"Oh no. But she was not given to think much of such things. She took all that for granted. Poor girl! she is at rest now, and her money has gone, where it should go, among her own relatives."
"Yes; with such feelings as yours are about her, her money would have been a burden to you."
"I would not have taken it. I hope, at least, that I would not have taken it. Money is a sore temptation, especially to a poor man like me. It is well for me that the trial did not come in my way."
"But you are not such a very poor man now, are you, George? I thought your business was a good one."
"It is, and I have no right to be a poor man. But a man will be poor who does such mad things as I do. I had three or four thousand pounds clear, and I spent every shilling of it on the Chelsea election.
Goodness knows whether I shall have a shilling at all when another chance comes round; but if I have I shall certainly spend it, and if I have not, I shall go in debt wherever I can raise a hundred pounds."
"I hope you will be successful at last."
"I feel sure that I shall. But, in the mean time, I cannot but know that my career is perfectly reckless. No woman ought to join her lot to mine unless she has within her courage to be as reckless as I am.
You know what men do when they toss up for shillings?"
"Yes, I suppose I do."
"I am tossing up every day of my life for every shilling that I have."
"Do you mean that you"re--gambling?"
"No. I have given that up altogether. I used to gamble, but I never do that now, and never shall again. What I mean is this,--that I hold myself in readiness to risk everything at any moment, in order to gain any object that may serve my turn. I am always ready to lead a forlorn hope. That"s what I mean by tossing up every day for every shilling that I have."
Alice did not quite understand him, and perhaps he did not intend that she should. Perhaps his object was to mystify her imagination.
She did not understand him, but I fear that she admired the kind of courage which he professed. And he had not only professed it: in that matter of the past election he had certainly practised it.
In talking of beauty to his sister he had spoken of himself as being ugly. He would not generally have been called ugly by women, had not one side of his face been dreadfully scarred by a cicatrice, which in healing, had left a dark indented line down from his left eye to his lower jaw. That black ravine running through his cheek was certainly ugly. On some occasions, when he was angry or disappointed, it was very hideous; for he would so contort his face that the scar would, as it were, stretch itself out, revealing all its horrors, and his countenance would become all scar. "He looked at me like the devil himself--making the hole in his face gape at me," the old squire had said to John Vavasor in describing the interview in which the grandson had tried to bully his grandfather into a.s.senting to his own views about the mortgage. But in other respects George"s face was not ugly, and might have been thought handsome by many women. His hair was black, and was parted in the front. His forehead, though low, was broad. His eyes were dark and bright, and his eyebrows were very full, and perfectly black. At those periods of his anger, all his face which was not scar, was eye and eyebrow. He wore a thick black moustache, which covered his mouth, but no whiskers. People said of him that he was so proud of his wound that he would not grow a hair to cover it. The fact, however, was that no whisker could be made to come sufficiently forward to be of service, and therefore he wore none.
The story of that wound should be told. When he was yet hardly more than a boy, before he had come up to London, he was living in a house in the country which his father then occupied. At the time his father was absent, and he and his sister only were in the house with the maid-servants. His sister had a few jewels in her room, and an exaggerated report of them having come to the ears of certain enterprising burglars, a little plan was arranged for obtaining them.
A small boy was hidden in the house, a window was opened, and at the proper witching hour of night a stout individual crept up-stairs in his stocking-feet, and was already at Kate Vavasor"s door,--when, in the dark, dressed only in his nightshirt, wholly unarmed, George Vavasor flew at the fellow"s throat. Two hours elapsed before the horror-stricken women of the house could bring men to the place.
George"s face had then been ripped open from the eye downwards, with some chisel, or house-breaking instrument. But the man was dead.
George had wrenched from him his own tool, and having first jabbed him all over with insufficient wounds, had at last driven the steel through his windpipe. The small boy escaped, carrying with him two shillings and threepence which Kate had left upon the drawing-room mantelpiece.
George Vavasor was rather low in stature, but well made, with small hands and feet, but broad in the chest and strong in the loins. He was a fine horseman and a hard rider; and men who had known him well said that he could fence and shoot with a pistol as few men care to do in these peaceable days. Since volunteering had come up, he had become a captain of Volunteers, and had won prizes with his rifle at Wimbledon.
Such had been the life of George Vavasor, and such was his character, and such his appearance. He had always lived alone in London, and did so at present; but just now his sister was much with him, as she was staying up in town with an aunt, another Vavasor by birth, with whom the reader will, if he persevere, become acquainted in course of time. I hope he will persevere a little, for of all the Vavasors Mrs.
Greenow was perhaps the best worth knowing. But Kate Vavasor"s home was understood to be in her grandfather"s house in Westmoreland.
On the evening before they started for Switzerland, George and Kate walked from Queen Anne Street, where they had been dining with Alice, to Mrs. Greenow"s house. Everything had been settled about luggage, hours of starting, and routes as regarded their few first days; and the common purse had been made over to George. That portion of Mr. Grey"s letter had been read which alluded to the Paynims and the gla.s.ses of water, and everything had pa.s.sed in the best of good-humour. "I"ll endeavour to get the cold water for you," George had said; "but as to the breakfasts, I can only hope you won"t put me to severe trials by any very early hours. When people go out for pleasure it should be pleasure."
The brother and sister walked through two or three streets in silence, and then Kate asked a question.
"George, I wonder what your wishes really are about Alice?"
"That she shouldn"t want her breakfast too early while we are away."
"That means that I"m to hold my tongue, of course."
"No, it doesn"t."
"Then it means that you intend to hold yours."
"No; not that either."
"Then what does it mean?"
"That I have no fixed wishes on the subject. Of course she"ll marry this man John Grey, and then no one will hear another word about her."
"She will no doubt, if you don"t interfere. Probably she will whether you interfere or not. But if you wish to interfere--"
"She"s got four hundred a year, and is not so good-looking as she was."
"Yes; she has got four hundred a year, and she is more handsome now than ever she was. I know that you think so;--and that you love her and love no one else--unless you have a sneaking fondness for me."
"I"ll leave you to judge of that last."
"And as for me,--I only love two people in the world; her and you. If ever you mean to try, you should try now."
CHAPTER V.
The Balcony at Basle.
I am not going to describe the Vavasors" Swiss tour. It would not be fair on my readers. "Six Weeks in the Bernese Oberland, by party of three," would have but very small chance of success in the literary world at present, and I should consider myself to be dishonest if I attempt to palm off such matter on the public in the pages of a novel. It is true that I have just returned from Switzerland, and should find such a course of writing very convenient. But I dismiss the temptation, strong as it is. _Retro age, Satanas._ No living man or woman any longer wants to be told anything of the Grimsell or of the Gemmi. Ludgate Hill is now-a-days more interesting than the Jungfrau.
The Vavasors were not very energetic on their tour. As George had said, they had gone out for pleasure and not for work. They went direct to Interlaken and then hung about between that place and Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, It delighted him to sit still on some outer bench, looking at the mountains, with a cigar in his mouth, and it seemed to delight them to be with him. Much that Mr. Grey prophesied had come true. The two girls were ministers to him, instead of having him as their slave.
"What fine fellows those Alpine club men think themselves," he said on one of these occasions, "and how thoroughly they despise the sort of enjoyment I get from mountains. But they"re mistaken."
"I don"t see why either need be mistaken," said Alice.
"But they are mistaken," he continued. "They rob the mountains of their poetry, which is or should be their greatest charm. Mont Blanc can have no mystery for a man who has been up it half a dozen times.
It"s like getting behind the scenes at a ballet, or making a conjuror explain his tricks."
"But is the exercise nothing?" said Kate.
"Yes; the exercise is very fine;--but that avoids the question."
"And they all botanize," said Alice.
"I don"t believe it. I believe that the most of them simply walk up the mountain and down again. But if they did, that avoids the question also. The poetry and mystery of the mountains are lost to those who make themselves familiar with their details, not the less because such familiarity may have useful results. In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares. Look in there, through that valley, where you just see the distant little peak at the end. Are you not dreaming of the unknown beautiful world that exists up there;--beautiful, as heaven is beautiful, because you know nothing of the reality? If you make your way up there and back to-morrow, and find out all about it, do you mean to say that it will be as beautiful to you when you come back?"
"Yes;--I think it would," said Alice.
"Then you"ve no poetry in you. Now I"m made up of poetry." After that they began to laugh at him and were very happy.