Can You Forgive Her? (106 page)

As he lay there with his face turned towards her, the windows were at her back, and he could see her very plainly. He saw and appreciated the little struggles she had made to create by her appearance some reminiscence of her former self. He saw the shining coarseness of the long ringlets which had once been softer than silk. He saw the sixpenny brooch
on her bosom where he had once placed a jewel, the price of which would now have been important to him. He saw it all, and lay there for a while, silently reading it.

‘Don’t let me stand here,’ she said, ‘without speaking a word to me.’

‘I don’t want you to stand there,’ he said.

‘That’s all very well, George. I know you don’t want me to stand here. I know you don’t want to see me ever again.’

‘Never.’

‘I know it. Of course I know it But what am I to do? Where am I to go for money? Even you would not wish that I should starve.’

‘That’s true, too. I certainly would not wish it. I should be delighted to hear that you had plenty to eat and plenty to drink, and plenty of clothes to wear. I believe that’s what you care for the most, after all.’

‘It was only for your sake, – because you
liked it.’

‘Well; –I did like it; but that has come to an end, as have all my other likings. You know very well that I can do nothing more for you. What good do you do yourself by coming here to annoy me? Have I not told you over and over again that you were never to look for me here? It is likely that I should give you money now, simply because you have disobeyed me!’

‘Where else was I to find
you?’

‘Why should you have found me at all? I don’t want you to find me. I shall give you nothing; – not a penny. You know very well that we’ve had all that out before. When I put you into business I told you that we were to see no more of each other.’

‘Business!’ she said. ‘I never could make enough out of the shop to feed a bird.’

‘That wasn’t my fault. Putting you there cost me over a hundred
pounds, and you consented to take the place.’

‘I didn’t consent. I was obliged to go there because you took my other home away from me.’

‘Have it as you like, my dear. That was all I could do for you; – and more than most men would have done, when all things are considered.’ Then he got up from the sofa, and stood himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the fireplace. ‘At any rate, you may
be sure of this, Jane; – that I shall do nothing more. You have come here to torment me, but you shall get nothing by it’

‘I have come here because I am starving.’

‘I have nothing for you. Now go;’ and he pointed to the door. Nevertheless, for more than three years of his life this woman had been his closest companion, his nearest friend, the being with whom he was most familiar. He had loved
her according to his fashion of loving, and certainly she had loved him. ‘Go,’ he said repeating the word very angrily. ‘Do as I bid you, or it will be the worse for you.’

‘Will you give me a sovereign?’

‘No; – I will give you nothing. I have desired you not to come to me here, and I will not pay for you coming.’

‘Then I will not go;’ and the woman sat down upon a chair at the foot of the table.
‘I will not go till you have given me something to buy food. You may put me out of the room if you can, but I will lie at the door of the stairs. And if you get me out of the house, I will sit upon the door-step.’

‘If you play that game, my poor girl, the police will take you.’

‘Let them. It has come to that with me, that I care for nothing. Out of this I will not go till you give me money –
unless I am put out’

And for this she had dressed herself with so much care, mending her gloves, and darning her little fragments of finery! He stood looking at her, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, – looking at her and thinking what he had better do to rid himself of her presence. If he even quite resolved to take that little final journey of which we have spoken, with the pistol
in his hand, why should he not go and leave her there? Or, for the matter of that, why should he not make her his heir to all remainder of his wealth? What he still had left was sufficient to place her in a seventh heaven of the earth. He cared but little for her, and was at this moment angry with her; but there was no one for whom he cared more, and no friend with whom he was less angry. But then
his mind was not quite made up as to that final journey. Therefore he desired to rid himself and his room of the nuisance of her presence.

‘Jane,’ he said, looking at her again with that assumed tranquillity of which I have spoken, ‘you talk of starving and of being ruined, –’

‘I am starving. I have not a shilling in the world.’

‘Perhaps it may be a comfort to you in your troubles to know that
I am, at any rate, as badly off as you are? I won’t say that I am starving, because I could get food to eat at this moment if I wanted it; but I am utterly ruined. My property, – what should have been mine, – has been left away from me. I have lost the trumpery seat in Parliament for which I have paid so much. All my relations have turned their backs upon me –’

‘Are you not going to be married?’
she said, rising quickly from her chair and coming close to him.

‘Married! No; – but I am going to blow my brains out. Look at that pistol, my girl. Of course you won’t think that I am in earnest, – but I am.’

She looked up into his face piteously. ‘Oh! George,’ she said, ‘you won’t do that?’

‘But I shall do that. There is nothing else left for me to do. You talk to me about starving. I tell
you that I should have no objection to be starved, and so be put an end to in that way. It’s not so bad as some other ways when it comes gradually. You and I, Jane, have not played our cards very well. We have staked all that we had, and we’ve been beaten. It’s no good whimpering after what’s lost. We’d better go somewhere else and begin a new game.’

‘Go where?’ said she.

‘Ah! – that’s just
what I can’t tell you.’

‘George,’ she said, ‘I’ll go anywhere with you. If what you say is true, – if you’re not going to be married, and will let me come to you, I will work for you like a slave. I will indeed. I know I’m poorly looking now – ’

‘My girl, where I’m going, I shall not want any slave; and as for your looks – when you go there too, – they’ll be of no matter, as far as I am able
to judge.’

‘But, George, where are you going?’

‘Wherever people do go when their brains are knocked out of them; or, rather, when they have knocked out their own brains, – if that makes any difference.’

‘George,’ – she came up to him now, and took hold of him by the front of his coat, and for the moment he allowed her to do so, –
‘George, you frighten me. Do not do that Say that you will not
do that?’

‘But I am just saying that I shall.’

‘Are you not afraid of God’s anger? You and I have been very wicked.’

‘I have, my poor girl. I don’t know much about your wickedness. I’ve been like Topsy; – indeed I am a kind of second Topsy myself. But what’s the good of whimpering when it’s over?’

‘It isn’t over; it isn’t over, – at any rate for you.’

‘I wish I knew how I could begin again.
But all this is nonsense, Jane, and you must go.’

‘You must tell me, first, that you are not going to – kill yourself.’

‘I don’t suppose I shall do it tonight, – or, perhaps, not tomorrow. Very probably I may allow myself a week, so that your staying here can do no good. I merely wanted to make you understand that you are not the only person who has come to grief.’

‘And you are not going to
be married?’

‘No; I’m not going to be married, certainly.’

‘And I must go now?’

‘Yes; I think you’d better go now.’ Then she rose and went, and he let her leave the room without giving her a shilling! His bantering tone, in speaking of his own position, had been successful. It had caused her to take herself off quietly. She knew enough of his usual manner to be aware that his threats of self
destruction were probably unreal; but, nevertheless, what he had said had created some feeling in her heart which had induced her to yield to him, and go away in peace.

I
T
was nearly seven o’clock in the evening, – a hot, July evening, – when the woman went from Vavasor’s room, and left him there alone. It was necessary that he should immediately do something.
In the first place he must dine, unless he meant to carry out his threat, and shoot himself at once. But he had no such intention as that, although he
stood for some minutes with the pistol in his hand. He was thinking then of shooting some one else. But he resolved that, if he did so at all, he would not do it on that evening, and he locked up the pistol again in the standing desk. After that, he took up some papers, referring to steam packets, which were lying on his table. They contained the programmes of different companies, and showed how one
vessel went on one day to New York, and another on another day would take out a load of emigrants for New Zealand and Australia. ‘That’s a good line,’ said he, as he read a certain prospectus. ‘They generally go to the bottom, and save a man from any further trouble on his own account.’ Then he dressed himself, putting on his boots and coat, and went out to his club for his dinner.

London was
still fairly full, – that is to say, the West End was not deserted, although Parliament had been broken up two months earlier than usual, in preparation for the new elections. Many men who had gone down into the country were now back again in town, and the dining-room at the club was crowded. Men came up to him condoling with him, telling him that he was well rid of a great nuisance, that the present
Members for the Chelsea Districts would not sit long, or that there would be another general election in a year or two. To all these little speeches he made cheerful replies, and was declared by his acquaintance to bear his disappointment well. Calder Jones came to him and talked hunting talk, and Vavasor expressed his intention of being at Roebury in November. ‘You had better join our club,’
said Calder Jones. In answer to which Vavasor said that he thought he would join the club. He remained in the smoking-room till nearly eleven; then he took himself home, and remained up half the night destroying papers. Every written document on which he could lay his hands he destroyed. All the pigeon-holes of his desk were emptied out, and their contents thrown into the flames. At first he looked
at the papers before he burned them; but the trouble of doing so soon tired him, and he condemned them all, as he came to them, without examination. Then he selected a considerable amount of his
clothes, and packed up two portmanteaus, folding his coats with care, and inspecting his boots narrowly, so that he might see which, out of the large number before him, it might be best worth his while
to take with him. When that was done, he took from his desk a bag of sovereigns, and, pouring them out upon the table, he counted them out into parcels of twenty-five each, and made them up carefully into rouleaus with paper. These, when complete, he divided among the two portmanteaus and a dressing-bag which he also packed and a travelling desk, which he filled with papers, pens, and the like. But
he put into it no written document. He carefuly looked through his linen, and anything that had been marked with more than his initials he rejected. Then he took out a bundle of printed cards, and furnished a card-case with them. On these cards was inscribed the name of Gregory Vance. When all was finished, he stood for awhile with his back to the fireplace contemplating his work. ‘After all,’
he said to himself, ‘I know that I shall never start; and, if I do, nobody can hinder me, and my own name would be as good as any other. As for a man with such a face as mine not being known, that is out of the question.’ But still he liked the arrangements which he had made, and when he had looked at them for awhile he went to bed.

He was up early the next morning, and had some coffee brought
to him by the servant of the house, and as he drank it he had an interview with his landlady. ‘He was going,’ he said; – ‘going that very day.’ It might be possible that he would change his mind; but as he would desire to start without delay, if he did go, he would pay her then what he owed her, and what would be due for her lodgings under a week’s notice. The woman stared, and curtseyed, and took
her money. Vavasor, though he had lately been much pressed for money, had never been so foolish as to owe debts where he lived. There will be some things left about, Mrs Bunsby,’ he said, ‘and I will get you to keep them till I call or send.’ Mrs Bunsby said that she would, and then looked her last at him. After that interview she never saw him again.

When he was left alone he put on a rough
morning coat, and taking up the pistol, placed it carefully in his pocket, and sallied forth. It was manifest enough that he had some decided scheme in
his head, for he turned quickly towards the West when he reached the Strand, went across Trafalgar Square to Pall Mall East, and then turned up Suffolk Street. Just as he reached the club-house at the corner he paused and looked back, facing first
one way and then the other. ‘The chances are that I shall never see anything of it again,’ he said to himself. Then he laughed in his own silent way, shook his head slightly, and turning again quickly on his heel, walked up the street till he reached the house of Mr Jones, the pugilistic tailor. The reader, no doubt, has forgotten all he ever knew of Mr Jones, the pugilistic tailor. It can soon
be told again. At Mr Jones’s house John Grey lodged when he was in London, and he was in London at this moment.

Vavasor rang the bell, and as soon as the servant came he went quickly into the house, and passed her in the passage. ‘Mr Grey is at home,’ he said. ‘I will go up to him.’ The girl said that Mr Grey was at home, but suggested that she had better announce the gentleman. But Vavasor was
already halfway up the stairs, and before the girl had reached the first landing-place, he had entered Mr Grey’s room and closed the door behind him.

Grey was sitting near the open window, in a dressing-gown, and was reading. The breakfast things were on the table, but he had not as yet breakfasted. As soon as he saw George Vavasor, he rose from his chair quickly, and put down his book. ‘Mr Vavasor,’
he said, ‘I hardly expected to see you in my lodgings again!’