The cold weather, which in the country produced rugged roads and ice-bound ponds; which frosted the leafless branches of the trees with a silver tint, and gave a thousand different fantastic but ever lovely hues and shapes to nature; had no such pleasant refreshing effect in London, where the frost, ere three hours old, was beaten into mud under foot, ran drizzling in dirty streams from house-tops, and subsided into rain and fog before the daylight had disappeared. The day succeeding that on which George Dallas had entered the town of Amherst was a thorough specimen of what London can do when put to its worst. It was bad in the large thoroughfares where the passing crowds jostled each other ill-temperedly, digging at each other's umbrellas, and viciously contesting every inch of foot pavement, where the omnibus-wheels revolved amid mud-ruts, and every passing cab-horse produced a fountain of slush and spray. But it was even worse in the bystreets, where an attempt at sweeping had been made, where the mud lay in a thick slimy, shiny tide between the narrow ridges of footpath, where the tall houses, so close together that they completely filtered the air and light and retained nothing but the darkness and the dirt, were splashed with mud to their first-floor windows, and whose inhabitants or visitors desirous of crossing the road had to proceed to the junction with the main street, and, after tacking across in comparative cleanliness, commence their descent on the opposite side.
In the front room of the first floor of a house in such a street, South Molton-street, connecting Oxford-street the plebeian with Brook-street the superb, just as the feeble glimmer of daylight which had vouchsafed itself during the day was beginning to wax even feebler, previous to its sudden departure, a man sat astride a chair, sunk in thought. He had apparently just entered, for he still wore his hat and overcoat, though the former was pushed to the back of his head, and the latter thrown negligently open. He was a tall handsome man, with keen black eyes glancing sharply, with thick black brows, a long straight nose, thin tight lips unshrouded by moustache or beard, and a small round chin. He had full flowing black whiskers, and the blue line round his mouth showed that the beard was naturally strong; had he suffered it to grow he might have passed for an Italian. As it was, there was no mistaking him for anything but an Englishman--darker, harder-looking than most of his race, but an Englishman. His face, especially round the eyes, was flushed and marked and lined, telling of reckless dissipation. There was a something not exactly fast, but yet slangy, in the cut of his clothes and in the manner in which he wore them; his attitude as he sat at the window with his hands clasped in front of him over the back rail of his chair, his knees straight out and his feet drawn back, as a man sits a horse at a hunt, was in its best aspect suggestive of the mess-room: in its worst, of the billiard-room. And yet there was an indescribable something in the general aspect of the man, in the very ease of his position, in the shape of the hands clasped in front of him, in the manner, slight as it was, in which now and again he would turn on his chair and peer back into the darkness behind him, by which you would have known that he had had a refined education, and had been conversant with the manners of society.
Nor would you have been wrong. In Burke's Landed Gentry, the Rouths of Carr Abbey take up their full quota of pages, and when the county election for Herefordshire comes off, the liberal agent is forced to bring to bear all the science he can boast of, to counteract the influence which the never-failing adhesion of the old family throws into the Tory scale. Never having risen, never for an instant having dreamed of demeaning themselves by rising, above the squirearchy, owners of the largest and best herds in all that splendid cattle-breeding county, high-sheriffs and chairmen of quarter-sessions as though by prescriptive right, perpetual presidents of agricultural societies, and in reality taking precedence immediately after the lord-lieutenant, the Rouths of Carr Abbey, from time immemorial, have sent their sons to Oxford and their daughters to court, and have never, save in one instance, had to blush for their children.
Save in one instance. The last entry in the old family Bible of Carr Abbey is erased by a thick black line. The old squire speaks habitually of "My only son, William;" and should a stranger, dining at the Abbey, casually refer to the picture, by Lawrence, of two little boys, one riding a pony, the younger decking a dog's neck with ribbon, he is, if the squire had not heard his question, motioned in dumb show to silence, or is replied to by the squire himself that "that boy is--lost, sir."
That boy, Stewart Routh, the man looking out of the window in South Molton-street, was captain of the boat at Eton, and first favourite, for a time, both with the dons and undergraduates at Oxford. Rumours of high play at cards developing into fact of perpetually sported "oak," non-attendance at chapel, and frequent shirking of classes, lessened the esteem in which Mr. Routh was held by the authorities; and a written confession handed to the dean, after being obtained by parental pressure, from Mr. Albert Grüntz, of Christ Church, son of and heir to Mr. Jacob Grüntz, sugar-baker, of St Mary Axe, in the city of London, and Balmoral-gardens, Hyde-park, a confession to the effect that he, Mr. A. Grüntz, had lost the sum of two thousand pounds to Mr. S. Routh, at a game played with dice, and known as French hazard, procured the dismissal of Mr. S. Routh from the seat of learning. At Carr Abbey, whither he retired, his stay was shortened by the arrival of another document from Oxford, this time signed by Lord Hawkhurst, gentleman commoner of Christ Church, and Arthur Wardroper, of Balliol, setting forth that Mr. S. Routh, while playing hazard in Mr. Grüntz's rooms, had been caught therein flagrante delictoin the act of cheating by "securing,"i.e. retaining in his fingers, one of the dice which he should have shaken from the box. It was the receipt of this letter that caused the squire to make the erasure in the family Bible, and to look upon his youngest son as dead.
Driven from the paternal roof, Mr. Stewart Routh descended upon the pleasant town of Boulogne, whence, after a short stay not unmarked by many victories over the old and young gentlemen who frequent the card-tables at the Etablissement des Bains, from whom he carried off desirable trophies, he proceeded to the baths and gambling-houses of Ems, Homburg, and Baden-Baden. It was at the last-mentioned place, and when in the very noon and full tide of success, that he was struck down by a fever, so virulent that the affrighted servants of the hotel refused to wait upon him. No nurse could be prevailed upon to undertake to attend him; and he would have been left to die for want of proper care, had not a young Englishwoman, named Harriet Creswick, travelling in the capacity of nursery-governess to Lord de Mauleverer's family (then passing through Baden on their way to winter in Rome), come to the rescue. Declaring that her countryman should not perish like a dog, she there and then devoted herself to attendance on the sick man. It need scarcely be told that Lady de Mauleverer, protesting against "such extraordinary conduct," intimated to Miss Creswick that her connection with her noble charges must cease at once and for ever. But it is noteworthy that in such a man as Stewart Routh had hitherto proved himself, a spirit of gratitude should have been so strongly aroused, that when his sense and speech returned to him, in weak and faltering accents he implored the woman who had so tenderly nursed him through his illness, to become his wife. It is quite needless to say that his friends, on hearing of it, averred, some that he thought he was going to die, and that it did not matter to him what he did, while it might have pleased the young lady; others, that he was a particularly knowing card, whose brains had never deserted him, even when he was at his worst, and that he had discovered in Harriet Creswick a woman exactly fitted, by physical and mental qualification, efficiently to help him as his partner in playing the great game of life. Be it as it may--and people will talk, especially in such circles--the fact remains that on his sick couch at the Hollandischer Hof, Baden-Baden, Stewart Routh proposed to Harriet Creswick and was accepted; that so soon as he could safely be left she departed for England; and that within a month they were married in London.
Of that one event at least in all his eventful life, Stewart Routh had never repented. Through all his vicissitudes of fortune his wife had been by his side, and as, in the long run, chance had been against him, taking the heaviest portion of his burden on herself. Harriet Routh's was an untiring, undying, unquestioning love or worship of her husband. The revelation of his--to say the least of it--loose mode of life, the shifts and expedients to which he resorted for getting money, the questionable company in which he habitually lived, would have told with fatal effect on a devotion less thorough, a passion more transient. Harriet herself, who had been brought up staidly at an Institution, which she had only quitted to join the family with whom she was travelling when she arrived at Baden--Harriet herself at first shrunk back stunned and stupefied by the revelation of an unknown life which burst upon her a few days after her marriage. But her love bore her through it. As the dyer's hand assimilates to that it works in, so gradually did Harriet Routh endue herself with her husband's tone, temper, and train of thought, until, having become almost his second self, she was his most trusted ally, his safest counsellor in all the strange schemes by which he made out life. In the early days after their marriage she had talked to him once, only once, and then but for a few minutes, of reformation, of something better and more reputable, of doing with less money, to be obtained by the exercise of his talents in some legitimate manner. And her husband, with the nearest approach to harshness that before or since he had ever assumed, told her that his time for that kind of thing was passed and gone for ever, that she must forget all the childish romance that they had taught her at the Institution, that she must sink or swim with him, and be prepared to cast in her lot with that kind of existence which had become his second nature, and out of which he could never hope to move. Even if he could move from it, he added, he did not think that he would wish to do so, and there must be an end to the matter.
There was an end to the matter. From that time forth, Harriet Routh buried her past, buried her former self, and devoted herself, soul and body, to her husband. Her influence over him strengthened with each year that they lived together, and was traceable in many ways. The fact once faced, that their precarious livelihood was to be earned by the exercise of sharpness superior to that enjoyed by those with whom they were brought into contact, Harriet laid herself out at once for the fulfilment of her new duties, and in a very short time compelled her husband's surprised laudation of the ease and coolness with which she discharged them. There were no other women in that strange society; but if there had been, Harriet would have queened it over them, not merely by her beauty, but by her bright spirit, her quick appreciation, her thorough readiness to enter exactly into the fancy of the moment. The men who lost their money to Routh and his companion treated her not merely with a punctilio which forbade the smallest verbal excess, but bore their losses with comparative good humour so long as Mrs. Routh was present. The men who looked up to Routh as the arch-concocter of and prime mover in all their dark deeds, had a blind faith in her, and their first question, on the suggestion of any scheme, would be "what Mrs. Routh thought of it." Ah, the change, the change! The favourite pupil of the Institution, who used to take such close notes of the sermon on Sunday mornings, and illustrate the chaplain's meaning with such apposite texts from other portions of Scripture, as quite to astonish the chaplain himself, which perhaps was not to be wondered at, as the chaplain (a bibulous old gentleman, who had been appointed on the strength of his social qualities by the committee, who valued him as "a parson, you know, without any nonsense about him") was in the habit of purchasing his discourses ready made, and only just ran them through, on Saturday nights. The show pupil of the Institution, who did all kinds of arithmetical problems "in her head," by which the worthy instructors meant without the aid of paper and pencil--the staid and decorous pupil of the Institution, who, when after her last examination she was quitting the table loaded with prizes--books--was called back by the bishop of the diocese, who with feeble hands pinned a silver medal on to her dress, and said, in a trembling voice, "I had nearly forgotten the best of all. This is in testimony of your excellent conduct, my dear." What was become of this model miss? She was utilizing her talents in a different way. That was all. The memory which had enabled her to summarize and annotate the chaplain's sermons now served as her husband's note-book, and was stored with all kinds of odd information, "good things" to "come off," trials of horses, names and fortunes of heirs who had just succeeded to their estates, lists of their most pressing debts, names of the men who were supposed to be doubtful in money matters, and with whom it was thought inexpedient to bet or play--all these matters dwelt in Harriet Routh's brain, and her husband had only to turn his head and ask, "What is it, Harry?" to have the information at once. The arithmetical quickness stood her in good stead, in the calculation of odds on all kinds of sporting events, on the clear knowledge of which the success of most of Routh's business depended; and as for the good conduct--well, the worthy bishop would have held up his hands in pious horror at the life led by the favourite pupil of the Institution, and at her surroundings; but against Mrs. Routh, as Mrs. Routh, as the devoted, affectionate, self-denying, spotless wife, the veriest ribald in all that loose crew had never ventured to breathe a doubt.
Devoted and affectionate! See her now as she comes quietly into the room--a small compact partridge of a woman with deep blue eyes in a very pale face, with smooth shining light brown hair falling on either side in two long curls, and gathered into a clump at the back of her head, with an impertinent nose only just redeemed from being a snub, with a small mouth, and a very provoking pattable chin. See how she steals behind her husband, her dark linsey dress draping her closely and easily, and not making the slightest rustle; her round arm showing its symmetry in her tight sleeve twining round his neck; her plump shapely hand resting on his head; her pale cheek laid against his face. Devoted and affectionate! No simulation here.
"Anything gone wrong, Stewart?" she asked, in a very sweet voice.
"No, dear. Why?" said Routh, who was now sitting at a table strewn with papers, a pen in his right hand, and his left supporting his handsome worn face.
"You looked gloomy, I thought; but, if you say so, it's all right," returned his wife, cheerfully, leaving his side as she spoke, and proceeding to sweep up the hearth, put on fresh coals, and make the whole room look comfortable, with a few rapid indefinable touches. Then she sat down in a low chair by the fire, perfectly still, and turned her calm pale face to her husband with a business-like air. He made some idle scratches with his pen in silence, then threw it down, and, suddenly pushing away his chair, began to walk up and down the room with long light strides.
"What do you make of Deane, Harriet?" he said, at length, stopping for a moment opposite his wife, and looking closely at her.
"How do you mean? In character or in probabilities? As regards himself, or as regards us?"
"Well, both. I cannot make him out; he is so confoundedly cool, and so infernally sharp. He might be a shrewd man of business, bent on making a fortune, and a good way on the road to his object; and yet he's nothing but a man of pleasure, of what yourgoodpeople would call a wretched low kind of pleasure too, and is spending the fortune instead."
"I don't think so, Stewart," his wife said, quietly and impressively. "I don't think Mr. Deane is spending any very considerable portion of his fortune, whatever it may be."
Stewart had resumed his walking up and down, but listened to her attentively.
"I regard him as a curious combination of the man of business with the man of pleasure. I don't know that we have ever met exactly the kind of person before. He is as calculating in his pleasures as other men are in their business."
"I hate the man," said Routh, with an angry frown and a sullen gesture.
"That's dangerous, Stewart," said Harriet. "You should not allow yourself either to hate or to like any one in whom you are speculating. If you do the one, it will make you incautious; if you do the other, scrupulous. Both are unwise. I do not hate Mr. Deane."
"Fortunately for him, Harry. I think a man would be a great deal safer with my hatred than with yours."
"Possibly," she said, simply, and the slightest smile just parted her crimson lips, and showed a momentary gleam of her white, small, even teeth. "But I do not hate him. I think about him, though; because it is necessary that I should, and I fancy I have found out what he really is."
"Have you, by Jove?" interrupted Routh. "Then you've done a clever thing, Harriet--clever even for you; for of all the close and impenetrable men I ever met, Deane's the closest and the hardest. When I'm with him, I always feel as if he were trying todome somehow, and as if he would succeed too, though that's not easy. He's as mean as a Scotch shopkeeper, as covetous as a Jew, as wide awake as a Yankee. There's a coolness and a constant air of avowed suspicion about him that drives me mad."
"And yet you ought to have been done with temper and with squeamishness long ago," said Harriet, in a tone of quiet conviction. "How often have you told me, Stewart, that to us, in our way of life, every man must be a puppet, prized in proportion to the readiness with which he dances to our pulling? What shouldwecare? I am rendered anxious and uneasy by what you say."
She kept silence for a few moments, and then asked him, in a changed tone,
"How does your account with him stand?"
"My account!---ah, there's the rub! He's so uncommonly sharp, that there's little to be done with him. The fellow's a blackguard--more of a blackguard than I am, I'll swear, and as much of a swindler, at least, in his capacity for swindling. Only I dare say he has never had occasion to reduce it to practice. And yet there's a hardly veiled insolence in his manner to me, at times, for which I'd like to blow his brains out. He tells me, as plainly as if he said it in words, that he pays me a commission on his pleasures, such as are of my procuring, but that he knows to a penny what he intends to pay, and is not to be drawn into paying a penny more."
Harriet sat thoughtful, and the faintest flush just flickered on her cheek. "Who are his associates, when he is not with you?"
"He keeps that as close as he keeps everything else," replied Routh; "but I have no doubt he makes them come cheap, if indeed he does not get a profit out of them."
"You are taking my view of him, Stewart," said Harriet; then she added, "He has some motive for acting with such caution, no doubt; but a flaw may be found in his armour, when we think fit to look for it. In the mean time, tell me what has set you thinking of him?"
"Dallas's affair, Harriet. I am sorry the poor fellow lost his money tohim. Hang it, I'm such a bad fellow myself, so utterly gone a'coon" (his wife winced, and her pale face turned paler), "that it comes ill from me to say so, and I wouldn't, except to you. But I am devilish sorry Deane got the chance of cleaning Dallas out. I like the boy; he's a stupid fool, but not half bad, and he didn't deserve such an ill turn of fortune."
"Well," said Harriet, "take comfort in remembering that you helped him."
She spoke very coldly, and evidently was a stranger to the feelings which actuated Routh.
"Youdon't care about it, that's clear," he remarked.
He was standing still now, leaning against the mantelpiece. She rose and approached him.
"No, Stewart," she said, in her calm sweet voice, which rose a little as she went on, "I do not. I care for nothing on earth (and I never look beyond this earth) butyou. I have no interest, no solicitude, for any other creature. I cannot feel any, and it is well. Nothing but this would do in my case."
She stood and looked at him with her deep blue eyes, with her hands folded before her, and with a sober seriousness in her face confirmatory of the words she had spoken. He looked at her until she turned away, and a keen observer might have seen in his face the very slightest expression of impatience.
"Shall we go into those accounts now?" said Harriet; "we shall just have time for it, before you go to Flinders'."
She sat down, as she spoke, before a well-appointed writing table, and, drawing a japan box towards her, opened it, and took out a number of papers. Routh took a seat beside her, and they were soon deep in calculations which would have had little interest or meaning for a third person, had there been one present. By degrees, Routh's face darkened, and many times he uttered angry oaths; but though Harriet watched him narrowly, and felt in every nerve the annoyance under which he was labouring, she preserved her calm manner, and went steadily on with her task; condensing the contents of several papers into brief memoranda, carefully tearing up the originals, and placing the little heaps methodically beside her for consignment to the fire. At length Routh again stood up, and lounged against the mantelpiece.
"All thesemustbe paid, then, Harry?" he asked, as he lighted a cigar, and began to smoke sullenly.
"Yes," she answered, cheerfully. "You know, dear, it has always been our rule, as it has hitherto constituted our safety, to stand well with our tradespeople, and paythem, at least, punctually. We have never been so much behindhand; and as you are about to take a bolder flight than usual, it is doubly necessary that we should be untrammelled. Fancy Flinders getting snubbed by the landlady, or your being arrested for your tailor's bills, at the time when the new Company is coming out!"
"Hang it! the bills all seem to be mine," growled Routh, "Where are yours? Haven't you got any?"
It would have been difficult to induce an unseen witness to believe how utterly unscrupulous, remorseless, conscienceless a woman Harriet Routh had become, if he had seen the smile with which she answered her husband's half-admiring, half-querulous question.
"You know, dear, I don't need much. I have not to keep up appearances as you have. You are in the celebrated category of those who cannot afford to be anything but well-dressed. It's no matter for me, but it's a matter of business for you."
"Ah! I might have known you'd have some self-denying, sensible reason ready; but the puzzle to me is, that you alwaysarewell dressed. By Jove, you're the neatest woman I know, and the prettiest!"
The smile upon her face brightened, but she only shook her head, and went on:
"If Dallas does not get the money, or at least some of it, what do you propose to do? I don't know."
"Do you think he will get the money, Harry? He toldyouall about it. What are the odds?"
"I cannot even guess. All depends on his mother. If she is courageous, and fond of him, she will get it for him, even supposing her immediate control as small as she believes it to be. If she is not courageous, her being fond of him will do very little good, and women are mostly cowards," said Harriet composedly.
"I never calculated much on the chance," said Routh, "and indeed it would be foolish to take the money if he got it--in that way, at least; for though I am sorry Deane profited by the young fellow, that's because I hate Deane. It's all right, for my purpose, that Dallas should be indebted as largely as may be to me. He's useful in more ways than one; his connection with the press serves our turn, Harry, doesn't it? Especially when you work it so well, and give him such judicious hints, such precious confidences."
(Even such praise as this, the woman's perverted nature craved and prized.) "You won't need to take the money from him in formal payment," she said, "if that's what you want to avoid. If he returns with that sum in his pocket, he will not be long before he--"
A knock at the door interrupted her, and George Dallas entered the room.
He looked weary and dispirited, and, before the customary greetings had been exchanged, Routh and Harriet saw that failure had been the result of experiment. Harriet's eyes sought her husband's face, and read in it the extent of his discomfiture; and the furtive glance she turned on Dallas was full of resentment. But it found no expression in her voice as she asked him commonplace questions about his journey, and busied herself in setting a chair for him by the fire, putting his hat aside, and begging him to take off his overcoat. He complied. As he threw the coat on a chair, he said, with a very moderately successful attempt at pleasantry:
"I have come back richer than I went, Mrs. Routh, by that elegant garment, and no more."
"Bowled out, eh?" asked Routh, taking the cigar from his mouth, and laying it on the mantel-piece.
"Stumped, sir," replied Dallas.
Harriet said nothing.
"That's bad, Dallas."
"Very bad, my dear fellow, but very true. Look here," the young man continued, with earnestness, "I don't know what to do. I don't, upon my soul! I saw my mother--"
"Yes?" said Harriet going up to his side. "Well?
"I saw her and--and she is unable to help me; she is, indeed, Mrs. Routh," for a bitter smile was on Harriet's face, turned full upon his. "She hasn't the means. I never understood her position until last night, but I understood it then. She is--" he stopped. All his better nature forbad his speaking of his mother's position to these people. Her influence, the gentler, better influence, was over him still. However transitory it might prove, it had not passed yet. Harriet Routh knew as well as he did what the impulse was that arrested his speech.
"You will tell me all about it yet," she thought, and not a sign of impatience appeared in her face.
"I--I need not bore you with details," he went on. "She could not give me the money. She made me understand that. But she promised to get it for me, in some way or other, if the thing is within the reach of possibility, before a month expires. I know she will do it, but I must give her time, if it's to be forthcoming, and you must give me time."
"It's unfortunate, Dallas," Routh began, in a cold voice, "and, of course, it's all very well your talking to me about giving you time, but how am I to get it? It's no good going over the old story, you know it as well as I do. There, there," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "I must try and get old Shadrach to renew. I suppose we may as well go at once, Dallas." He left the room, followed by Harriet.
George Dallas sat over the fire in an attitude of deep dejection. He was sick at heart, and the revulsion of feeling that had begun at Poynings had not yet ceased. "If I could but be done with it all!" he thought. "But I'm in the groove, I'm in the groove."
"Come along, George," said Routh, who seemed more good-humoured than before, as he re-entered the room, soberly attired, as became a man going to do business in the City. "Don't be down-hearted; the old lady will keep her word. Don't be afraid; and in the mean time, we'll pull through. Put your coat on, and come along. You'll give us some dinner, Harriet, won't you? And if Deane calls, ask him to join us. He won't," he continued, with a laugh, "because he believes in tavern dinners, and puts no faith in ours. We're snobs who live in lodgings, George, you know; but he'll drop in in the evening fast enough."
The application to Mr. Shadrach proved successful, and George Dallas returned with Stewart Routh to his lodgings, more firmly tied to him than ever, by the strong bond of an increased money-obligation.
"Pretty tidy terms, weren't they?" Routh asked Dallas, when he had told Harriet, in answer to her anxious questioning, that the "renewal" had been arranged.
"Very tidy indeed," said poor George, ruefully: "but, Routh, suppose when I do get the money, it's not enough. What's to be done then?"
"Never mind aboutthen," said Routh, "nowis the important matter. Remember that everythenis made ofnows, and keep your mind easy. That's philosophy, as Mr. Squeers says. Your present business is to eat your dinner."
Stewart Routh had thrown off his low spirits, and had all but succeeded in rousing George Dallas from his. Kindly, convivial, only occasionally coarse, he was a dangerously pleasant man at all times, and especially so to George Dallas when Harriet was present; for then his coarseness was entirely laid aside, and her tact, humour, intelligence never failed to please, to animate, and to amuse him. The dinner was a very pleasant one, and, before it had come to a conclusion, George Dallas began to yield as completely as ever to the influence of the man whose enviable knowledge of "life" had been the first medium through which he had attained it. George had forgotten the renewed bill and his late failure for a while, when the mention of Deane's name recalled it to his memory.
"Has Deane been here, Harry?" asked Routh.
"No, Stewart, I have been at home all day, but he has not called."
"Ah--didn't happen to want me, no doubt."
"Have you seen much of him lately, Routh?" inquired George Dallas. "I mean, within the last week or two? While I--while I've been keeping out of the way?" he said, with a nervous laugh.
"Poor boy, youhavebeen down on your luck," said Routh. "Seen much of Deane? Oh, yes; he's always about--he's here most days, some time in the forenoon."
"In the forenoon, is he? Considering the hours he keeps at night, that surprises me."
"It doesn't surpriseme. He's very strong--has a splendid constitution, confound him, and has not given it a shake yet. Drink doesn't seem to 'trouble' him in the least."
"He's an odd fellow," said George, thoughtfully. "How coolly he won my money, and what a greenhorn I was, to be sure!! wonder if he would have lost his own so coolly."
"Not a doubt of it," said Routh; "he'd have been satisfied he would make it up out of something else. Heisan odd fellow, and a deuced unpleasant fellow tomymind."
Harriet looked at her husband with a glance of caution. It was unlike Routh to dwell on a mere personal feeling, or to let so much of his mind be known unnecessarily. He caught the glance and understood it, but it only angered, without otherwise influencing him.
"A low-lived loafer, if ever there was one," he went on, "but useful in his way, Dallas. Every man has a weakness;hisis to think himself a first-rate billiard player, while he is only a fourth-rate. A man under such a delusion is sure to lose his money to any one who plays better than he does, and I may as well be that man, don't you see?"
"I see perfectly," said George; "but I wish he had been equally mistaken in his notions of his card-playing science; it would have made a serious difference to me."
"Never mind, old fellow," answered Routh; "you shall have your revenge some day. Finish your wine, and Harriet shall give us some music."
She did so. She gave them some music, such as very few can give--music which combines perfection of art with true natural feeling. This woman was a strange anomaly, full of "treasons, stratagems, and spoils," and yet with music in her soul.
Rather early, George Dallas left the pair, but they sat up late, talking earnestly. Things were going ill with Stewart Routh. Some of his choicest and most promising combinations had failed. He had once or twice experienced a not uncommon misfortune in the lot of such men as he;--he had encountered men in his own profession who were as clever as himself, and who, favoured by circumstances and opportunity, had employed their talents at his expense. The swindler had been swindled once or twice, the biter had been bitten, and his temper had not been improved in the process. He was about, as Harriet had said, to take a new flight this time, in the direction of operations on the general public, and he had formed designs on Mr. Deane, which did not, in the increased knowledge he had obtained of that gentleman's character, and in the present aspect of affairs, look quite so promising as in the early stage of their acquaintance, six weeks before. The operations of gentlemen of the Routh fraternity are planned and executed with a celerity which seems extraordinary to pursuers of the more legitimate branches of industry. Routh had not passed many hours in Mr. Deane's society (they had met at a low place of amusement, the honours of which Routh was doing to a young Oxonian, full of cash and devoid of brains, whom he had in hand just then), before he had built an elaborate scheme upon the slender foundation of that gentleman's boasted wealth and assumed greenness. His subsequent experience had convinced him of the reality of the first, but had shown him his mistake as to the last, and gradually his mind, usually cool and undaunted, became haunted by an ever-burning desire to possess himself of the money for ever flaunted before his eyes--became haunted, too, by an unreasonable and blind animosity to the stranger, who combined profligacy with calculation, unscrupulous vice with well-regulated economy, and the unbridled indulgence of his passions with complete coldness of heart and coolness of temper. Routh had no knowledge of Deane's real position in life, but he had a conviction that had it been, like his own, that of a professional swindler, he would have been a dangerous rival, quite capable of reducing his own occupation and his own profits very considerably. Therefore Routh hated him.
When the conference between Routh and Harriet came to a conclusion, it left the woman visibly troubled. When Routh had been for some time asleep, she still sat by the table, on which her elbows rested, her head on her hands, and the light shining on her fair brown hair. There she sat, until the fire died out, and the late wintry dawn came. She was not unused to such watches; wakefulness was habitual to her, and care had often kept her company. But no vigil had ever tired her so much. Her mind was at work, and suffering. When at length she rose from her chair with an impatient shiver, dark circles were round her blue eyes, and her pure waxen complexion looked thick and yellow. She lighted a candle, turned the gas out, and went for a moment to the window. The cold grey light was beginning to steal through the shutter, which she opened wide, and then looked out. She set the candle down, and leaned idly against the window. Weariness and restlessness were upon her. The street was quite empty, and the houses opposite looked inexpressibly gloomy. "One would think all the people in them were dead instead of asleep," she said, half aloud, as she pulled the blind down with a jerk, and turned away. She went slowly upstairs to her bed-room, and as she went, she murmured:
"Where will it end? How will it end? It is an awful risk!"
Not one wo䝤rd came from Mrs. Carruthers for full six weeks. The hope which had sprung up in George Dallas's breast after the interview with his mother in the housekeeper's room had gone through the various stages common to unfulfilled desires in men of sanguine temperaments. It had been very bright at first, and when no letter came after the lapse of a week, it had begun to grow dim, and then he had endeavoured to reason with himself that the very fact of no letter coming ought to be looked upon as a good sign, as showing that "something was doing." Then the absence of any news caused his hope to flicker until the recollection of the old adage, that "no news was good news," made it temporarily bright again; then as the time for payment of the renewed bill grew nearer and nearer, so did George Dallas's prospects become gloomier and yet more gloomy, and at last the light of hope went out, and the darkness of despair reigned paramount in his bosom. What could his mother be about? She must have pretended that she had some bill of her own to pay, and that the money was immediately required; old Carruthers must have questioned her about it, and there must have been a row; she must have tried to "collar" the amount out of the housekeeping--no! the sum was too large; that was absurd! She had old friends--people who knew and loved her well, and she must have asked some of them to lend it to her, and probably been refused; old friends always refuse to lend money. She must have tried--confound it all, he did not know, he could not guess what she had tried! All he did know, to his sorrow, was, that she had not sent the money; all he knew, to his joy, was, that though he was constantly seeing Stewart Routh, that worthy lad, as yet, uttered no word of discontent at its non-appearance.
Not he! In the hand which Stewart Routh was at that moment playing in the greater game of life, the card representing a hundred and forty pounds was one on which he bestowed very little attention. It might, or it might not, form part of the odd trick, either way: but it had very little influence on his strategy and finesse. There were times when a five-pound note might have turned his chance, but this was not one of them. Driven into a corner, pressed for the means of discharging paltry debts, harassed by dunning creditors, Stewart Routh would have needed and claimed the money due to him by George Dallas. Present circumstances were more favourable, and he only needed George Dallas's assistance in his schemes. For, Stewart Routh's measures for raising money were of all kinds and of all dimensions; the elephant's trunk of his genius could pick up a five-pound-note bet from a flat atécarté, or could move the lever of a gigantic city swindle. And he was "in for a large thing" just at this time. Men attending professionally at the betting-ring at the great steeplechase then coming off, noticed Routh's absence with wonder, and though he occasionally looked in at two or three of the second-rate sporting clubs of which he was a member, he was listless and preoccupied. If he took a hand at cards, though from mere habit he played closely and cautiously, yet he made no great points, and was by no means, as usual, the dashing Paladin round whose chair men gathered thickly, and whose play they backed cheerily. No! The paltry gains of the dice-box and cards paled before the glamour of the fortune to be made in companies and shares; the elephant's trunk was to show its strength now, as well as its dexterity, and the genius which had hitherto been confined to "bridging" a pack of cards, or "securing" a die, talking over a flat or winning money of a greenhorn, was to have its vent in launching a great City Company. Of this scheme Dallas knew nothing. A disinherited man, with neither name nor influence, would have been utterly useless; but he was reserved for possible contingencies. Routh was always sending to him to call, always glad to see him when he called, and never plagued him with allusions to his debt. But in their interviews nothing but mere generalities were discussed, and George noticed that he always received a hint to go whenever Mr. Deane was announced.
But although Stewart Routh was seen but seldom in his usual haunts, he was by no means inactive or neglectful of his own interests. Day after day he spent several hours in the City, diligently engaged in the formation of his new Company, a grand undertaking for working some newly-discovered silver mines in the Brazils; and day after day were his careful scheming, his elaborate plotting, his vivacious daring, and his consummate knowledge of the world, rewarded by the steady progress which the undertaking made. The temporary offices in Tokenhouse-yard were besieged with inquirers; good brokers with City names of high standing offered their services; splendid reports came from the engineers, who had been sent out to investigate the state of the mines. Only one thing was wanting, and that was capital; capital, by hook or by crook, Mr. Stewart Routh must have, and was determined to have. If the affair were to be launched, the brokers said, the next week must see it done; and the difficulty of raising the funds for the necessary preliminary expenses was becoming day by day more and more palpable and insurmountable to Stewart Routh.
The interval of time that had witnessed so much activity on the part of Mr. Stewart Routh, and had advanced his schemes close to a condition of imminent crisis, had been productive of nothing new or remarkable in the existence of George Dallas. That is to say, on the surface of it. He was still leading the desultory life of a man who, with an intellectual and moral nature capable of better deeds and nobler aspirations, is incurably weak, impulsive, and swayed by a love of pleasure; a man incapable of real self-control, and with whom the gratification of the present is potent, above all suggestions or considerations of the contingencies of the future. He worked a little, and his talent was beginning to tell on the popularity of the paper for which he worked, The Mercury, and on the perceptions of its proprietors. George Dallas was a man in whose character there were many contradictions. With much of the fervour of the poetic temperament, with its sensuousness and its sensitiveness, he had a certain nonchalance about him, a fitful indifference to external things, and a spasmodic impatience of his surroundings. This latter was apt to come over him at times when he was apparently merriest, and it had quite as much to do with his anxiety to get his debt to Routh discharged, and to set himself free from Routh, as any moral sense of the danger of keeping such company, or any moral consciousness of the waste of his life, and the deterioration of his character. George Dallas had no knowledge of the true history of Routh's career; of the blacker shades of his character he was entirely ignorant. In his eyes Routh was a clever man and a good-for-nothing, a "black sheep" like himself, a sheep for whose blackness Dallas (as he did in his own case) held circumstances, the white sheep, anything and everything except the man himself, to blame. He was dimly conscious that his associate was stronger than he, stronger in will, stronger in knowledge of men, and somehow, though he never defined or acknowledged the feeling to himself, he mistrusted and feared him. He liked him, too, he felt grateful to him for his help; he did not discern the interested motives which actuated him, and, indeed, they were but small, and would by no means have accounted for all Routh's proceedings towards Dallas. Nor is it necessary that they should; a villain is not, therefore, altogether precluded from likings, or even the feebler forms of friendship, and Dallas was not simply silly and egotistical when he believed that Routh felt kindly and warmly towards him. Still, whether a merciful and occult influence was at work within him or the tide of his feelings had been turned by his stolen interview with his mother, by his being brought into such positive contact with her life and its conditions, and having been made to realize the bitterness he had infused into it, it were vain to inquire. Whatever his motives, however mixed their nature or confused their origin, he was filled, whenever he was out of Routh's presence, and looked his life in the face, with an ardent longing to "cut the whole concern," as he phrased it in his thoughts. And Harriet?--for the "whole concern" included her, and he was forced to remember--Harriet, the only woman whose society he liked--Harriet, whom he admired with an admiration as pure and respectful as he could have felt for her, had he met her in the least equivocal, nay, even in the most exalted position. Well, he would be very sorry to lose Harriet, but, after all, she cared only for Routh; and he was dangerous. "I must turn over a new leaf, forhersake" (he meant for his mother's); "and I can't turn it while they are at my elbows." From which conviction on the part of George it is sufficiently evident that Routh and Harriet had ample reason to apprehend that Dallas, on whom they desired to retain a hold, for more reasons than one, was slipping through their fingers.
George Dallas was more than usually occupied with such thoughts one morning, six weeks after his unsuccessful visit to Poynings. He had been very much with Routh and Deane during this period, and yet he had begun to feel aware, with a jealous and suspicious sense of it, too, that he really knew very little of what they had been about. They met in the evening, in pursuit of pleasure, and they abandoned themselves to it; or they met at Routh's lodgings, and Dallas surrendered himself to the charm which Harriet's society always had for him. But he had begun to observe of late that there was no reference to the occupation of the earlier part of the day, and that while there was apparently a close bond of mutual confidence or convenience between Routh and Deane, there was some under-current of mutual dislike.
"If my mother can only get me out of this scrape, and I can get thePiccadillypeople to take my serial," said George Dallas to himself one morning, when April was half gone, and "the season" was half come, "I shall get away somewhere, and go in for work in earnest." He looked, ruefully enough, round the wretched little bed-room, at whose small window he was standing, as he spoke; and he thought impatiently of his debt to his coarse shrewish landlady, and of the small liabilities which hampered him as effectually as the great one. It was later than his usual hour of rising, and he felt ill and despondent: not anxious to face the gay, rich, busy world outside, and still less inclined for his own company and waking thoughts in the shabby little den he tenanted. A small room, a mere apology for a sitting-room, was reached through a rickety folding-door, which no human ingenuity could contrive to keep shut if any one opened the other door leading to the narrow passage, and the top of the steep dark staircase. Through this yawning aperture George lounged disconsolately into the little room beyond, eyeing with strong disfavour the preparations for his breakfast, which preparations chiefly consisted of a dirty table-cloth and a portion of a stale loaf, popularly known as a "heel." But his gaze travelled further, and brightened; for on the cracked and blistered wooden chimney-piece lay a letter in his mother's hand. He darted at it, and opened it eagerly, then held it for a moment in his hand unread. His face turned very pale, and he caught his breath once or twice as he muttered:
"Suppose it's to say she can't do anything at all." But the fear, the suspense were over with the first glance at his mother's letter. She wrote:
"Poynings, 13th April, 1861.
"My Dear George,--I have succeeded in procuring you the money, for which you tell me you have such urgent need. Perhaps if I admired, and felt disposed to act up to, a lofty standard of sentimental generosity, I should content myself with making this announcement, and sending you the sum which you assure me will release you from your difficulties, and enable you to commence the better life on which you have led me to hope you are resolved. But not only do the circumstances under which I have contrived to get this money for you make it impossible for me to act in this way, but I consider I should be very wrong, and quite wanting in my duty, if I failed to make you understand, at the cost of whatever pain to myself, the price I have had to pay for the power of aiding you.
"You have occasioned me much suffering, George. You, my only child, to whom I looked in the first dark days of my early bereavement, with such hope and pride as I cannot express, and as only a mother can understand--you have darkened my darkness and shadowed my joy, you have been the source of my deepest anxiety, though not the less for that, as you well know, the object of my fondest love. I don't write this to reproach you--I don't believe in the efficacy of reproach; but merely to tell you the truth--to preface another truth, the full significance of which it may prove very beneficial to you to understand. Sorrow I have known through you, and shame I have experienced for you. You have cost me many tears, whose marks can never be effaced from my face or my heart; you have cost me infinite disappointment, bitterness, heart-sickness, and domestic wretchedness; but now, for the first time, you cost me shame on my own account. Many and great as my faults and shortcomings have been through life, deceit was equally abhorrent to my nature and foreign to my habits. But for you, George, for your sake, to help you in this strait, to enable you to release yourself from the trammels in which you are held, I have descended to an act of deceit and meanness, the recollection of which must for ever haunt me with a keen sense of humiliation. I retain enough of my former belief in you, my son, to hope that what no other argument has been able to effect, this confession on my part may accomplish, and that you, recognizing the price at which I have so far rescued you, may pause, and turn from, the path leading downward into an abyss of ruin, from which no effort of mine could avail to snatch you. I have procured the money you require, by an expedient suggested to me accidentally, just when I had begun utterly to despair of ever being able to accomplish my ardent desire, by a conversation which took place at dinner between Mr. Carruthers and his family solicitor, Mr. Tatham. The conversation turned on a curious and disgraceful family story which had come under his knowledge lately. I need not trouble you to read, nor myself to write, its details; you will learn them when I see you, and give you the money; and I do not doubt, I dare not doubt, George, that you will feel all I expect you to feel when you learn to how deliberate, laborious, and mean a deception I have descended for your sake. I can never do the same thing again; the expedient is one that it is only possible to use once, and which is highly dangerous even in that one instance. So, if even you were bad and callous enough to calculate upon a repetition of it, which I could not believe, my own dear boy, I am bound to tell you that it never could be. Unless Mr. Carruthers should change his mind, consequent upon an entire, radical, and most happy change in your conduct, all pecuniary assistance on my part must be entirely impossible. I say this, thus strongly, out of the kindest and best motives towards you. Your unexpected appearance and application agitated and distressed me very much; not but that the sight of you, under any circumstances, must always give me pleasure, however closely pursued and overtaken by pain. For several days I was so completely upset by the recollection of your visit, and the strong and desperate necessity that existed for repressing all traces of such feelings, that I was unable to think over the expedients by which I might procure the money you required. Then as I began to grow a little quieter, accident gave me the hint upon which I have acted secretly and safely. Come down to Poynings in three days from this time. Mr. Carruthers is at present away at an agricultural meeting at York, and I can see you at Amherst, without difficulty or danger. Go to the town, but not to the inn. Wait about until you see my carriage. This is the 13th. I shall expect you on the 17th, by which day I hope to have the money ready for you.
"And now, my dear boy, how shall I end this letter? What shall I say? What can I say that I have not said again and again, and with sadly little effect, as you will not deny! But I forbear, and I hope. A feeling that I cannot define, an instinct, tells me that a crisis in my life is near. And what can such a crisis in my life mean, except in reference to you, my beloved and only child? In your hands lies all the future, all the disposition of the 'few and evil' years which remain to me. How are you going to deal with them? Is the love, which can never fail or falter, to be tried and wounded to the end, George, or is it to see any fruition in this world? Think over this question, my son, and let me read in your face, when I see you, that the answer is to be one of hope. You are much changed, George, the bitterness is succeeding the honey in your mouth; you are 'giving your strength for that which is not meat, and your labour for that which satisfieth not,' and though all the lookers-on at such a career as yours can see, and always do see, its emptiness and insufficiency plainly, what does their wisdom, their experience, avail? But if wisdom and experience come toyourself, that makes all the difference. Ifyouhave learned, and I venture to hope youhave, that the delusive light is but a 'Will of the Wisp,' you will cease to pursue it. Come to me, then, my boy. I have kept my word to you, at such a cost as you can hardly estimate, seeing that no heart can impartallits bitterness to another; will you keep yours to me?
"C. L. Carruthers."
"What does she mean? What can she mean?" George Dallas asked himself this question again and again, as he stood looking at the letter in his hand. "What hasshedone? A mean and deliberate deceit--some dishonourable transaction? My mother could not do anything deserving to be so called. It is impossible. Even if she could contemplate such a thing, she would not know how to set about it. God bless her!"
He sat down by the table, drew the dingy Britannia-metal teapot over beside his cup, and sat with his hand resting idly upon the distorted handle, still thinking less of the relief which the letter had brought him, than of the mysterious terms in which it was couched.
"She can't have got it out of Carruthers without his knowing anything about it?" he mused. "No; besides, getting it from him at all, is precisely the thing she told me she could not do. Well, I must wait to know; but how good of her to get it! Who's the fellow who says a man can have only one mother? By Jove, how right he is!"
Then George ate his breakfast hastily, and, putting the precious letter in his breast-pocket, went to Routh's lodgings.
"I dare say they're not up," he thought, as he knocked at the door, and patiently waited the lingering approach of the slipshod servant. "Routh was as late as I was last night, and I know she always sits up for him."
He was right; they had not yet appeared in the sitting-room, and he had time for a good deal of walking up and down, and much cogitation over his mother's letter, before Harriet appeared. She was looking anxious, Dallas thought, so he stepped forward even more eagerly than usual, and told her in hurried tones of gladness that the post had brought him good news, and that his mother was going to give him the money.
"I don't know how she has contrived to get it, Mrs. Routh," he said.
"Does she not tell you, then?" asked Harriet, as she eyed with some curiosity the letter which Dallas had taken out of his pocket, and which he turned about in his hand, as he stood talking to her. As she spoke, he replaced the letter in his pocket, and sat down.
"No," he answered, moodily, "she does not; but she did not get it easily, I know--not without a very painful self-sacrifice; but here's Routh."
"Ha! Dallas, my boy," said Routh, after he had directed one fleeting glance of inquiry towards his wife, and almost before he had fairly entered the room. "You're early--any news?"
"Very good news," replied Dallas; and he repeated the information he had already given Harriet. Routh received it with a somewhat feigned warmth, but Dallas was too much excited by his own feelings to perceive the impression which the news really produced on Routh.
"Is your letter from the great Mr. Carruthers himself?" said Routh; "from the provincial magnate who has the honour of being stepfather to you--your magnificent three-tailed bashaw?"
"Oh dear no!" said the young man grimly; "not from him. My letter is from my mother."
"And what has she to say?" asked Harriet quickly.
"She tells me she will very shortly be able to let me have the sum I require."
"The deuce she will!" said Routh. "Well, I congratulate you, my boy! I may say I congratulate all of us, for the matter of that; but it's rather unexpected, isn't it? I thought Mrs. Carruthers told you, when you saw her so lately, that the chances of her bleeding that charming person, her husband, were very remote."
"She did say so, and she was right; it's not from him she's going to get the money. Thank Heaven for that!"
"Certainly, if you wish it, though I'm not sure that we're right in being over-particular whence the money comes, so that it does come when one wants it. What is that example in the Eton Latin Grammar--'I came to her in season, which is the chief thing of all?' But if not from Mr. Carruthers, where does she get the money?"
"I--I don't know; but she does not get it without some horrible self-sacrifice; you may depend on that."
"My dear George, Mrs. Carruthers's case is not a singular one. We none of us get money without an extraordinary amount of self-sacrifice."
"Not a singular one! No, by George, you're right there, Routh," said the young man bitterly; "but does that make it any lighter for her to bear, or any better for me to reflect upon? There are hundreds of vagabond sons in England at this moment, I dare say, outcasts--sources of shame and degradation to their mothers, utterly useless to any one. I swear, when I think of what my mother must have gone through to raise this money, when I think of the purpose for which it is required, I thoroughly loathe myself, and feel inclined to put a pistol to my head or a razor to my throat. However, once free, I--there--that's the old cant again!"
As the young man said these words, he rose from his chair, and fell to pacing the room with long strides. Stewart Routh looked up sternly at him from under his bent brows, and was about to speak; but Harriet held up a finger deprecatingly, and when George Dallas seated himself again, and, with his face on his hands, remained moodily gazing at the table, she stole behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
"I know you would not intentionally woundme, Mr. Dallas," she said. "I say, you would not intentionally woundme," she repeated, apparently in answer to his turning sharply round and staring at her in surprise; "but you seem to forget that it was I who counselled your recent visit to your mother, and suggested your asking her for this sum of money, which you were bound in honour to pay, and without the payment of which you--who have always represented yourself as most dear to her--would have been compromised for ever. I am sorry I did so, now that I see my intentions were misunderstood, and I say so frankly."
"I swear to you, Har--Mrs. Routh--I had not the slightest idea of casting the least imputation on your motives; I was only thinking--You know I'm a little hot on the subject of my mother, not without reason, perhaps, for she's been a perfect angel to me, and--one can't expect other people to enter into these things, and, of course, it was very absurd. But you must forget it, please, Mrs. Routh, and you too, Stewart. If I spoke sharply or peevishly, don't mind it, old fellow!"
"I?" said Routh, with a crisp laugh. "Idon'tmind it; and I dare say I was very provoking; but you see I never knew what it was to have a mother, and I'm not much indebted to my other parent. As to the money, George--these are hard times, but if the payment of it is to drive a worthy lady to distress, or is to promote discord between you and me, why, in friendship's name, keep it, I say!"
"You're a good fellow, Stewart," said Dallas, putting out his hand; "and you, Mrs. Routh, have forgiven me?" Though she only bowed her head slightly, she looked down into his face with a long, steady, earnest gaze. "There's an end of it, then, I trust," he continued; "we never have had words here, and I hope we're not going to begin now. As for the money, that must be paid. Whatever my mother has had to do is as good as done, and need not be whined over. Besides, I know you want the money, Stewart."
"That's simply to say that I am in my normal state. I always want money, my dear George."
"You shall have this, at all events. And now I must be off, as I have some work to do for the paper. See you very soon again. Good-bye, Stewart. The cloud has quite passed away, Mrs. Routh?"
She said "Quite," as she gave him her hand, and their eyes met. There was eager inquiry in his glance; there was calm, steadfast earnestness in hers. Then he shook hands with Routh, and left the room.
The moment the door closed behind him; the smile faded away from Routh's face, and the stern look which it always wore when he was preoccupied and thoughtful settled down upon it For a few minutes he was silent; then he said in a low voice: "Harriet, for the first time in your life, I suppose, you very nearly mismanaged a bit of business I intrusted to you."
His wife looked at him with wonder-lifted brows. "I, Stewart? Not intentionally, I need not tell you. But how?"
"I mean this business of George's. Did not you advise him to go down and see his mother?"
"I did. I told him he must get the money from her."
"A mistake, Harry, a mistake!" said Routh, petulantly. "Getting the money means paying us; paying us means breaking with us?"
"Breaking with us?"
"Nothing less. Did you not hear him when the remorseful fit was on him just now? And don't you know that he's wonderfully young, considering all things, and has kept the bloom on his feelings in a very extraordinary manner? Did you not hear him mutter something about 'once free'? I did not like that, Harry."
"Yes, I heard him say those words," replied Harriet. "It was my hearing them that made me go up to him and speak as I did."
"That was quite right, and had its effect. One does not know what he might have done if he had turned rusty just then. And it is essential that there should not be a rupture between us now."
"George Dallas shall not dream of breaking with us; at least, he shall not carry out any such idea; I will take care of that," said Harriet, "though I think you overrate his usefulness to us."
"Do I? I flatter myself there is no man in London forced to gain his bread by his wits who has a better eye for a tool than myself. And I tell you, Harry, that during all the time we have been leading this shifty life together, we have never had any one so suitable to our purposes as George Dallas."
"He is certainly wonderfully amenable."
"Amenable? He is a good deal more than that; he is devoted. You know whose doing that is, Harry, and so do I. Why, when you laid your hand on his shoulder I saw him shiver like a leaf, and the first few words from you stilled what I thought was going to be a heavy storm."
She looked up anxiously into his face, but the smile had returned to his lips, and his brow was unclouded. Not perfectly satisfied, she suffered her eyes to drop again.
"I know perfectly well," pursued Routh, "that the manner in which Dallas has stuck to us has been owing entirely to the influence you have over him, and which is natural enough. He is a bright young fellow, impressionable as we all are----" again her eyes were raised to his face, "--at his age; and though from the scrapes he has got into, and his own natural love of play (more developed in him than in any other man I ever met), though these things keep him down, he is innately a gentleman. You are the only woman of refinement and education to whose society he has access, and as, at the same time, you have a sweet face and an enormous power of will, it is not extraordinary that he should be completely under your influence."
"Don't you overrate that same influence, Stewart?" she asked with a faint smile.
"No man knows better how to appraise the value of his own goods--and you are my goods, are you not, Harry, and out and away, the best of all my goods? Not that that's saying much. No; I understand these things, and I understand you, and having perfect confidence and trust in you, I stand by and watch the game."
"And you're never jealous, Stewart?" she asked, with a half-laugh, but with the old expression of anxious interest in her eyes.
"Jealous, Harry? Not I, my love! I tell you, I have perfect trust and confidence in you, and I know your thorough devotion to our affairs. Let us get back to what we were talking about at first--what was it exactly?"
Her eyes had dropped again at the commencement of his reply, but she raised them as he finished speaking, and said, "We were discussing the amount of George Dallas's usefulness to us."
"Exactly. His usefulness is greater than it seems. There is nothing so useful in a life like ours as the outward semblance of position. I don't mean the mere get up; that most fools can manage; but the certain something which proclaims to his fellows and his inferiors that a man has had education and been decently bred. There are very few among our precious acquaintances who could not win Dallas's coat off his back, at cards, or billiards, or betting, but there is not one whom I could present to any young fellow of the smallest appreciation whom I might pick up. Even if their frightful appearance were not sufficiently against them--and it is--they would say or do something in the first few minutes which would awake suspicion, whereas Dallas, even in his poverty-stricken clothes of the last few weeks, looks like a gentleman, and talks and behaves like one."
"Yes," said Harriet, reflecting, "he certainly does; and that's a great consideration, Stewart?"
"Incalculable! Besides, though he is a thorough gambler at heart, he has some other visible profession. His 'connection with the press,' as he calls it, seems really to be a fact; he could earn a decent salary if he stuck to it. From a letter he showed me, I make out that they seem to think well of him at the newspaper office; and mind you, Harriet, he might be uncommonly useful to us some day in getting things kept out of the papers, or flying a few rumours which would take effect in the money-market or at Tattersall's. Do you see all that, Harry?"
"I see it," she replied; "I suppose you're right."
"Eight? Of course I am! George Dallas is the best ally--and the cheapest--we have ever had, and he must be kept with us."
"You harp upon that 'kept with us.' Are you still so persuaded that he wishes to shake us off?"
"I am. I feel convinced, from that little outburst to-night, that he is touched by this unexplained sacrifice on the part of his mother, and that in his present frame of mind he would give anything to send us adrift and get back into decent life. I feel this so strongly, Harriet," continued Routh, rising from his seat, crossing to the mantelshelf, and taking a cigar, "that I think even your influence would be powerless to restrain him, unless--"
"Unless what? Why do you pause?" she asked, looking up at him with a clear steadfast gaze.
"Unless," said Routh, slowly puffing at his newly-lighted cigar, "unless we get a fresh and a firm hold on him. He will pay that hundred and forty pounds. Once paid that hold is gone, and with it goes our ally!"
"I see what you mean," said Harriet, after a pause, with a short mirthless laugh. "He must be what they call in the East 'compromised.' We are plague-stricken. George Dallas must be seen to brush shoulders with us. His garments must be known to have touched ours. Then the uninfected will cast him out, and he will be reduced to herd with us."
"You are figurative, Harry, but forcible: you have hit my meaning exactly. But the main point still remains--howis he to be 'compromised'?"
"It is impossible to settle that hurriedly," she replied, pushing her hair back from her forehead. "But it must be done effectually, and the step which he is led to take, and which is to bind him firmly to us, must be irrevocable. Hush! Come in!"
These last words were in reply to a knock at the room door. A dirty servant-girl put her tangled head into the room, and announced "Mr. Deane" as waiting down-stairs. This statement was apparently incorrect, for the girl had scarcely made it before she disappeared, as though pulled back, and a man stepped past her, and made one stride into the middle of the room, where he stood looking round him with a suspicious leer.
He was a young man, apparently not more than two or three and twenty, judging by his figure and his light active movements; but cunning and deceit had stamped such wrinkles round his eyes, and graven such lines round his mouth, as are seldom to be seen in youth. His eyes, of a greenish-gray hue, were small and deeply sunk in his head; his cheek-bones were high, his cheeks fringed by a very small scrap of whisker running into a dirt-coloured tuft of hair growing underneath his chin. His figure was tall and; angular, his arms and legs long and awkward, his hands and feet large and ill-shaped. He wore a large thick overcoat with broad fur collar and cuffs, and a hood (also fur-lined) hanging back on his shoulders. With the exception of a very slight strip of ribbon, he had no cravat underneath his long limp turnover collar, but stuck into his shirt-front was a large and handsome diamond pin.
"Why, what the 'tarnal," he commenced, placing his arms a-kimbo and without removing his hat--"what the 'tarnal, as they say down west, is the meaning of this little game? I come here pretty smart often, don't I? I come in gen'lly right way, don't I? Why does that gal go totin' up in front of me to-day to see if you would see me, now?"
"Some mistake, eh?"
"Not a bit of it! Gal was all right, gal was. What I want to know is, what was up? Was you a practisin' any of your little hankey-pankeys with the pasteboards? Was you a bitin' in a double set of scrip of the new company to do your own riggin' of the market? Or was it a little bit of quiet con-nubiality with the mar-darm here in which you didn't want to be disturbed?"
Stewart Routh's face had been growing darker and darker as this speech proceeded, and at the allusion to his wife his lips began to move; but they were stopped by a warning pressure underneath the table from Harriet's foot.
"You're a queer fellow, Deane!" he said, in a subdued voice. "The fact is, we have a new servant here, and she did not recognize you asl'ami de la maison, and so stood on the proprieties, I suppose."
"O, that's it, eh? I don't know about the proprieties; but when the gal knows more of me, she'll guess I'm one of 'em. Nothing improper about me--no loafin' rowdy ways, such as some of your friends have. Pay my way as I go, ask no favours, and don't expect none." He gave his trousers pockets a ringing slap as he spoke, and looked round with a sneering laugh.
"There, there! It's all right; now sit down, and have a glass of wine, and tell us the news."
"No," he said, "thank'ee. I've been liquoring up in the City, where I've been doin' a little business--realizing some of them Lake Eries and Michigans as I told you on. Spanking investments they were, and have turned up trumps."
"I hope you're in the hands of an honest broker," said Routh. "I could introduce you to one who--"
"Thank'ee, I have a great man to broke for me, recommended to me from t'other side by his cousin who leads Wall-street, New York City. I have given him the writings, and am going to see him on Tuesday, at two, when I shall trouser the dollars to the tune of fifteen thousand and odd, if markets hold up, I reckon."