With the unexpected return of George Dallas to London from Amsterdam, an occurrence against which so much precaution had been taken, and which had appeared to be so very improbable, a sense of discouragement and alarm had stolen over Stewart Routh. In the coarse bold sense of the term, he was a self-reliant man. He had no faith in anything higher or holier than luck and pluck; but, in those mundane gods, his faith was steadfast, and had been hitherto justified. On the whole, for an outcast (as he had been for some time, that time, too, so important in a man's life) he had not done badly; he had schemed successfully, and cunning and crime had availed him. He was a callous man by nature, of a base disposition; and, under any circumstances, would have been cool-headed and dogged. In the circumstances in which he found himself, his dogged cool-headedness was peculiarly useful and valuable. He had relied upon them without any doubt or misgiving until the day on which he was convinced by George Dallas's appearance on the stage, which he believed him to have abandoned for an indefinite time, that he had made a miscalculation. Then a slow cold fear began to creep over him. Had his luck--what marvellous luck it had been!--turned? Believers in such a creed as his are mostly superstitious fanatics. He had felt some such dread; then, from the moment when Harriet--Harriet, who should have seen that he had blundered: confound the woman, wasshelosing her head?--had told him, in her smooth encouraging way, that this new difficulty should be surmounted as the others had been. Not the smallest touch of repentance, not the slightest shadow of remorse, fell upon him with the stirring of this fact--only a hard, contemptuous anger against himself and Harriet, and a bitter scornful hatred for the young man who had been his tool for so long, and might now, in a moment, be turned into the agent of his punishment. When George Dallas left Harriet after the discussion which had terminated in his promise not to move in the matter of the identification of Deane, Stewart Routh, though he bore himself with calmness in his talk with his wife, had invariably writhed and raged under the galling sense of the first check he had received. If he could have done it safely, if the deed would not have been more fatal than the conjuncture he feared, he would have murdered Dallas readily; and he told himself so. He had none of the poetry, none of the drama of crime about him. He was not a man to kill one human being because it suited his purpose to do so, and then to hesitate about killing another, if a still more powerful preventive presented itself; he was incapable of the mixture of base and cruel motives with the kind of sentimental heroics, with which the popular imagination endows criminals of the educated classes. He had all the cynicism of such individuals, cynicism which is their strongest, characteristic; but he had nothing even mock heroic in his composition. His hatred of George was mixed with the bitterest contempt. When he found the young man amenable beyond his expectations; when he found him unshaken in the convictions with which Harriet had contrived to inspire him and hardly requiring to be supported by his own arguments, his reassurance was inferior to his scorn.
"The fool, the wretched, contemptible idiot!" Routh said, as he looked round his dressing-room that night, and noted one by one the signs which would have betokened to a practised eye preparations for an abrupt departure, "it is hardly worth while to deceive him, and to rule such a creature. He was full of suspicion of me before he went away, and the first fruits of that pretty and affecting conversation of his, under the influence of his mother and the territorial decencies of Poynings, was what he flattered himself was a resolution to pay me off, and be free of me. He yields to my letter without the slightest difficulty, and comes here the moment he returns. He believes in Harriet as implicitly as ever; and if he is not as fond of me as he was, he is quite as obedient." The cynical nature of the man showed itself in the impatient weariness with which he thought of his success, and in the levity with which he dismissed, or at least tried to dismiss, the subject from his mind. There was, however, one insuperable obstacle to his getting rid of it--his wife.
Harriet had miscalculated her strength; not the strength of her intellect, but that of her nerves, and the strain had told upon them. She still loved her husband with a desperate kind of love; but all its peace, all its strength, all its frankness--and even in the evil life they had always led it had possessed these qualities--had vanished. She loved him now with all the old intensity of passion, but with an element of fierceness added to it, with a horrid craving and fear, sometimes with a sudden repulsion, which she rebelled against as physical cowardice, causing her to shrink from him in the darkness, and to shut her ears from the sound of his breathing in his sleep. And then she would upbraid herself fiercely, and ask herself if she, who had given him all her life and being, who had renounced for him--though she denied to herself that such renunciation was any sacrifice, for did she not love him, as happy women, the caressed of society, do not know how to love--home, name, kindred, and God, could possibly shrink from him now? She had not played any pretty little game of self-deception; she had not persuaded herself that he was other than he really was; she did not care, she lovedhim, just as he was, no better and no worse. She lived for him, she believed in, she desired, she asked no other life; and if a terrible anguish had come into that life latterly, that was her share of it, her fair share. It was not easy, for she was a woman and weak; her nerves would thrill sometimes, and phantoms swarm about her; sleeplessness would wear her down, and a spell be set upon her lips, under which they strove vainly to curve with their old smile, and to utter their old words of endearment and protestation; for she scorned and hated herself for such weakness, and could have torn her rebellious flesh with rage, that sometimes it would creep and turn cold when he touched her, or even when he only spoke. She fought this false and dastardly weakness, as she called it, with steady bravery, and with the resolve to conquer, which is always half a moral battle; but she did not conquer it, she only quelled it for a little while. It returned on occasions, and then it tortured and appalled her even more than when the foe had been always in position.
All such conflicts of feeling had the effect of narrowing the sphere of her life, of concentrating her whole attention on, and intensifying her absorption in, her husband. A lassitude which her own good sense told her was dangerous began to take possession of her. They were better off now--she did not rightly know how, or how much, for she had gradually lapsed from her previous customary active overseeing of Routh's affairs, and had been content to take money as he gave it, and expend it as he desired, skilfully and economically, but with an entire indifference, very different from the cheerful, sunny household thriftiness which had formerly been so marked a feature in their Bohemian life, and had testified, perhaps more strongly than any other of its characteristics, to the utter deadness of the woman's conscience. His comforts were as scrupulously looked after as ever, and far more liberally provided for; but the tasteful care for her home, the indescribable something which had invested their life with the charm of a refinement contrasting strangely with its real degradation, had vanished. Harriet's manner was changed--changed to a quietude unnatural to her, and peculiarly unpleasant to Routh, who had had a scientific appreciation of the charm of steady, business-like, calm judgment and decision brought to bear on business matters; but discarded, at a moment's notice, for sparkling liveliness and a power of enjoyment which never passed the bounds of refinement in its demonstrativeness. "Eat, drink, and be merry" had been their rule of life in time that seemed strangely old to them both; and if the woman alone had sometimes remarked that the precept had a corollary, she did not care much about it. "To-morrow ye die" was an assurance which carried little terror to one absolutely without belief in a future life, and who, in this, had realized her sole desire, and lived every hour in the fulness of its realization. Stewart Routh had never had the capacity, either of heart or of intellect, to comprehend his wife thoroughly; but he had loved her as much as he was capable of loving any one, in his own way, and the strength and duration of the feeling had been much increased by their perfect comradeship. His best aid in business, his shrewd, wise counsellor in difficulty, his good comrade in pleasure, his sole confidant--it must be remembered that there was no craving for respect on the one side, no possibility of rendering it, no power of missing it, on the other--and the most cherished wife of the most respectable and worthy member of society might have compared her position with that of Harriet with considerable disadvantage on many points.
Things were, however, changed of late, and Harriet had begun to feel, with something of the awfully helpless, feeble foreboding with which the victims of conscious madness foresee the approach of the foe, that there was some power, whose origin she did not know, whose nature she could not discern, undermining her, and conquering her unawares. Was it bodily illness? She had always had unbroken health, and was slow to detect any approach of disease. She did not think it could be that, and conscience, remorse, the presence, the truth, of the supernatural components of human life, she disbelieved in; therefore she refused to take the possibility of their existence and their influence into consideration. She was no longer young, and she had suffered--yes, she had certainly suffered a very great deal; no one could love as she loved and not suffer, that was all. Time would do everything for her; things were going well; all risk was at an end, with the procuring of George's promise and the quieting of George's scruples (how feeble a nature his was, she thought, but without the acrid scorn a similar reflection had aroused in her husband's mind); and every week of time gained without the revival of any inquisition, was a century of presumptive safety. Yes, now she was very weak, and certainly not quite well; it was all owing to her sleeplessness. How could any one be well who did not get oblivion in the darkness? This would pass, and time would bring rest and peace. Wholly possessed by her love for her husband, she was not conscious of the change in her manner towards him. She did not know that the strange repulsion she sometimes felt, and which she told herself was merely physical nervousness, had so told upon her, that she was absent and distant with him for the most part, and in the occasional spasmodic bursts of love which she yielded to showed such haunting and harrowing grief as sometimes nearly maddened him with anger, with disgust, withennui--not with repentance, not with compassion--maddened him, not for her sake, but for his own.
The transition, effected by the aid of his intense selfishness, from his former state of feeling towards Harriet, to one which required only the intervention of any active cause to become hatred, was not a difficult matter to a man like Routh. Having lost all her former charm, and much of her previous usefulness, she soon became to him a disagreeable reminder. Something more than that--the mental superiority of the woman, which had never before incommoded him, now became positively hateful to him. It carried with it, now that it was no longer his mainstay, a power which was humiliating, because it was fear-inspiring. Routh was afraid of his wife, and knew that he was afraid of her, when he had ceased to love her, after he had begun to dislike her; so much afraid of her that he kept up appearances to an extent, and for a duration of time, inexpressibly irksome to a man so callous, so egotistical, so entirely devoid of any sentiment or capacity of gratitude.
Such was the position of affairs when George Dallas and Mr. Felton left London to join Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers at Homburg. From the time of his arrival, and even when he had yielded to the clever arguments which had been adduced to urge him to silence, there was a sense of insecurity, foreboding in Routh's mind; not a trace of the sentimental superstitious terror with which imaginary criminals are invested after the fact, but with the reasonable fear of a shrewd man, in a tremendously dangerous and difficult position, who knows he has made a false move, and looks, with moody perplexity, for the consequences sooner or later.
"He must have come to England, at all events, Stewart," Harriet said to her husband, when he cursed his own imprudence for the twentieth time; "he must have come home to see his uncle. Mr. Felton would have been directed here to us by the old woman at Poynings, and we must have given his address. Remember, his uncle arrived in England the same day he did."
"I should have sent him to George, not brought George to him," said Routh. "And there's that uncle of his, Felton; he is no friend of ours, Harriet; he does not like us."
"I am quite aware of that," she answered; "civil as he is, he is very honest, and has never pretended to be our friend. If he is George's friend, and George has told him anything about his life since he has known us, I think we could hardly expect him to like us."
Her husband gave her one of his darkest looks, but she did not remark it. Many things passed now without attracting her notice; even her husband's looks, and sometimes his words, which were occasionally as bitter as he dared to make them.
He was possessed with a notion that he must, for a time at least, keep a watch upon George Dallas; not near, indeed, nor apparently close, but constant, and as complete as the maintenance of Harriet's influence with him made possible. For himself, he felt his own influence was gone, and he was far too wise to attempt to catch at it, as it vanished, or to ignore its absence. He acquiesced in the tacit estrangement; he was never in the way, but he never lost sight of George; he always knew what he was doing, and had early information of his movements, and with tolerable accuracy, considering that the spy whose services he employed was quite an amateur and novice.
This spy was Mr. James Swain, who took to the duties of his new line of business with vigorous zeal, and who seemed to derive a grim kind of amusement from their discharge. Stewart Routh had arrived with certainty at the conclusion that the young man had adhered to the promised silence up to the time of his leaving England with his uncle, and he felt assured that Mr. Felton was in entire ignorance of the circumstances which had had such terrible results for Mrs. Carruthers. It was really important to him to have George Dallas watched, and, in setting Jim Swain to watch him, he was inspired by darkly sinister motives, in view of certain remote contingencies--motives which had suggested themselves to him shortly after George's unhesitating recognition of the boy who had taken Routh's note to Deane, on the last day of the unhappy man's life, had solved the difficulty which had long puzzled him. Only second in importance to his keeping George Dallas in view was his not losing sight of the boy; and all this time it never occurred to Routh, as among the remote possibilities of things, that Mr. Jim Swain was quite as determined to keep an eye on him.
Harriet had acquiesced in her husband's proposal that they should go to Homburg readily. It happened that she was rather more cheerful than usual on the day he made it, more like, though still terribly unlike, her former self. She was in one of those intervals in which the tortured prisoner stoops at the stake, during a temporary suspension of the inventive industry of his executioner. The fire smouldered for a little, the pincers cooled. She was in the hands of inflexible tormentors, and who could tell what device of pain might attend the rousing from the brief torpor? Nature must have its periods of rest for the mind, be the agony ever so great; and hers was of the slow and hopeless kind which has such intervals most surely, and with least efficacy. One of them had come just then, and she was placid, drowsy, and acquiescent. She went with Routh to Homburg; he managed to make some hopeful, promising, and credulous acquaintances on the way, and was besides accredited to some "business people," of perfectly authentic character, at Frankfort, in the interest of the flourishing Flinders.
The change, the novelty, the sight of gaiety in which she took no share, but which she looked on at with a partial diversion of her mind, did her good. It was something even to be out of England; not a very rational or well-founded relief, but still a relief, explicable and defensible too, on the theory to which she adhered, that all her ills were merely physical. The torpid interval prolonged itself, and the vital powers of the sufferer were recruited for the wakening.
This took place when Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge's pony-carriage passed her as she sat by the side of the broad shaded road, and the woman's splendid black eyes met hers. When her husband passed her without seeing her, absorbed in passionate admiration, which any child must have recognized as such, for the beautiful woman whose pony-carriage was like a triumphal chariot, so royal and conquering of aspect was she.
Keen were the tormentors, and full of avidity, and subtle was the new device to tax the recruited strength and mock the brief repose. It was raging, fierce, fiery, maddening jealousy.
It was late in the afternoon of the day on which Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge had sent her answer to Mr. Felton's note, and while George Dallas was sitting with Mrs. Routh, that the beautiful widow and her companion--this time exploring the forest glades in another direction, in which they met but few of the visitors to the springs--once more mentioned Mr. Felton and his son. The gray ponies were going slowly, and the French groom in attendance was considering the probable direction of the "affair" in which his mistress had so precipitately engaged herself, and which, being conducted in the English tongue, was interpreted to him by glances and tones only. The beauty of the face on which Stewart Routh was gazing in an intensity of admiration, with a certain desperation in it, in which a cleverer woman than this one would have seen indications of character to warn and alarm her, but which this one merely recognized as a tribute due to her, was marvellously bright and soft, as the slanting rays of the sun came through the tree stems, and touched it lingeringly, lovingly. Her black eyes had wonderful gleams and reflections in them, and the masses of her dark hair were daintily tinged and tipped with russet tints. She was looking a little thoughtful, a little dreamy. Was she tired, for the moment, of sparkling? Was she resting herself in an array of the semblance of tenderness, more enchanting still?
"You knew him, then, in your husband's lifetime? He is not a new acquaintance?"
"What a catechist you are!" she said, with just a momentary glance at him, and the least flicker of a smile. "I did know him in my husband's lifetime, who highly disapproved of him, if you care forthatpiece of information; we were great friends and he was rather inclined to presume upon the fact afterwards."
She lingered upon the word, and gave it all the confirmatory expression Routh had expected and feared.
"And yet you make an appointment with him to meet himhere, in this place, where every one is remarked and speculated upon; here, alone, where you are without even a companion--" He paused, and with a light, mocking laugh, inexpressibly provoking, she said:
"Why don't you say a 'sheep-dog'! We know the immortal Becky quite as well as you do. In the first place, my appointment with Arthur Felton means simply nothing. I am just as likely to break it as to keep it; to go to London, or Vienna, or Timbuctoo, to-morrow, if the fancy takes me; or to stay here, and have him told I'm not at home when he calls, only that would please his father; and Mr. Felton is about the only male creature of my acquaintance whom I don't want to please. In the second place, I don't care one straw who remarks me, or what they remark, and have no notion of allowing public opinion to take precedence of my pleasure."
She laughed again, a saucy laugh which he did not like, gave him another glance and another flicker of her eyelash, and said:
"Why, how extremely preposterous you are! You know well, if I cared what people could, would, might, or should say, I would not allow you to visit me every day, and I would not drive you out alone like this."
The perfect unconcern and freedom of the remark took Routh by surprise, and disconcerted him as completely as its undeniable truth. He kept silence; and Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge, amused at the blank expression of his countenance, burst into a hearty fit of laughter this time.
"I tell you I don't care about public opinion. All the men admire me, no matter what I do; and all the women hate me, and would hate me all the same, for my beauty--which I entirely appreciate, you know--if I made my life as dull and decorous, as miserable, squalid, and canting, as I make it pleasant, and joyous, and 'not the thing.' Neither men nor women dare to insult me; and if they did, I should know how to meet the emergency, I assure you, though I am not at all clever. I am only courageous--'plucky,' your English ladies call it, I think, in the last new style of stable and barrack-room talk. I am that; I don't think that I could be afraid of anything or any one."
"Not of a man who really loved you with all the force and passion of his heart?" said Routh, in a hoarse whisper, and bending a fierce dark look upon her.
"Certainly not," she replied, lightly; but the colour rose in her cheek, and her breath came a little quicker. "I don't believe in people loving with passion and force, and all that sort of thing. It is pretty to talk about on balconies, and it looks well on paper, in a scrawly hand, running crookedly up into the corner, and with plenty of dashes, and no date--" And here she laughed again, and touched up the grays. Routh still kept silence, and still his dark look was bent upon her.
"No, no," she went on, as the rapid trot of the ponies began again to sound pleasantly on the level road, and she turned them out of the forest boundaries towards the town, "I know nothing about all that, exceptpour rire, as they say in Paris, about everything under the sun, I do believe. To return to Arthur Felton; he is the last person in the world with whom I could imagine any woman could get up anything more serious than the flimsiest flirtation."
"You did 'get up' that, however, I imagine?" said Routh.
"Of course we did. We spouted very trite poetry, and he sent me bouquets--very cheap ones they were, too, and generally came late in the evening, when they may, being warranted not to keep, be had at literally a dead bargain; and we even exchanged photographs--I don't say portraits, you will observe. His is like enough; but that is really nothing, even among the most prudish of the blonde misses. I wonder the haberdashers don't send their likenesses with their bills, and I shall certainly give mine to the postman here; I am always grateful to the postman everywhere, and I like this one--he has nice eyes, his name is Hermann, and he does not smoke."
"What a degenerate German!" said Routh. "And so Mr. Arthur Felton has your likeness?"
"Had---had, you mean. How can I tell where it is now?--thrown in the fire, probably, and that of the reigning sovereign of his affections comfortably installed in the locket which contained it, which is handsome, I confess: but he does not so much mind spending money on himself, you see. It is exactly like this."
She placed her whip across the reins, and held all with the left hand, whilst she fumbled with the right among the satin and lace in which she was wrapped, and drew out a short gold chain, to which a richly-chased golden ball, as large as an egg, was attached. Turning slightly towards him, and gently checking her ponies, she touched a spring, and the golden egg opened lengthways, and disclosed two small finely-executed photographs.
One was a likeness of herself, and Routh made the usual remarks about the insufficiency of the photographic art in certain cases. He was bending closely over her hand, when she reversed the revolving plate, and showed him the portrait on the other side.
"That is Arthur Felton," she said.
Then she closed the locket, and let it drop down by her side amid the satin and the lace.
The French groom had in his charge a soft India shawl in readiness for his mistress, in case of need. This shawl Stewart Routh took from the servant, and wrapped very carefully round Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge as they neared the town.
"The evening has turned very cold," he said; and, indeed, though she did not seem to feel it, and rather laughed at his solicitude, Routh shivered more than once before she set him down, near the Kursaal, and then drove homewards, past the house where his wife was watching for her, and waiting for him.
Routh ordered his dinner at the Kursaal, but, though he sat for a long time at the table, he ate nothing which was served to him. But he drank a great deal of wine, and he went home, to Harriet--drunk.
"How horribly provoking! It must have come undone while I was handling it to-day," said Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge to her maid, when that domestic was attiring her for dinner. "I had the locket, open, not an hour ago."
"Yes, ma'am," answered the maid, examining the short gold chain; "it is not broken, the swivel is open."
"And of all my lockets, I liked my golden egg best," lamented Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge.
"Stewart," said Harriet Routh to her husband in a tone of calm, self-possessed inquiry, on the following day, "what has happened? What occurred yesterday, which you had not the courage to face, and deprived yourself of the power of telling me?"
As Harriet asked him this question, she unconsciously assumed her former manner. Something told her that the cause of Routh's conduct, and of the distress of mind which she read in his face, was not connected with the subject that was torturing her. Anything apart from that, any misfortune, any calamity even, might draw them together again; might teach him anew his need of her, her worth to him--she felt some alarm, but it was strangely mingled with satisfaction. The sharp agony she had endured had impaired her faculties so far, had dulled her clear understanding so far, that the proportions of the dangers in her path had changed places, and the first and greatest danger was this stranger--this beautiful, dreadful woman. In that direction was the terrible impotence, the helpless horror of weakness, which is the worst attribute of human suffering; in every other, there was the power to exercise her faculties, to rally her presence of mind, to call on her fertility of resource, to act for and with him. With him at her side, and in his cause, Harriet was consciously strong; out from a trouble in which he should be arrayed against her, in which he should be her enemy, she shrank, like a leaf from the shrivelling touch of fire.
She was standing by his side as she asked him the question, in the familiar attitude which she had discarded of late. Her composed figure and pale calm face, the small firm white hand, which touched his shoulder with the steady touch he knew so well, the piercing clear blue eyes, all had the old promise in them, of help that had never failed, of counsel that had never misled. He thought of all these things, he felt all these things, but he no longer thought of, or remembered, or looked for the love which had been their motive and their life. He sat moodily, his face pale and frowning, one clenched hand upon his knee, the other restlessly drumming upon the table; his eyes were turned away from her, and for some time after she had spoken he kept a sullen silence.
"Tell me, Stewart," she repeated, in a softer voice, while the hand that touched his shoulder moved gently to his neck and clasped it. "I know there is something wrong, very wrong. Tell me what it is."
He turned and looked full at her.
"Do you remember what you said, Harriet, when that letter came from Poynings--what you said about the hydra and its heads?"
"I remember," she answered. Her pale cheek grew paler; but she drew nearer to his side, and her fingers clasped his neck more closely and more tenderly. "I remember. Another head has sprung up, and is menacing you."
"Yes," he said, half fiercely, half wearily. "This cursed thing is never to be escaped nor forgotten. I believe. I can hardly tell you what has happened, Harry, and even you will hardly see your way out of this."
A touch of feeling for her was in his voice. He really did suffer in the anticipation of the shock she would have to sustain.
"Tell me--tell me," she repeated, faintly, and with a quick involuntary closing of her eyes, which would have told a close observer of constant suffering and apprehension.
"Sit down, Harry." He rose as he spoke, placed her in his chair, and stood before her, holding both her hands in his.
"I have found out that the man we knew as Philip Deane was--was Arthur Felton, George Dallas's cousin, the man they are inquiring about, whom they are expecting here."
She did not utter a cry, a groan, or any sort of sound. She shrank into the chair she was sitting in, as if she cowered for life in a hiding-place, her outstretched hands turned cold and clammy in her husband's grasp. Into her widely opened blue eyes a look of unspeakable horror came, and the paleness of her cheeks turned to ashen gray. Stewart Routh, still standing before her holding her hands, looked at her as the ghastly change came over her face, telling--what words could never tell--of the anguish she was suffering, and thought for a moment that she was dying before his face. The breath came from her lips in heavy gasps, and her low white brow was damp with cold sluggish drops.
"Harriet," said Routh--"Harriet, don't give way like this. It's awful--it's worse than anything I ever thought of, or feared. But don't give way like this."
"I am not giving way," she said. Drawing her hands from his hold, she raised them to her head, and held them pressed to her temples while she spoke. "I will not give way. Trust me, as you have done before. This, then, is what I have felt coming nearer and nearer, like a danger in the dark--this--this dreadful truth. It is better known than vague. Tell me how you have discovered it."
He began to walk up and down the room, and she still sat cowering in her chair, her hands pressing her temples, her eyes, with their horror-stricken looks, following him.
"I discovered it by an extraordinary accident. I have not seen much of Dallas, as you know, and I know nothing in particular about Mr. Felton and his son. But there is a lady here--an American widow--who knows Felton well."
"Yes," said Harriet, with distinctness; and now she sat upright in her chair, and her low white brow was knitted over her horror-stricken eyes. "Yes, I have seen her."
"Have you indeed? Ah! well, then, you know who I mean. She and he were great friends--lovers, I fancy," Routh went on, with painful effort; "and when they parted in Paris, it was with an understanding that they were to meet here just about this time. She met George Dallas, and told him, not that, but something which made him understand that information was to be had from her, and she has appointed an interview with Mr. Felton for to-morrow."
"Yes," repeated Harriet, "I understand. When she and he meet, she will tell him his son is coming here. His son will not come. How did you discover what you have discovered?"
He took out of his pocket a large locket like a golden egg, and opened it by touching a spring. It opened lengthwise, and held it towards Harriet. She looked at one of the photographs which it enclosed, and then, pushing it from her, covered her face with her hands.
"She showed me that yesterday," Routh continued, his throat drier, his voice more hesitating with every word he spoke, "when she told me she was expecting him--and I contrived to secure it."
"For what purpose?" asked Harriet, hoarsely.
"Don't you see, Harriet," he said, earnestly, "that it is quite plain Dallas has never seen a likeness of his cousin, or he must have recognized the face? Evidently Mr. Felton has not one with him. Dallas might not have seen this; but then, on the other hand, he might; and to prevent his seeing it, even for a few hours, until we had time to talk it over, to gain ever so little time, was a great object."
"You took a strange way of gaining time, Stewart," said Harriet. "Had you come home last night in a state to tell me the truth, time would really have been gained. We might have got away this morning."
"Got away!" said Routh. "What do you mean? What good could that do?"
"Can you seriously ask me?" she returned. "Does any other course suggest itself to you?"
"I don't know, Harry. I am bewildered. The shock was so great that the only thing I could think of was to try and forget it for a little. I don't know that I ever in my life deliberately drank for the purpose of confusing my thoughts, or postponing them, before; but I could not help it, Harry. The discovery was so far from any apprehension or fancy I had ever had."
"The time was, Stewart," said Harriet, slowly and with meaning, "when, instead of 'confusing' or 'postponing' any trouble, dread, or difficulty, you would have brought any or all of them to me at once; unhappily for us both, I think that time is past."
He glanced at her sharply and uneasily, and an angry flush passed over his face.
"What cursed folly have you got in your head? Is it not enough that this fresh danger has come down upon me--"
"Uponus, you mean," she interrupted, calmly.
"Well, uponus, then--but you must get up an injured air, and go on with I don't know what folly? Have done with it; this is no time for womanish nonsense--"
"There is so much womanish nonsense about me! There is such reasonableness in your reproach!"
Again he looked angrily at her, as he walked up and down the room with a quicker step. He was uneasy, amazed at the turn she had taken, at the straying of her attention from the tremendous fact he had revealed; but, above and beyond all this, he was afraid of her.
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, and said, "Let it drop, let it drop; let me be as unreasonable as you like, and blame me as much as you please, but be truer to yourself, Harriet, to your own helpful nature, than to yield to such fancies now. This is no time for them. We must look things in the face, and act."
"It is not I, but you, who refuse to look things in the face, Stewart. This woman, whom I do not know, who has not sought my acquaintance, whose name you have not once mentioned before me, but who makes you the confidant of her flirtations and her appointments--she is young and beautiful, is she not?"
"What the devil does it matter whether she is or not?" said Routh, fiercely. "I think you are bent on driving me mad. What has come to you? I don't know you in this new character. I tell you, this woman--"
"Mrs. Bembridge," said Harriet, calmly.
"Mrs. Bembridge, then, has been the means of my making a discovery which is of tremendous importance, and thus she has unconsciously saved me from an awful danger.
"By preventing George Dallas from finding out this fact for a little longer?"
"Precisely so. Now I hope you have come to yourself, Harriet, and will talk rationally about this."
"I will," she said, rising from her chair and approaching him. She placed her hands upon his shoulders, and looked at him with a steady, searching look. "We will talk this out, Stewart, and I will not shrink from anything there is to be said about it; but you must hear me then, in my turn. We are not like other people, Stewart, and our life is not like theirs. Only ruin can come of any discord or disunion between us."
Then she quietly turned away and sat down by the window, with her head a little averted from him, waiting for him to speak. Her voice had been low and thrilling as she said those few words, without a tone of anger in it, and yet the callous man to whom they were addressed heard in them something which sounded like the warning or the menace of doom.
"When Dallas knows what we now know, Harriet," said Routh, "he will come to us and tell us his discovery, and then the position of affairs will be that for which we were prepared, if we had not succeeded in inducing him to be silent about Deane's identity."
"Exactly so," said Harriet; "with the additional difficulty of his having concealed his knowledge."
"Yes," said Routh; "but that ishisaffair, not ours. He concealed his knowledge because he was compromised. There is nothing to compromise me. I neglected a public duty, certainly, in favour of a private friendship; but that is a venial offence."
It was wonderful to see how the callousness of the man asserted itself. As he arranged the circumstances, and stated them, he began to regain his accustomed ease of manner.
"It is unfortunate that he should be compromised in this double way, and, of course, there will be a great deal to go through, which will be hard to bear, and not easy to manage; but, after all, the thing is only as bad as it was when Dallas came back. Don't you see that, Harriet?"
"I see that, Stewart, but I also see that he will now have a tenfold interest in finding out the truth. Hitherto he might have been content with clearing himself of suspicion, but now he will be the one person most deeply interested in discovering the truth."
"But how can he discover it?" said Routh: his face darkened, and he dropped his voice still lower. "Harriet, have you forgotten that if there be danger from him, there is also the means of turning that danger on himself? Have you forgotten that I can direct suspicion against him tenfold stronger than any that can arise against me?"
She shivered, and closed her eyes again. "No, I have not forgotten," she said; "but oh, Stewart, it is an awful thing to contemplate--a horrible expedient."
"Yet you arranged it with a good deal of composure, and said very little about its being horrible at the time," said Routh, coarsely. "I hope you are not going to be afflicted with misplaced and ill-timed scruples now. It's rather late in the day, you know, and you'll have to choose, in that case, between Dallas and me."
She made him no answer.
"The thing is just this," he continued: "Dallas cannot come to any serious grief, I am convinced; but, if the occasion arises, he must be let come to whatever grief there may be--a trial and an acquittal at the worst. The tailor's death, and his mother's recovery, will tell in his favour, though I've no doubt he will supply all the information Evans would have given, of his own accord. I think there is no real risk; but, Harriet, much, very much, depends on you."
"On me, Stewart! How?"
"In this way. When Dallas comes to see you, you must find out whether any other clue to the truth exists; if not, there is time before us. You must keep up the best relations with him, and find out all he is doing. Is it not very odd that he has not mentioned his uncle's solicitude about his son to you?"
"I don't think so, Stewart. I feel instinctively that Mr. Felton dislikes and distrusts us (what well-founded dislike and distrust it was!" she thought, mournfully, with a faint pity for the unconscious father)--"and George knows it, I am sure, and will not talk to me about his uncle's affairs. He is right there; there is delicacy of feeling in George Dallas."
"You seem to understand every turn in his disposition," said Routh, with a sneer.
"There are not many to understand," replied Harriet, simply. "The good and the evil in him are easily found, being superficial. However, we are not talking of his character, but of certain irreparable harm which we must do him, it seems, in addition to that which we have done. Go on with what you were saying."
"I was saying that you must find out what you can, and win his confidence in every way. I shall keep as clear of him as possible, under any circumstances. If the interview of to-morrow goes off without any discovery, there will be a chance of its not being made at all."
"Impossible, Stewart--quite impossible," said Harriet, earnestly. "Do not nourish any such expectation. How long, do you suppose, will Mr. Felton remain content with expecting his son's arrival, and hearing no news of him? How soon will he set inquiries on foot which must end in discovery? Remember, hiding is possible only when there is no one seeking urged by a strong motive to find. Listen to me, now, in your turn, and listen to me as you used to do, not to cavil at my words, or sneer at them, but to weigh them well. This is a warning to us, Stewart. I don't talk superstition, as you know. I don't believe any nonsense of the kind; but this I do believe, because experience teaches it, that there are combinations of circumstances in which the wise may read signs and tokens which do not mislead. Here is just such a case. The first misfortune was George's return; it was confirmed by his uncle's arrival; it is capped by this terrible discovery. Stewart, let us be warned and wise in time; let us return to England at once--to-morrow. I suppose you will have the means of learning the tenor of Mr. Felton's interview with this lady who knew his son so well. If no discovery be then made, let us take it as another indication of luck, circumstance, what you will, and go."
"What for?" said Routh, in amazement. "Are you returning to that notion, when all I have said is to show you that you must not lose sight of Dallas?"
"I know," she said--"I know; but you are altogether wrong. George Dallas must make the discovery some time, and must bear the brunt of the suspicion. I don't speak in his interests, but in yours--in mine. Let it come when it may, but let us be away out of it all. We have money now, Stewart--at least, we are not so poor but that we may make our way in another country--that we may begin another life. Have I ever talked idly, Stewart, or given you evil counsel? No, surely not. In all the years for which you have been all the world to me, I have never spoken vainly; let me not speak vainly now. I might implore, I might entreat," she went on, her eyes now bright with eagerness and her hands clasped. "I might plead a woman's weakness and natural terror; I might tell you I am not able for the task you dictate to me; but I tell you none of these things. I am able to do and to suffer anything, everything, that may or must be done, or suffered for you. I don't even speak of what I have suffered; but I say to you, be guided by me in this--yield to me in this. There is a weak spot in our stronghold; there is a flaw in our armour. I know it. I cannot tell, I cannot guess where it is. An instinct tells me that ruin is threatening us, and this is our way of escape. Oh, my husband, listen to me!"
He was standing opposite to her, leaning against an angle of the wall, mingled fury and amazement in his face, but he did not interrupt her by a word or a sign.
"There is no power in me," she went on, "to tell you the strength of my conviction that this is the turning-point in our fate. Let us take the money we have, and go. Why should you stay in England, Stewart, more than in any other country? We have no ties but one another." She looked at him more sharply here, through all her earnestness. "Friendships and the obligations they bring are not for us. The world has no home bonds for us, Where money is to be made you can live, in such content as you can ever have; and where you are I am as content as I can ever be."
"You are a cheerful counsellor," Routh broke out, in uncontrollable passion. "Do you think I am mad, woman, when I have played so desperate a game, and am winning it so fast, that I should throw up my cards now? Let me hear no more of this. Come to your senses, if you can, and as soon as you can, for I will not stand this sort of thing, I can tell you. I will not leave this place an hour sooner than I intended to leave it. And as to leaving England, if the worst came to pass that could happen, I should hardly be driven to that extremity. What devil is in you, Harriet, to prompt you to exasperate, me, when I looked to you for help?"
"What devil is inyou," she answered him, rising as she spoke, "that is prompting you to your ruin? What devil, do I say? Words, mere words. What do I know or believe of God, or devil, or any ruling power but the wicked will of men and women, to waylay, and torture, and destroy? The devil of blindness is in you, the devil of wilfulness, the devil of falsehood and ingratitude; and a blacker devil still, I tell you. See that it does not rend you, as I read in the old book--for ever closed for me."
Her breast was heaving violently, and her eyes were unnaturally bright, but there was not a ray of colour in her face, and her voice was rapid and unfaltering in its utterance. Routh looked at her, and hated her. Hated her, and feared her, and uttered never a word.
"The madness that goes before destruction is coming fast upon you," she said; "I see it none the more clearly because that destruction must involve me too. Let it come; I am ready for it, as I have been ready for any evil for a long time now. You speak idle words to me when you reproach me, Stewart. I am above and beyond reproach from you. I am as wicked a woman, if the definition of good and evil be true, as ever lived upon this earth; but I have been, and am, to you what no good woman could be--and look to it, if you requite me ill. I don't threaten you in saying this--no threats can come from me, nor would any avail--but in your treachery to me, its own punishment will be hidden, ready to spring out upon and destroy you. Scorn my influence, slight my counsel, turn a deaf ear to the words that are inspired by love such as only a wretch like me, with no hope or faith at all in Heaven, and only this hope and faith on Earth, can feel--and see the end."
He stepped forward and was going to speak, but she put out her hand and stopped him.
"Not now. Don't say anything to me, don't ask me anything now. Don't speak words that I must be doomed for ever to remember--for ever to long to forget. Have so much mercy on me, for the sake of the past and for the sake of the present. Ruin is impending over us; if you will, you may escape it; but there is only one way."
She had drawn near the door as she spoke the last words. In another instant she had left him.
Left him in a most unenviable state of bewilderment, rage, and confusion. The emotion which had overpowered him when he had made the discovery of yesterday was almost forgotten in the astonishment with which Harriet's words had filled him. An uneasy sense, which was not anything so wholesome as shame, was over him. What did she know of his late proceedings? Had she watched him? Had any of the gossiping tongues of the place carried the tidings of the beautiful American's openly paraded conquest? No, that could hardly be, for Harriet knew no one at Homburg but George, and George knew nothing about him. Was he not always with either his mother, or his uncle, or with Harriet herself? Besides, George would not say anything to Harriet that could hurt her. The fellow was a fool and soft-hearted, his quondam friend thought, with much satisfaction. He must set it right with Harriet, however; under any circumstances he must not quarrel with her; in this fresh complication particularly. It could only be a general notion that she had taken, and he must endeavour to remove it; for though he was horribly weary of her, though he hated her at that moment, and felt that he should very likely continue to hate her, even at that moment, and while resolved to disregard her advice, and utterly unmoved by her appeal, he knew he could not afford to lose her aid.
If the beautiful American could have seen the visions of probabilities or possibilities in which she was concerned, that floated through Stewart Routh's mind as he stood gazing out of the window when his wife had left him, she might, perhaps, have felt rather uneasy at the revelation. Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge was not an adept at reading character, and sometimes, when a disagreeable impression that her new admirer was a man of stronger will and tougher material than she altogether liked to deal with, crossed her mind, she would dismiss it with the reflection that such earnestness was very flattering and very exciting for a time, and the duration of that time was entirely within her choice and discretion.
Stewart Routh stood at the window thinking hurriedly and confusedly of these things. There was a strange fear over him, with all his assurance, with all the security which he affirmed over and over again to himself, and backed up with a resolution which he had determined from the first to conceal from Harriet.
"If my own safety positively demands it," he thought, "Jim's evidence about the note will be useful, and the payment to the landlady will be tolerably conclusive. Dallas told Harriet the initials were A.F. I wonder it never occurred to me at the time."
Presently he heard Harriet's step in the corridor. It paused for a moment at the sitting-room, then passed on, and she went out. She was closely veiled, and did not turn her head towards the window as she went by. Routh drew nearer and watched her, as she walked swiftly away. Then he caught sight of George Dallas approaching the house. He and Harriet met and shook hands, then George turned and walked beside her. They were soon out of sight.
"I don't think I shall see much more of Homburg," George was saying. "My mother has taken an extraordinary longing to get back to Poynings. Dr. Merle says she must not be opposed in anything not really injurious. She is very anxious I should go with her, and Mr. Carruthers is very kind about it."
"You will go, George, of course?"
"I don't quite know what to do, Mrs. Routh. I don't like to let my mother go without me, now that things are so well squared; I don't like to persuade her to put off her journey, and yet I feel I ought, if possible, to remain with my uncle until his truant son turns up."
"Has--has nothing been heard of him yet?"
"Not a word. I was awfully frightened about it, though I hid it from my uncle, until I met Mrs. Ireton P. &c. But though she didn't say much, I could see by her manner it was all right. Bless you, she knows all about him, Mrs. Routh. I dare say he'll appear next week, and be very little obliged to us all for providing a family party for him here."