should be sold out, or would he resolve to use his cousin’s money? That his cousin’s money would still be at his disposal, in spite of the stormy mood in which he had retreated from her presence, he felt sure; but the asking for it on his part would be unpleasant. That duty he must entrust to Kate. But as he reached Mr Scruby’s door, he had decided that for such purposes as those now in hand, it was preferable that he should use his wife’s fortune. It was thus that in his own mind he worded the phrase, and made for himself an excuse. Yes;—he would use his wife’s fortune, and explain to Mr Scruby that he would be justified in doing so by the fact that his own heritage would be settled on her at her marriage. I do not suppose that he altogether liked it. He was not, at any rate as yet, an altogether heartless swindler. He could not take his cousin’s money without meaning,—without thinking that he meant, to repay her in full all that he took. Her behaviour to him this very morning had no doubt made the affair more difficult to his mind, and more unpleasant than it would have been had she smiled on him; but even as it was, he managed to assure himself that he was doing her no wrong, and with this self-assurance he entered Mr Scruby’s office.
The clerks in the outer office were very civil to him, and undertook to promise him that he should not be kept waiting an instant. There were four gentlemen in the little parlour, they said, waiting to see Mr Scruby, but there they should remain till Mr Vavasor’s interview was over. One gentleman, as it seemed, was even turned out to make way for him; for as George was ushered into the lawyer’s room, a little man, looking very meek, was hurried away from it.
“You can wait, Smithers,” said Mr Scruby, speaking from within. “I shan’t be very long.” Vavasor apologized to his agent for the injury he was doing Smithers; but Mr Scruby explained that he was only a poor devil of a printer, looking for payment of his little account. He had printed and posted 30,000 placards for one of the late Marylebone candidates, and found some difficulty in getting his money. “You see, when they’re in a small way of business, it ruins them,” said Scruby. “Now that poor devil,—he hasn’t had a shilling of his money yet, and the greater part has been paid out of his pocket to the posters. It is hard.”
It comforted Vavasor when he thus heard that there were others who were more backward in their payments, even than himself, and made him reflect that a longer credit than had yet been achieved by him, might perhaps be within his reach. “It is astonishing how much a man may get done for him,” said he, “without paying anything for years.”
“Yes; that’s true. So he may, if he knows how to go about it. But when he does pay, Mr Vavasor, he does it through the nose;—cent. per cent., and worse, for all his former shortcomings.”
“How many there are who never pay at all,” said George.
“Yes, Mr Vavasor;—that’s true, too. But see what a life they lead. It isn’t a pleasant thing to be afraid of coming into your agent’s office; not what you would like, Mr Vavasor;—not if I know you.”
“I never was afraid of meeting anyone yet,” said Vavasor; “but I don’t know what I may come to.”
“Nor never will, I’ll go bail. But, Lord love you, I could tell you such tales! I’ve had Members of Parliament, past, present, and future, almost down on their knees to me in this little room. It’s about a month or six weeks before the elections come on when they’re at their worst. There is so much you see, Mr Vavasor, for which a gentleman must pay ready money. It isn’t like a business in which a lawyer is supposed to find the capital. If I had money enough to pay out of my own pocket all the cost of all the metropolitan gentlemen for whom I act, why, I could live on the interest without any trouble, and go into Parliament myself like a man.”
George Vavasor perfectly understood that Mr Scruby was explaining to him, with what best attempt at delicacy he could make, that funds for the expense of the Chelsea election were not to be forthcoming from the Great Marlborough Street establishment.
“I suppose so,” said he. “But you do do it sometimes.”
“Never, Mr Vavasor,” said Mr Scruby, very solemnly. “As a rule, never. I may advance the money, on interest, of course, when I receive a guarantee from the candidate’s father, or from six or seven among the committee, who must all be very substantial,—very substantial indeed. But in a general way I don’t do it. It isn’t my place.”
“I thought you did;—but at any rate I don’t want you to do it for me.”
“I’m quite sure you don’t,” said Mr Scruby, with a brighter tone of voice than that he had just been using. “I never thought you did, Mr Vavasor. Lord bless you, Mr Vavasor, I know the difference between gentlemen as soon as I see them.”
Then they went to business, and Vavasor became aware that it would be thought convenient that he should lodge with Mr Scruby, to his own account, a sum not less than six hundred pounds within the next week, and it would be also necessary that he should provide for taking up that bill, amounting to ninety-two pounds, which he had given to the landlord of the “Handsome Man.” In short, it would be well that he should borrow a thousand pounds from Alice, and as he did not wish that the family attorney of the Vavasors should be employed to raise it, he communicated to Mr Scruby as much of his plans as was necessary,—feeling more hesitation in doing it than might have been expected from him. When he had done so, he was very intent on explaining also that the money taken from his cousin, and future bride, would be repaid to her out of the property in Westmoreland, which was,—did he say settled on himself? I am afraid he did.
“Yes, yes;—a family arrangement,” said Mr Scruby, as he congratulated him on his proposed marriage. Mr Scruby did not care a straw from what source the necessary funds might be drawn.
Chapter XXXVI.
John Grey Goes a Second Time to London
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
