CHAPTER XV.

The Pipe of Peace.

Sir Jekyl marched Mr. Pelter down the great stair again, intending to make the long journey rearward. As they reached the foot of the stairs, Monsieur Varbarriere, candle in hand, was approaching it on the way to his room. He was walking leisurely, as large men do after dinner, and was still some way off.

"By Jove! Why did not you tell me?" exclaimed the attorney, stopping short. "By the law! you've _got_ him here."

"Monsieur Varbarriere?" said the Baronet.

"Mr. Strangways, sir--_that's_ he."

"_That_ Strangways!" echoed the Baronet.

"Herbert Strangways," whispered Mr. Pelter, and by this time M. Varbarriere was under the rich oak archway, and stopped, smiling darkly, and bowing a little to the Baronet, who was for a moment surprised into silence.

"How do you do, Mr. Strangways, sir?" said the attorney, advancing with a shrewd resolute smile, and extending his hand.

M. Varbarriere, without the slightest embarrassment, took it, bowing with a courtly gravity.

"Ah, Monsieur Pelter?--yes, indeed--very happy to meet you again."

"Yes, sir--very happy, Mr. Strangways; so am I. Did not know you were in this part of the world, Mr. Strangways, sir. You remember Havre, sir?"

"Perfectly--yes. You did not know me by the name of Varbarriere, which name I adopted on purchasing the Varbarriere estates shortly after I met you at Havre, on becoming a naturalised subject of France."

"Wonderful little changed, Monsieur Barvarrian--fat, sir--a little stouter--in good case, Mr. Strangways; but six years, you _know_, sir, does not _count_ for _nothing_--ha, ha, ha!"

"You have the goodness to flatter me, I fear," answered Varbarriere, with a smile somewhat contemptuous, and in his deep tones of banter.

"This is my friend, Mr. Strangways, if he'll allow me to call him so--Mr. Herbert Strangways, Sir Jekyl," said the polite attorney, presenting his own guest to the Baronet.

"And so, Monsieur Varbarriere, I find I have an additional reason to rejoice in having made your acquaintance, inasmuch as it revives a very old one, so old that I almost fear you may have forgotten it. You remember our poor friend, Guy Deverell, and--"

"Perfectly, Sir Jekyl, and I was often tempted to ask you the same question; but--but you know there's a _melancholy_--and we were so very happy here, I had not courage to invite the sadness of the retrospect, though a very remote one. I believe I was right, Sir Jekyl. Life's true philosophy is to extract from the present all it can yield of happiness, and to bury our dead out of our sight."

"I dare say--I'm much of that way of thinking myself. And--dear me!--I--I suppose I'm very much altered." He was looking at Varbarriere, and trying to recover in the heavy frame and ponderous features before him the image of that Herbert Strangways whom, in the days of his early coxcombry, he had treated with a becoming impertinence.

"No--you're wonderfully little changed--I say honestly--quite wonderfully like what I remember you. And I--I know what a transformation I am--perfectly," said Varbarriere.

And he stood before Sir Jekyl, as he would display a portrait, full front--Sir Jekyl held a silver candlestick in his hand, Monsieur Varbarriere his in his--and they stood face to face--in a dream of the past.

Varbarriere's mystic smile expanded to a grin, and the grin broke into a laugh--deep and loud--not insulting--not sneering.

In that explosion of sonorous and enigmatic merriment Sir Jekyl joined--perhaps a little hesitatingly and coldly, for he was trying, I think, to read the riddle--wishing to be quite sure that he might be pleased, and accept these vibrations as sounds of reconciliation.

There was nothing quite to forbid it.

"I see," said Monsieur Varbarriere, in tones still disturbed by laughter, "in spite of your politeness, Sir Jekyl, what sort of impression my metamorphosis produces. Where is the raw-boned youth--so tall and gawky, that, egad! London bucks were ashamed to acknowledge him in the street, and when they did speak could not forbear breaking his gawky bones with their jokes?--ha, ha, ha! Now, lo! here he stands--the grand old black swine, on hind legs--hog-backed--and with mighty paunch and face all draped in fat. Bah! ha, ha, ha! What a magician is Father Time! Look and laugh, sir--you cannot laugh more than I."

"I laugh at your fantastic caricature, so utterly unlike what I see. There's a change, it's true, but no more than years usually bring; and, by Jove! I'd much rather any day grow a little full, for _my_ part, than turn, like some fellows, into a scarecrow."

"No, no--no scarecrow, certainly," still laughed Varbarriere.

"Egad, no," laughed the attorney in chorus. "No corners there, sir--ribs well covered--hey? nothing like it coming on winter;" and grinning pleasantly, he winked at Sir Jekyl, who somehow neither heard nor saw him, but said--

"Mr. Pelter, my law adviser here, was good enough to say he'd come to my room, which you know so well, Monsieur Varbarriere, and smoke a cigar. You can't do better--pray let me persuade you."

He was in fact tolerably easily persuaded, and the three gentlemen together--Sir Jekyl feeling as if he was walking in a dream, and leading the way affably--reached that snuggery which Varbarriere had visited so often before.

"Just _one_--they _are_ so good," said he. "We are to go to the drawing-room--aren't we?"

"Oh, certainly. I think you'll like these--they're rather good, Mr. Pelter. You know them, Monsieur Varbarriere."

"I've hardly ever smoked such tobacco. Once, by a chance, at Lyons, I lighted on a box very like these--that is, about a third of them--but hardly so good."

"We've smoked some of these very pleasantly together," said Sir Jekyl, cultivating genial relations.

Varbarriere, who had already one between his lips, grunted a polite assent with a nod. You would have thought that his whole soul was in his tobacco, as his dark eyes dreamily followed the smoke that thinly streamed from his lips. His mind, however, was busy in conjecturing what the attorney had come about, and how much he knew of his case and his plans. So the three gentlemen puffed away in silence for a time.

"Your nephew, Mr. Guy Strangways, I hope we are soon to see him again?" asked Sir Jekyl, removing his cigar for a moment.

"You are very good. Yes, I hope. In fact, though I call it business, it is only a folly which displeases me, which he has promised shall end; and whenever I choose to shake hands, he will come to my side. There is no real quarrel, mind," and Varbarriere laughed, "only I must cure him of his nonsense."

"Well, then we may hope very soon to see Mr. Strangways. I _call_ him Strangways, you know, because he has assumed that name, I suppose, permanently."

"Well, I think so. His real name is Deverell--a very near relation, and, in fact, representative of our poor friend Guy. His friends all thought it best he should drop it, with its sad associations, and assume a name that may be of some little use to him among more affluent relatives," said M. Varbarriere, who had resolved to be frank as day and harmless as doves, and to disarm suspicion adroitly.

"A particularly handsome fellow--a distinguished-looking young man. How many things, Monsieur Varbarriere, we wish undone as we get on in life!"

The attorney lay back in his chair, his hands in his pockets, his heels on the carpet, his cigar pointing up to the ceiling, and his eyes closed luxuriously. He intended making a note of everything.

"I hope to get him on rapidly in the French service," resumed Varbarriere, "and I can make him pretty comfortable myself while I live, and more so after I'm gone; and in the meantime I am glad to put him in a field where he must exert himself, and see something of labour as well as of life."

There was a knock at the door, and the intelligence that Mr. Pelter's luggage was in his room. He would have stayed, perhaps, but Sir Jekyl, smiling, urged haste, and as his cigar was out, he departed. When he was quite gone, Sir Jekyl rose smiling, and extended his hand to Varbarriere, who took it smiling in his own way; also, Sir Jekyl was looking in the face of the large man who stood before him, and returning his gaze a little cloudily; and laughing, both shook hands for a good while, and there was nothing but this low-toned laughter between them.

"At all events, Herbert, I'm glad we have met, very glad--very, very. I did not think I'd have felt it quite this way. I've your forgiveness to ask for a great deal. I never mistook a man so much in my life. I believe you are a devilish good fellow; but--but I fancied, you know, for a long time, that you had taken a hatred to me, and--and I have done you great injustice; and I wish very much I could be of any use to--to that fine young fellow, and show any kindness worth the name towards you."

Sir Jekyl's eyes were moist, he was smiling, and he was shaking Varbarriere's powerful hand very kindly. I cannot analyse his thoughts and feelings in that moment of confusion. It had overcome him suddenly--it had in some strange way even touched Varbarriere. Was there dimly seen by each a kindly solution of a life-long hatred--a possibility of something wise, perhaps self-sacrificing, that led to reconciliation and serenity in old days?

Varbarriere leaned his great shoulders to the wall, his hand still in Sir Jekyl's, still smiling, and looked almost sorrowfully, while he uttered something between a long pant and a sigh.

"Wonderful thing life is--terrible battle, life!" murmured Varbarriere, leaning against the wall, with his dark eyes raised to the far cornice, and looking away and through and beyond it into some far star.

There are times when your wide-awake gentlemen dream a little, and Sir Jekyl laughed a pensive and gentle little laugh, shaking his head and smiling sadly in reply.

"Did you ever read Vathek?" asked the Baronet, "rather a good horror--the fire, you know--ah, ha!--that's a fire every fellow has a spark of in him; I know I have. I've had everything almost a fellow wants; but this I know, if I were sure that death was only rest and darkness, there's hardly a day I live I would not choose it." And with this sentiment came a sincere and odd little laugh.

"My faith! I believe it's true," said Varbarriere with a shrug, and a faint smile of satiety on his heavy features.

"We must talk lots together, Herbert--talk a great deal. You'll find I'm not such a bad fellow after all. Egad, I'm _very_ glad you're here!"