a fellow into your house, and then say such things to him as that. And it isn’t what I’ve been accustomed to either; I can tell you that, Mr Cheesacre.”
“Oh, bother!”
“It’s all very well to say bother, but I choose to be treated like a gentleman wherever I go. You and I have known each other a long time, and I’d put up with more from you than from anyone else; but —.”
“Can you pay me the money that you owe me, Bellfield?” said Cheesacre, looking hard at him.
“No, I can’t,” said Bellfield; not immediately.
“Then eat your breakfast, and hold your tongue.”
After that Captain Bellfield did eat his breakfast — leaving the ham however untouched, and did hold his tongue, vowing vengeance in his head. But the two men went into Norwich more amicably together than they would have done had there been no words between them. Cheesacre felt that he had trespassed a little, and therefore offered the Captain a cigar as he seated himself in the cart. Bellfield accepted the offering, and smoked the weed of peace.
“Now,” said Cheesacre, as he drove into the Swan yard, “what do you mean to do with yourself all day?”
“I shall go down to the quarters, and look the fellows up.”
“All right. But mind this, Bellfield — it’s an understood thing, that you’re not to be in the Close before four?”
“I won’t be in the Close before four!”
“Very well. That’s understood. If you deceive me, I’ll not drive you back to Oileymead tonight.”
In this instance Captain Bellfield had no intention to deceive. He did not think it probable that he could do himself any good by philandering about the widow early in the day. She would be engaged with her dinner and with an early toilet. Captain Bellfield, moreover, had learned from experience that the first comer has not always an advantage in ladies’ society. The mind of a woman is greedy after novelty, and it is upon the stranger, or upon the most strange of her slaves around her, that she often smiles the sweetest. The cathedral clock, therefore, had struck four before Captain Bellfield rang Mrs Greenow’s bell, and then, when he was shown into the drawing-room, he found Cheesacre there alone, redolent with the marrow oil, and beautiful with the pink bosom.
“Haven’t you seen her yet?” asked the Captain almost in a whisper.
“No,” said Cheesacre sulkily.
“Nor yet Charlie Fairstairs?”
“I’ve seen nobody,” said Cheesacre.
But at this moment he was compelled to swallow his anger, as Mrs Greenow, accompanied by her lady guest, came into the room. “Whoever would have expected two gentlemen to be so punctual,” said she, “especially on market day!”
“Market day makes no difference when I come to see you,” said Cheesacre, putting his best foot forward, while Captain Bellfield contented himself with saying something civil to Charlie. He would bide his time and ride a waiting race.
The widow was almost gorgeous in her weeds. I believe that she had not sinned in her dress against any of those canons which the semi-ecclesiastical authorities on widowhood have laid down as to the outward garments fitted for gentlemen’s relicts. The materials were those which are devoted to the deepest conjugal grief. As regarded every item of the written law her suttee worship was carried out to the letter. There was the widow’s cap, generally so hideous, so well known to the eyes of all men, so odious to womanhood. Let us hope that such headgear may have some assuaging effect on the departed spirits of husbands. There was the dress of deep, clinging, melancholy crape — of crape which becomes so brown and so rusty, and which makes the six months’ widow seem so much more afflicted a creature than she whose husband is just gone, and whose crape is therefore new. There were the trailing weepers, and the widow’s kerchief pinned close round her neck and somewhat tightly over her bosom. But there was that of genius about Mrs Greenow, that she had turned every seeming disadvantage to some special profit, and had so dressed herself that though she had obeyed the law to the letter, she had thrown the spirit of it to the winds. Her cap sat jauntily on her head, and showed just so much of her rich brown hair as to give her the appearance of youth which she desired. Cheesacre had blamed her in his heart for her private carriage, but she spent more money, I think, on new crape than she did on her brougham. It never became brown and rusty with her, or formed itself into old lumpy folds, or shaped itself round her like a grave cloth. The written law had not interdicted crinoline, and she loomed as large with weeds, which with her were not sombre, as she would do with her silks when the period of her probation should be over. Her weepers were bright with newness, and she would waft them aside from her shoulder with an air which turned even them into auxiliaries. Her kerchief was fastened close round her neck and close over her bosom; but Jeannette well knew what she was doing as she fastened it — and so did Jeannette’s mistress.
Mrs Greenow would still talk much about her husband, declaring that her loss was as fresh to her wounded heart, as though he, on whom all her happiness had rested, had left her only yesterday; but yet she mistook her dates, frequently referring to the melancholy circumstance, as having taken place fifteen months ago. In truth, however, Mr Greenow had been alive within the last nine months — as everybody around her knew. But if she chose to forget the exact day, why should her friends or dependents remind her of it? No friend or dependent did remind her of it, and Charlie Fairstairs spoke of the fifteen months with bold confidence — false-tongued little parasite that she was.
“Looking well?” said the widow, in answer to some outspoken compliment from Mr Cheesacre. “Yes, I’m well enough in health, and I suppose I ought to be thankful that it is so. But if you had buried a wife whom you had loved within the last eighteen months, you would have become as indifferent as I am to all that kind of thing.”
“I never was married yet,” said Mr Cheesacre.
“And therefore you know nothing about it. Everything in the world is gay and fresh to you. If I were you, Mr Cheesacre, I would not run the risk. It is hardly worth a woman’s while, and I suppose not a man’s. The sufferings are too great!” Whereupon she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
“But I mean to try all the same,” said Cheesacre, looking the lover all over as he gazed into the fair one’s face.
“I hope that you may be successful, Mr Cheesacre, and that she may not be torn away from you early in life. Is dinner ready, Jeannette? That’s well. Mr Cheesacre, will you give your arm to Miss Fairstairs?”
There was no doubt as to Mrs Greenow’s correctness. As Captain Bellfield held, or had held, her Majesty’s commission, he was clearly entitled to take the mistress of the festival down to dinner. But Cheesacre would not look at it in this light. He would only remember that he had paid for the Captain’s food for some time past, that the Captain had been brought into Norwich in his gig, that the Captain owed him money, and ought, so to say, to be regarded as his property on the occasion. “I pay my way, and that ought to give a man higher station than being a beggarly captain — which I don’t believe he is, if all the truth was known.” It was thus that he took an occasion to express himself to Miss Fairstairs on that very evening. “Military rank is always recognized,” Miss Fairstairs had replied, taking Mr Cheesacre’s remarks as a direct slight upon herself. He had taken her down to dinner, and had then come to her complaining that he had been injured in being called upon to do so! “If you were a magistrate, Mr Cheesacre, you would have rank; but I believe you are not.” Charlie Fairstairs knew well what she was about. Mr Cheesacre had striven much to get his name put upon the commission of the peace, but had failed. “Nasty, scraggy old cat,” Cheesacre said to himself, as he turned away from her.
But Bellfield gained little by taking the widow down. He and Cheesacre were placed at the top and bottom of the table, so that they might do the work of carving; and the ladies sat at the sides. Mrs Greenow’s hospitality was very good. The dinner was exactly what a dinner ought to be for four persons. There was soup, fish, a cutlet, a roast fowl, and some game, Jeannette waited at table nimbly, and the thing could not have been done better. Mrs Greenow’s appetite was not injured by her grief, and she so far repressed for the time all remembrance of her sorrow as to enable her to play the kind hostess to perfection. Under her immediate eye Cheesacre was forced into apparent cordiality with his friend Bellfield, and the Captain himself took the good things which the gods provided with thankful good humour.
Nothing, however, was done at the dinner-table. No work got itself accomplished. The widow was so accurately fair in the adjustment of her favours, that even Jeannette could not perceive to which of the two she turned with the amplest smile. She talked herself and made others talk, till Cheesacre became almost comfortable, in spite of his jealousy. “And now,” she said, as she got up to leave the room, when she had taken her own glass of wine, “We will allow these two gentlemen just half an hour, eh, Charlie? and then we shall expect them upstairs.”
“Ten minutes will be enough for us here,” said Cheesacre, who was in a hurry to utilize his time.
“Half an hour,” said Mrs Greenow, not without some little tone of command in her voice. Ten minutes might be enough for Mr Cheesacre, but ten minutes was not enough for her.
Bellfield had opened the door, and it was upon him that the widow’s eye glanced as she left the room. Cheesacre saw it, and resolved to resent the injury. “I’ll tell you what it is, Bellfield,” he said, as he sat down moodily over the fire, “I won’t have you coming here at all, till this matter is settled.”
“Till what matter is settled?” said Bellfield, filling his glass.
“You know what matter I mean.”
“You take such a deuce of a time about it.”
“No, I don’t. I take as little time as anybody could. That other fellow has only been dead about nine months, and I’ve got the thing in excellent training already.”
“And what harm do I do?”
“You disturb me, and you disturb her. You do it on purpose. Do you suppose I can’t see? I’ll tell you what, now; if you’ll go clean out of Norwich for a month, I’ll lend you two hundred pounds on the day she becomes Mrs Cheesacre.”
“And where am I to go to?”
“You may stay at Oileymead if you like — that is, on condition that you do stay there.”
“And be told that I hack the ham because it’s not my own. Shall I tell you a piece of my mind, Cheesacre?”
“What do you mean?”
“That woman has no more idea of marrying you than she has of marrying the Bishop. Won’t you fill your glass, old fellow? I know where the tap is if you want another bottle. You may as well give it up, and spend no more money in pink fronts and polished boots on her account. You’re a podgy man, you see, and Mrs Greenow doesn’t like podgy men.”
Cheesacre sat looking at him with his mouth open, dumb with surprise, and almost paralysed with impotent anger. What had happened during the last few hours to change so entirely the tone of his dependent Captain? Could it be that Bellfield had been there during the morning, and that she had accepted him?
“You are very podgy, Cheesacre,” Bellfield continued, “and then you so often smell of the farmyard; and you talk too much of your money and your property. You’d have had a better chance if you had openly talked to her of hers — as I have done. As it is, you haven’t any chance at all.”
Bellfield, as he thus spoke to the man opposite to him, went on drinking his wine comfortably, and seemed to be chuckling with glee. Cheesacre was so astounded, so lost in amazement that the creature whom he had fed — whom he had bribed with money out of his own pocket, should thus turn against him, that for a while he could not collect his thoughts or find voice wherewith to make any answer. It occurred to him immediately that Bellfield was even now, at this very time, staying at his house — that he, Cheesacre, was expected to drive him, Bellfield, back to Oileymead, to his own Oileymead, on this very evening; and as he thought of this he almost fancied that he must be in a dream. He shook himself, and looked again, and there sat Bellfield, eyeing him through the bright colour of a glass of port.
“Now I’ve told you a bit of my mind, Cheesy, my boy,” continued Bellfield, “and you’ll save yourself a deal of trouble and annoyance if you’ll believe what I say. She don’t mean to marry you. It’s most probable that she’ll marry me; but, at any rate, she won’t marry you.”
“Do you mean to pay me my money, sir?” said Cheesacre, at last, finding his readiest means of attack in that quarter.
“Yes, I do.”
“But when?”
“When I’ve married Mrs Greenow — and, therefore, I expect your assistance in that little scheme. Let us drink her health. We shall always be delighted to see you at our house, Cheesy, my boy, and you shall be allowed to hack the hams just as much as you please.”
“You shall be made to pay for this,” said Cheesacre, gasping with anger — gasping almost more with dismay than he did with anger.
“All right, old fellow; I’ll pay for it — with the widow’s money. Come; our half-hour is nearly over; shall we go upstairs?”
“I’ll expose you.”
“Don’t now — don’t be ill-natured.”
“Will you tell me where you mean to sleep tonight, Captain Bellfield?”
“If I sleep at Oileymead it will only be on condition that I have one of the mahogany-furnitured bedrooms.”
“You’ll never put your foot in that house again. You’re a rascal, sir.”
“Come, come, Cheesy, it won’t do for us to quarrel in a lady’s house. It wouldn’t be the thing at all. You’re not drinking your wine. You might as well take another glass, and then we’ll go upstairs.”
“You’ve left your traps at Oileymead, and not one of them you shall have till you’ve paid me every shilling you owe me. I don’t believe you’ve a shirt in the world beyond what you’ve got there.”
“It’s lucky I brought one in to change; wasn’t it, Cheesy? I shouldn’t have thought of it only for the hint you gave me. I might as well ring the bell for Jeannette to put away the wine, if you won’t take any more.” Then he rang the bell, and when Jeannette came he skipped lightly upstairs into the drawing-room.
“Was he here before today?” said Cheesacre, nodding his head at the door-way through which Bellfield had passed.
“Who? The Captain? Oh dear no. The Captain don’t come here much now — not to say often, by no means.”
“He’s a confounded rascal.”
“Oh, Mr Cheesacre!” said Jeannette.
“He is — and I ain’t sure that there ain’t others nearly as bad as he is.”
“If you mean me, Mr Cheesacre, I do declare you’re a wronging me; I do indeed.”
“What’s the meaning of his going on in this way?”
“I don’t know nothing of his ways, Mr Cheesacre; but I’ve been as true to you, sir — so I have — as true as true.” And Jeannette put her handkerchief up to her eyes.
He moved to the door, and then a thought occurred to him. He put his hand to his trousers pocket, and turning back towards the girl, gave her half-a-crown. She curtsied as she took it, and then repeated her last words. “Yes, Mr Cheesacre — as true as true.” Mr Cheesacre said nothing further, but followed his enemy up to the drawing-room. “What game is up now, I wonder,” said Jeannette to herself, when she was left alone. “They two’ll be cutting each other’s throatses before they’ve done, and then my missus will take the surwiver.” But she made up her mind that Cheesacre should be the one to have his throat cut fatally, and that Bellfield should be the survivor.
Cheesacre, when he reached the drawing-room, found Bellfield sitting on the same sofa with Mrs Greenow looking at a book of photographs which they both of them were handling together. The outside rim of her widow’s frill on one occasion touched the Captain’s whisker, and as it did so the Captain looked up with a gratified expression of triumph. If any gentleman has ever seen the same thing under similar circumstances, he will understand that Cheesacre must have been annoyed.
“Yes,” said Mrs Greenow, waving her handkerchief, of which little but a two-inch-deep border seemed to be visible. Bellfield knew at once that it was not the same handkerchief which she had waved before they went down to dinner. “Yes — there he is. It’s so like him.” And then she apostrophized the carte de visite of the departed one. “Dear Greenow; dear husband! When my spirit is false to thee, let thine forget to visit me softly in my dreams. Thou wast unmatched among husbands. Whose tender kindness was ever equal to thine? whose sweet temper was ever so constant? whose manly care so all-sufficient?” While the words fell from her lips her little finger was touching Bellfield’s little finger, as they held the book between them. Charlie Fairstairs and Mr Cheesacre were watching her narrowly, and she knew that they were watching her. She was certainly a woman of great genius and of great courage.
Bellfield, moved by the eloquence of her words, looked with some interest at the photograph. There was represented there before him, a small, grey-looking, insignificant old man, with pig’s eyes and a toothless mouth — one who should never have been compelled to submit himself to the cruelty of the sun’s portraiture! Another widow, even if she had kept in her book the photograph of such a husband, would have scrambled it over silently — would have been ashamed to show it. “Have you ever seen it, Mr Cheesacre?” asked Mrs Greenow. “It’s so like him.”
“I saw it at Yarmouth,” said Cheesacre, very sulkily.
“That you did not,” said the lady with some dignity, and not a little of rebuke in her tone; “simply because it never was at Yarmouth. A larger one you may have seen, which I always keep, and always shall keep, close by my bedside.”
“Not if I know it,” said Captain Bellfield to himself. Then the widow punished Mr Cheesacre for his sullenness by whispering a few words to the Captain; and Cheesacre in his wrath turned to Charlie Fairstairs. Then it was that he spake out his mind about the Captain’s rank, and was snubbed by Charlie — as was told a page or two back.
After that, coffee was brought to them, and here again Cheesacre in his ill-humour allowed the Captain to out-manoeuvre him. It was the Captain who put the sugar into the cups, and handed them round. He even handed a cup to his enemy. “None for me, Captain Bellfield; many thanks for your politeness all the same,” said Mr Cheesacre; and Mrs Greenow knew from the tone of his voice that there had been a quarrel.
Cheesacre sitting then in his gloom, had resolved upon one thing — or, I may perhaps say, upon two things. He had resolved that he would not leave the room that evening till Bellfield had left it; and that he would get a final answer from the widow, if not that night — for he thought it very possible that they might both be sent away together — then early after breakfast on the following morning. For the present, he had given up any idea of turning his time to good account. He was not perhaps a coward, but he had not that special courage which enables a man to fight well under adverse circumstances. He had been cowed by the unexpected impertinence of his rival — by the insolence of a man to whom he thought that he had obtained the power of being always himself as insolent as he pleased. He could not recover his ground quickly, or carry himself before his lady’s eye as though he was unconscious of the wound he had received. So he sat silent, while Bellfield was discoursing fluently. He sat in silence, comforting himself with reflections on his own wealth, and on the poverty of the other, and promising himself a rich harvest of revenge when the moment should come in which he might tell Mrs Greenow how absolutely that man was a beggar, a swindler, and a rascal.
And he was astonished when an opportunity for doing so came very quickly. Before the neighbouring clock had done striking seven, Bellfield rose from his chair to go. He first of all spoke a word of farewell to Miss Fairstairs; then he turned to his late host; “Good-night, Cheesacre,” he said, in the easiest tone in the world; after that he pressed the widow’s hand and whispered his adieu.
“I thought you were staying at Oileymead?” said Mrs Greenow.
“I came from there this morning,” said the Captain.
“But he isn’t going back there, I can tell you,” said Mr Cheesacre.
“Oh, indeed,” said Mrs Greenow; “I hope there is nothing wrong.”
“All as right as a trivet,” said the Captain; and then he was off.
“I promised mamma that I would be home by seven,” said Charlie Fairstairs, rising from her chair. It cannot be supposed that she had any wish to oblige Mr Cheesacre, and therefore this movement on her part must be regarded simply as done in kindness to Mrs Greenow. She might be mistaken in supposing that Mrs Greenow would desire to be left alone with Mr Cheesacre; but it was clear to her that in this way she could give no offence, whereas it was quite possible that she might offend by remaining. A little after seven Mr Cheesacre found himself alone with the lady.
“I’m sorry to find,” said she, gravely, “that you two have quarrelled.”
“Mrs Greenow,” said he, jumping up, and becoming on a sudden full of life, “that man is a downright swindler.”
“Oh, Mr Cheesacre.”
“He is. He’ll tell you that he was at Inkermann, but I believe he was in prison all the time.” The Captain had been arrested, I think twice, and thus Mr Cheesacre justified to himself this assertion. “I doubt whether he ever saw a shot fired,” he continued.
“He’s none the worse for that.”
“But he tells such lies; and then he has not a penny in the world. How much do you suppose he owes me, now?”
“However much it is, I’m sure you are too much of a gentleman to say.”
“Well — yes, I am,” said he, trying to recover himself. “But when I asked him how he intended to pay me, what do you think he said? He said he’d pay me when he got your money.”
“My money! He couldn’t have said that!”
“But he did, Mrs Greenow; I give you my word and honour. ‘I’ll pay you when I get the widow’s money,’ he said.”
“You gentlemen must have a nice way of talking about me when I am absent.”
“I never said a disrespectful word about you in my life, Mrs Greenow — or thought one. He does — he says horrible things.”
“What horrible things, Mr Cheesacre?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you — but he does. What can you expect from such a man as that, who, to my knowledge, won’t have a change of clothes tomorrow, except what he brought in on his back this morning? Where he’s to get a bed tonight, I don’t know, for I doubt whether he’s got half-a-crown in the world.”
“Poor Bellfield!”
“Yes; he is poor.”
“But how gracefully he carries his poverty.”
“I should call it very disgraceful, Mrs Greenow.” To this she made no reply, and then he thought that he might begin his work. “Mrs Greenow — may I say Arabella?”
“Mr Cheesacre!”
“But mayn’t I? Come, Mrs Greenow. You know well enough by this time what it is I mean. What’s the use of shilly-shallying?”
“Shilly-shallying, Mr Cheesacre! I never heard such language. If I bid you good-night, now, and tell you that it is time for you to go home, shall you call that shilly-shallying?”
He had made a mistake in his word and repented it. “I beg your pardon, Mrs Greenow; I do indeed. I didn’t mean anything offensive.”
“Shilly-shallying, indeed! There’s very little shall in it, I can assure you.”
The poor man was dreadfully crestfallen, so much so that the widow’s heart relented, and she pardoned him. It was not in her nature to quarrel with people — at any rate, not with her lovers. “I beg your pardon, Mrs Greenow,” said the culprit, humbly. “It is granted,” said the widow; “but never tell a lady again that she is shilly-shallying. And look here, Mr Cheesacre, if it should ever come to pass that you are making love to a lady in earnest — ”
“I couldn’t be more in earnest,” said he.
“That you are making love to a lady in earnest, talk to her a little more about your passion and a little less about your purse. Now, goodnight.”
“But we are friends.”
“Oh yes — as good friends as ever.”
Cheesacre, as he drove himself home in the dark, tried to console himself by thinking of the miserable plight in which Bellfield would find himself in at Norwich, with no possessions but what he had brought into the town that day in a small bag. But as he turned in at his own gate he met two figures emerging; one of them was laden with a portmanteau, and the other with a hat case.
“It’s only me, Cheesy, my boy,” said Bellfield. “I’ve just come down by the rail to fetch my things, and I’m going back to Norwich by the 9.20.”
“If you’ve stolen anything of mine I’ll have you prosecuted,” roared Cheesacre, as he drove his gig up to his own door.
George Vavasor remained about four days beneath his grandfather’s roof; but he was not happy there himself, nor did he contribute to the happiness of any one else. He remained there in great discomfort so long, being unwilling to leave till an answer had been received to the request made to Aunt Greenow, in order that he might insist on Kate’s performance of her promise with reference to Alice, if that answer should be unfavourable. During these five days Kate did all in her power to induce her brother to be, at any rate, kind in his manner towards his grandfather, but it was in vain. The Squire would not be the first to be gracious; and George, quite as obstinate as the old man, would take no steps in that direction till encouraged to do so by graciousness from the other side. Poor Kate entreated each of them to begin, but her entreaties were of no avail. “He is an ill-mannered cub”, the old main said, “and I was a fool to let him into the house. Don’t mention his name to me again.” George argued the matter more at length. Kate spoke to him of his own interest in the matter, urging upon him that he might, by such conduct, drive the Squire to exclude him altogether from the property.
“He must do as he likes,” George said, sulkily.
“But for Alice’s sake!” Kate answered.
“Alice would be the last to expect me to submit to unreasonable ill-usage for the sake of money. As regards myself, I confess that I’m very fond of money and am not particularly squeamish. I would do anything that a man can do to secure it. But this I can’t do. I never injured him, and I never asked him to injure himself. I never attempted to borrow money from him. I have never cost him a shilling. When I was in the wine business he might have enabled me to make a large fortune simply by settling on me then the reversion of property which, when he dies, ought to be my own. He was so perversely ignorant that he would make no inquiry, but chose to think that I was ruining myself, at the only time of my life when I was really doing well.”
“But he had a right to act as he pleased,” urged Kate.
“Certainly he had. But he had no right to resent my asking such a favour at his hands. He was an ignorant old fool not to do it; but I should never have quarrelled with him on that account. Nature made him a fool, and it wasn’t his fault. But I can’t bring myself to kneel in the dirt before him simply because I asked for what was reasonable.”
The two men said very little to each other. They were never alone together except during that half-hour after dinner in which they were supposed to drink their wine. The old Squire always took three glasses of port during this period, and expected that his grandson would take three with him. But George would drink none at all. “I have given up drinking wine after dinner,” said he, when his grandfather pushed the bottle over to him. “I suppose you mean that you drink nothing but claret,” said the Squire, in a tone of voice that was certainly not conciliatory. “I mean simply what I say,” said George — “that I have given up drinking wine after dinner.” The old man could not openly quarrel with his heir on such a point as that. Even Mr Vavasor could not tell his grandson that he was going to the dogs because he had become temperate. But, nevertheless, there was offence in it; and when George sat perfectly silent, looking at the fire, evidently determined to make no attempt at conversation, the offence grew, and became strong. “What the devil’s the use of your sitting there if you neither drink nor talk?” said the old man, “No use in the world, that I can see,” said George; “if, however, I were to leave you, you would abuse me for it.”
“I don’t care how soon you leave me,” said the Squire. From all which it may be seen that George Vavasor’s visit to the hall of his ancestors was not satisfactory.
On the fourth day, about noon, came Aunt Greenow’s reply.
“Dearest Kate,” she said, “I am not going to do what you ask me,” — thus rushing instantly into the middle of her subject. “You see, I don’t know my nephew, and have no reason for being specially anxious that he should be in Parliament. I don’t care two straws about the glory of the Vavasor family. If I had never done anything for myself, the Vavasors would have done very little for me. I don’t care much about what you call ‘blood.’ I like those who like me, and whom I know, I am very fond of you, and because you have been good to me I would give you a thousand pounds if you wanted it for yourself; but I don’t see why I am to give my money to those I don’t know. If it is necessary to tell my nephew of this, pray tell him that I mean no offence.
“Your friend C. is still waiting — waiting — waiting, patiently; but his patience may be exhausted.
“Your affectionate aunt, ARABELLA GREENOW.”
“Of course she won’t,” said George, as he threw back the letter to his sister. “Why should she?”
“I had hoped she would,” said Kate,
“Why should she? What did I ever do for her? She is a sensible woman. Who is your friend C., and why is he waiting patiently?”
“He is a man who would be glad to marry her for her money, if she would take him.”
“Then what does she mean by his patience being exhausted?”
“It is her folly. She chooses to pretend to think that the man is a lover of mine.”
“Has he got any money?”
“Yes; lots of money — or money’s worth.”
“And what is his name?”
“His name is Cheesacre. But pray don’t trouble yourself to talk about him.”
“If he wants to marry you, and has plenty of money, why shouldn’t you take him?”
“Good heavens, George! In the first place he does not want to marry me. In the next place all his heart is in his farmyard.”
“And a very good place to have it,” said George.
“Undoubtedly. But, really, you must not trouble yourself to talk about him.”
“Only this — that I should be very glad to see you well married.”
“Should you?” said she, thinking of her close attachment to himself.
“And, now, about the money,” said George. “You must write to Alice at once.” — “Oh, George!”
“Of course you must; you have promised. Indeed, it would have been much wiser if you had taken me at my word, and done it at once.” — “I cannot do it.”
Then the scar on his face opened itself, and his sister stood before him in fear and trembling. “Do you mean to tell me,” said he, “that you will go back from your word, and deceive me — that after having kept me here by this promise, you will not do what you have said you would do?”
“Take my money now, and pay me out of hers as soon as you are married. I will be the first to claim it from her — and from you.”
“That is nonsense.”
“Why should it be nonsense? Surely you need have no scruple with me. I should have none with you if I wanted assistance.”
“Look here, Kate; I won’t have it, and there’s an end of it. All that you have in the world would not pull me through this election, and therefore such a loan would be worse than useless.”
“And am I to ask her for more than two thousand pounds?”
“You are to ask her simply for one thousand. That is what I want, and must have, at present. And she knows that I want it, and that she is to supply it; only she does not know that my need is so immediate. That you must explain to her.”
“I would sooner burn my hand, George!”
“But burning your hand, unfortunately, won’t do any good. Look here, Kate; I insist upon your doing this for me. If you do not, I shall do it, of course, myself; but I shall regard your refusal as an unjustifiable falsehood on your part, and shall certainly not see you afterwards. I do not wish, for reasons which you may well understand, to write to Alice myself on any subject at present. I now claim your promise to do so; and if you refuse, I shall know very well what to do.”
Of course she did not persist in her refusal. With a sorrowful heart, and with fingers that could hardly form the needful letters, she did write a letter to her cousin, which explained the fact — that George Vavasor immediately wanted a thousand pounds for his electioneering purposes. It was a stiff, uncomfortable letter, unnatural in its phraseology, telling its own tale of grief and shame. Alice understood very plainly all the circumstances under which it was written, but she sent back word to Kate at once, undertaking that the money should be forthcoming; and she wrote again before the end of January, saying that the sum named had been paid to George’s credit at his own bankers.
Kate had taken immense pride in the renewal of the match between her brother and her cousin, and had rejoiced in it greatly as being her own work. But all that pride and joy were now over. She could no longer write triumphant notes to Alice, speaking always of George as one who was to be their joint hero, foretelling great things of his career in Parliament, and saying little soft things of his enduring love. It was no longer possible to her now to write of George at all, and it was equally impossible to Alice. Indeed, no letters passed between them, when that monetary correspondence was over, up to the end of the winter. Kate remained down in Westmoreland, wretched and ill at ease, listening to hard words spoken by her grandfather against her brother, and feeling herself unable to take her brother’s part as she had been wont to do in other times. George returned to town at the end of those four days, and found that the thousand pounds was duly placed to his credit before the end of the month. It is hardly necessary to tell the reader that this money had come from the stores of Mr Tombe, and that Mr Tombe duly debited Mr Grey with the amount. Alice, in accordance with her promise, had told her father that the money was needed, and her father, in accordance with his promise, had procured it without a word of remonstrance. “Surely I must sign some paper,” Alice had said.
But she had been contented when her father told her that the lawyers would manage all that.
It was nearly the end of February when George Vavasor made his first payment to Mr Scruby on behalf of the coming election; and when he called at Mr Scruby’s office with this object, he received some intelligence which surprised him not a little. “You haven’t heard the news,” said Scruby. “What news?” said George.
“The Marquis is as nearly off the hooks as a man can be.” Mr Scruby, as he communicated the tidings, showed clearly by his face and voice that they were supposed to be of very great importance; but Vavasor did not at first seem to be as much interested in the fate of “the Marquis” as Scruby had intended.
“I’m very sorry for him,” said George. “Who is the Marquis? There’ll be sure to come another, so it don’t much signify.”
“There will come another, and that’s just it. It’s the Marquis of Bunratty; and if he drops, our young Member will go into the Upper House.”
“What, immediately; before the end of the Session?” George, of course, knew well enough that such would be the case, but the effect which this event would have upon himself now struck him suddenly.
“To be sure,” said Scruby. “The writ would be out immediately. I should be glad enough of it, only that I know that Travers’s people have heard of it before us, and that they are ready to be up with their posters directly the breath is out of the Marquis’s body. We must go to work immediately; that’s all.”
“It will only be for part of a Session,” said George. “Just so,” said Mr Scruby.
“And then there’ll be the cost of another election.”
“That’s true,” said Mr Scruby; “but in such cases we do manage to make it come a little cheaper. If you lick Travers now, it may be that you’ll have a walk over for the next.”
“Have you seen Grimes?” asked George.
“Yes, I have; the blackguard! He is going to open his house on Travers’s side. He came to me as bold as brass, and told me so, saying that he never liked gentlemen who kept him waiting for his odd money. What angers me is that he ever got it.”
“We have not managed it very well, certainly,” said Vavasor, looking nastily at the attorney.
“We can’t help those little accidents, Mr Vavasor. There are worse accidents than that turn up almost daily in my business. You may think yourself almost lucky that I haven’t gone over to Travers myself. He is a Liberal, you know; and it hasn’t been for want of an offer, I can tell you.”
Vavasor was inclined to doubt the extent of his luck in this respect, and was almost disposed to repent of his Parliamentary ambition. He would now be called upon to spend certainly not less than three thousand pounds of his cousin’s money on the chance of being able to sit in Parliament for a few months. And then, after what a fashion would he be compelled to negotiate that loan! He might, to be sure, allow the remainder of this Session to run, and stand, as he had intended, at the general election; but he knew that if he now allowed a Liberal to win the seat, the holder of the seat would be almost sure of subsequent success. He must either fight now, or give up the fight altogether; and he was a man who did not love to abandon any contest in which he had been engaged.
“Well, Squire,” said Scruby, “how is it to be?” And Vavasor felt that he detected in the man’s voice some diminution of that respect with which he had hitherto been treated as a paying candidate for a metropolitan borough,
“This lord is not dead yet,” said Vavasor.
“No; he’s not dead yet, that we have heard; but it won’t do for us to wait. We want every minute of time that we can get. There isn’t any hope for him, I’m told. It’s gout in the stomach, or dropsy at the heart, or some of those things that make a fellow safe to go.”
“It won’t do to wait for the next election?”
“If you ask me, I should say certainly not. Indeed, I shouldn’t wish to have to conduct it under such circumstances. I hate a fight when there’s no chance of success. I grudge spending a man’s money in such a case; I do indeed, Mr Vavasor.”
“I suppose Grimes’s going over won’t make much difference?”
“The blackguard! He’ll take a hundred and fifty votes, I suppose; perhaps more. But that is not much in such a constituency as the Chelsea districts. You see, Travers played mean at the last election, and that will be against him.”
“But the Conservatives will have a candidate.”
“There’s no knowing; but I don’t think they will. They’ll try one at the general, no doubt; but if the two sitting Members can pull together, they won’t have much of a chance.” Vavasor found himself compelled to say that he would stand; and Scruby undertook to give the initiatory orders at once, not waiting even till the Marquis should be dead. “We should have our houses open as soon as theirs,” said he. “There’s a deal in that.” So George Vavasor gave his orders. “If the worst comes to the worst,” he said to himself, “I can always cut my throat.”
As he walked from the attorney’s office to his club he bethought himself that that might not unprobably be the necessary termination of his career. Everything was going wrong with him. His grandfather, who was eighty years of age, would not die — appeared to have no symptoms of dying — whereas this Marquis, who was not yet much over fifty, was rushing headlong out of the world, simply because he was the one man whose continued life at the present moment would be serviceable to George Vavasor. As he thought of his grandfather he almost broke his umbrella by the vehemence with which he struck it against the pavement. What right could an ignorant old fool like that have to live for ever, keeping possession of a property which he could not use, and ruining those who were to come after him? If now, at this moment, that wretched place down in Westmoreland could become his, he might yet ride triumphantly over his difficulties, and refrain from sullying his hands with more of his cousin’s money till she should become his wife.
Even that thousand pounds had not passed through his hands without giving him much bitter suffering. As is always the case in such matters, the thing done was worse than the doing of it. He had taught himself to look at it lightly whilst it was yet unaccomplished; but he could not think of it lightly now. Kate had been right. It would have been better for him to take her money. Any money would have been better than that upon which he had laid his sacrilegious hands. If he could have cut a purse, after the old fashion, the stain of the deed would hardly have been so deep. In these days — for more than a month, indeed, after his return from Westmorelard — he did not go near Queen Anne Street, trying to persuade himself that he stayed away because of her coldness to him. But, in truth, he was afraid of seeing her without speaking of her money, and afraid to see her if he were to speak of it.
“You have seen the Globe’?” someone said to him as he entered the club,
“No, indeed; I have seen nothing.”
“Bunratty died in Ireland this morning. I suppose you’ll be up for the Chelsea districts?”
Parliament opened that year on the twelfth of February and Mr Palliser was one of the first Members of the Lower House to take his seat. It had been generally asserted through the country, during the last week, that the existing Chancellor of the Exchequer had, so to say, ceased to exist as such; that though he still existed to the outer world, drawing his salary, and doing routine work — if a man so big can have any routine work to do — he existed no longer in the inner world of the Cabinet. He had differed, men said, with his friend and chief, the Prime Minister, as to the expediency of repealing what were left of the direct taxes of the country, and was prepared to launch himself into opposition with his small bodyguard of followers, with all his energy and with all his venom.
There is something very pleasant in the close, bosom friendship, and bitter, uncompromising animosity, of these human gods — of these human beings who would be gods were they not shorn so short of their divinity in that matter of immortality. If it were so arranged that the same persons were always friends, and the same persons were always enemies, as used to be the case among the dear old heathen gods and goddesses — if Parliament were an Olympus in which Juno and Venus never kissed, the thing would not be nearly so interesting. But in this Olympus partners are changed, the divine bosom, now rabid with hatred against some opposing deity, suddenly becomes replete with love towards its late enemy, and exciting changes occur which give to the whole thing all the keen interest of a sensational novel. No doubt this is greatly lessened for those who come too near the scene of action. Members of Parliament, and the friends of Members of Parliament, are apt to teach themselves that it means nothing; that Lord This does not hate Mr That, or think him a traitor to his country, or wish to crucify him; and that Sir John of the Treasury is not much in earnest when he speaks of his noble friend at the “Foreign Office” as a god to whom no other god was ever comparable in honesty, discretion, patriotism, and genius. But the outside Briton who takes a delight in politics — and this description should include ninety-nine educated Englishmen out of every hundred — should not be desirous of peeping behind the scenes. No beholder at any theatre should do so. It is good to believe in these friendships and these enmities, and very pleasant to watch their changes. It is delightful when Oxford embraces Manchester, finding that it cannot live without support in that quarter; and very delightful when the uncompromising assailant of all men in power receives the legitimate reward of his energy by being taken in among the bosoms of the blessed.
But although the outer world was so sure that the existing Chancellor of the Exchequer had ceased to exist, when the House of Commons met that gentleman took his seat on the Treasury Bench. Mr Palliser, who had by no means given a general support to the Ministry in the last Session, took his seat on the same side of the House indeed, but low down, and near to the cross benches. Mr Bott sat close behind him, and men knew that Mr Bott was a distinguished member of Mr Palliser’s party, whatever that party might be. Lord Cinquebars moved the Address, and I must confess that he did it very lamely. He was once accused by Mr Maxwell, the brewer, of making a great noise in the hunting field. The accusation could not be repeated as to his performance on this occasion, as no one could hear a word that he said. The Address was seconded by Mr Loftus Fitzhoward, a nephew of the Duke of St Bungay, who spoke as though he were resolved to trump poor Lord Cinquebars in every sentence which he pronounced — as we so often hear the second clergyman from the Communion Table trumping his weary predecessor, who has just finished the Litany not in the clearest or most audible voice. Every word fell from Mr Fitzhoward with the elaborate accuracy of a separate pistol-shot; and as he became pleased with himself in his progress, and warm with his work, he accented his words sharply, made rhetorical pauses, even moved his hands about in action, and quite disgusted his own party, who had been very well satisfied with Lord Cinquebars. There are many rocks which a young speaker in Parliament should avoid, but no rock which requires such careful avoiding as the rock of eloquence. Whatever may be his faults, let him at least avoid eloquence. He should not be inaccurate, which, however, is not much; he should not be long-winded, which is a good deal; he should not be ill-tempered, which is more; but none of these faults are so damnable as eloquence. All Mr Fitzhoward’s friends and all his enemies knew that he had had his chance, and that he had thrown it away.
In the Queen’s Speech there had been some very lukewarm allusion to remission of direct taxation. This remission, which had already been carried so far, should be carried further if such further carrying were found practicable. So had said the Queen. Those words, it was known, could not have been approved of by the energetic and still existing Chancellor of the Exchequer. On this subject the mover of the Address said never a word, and the seconder only a word or two. What they had said had, of course, been laid down for them; though, unfortunately, the manner of saying could not be so easily prescribed. Then there arose a great enemy, a man fluent of diction, apparently with deep malice at his heart, though at home — as we used to say at school — one of the most good-natured fellows in the world; one ambitious of that godship which a seat on the other side of the House bestowed, and greedy to grasp at the chances which this disagreement in the councils of the gods might give him. He was quite content, he said, to vote for the Address, as, he believed, would be all the gentlemen on his side of the House. No one could suspect them or him of giving a factious opposition to Government. Had they not borne and forborne beyond all precedent known in that House? Then he touched lightly, and almost with grace to his opponents, on many subjects, promising support, and barely hinting that they were totally and manifestly wrong in all things. But —. Then the tone of his voice changed, and the well-known look of fury was assumed upon his countenance. Then great Jove on the other side pulled his hat over his eyes, and smiled blandly. Then members put away the papers they had been reading for a moment, and men in the gallery began to listen. But —. The long and the short of it was this; that the existing Government had come into power on the cry of a reduction of taxation, and now they were going to shirk the responsibility of their own measures. They were going to shirk the responsibility of their own election cry, although it was known that their own Chancellor of the Exchequer was prepared to carry it out to the full. He was willing to carry it out to the full were he not restrained by the timidity, falsehood, and treachery of his colleagues, of whom, of course, the most timid, the most false, and the most treacherous was — the great god Jove, who sat blandly smiling on the other side.
No one should ever go near the House of Commons who wishes to enjoy all this. It was so manifestly evident that neither Jove nor any of his satellites cared tuppence for what the irate gentleman was saying; nay, it became so evident that, in spite of his assumed fury, the gentleman was not irate. He intended to communicate his look of anger to the newspaper reports of his speech; and he knew from experience that he could succeed in that. And men walked about the House in the most telling moments — enemies shaking hands with enemies — in a way that showed an entire absence of all good, honest hatred among them. But the gentleman went on and finished his speech, demanding at last, in direct terms, that the Treasury Jove should state plainly to the House who was to be, and who was not to be, the bearer of the purse among the gods.
Then Treasury Jove got up smiling, and thanked his enemy for the cordiality of his support. “He had always,” he said, “done the gentleman’s party justice for their clemency, and had feared no opposition from them; and he was glad to find that he was correct in his anticipations as to the course they would pursue on the present occasion.” He went on saying a good deal about home matters, and foreign matters, proving that everything was right, just as easily as his enemy had proved that everything was wrong. On all these points he was very full, and very courteous; but when he came to the subject of taxation, he simply repeated the passage from the Queen’s Speech, expressing a hope that his right honourable friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would be able to satisfy the judgment of the House, and the wishes of the people. That specially personal question which had been asked he did not answer at all.
But the House was still all agog, as was the crowded gallery. The energetic and still existing Chancellor of the Exchequer was then present, divided only by one little thin Secretary of State from Jove himself. Would he get up and declare his purposes? He was a man who almost always did get up when an opportunity offered itself — or when it did not. Some second little gun was fired off from the Opposition benches, and then there was a pause. Would the purse-bearer of Olympus rise upon his wings and speak his mind, or would he sit in silence upon his cloud? There was a general call for the purse-bearer, but he floated in silence, and was inexplicable. The purse-bearer was not to be bullied into any sudden reading of the riddle. Then there came on a general debate about money matters, in which the purse-bearer did say a few words, but he said nothing as to the great question at issue. At last up got Mr Palliser, towards the close of the evening, and occupied a full hour in explaining what taxes the Government might remit with safety, and what they might not — Mr Bott, meanwhile, prompting him with figures from behind with an assiduity that was almost too persistent. According to Mr Palliser, the words used in the Queen’s Speech were not at all too cautious. The Members went out gradually, and the House became very thin during this oration; but the newspapers declared, next morning, that his speech had been the speech of the night, and that the perspicuity of Mr Palliser pointed him out as the coming man.
He returned home to his house in Park Lane quite triumphant after his success, and found Lady Glencora, at about twelve o’clock, sitting alone. She had arrived in town on that day, having come up at her own request, instead of remaining at Matching Priory till after Easter, as he had proposed. He had wished her to stay, in order, as he had said, that there might be a home for his cousins. But she had expressed herself unwilling to remain without him, explaining that the cousins might have the home in her absence, as well as they could in her presence; and he had given way. But, in truth, she had learned to hate her cousin Iphy Palliser with a hatred that was unreasonable — seeing that she did not also hate Alice Vavasor, who had done as much to merit her hatred as had her cousin. Lady Glencora knew by what means her absence from Monkshade had been brought about. Miss Palliser had told her all that had passed in Alice’s bedroom on the last night of Alice’s stay at Matching, and had, by so doing, contrived to prevent the visit. Lady Glencora understood well all that Alice had said; and yet, though she hated Miss Palliser for what had been done, she entertained no anger against Alice. Of course Alice would have prevented that visit to Monkshade if it were in her power to do so. Of course she would save her friend. It is hardly too much to say that Lady Glencora looked to Alice to save her. Nevertheless she hated Iphy Palliser for engaging herself in the same business. Lady Glencora looked to Alice to save her, and yet it may be doubted whether she did, in truth, wish to be saved.
While she was at Matching, and before Mr Palliser had returned from Monkshade, a letter reached her, by what means she had never learned. “A letter has been placed within my writing-case,” she said to her maid, quite openly. “Who put it there?” The maid had declared her ignorance in a manner that had satisfied Lady Glencora of her truth. “If such a thing happens again,” said Lady Glencora, “I shall be obliged to have the matter investigated. I cannot allow that anything should be put into my room surreptitiously.” There, then, had been an end of that, as regarded any steps taken by Lady Glencora. The letter had been from Burgo Fitzgerald, and had contained a direct proposal that she should go off with him. “I am at Matching,” the letter said, “at the Inn; but I do not dare to show myself, lest I should do you an injury. I walked round the house yesterday, at night, and I know that I saw your room. If I am wrong in thinking that you love me, I would not for worlds insult you by my presence; but if you love me still, I ask you to throw aside from you that fictitious marriage, and give yourself to the man whom, if you love him, you should regard as your husband.” There had been more of it, but it had been to the same effect. To Lady Glencora it had seemed to convey an assurance of devoted love — of that love which, in former days, her friends had told her was not within the compass of Burgo’s nature. He had not asked her to meet him then, but saying that he would return to Matching after Parliament was met, begged her to let him have some means of knowing whether her heart was true to him,
She told no one of the letter, but she kept it, and read it over and over again in the silence and solitude of her room. She felt that she was guilty in thus reading it — even in keeping it from her husband’s knowledge; but though conscious of this guilt, though resolute almost in its commission, still she determined not to remain at Matching after her husband’s departure — not to undergo the danger of remaining there while Burgo Fitzgerald should be in the vicinity. She could not analyse her own wishes. She often told herself, as she had told Alice, that it would be better for them all that she should go away; that in throwing herself even to the dogs, if such must be the result, she would do more of good than of harm. She declared to herself, in the most passionate words she could use, that she loved this man with all her heart. She protested that the fault would not be hers, but theirs, who had forced her to marry the man she did not love. She assured herself that her husband had no affection for her, and that their marriage was in every respect prejudicial to him. She recurred over and over again, in her thoughts, to her own childlessness, and to his extreme desire for an heir. “Though I do sacrifice myself,” she would say, “I shall do more of good than harm, and I cannot be more wretched than I am now.” But yet she fled to London because she feared to leave herself at Matching when Burgo Fitzgerald should be there. She sent no answer to his letter. She made no preparation for going with him. She longed to see Alice, to whom alone, since her marriage, had she ever spoken of her love, and intended to tell her the whole tale of that letter. She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.
Mr Palliser had not seen her since her arrival in London, and, of course, he took her by the hand and kissed her. But it was the embrace of a brother rather than of a lover or a husband. Lady Glencora, with her full woman’s nature, understood this thoroughly, and appreciated by instinct the true hearing of every touch from his hand. “I hope you are well?” she said.
“Oh, yes; quite well. And you? A little fatigued with your journey, I suppose?”
“No; not much.”
“Well, we have had a debate on the Address. Don’t you want to know how it has gone?”
“If it has concerned you particularly, I do, of course.”
“Concerned me! It has concerned me certainly.”
“They haven’t appointed you yet; have they?”
“No; they don’t appoint people during debates, in the House of Commons. But I fear I shall never make you a politician.”
“I’m almost afraid you never will. But I’m not the less anxious for your success, since you wish it yourself. I don’t understand why you should work so very hard; but, as you like it, I’m as anxious as anybody can be that you should triumph.”
“Yes; I do like it,” he said. “A man must like something, and I don’t know what there is to like better. Some people can eat and drink all day; and some people can care about a horse. I can do neither.”
And there were others, Lady Glencora thought, who could love to lie in the sun, and could look up into the eyes of women, and seek their happiness there. She was sure, at any rate, that she knew one such. But she said nothing of this,
“I spoke for a moment to Lord Brock,” said Mr Palliser. Lord Brock was the name by which the present Jove of the Treasury was known among men.
“And what did Lord Brock say?”
“He didn’t say much, but he was very cordial.”
“But I thought, Plantagenet, that he could appoint you if he pleased? Doesn’t he do it all?”
“Well, in one sense, he does. But I don’t suppose I shall ever make you understand.” He endeavoured, however, to do so on the present occasion, and gave her a somewhat longer lecture on the working of the British Constitution, and the manner in which British politics evolved themselves, than would have been expected from most young husbands to their young wives under similar circumstances. Lady Glencora yawned, and strove lustily, but ineffectually, to hide her yawn in her handkerchief.
“But I see you don’t care a bit about it,” said he, peevishly.
“Don’t be angry, Plantagenet. Indeed I do care about it, but I am so ignorant that I can’t understand it all at once. I am rather tired, and I think I’ll go to bed now. Shall you be late?”
“No, not very; that is, I shall be rather late. I’ve a lot of letters I want to write tonight, as I must be at work all tomorrow. By the by, Mr Bott is coming to dine here. There will be no one else.” The next day was a Wednesday, and the House would not sit in the evening.
“Mr Bott!” said Lady Glencora, showing by her voice that she anticipated no pleasure from that gentleman’s company.
“Yes, Mr Bott. Have you any objection?”
“Oh, no. Would you like to dine alone with him?”
“Why should I dine alone with him? Why shouldn’t you eat your dinner with us? I hope you are not going to become fastidious, and to turn up your nose at people. Mrs Marsham is in town, and I dare say she’ll come to you if you ask her.”
But this was too much for Lady Glencora. She was disposed to be mild, but she could not endure to have her two duennas thus brought upon her together on the first day of her arrival in London. And Mrs Marsham would be worse than Mr Bott. Mr Bott would be engaged with Mr Palliser during the greater part of the evening. “I thought,” said she, “of asking my cousin, Alice Vavasor, to spend the evening with me.”
“Miss Vavasor!” said the husband. “I must say that I thought Miss Vavasor — ” He was going to make some allusion to that unfortunate hour spent among the ruins, but he stopped himself.
“I hope you have nothing to say against my cousin?” said his wife. “She is my only near relative that I really care for — the only woman, I mean.”
“No; I don’t mean to say anything against her. She’s very well as a young lady, I dare say. I would sooner that you would ask Mrs Marsham tomorrow.”
Lady Glencora was standing, waiting to go away to her own room, but it was absolutely necessary that this matter should be decided before she went. She felt that he was hard to her, and unreasonable, and that he was treating her like a child who should not be allowed her own way in anything. She had endeavoured to please him, and, having failed, was not now disposed to give way.
“As there will be no other ladies here tomorrow evening, Plantagenet, and as I have not yet seen Alice since I have been in town, I wish you would let me have my way in this. Of course I cannot have very much to say to Mrs Marsham, who is an old woman.”
“I especially want Mrs Marsham to be your friend,” said he.
“Friendships will not come by ordering, Plantagenet,” said she.
“Very well,” said he. “Of course, you will do as you please. I am sorry that you have refused the first favour I have asked you this year.” Then he left the room, and she went away to bed,