Guy Deverell. Volume 1 of 2

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 shirt-sleeves 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 drawing-room, 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 to-morrow; 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.