General Lennox receives a Letter.
Monsieur Varbarriere was charmed with his host this morning. Sir Jekyl spent more than an hour in pointing out and illustrating the principal objects in the panorama that spread before and beneath them as they stood with field-glasses scanning the distance, and a very agreeable showman he made.
Very cheery and healthful among the breezy copse to make this sort of rural survey. As they parted in the hall, Monsieur Varbarriere spoke his eloquent appreciation of the beauties of the surrounding country; and then, having letters to despatch by the post, he took his leave, and strode up with pounding steps to his dressing-room.
Long before he reached it, his smile had quite subsided, and it was with a solemn and stern countenance that he entered and nodded to his valet, whom he found awaiting him there.
“Well, Jacques, any more offers? Does Sir Jekyl still wish to engage you?”
“I can assure Monsieur there has not been a word since upon that affair.”
“Good!” said Monsieur Varbarriere, after a second’s scrutiny of the valet’s dark, smirking visage.
The elderly gentleman unlocked his desk, and taking forth a large envelope, he unfolded the papers enclosed in it.
“Have we anything to note to-day about that apartment verd? Did you manage the measurement of the two recesses?”
“They are three feet and a half wide, two feet and a half deep, and the pier between them is, counting in the carved case, ten feet and six inches; and there is from the angle of the room at each side, that next the window and that opposite, to the angle of the same recesses, counting in, in like manner, the carved case, two feet and six inches exactly. Here Monsieur has the threads of measurement,” added Jacques, with a charming bow, handing a little paper, containing certain pieces of tape cut at proper lengths and noted in pen and ink, to his master.
“Were you in the room yourself since?”
“This afternoon I am promised to be again introduced.”
“Try both — particularly that to your right as you stand near the door — and rap them with your knuckles, and search as narrowly as you can.”
Monsieur Jacques bowed low and smiled.
“And now about the other room,” said Monsieur Varbarriere; “have you had an opportunity?”
“I have enjoyed the permission of visiting it, by the kindness of Sir Jekyl’s man.”
“He does not suppose any object?” inquired Monsieur Varbarriere.
“None in the world — nothing — merely the curiosity of seeing everything which is common in persons of my rank.”
Monsieur Varbarriere smiled dimly.
“Well, there is a room opening at the back of Sir Jekyl’s room — what is it?”
“His study.”
Varbarriere nodded— “Go on.”
“A room about the same size, surrounded on all sides except the window with books packed on shelves.”
“Where is the door?”
“There is no door, visible at least, except that by which one enters from Sir Jekyl Marlowe’s room,” answered Monsieur Jacques.
“Any sign of a door?”
Monsieur Jacques smiled a little mysteriously.
“When my friend, Monsieur Tomlinson, Sir Jekyl’s gentleman, had left me alone for a few minutes, to look at some old books of travels with engravings, for which I had always a liking, I did use my eyes a little, Monsieur, upon other objects, but could see nothing. Then, with the head of my stick I took the liberty to knock a little upon the shelves, and one place I did find where the books are not real, but made of wood.”
“Made of wood?” repeated Monsieur Varbarriere.
“Yes — bound over to imitate the tomes; and all as old and dingy as the books themselves.”
“You knew by the sound?”
“Yes, Monsieur, by the sound. I removed, moreover, a real book at the side, and I saw there wood.”
“Whereabout is that in the wall?”
“Next to the corner, Monsieur, which is formed by the wall in which the windows are set — it is a dark corner, nearly opposite the door by which you enter.”
“That’s a door,” said Monsieur Varbarriere, rising deliberately as if he were about to walk through it.
“I think Monsieur conjectures sagely.”
“What more did you see, Jacques?” demanded Monsieur Varbarriere, resuming his seat quietly.
“Nothing, Monsieur; for my good friend returned just then, and occupied my attention otherwise.”
“You did not give him a hint of your discovery?”
“Not a word, sir.”
“Jacques, you must see that room again, quietly. You are very much interested, you know, in those books of travel. When you have a minute there to yourself again, you will take down in turn every volume at each side of that false bookcase, and search closely for hinge or bolt — there must be something of the kind — or keyhole — do you see? Rely upon me, I will not fail to consider the service handsomely. Manage that, if possible, to-day.”
“I will do all my possible, Monsieur.”
“I depend upon you, Jacques. Adieu.”
With a low bow and a smirk, Jacques departed.
Monsieur Varbarriere bolted his dressing-room door, and sat down musing mysteriously before his paper. His large, fattish, freckled hand hung down over the arm of the low chair, nearly to the carpet, with his heavy gold pencil-case in its fingers. He heaved one deep, unconscious sigh, as he leaned back. It was not that he quailed before any coming crisis. He was not a soft-hearted or nervous general, and had quite made up his mind. But he was not without good nature in ordinary cases, and the page he was about to open was full of terror and bordered all round with black.
Lady Jane Lennox was at that moment seated also before her desk, very pale, and writing a few very grateful and humble lines of thanks to her General — vehement thanks — vehement self-abasement — such as surprised him quite delightfully. He read them over and over, smiling with all his might, under his stiff white moustache, and with a happy moisture in his twinkling grey eyes, and many a murmured apostrophe, “Poor little thing — how pleased she is — poor little Janet!” and resolving how happy they two should be, and how much sunshine was breaking into their world.
Monsieur Varbarriere was sitting in deep thought before his desk.
“Yes, I think I may,” was the result of his ruminations.
And in his bold clear hand he indited the following letter, which we translate: —
Private and Confidential.
Marlowe Manor, — th October, 1849.
General Lennox.
Sir, — I, in the first place, beg you to excuse the apparent presumption of my soliciting a private audience of a gentleman to whom I have the honour to be but so slightly known, and of claiming the protection of an honourable secrecy. The reason of my so doing will be obvious when I say that I have certain circumstances to lay before you which nearly affect your honour. I decline making any detailed statement by letter, nor will I explain my meaning at Marlowe Manor; but if, without fracas, you will give me a private meeting, at any place between this and London, I will make it my business to see you, when I shall satisfy you that I have not made this request without the gravest reasons. May I entreat that your reply may be addressed to me, poste restante, Slowton.
Accept the assurance, &c., &c., &c.,
H. Varbarriere.
Thus was the angelic messenger, musical with silvery wings, who visited honest General Lennox in his lodgings off Piccadilly, accompanied all the way, in the long flight from Slowton to the London terminus, by a dark spirit of compensation, to appal him with a doubt.
Varbarriere’s letter had been posted at Wardlock by his own servant Jacques — a precaution he chose to adopt, as he did not care that anyone at the little town of Marlowe, far less at the Manor, should guess that he had anything on earth to say to General Lennox.
When the two letters reached that old gentleman, he opened Lady Jane’s first; for, as we know, he had arrived at the amorous age, and was impatient to read what his little Jennie had to say; and when he had read it once, he had of course to read it all over again; then he kissed it and laughed tremulously over it, and was nearer to crying than he would have confessed to anyone — even to her; and he read it again at the window, where he was seen by seedy Captain Fezzy, who was reading Bell’s Life, across, the street, in the three-pair-of-stairs window, and by Miss Dignum, the proprietress, from the drawing-room, with a countenance so radiant and moved as to interest both spectators from their different points of view.
Thus, with many re-perusals and pleasant castle-buildings, and some airs gently whistled in his reveries, he had nearly forgotten M. Varbarriere’s letter.
He was so gratified — he always knew she cared for her old man, little Jennie — she was not demonstrative, all the better perhaps for that; and here, in this delightful letter, so grateful, so sad, so humble, it was all confessed — demonstrated, at last; and old General Lennox thought infinitely better of himself, and far more adoringly of his wife than ever, and was indescribably proud and happy. Hitherto his good angel had had it all his own way; the other spirit was now about to take his turn — touched him on the elbow and presented Monsieur Varbarriere’s letter, with a dark smile.
“Near forgetting this, by Jove!” said the old gentleman with the white moustache and eyebrows, taking the letter in his gnarled pink fingers.
“What the devil can the fellow mean? I think he’s a fool,” said the General, very pale and stern, when he had read the letter twice through.
If the people at the other side had been studying the transition of human countenance, they would have had a treat in the General’s, now again presented at his drawing-room window, where he stood leaning grimly on his knuckles.
Still oftener, and more microscopically, was this letter spelled over than the other.
“It can’t possibly refer to Jane. It can’t. I put that out of my head — quite,” said the poor General energetically to himself, with a short wave of his hand like a little sabre-cut in the air.
But what could it be? He had no kinsman near enough in blood to “affect his honour.” But these French fellows had such queer phrases. The only transaction he could think of was the sale of his black charger in Calcutta for two hundred guineas, to that ill-conditioned fellow, Colonel Bardell, who, he heard, had been grumbling about that bargain, as he did about every other.
“I should not be surprised if he said I cheated him about that horse!”
And he felt quite obliged to Colonel Bardell for affording this hypothesis.
“Yes, Bardell was coming to England — possibly at Marlowe now. He knows Sir Jekyl. Egad, that’s the very thing. He’s been talking; and this officious old French bourgeois thinks he’s doing a devilish polite thing in telling me what a suspected dog I am.”
The General laughed, and breathed a great sigh of relief, and recalled all the cases he could bring up in which fellows had got into scrapes unwittingly about horse-flesh, and how savagely fellows sometimes spoke when they did not like their bargains.