"So the question is to be opened whether the anonymous payment—he lies, it was in my name!—through the bankers protects me technically from pursuit; and I'm to be 'run by the old Hebrew pack from cover to cover,' over the Continent—bravo!—till I vanish for seven years more." Here Monsieur Varbarriere laughed in lurid contempt.
The letter went on in the same vein—contemptuous, cruel, he fancied. Everyone is cruel in self-defence; and in its allusions and spirit was something which bitterly recalled the sufferings which in younger and weaker days that same Baronet, pursuing the same policy, had inflicted upon him. Varbarriere remembered when he was driven to the most ignominious and risky shifts, to ridiculous disguises; he remembered his image in the cracked shaving-glass in the garret in his lair near Notre Dame—the red wig and moustache, and the goggles.
How easily an incautious poke will re-awake the dormant neuralgia of toothache; and tooth, cheek, ear, throat, brain, are all throbbing again in the re-induced anguish! With these sharp and vivid recollections of humiliation, fear, and suffering, all stirred into activity by this unlucky letter, that savage and vindictive feeling which had for so long ruled the life of Herbert Strangways, and had sunk into an uneasy doze under the narcotic of this evening's interview, rose up suddenly, wide awake and energetic.
He looked at his watch. The minute-hand showed him exactly how long he had been reading this confidence of client to attorney. "You will, will you?" murmured Varbarriere, with his jaw a little fiercely set, and a smile. "He will checkmate me, he thinks, in two or three moves. He does not see, clever fellow, that I will checkmate him in one!"
Now, this letter had preceded all that had occurred this evening to soften old animosities—though, strictly examined, that was not very much. It did not seem quite logical then, that it should work so sudden a revolution. I cannot, however, say positively; for in Varbarriere's mind may have long lain a suspicion that Sir Jekyl was not now altogether what he used to be, that he did not quite know all he had inflicted, and that time had made him wiser, and therefore gentler of heart. If so, the letter had knocked down this hypothesis, and its phrases, one or two of them, were of that unlucky sort which not only recalled the thrill of many an old wound, but freshly galled that vanity which never leaves us, till ear and eye grow cold, and light and sound are shut out by the coffin-lid.
So Varbarriere, being quite disenchanted, wondered at his own illusions, and sighed bitterly when he thought what a fool he had been so near making of himself. And thinking of these things, he stared grimly on his watch, and by one of those movements that betray one's abstraction, held it to his ear, as if he had fancied it might have gone down.
There it was, thundering on at a gallop. The tread of unseen fate approaching. Yes, it was time he should go. Jacques peeped in.
"You've done as I ordered?"
"Yes Monsieur."
"Here, lend me a hand with my cloak—very good. The servants, the butler, have they retired?"