“That’s true. If you look at it in that light, it’s quite true. But you see we cannot do without him. If he hadn’t got your bill, he’d have gone over to the other fellows before the week was over; and the worst of it would have been that he knows our hand. Looking at it all round you’ve got him cheap, Mr. Vavasor;—you have, indeed.”
“Looking at it all round is just what I don’t like, Mr. Scruby. But if a man will have a whistle, he must pay for it.”
“You can’t do it cheap for any of these metropolitan seats; you can’t, indeed, Mr. Vavasor. That is, a new man can’t. When you’ve been in four or five times, like old Duncombe, why then, of course, you may snap your fingers at such men as Grimes. But the Chelsea districts ain’t dear. I don’t call them by any means dear. Now Marylebone is dear—and so is Southwark. It’s dear, and nasty; that’s what the borough is. Only that I never tell tales, I could tell you a tale, Mr. Vavasor, that’d make your hair stand on end; I could indeed.”
“Ah! the game is hardly worth the candle, I believe.”
“That depends on what way you choose to look at it. A seat in Parliament is a great thing to a man who wants to make his way;—a very great thing;—specially when a man’s young, like you, Mr. Vavasor.”
“Young!” said George. “Sometimes it seems to me as though I’ve been living for a hundred years. But I won’t trouble you with that, Mr. Scruby, and I believe I needn’t keep you any longer.” With that, he got up and bowed the attorney out of the room, with just a little more ceremony than he had shown to the publican.
“Young!” said Vavasor to himself, when he was left alone. “There’s my uncle, or the old squire—they’re both younger men than I am. One cares for his dinner, and the other for his bullocks and his trees. But what is there that I care for, unless it is not getting among the sheriff’s officers for debt?” Then he took out a little memorandum-book from his breast-pocket, and having made in it an entry as to the amount and date of that bill which he had just accepted on the publican’s behalf, he conned over the particulars of its pages. “Very blue; very blue, indeed,” he said to himself when he had completed the study. “But nobody shall say I hadn’t the courage to play the game out, and that old fellow must die some day, one supposes. If I were not a fool, I should make it up with him before he went; but I am a fool, and shall remain so to the last.” Soon after that he dressed himself slowly, reading a little every now and then as he did so. When his toilet was completed, and his Sunday newspapers sufficiently perused, he took up his hat and umbrella and sauntered out.
XIV
Alice Vavasor Becomes Troubled
Kate Vavasor had sent to her brother only the first half of her cousin’s letter, that half in which Alice had attempted to describe what had taken place between her and Mr. Grey. In doing this, Kate had been a wicked traitor—a traitor to that feminine faith against which treason on the part of one woman is always unpardonable in the eyes of other women. But her treason would have been of a deeper die had she sent the latter portion, for in that Alice had spoken of George Vavasor himself. But even of this treason, Kate would, I think, have been guilty, had the words which Alice wrote been of a nature to serve her own purpose if read by her brother. But they had not been of this nature. They had spoken of George as a man with whom any closer connection than that which existed at present was impossible, and had been written with the view of begging Kate to desist from making futile attempts in that direction. “I feel myself driven,” Alice had said, “to write all this, as otherwise—if I were simply to tell you that I have resolved to part from Mr. Grey—you would think that the other thing might follow. The other thing cannot follow. I should think myself untrue in my friendship to you if I did not tell you about Mr. Grey; and you will be untrue in your friendship to me if you take advantage of my confidence by saying more about your brother.” This part of Alice’s letter Kate had not sent to George Vavasor;—“But the other thing shall follow,” Kate had said, as she read the words for the second time, and then put the papers into her desk. “It shall follow.”
To give Kate Vavasor her due, she was, at any rate, unselfish in her intrigues. She was obstinately persistent, and she was moreover unscrupulous, but she was not selfish. Many years ago she had made up her mind that George and Alice should be man and wife, feeling that such a marriage would be good at any rate for her brother. It had been almost brought about, and had then been hindered altogether through a fault on her brother’s part. But she had forgiven him this sin as she had forgiven many others, and she was now at work in his behalf again, determined that they two should be married, even though neither of them might be now anxious that it should be so. The intrigue itself was dear to her, and success in it was necessary to her self-respect.
She answered Alice’s letter with a pleasant, gossiping epistle, which shall be recorded, as it will tell us something of Mrs. Greenow’s proceedings at Yarmouth. Kate had promised to stay at Yarmouth for a month, but she had already been there six weeks, and was still
