The Palliser Novels Part 44

"Let him come up," she said. "But I think, Jane, you ought to ask him his name." Jane did ask him his name, and came back immediately, announcing Mr Levy.

This occurred immediately after the return of Mr John Vavasor from Westmoreland. He had reached home late on the preceding evening, and at the moment of Mr Levy's call was in his dressing-room.

Alice got up to receive her visitor, and at once understood the tone of her maid's voice. Mr Levy was certainly not a gentleman of the sort to which she had been most accustomed. He was a little dark man, with sharp eyes, set very near to each other in his head, with a beaked nose, thick at the bridge, and a black moustache, but no other beard. Alice did not at all like the look of Mr Levy, but she stood up to receive him, made him a little bow, and asked him to sit down.

"Is papa dressed yet?" Alice asked the servant.

"Well, miss, I don't think he is, - not to say dressed."

Alice had thought it might be as well that Mr Levy should know that there was a gentleman in the house with her.

"I've called about a little bit of business, miss," said Mr Levy, when they were alone. "Nothing as you need disturb yourself about. You'll find it all square, I think." Then he took a case out of his breast-pocket, and produced a note, which he handed to her. Alice took the note, and saw immediately that it was addressed to her by her cousin George. "Yes, Mr George Vavasor," said Mr Levy. "I dare say you never saw me before, miss?"

"No, sir; I think not," said Alice.

"I am your cousin's clerk."

"Oh, you're Mr Vavasor's clerk. I'll read his letter, if you please, sir."

"If you please, miss."

George Vavasor's letter to his cousin was as follows: - Dear Alice, After what pa.s.sed between us when I last saw you I thought that on my return from Westmoreland I should learn that you had paid in at my bankers' the money that I require. But I find that this is not so; and of course I excuse you, because women so seldom know when or how to do that which business demands of them. You have, no doubt, heard the injustice which my grandfather has done me, and will probably feel as indignant as I do. I only mention this now, because the nature of his will makes it more than ever inc.u.mbent on you that you should be true to your pledge to me.

Till there shall be some ground for a better understanding between us, - and this I do not doubt will come, - I think it wiser not to call, myself, at Queen Anne Street. I therefore send my confidential clerk with four bills, each of five hundred pounds, drawn at fourteen days' date, across which I will get you to write your name. Mr Levy will show you the way in which this should be done. Your name must come under the word "accepted," and just above the name of Messrs Drummonds, where the money must be lying ready, at any rate, not later than Monday fortnight. Indeed, the money must be there some time on the Sat.u.r.day. They know you so well at Drummonds' that you will not object to call on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and ask if it is all right.

I have certainly been inconvenienced by not finding the money as I expected on my return to town. If these bills are not properly provided for, the result will be very disastrous to me. I feel, however, sure that this will be done, both for your own sake and for mine.

Affectionately yours, George Vavasor.

The unparalleled impudence of this letter had the effect which the writer had intended. It made Alice think immediately of her own remissness, - if she had been remiss, - rather than of the enormity of his claim upon her. The decision with which he asked for her money, without any pretence at an excuse on his part, did for the time induce her to believe that she had no alternative but to give it to him, and that she had been wrong in delaying it. She had told him that he should have it, and she ought to have been as good as her word. She should not have forced upon him the necessity of demanding it.

But the idea of signing four bills was terrible to her, and she felt sure that she ought not to put her name to orders for so large an amount and then intrust them to such a man as Mr Levy. Her father was in the house, and she might have asked him. The thought that she would do so of course occurred to her. But then it occurred to her also that were she to speak to her father as to this advancing of money to her cousin, - to this giving of money, for she now well understood that it would be a gift; - were she to consult her father in any way about it, he would hinder her, not only from signing the bills for Mr Levy, but, as far as he could do so, from keeping the promise made to her cousin. She was resolved that George should have the money, and she knew that she could give it to him in spite of her father. But her father might probably be able to delay the gift, and thus rob it of its chief value. If she were to sign the bills, the money must be made to be forthcoming. So much she understood.

Mr Levy had taken out the four bills from the same case, and had placed them on the table before him. "Mr Vavasor has explained, I believe, miss, what it is you have to do?" he said.

"Yes, sir; my cousin has explained."

"And there is nothing else to trouble you with, I believe. If you will just write your name across them, here, I need not detain you by staying any longer." Mr Levy was very anxious to make his visit as short as possible, since he had heard that Mr John Vavasor was in the house.

But Alice hesitated. Two thousand pounds is a very serious sum of money. She had heard much of sharpers, and thought that she ought to be cautious. What if this man, of whom she had never before heard, should steal the bills after she had signed them? She looked again at her cousin's letter, chiefly with the object of gaining time.

"It's all right, miss," said Mr Levy.

"Could you not leave them with me, sir?" said Alice.

"Well; not very well, miss. No doubt Mr Vavasor has explained it all; but the fact is, he must have them this afternoon. He has got a heavy sum to put down on the nail about this here election, and if it ain't down to-day, them on whom he has to depend will be all abroad."

"But, sir, the money will not be payable to-day. If I understand it, they are not cheques."

"No, miss, no; they are not cheques. But your name, miss, at fourteen days, is the same as ready money; - just the same."

She paused, and while she paused, he reached a pen for her from the writing-table, and then she signed the four bills as he held them before her. She was quick enough at doing this when she had once commenced the work. Her object, then, was that the man should be gone from the house before her father could meet him.

These were the four bits of paper which George Vavasor tendered to Mr Scruby's notice on the occasion which we have now in hand. In doing so, he made use of them after the manner of a grand capitalist, who knows that he may a.s.sume certain airs as he allows the odours of the sweetness of his wealth to drop from him.

"You insisted on ready money, with your d suspicions," said he; "and there it is. You're not afraid of fourteen days, I dare say."

"Fourteen days is neither here nor there," said Mr Scruby. "We can let our payments stand over as long as that, without doing any harm. I'll send one of my men down to Grimes, and tell him I can't see him, till, - let me see," and he looked at one of the bills, "till the 15th."

But this was not exactly what George Vavasor wanted. He was desirous that the bills should be immediately turned into money, so that the necessity of forcing payments from Alice, should due provision for the bills not be made, might fall into other hands than his.

"We can wait till the 15th," said Scruby, as he handed the bits of paper back to his customer.

"You will want a thousand, you say?" said George.

"A thousand to begin with. Certainly not less."

"Then you had better keep two of them."

"Well - no! I don't see the use of that. You had better collect them through your own banker, and let me have a cheque on the 15th or 16th."

"How cursed suspicious you are, Scruby."

"No, I ain't. I'm not a bit suspicious. I don't deal in such articles; that's all!"

"What doubt can there be about such bills as those? Everybody knows that my cousin has a considerable fortune, altogether at her own disposal."

"The truth is, Mr Vavasor, that bills with ladies' names on them, - ladies who are no way connected with business, - ain't just the paper that people like."

"Nothing on earth can be surer."

"You take them into the City for discount, and see if the bankers don't tell you the same. They may be done, of course, upon your name. I say nothing about that."

"I can explain to you the nature of the family arrangement, but I can't do that to a stranger. However, I don't mind."

"Of course not. The time is so short that it does not signify. Have them collected through your own bankers, and then, if it don't suit you to call, send me a cheque for a thousand pounds when the time is up." Then Mr Scruby turned to some papers on his right hand, as though the interview had been long enough. Vavasor looked at him angrily, opening his wound at him and cursing him inwardly. Mr Scruby went on with his paper, by no means regarding either the wound or the unspoken curses. Thereupon Vavasor got up and went away without any word of farewell.

As he walked along Great Marlborough Street, and through those unalluring streets which surround the Soho district, and so on to the Strand and his own lodgings, he still continued to think of some wide scheme of revenge, - of some scheme in which Mr Scruby might be included. There had appeared something latterly in Mr Scruby's manner to him, something of mingled impatience and familiarity, which made him feel that he had fallen in the attorney's estimation. It was not that the lawyer thought him to be less honourable, or less clever, than he had before thought him; but that the man was like a rat, and knew a falling house by the instinct that was in him. So George Vavasor cursed Mr Scruby, and calculated some method of murdering him without detection.

The reader is not to suppose that the Member for the Chelsea Districts had, in truth, resolved to gratify his revenge by murder, - by murdering any of those persons whom he hated so vigorously. He did not, himself, think it probable that he would become a murderer. But he received some secret satisfaction in allowing his mind to dwell upon the subject, and in making those calculations. He reflected that it would not do to take off Scruby and John Grey at the same time, as it would be known that he was connected with both of them; unless, indeed, he was to take off a third person at the same time, - a third person, as to the expediency of ending whose career he made his calculations quite as often as he did in regard to any of those persons whom he cursed so often. It need hardly be explained to the reader that this third person was the sitting Member for the Chelsea Districts.

As he was himself in want of instant ready money Mr Scruby's proposition that he should leave the four bills at his own bankers', to be collected when they came to maturity, did not suit him. He doubted much, also, whether at the end of the fourteen days the money would be forthcoming. Alice would be driven to tell her father, in order that the money might be procured, and John Vavasor would probably succeed in putting impediments in the way of the payment. He must take the bills into the City, and do the best there that he could with them. He was too late for this to-day, and therefore he went to his lodgings, and then down to the House. In the House he sat all the night with his hat over his eyes, making those little calculations of which I have spoken.

"You have heard the news; haven't you?" said Mr Bott to him, whispering in his ear.

"News; no. I haven't heard any news."

"Finespun has resigned, and Palliser is at this moment with the Duke of St Bungay in the Lords' library."

"They may both be at the bottom of the Lords' fishpond, for what I care," said Vavasor.

"That's nonsense, you know," said Bott. "Still, you know Palliser is Chancellor of the Exchequer at this moment. What a lucky fellow you are to have such a chance come to you directly you get in. As soon as he takes his seat down there, of course we shall go up behind him."

"We shall have another election in a month's time," said George. "I'm safe enough," said Bott. "It never hurts a man at elections to be closely connected with the Government."

George Vavasor was in the City by times the next morning, but he found that the City did not look with favourable eyes on his four bills. The City took them up, first horizontally, and then, with a twist of its hand, perpendicularly, and looked at them with distrustful eyes. The City repeated the name, Alice Vavasor, as though it were not esteemed a good name on Change. The City suggested that as the time was so short, the holder of the bills would be wise to hold them till he could collect the amount. It was very clear that the City suspected something wrong in the transaction. The City, by one of its mouths, a.s.serted plainly that ladies' bills never meant business. George Vavasor cursed the City, and made his calculation about murdering it. Might not a river of strychnine be turned on round the Exchange about luncheon time? Three of the bills he left at last with his own bankers for collection, and retained the fourth in his breast-pocket, intending on the morrow to descend with it into those lower depths of the money market which he had not as yet visited. Again, on the next day, he went to work and succeeded to some extent. Among those lower depths he found a capitalist who was willing to advance him two hundred pounds, keeping that fourth bill in his possession as security. The capitalist was to have forty pounds for the transaction, and George cursed him as he took his cheque. George Vavasor knew quite enough of the commercial world to enable him to understand that a man must be in a very bad condition when he consents to pay forty pounds for the use of two hundred for fourteen days. He cursed the City. He cursed the House of Commons. He cursed his cousin Alice and his sister Kate. He cursed the memory of his grandfather. And he cursed himself.

Mr Levy had hardly left the house in Queen Anne Street, before Alice had told her father what she had done. "The money must be forthcoming," said Alice. To this her father made no immediate reply, but turning himself in his chair away from her with a sudden start, sat looking at the fire and shaking his head. "The money must be made to be forthcoming," said Alice. "Papa, will you see that it is done?" This was very hard upon poor John Vavasor, and so he felt it to be. "Papa, if you will not promise, I must go to Mr Round about it myself, and must find out a broker to sell out for me. You would not wish that my name should be dishonoured."

"You will be ruined," said he, "and for such a rascal as that!"

"Never mind whether he is a rascal or not, papa. You must acknowledge that he has been treated harshly by his grandfather."

"I think that will was the wisest thing my father ever did. Had he left the estate to George, there wouldn't have been an acre of it left in the family in six months' time."

"But the life interest, papa!"

"He would have raised all he could upon that, and it would have done him no good."

"At any rate, papa, he must have this two thousand pounds. You must promise me that."

"And then he will want more."

"No; I do not think he will ask for more. At any rate, I do not think that I am bound to give him all that I have."

"I should think not. I should like to know how you can be bound to give him anything?"

"Because I promised it. I have signed the bills now, and it must be done." Still Mr Vavasor made no promise. "Papa, if you will not say that you will do it, I must go down to Mr Round at once."

"I don't know that I can do it. I don't know that Mr Round can do it. Your money is chiefly on mortgage." Then there was a pause for a moment in the conversation. "Upon my word, I never heard of such a thing in my life," said Mr Vavasor; "I never did. Four thousand pounds given away to such a man as that, in three months! Four thousand pounds! And you say you do not intend to marry him."

"Certainly not; all that is over."

"And does he know that it is over?"

"I suppose he does."

"You suppose so! Things of that sort are so often over with you!" This was very cruel. Perhaps she had deserved the reproach, but still it was very cruel. The blow struck her with such force that she staggered under it. Tears came into her eyes, and she could hardly speak lest she should betray herself by sobbing.

"I know that I have behaved badly," she said at last; "but I am punished, and you might spare me now!"

"I didn't want to punish you," he said, getting up from his chair and walking about the room. "I don't want to punish you. But, I don't want to see you ruined!"

"I must go to Mr Round then, myself."

Mr Vavasor went on walking about the room, jingling the money in his trousers-pockets, and pushing the chairs about as he chanced to meet them. At last, he made a compromise with her. He would take a day to think whether he would a.s.sist her in getting the money, and communicate his decision to her on the following morning.

CHAPTER LXI.

The Bills Are Made All Right Mr Vavasor was at his wits' end about his daughter. She had put her name to four bills for five hundred pounds each, and had demanded from him, almost without an apology, his aid in obtaining money to meet them. And she might put her name to any other number of bills, and for any amount! There was no knowing how a man ought to behave to such a daughter. "I don't want her money," the father said to himself; "and if she had got none of her own, I would make her as comfortable as I could with my own income. But to see her throw her money away in such a fashion as this is enough to break a man's heart."

Mr Vavasor went to his office in Chancery Lane, but he did not go to the chambers of Mr Round, the lawyer. Instead of calling on Mr Round he sent a note by a messenger to Suffolk Street, and the answer to the note came in the person of Mr Grey. John Grey was living in town in these days, and was in the habit of seeing Mr Vavasor frequently. Indeed, he had not left London since the memorable occasion on which he had pitched his rival down the tailor's stairs at his lodgings. He had made himself pretty well conversant with George Vavasor's career, and had often shuddered as he thought what might be the fate of any girl who might trust herself to marry such a man as that.

He had been at home when Mr Vavasor's note had reached his lodgings, and had instantly walked off towards Chancery Lane. He knew his way to Mr Vavasor's signing-office very accurately, for he had acquired a habit of calling there, and of talking to the father about his daughter. He was a patient, persevering man, confident in himself, and apt to trust that he would accomplish those things which he attempted, though he was hardly himself aware of any such apt.i.tude. He had never despaired as to Alice. And though he had openly acknowledged to himself that she had been very foolish, - or rather, that her judgement had failed her, - he had never in truth been angry with her. He had looked upon her rejection of himself, and her subsequent promise to her cousin, as the effects of a mental hallucination, very much to be lamented, - to be wept for, perhaps, through a whole life, as a source of terrible sorrow to himself and to her. But he regarded it all as a disease, of which the cure was yet possible, - as a disease which, though it might never leave the patient as strong as she was before, might still leave her altogether. And as he would still have clung to his love had she been attacked by any of those illnesses for which doctors have well-known names, so would he cling to her now that she was attacked by a malady for which no name was known. He had already heard from Mr Vavasor that Alice had discovered how impossible it was that she should marry her cousin, and, in his quiet, patient, enduring way, was beginning to feel confident that he would, at last, carry his mistress off with him to Nethercoats.

It was certainly a melancholy place, that signing-office, in which Mr John Vavasor was doomed to spend twelve hours a week, during every term time, of his existence. Whether any man could really pa.s.s an existence of work in such a workshop, and not have gone mad, - could have endured to work there for seven hours a day, every week-day of his life, I am not prepared to say. I doubt much whether any victims are so doomed. I have so often wandered through those gloomy pa.s.sages without finding a sign of humanity there, - without hearing any slightest tick of the hammer of labour, that I am disposed to think that Lord Chancellors have been anxious to save their subordinates from suicide, and have mercifully decreed that the whole staff of labourers, down to the very message boys of the office, should be sent away to green fields or palatial clubs during, at any rate, a moiety of their existence.

The dismal set of chambers, in which the most dismal room had been a.s.signed to Mr Vavasor, was not actually in Chancery Lane. Opening off from Chancery Lane are various other small lanes, quiet, dingy nooks, some of them in the guise of streets going no whither, some being thoroughfares to other dingy streets beyond, in which sponging-houses abound, and others existing as the entrances to so-called Inns of Court, - inns of which all knowledge has for years been lost to the outer world of the laity, and, as I believe, lost almost equally to the inner world of the legal profession. Who has ever heard of Symonds' Inn? But an ancestral Symonds, celebrated, no doubt, in his time, did found an inn, and there it is to this day. Of Staples' Inn, who knows the purposes or use? Who are its members, and what do they do as such? And Staples' Inn is an inn with pretensions, having a chapel of its own, or, at any rate, a building which, in its external dimensions, is ecclesiastical, having a garden and architectural proportions; and a facade towards Holborn, somewhat dingy, but respectable, with an old gateway, and with a decided character of its own.

The building in which Mr John Vavasor had a room and a desk was located in one of these side streets, and had, in its infantine days, been regarded with complacency by its founder. It was stone-faced, and strong, and though very ugly, had about it that air of importance which justifies a building in a.s.suming a special name of itself. This building was called the Accountant-General's Record Office, and very probably, in the gloom of its dark cellars, may lie to this day the records of the expenditure of many a fair property which has gotten itself into Chancery, and has never gotten itself out again. It was entered by a dark hall, the door of which was never closed; and which, having another door at its further end leading into another lane, had become itself a thoroughfare. But the pa.s.sers through it were few in number. Now and then a boy might be seen there carrying on his head or shoulders a huge ma.s.s of papers which you would presume to be accounts, or some clerk employed in the purlieus of Chancery Lane who would know the shortest possible way from the chambers of some one attorney to those of some other. But this hall, though open at both ends, was as dark as Erebus; and any who lingered in it would soon find themselves to be growing damp, and would smell mildew, and would become naturally affected by the exhalations arising from those Chancery records beneath their feet.

Up the stone stairs, from this hall, John Grey pa.s.sed to Mr Vavasor's signing-room. The stairs were broad, and almost of n.o.ble proportions, but the darkness and gloom which hung about the hall, hung also about them, - a melancholy set of stairs, up and down which no man can walk with cheerful feet. Here he came upon a long, broad pa.s.sage, in which no sound was, at first, to be heard. There was no busy noise of doors slamming, no rapid sound of shoes, no pa.s.sing to and fro of men intent on their daily bread. Pausing for a moment, that he might look round about him and realize the deathlike stillness of the whole, John Grey could just distinguish the heavy breathing of a man, thereby learning that there was a captive in, at any rate, one of those prisons on each side of him. As he drew near to the door of Mr Vavasor's chamber he knew that the breathing came from thence.

On the door there were words inscribed, which were just legible in the gloom - "Signing Room. Mr Vavasor."

How John Vavasor did hate those words! It seemed to him that they had been placed there with the express object of declaring his degradation aloud to the world. Since his grandfather's will had been read to him he had almost made up his mind to go down those melancholy stairs for the last time, to shake the dust off his feet as he left the Accountant-General's Record Office for ever, and content himself with half his official income. But how could he give up so many hundreds a year while his daughter was persisting in throwing away thousands as fast as, or faster than, she could lay her hands on them?

John Grey entered the room and found Mr Vavasor sitting all alone in an arm-chair over the fire. I rather think that that breathing had been the breathing of a man asleep. He was resting himself amidst the labours of his signing. It was a large, dull room, which could not have been painted, I should think, within the memory of man, looking out backwards into some court. The black wall of another building seemed to stand up close to the window, - so close that no direct ray of the sun ever interrupted the signing-clerk at his work. In the middle of the room there was a large mahogany-table, on which lay a pile of huge papers. Across the top of them there was placed a bit of blotting-paper, with a quill pen, the two only tools which were necessary to the performance of the signing-clerk's work. On the table there stood a row of official books, placed lengthways on their edges: the "Post-Office Directory," the "Court Circular," a "Directory to the Inns of Court," a dusty volume of Acts of Parliament, which had reference to Chancery accounts, - a volume which Mr Vavasor never opened; and there were some others; but there was no book there in which any Christian man or woman could take delight, either for amus.e.m.e.nt or for recreation. There were three or four chairs round the wall, and there was the one arm-chair which the occupant of the chamber had dragged away from its sacred place to the hearth-rug. There was also an old Turkey carpet on the floor. Other furniture there was none. Can it be a matter of surprise to any one that Mr Vavasor preferred his club to his place of business? He was not left quite alone in this deathlike dungeon. Attached to his own large room there was a small closet, in which sat the signing-clerk's clerk, - a lad of perhaps seventeen years of age, who spent the greatest part of his time playing t.i.t-tat-to by himself upon official blotting-paper. Had I been Mr Vavasor I should have sworn a bosom friendship with that lad, have told him all my secrets, and joined his youthful games.

"Come in!" Mr Vavasor had cried when John Grey disturbed his slumber by knocking at the door. "I'm glad to see you, - very. Sit down; won't you? Did you ever see such a wretched fire? The coals they give you in this place are the worst in all London. Did you ever see such coals?" And he gave a wicked poke at the fire.

It was now the 1st of May, and Grey, who had walked from Suffolk Street, was quite warm. "One hardly wants a fire at all, such weather as this," he said.

"Oh; don't you?" said the signing-clerk. "If you had to sit here all day, you'd see if you didn't want a fire. It's the coldest building I ever put my foot in. Sometimes in winter I have to sit here the whole day in a great-coat. I only wish I could shut old Sugden up here for a week or two, after Christmas." The great lawyer whom he had named was the man whom he supposed to have inflicted on him the terrible injury of his life, and he was continually invoking small misfortunes on the head of that tyrant.

"How is Alice?" said Grey, desiring to turn the subject from the ten-times-told tale of his friend's wrongs.

Mr Vavasor sighed. "She is well enough, I believe," he said.

"Is anything the matter in Queen Anne Street?"

"You'll hardly believe it when I tell you; and, indeed, I hardly know whether I ought to tell you or not."

"As you and I have gone so far together, I think that you ought to tell me anything that concerns her nearly."

"That's just it. It's about her money. Do you know, Grey, I'm beginning to think that I've been wrong in allowing you to advance what you have done on her account?"

"Why wrong?"

"Because I foresee there'll be a difficulty about it. How are we to manage about the repayment?"

"If she becomes my wife there will be no management wanted."