Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated), page 280
“Sir, I admire your care of the young lady’s simplicity,” said M. Varbarriere, sardonically. “You will procure all this for me as quickly as you can, and I shan’t forget my promise.”
Jacques was again radiantly grateful.
“Jacques, you have the character of being always true to your chief. I never doubted your honour, and I show the esteem I hold you in by undertaking to give you five thousand francs in three weeks’ time, provided you satisfy me while here. It would not cost me much, Jacques, to make of you as good a gentleman as your father.”
Jacques here threw an awful and indescribable devotion into his countenance.
“I don’t say, mind you, I’ll do it — only that if I pleased I very easily might. You shall bring me a little plan of that room, including all the measurements I have mentioned, if possible tomorrow — the sooner the better; that to begin with. Enough for the present. Stay; have you had any talk with Sir Jekyl Marlowe — you must be quite frank with me — has he noticed you?”
“He has done me that honour.”
“Frequently?”
“Once only, Monsieur.”
“Come, let us hear what passed.”
M. Varbarriere had traced a slight embarrassment in Jacques’ countenance.
So with a little effort and as much gaiety as he could command, Jacques related tolerably truly what had passed in the stableyard.
A lurid flush appeared on the old man’s forehead for a moment, and he rang out fiercely —
“And why the devil, sir, did you not mention that before?”
“I was not aware, Monsieur, it was of any importance,” he answered deferentially.
“Jacques, you must tell me the whole truth — did he make you a present?”
“No, Monsieur.”
“He gave you nothing then or since?”
“Pas un sous, Monsieur — nothing.”
“Has he promised you anything?”
“Nothing, Monsieur.”
“But you understand what he means?”
“Monsieur will explain himself.”
“You understand he has made you an offer in case you consent to transfer your service.”
“Monsieur commands my allegiance.”
“You have only to say so if you wish it.”
“Monsieur is my generous chief. I will not abandon him for a stranger — never, while he continues his goodness and his preference for me.”
“Well, you belong to me for a month, you know, by our agreement. After that you may consider what you please. In the meantime be true to me; and not one word, if you please, of me or my concerns to anybody.”
“Certainly, Monsieur. I shall be found a man of honour now as always.”
“I have no doubt, Jacques; as I told you, I know you to be a gentleman — I rely upon you.”
M. Varbarriere looked rather grimly into his eye as he uttered this compliment; and when the polite little gentleman had left the room, M. Varbarriere bethought him how very little he had to betray — how little he knew about him, his nephew, and his plans; and although he would not have liked his inquiries to be either baulked or disclosed, he could yet mentally snap his fingers at Monsieur.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVII.
M. Varbarriere talks a little more freely.
After his valet left him, M. Varbarriere did not descend, but remained in his dressing-room, thinking profoundly; and, after a while, he opened his pocketbook, and began to con over a number of figures, and a diagram to which these numbers seemed to refer.
Sometimes standing at the window, at others pacing the floor, and all the time engrossed by a calculation, like a man over a problem in mathematics.
For two or three minutes he had been thus engaged when Guy Strangways entered the room.
“Ho! young gentleman, why don’t you read your prayer-book?” said the old man, with solemn waggery.
“I don’t understand,” said the young gentleman.
“No, you don’t. I am the old sphynx, you see, and some of my riddles I can’t make out, even myself. My faith! I have been puzzling my head till it aches over my notebook; and I saw you walking with that old lady, Lady Alice Redcliffe, up and down so affectionately. There is another riddle! My faith! the house itself is an enigma. And Sir Jekyl — what do you think of him; is he going to marry?”
“To marry!” echoed Guy Strangways.
“Ay, to marry. I do not know, but he is so sly. We must not let him marry, you know; it would be so cruel to poor little Mademoiselle Beatrix — eh?”
Guy Strangways looked at him doubtingly.
“He is pretty old, you know, but so am I, and older, my faith! But I think he is making eyes at the married ladies — eh?”
“I have not observed — perhaps so,” answered Guy, carelessly. “He does walk and talk a great deal with that pretty Madame Maberly.”
“Madame Maberly? Bah!” And M. Varbarriere’s “bah” sounded like one of those long sneering slides played sometimes on a deep chord of a double bass. “No, no, it is that fine woman, Miladi Jane Lennox.”
“Lady Jane! I fancied she did not like him. I mean that she positively disliked him; and to say truth, I never saw, on his part, the slightest disposition to make himself agreeable.”
“I do not judge by words or conduct — in presence of others those are easily controlled; it is when the eyes meet — you can’t mistake. Bah! I knew the first evening we arrived. Now see, you must have your eyes about you, Guy. It is your business, not mine. Very important to you, mon petit garçon; of no sort of imaginable consequence to me, except as your friend; therefore you shall watch and report to me. You understand?”
Guy flushed with a glow of shame and anger, and looked up with gleaming eyes, expecting to meet the deep-set observation of the old man. Had their eyes encountered, perhaps a quarrel would have resulted, and the fates and furies would have had the consequences in their hands; but M. Varbarriere was at the moment reading his attorney’s letter again. Guy looked out of the window, and thought resolutely.
“One duplicity I have committed. It is base enough to walk among these people masked, but to be a spy — never.”
And he clenched his hand and pressed his foot upon the floor.
It was dreadful to know that these moral impossibilities were expected of him. It was terrible to feel that a rupture with his best, perhaps his only friend, was drawing slowly but surely on; but he was quite resolved. Nothing on earth could tempt him to the degradation of which his kinsman seemed to think so lightly.
Happily, perhaps, for the immediate continuance of their amicable relations, the thoughts of M. Varbarriere had taken a new turn, or rather reverted to the channel from which they had only for a few minutes diverged.
“You were walking with that old woman, Lady Alice Redcliffe. She seemed to talk a great deal. How did she interest you all that time?”
“To say truth, she did not interest me all that time. She talked vaguely about family afflictions, and the death of her son; and she looked at me at first as if I were a brigand, and said I was very like some one whom she had lost.”
“Then she’s a friendly sort of old woman, at least on certain topics, and garrulous? Who’s there? Oh! Jacques; very good, you need not stay.”
The old gentleman was by this time making his toilet.
“Did she happen to mention a person named Gwynn, a housekeeper in her service?”
“No.”
“I’m glad she is an affable old lady; we shall be sure to hear something useful,” said the old gentleman, with an odd smile. “That housekeeper I must see and sift. They tell me she’s impracticable; they found her so. I shall see. While you live, Guy, do your own business; no one else will do it, be sure. I did mine, and I’ve got on.”
The old gentleman, who was declaiming before the looking-glass in his shirtsleeves and crimson silk suspenders, brushing up that pyramid of grizzled hair which added to the solemnity of his effect, now got into his black silk waistcoat. The dressing-bell had rung, and the candles had superseded daylight.
“You’ll observe all I told you, Guy. Sir Jekyl shan’t marry — he would grow what they call impracticable, like Madame Gwynn; Miss Beatrix, she shan’t marry either — it would make, perhaps, new difficulties; and you, I may as well tell you, can’t marry her. When you know the reasons you will see that such an event could not be contemplated. You understand?”
And he dropped his haircomb, with which he had been bestowing a last finish on his spire of hair, upon his dressing-table, with a slight emphasis.
“Therefore, Guy, you will understand you must not be a fool about that young lady; there are many others to speak to; and if you allow yourself to like her, you will be a miserable stripling till you forget her.”
“There is no need, sir, to warn me; I have resolved to avoid any such feeling. I have sense enough to see that there are obstacles insurmountable to my ever cherishing that ambition, and that I never could be regarded as worthy.”
“Bravo! young man, that is what I like; you are as modest as the devil; and here, I can tell you, modesty, which is so often silly, is as wise as the serpent. You understand?”
The large-chested gentleman was now getting into his capacious coat, having buttoned his jewelled wrist-studs in; so he contemplated himself in the glass, with a touch and a pluck here and there.
“One word more, about that old woman. Talk to her all you please, and let her talk — and talk more than you, so much the better; but observe, she will question you about yourself and your connections, and one word you shall not answer; observe she learns nothing from you, that is, in the spirit of your solemn promise to me.”
M. Varbarriere had addressed this peremptory reminder over his shoulder, and now retouched his perpendicular cone of hair, which waved upwards like a grey flame.
“Guy, you will be late,” he called over his shoulder. “Come, my boy; we must not be walking in with the entremets.”
And he plucked out that huge chased repeater, a Genevan masterpiece, which somehow harmonised, with his air of wealth and massiveness, and told him he had hut eight minutes left; and with an injunction to haste, which Guy, with a start, obeyed, this sable and somewhat mountainous figure swayed solemnly from the room.
“Who is that Monsieur Varbarriere?” inquired Lady Alice of her host, as the company began to assemble in the drawingroom, before that gentleman had made his appearance.
“I have not a notion.”
“Are you serious? No, you’re not serious,” served Lady Alice.
“I’m always serious when I talk to you.”
“Thank you. I’m sure that is meant for a compliment,” said the old lady, curtly.
“And I assure you I mean what I say,” continued Sir Jekyl, not minding the parenthesis. “I really don’t know, except that he comes from France — rather a large place, you know — where he comes from. I have not a notion what his business, calling, or trade may be.”
“Trade!” replied Lady Alice, with dry dignity.
“Trade, to be sure. You’re a tradesman yourself, you know — a miner — I bought twenty-two shares in that for you in June last; you’re an iron ship-builder — you have fifteen in that; you’re a ‘bus-man — you have ten there; and you were devilish near being a brewer, only it stopped.”
“Don’t talk like a fool — a joint-stock company I hope is one thing, and a — a — the other sort of thing quite another, I fancy.”
“You fancy, yes; but it is not. It’s a firm — Smith, Brown, Jones, Redcliffe, and Co., omnibus drivers, brewers, and so forth. So if he’s not a rival, and doesn’t interfere with your little trade, I really don’t care, my dear little mamma, what sort of shop my friend Varbarriere may keep; but as I said, I don’t know; maybe he’s too fine a fellow to meddle, like us, with vats and ‘busses.”
“It appears odd that you should know absolutely nothing about your own guests,” remarked Lady Alice.
“Well, it would be odd, only I do,” answered Sir Jekyl— “all one needs to know or ask. He presented his papers, and comes duly accredited — a letter from old Philander the Peer. Do you remember Peery still? I don’t mind him; he was always a noodle, though in a question of respectability he’s not quite nothing; and another from Bob Charteris — you don’t know him — Attaché at Paris; a better or more reliable quarter one could not hear from. I’ll let you read them tomorrow; they speak unequivocally for his respectability; and I think the inference is even that he has a soul above ‘busses. Here he is.”
M. Varbarriere advanced with the air of a magician about to conduct a client to his magic mirror, toward Lady Alice before whom he made a low bow, having been presented the day before, and he inquired with a grave concern how she now felt herself and expressed with a sonorous suavity his regrets and his hopes.
Lady Alice, having had a good account of him, received him on the whole very graciously; and being herself a good Frenchwoman, the conversation flowed on agreeably.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Some private Talk of Varbarriere and Lady Alice at the Dinner-table.
At dinner he was placed beside the old lady. He understood good cookery, and with him to dine was to analyse and contemplate. He was usually taciturn and absorbed during the process; but on this occasion he made an effort, and talked a good deal in a grave, but, as the old lady thought, an agreeable and kindly vein.
Oddly enough, he led the conversation to his nephew, and found his companion very ready indeed to listen, as perhaps he had anticipated, and even to question him on this theme with close but unavowed interest.
“He bears two names which, united, remind me of some of my bitterest sorrows — Guy was my dear son’s Christian name, and Mr. Strangways was his most particular friend; and there is a likeness too,” she continued, looking with her dim and clouded eyes upon Guy at the other side, whom fate had placed beside Miss Blunket— “a likeness so wonderful as to make me, at times, quite indescribably nervous; at times it is — how handsome! don’t you consider him wonderfully handsome? — at times the likeness is so exact as to become all but insupportable.”
She glanced suddenly as she spoke, and saw an expression on the countenance of M. Varbarriere, who looked for no such inspection at that moment, which she neither liked nor understood.
No, it was not pleasant, connected with the tone in which she spoke, the grief and the agitation she recounted, and above all with the sad and horrible associations connected indissolubly in her mind with those names and features. It was a face both insincere and mocking — such a countenance as has perhaps shocked us in childhood, when in some grief or lamentation, looking up for sympathy, we behold a face in which lurks a cruel enjoyment, or a sense of an undivulged joke.
Perhaps he read in the old lady’s face something of the shock she experienced; for he said, to cover his indiscretion, “I was, at the moment, reminded of a strange mistake which once took place in consequence of a likeness. Some of the consequences were tragic, but the rest so ridiculous that I can never call the adventure to mind without feeling the comedy prevail. I was thinking of relating it, but, on recollection, it is too vulgar.”
M. Varbarriere, I am certain, was telling fibs; but he did it well. He did not hasten to change his countenance, but allowed that expression to possess his features serenely after she had looked, and only shifted it for a grave and honest one when he added —
“You think then, perhaps, that, my nephew had formerly the honour of being a companion of Mr. Redcliffe, your son?”
“Oh, dear, no. He was about Jekyl’s age. I dare say I had lost him before that young man was born.”
“Oh! that surprises me very much. Monsieur Redcliffe — your son — is it possible he should have been so much older?”
“My son’s name was Deverell,” said the old lady, sadly.
“Ah! that’s very odd. He, Guy, then, had an uncle who had a friend of that name — Guy Deverell — long ago, in this country. That is very interesting.”
“Is not it?” repeated Lady Alice, with a gasp. “I feel, somehow, it must be he — a tall, slight young man.”
“Alas! madam, he is much changed if it be he. He must have been older than your son, madam. He must be, I think, near sixty now, and grown rather stout. I’ve heard him talk at times of his friend Guy Deverell.”
“And with affection, doubtless.”
“Well, yes, with affection, certainly, and with great indignation of his death — the mode of it.”
“Ah! yes,” said Lady Alice, flushing to the roots of her grey hair, and looking down on her plate.
Here there was silence for the space of a minute or more.
“Yes, Monsieur Varbarriere; but you know, even though we cannot always forget, we must forgive.”
“Champagne, my lady?” inquired the servant over her shoulder.
“No, thank you,” murmured Lady Alice.
M. Varbarriere took some and sipped it, wondering how Sir Jekyl contrived to get such wines, and mentally admitting that even in the champagne countries it would task him — M. Varbarriere — to find its equal. And he said —
“Yes, Lady Alice, divine philosophy, but not easy to practise. I fear it is as hard to do one as the other.”
“And how is Mr. Strangways?” inquired Lady Alice.
They were talking very confidentially and in a low tone, as if old Strangways’ health was the subject of conspiracy.
“Growing old, Lady Alice; he has not spared himself; otherwise well.”
“And this, you say, is his nephew?” continued the old lady. “And you?”
