Guy Deverell Volume Ii Part 24

"Haw! dear me! yes, I saw him, Mr. Jack, I did; and what, Mr. Jack, is the doors opened for at these hours, unbeknown to me?"

"My most dear friend, I am taking every care, as you see; but my master, he choose to go out, and he choose to come in. Jacques is nothing but what you call the latch-key."

"And what is he a-doing hout o' doors this time o' night, Mr. Jack? I never knowd afore sich a think to 'appen. Why it looks like a stragethim, that's what it does, Mr. Jack--a stragethim."

And the butler nodded with the air of a moral constable.

"It's a folly, Monsieur. My faith! a little _ruse_ of love, I imagine."

"You don't mean to say he's hout a-larkin?"

Jacques, who only conjectured the sense of the sentence, winked and smiled.

"Well, I don't think it's not the way he should be."

"My master is most generous man. My friend, you shall see he shall know how kind you have been. Monsieur, my master, he is a _prince_!" murmured Jacques, eloquently, his fingers on the butler's cuff, and drew back to read in his countenance how it worked.

"It must not hoccur again, Mr. Jack, wile ere," replied the butler, with another grave shake of his head.

"Depend yourself on me," whispered Jacques again in his ear, while he squeezed the prudent hand of the butler affectionately. "But you must go way."

"I do depend on you, Mr. Jack, but I don't like it, mind--I don't like it, and I won't say nothink of it till I hear more from you."

So the butler withdrew, and the danger disappeared.

"You will please to remember, sir," said Varbarriere, as they approached the house, "that this is of the nature of a military movement--a surprise; there must be no sound--no alarm."

"Quite so," whispered old Lennox, with white lips. He was clutching something nervously under the wide sleeve of his loose drab overcoat. He stopped under the shadow of a n.o.ble clump of trees about fifty steps away from the gla.s.s door they were approaching.

"I--I almost wish, sir--I'll go back--I don't think I can go on, sir."

Varbarriere looked at his companion with an unconscious sneer, but said nothing.

"By ----, sir, if I find it true, I'll kill him, sir."

The old man had in his gouty grip one of those foolish daggers once so much in vogue, but which have now gone out of use, and Varbarriere saw it glimmer in the faint light.

"Surely, Colonel Lennox, you don't mean--you can't mean--you're not going to resort to violence, sir?"

"By ----, sir, he had best look to it."

Varbarriere placed his hand on the old man's sleeve, he could feel the tremor of his thin wrist through it.

"General Lennox, if I had fancied that you could have harboured such a thought, I never should have brought you here."

The General, with his teeth clenched, made him no reply but a fierce nod.

"Remember, sir, you have the courts of law, and you have the code of honour--either or both. One step more I shall not take with you, if you mean that sort of violence."

"What do you mean, sir?" asked the General, grimly.

"I mean this, sir, you shall learn nothing by this night's procedure, unless you promise me, upon your honour as a soldier, sir, and a gentleman, that you will not use that dagger or any other weapon."

General Lennox looked at him with a rather gla.s.sy stare.

"You're right, sir, I dare say," said Lennox, suddenly and helplessly.

"You promise?"

"Ay, sir."

"Upon your honour?"

"Upon my honour; ay, sir, my honour."

"I'm satisfied, General. Now observe, you must be silent, and as noiseless as you can. If Sir Jekyl be apprised of your arrival, of course the--the experiment fails."

General Lennox nodded. Emerging into the moonlight, Varbarriere saw how pale and lean his face looked.

Across the gra.s.s they pace side by side in silence. The gla.s.s door opened without a creak or a hitch. Jacques politely secured it, and, obeying his master's gesture, led the way through the gallery to the hall.

"You'll remember, General, that you arrived late; you understand? and having been observed by me, were admitted; and--and all the rest occurred naturally."

"Yes, sir, any d--d lie you like. All the world's lying--why should not I?"

At the foot of the staircase Jacques was dismissed, having lighted bed-room candles for the two gentlemen, so that they lost something of their air of Spanish conspirators, and they mounted the stairs together in a natural and domestic fashion.

When they had crossed the lobby, and stood at the door of the dressing-room, Varbarriere laid his hand on General Lennox's arm--

"Stop here a moment; you must knock at Lady Alice's door over there, and get the key of your room. She locks the door and keeps the key at night.

Make no noise, you know."

They had been fortunate hitherto in having escaped observation; and Varbarriere's strategy had, up to this point, quite succeeded.

"Very quietly, mind," whispered he, and withdrew behind the angle of the wall, toward the staircase.

Old Lennox was by this time at the door which he had indicated, and knocked. There was a little fuss audible within, but no answer. He knocked again more sharply, and he heard the gabble of female voices; and at last a rather nervous inquiry, "Who's there, please?"

"General Lennox, who wants the key of his room," answered he, in no mood to be trifled with. The General was standing, grim as fate, and stark as Corporal Trim, bed-room candle in hand, outside her door.

"He's _not_ General Lennox--send him about his business," exclaimed an imperious female voice from the state bed, in which Lady Alice was sitting, measuring some mysterious drops in a graduated gla.s.s.

"My lady says she's sorry she can't find it to-night, sir, being at present in bed, please, sir."

"Come, child--no nonsense--I want my key, and I'll have it," replied the General, so awfully that the maid recoiled.

"I think, my lady, he'll be rude if he doesn't get it."