LITMIR.BIZ

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“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!”

      “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

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