Mr. George Vavasor at Home.
It cannot perhaps fairly be said that George Vavasor was an
unhospitable man, seeing that it was his custom to entertain his
friends occasionally at Greenwich, Richmond, or such places; and
he would now and again have a friend to dine with him at his club.
But he never gave breakfasts, dinners, or suppers under his own
roof. During a short period of his wine-selling career, at which
time he had occupied handsome rooms over his place of business in
New Burlington Street, he had presided at certain feasts given to
customers or expectant customers by the firm; but he had not found
this employment to his taste, and had soon relinquished it to one
of the other partners. Since that he had lived in lodgings in Cecil
Street,--down at the bottom of that retired nook, near to the river
and away from the Strand. Here he had simply two rooms on the first
floor, and hither his friends came to him very rarely. They came very
rarely on any account. A stray man might now and then pass an hour
with him here; but on such occasions the chances were that the visit
had some reference, near or distant, to affairs of business. Eating
or drinking there was never any to be found here by the most intimate
of his allies. His lodgings were his private retreat, and they were
so private that but few of his friends knew where he lived.
And had it been possible he would have wished that no one should have
known his whereabouts. I am not aware that he had any special reason
for this peculiarity, or that there was anything about his mode of
life that required hiding; but he was a man who had always lived as
though secrecy in certain matters might at any time become useful
to him. He had a mode of dressing himself when he went out at night
that made it almost impossible that any one should recognise him. The
people at his lodgings did not even know that he had relatives, and
his nearest relatives hardly knew that he had lodgings. Even Kate
had never been at the rooms in Cecil Street, and addressed all her
letters to his place of business or his club. He was a man who would
bear no inquiry into himself. If he had been out of view for a month,
and his friends asked him where he had been, he always answered the
question falsely, or left it unanswered. There are many men of whom
everybody knows all about all their belongings;--as to whom everybody
knows where they live, whither they go, what is their means, and how
they spend it. But there are others of whom no man knows anything,
and George Vavasor was such a one. For myself I like the open babbler
the best. Babbling may be a weakness, but to my thinking mystery is a
vice.
Vavasor also maintained another little establishment, down in
Oxfordshire; but the two establishments did not even know of each
other's existence. There was a third, too, very closely hidden from
the world's eye, which shall be nameless; but of the establishment in
Oxfordshire he did sometimes speak, in very humble words, among his
friends. When he found himself among hunting men, he would speak of
his two nags at Roebury, saying that he had never yet been able to
mount a regular hunting stable, and that he supposed he never would;
but that there were at Roebury two indifferent beasts of his if any
one chose to buy them. And men very often did buy Vavasor's horses.
When he was on them they always went well and sold themselves
readily. And though he thus spoke of two, and perhaps did not keep
more during the summer, he always seemed to have horses enough when
he was down in the country. No one even knew George Vavasor not to
hunt because he was short of stuff. And here, at Roebury, he kept
a trusty servant, an ancient groom with two little bushy grey eyes
which looked as though they could see through a stable door. Many
were the long whisperings which George and Bat Smithers carried on
at the stable door, in the very back depth of the yard attached to
the hunting inn at Roebury. Bat regarded his master as a man wholly
devoted to horses, but often wondered why he was not more regular in
his sojournings in Oxfordshire. Of any other portion of his master's
life Bat knew nothing. Bat could give the address of his master's
club in London, but he could give no other address.
But though Vavasor's private lodgings were so very private, he had,
nevertheless, taken some trouble in adorning them. The furniture in
the sitting-room was very neat, and the book-shelves were filled
with volumes that shone with gilding on their backs. The inkstand,
the paper-weight, the envelope case on his writing-table were all
handsome. He had a single good portrait of a woman's head hanging on
one of his walls. He had a special place adapted for his pistols,
others for his foils, and again another for his whips. The room was
as pretty a bachelor's room as you would wish to enter, but you
might see, by the position of the single easy-chair that was brought
forward, that it was seldom appropriated to the comfort of more than
one person. Here he sat lounging over his breakfast, late on a Sunday
morning in September, when all the world was out of town. He was
reading a letter which had just been brought down to him from his
club. Though the writer of it was his sister Kate, she had not been
privileged to address it to his private lodgings. He read it very
quickly, running rapidly over its contents, and then threw it aside
from him as though it were of no moment, keeping, however, an
enclosure in his hand. And yet the letter was of much moment, and
made him think deeply. "If I did it at all," said he, "it would be
more with the object of cutting him out than with any other."
The reader will hardly require to be told that the him in question
was John Grey, and that Kate's letter was one instigating her brother
to renew his love affair with Alice. And Vavasor was in truth well
inclined to renew it, and would have begun the renewing it at once,
had he not doubted his power with his cousin. Indeed it has been seen
that he had already attempted some commencement of such renewal at
Basle. He had told Kate more than once that Alice's fortune was not
much, and that her beauty was past its prime; and he would no doubt
repeat the same objections to his sister with some pretence of
disinclination. It was not his custom to show his hand to the players
at any game that he played. But he was, in truth, very anxious to
obtain from Alice a second promise of her hand. How soon after that
he might marry her, would be another question.
Perhaps it was not Alice's beauty that he coveted, nor yet her money
exclusively. Nevertheless he thought her very beautiful, and was
fully aware that her money would be of great service to him. But I
believe that he was true in that word that he spoke to himself, and
that his chief attraction was the delight which he would have in
robbing Mr. Grey of his wife. Alice had once been his love, had
clung to his side, had whispered love to him, and he had enough of
the weakness of humanity in him to feel the soreness arising from
her affection for another. When she broke away from him he had
acknowledged that he had been wrong, and when, since her engagement
with Mr. Grey, he had congratulated her, he had told her in his quiet,
half-whispered, impressive words how right she was; but not the less,
therefore, did he feel himself hurt that John Grey should be her
lover. And when he had met this man he had spoken well of him to
his sister, saying that he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a man
of parts; but not the less had he hated him from the first moment
of his seeing him. Such hatred under such circumstances was almost
pardonable. But George Vavasor, when he hated, was apt to follow up
his hatred with injury. He could not violently dislike a man and yet
not wish to do him any harm. At present, as he sat lounging in his
chair, he thought that he would like to marry his cousin Alice; but
he was quite sure that he would like to be the means of putting a
stop to the proposed marriage between Alice and John Grey.
Kate had been very false to her friend, and had sent up to her
brother the very letter which Alice had written to her after that
meeting in Queen Anne Street which was described in the last
chapter,--or rather a portion of it, for with the reserve common to
women she had kept back the other half. Alice had declared to herself
that she would be sure of her cousin's sympathy, and had written out
all her heart on the matter, as was her wont when writing to Kate.
"But you must understand," she wrote, "that all that I said to him
went with him for nothing. I had determined to make him know that
everything between us must be over, but I failed. I found that I had
no words at command, but that he was able to talk to me as though I
were a child. He told me that I was sick and full of phantasies, and
bade me change the air. As he spoke in this way, I could not help
feeling how right he was to use me so; but I felt also that he,
in his mighty superiority, could never be a fitting husband for a
creature so inferior to him as I am. Though I altogether failed
to make him understand that it was so, every moment that we were
together made me more fixed in my resolution."
This letter from Alice to Kate, Vavasor read over and over again,
though Kate's letter to himself, which was the longer one, he had
thrown aside after the first glance. There was nothing that he could
learn from that. He was as good a judge of the manner in which he
would play his own game as Kate could be; but in this matter he was
to learn how he would play his game from a knowledge of the other
girl's mind. "She'll never marry him, at any rate," he said to
himself, "and she is right. He'd make an upper servant of her; very
respectable, no doubt, but still only an upper servant. Now with
me;--well, I hardly know what I should make of her. I cannot think of
myself as a man married." Then he threw her letter after Kate's, and
betook himself to his newspaper and his cigar.
It was two hours after this, and he still wore his dressing-gown, and
he was still lounging in his easy-chair, when the waiting-maid at
the lodgings brought him up word that a gentleman wished to see him.
Vavasor kept no servant of his own except that confidential groom
down at Bicester. It was a rule with him that people could be better
served and cheaper served by other people's servants than by their
own. Even in the stables at Bicester the innkeeper had to find what
assistance was wanted, and charge for it in the bill. And George
Vavasor was no Sybarite. He did not deem it impracticable to put on
his own trousers without having a man standing at his foot to hold up
the leg of the garment. A valet about a man knows a great deal of a
man's ways, and therefore George had no valet.
"A gentleman!" said he to the girl. "Does the gentleman look like a
public-house keeper?"
"Well, I think he do," said the girl.
"Then show him up," said George.
And the gentleman was a public-house keeper. Vavasor was pretty sure
of his visitor before he desired the servant to give him entrance.
It was Mr. Grimes from the "Handsome Man" public-house and tavern, in
the Brompton Road, and he had come by appointment to have a little
conversation with Mr. Vavasor on matters political. Mr. Grimes was
a man who knew that business was business, and as such had some
considerable weight in his own neighbourhood. With him politics was
business, as well as beer, and omnibus-horses, and foreign wines;--in
the fabrication of which latter article Mr. Grimes was supposed
to have an extended experience. To such as him, when intent on
business, Mr. Vavasor was not averse to make known the secrets of his
lodging-house; and now, when the idle of London world was either at
morning church or still in bed, Mr. Grimes had come out by appointment
to do a little political business with the lately-rejected member for
the Chelsea Districts.
Vavasor had been, as I have said, lately rejected, and the new member
who had beaten him at the hustings had sat now for one session in
parliament. Under his present reign he was destined to the honour of
one other session, and then the period of his existing glory,--for
which he was said to have paid nearly six thousand pounds,--would be
over. But he might be elected again, perhaps for a full period of six
sessions; and it might be hoped that this second election would be
conducted on more economical principles. To this, the economical view
of the matter, Mr. Grimes was very much opposed, and was now waiting
upon George Vavasor in Cecil Street, chiefly with the object of
opposing the new member's wishes on this head. No doubt Mr. Grimes was
personally an advocate for the return of Mr. Vavasor, and would do all
in his power to prevent the re-election of the young Lord Kilfenora,
whose father, the Marquis of Bunratty, had scattered that six
thousand pounds among the electors and non-electors of Chelsea; but
his main object was that money should be spent. "'Tain't altogether
for myself," he said to a confidential friend in the same way of
business; "I don't get so much on it. Perhaps sometimes not none. May
be I've a bill agin some of those gents not paid this werry moment.
But it's the game I looks to. If the game dies away, it'll never be
got up again;--never. Who'll care about elections then? Anybody'd go
and get hisself elected if we was to let the game go by!" And so,
that the game might not go by, Mr. Grimes was now present in Mr. George
Vavasor's rooms.
"Well Mr. Grimes," said George, "how are you this morning? Sit down,
Mr. Grimes. If every man were as punctual as you are, the world would
go like clock-work; wouldn't it?"
"Business is business, Mr. Vavasor," said the publican, after having
made his salute, and having taken his chair with some little show of
mock modesty. "That's my maxim. If I didn't stick to that, nothing
wouldn't ever stick to me; and nothing doesn't much as it is. Times
is very bad, Mr. Vavasor."
"Of course they are. They're always bad. What was the Devil made
for, except that they should be bad? But I should have thought you
publicans were the last men who ought to complain."
"Lord love you, Mr. Vavasor; why, I suppose of all the men as is put
upon, we're put upon the worst. What's the good of drawing of beer,
if the more you draw the more you don't make. Yesterday as ever was
was Saturday, and we drawed three pound ten and nine. What'll that
come to, Mr. Vavasor, when you reckons it up with the brewer? Why,
it's a next to nothing. You knows that well enough."
"Upon my word I don't. But I know you don't sell a pint of beer
without getting a profit out of it."
"Lord love you, Mr. Vavasor. If I hadn't nothink to look to but beer I
couldn't keep a house over my head; no I couldn't. That house of mine
belongs to Meux's people; and very good people they are too;--have
made a sight of money; haven't they, Mr. Vavasor? I has to get my beer
from them in course. Why not, when it's their house? But if I sells
their stuff as I gets it, there ain't a halfpenny coming to me out of
a gallon. Look at that, now."
"But then you don't sell it as you get it. You stretch it."
"That's in course. I'm not going to tell you a lie, Mr. Vavasor. You
know what's what as well as I do, and a sight better, I expect.
There's a dozen different ways of handling beer, Mr. Vavasor. But
what's the use of that, when they can take four or five pounds a day
over the counter for their rot-gut stuff at the 'Cadogan Arms,' and I
can't do no better nor yet perhaps so well, for a real honest glass
of beer. Stretch it! It's my belief the more you poison their liquor,
the more the people likes it!"
Mr. Grimes was a stout man, not very tall, with a mottled red face,
and large protruding eyes. As regards his own person, Mr. Grimes
might have been taken as a fair sample of the English innkeeper,
as described for many years past. But in his outer garments he was
very unlike that description. He wore a black, swallow-tailed coat,
made, however, to set very loose upon his back, a black waistcoat,
and black pantaloons. He carried, moreover, in his hands a black
chimney-pot hat. Not only have the top-boots and breeches vanished
from the costume of innkeepers, but also the long, particoloured
waistcoat, and the birds'-eye fogle round their necks. They get
themselves up to look like Dissenting ministers or undertakers,
except that there is still a something about their rosy gills which
tells a tale of the spigot and corkscrew.
Mr. Grimes had only just finished the tale of his own hard ways as a
publican, when the door-bell was again rung. "There's Scruby," said
George Vavasor, "and now we can go to business."