The Palliser Novels (86 page)

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 assist her in getting the money, and communicate his decision to her on the following morning.

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 aptitude. 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 pass 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 passages 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 assigned 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 façade 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 assuming 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 passers through it were few in number. Now and then a boy might be seen there carrying on his head or shoulders a huge mass 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 passed to Mr Vavasor’s signing-room. The stairs were broad, and almost of noble 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 passage, in which no sound was, at first, to be heard. There was no busy noise of doors slamming, no rapid sound of shoes, no passing 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 amusement 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 tit-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?”