An air of respectability and the presence of good taste characterized the house in Queen-street, Mayfair, now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Routh. These things were inseparable from a dwelling of Harriet's. She had the peculiar feminine talent for embellishing the place she lived in, however simple and small were the means at her disposal. The lodgings at South Molton-street had never had the comfortless look and feeling of lodgings, and now there was apparently no lack of money to make the new home all that a house of its size and capabilities need be. Harriet moved about her present dwelling, not as she had moved about her former home, indeed, with happy alacrity, but with the same present judgment, the same critical eye; and though all she did now was done mechanically, it was done thoroughly.
Harriet was very restless on the day that was to bring George Dallas to their new residence. She had duly received his message from Jim Swain, and though the keen eye of the boy, who was singularly observant of her in every particular that came under his notice, had detected that the intelligence imparted a shock to her, she had preserved her composure wonderfully, in conveying the unwelcome news to her husband. Routh had received it with far less calmness. He felt in a moment that the delay of Harriet's projected letter, a delay prescribed by himself, had induced the return of Dallas, and angry with himself for the blunder, he was angry with her that she had not foreseen the risk. He was often angry with Harriet now; a strange kind of dislike to her arose frequently in his base and ungrateful heart, and the old relations between them had undergone a change, unavowed by either, but felt keenly by both. The strength of character on which Routh knew he could rely to any extent, which he knew would never fail him or its owner, made him strangely afraid, in the midst of all the confidence it inspired, and he was constrained in his wife's presence, and haunted out of it.
Stewart Routh had never been a rough-spoken man; the early tradition of his education had preserved him from the external coarseness of a vagabond life, but the underlying influences of an evil temper asserted themselves at times. Thus when Harriet told him gently, and with her blue eyes bright with reassuring encouragement, that Dallas was in England, and would be with them on the morrow, he turned upon her with an angry oath. She shrank back from him for a moment, but the next, she said, gently:
"We must meet this, Stewart, like all the rest, and it can be done."
"How?" he said, rudely; "how is it to be met?"
"Iwill meet it, Stewart," she replied. "Trust me: you have often done so, and never had cause to regret the consequence. I am changed, I know. I have not so much quickness and readiness as I had, but I have no less courage. Remember what my influence over George Dallas was; it is still unchanged; let me use it to the utmost of my ability. If it fails, why then"--she spoke very slowly, and leaned her hand heavily on his shoulder with the words,--"then we have but to do what I at least have always contemplated."
Their eyes met, and they looked steadily at each other for some moments; then withdrawing his gaze from her with difficulty, Routh said, sullenly, "Very well, let it be so; you must see him first: but I suppose I shall have to see him; I can't escape that, can I?"
She looked at him with a queer glance for a moment, and the shadow of a smile just flickered over her lips. Could he escape? That was his thought, his question. Did she ever ask it for herself? But the impression, irresistible to the woman's keen perception, was only momentary. She answered the base query instantly.
"No, you cannot; the thing is impossible. But I will see him first, and alone; then if I succeed with him, no risk can come of your seeing him; if I fail, the danger must be faced."
He turned sulkily away, and leaned upon the window-frame, looking idly into the street.
"You don't know when he will be here, I suppose?" he said, presently.
"I do not; but I fancy early in the day."
"It's too bad. I am sick of this. The thing is over now. Why is it always cropping up?"
He spoke to himself rather than to her; but she heard him, and the colour flew over her pale face at his words. He left the room soon after, and then Harriet sat down in the weary way that had become habitual to her, and murmured:
"It is done and over; and he wonders why it is always cropping up, and I--"
Stewart Routh did not return home until late that night. Such absences had become common now, and Harriet made no comment then or ever. How she passed the hours of solitude he did not inquire, and, indeed, she could hardly have told. On this particular evening she had employed herself on the close and attentive perusal of a number of letters. They were all written by George Dallas, and comprised the whole of his correspondence with her. She read them with attentive eye and knitted brow; and when she locked the packet up in her desk again, she looked, as Mrs. Brookes had seen her, like a woman who had a purpose, and who clearly saw her way to its fulfilment.
But the next day Harriet was restless. She could do the thing that lay before her, but she wanted the time for doing it to be come; she wanted to get it over. If this were weakness, then in this Harriet was weak.
Immediately after breakfast Stewart Routh went out. Only a few words had been exchanged between him and Harriet on the subject of George's expected visit, and Harriet had gone to the drawing-room when George came. She met him with the old frank welcome which he remembered so well, and, in answer to his inquiry for Routh, said she was momentarily expecting him.
"You know what brought me back to England," George said, when he was seated, and the first greeting was over; "you got my message?"
"That bad news had reached you. Yes," replied Harriet. "I was just about to write to you. You would have had my letter to-day. I learned from the newspapers that your mother was ill and--"
"And went to see about it for me. I know all your goodness, Mrs. Routh, and can never thank you for it half enough. It is only of a piece, though, with all your goodness to me. You have always been the best and truest of friends. My old nurse told me all about your visit. God bless you, Mrs. Routh." And George Dallas took her hand, and, for the second time in his life, kissed it.
There was a pause, a dangerous pause. Harriet felt it, for her heart was beating thickly, and her face was not under such command but that the interested eyes which were looking into it might read the traces of a deep and painful emotion.
"You have been comforted by your visit to Poynings," she said. "You have more hope and relief about your mother? Mrs. Brookes has told you all particulars."
"Yes, Mrs. Routh, I did hear all the particulars, and I also made an extraordinary and terrible discovery in connection with that illness."
"Indeed!" said Harriet, leaning towards him with the liveliest interest and concern in every feature of her face. "It is not that the illness is of a hopeless nature, I hope?"
"I trust not," he said, solemnly; "but, Mrs. Routh, my mother has been nearly killed by being obliged to suspect me of a dreadful crime."
"A dreadful crime! You, Mr. Dallas! What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Dallas, "that a murder has been committed, in which I would appear to have been implicated. I know what I am about to tell you will agitate and distress you, Mrs. Routh, and one of the most mysterious points of a mysterious subject is, that it should be my lot to tell it to you." He hesitated, then went on: "I don't know whether I ought to tell you all that I have heard. I have to consult Routh on some important matters, so that it is the more unfortunate that he is out of the way, as no time must be lost in what I have to do."
The occasion had come now, and Harriet was equal to it. It was with a smile, serious but quite unembarrassed, that she said:
"Don't depose me from the position of your confidant, George." She called him by his Christian name for the first time. "You know Stewart has no secret from me. Whatever you would tell to him, tell to me. I have more time at your disposal than he has, though not more friendship. In this matter count us as one. Indeed," she added, with a skilful assumption of playfulness, which did not, however, alter the gravity of George's manner, "as I am your correspondent, I claim precedence by prescriptive right."
"I hardly know how to tell you, Mrs. Routh; all the circumstances are so shocking, and so very, very strange. You and Routh have been rather surprised, have you not, by the sudden disappearance of Deane? Routh always thought him an odd, eccentric, unaccountable sort of fellow, coming nobody knew whence, and likely to go nobody knew whither; but yet it has surprised you and Routh a little that, since the day we were to have dined together in the Strand, Deane has never turned up, hasn't it?"
The strength and self-control which formed such striking features in Harriet's character were severely tried, almost beyond their limits, by the expectation of the revelation which George was about to make; but there was not a questioning tone in her voice, not a quiver on her lip, as the minutes passed by, while she won him more and more securely by her calm interest and friendliness. His growing anxiety to see Routh confirmed her in the belief that he knew all that his mother and Mrs. Brookes had known. Remembering the agony she had suffered when she and George had last talked together, and feeling that the present crisis was scarcely less momentous, she rallied all her powers--and they were considerable--and asked him boldly what it was he had to communicate to her. In a voice of the deepest solemnity, he said, taking her hand in his:
"The man who has been murdered, of whose murder my mother was led to suspect me, was Philip Deane!"
"Good God!" cried Harriet, and shrunk back in her chair, covering her face with her hands.
He had reason to say that the news he had to tell her would agitate and distress her. Her whole frame crept and trembled, and a chill moisture broke out on her smooth forehead and pale shivering cheeks. George was alarmed at her distress, and she knew by the intensity of her emotion, now that the words she had been expecting were spoken, how much her nervous system had suffered in the long struggle she had fought out with such success. He tried to calm her, and loved and admired her all the more for her keen womanly feeling.
"Horrible, most horrible!" she murmured, her eyes still hidden in her shaking hands. "But how do you know? Tell me all you know."
Then George told her without omission or reservation. She listened eagerly, greedily, and as the narrative proceeded she became quite calm. George dwelt on his astonishment that Routh had not made the discovery which had forced itself on him, but Harriet disposed of that part of the matter in a moment.
"You forget," she said, "he was not in London. When you came to me, on your return from Amherst, do you not remember I told you Stewart was away, hiding from his creditors, poor fellow? He never heard of the murder, very likely; he never interests himself in such horrors. Indeed, he never mentioned anything about it to me, and of course he must have known at once that the man was Deane. The very name of the tavern in the Strand where he was to have dined himself would have suggested the idea."
"Precisely so," said George; "that was the thing which puzzled me so completely, and made me anxious to see him."
"The strangeness of the coincidence," said Harriet, "is as remarkable as the event is horrible. It only proves how mistaken are our notions of the laws of chance. What could be more wildly improbable than that, living in the midst of London, and within constant reach of the talk and speculation about it, Stewart and I should have known nothing of the matter?"
"Very extraordinary indeed," said George; "one of those facts which would be denounced as too unnatural, if they were told in fiction. And how unfortunate! What a terrible mystery Routh might have cleared up!"
"And yet," Harriet replied, with a furtive glance at Dallas, full of keen and searching expression, "what could he have told, beyond the fact that he had known the man under the name of Deane? After all, it comes to that, and to no more, doesn't it?"
"To no more, my dear Mrs. Routh? To a great deal more. When we tell the police what we know, there will be not only an identification of the body, but an explanation of the motive."
"I don't quite understand you," said Harriot; and as she spoke, there came a click in her throat, as there had come when she and George Dallas had last spoken together.
Would it ever be over? Should her purpose ever be gained?
"Don't you?" said George, surprised, "and you so quick, too. But no wonder you are upset by this; it is so dreadful when one has known the person, is it not? But youwillsee in a moment that our being able to depose to the large sum of money and the jewels in the poor fellow's possession will make the motive quite plain. They have got a notion now that he was a foreigner, and that the motive was political, whereas it was of course simply a robbery. He resisted, I suppose, and was killed in the scuffle."
"Does the report read like that?" asked Harriet, faintly.
"It simply says he was stabbed," said George; "but it is plain that all the newspapers took up the political-murder notion at once, and then, of course, their reports would be made to fit their theory. No doubt some ruffian did it who knew that he had a large sum about him that day. Very likely he had been traced from the City; he had been there to get some securities. I can swear to his having told me that, at all events. How very ill you look, Mrs. Routh! This ghastly story has been too much for you. I don't think you ever liked poor Deane, but no one could know of a man's coming to such an untimely end, if he was ever such a bad fellow, and not feel it, especially you. I wish I had not said anything. It would have been better for Routh to have told you this."
"No, no," said Harriet. "Indeed it is better that I should hear it from you, and you are mistaken in supposing I am so much overcome entirely on account of--on account of--"
"The murder? Yes?" asked George, looking anxiously at her.
"It is all dreadful; no one in the world can feel it to be more dreadful than I do," said Harriet, earnestly.
As she spoke she rose from her chair, pushed her hair off her forehead, and began to walk slowly up and down the room. George sat still, following her with his eyes, and noting, in all his excitement and perturbation of spirit, the change which a few weeks had made in her appearance.
"I am grieved and troubled for you, George. I see in this serious results for you, and I think more of them."
"For me, Mrs. Routh? What can happen for me in this matter that has not already happened? My mother has suffered all she can suffer. Time may or may not restore her. Surely the follies and sins of my life have been heavily punished. Nothing can undo all this misery; but nothing can be added to it either. I have only to set the mystery at rest."
"Take care, George," said Harriet, earnestly; "I am not sure of that. Let us look at the case in all its bearings. Nothing that you have to tell can contradict the evidence given at the inquest, and which directs suspicion against you. You did dine with this wretched man; you did leave the tavern in his company; you did wear the coat to which the waiter swears."
"Ah, by the by," said George, "that was the coat I left at your house. Where is it, Mrs. Routh? It must be produced, of course."
He did not yet perceive that she was trying to shake his determination; but she answered his question with truly wonderful carelessness. "The coat; O yes, I remember. You wrote to me about it. It must be here, of course, unless it has been lost in the flitting from South Molton-street. He tells me a lot of his things have gone astray."
"Well," said George, "that's easily found out. Pray go on, Mrs. Routh. You were saying--"
"I was saying, George, that when you put together all the strange coincidences in this matter which have led, naturally, it must be said, to such a conclusion as that the man who wore the coat which you bought at Amherst is the criminal whom the police want to arrest--I think you would find it very difficult to prove that you are not the man!"
"Good God! You are not serious?" cried George.
"I am perfectly serious," Harriet answered. "How can you prove it? How do I, at this moment, know in a manner which I could demonstrate to legal satisfaction that you are not the man who did the deed?"
George looked at her in astonishment.
"Of course Idoknow it--that is, I believe it, which is quite a different thing; but supposing I did not believe it, supposing my mind were not made up about it, how would you propose to prove it to me? Tell me that, and then the strength of my argument, the value of my advice, will become evident to you, I think."
Still George looked at her, and his colour rose. He was unaccountably embarrassed by the question. The whole thing had appeared to him as simple for him as it was terrible for Deane, when Harriet began to speak. It bore a very different aspect now.
"I--I should prove that I parted with Deane, that night, at the door of the billiard-rooms where we had been playing."
"Outside the door or inside, before witnesses or alone?" interrupted Harriet.
"Why, it certainly was outside the door, and we were alone."
"Exactly. Then your having parted with him that night is just what you cannot prove; and as you cannot prove that, you can prove nothing. Let me repeat to you your own account of that night's proceedings, and you will see that you can prove nothing to outweigh the presumptive evidence against you. You told me this wretched man had money about him which he boasted of; therefore you knew he was a rich prey. You had no money--only a few shillings at least; you went to your lodgings that night, and left them without notice on the following morning, having paid your landlady with a ten-pound note that had been in this man's possession. How can you account for that? You went to Amherst, where you remained, alone, under a feigned name, for four days; you returned to London, where it can be proved the occurrence was, at the time, a topic of general discussion, late at night. You went abroad the following morning, and at Amsterdam you offered certain valuable diamonds for sale. The diamonds are your mother's, you say, and formed part of a bracelet given to you by her."
"No, no," said George; "I never would explain that under any circumstances."
Harriet smiled, but the steadfast earnestness of her manner was not lessened by the smile, which was just a little contemptuous.
"That is precisely what you would be forced to explain," she continued. "Certain diamond ornaments were among the articles in the possession of the murdered man, says the newspaper report," she pointed to the passage with a steady hand. He read it, and listened in silence, his face grave and anxious.
"You must account for the diamonds which you sold at Amsterdam; how are you to prove, otherwise, that they are not those the wretched man wore when he was seen in your company?"
"I remember his studs and his ring," said George, in a low agitated voice. "I wonder they have not been traced."
Harriet did not reply for a moment; and the click in her throat was painfully hard and audible, as she said at length: "They would have been broken up, of course; and remember, George, they were unset diamonds you sold at Amsterdam."
George Dallas leaned his elbows on the table, and his head on his hands. He looked at Harriet, and her face changed when his gaze was removed--changed to a look of sharp, terrible anxiety, to all the intentness of one pleading in a desperate cause.
"You must tell the story of your visit to Amherst; you must tell the truth about your mother and the jewels; moreover, you must prove it. Can your mother do that for you?"
"No," said George, drearily; "but my old nurse can."
"How? Did she see you on the Wednesday, when you arrived at Amherst t Did she see you at all until the Monday? Could she swear you were at Amherst in the interval? And, supposing she could, what would it avail? Look here, George, this man's body was found on the Wednesday evening, the eighteenth of April, and the presumption is that it had been a night and a day in the river. Do you see what this means?" She put her hand on his shoulder, and grasped it securely. He shrunk from her light fingers; they hurt his flesh as though they had been steel bars. She struck the newspaper lying open on the table with the other hand, and said with a desperate effort, "It means this, George: The man was found on Wednesday; but the deed was done on Tuesday night--done, of course, after you left him; but who can prove that? He was seen alive in your company late on Tuesday night, and he was never seen alive again. The hours of that night must be accounted for, George, if you are to prove yourself guiltless. How can you account for them after the time the waiter saw you leave the tavern together?"
George did not answer. She caught her breath and went on, fixing on him a sideway look of intense anxiety.
"Can any of the people at the billiard-rooms prove at what hour you left them? Can any one at your former lodgings prove at what hour you reached home that night?"
"I don't think we left any one after us at the billiard-room but the marker," George replied. "By the way, how extraordinary he did not come forward at the inquest! He must have noticed Deane's odd appearance, and his diamond studs and things. I should think."
"One would think so," said Harriet; "but I dare say the foreign look is commonly enough seen in such places. Still the coat must have been very conspicuous. I forget whether you said you were in the habit of going to those particular billiard-rooms."
"I did not say anything about it, Mrs. Routh. I never was there but that once. It is very odd, as you say, about Deane's coat, but the poor man hadn't it on. After we left the tavern, I said it was an odd, un-English kind of coat, and too warm, I should think, for the weather; but he said he had 'the shakes' that day--Yankee for ague, you know--and had never worn it before in this country. He carried it over his arm, I remember, the cloth side out, and threw it into a corner of the billiard-room. I dare say no one saw it."
"Had he put it on when you parted with him?" asked Harriet.
"No," said George; "he was still carrying it over his arm, and I remember now that I said to him, 'You had better button that trapper's wrap of yours over all that money you've been staggering under the weight of.' 'Lightened a little, old fellow, by you,' he said, though he had paid his losses in a note, not in gold."
Harriet's face was less anxious now.
"Poor fellow!" George went on, with a slight shudder; "how dreadful it is--such light words, too, as we parted with. When he handed me the note, he asked for pen and ink, and wrote his name upon it, in full, over some initials--A. F., I think--and told me a queer story about an old lady who always indorsed her notes with her name, residence, and the date of her birth, and how he once traced a forgery by a bank-note, purporting to come from her, being devoid of those eccentric inscriptions. He was telling me the story as we went out."
George's discursive fancy had wandered from his own position to the circumstances which invested Deane's fate with additional sadness to his mind. Harriet frowned angrily at this proof of his invincibly light nature, and went on sharply:
"All this adds strength to my argument. But I asked you another question. Did any one in the house you lodged at know at what hour you went home that night? Is any one in a position to prove it?"
"No," said George. "I let myself in with a latch-key, and made no noise. I never did when I could help it, there, the old woman was such a Tartar."
"Then there is not a flaw in my argument, George," she said, in a sweet, solemn tone, which, from the first time he had heard it, had had an irresistible charm for the young man; "there is nothing to be gained for any one, for any conceivable interest that you are bound to consider, for any interest, indeed, except the abstract one of the law, in telling what you know of this matter."
"The man's friends," remonstrated George, who, habitually submissive to her, did not recoil at the suggestion, as he would infallibly have recoiled had it come from any other person; "they may not know, they may be in suspense, in misery."
"I hardly think so," said Harriet, and her blue eyes had their coldest colour, and her sweet voice its subtlest inflection of scorn. "Did you ever hear him mention relative or friend. Did you ever know a man so cold, so callous, so base, so shamelessly devoid of any interest save in his own pleasure or his own gain? Did you ever know one so narrow-hearted, so mean-spirited, of so crafty and cruel a nature?" Her energy quite startled George. She was looking straight before her, and her hand was raised as though she were tracing a picture as her mind produced it. "The man was a reptile, George--a cruel snake in his nature. I don't believe any one on earth ever loved him, except his mother in his babyhood. I hope she's dead; yes, I trust she's dead! And that you should peril your safety, drag your mother's name into the police-courts, rouse all the anger, stab all the pride, of your stepfather, ruin, or at least greatly injure, your own prospects, by the revelations you will be forced to make, supposing (which, I confess, I think most difficult and improbable) you do prove your own innocence, seems to me utterly monstrous and irrational. Remember, you can give justice only negative assistance. If you prove that Deane was the victim, and you not the criminal, you can't tell them who the criminal is, or give them any information about Deane."
"No," said George, very quickly; "but then, you know, Routh can."
Harriet dropped her hand off his shoulder, and fell into a chair.
"You are overdone, Mrs. Routh," George said, tenderly, as he took her hand in his, and resumed his old manner of deferential affection. "You have talked too long and too much about this murder, and it has been too much for you. I ought to have seen that before. We won't say another word about it, until I have consulted Routh. How shocked he will be! I will think of all you have said; but I will do nothing to-day. I can't even wait to see him now, for I must get down to theMercuryoffice by four. I must leave you now."
"You are sure you will do nothing until we have seen you again?" Harriet said, faintly. "George, let nothing induce you to mention the matter at theMercury. Only think of the godsend a hint would be to them."
"I'll take care," said George. "I will not stir in the matter till I have talked it over thoroughly with you."
"You will stay here, George, of course," said Harriet, kindly, holding out her hand, but without rising. "We have a room at your disposal now, you know."
"Thank you, Mrs. Routh, I will; but I don't think I shall be more than a day or two in London, unless I should be detained by this sad business."
"Are you going back to Amsterdam?" asked Harriet.
"No," said George; "I am going to my mother."
"I was right," Harriet said, when she was alone, as she lay back in her chair, pale and exhausted. "I thought the one strong motive, the motive which, though late aroused, has been strong enough to save George Dallas from himself, could be powerful now. Twice his mother has helped, has saved, at his expense, his worst, his involuntary enemy. There was nothing else to work upon, but that has succeeded."
Harriet was right to a certain extent, but not quite right. Another motive had helped the end she desired to gain, and George named it to his own heart as he walked down to theMercuryoffice by the name of Clare Carruthers.
"You are a wonderful woman, Harry," said Routh, when Harriet had concluded the brief statement into which she condensed her report of the interview between herself and George. But, though he spoke in a tone of strong admiration, and his face relaxed into a look of intense relief, he did not hold her in his arms and kiss her passionately now. "You are a wonderful woman, and this danger is escaped."
She smiled a little bitterly, very sadly, as she said:
"I don't know. At all events, it is once more tided over."
Stewart Routh was as hard a man as could readily be found, but his hardness was not proof against his meeting with George Dallas, and he showed Harriet how great a trial it was to him, and how much he feared his own constancy, when he told her he thought she had better not be present at their meeting. The curse of an unholy alliance had fallen upon these two, and was now beginning to make itself felt. Each was desirous to conceal from the other the devices to which they were compelled to resort, in order to keep up the false appearances to which they were condemned; in all their life there was no time in which they were free from restraint, except in solitude. But, though the effect was in each case the same, the origin was widely different. Harriet suffered for her husband's sake; he, entirely for his own. He had calculated that if anything in his appearance, voice, and manner, should escape his control, George would be certain to impute it to the natural feelings of horror and regret with which he would have received the intelligence conveyed to him by Harriet, of George's discovery of the identity of the murdered man.
"You had better remain upstairs until I call you," Routh had said to Harriet, "when Dallas comes to dinner. It will be easier for you," he added. Harriet was sitting listlessly by her dressing-table while he spoke, and he stood behind her chair, and looked gloomily at the reflection of her face in the glass.
She smiled faintly. "Thank you, Stewart," she said; "it will be easier." Then, after a brief pause, "Would you very much mind my not going down to dinner at all?"
So far from minding it, Routh instantly felt that her absence would be a great relief. It would enable him to sound George thoroughly, to scheme upon whatever discoveries he should make concerning his future plans; and then, Harriet had done all the hard work, had prepared the way for him, had got over the difficulty and the danger. A little unpleasantness, some disagreeable emotion, must indeed be encountered, that was inevitable, but everything might go off well, and if so, Harriet's restraining presence, Harriet's face, with its constant reminder in it, would be much better out of sight.
"Not at all," he answered. "Stay upstairs if you like. I'll tell Dallas you are a little knocked up, but will be all right in the morning."
"He will not be surprised, I dare say," she replied, "though it was not my way to be knocked up formerly."
"Nor to be always harping on one string, either; and I can't say there's a change for the better," said Routh roughly. Once or twice of late the innate ruffianism of the man had come out towards her, from whom it had once been so scrupulously concealed. But she did not heed it; not a quiver crossed the drooping rigid face, at which Routh once more glanced covertly before he left the room. It would have been impossible to tell whether she had even heard him.
Routh went down to the well-appointed dining-room, so different to the scene of the dinners of which George had formerly partaken, in the character of his guest. Wherever Harriet was, neatness and propriety never were absent, but there was something more than neatness and propriety in Routh's house now. Nevertheless, the look which the master of the house cast upon the well-laid, well-lighted table, with its perfect, unobtrusive, unpretentious appointments, was full of gloom. He wished he had not come down so soon; the inevitable meeting assumed a more portentous aspect with every minute that it was delayed; he wished he had not told Harriet to remain in her room. The fact was, Routh was staggered by the first failure of his plans. Everything had gone so right with him; his calculations had been fulfilled so exactly, so unfailingly, until now, and this unexpected accident had befallen through a blunder of his own. True, Harriet had met it with amazing tact, and had so treated it, that if only it could be further dexterously managed, it might be turned to ultimate advantage and an incalculable strengthening of his position. Let him keep his thoughts to that view of the question, and keep his nerves still. Were they going to play him false now, his nerves, which had never failed him before? So Mr. Stewart Routh passed a very unpleasant quarter of an hour before his expected guest arrived. He had just had recourse, as much in weakness as in nervousness, to a flask of brandy which stood on the sideboard, and had drank off half a glassful, when a knock at the door was quickly answered by the grave and correct man-servant, who formed an important and eminently respectable feature of the improved household of the Rouths, and the well-known quick tread of Dallas crossed the hall.
"Well, Routh, old fellow!"
"George, my boy; delighted to see you!" and the meeting was over; and Routh, looking into the young man's face, saw that not a trace of suspicion rested upon it, and that the material before him was as plastic as ever.
"Harriet is not very well this evening," said Routh, "and begs you will excuse her if she does not make her appearance. I undertook to make it all right, and indeed I am rather glad we should be alone just at first. I have so much to say and to hear, and Harriet has had a long talk with you already."
"Yes," said George, and his smile was at once overcast, and his face darkened into gloom, "I had a long talk with her. Of course, Routh, she told you the dreadful discovery I have made, and the curious way in which I am implicated in this ghastly affair."
"She told me all about it, my dear fellow," returned Routh. "But here comes dinner, and we must postpone discussion until afterwards. I can only say now that I think Harriet's view of the matter perfectly correct, and her advice the soundest possible; it generally is, you know of old." And then Routh made a slight signal suggestive of caution to his guest, and the two men stood by the fireplace and talked of trifles while the irreproachable man-servant set the dishes upon the table, assisted by a neat parlour-maid.
While far more serious thoughts were busy in George's mind, over the surface of it was passing observation of the changed order of things, and an amused perception of the alteration in Routh himself. It was as he had said in his letter--he had assumed the responsibility, the pose, the prosperity of the genuine plodding "City man;" and he looked the part to absolute perfection. "And yet," George thought, "he knows that one who was with us two the last time we met has met with a violent death; he knows that I am in a position as painful and perilous as it is extraordinary, and that he is indirectly mixed up with the dreadful event, and he is as cool and unconcerned as possible. I suppose it is constitutional, this callousness; but I'm not sure it is very enviable. However, one thing is certain--it makes him the very best adviser one can possibly have under such circumstances. He won't be carried away by the horror of the circumstances, anyhow."
The dinner proceeded, and George yielded rapidly to the influences which had been so powerful, and which he had been so determined to resist, when out of Routh's presence and under the sway of his penitence and his determination to reform. The conversation of Routh asserted all its old charm; the man's consummate knowledge of the world, his varied experience, the perfect refinement and tact which he could display at will, the apparent putting off of old things, the tone of utter respectability which abled George's newly-sharpened conscience to consent to the fascination as readily as his predilections, had more than ever an irresistible attraction for the young man. During dinner, which, in the altered state of affairs, involved the presence of the servant, Routh kept the conversation almost entirely to Dallas's own doings, plans, and prospects. He knew Amsterdam well, and talked of Dutch art and the history of the Low Countries with much skill and fluency. Without an allusion which could supply material for the curiosity and the gossip of the servants, he made George understand that the Bohemian element had been completely banished from his life and its associations; he sketched a plan of London life for George, moderately prosperous, quite practical, and entirely inoffensive. He made him, in short, as ready to congratulate himself on the resumption of their intimacy in the present phase of his moral being as he had been to rejoice in its formation under former conditions.
Routh's spirits rose with his senses. He felt a depraved pride in the devilish skill he possessed in his grand faculty of deception. He excelled in it, he revelled in its exercise, and he had not enjoyed it, in this orthodox way, of late. He had been making money, it is true, and doing some real work as well as a good deal of swindling in the process, but he had had only the opportunity of using a certain set of his faculties. His persuasive eloquence, his personal influence, his skilful and expansive but shrewd falsehood had lain dormant for some time. As a singer who has lost his voice for a time suddenly finds the liquid notes filling the air with all their accustomed power and sweetness, and exults in the recovered faculty, so Stewart Routh marked the pleasure, the enthusiasm, almost enabling George to forget the coming painful topic of discussion from which only a few minutes divided them, as he listened to the voice of the charmer, who had never before charmed him so wisely nor so well.
At length the wine was set upon the table, and then they were alone; and by this time, so complete did Routh feel his resumption of power over George Dallas, that it was with indifference only very little feigned that he said:
"And now, George, let us go into this sad business about poor Deane. It has quite floored Harriet, as I dare say you guessed."
"And so you give me the same counsel as Harriet has given me," said George, when he had to tell his story all over again, and had worked himself up into a new fit of excitement over the horror of the murder, and the dreadful idea of the ignorance of the deed in which the dead man's relatives still remained.
"I do, indeed, George," said Routh, solemnly: "in taking any other course you will expose yourself to certain difficulty, and, indeed, to imminently probable danger. While you have been telling all this, I have been thinking how fortunate it was that I was away at the time, and so down upon my luck that I never knew or thought about any public affairs, and so did not hear of the murder except in the vaguest way. In the peculiar lustre of our London civilization, you know, George, somebody found dead in the river is so frequent a mote, that nobody thinks about it."
"Not in a general way," said George; "but they made so much of this, and were so confident that it was a political affair, I cannot understand how any of us escaped hearing of it."
"Yes," acquiesced Routh, "it is very extraordinary, but such things do happen. And rather fortunate, it seems, that they do, for if I had dropped in on the inquest, it would have been very awkward for you."
"Why?" said George; "after all, the truth must have come out, and all this misery about my mother would have been avoided."
An evil look from Routh's eye lighted for a moment on the young man's unconscious face, then glanced away, as he said:
"You forget that all I could have said must have strongly favoured the notion that the man who wore the coat which the waiter swore to, and was last seen with Deane, was the last person who ever saw him alive. If I had had time to think, of course I shouldn't have said a word about it; but if I had been hurried into speaking, that is what I must have said. Come, George, you are much too sensitive about this matter. Of course, I'm sorry for Deane, but I care a great deal more for you, and I decline to look at any part of this matter except such as concerns you. As to his relatives, as that part of the business appears to distress you most keenly, I must set your mind at rest by informing you that he had not a near relation in the world."
"Indeed!" said George. "How do you know?"
"He told me so," said Routh. "You will say, perhaps, that is not very trustworthy evidence, but I think we may take it in this particular instance for more than its general worth. He was the coldest, hardest, most selfish fellow I ever knew in the whole course of my experience, which has included a good deal of scoundreldom, and he seemed so thoroughly to appreciate the advantages of such isolation, that I believe it really did exist."
"He was certainly a mystery in every way," said George. "Where did he live? We never knew him--at least I never did--except loafing about at taverns, and places of the kind."
"I don't know where he lived," said Routh; "he never gave me an address, or a rendezvous, except at some City eating-house, or West-end billiard-room."
"How very extraordinary that no one recognized the description! It was in every way remarkable, and the fur-lined coat must have been known to some one. If I had seen any mention of the murder, I should have remembered that coat in a moment."
"Would you?" said Routh. "Well, it would have thrown me off the scent, for I never happened to see it. An American coat, no doubt. However, I have a theory, which I think you will agree with, and which is this: I suspect he had been living somewhere in another name--he told me he wasn't always known by that of Deane--under not very creditable circumstances, and as he must have had some property, which, had he been identified, must have been delivered up to the authorities, those in the secret have very wisely held their tongues."
"You think there was a woman in the case?"
Routh smiled a superior smile.
"Of course I think so; and knowing as much or as little of the man as you and I know, we are not likely to blame her much for consulting her own interests exclusively. This seems a curious case to us, because we happen to know about it; but just think, in this enormous city, in this highly criminal age, how common such things must be. How many persons may not have dropped out of existence since you and I last met, utterly unknown and uncared for, amid the mass of human beings here? It is no such rare thing, George, believe me, and you must listen to reason in this matter, and not run absurd risks to do an imaginary piece of justice."
This was Harriet's counsel merely put in colder, more worldly words. Routh watched his listener keenly as he gave it, and saw that his purpose was gained. He would have been glad now to have turned the conversation into some other channel; and did partially succeed in directing it to Dallas's literary prospects and intentions, but only for a time. George pertinaciously came back to the murder, to his mother's state, to his apprehensions that she might never recover, and to his altered feelings towards Mr. Carruthers.
Routh made very effective use of the latter topic. He enlarged upon the pride and sensitiveness of Mr. Carruthers; adverted to the pleasure with which, in case of her recovery, his mother would hail the better state of things for which Mr. Carruthers's letter to his stepson, combined with George's adoption of a new and steady career, would afford an opening; and congratulated George upon having been saved from taking any step which, by bringing public notice upon himself in so terrible a matter, must have incensed the proud man, and irritated him against him incalculably.
George was amenable to this line of reasoning, and with only occasional divergence from the main topic of their discourse, the evening passed away, and the two men parted for the night, it having been agreed that Harriet should be taken into consultation in the morning, and a well-considered letter written to Mr. Carruthers.
George Dallas was in the dining-room on the following morning before Routh and Harriet came in, and he found a letter directed to himself, in a hand with which he was unacquainted, on the breakfast-table. He broke the seal with some alarm and much curiosity. A slip of paper folded round two thin limp letters formed the enclosure; it bore only the words; "My dear boy, I forgot to give you these letters. You had better read them. I think they are from your uncle.--E. B."
George sat down by the window, through which the soft air of a morning bright and beautiful even in London came refreshingly in. He looked at the postmarks of the two letters, and broke the seal of that which bore the earliest date first. As he read the letter, which was long, and closely written, ail occasional exclamation escaped him, and when he had finished its perusal, he threw it hastily down, and impatiently tore open the other. This one, on the contrary, was brief; he had read the few lines it contained in a few minutes, with a face expressive of the utmost astonishment, when Harriet, whose noiseless step had escaped his hearing, entered the room.
Without pausing to exchange the customary greeting, she came quickly towards him, and asked him "What was the matter? Had he any bad news?"
"Not bad news, but most astonishing, most unexpected news, Mrs. Routh. These letters have been sent to me from Poynings; they are written to my mother by my uncle, her only brother, and they announce his immediate arrival in England. How fortunate that Ellen should have sent them to me! But I don't know what to do about sending the news to my mother. She ought to know it. What can I do?"
"Communicate with Mr. Carruthers at once, George," said Harriet, in the tone of quiet decision with which she was accustomed to settle matters submitted to her judgment. "He is with her, and knows what she can bear. Sit down now and have some breakfast, and tell me about this uncle of yours. I never heard you mention him."
She took her place at the head of the table. She was dressed, as he had been accustomed to see her, with neatness and taste; there was no change in her appearance in that respect, yet there was a change--a change which had struck George painfully yesterday, and which, in the midst of all the agitation of to-day, he could not keep from noticing.
"Are you well, Mrs. Routh?" he asked her, anxiously. "Are you sure you are well? I don't like your looks."
"Never mind my looks, George," Harriet said, cheerfully; "I am very well. Get on with your breakfast and your story. Routh will be here presently, and I want to know all about it before he comes. He gets impatient at my feminine curiosity, you know."
The smile with which she spoke was but the ghost of her former smile, and George still looked at her strangely, but he obeyed her, and proceeded with his breakfast and his story.
"I don't know very much about my mother's family," he said, "because they did not like her marriage with my father, and she kept aloof from them, and her parents were dead before she had the opportunity of appeasing them by making the fine match they would have considered her marriage with Mr. Carruthers to be. I know that some of their relatives were settled in America,--some at New York, some in South Carolina,--and my mother's brother, Mark Felton--queer name, puritanical and fanatical, with a touch of the association of assassination about it--was sent out to New York when quite a child. I forgot to tell you it was my mother's stepfather and her mother who objected to her first marriage--her own father died when she was an infant; and on her mother's second marriage with a Mr. Creswick--a poor, proud, dissipated fellow, I fancy, though I never heard much about him--the American branch of the family sent for the boy. My mother has told me they would have taken her too, and her stepfather would not have made the least objection--we haven't been lucky in stepfathers, Mrs. Routh--but her mother would not stand it; and so she kept her child. Not for many years, for she married my father when she was only seventeen. Her brother was just twenty then, and had been taken into the rich American firm of his relatives, and was a prosperous man. She knew very little of him, of course. I believe he took the same view of her marriage as her mother had taken; at all events, the first direct communication between them took place when my mother was left a handsome and poor young widow, with one boy, who did not make much delay about proving himself the graceless and ungrateful son you know him to have been."
George's voice faltered, and an expression of pain crossed his face. Harriet looked at him kindly, and laid her soft white hand on his.
"That is all over, you know," she said. "You will not err in that way again."
"But the consequences, Mrs. Routh, the consequences. Think of my mothernow. However," and he drew a long breath, and threw his shoulders back, like a man who tries to shift a burden, "I must go on with my story. There's not much more to tell, however. My mother might have had a home for herself and me in her brother's house, but she could not bear dependence, and has told me often that she regarded unknown relatives as the most formidable kind of strangers. Her brother's wife made him resent my mother's determination to remain in England, and do the best she could for us both on our small means. Of course, all this was an old story long before I knew anything about it, and I fancy that it is only lately any correspondence has taken place between my mother and her brother. From this letter" (he touched the first he had read) "I can divine the nature of that correspondence. My mother," said George, sadly, "has appealed to her brother on behalf of her prodigal son, and her brother has told her his sorrows in return; they have been heavy, and in one respect not unlike her own. He, too, has an only son, and seems to find little happiness in the fact."
"Did you not know of your cousin's existence until now?" asked Harriet.
"O yes, I knew of it, in a kind of way; in fact, I just knew he existed, and no more. I don't think my mother knew more. I fancy in some previous letter he told her of his wife's death, and the general unsatisfactoriness of Arthur."
"He--your uncle, I mean---is then a widower."
"Yes," replied George. "I won't bother you with the whole of this long letter, Mrs. Routh; the gist of it is this: My cousin, Arthur Felton, is not a good son, nor a good anything, I fancy, for I find my uncle congratulating my mother on my affection for her, my good feeling, in spite of all--(bless the poor man! he little knew how his words would wound, and how ill-deserved is the extenuation!)--and prophesying all manner of good things about me. It appears this hopeful son of his has been in Europe for some months, and probably in London for some months too, as my uncle says--stay, here is the passage: 'Arthur has with him a letter of introduction to you and Mr. Carruthers, some trifles from this side of the world which I thought you might like, and my instructions to make his cousin's acquaintance as soon as possible. You speak of George as living habitually in London; I hope by this time they have met, are good friends, and are, perhaps, chumming together. I have not heard from Arthur for some time. He is a careless correspondent, and not at any time so regardful of the feelings of other people as he might be. I dare say the first intelligence I shall have of him from England, as he cannot possibly want money'--that looks bad, Mrs. Routh," said George, breaking off abruptly, and looking up at her; "that looks bad--'as he cannot possibly want money, will be from you. I know you will receive him kindly, and I earnestly hope he may make a favourable impression on Mr. Carruthers.'" Here George left off reading the letter, and looked blankly at Harriet.
"And he has never presented himself at Poynings, has he?" she asked.
"Never, that I know of; and of course Ellen Brookes would have told me, if he had. Besides, you see this letter was late for the mail, and arrived with this other one. My mother never saw either, and they have been lying more than six weeks at Poynings."
"No doubt your cousin is still in Paris. All Americans delight in Paris. He would be in no hurry to leave Paris, depend on it, if he had no more interesting acquaintance than that of an aunt and a cousin to make in London, and as much time before him as he chose."
"I should think with you, Mrs. Routh, only that this letter, written at New York on the 3rd of April, says my uncle had heard from Arthur, who had merely written him a line from London, saying: 'Here I am. Particulars by next mail.' The mail brought no particulars, and my uncle writes to my mother, subsequently to this long letter, which is cheerful enough, you'll observe, that he is a prey to a presentiment that something is wrong with Arthur, also that he has conceived the strongest wish to come to England and see her, and especially to see me--that he has sufficient money and leisure to gratify the inclination--that he will wait for the chance of further intelligence of Arthur, and to arrange certain business matters, a month longer, and then come to England. He seems to have formed a remarkably elementary notion of my respected stepfather's manners, customs, and general disposition, for he proposes to present himself at Poynings immediately on his arrival, and never appears to entertain the least misgiving as to the cordiality of his reception. He must have been astonished at getting no answer to either letter, and I should think must have had his presentiments considerably sharpened and strengthened by the fact."
Here George referred to the date of the later of the two letters, and exclaimed:
"By Jove! I should not be surprised if he were at Poynings now!"
At this moment Routh entered the room, and, in his turn, had the new aspect of affairs explained to him, but at no great length. He displayed very little interest in the matter, thought it very probable that Mr. Felton might have arrived in England, or even at Poynings, but did not see what George could do in that case.
"You can't go and entertain another man at a house where you haven't the entrée yourself," he said. "I suppose the old woman will let you know if he really comes to Poynings. In the mean time, send the letters on to Mr. Carruthers. You expect to get his address from some girl or other--his niece, I think I understood Harriet--and ask what is to be done. It's rather a lucky turn up, Dallas, I take it, and will help your good-boy intentions towards your stepfather wonderfully, to have a rich uncle to act as a connecting-link between you. By the by, he's sure to set you up in life, George, and periodical literature will be robbed of a shining luminary."
George did not altogether like the tone in which all this was said. It was a little sneering, and altogether careless. Nothing was so difficult to Routh, as it always is to men of his class, as the sustained assumption of interest in any affairs but their own; and now that his anxieties of the previous day were relieved, and he had no immediate object in which Dallas was concerned, to gain, he was impatient of any interruption of his immediate pursuits, and harsh and rough with him. He sat down, and ate his breakfast hastily, while he read a heap of letters which lay beside his plate.
"I don't know, indeed," George had replied good-humouredly to the speech which had jarred upon him; "but you are busy, Routh, and I won't trouble you with my business just now. Mrs. Routh and I will discuss the letter to Mr. Carruthers."
"A telegram for Mr. Dallas," said the irreproachable servant, who entered the room while George was speaking. "Please to sign this, sir."
Routh looked up from his letters, Harriet set down the teapot, and quietly taking up the slip of paper which the man had laid upon the table by George's elbow, signed it with his name, writing it with a pencil which hung at her waist. The servant left the room, and George said:
"I was not wrong. This is from my uncle, and it comes from Amherst. He says: 'Meet me at Morley's Hotel this evening, at six.'"
"Very odd," said Routh. "Well, George, I am sure I wish you all manner of luck with your American uncle."
He had taken up his hat and gloves as he spoke, and now rang for the servant, whom he directed to call a hansom. The man went to the door, and transferred the commission to a street-boy lingering about there, who ran off, and returned in two minutes with the required vehicle. George and Routh were standing on the steps as the boy reappeared, talking. They shook hands, and Routh was stepping into the cab, when George followed him, and said, in a whisper:
"Was it not extraordinary the boy did not recognize poor Deane?"
"What boy?" said Routh, in astonishment, and stepping back on to the flagway.
"Why, that boy; the boy you always employ. He brought you my message the other day. Don't you remember it was he brought your note to poor Deane that day at the tavern?"
"I did not remember; I did not particularly notice," said Routh. "Good-bye." And he jumped into the cab, and was driven away.
George went back into the house, eyed curiously by Jim Swain, who touched his cap as he passed.