At the Bell and Horns.
With the reader's permission, I must tell here how Monsieur Varbarriere
proceeded on his route to Slowton.
As he mounted his vehicle from the steps of Wardlock, the flunky, who
was tantalised by the very unsatisfactory result of his listening at the
parlour-door, considered him curiously.
"Go on towards the village," said M. Varbarriere to the driver, in his
deep foreign accents.
And so soon as they were quite out of sight of the Wardlock flunky, he
opened the front window of his nondescript vehicle, and called--
"Drive to Slowton."
Which, accordingly, was done. M. Varbarriere, in profound good-humour, a
flood of light and certainty having come upon him, sat back luxuriously
in a halo of sardonic glory, and was smiling to himself, as men
sometimes will over the chess-board when the rest of their game is
secure.
At the Bell and Horns he was received with a reverential welcome.
"A gentleman been inquiring for Monsieur Varbarriere?" asked the foreign
gentleman in black, descending.
"A gentleman, sir, as has took number seven, and expects a gentleman to
call, but did not say who, which his name is Mr. Rumsey?"
"Very good," said Monsieur Varbarriere.
Suddenly he recollected that General Lennox's letter might have reached
the post-office, and, plucking a card from his case, wrote an order on
it for his letters, which he handed to Boots, who trudged away to the
post-office close by.
Varbarriere was half sorry now that he had opened his correspondence
with old General Lennox so soon. He had no hope that Donica Gwynn's
reserves would have melted and given way so rapidly in the interview
which had taken place. He was a man who cared nothing about penal
justice, who had embraced the world's ethics early, and looked
indulgently on escapades of human nature, and had no natural turn for
cruelty, although he could be cruel enough when an object was to be
accomplished.
"I don't think I'd have done it, though he deserves it richly, and has
little right to look for quarter at my hands."
And whichever of the gentlemen interested he may have alluded to, he
cursed him under his breath ardently.
In number seven there awaited him a tall and thin man of business, of a
sad countenance and bilious, with a pale drab-coloured and barred muslin
cravat, tied with as much precision as a curate's; a little bald at the
very top of his head; a little stooped at his shoulders. He did not
smile as Monsieur Varbarriere entered the room. He bowed in a meek and
suffering way, and looked as if he had spent the morning in reading
Doctor Blewish's pamphlet "On the Ubiquity of Disguised Cholera Morbus,"
or our good Bishop's well-known tract on "Self-Mortification." There
was a smell of cigars in the room, which should not have been had he
known that Monsieur Varbarriere was to be here so early. His chest was
weak, and the doctors ordered that sort of fumigation.
Monsieur Varbarriere set his mind at ease by preparing himself to smoke
one of the notable large cigars, of which he carried always a dozen
rounds or so in his case.
"You have brought the cases and opinions with you?" inquired
Varbarriere.
The melancholy solicitor replied by opening a tin box, from which he
drew several sheafs of neatly labelled papers tied up in red tape; the
most methodical and quiet of attorneys, and one of the most efficient to
be found.
"Smoke away; you like it, so do I; we can talk too, and look at these,"
said Varbarriere, lighting his cigar.
Mr. Rumsey bowed, and meekly lighted his also.
Then began the conference on business.
"Where are Gamford's letters?--these?--ho!"
And as Monsieur Varbarriere read them, puffing away as fast as a
furnace, and threw each down as he would play a card, in turn, he would
cry "Bah!"--"Booh!"--or, "Did you ever read such Galamathias?"--and, at
last--
"Who was right about that _benet_--you or I? I told you what he was."
"You will perceive just now, I think, sir, that there are some things of
value there notwithstanding. You can't see their importance until you
shall have looked into the enlarged statement we have been enabled by
the result of some fresh discoveries to submit to counsel."
"Give me that case. Fresh discoveries, have you? I venture to say, when
you've heard my notes, you'll open your eyes. No, I mean the cigar-case;
well, you may give me that too."
So he took the paper, with its bluish briefing post pages, and broad
margin, and the opinions of Mr. Serjeant Edgeways and Mr. Whaulbane,
Q.C., copied in the same large, round hand at the conclusion.
"Well, these opinions are stronger than I expected. There is a bit here
in Whaulbane's I don't like so well--what you call fishy, you know. But
you shall hear just now what I can add to our proofs, and you will see
what becomes of good Mr. Whaulbane's doubts and queries. You said always
you did not think they had destroyed the deed?"
"If well advised, they did not. I go that length. Because the deed,
although it told against them while a claimant in the Deverell line
appeared, would yet be an essential part of their case in the event of
their title being attacked from the Bracton quarter; and therefore the
fact is, they could not destroy it."
"They are both quite clear upon the question of secondary evidence of
the contents of a lost deed, I see," said Varbarriere, musingly, "and
think our proof satisfactory. Those advocates, however--_why_ do
they?--always say their say with so many reserves and misgivings, that
you begin to think they know very little more of the likelihoods of the
matter, with all their pedantry, than you do yourself."
"The glorious uncertainty of the law!" ejaculated Mr. Rumsey, employing
a phrase which I have heard before, and with the nearest approach to a
macerated smile which his face had yet worn.
"Ay," said Varbarriere, in his metallic tones of banter, "the glorious
uncertainty of the law. That must be true, for you're always saying it;
and it must be pleasant too, if one could only see it; for, my faith!
you look almost cheerful while you say it."
"It makes counsel cautious, though it does not cool clients when they're
once fairly blooded," said Mr. Rumsey. "A client is a wonderful thing
sometimes. There would not be half the money made of our profession if
men kept their senses when they go into law; but they seldom do. Lots of
cool gamblers at every other game, but no one ever keeps his head at
law."
"That's encouraging; thank you. Suppose I take your advice, and draw
stakes?" said Varbarriere.
"You have no notion," said Mr. Rumsey, resignedly.
"Well, I believe you're right, monsieur; and I believe _I_ am right too;
and if you have any faith in your favourite oracles, so must you; but,
have you done your cigar? Well, take your pen for a moment and listen to
me, and note what I say. When Deverell came down with his title-deeds to
Marlowe, they gave him the Window dressing-room for his bed-room, and
the green chamber, with the bed taken down, for his dressing-room; and
there he placed his papers, with the key turned in the door. In the
morning his attorney came. It was a meeting about a settlement of the
mortgage; and when the papers were overhauled it was found that that
deed had been abstracted. Very good. Now listen to what I have to relate
concerning the peculiar construction of that room."
So Monsieur Varbarriere proceeded to relate minutely all he had
ascertained that day, much to the quiet edification of Mr. Rumsey, whose
eyes brightened, and whose frontal wrinkles deepened as he listened.
"I told you I suspected some legerdemain about that room long ago; the
idea came to me oddly. When on a visit to the Marquis de Mirault he told
me that in making alterations in the chateau they had discovered a false
door into one of the bed-rooms. The tradition of this contrivance, which
was singularly artful, was lost. It is possible that the secret of it
perished with its first possessor. By means of this door the apartment
in question was placed in almost immediate conjunction with another,
which, except through this admirably concealed door, could not be
reached from it without a long circuit. The proximity of the rooms, in
fact, had been, by reason of the craft with which they were apparently
separated, entirely overlooked."
The attorney observed, sadly--
"The French are an ingenious people."
"The curiosity of my friend was excited," continued Varbarriere, "and
with some little search among family records he found that this room,
which was constructed in the way of an addition to the chateau, had been
built about the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the
marquisate of one of the line, who was celebrated as _un homme à bonnes
fortunes_, you understand, and its object was now quite palpable."
"A man, no doubt, of ability--a long-headed gentleman," mused the
melancholy attorney.
"Well, at Marlowe I saw a collection of elevations of the green chamber,
as it is called, built only two or three years later--and, mind this, by
the same architect, an Italian, called Paulo Abruzzi, a remarkable name,
which I perfectly remembered as having been mentioned by my friend the
Marquis as the architect of his ancestral relic of Cupid's legerdemain.
But here is the most remarkable circumstance, and to which my friend Sir
Jekyl quite innocently gave its proper point. The room under this
chamber, and, of course, in the same building, was decorated with
portraits painted in the panel, and one of them was this identical
Marquis de Mirault, with the date 1711, and the Baronet was good enough
to tell me that he had been a very intimate friend, and had visited his
grandfather, at Marlowe."