Can You Forgive Her? (107 page)

‘I dare say not,’ said Vavasor; ‘but, nevertheless, here I am.’ He kept his right hand in the pocket which held the pistol, and held his left hand under his waistcoat.

‘May I ask why you have come?’ said Grey.

‘I intend to tell you, at any rate, whether you ask me or not. I have come to declare in your own hearing, – as I am in the
habit of doing occasionally behind your back, – that you are a blackguard, – to spit in your face, and defy you.’ As he said this he suited his action to his words, but without any serious result. ‘I have come here to see if you are man enough to resent any insult that I can offer you; but I doubt whether you are.’

‘Nothing that you can say to me, Mr Vavasor, will have any effect upon me; – except
that you can, of course, annoy me.’

‘And I mean to annoy you, too, before I have done with you. Will you fight me?’

‘Fight a duel with you, – with pistols? Certainly not’

‘Then you are a coward, as I supposed.’

‘I should be a fool if I were to do such a thing as that’

‘Look here, Mr Grey. You managed to worm yourself into an intimacy with my cousin, Miss Vavasor, and to become engaged to
her. When she found out what you were, how paltry, and mean, and vile, she changed her mind, and bade you leave her.’

‘Are you here at her request?’

‘I am here as her representative.’

‘Self-appointed, I think.’

‘Then, sir, you think wrong. I am at this moment her affianced husband; and I find that, in spite of all that she has said to you, – which was enough, I should have thought, to keep
any man of spirit out of her presence, – you still persecute her by going to her house, and forcing yourself upon her presence. Now, I give you two alternatives. You shall either give me your written promise never to go near her again, or you shall fight me.’

‘I shall do neither one nor the other, – as you know very well yourself.’

‘Stop till I have done, sir. If you have courage enough to fight
me, I will meet you in any country. I will fight you here in London, or, if you are afraid of that, I will go over to France, or to America, if that will suit you better.’

‘Nothing of the kind will suit me at all. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.’

‘Then you are a coward.’

‘Perhaps I am; – but your saying so will not make me one.’

‘You are a coward, and a liar, and a blackguard.
I have given you the option of behaving like a gentleman, and you have refused it Now, look here. I have come here with arms, and I do not intend to leave this room without using them, unless you will promise to give me the meeting that I have proposed. ‘And he took the pistol out of his pocket

‘Do you mean that you are going to murder me?’ Grey asked. There were two windows in the room, and
he had been sitting
near to that which was furthest removed from the fireplace, and consequently furthest removed from the bell, and his visitor was now standing immediately between him and the door. He had to think what steps he might best take, and to act upon his decision instantly. He was by no means a timid man, and was one, moreover, very little prone to believe in extravagant action. He
did not think, even now, that this disappointed, ruined man had come there with any intention of killing him. But he knew that a pistol in the hands of an angry man is dangerous, and that it behoved him to do his best to rid himself of the nuisance which now encumbered him. ‘Do you mean that you are going to murder me?’ he had said.

‘I mean that you shall not leave this room alive unless you
promise to meet me, and fight it out.’ Upon hearing this, Grey turned himself towards the bell. ‘If you move a step, I will fire at you,’ said Vavasor. Grey paused a moment, and looked him full in the face. ‘I will,’ said Vavasor again.

‘That would be murder,’ said Grey.

‘Don’t think that you will frighten me by ugly words,’ said Vavasor. ‘I am beyond that.’

Grey had stopped for a moment to
fix his eyes on the other man’s face; but it was only for a moment, and then he went on to the bell. He had seen that the pistol was pointed at himself, and had once thought of rushing across the room at his adversary, calculating that a shot fired at him as he did so might miss him, and that he would then have a fair chance of disarming the madman. But his chief object was to avoid any personal
conflict, to escape the indignity of a scramble for the pistol, – and especially to escape the necessity of a consequent appearance at some police-office, where he would have to justify himself, and answer the questions of a lawyer hired to cross-question him. He made, therefore, towards the bell, trusting that Vavasor would not fire at him, but having some little thought also as to the danger of
the moment. It might be that everything was over for him now, – that the fatal hour had come, and that eternity was close upon him. Something of the spirit of a prayer flashed across his mind as he moved. Then he heard the click of the pistol’s hammer as it fell,
and was aware that his eyes were dazzled, though he was unconscious of seeing any flame. He felt something in the air, and knew that
the pistol had been fired; – but he did not know whether the shot had struck him or had missed him. His hand was out for the bell-handle, and he had pulled it, before he was sure that he was unhurt

‘D—ation!’ exclaimed the murderer. But he did not pull the trigger again. Though the weapon had of late been so often in his hands, he forgot, in the agitation of the moment, that his missing once
was but of small matter if he chose to go on with his purpose. Were there not five other barrels for him, each making itself ready by the discharge of the other? But he had paused, forgetting, in his excitement, the use of his weapon, and before he had bethought himself that the man was still in his power, he heard the sound of the bell. ‘D—ation!’ he exclaimed. Then he turned round, left the room,
hurried down the stairs, and made his way out into the street, having again passed the girl on his way.

Grey, when he perceived that his enemy was gone, turned round to look for the bullet or its mark. He soon found the little hole in the window-shutter, and probing it with the point of his pencil, came upon the morsel of lead which might now just as readily have been within his own brain. There
he left it for the time, and then made some not inaccurate calculation as to the narrowness of his own escape. He had been standing directly between Vavasor and the shutter, and he found, from the height of the hole, that the shot must have passed close beneath his ear. He remembered to have heard the click of the hammer, but he could not remember the sound of the report, and when the girl entered
the room, he perceived at once from her manner that she was unaware that firearms had been used.

‘Has that gentleman left the house?’ Grey asked. The girl said that he had left the house. ‘Don’t admit him again,’ said he; – ‘that is, if you can avoid it I believe he is not in his right senses.’ Then he asked for Mr Jones, his landlord, and in a few minutes the pugilistic tailor was with him.

During those few minutes he had been called upon to resolve what he would do now. Would he put the police at once upon the
track of the murderer, who was, as he remembered too well, the first cousin of the woman whom he still desired to make his wife? That cross-examination which he would have to undergo at the police-office, and again probably in an assize court, in which all his relations with
the Vavasor family would be made public, was very vivid to his imagination. That he was called upon by duty to do something he felt almost assured. The man who had been allowed to make such an attempt once with impunity, might probably make it again. But he resolved that he need not .now say anything about the pistol to the pugilistic tailor, unless the tailor said something to him.

‘Mr Jones,’
he said, ‘that man whom I had to put out of the room once before, has been here again.’

‘Has there been another tussle, sir?’

‘No; – nothing of that kind. But we must take some steps to prevent his getting in again, if we can help it.’

Jones promised his aid, and offered to go at once to the police. To this, however, Mr Grey demurred, saying that he should himself seek assistance from some
magistrate. Jones promised to be very vigilant as to watching the door; and then John Grey sat down to his breakfast. Of course he thought much of what had occurred. It was impossible that he should not think much of so narrow an escape. He had probably been as near death as a man may well be without receiving any injury; and the more he thought of it, the more strongly he was convinced that he could
not allow the thing to pass by without some notice, or some precaution as to the future.

At eleven o’clock he went to Scotland Yard, and saw some officer great in power over policemen, and told him all the circumstances, – confidentially. The powerful officer recommended an equally confidential reference to a magistrate; and towards evening a very confidential policeman in plain clothes paid
a visit to Vavasor’s lodgings in Cecil Street. But Vavasor lodged there no longer. Mrs Bunsby, who was also very confidential, – and at her wits’ end because she could not learn the special business of the stranger who called, – stated that Mr George Vavasor left her house in a cab at ten o’clock that morning, having taken with him
such luggage as he had packed, and having gone, ‘she was afraid,
for good,’ as Mrs Bunsby expressed it.

He had gone for good, and at the moment in which the policeman was making the inquiry in Cecil Street, was leaning over the side of an American steamer which had just got up her steam and weighed her anchor in the Mersey. He was on board at six o’clock, and it was not till the next day that the cabman was traced who had carried him to Euston Square Station.
Of course, it was soon known that he had gone to America, but it was not thought worth while to take any further steps towards arresting him. Mr Grey himself was decidedly opposed to any such attempt, declaring his opinion that his own evidence would be insufficient to obtain a conviction. The big men in Scotland Yard were loth to let the matter drop. Their mouths watered after the job, and they
had very numerous and very confidential interviews with John Grey. But it was decided that nothing should be done. Pity!’ said one enterprising superintendent, in answer to the condolings of a brother superintendent Pity’s no name for it. It’s the greatest shame as ever I knew since I joined the force. A man as was a Member of Parliament only last Session, – as belongs to no end of swell clubs,
a gent as well known in London as any gent about the town! And I’d have had him back in three months, as sure as my name’s Walker.’ And that superintendent felt that his profession and his country were alike disgraced.

And now George Vavasor vanishes from our pages, and will be heard of no more. Roebury knew him no longer, nor Pall Mall, nor the Chelsea Districts. His disappearance was a nine
days’ wonder, but the world at large knew nothing of the circumstances of that attempt in Suffolk Street. Mr Grey himself told the story to no one, till he told it to Mr Palliser at Lucerne. Mr Scruby complained bitterly of the way in which Vavasor had robbed him; but I doubt whether Scruby, in truth, lost much by the transaction. To Kate, down in Westmoreland, no tidings came of her brother, and
her sojourn in London with her aunt had nearly come to an end before she knew that he was gone. Even then the rumour reached her through Captain Bellfield, and she learned what few facts she knew from Mrs Bunsby in Cecil Street.

‘He was always mysterious,’ said Mrs Greenow, ‘and now he has vanished. I hate mysteries, and, as for myself, I think it will be much better that he should not come back
again.’ Perhaps Kate was of the same opinion, but, if so, she kept it to herself.

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I
T
was not till they had been for a day or two together at lucerne that Mr grey told Mr palliser the story of george vavasor’s visit to him in suffolk street having begun the history of his connection with alice, he found himself obliged to go with it to the end, and as he described the way in which the man had vanished from the
sight of all who had known him, – that he had in truth gone, so as no longer to be a cause of dread, he could not without dissimulation, keep back the story of that last scene. ‘and he tried to murder you!’ said Mr palliser. ‘He should be caught and, – and –’ Mr Palliser hesitated, not liking to say boldly that the first cousin of the lady who was now living with him ought to be hung.

‘It is
better as it is,’ said Grey.

‘He actually walked into your rooms in the day time, and fired a pistol at you as you were sitting at your breakfast! He did that in London, and then walked off and went abroad, as though he had nothing to fear!’

‘That was just it,’ said Grey.

Mr Palliser began to think that something ought to be done to make life more secure in the metropolis of the world. Had
he not known Mr Grey, or been accustomed to see the other man in Parliament, he would not have thought so much about it But it was almost too much for him when he reflected that one man whom he now called his friend, had been nearly murdered in daylight, in the heart of his own part of London, by another man whom he had reckoned among his Parliamentary supporters. ‘And
he has got your money too!’
said Palliser, putting all the circumstances of the case together. In answer to this Mr Grey said that he hoped the loss might eventually be his own; but that he was bound to regard the money which had been taken as part of Miss Vavasor’s fortune. ‘He is simply the greatest miscreant of whom I ever heard in my life,’ said Mr Palliser. The wonder is that Miss Vavasor should ever have brought herself
to – to like him.’ Then Mr Grey apologized for Alice, explaining that her love for her cousin had come from her early years; that the man himself was clever and capable of assuming pleasant ways, and that he had not been wholly bad till ruin had come upon him. ‘He attempted public life and made himself miserable by failing, as most men do who make that attempt,’ said Grey. This was a statement
which Mr Palliser could not allow to pass without notice. Whereupon the two men got away from George Vavasor and their own individual interests, and went on seriously discussing the merits and demerits of public life. The end of it all is,’ said Grey at last, ‘that public men in England should be rich like you, and not poor like that miserable wretch, who has now lost everything that the Fates
had given him.’