Long before Mr. Carruthers, impelled by the irresistible force of routine, which not all the concern, and even alarm, occasioned him by Mrs. Carruthers's condition could subdue, had issued forth upon his daily tour of inspection, Clare's letters had been safely posted by her own hand at the village. She had slept but little on the night which had fallen on her first experience of fear and grief; and waking at dawn, oppressed by a heavy sense of some dimly-understood calamity, she had recalled it all in a moment; and having hurriedly dressed herself, she went down to the breakfast-room, and let herself out through the window, accompanied by her dog, whose joyous gambols in the bright morning air she did not notice. That morning air struck chill to the weary limbs and aching head of the sad, bewildered girl as she pursued her rapid way through the shrubbery, brushing the dew from the branches of the trees as she passed hurriedly along heart-sick, and yet wandering and confused in her thoughts.
Her walk was quite solitary and uninterrupted. She slid the letters into a convenient slit of a window-shutter of the general-shop, to which the dignity and emoluments of a post-office were attached; glanced up and down the little street, listened to certain desultory sounds which spoke of the commencement of activity in adjacent stable-yards, and to the barking with which some vagabond dogs of her acquaintance greeted her and Cæsar; satisfied herself that she was unobserved, and then retraced her steps as rapidly as possible. The large white-faced clock over the stables at Poynings--an unimpeachable instrument, never known to gain or lose within the memory of man--was striking six as Clare Carruthers carefully replaced the bolt of the breakfast-room window, and crept upstairs again, with a faint flutter of satisfaction that her errand had been safely accomplished contending with the dreariness and dread which filled her heart. She put away her hat and cloak, changed her dress, which was wet with the dew, and sat down by the door of the room to listen for the first stir of life in the house.
Soon she heard her uncle's step, lighter, less creaky than usual, and went out to meet him. He did not show any surprise on seeing her so early, and the expression of his face told her in a moment that he had no good news of the invalid to communicate.
"Brookes says she has had a very bad night," he said gravely. "I am going to send for Munns at once, and to telegraph to London for more advice." Then he went on in a state of subdued creak; and Clare, in increased bewilderment and misery, went to Mrs. Carruthers's room, where she found the reign of dangerous illness seriously inaugurated.
Doctor Munns came, and early in the afternoon a grave and polite gentleman arrived from London, who was very affable, but rather reserved, and who was also guilty of the unaccountable bad taste of suggesting a shock in connection with Mrs. Carruthers's illness. He also was emphatically corrected by Mr. Carruthers, but not with the same harshness which had marked that gentleman's reception of Dr. Munns's suggestion. The grave gentleman from London made but little addition to Dr. Munns's treatment, declined to commit himself to any decided opinion on the case, and went away, leaving Mr. Carruthers with a sensation of helplessness and vague injury, to say nothing of downright misery and alarm, to which the Grand Lama was entirely unaccustomed.
Before the London physician made his appearance Clare and her uncle had met at breakfast, and she had learned all there was to be known on the subject which had taken entire and terrible possession of her mind: It seemed to Clare now that she had no power of thinking of anything else, that it was quite impossible that only yesterday morning she was a careless unconscious girl musing over a romantic incident in her life, speculating vaguely upon the possibility of any result accruing from it in the future, and feeling as far removed from the crimes and dangers of life as if they had no existence. Now she took her place opposite her uncle with a face whose pallor and expression of deep-seated trouble even that unobservant and self-engrossed potentate could not fail to notice. He did observe the alteration in Clare's looks, and was not altogether displeased by it. It argued deep solicitude for Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings--an extremely proper sentiment; so Mr. Carruthers consoled his niece after his stately fashion, acknowledging, at the same time, the unaccountable vagaries of fever, and assuring Clare that there was nothing infectious in the case--a subject on which it had never occurred to the girl to feel any uneasiness. Not so with Mr. Carruthers, who had a very great dread of illness of every kind, and a superstitious reverence for the medical art. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the post, and Mr. Carruthers's attention was again drawn to the subject of the murder and the possibility of promoting his own importance in connection with it. Clare's pale face turned paler as her uncle took up the first letter of the number presented to him by Thomas (footman), that official looking peculiarly intelligent on the occasion; for the letter bore the magic inscription, "On Her Majesty's Service," and the seal of the Home Office.
Mr. Carruthers took some time to read the letter, even with the aid of the gold eye-glasses. It came from Mr. Dalrymple, who wrote an abnormally bad hand even for a government official--a circumstance which Mr. Carruthers mentally combined with the beard, of which he retained an indignant remembrance as a sign of the degeneracy of the age. The irrepressible pompousness of the man showed itself even in this crisis of affairs, as he perused the document, and laid it down upon the table under the hand armed with the eye-glasses.
Clare waited breathless.
"Hem! my dear," he began; "this letter is connected with the matter I mentioned to you yesterday. You remember, I daresay, about the murder, and the inquiry I was requested by the government to make at Amherst."
O yes, Clare remembered; she had been very much interested. Had anything since transpired?
"Nothing of any moment. This letter is from Mr. Dalrymple--the gentleman who came here, as I told you, from Lord Wolstenholme."
Clare, still breathless, bowed. There was no use in trying to accelerate Mr. Carruthers's speech. He was not to be hurried.
"He writes to me that the Home Secretary regrets very much the failure of our inquiries at Amherst, in eliciting any information concerning the only person on whom suspicion has as yet alighted. He informs me that, as I expected, and as I explained to you yesterday"--Mr. Carruthers paused condescendingly for Clare's silent gesture of assent--"the jury at the coroner's inquest (it closed yesterday) have returned an open verdict--wilful murder against some person or persons unknown; and the police have been instructed to use all possible vigilance to bring the criminal to light."
"Have they learned anything further about the dead man?" asked Clare, with a timid look (half of anxiety, half of avoidance) towards the newspaper, which Mr. Carruthers had not yet opened, and which no member of the family would have ventured to touch unsanctioned by the previous perusal of its august head.
"About the murdered man?--no, I believe not. Mr. Dalrymple further informs me that the fur-lined coat, and all the other less remarkable articles of clothing found on the body, are placed in the hands of the police, in hope of future identification. There is nothing more to be done, then, that I can see. Can you suggest anything, Clare!" Mr. Carruthers asked the question in a tone almost of banter, as though there were something ridiculous in his expecting a suggestion from such a quarter, but with very little real anxiety nevertheless.
"I--I really do not know, uncle," returned Clare; "I cannot tell. You are quite sure Evans told you all he knew?"
"Everything," replied Mr. Carruthers. "The clue furnished by the coat was very slight, but it was the only one. I am convinced, myself, that the man who wore the coat, and was last seen in company with the murdered man, was the man who committed the murder." Clare shivered. "But," continued Mr. Carruthers in an argumentative tone, "the thing to establish is the identity of the man who wore the coat with the man who bought it six weeks ago."
A bright flush rose on Clare's cheeks--a flush of surprise, of hope. "Is there any doubt about that, uncle?" she asked. "The waiter described the man, didn't he? Besides, no one would part with an overcoat in six weeks."
"Thatis by no means certain," said Mr. Carruthers with an air of profound wisdom. "Artists and writers, and foreigners, and generally people of the vagabond kind, sell and barter their clothes very frequently. The young man whom Evans describes might have been any one, from his purposeless indistinguishable description; the waiter's memory is clearer, as is natural, being newer."
"And what is the description he gives?" asked Clare faintly.
"You will find it in the weekly paper, my dear," returned Mr. Carruthers, stretching his hand out towards the daily journal. "Meantime let's see yesterday's proceedings."
Hope had arisen in Clare's heart. Might not all her fear be unfounded, all her sufferings vain? What if the coat had not been purchased by Paul Ward at all? She tried to remember exactly what he had said in the few jesting words that had passed on the subject. Had he said he had bought it at Amherst, or only that it had been made at Amherst? By an intense effort, so distracting and painful that it made her head ache with a sharp pain, she endeavoured to force her memory to reproduce what had passed, but in vain; she remembered only the circumstance, the fatal identification of the coat. "Artists and writers," her uncle had said, in his disdainful classification, occasionally made certain odd arrangements concerning their garments unknown to the upper classes, to whom tailors and valets appertain of right; and Paul Ward was both a writer and an artist. Might he not have bought the coat from an acquaintance? Men of his class, she knew, often had queer acquaintances. The possession was one of the drawbacks of the otherwise glorious career of art and literature--people who might require to sell their coats, and be equal to doing it.
Yes there was a hope, a possibility that it might be so, and the girl seized on it with avidity. But, in a moment, the terrible recollection struck her that she was considering the matter at the wrong end. Who had bought the coat made by Evans of Amherst, and what had been its intermediate history, were things of no import. The question was, in whose possession was it when the unknown man was murdered. Had Paul Ward dined with him at the Strand Tavern? Was Paul Ward the man whom the waiter could undertake to identify, in London? If so--and the terrible pang of the conviction that so, indeed, it was, returned to her with redoubled force from the momentary relief of the doubt--the danger was in London, not there at Amherst; from the waiter, not from Evans. Distracted between the horror, overwhelming to the innocent mind of the young girl, to whom sin and crime had been hitherto dim and distant phantoms, of such guilt attaching itself to the image which she had set up for the romantic worship of her girlish heart, and the urgent terrified desire which she felt that, however guilty, he might escape--nay, the more firmly she felt convinced that hemustbe guilty, the more ardently she desired it,--Clare Carruthers's gentle breast was rent with such unendurable torture as hardly any after happiness could compensate for or efface. All this time Mr. Carruthers was reading the newspaper, and at length he laid it down, and was about to address Clare, when the footman entered the room, and informed him that Mr. Evans, the tailor, from Amherst, wished to be permitted to speak to him as soon as convenient. With much more alacrity than he usually displayed, Mr. Carruthers desired that Evans should be shown into the library, and declared his intention of going to speak to him immediately.
"I have no doubt, Clare, that he has come about this business," said Mr. Carruthers, when the servant had left the room. With this consolatory assurance he left her to herself. She snatched up the newspaper, and read a brief account of the proceedings of the previous day--the close of the inquest, and some indignant remarks upon the impunity with which so atrocious a crime had, to all appearance, been committed; which wound up with a supposition that this murder was destined to be included in the number of those mysteries whose impenetrability strengthened the hand of the assassin, and made our police system the standing jest of continental nations. How ardently she hoped, how nearly she dared to pray, that it might indeed be so!
She lingered in the breakfast-room, waiting for her uncle's return. The restlessness, the uncertainty of misery, were upon her; she dreaded the sight of every one, and yet she feared solitude, because of the thoughts, the convictions, the terrors, which peopled it. Three letters lay on the table still unopened; and when Clare looked at them, she found they were addressed to Mrs. Carruthers, and that two of the three were from America. The postmark on each was New York, and on one were stamped the words, "Too late."
"She is too ill to read any letters now, or even to be told there are any," thought Clare. "I had better put them away, or ask my uncle to do so."
She was looking at the third letter, which was from George Dallas; but she had never seen his writing, to her knowledge; and the two words, which he had written on the slip of paper she had seen, being a Christian and surname, afforded her no opportunity of recognizing it as that of Paul Ward; when Mr. Carruthers returned, looking very pompous and fussy.
"I shall communicate with the Home Office immediately," he began. "This is very important. Evans has been here to tell me he has read all the proceedings at the inquest, and the waiter's description of the suspected individual tallies precisely with his own recollection of the purchaser of the coat."
"But, uncle," said Clare, with quick intelligence, "you told me the man's evidence and Evans's description were as vague as possible. Indeed, I was quite struck by what you said: 'A description that describes nothing' were your words. And don't you remember telling me how frequently you had observed in your magisterial capacity that these people never could be depended on to give an accurate account of an impression or a circumstance? And how you have told me that it was one of the chief distinctions between the educated and uneducated mind, that only the former could comprehend the real value and meaning of evidence? Depend on it, Evans has no new ground for his conviction. He has been reading the papers, and thinking over the importance of being mixed up in the matter, until he has persuaded himself into this notion. Don't you recollect that is just what you said you were sure he would do?"
Mr. Carruthers did not remember anything of the kind, nor did Clare. But the girl was progressing rapidly in the lessons which strong emotion teaches, and which add years of experience to hours of life. Instinctively she took advantage of the weakness of her uncle's character, which she comprehended without acknowledging. Mr. Carruthers had no objection to the imputation of superior sagacity conveyed in Clare's remark, and accepted the suggestion graciously; he was particularly pleased to learn that he had drawn that acute distinction between the educated and uneducated mind. It was like him, he thought: he was not a man on whom experience was wasted.
"Yes, yes, I remember, of course, my dear," replied Mr. Carruthers, graciously; "but then, you see, however little I may think of Evans's notions on the subject, I am bound to communicate with the Home Office. If Mrs. Carruthers's illness did not render my absence improper and impossible, I should go to London myself, and lay the matter before Lord Wolstenholme; but, as I cannot do that, I must write at once." Mr. Carruthers, in his secret soul, regarded the obligation with no little dread, and would have been grateful for a suggestion which he would not have condescended to ask for.
"Then I will leave you, uncle," said Clare, making a strong effort to speak as cheerfully as possible, "to your task of telling the big wigs that there is nothing more to be done or known down here. You might make them laugh, if such solemn, grand people ever laugh, by telling them how the rural mind believes two vaguenesses to make a certainty, and make them grateful that Evans came to you, and not to them, with his mare's nest of corroborative evidence."
Clare's fair face was sharpened with anxiety as she spoke, despite the brightness of her tone, and she had narrowly watched the effect of her words. Her uncle felt that they conveyed precisely the hint he required, and was proportionally relieved.
"Of course, of course," he answered, in his grandest manner; and Clare moved towards the door, when, remembering the letters, she said:
"There are some letters for Mrs. Carruthers, uncle. I fancy she is too ill to see them. Two are from America; will you take them?"
"I take them, Clare, why?" asked her uncle, in a tone of dignified surprise.
"Only because, being foreign letters, I thought they might require attention--that's all," said Clare, feeling herself rebuked for a vulgarity. "They come from New York."
"Probably from Mr. Felton," said Mr. Carruthers, pointing the gold eye-glasses at the letters in Clare's hand with dignified coldness, but making no attempt to look at them nearer. "You had better lay them aside, or give them to Brookes or Dixon. I never meddle with Mrs. Carruthers's family correspondence."
Clare made her escape with the letters, feeling as if her ears had, morally speaking, been boxed; and diverted, for a little, by the sensation from the devouring anxiety she had felt that Mr. Carruthers should communicate in the tone which she had tried to insinuate with the dignitaries of the Home Office.
The door of Mrs. Carruthers's room was open, and the curtain partly withdrawn, when Clare reached it. She called softly to Dixon, but received no reply. Then she went in, and found the housekeeper again in attendance upon the patient. To her inquiries she received from Mrs. Brookes very discouraging replies, and the old woman stated her conviction strongly that it was going to be a very bad business, and that Clare had much better go to the Sycamores.
"You can't do any good here, Miss Carruthers," said the old woman; and Clare thought she had never heard her speak so sternly and harshly. "I don't know that any one can do any good; but you can't anyhow, and the fever may be catching."
Clare's eyes filled with tears, not only because she loved Mrs. Carruthers, not only because another trouble was added to the crushing misery that had fallen upon her, but also because it hurt her gentle nature keenly to feel herself of no account.
"No," she said, in a low voice, "I know I am of no use, Mrs. Brookes. I am not her child. If I were, I should not be expected to leave her. And," she added bitterly, for the first time treading on the forbidden ground, "more than that, if it were not for me, her son might be with her now, perhaps."
"Hush, hush, pray," whispered Mrs. Brookes, with a frightened glance at the bed; "don't say that word! She may hear and understand more than we think."
Clare looked at her in bewilderment, but obeyed her, and asked no questions.
"These came just now," she said, "my uncle desired me to give them to you."
She put the letters into the old woman's hand, and crossed the room, leaving it by the opposite door, which communicated with Mrs. Carruthers's dressing-room. As she passed through the inner apartment, which opened on the corridor, she observed that the portrait of George Dallas, which had hung upon the wall as long as she remembered the room, was no longer there.
The hidden anguish in her own heart, the secret which was crushing her own young spirit, made the girl quick to see and interpret any sign of similar sorrow and mystery.
"Mrs. Brookes has taken away her son's picture," Clare thought, us she slowly descended the stairs, "and she dreads his name being mentioned in her presence. Dr. Munns asked if she had had a shock, and seemed to impute her illness to something of the kind. There is something wrong with George Dallas, and the two know it."
When Miss Carruthers left her, Mrs. Brookes broke the seal of one of the letters without a moment's hesitation, and read its contents, standing shielded from any possible observation by the invalid by the curtains of the bed. The letter contained only a few lines:
"I am going away, out of England, for a little while, my dearest mother," George Dallas wrote. "It is necessary for the transaction of my business; but I did not know it would be so when I last communicated with you. Write to me at the subjoined address: your letter mil be forwarded." The address given was Routh's, at South Molton-street.
The old woman sighed heavily as she read the letter, and then resumed her attendance on her patient.
The day waned, the London physician came and went. The household at Poynings learned little of their mistress's state. There was little to be learned. That night a letter was written to George Dallas, by Mrs. Brookes, which was a harder task to the poor old woman than she had ever been called upon to fulfil. With infinite labour, she wrote as follows:
"My Dear Master George,--Your letter has come, so I know you are not in England, and I am not sure but that some one else may see this. Your mother is very ill, in consequence of what she has seen in the papers. I do not believe it is as bad as it seems, though how bad that is, thank God, no one but your mother and I know, or can ever know, I hope and trust. Think of all the strongest and most imploring things I could say to you, my own dear boy, if it was safe to say anything, and if you can put us out of suspense, by writing, not to her, not on any account to her, but to me, do so. But if you can't, George--and think what I feel in saying thatif--keep away, don't let her hear of you, don't let her think of you in danger. Anyhow, God save, and help, and forgive you.
"Your affectionate old Nurse,
"ELLEN."
The days went on, as time travels in sickness and in health, and there was little change in Mrs. Carruthers, and little hope at Poynings. The fever had been pronounced not infectious, and Clare had not been banished to the Sycamores. No fresh alarm had arisen to agitate her, no news of the suspected man had been obtained. The matter had apparently been consigned to oblivion. With the subsidence of her first terror and agitation, a deeper horror and dread had grown upon Clare. Supposing, as it seemed, that he was safe now, Paul Ward was still a guilty wretch, a creature to be shunned by the pure, even in thought. And the more she felt this, and thought of it, the more frankly Clare confessed to her own heart that she had loved him, that she had set him up, with so little knowledge of him after their chance meeting, as an idol in the shrine of her girlish fancy--an idol defaced and overthrown now, a shrine for ever denied and desecrated. She was glad to think she had warned him; she wondered how much that warning had contributed to his security. She strove hard to banish the remembrance of him in all but its true aspect of abhorrence, but she did not always succeed; and, in the innocent girl's dreams, the smile, the voice, the frank kindly words would often come again, and make her waking to the jarring gladness of the morning terrible. A shadow fell upon her beauty, the gleeful tone died out of her voice; the change of an indelible sorrow passed upon the girl, but passed unnoticed by herself or any other.
The days went on, as time travels in sorrow and in joy; and at length a change came in Mrs. Carruthers, and there was hope at Poynings. Not hope, indeed, that she could ever be again as she had been, beautiful and stately in her serene and honoured matronhood, in her bright intelligence and dignity. That was not to be. She recovered; that is, she did not die, but she died to much of the past. She was an old woman from thenceforth, and all her beauty, save the immortal beauty of form, had left her very quiet, very patient and gentle, but of feeble nerves, and with little memory for the past, and little attention or interest in the present; she was the merest wreck of what she had been. Her faithful old servant was not so much distressed by the change as were her husband and Clare. She had her own reasons for thinking it better that it should be so. For many days after convalescence had been declared, she had watched and waited, sick with apprehension for some sign of recollection on the part of the patient, but none came, and the old woman, while she grieved with exceeding bitterness over the wreck of all she so dearly loved, thanked God in her heart that even thus relief had come. None had come otherwise. George Dallas had made no sign.
So the time went on, and summer was in its full pomp and pride when preparations were being made on a scale suitable to the travelling arrangements of magnates of the importance of Mr. Carruthers of Poynings for a continental tour, recommended by the physicians in attendance as a means for the complete restoration of Mrs. Carruthers. The time named for the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers had nearly arrived, and it had just been arranged that Clare should remain at the Sycamores during their absence, when Mr. Carruthers startled Mrs. Brookes considerably by asking her if she could inform him where a communication might be expected to find Mr. George Dallas? It would have been impossible for human ingenuity to have devised a question more unexpected by its recipient, and Mrs. Brookes was genuinely incapable of answering it for a moment, and showed her fear and surprise so plainly, that Mr. Carruthers, much softened by recent events, condescended to explain why he had asked it.
"I do not consider it proper that the young man should be left in ignorance of his mother's state of health and her absence from. England," he said, with less stateliness than usual; "and though I do not inquire into the manner and frequency of his communications with Mrs. Carruthers, I believe I am correct in supposing he has not written to her lately."
"Not lately, sir," replied Mrs. Brookes.
The result of this colloquy was that Mrs. Brookes gave Mr. Carruthers Routh's address at South Molton-street, and that Mr. Carruthers addressed a short epistle to George Dallas, in which he curtly informed his stepson that his mother, having just recovered from a dangerous illness which had enfeebled her mind considerably, was about to travel on the Continent for an indefinite period, during which, if he (Mr. Carruthers) should see any cause for so doing, he would communicate further with Mr. George Dallas. This letter was posted on the day which witnessed the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers "and suite" (as the County Chronicle was careful to notice) from Poynings; and Mr. Carruthers felt much conscious self-approval for having written it, and especially for having timed the writing of it so well. "Sooner, he might have made an excuse of it for coming here," thought the astute gentleman; "and it would have been heartless not to have written at all."
For once in his life Mr. Carruthers of Poynings had written a letter of importance.
High houses, broad, jolly, and red-faced, standing now on the edges of quays or at the feet of bridges, now in quaint trim little gardens, whose close-shaven turf is gaudy with brilliant bulbs, or overshadowed by box and yew, but always fringing the long, shallow, black canals, whose sluggish waters scarcely ripple under the passing barge. Water, water, everywhere, and requiring everybody's first consideration, dammed out by vast dykes and let in through numerous sluices, spanned by nearly three hundred bridges, employing a perfect army of men to watch it and tend it, to avail themselves of its presence and yet to keep it in subjection; for if not properly looked after and skilfully managed, it might at any moment submerge the city; avenues of green trees running along the canal banks and blooming freshly in the thickest portions of the commerce-crowded quays; innumerable windmills on the horizon; picture-galleries rich in treasures of Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, and Teniers; dock-yards, where square and sturdy ships are built by square and sturdy men, in solemn silence and with much pipe-smoking; asylums, homes, alms-houses, through which a broad stream of well-administered charity is always flowing. A population of grave burghers, and chattering vrows, and the fattest, shiniest, and most old-fashioned children; of outlandish sailors and Jews of the grand old type, who might have sat, and whose ancestors probably did sit, as models to Rembrandt; of stalwart bargemen and canal-tenders, of strangers, some pleasure-seeking, but the great majority intent on business; for whatever may be the solemn delights of its inhabitants, to a stranger accustomed to other capitals there are few gaieties to be met with in the city to which George Dallas had wended his way--Amsterdam.
To George Dallas this mattered very little. Of the grosser kinds of pleasure he had had enough and more than enough; the better feelings of his nature had been awakened, and nothing could have induced him to allow himself to drift back into the slough from which he had emerged. Wandering through the long picture-galleries and museums, and gloating over their contents with thorough artistic appreciation, dreamily gazing out of his hotel window over a prospect of barge-dotted and tree-bordered canals which would gradually dissolve before his eyes, the beech avenue of the Sycamores arising in its place, recalling Clare Carruthers's soft voice and ringing laugh and innocent trusting manner, George Dallas could scarcely believe that for months and months of his past life he had been the companion of sharpers and gamblers, and had been cat off from all communication with everything and everybody that in his youth he had been taught to look up to and respect. He shuddered as he recollected the orgies which he had taken part in, the company he had kept, the life he had led. He groaned aloud and stamped with rage as he thought of time lost, character blighted, opportunities missed. And his rage this time was vented on himself: he did not, as usual, curse his stepfather for having pronounced his edict of banishment; he did not lay the blame on luck or fate, which generally bore the burden; he was man enough to look his past life fairly in the face, and to own to himself that all its past privations, and what might have been its future miseries, were of his own creation. What might have been, but what should not be now. A new career lay before him, a career of honour and fame, inducements to pursue which such as he had never dreamed of were not wanting, and by Heaven's help he would succeed.
It was on the first morning after his arrival in Amsterdam that George Dallas, after much desultory thought, thus determined. Actuated by surroundings in an extraordinary degree, he had, while in London, been completely fascinated by the combined influence of Routh and Harriet; and had he remained with them he would, probably, never have shaken off that influence, or been anything but their ready instrument. But so soon as he had left them the fascination was gone, and his eyes were open to the degradation of his position, and the impossibility, so long as he continued with his recent associates, of retrieving himself in the eyes of the world--of being anything to Clare Carruthers. This last thought decided him--he would break with Stewart Routh, yes, and with Harriet, at once! He would sell the bracelet and send the proceeds to Routh with a letter, in which he would delicately but firmly express his determination and take farewell of him and Harriet. Then he would return to London, and throw himself into business at once. There was plenty for him to do at theMercury, the chief had said, and--No! he must not go back to London, he must not expose himself to temptation; at all events until he was more capable of resisting it. Now, there would be Routh, with his jovial blandishments, and Deane, and all the set, and Harriet, most dangerous of all! In London he would fall back into George Dallas, the outcast, the reprobate, the black sheep, not rise into Paul Ward, the genius; and it was under the latter name that he had made acquaintance with Clare, and that he hoped to rise into fame and repute.
But though the young man had, as he imagined, fully made up his mind as to his future course, he lounged through a whole day in Amsterdam before he took the first step necessary for its pursuance--the negotiation of the bracelet and the transmission of the money to Routh--and it is probable that any movement in the matter would have been yet further delayed had he not come to the end of the slender stock of money which he had brought with him from England. The reaction from a life of fevered excitement to one of perfect calm, the atmosphere of comfortable, quiet, staid tranquillity by which he was surrounded, the opportunity for indulging his artistic sympathies without the slightest trouble, all these influences were readily adopted by a man of George Dallas's desultory habits and easy temperament; but, at last, it was absolutely necessary that some action should be taken, and George consulted the polyglot waiter of the hotel as to the best means of disposing of some valuable diamonds which he had with him.
The question was evidently one to which the polyglot waiter was well accustomed, for he answered at once, "Dimants to puy is best by Mr. Dieverbrug, in Muiderstraat."
Not thoroughly comprehending the instance of the polyglottiness of the polyglot, George Dallas again advanced to the charge, and by varying his methods of attack, and diligently patching together such intelligible scraps as he rescued from the polyglot, he at length arrived at the fact that Mr. Dieverbrug, a Jew, who lived in the Muiderstraat, was a diamond merchant in a large way of business, speaking English, frequently visiting England, and likely to give as good, if not a better price than any one else in the trade. The polyglot added that he himself was not a bad judge of what he persisted in calling "dimants;" and as this speech was evidently a polite hint, George showed him the stones. The polyglot admired them very much, and pronounced them, in his opinion, worth between two and three hundred pounds--a valuable hint to George, who expected Mr. Dieverbrug would call upon him to name his price, and if any absurd sum was asked, the intending vendor might be looked upon with suspicion. The polyglot then owned that he himself frequently did a little business in the way of jewel-purchasing from visitors to the hotel, but frankly confessed that the "lot" under consideration was beyond him; so George thanked him and set out to visit Mr. Dieverbrug.
The Muiderstraat is the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, which said, it is scarcely necessary to add that it is the dirtiest, the foulest, the most evil-smelling. There all the well-known characteristics of such places flourish more abundantly even than in the Frankfort Judengasse or our own Houndsditch. There each house is the repository of countless suits of fusty clothes, heaped up in reckless profusion on the floors, bulging out from cupboards and presses, horribly suggestive of vermin, hanging from poles protruding from the windows. There every cellar bristles with an array of boots of all kinds and shades, amongst which the little Hebrew children squall and fight, and play at their little games of defrauding each other. There are thebric-à-bracshops, crammed with cheap odds and ends from every quarter of the globe, all equally undistinguishable under an impartial covering of dust and dirt; there are the booksellers, with their worm-eaten folios and their copies of the Scriptures, and their written announcements in the Hebrew character; there are the cheap printsellers, with smeary copies from popular pictures and highly coloured daubs of French battle-fields and English hunting-scenes. The day was fine, and nearly all the population was either standing outside its doors or lolling at its windows, chaffering, higgling, joking, scolding. George Dallas, to whom such a scene was an entire novelty, walked slowly along with difficulty, threading his way through the various groups, amused with all he saw, and speculating within himself as to the probable personal appearance of Mr. Dieverbrug. The diamond merchant, George imagined, would probably be an old man, with gray hair and spectacles, and a large hooked nose, like one of Rembrandt's "Misers," seated in a small shop, surrounded by the rarest treasures exquisitely set. But when he arrived at the number which the polyglot had given him as Mr. Dieverbrug's residence, he found a small shop indeed, but it was a bookseller's, and it was not until after some little time that he spied a painted inscription on the door-post directing Mr. Dieverbrug's visitors to the first floor, whither George at once proceeded.
At a small wooden table, on which stood a set of brass balance weights, sat a man of middle height and gentlemanly appearance dressed in black. The Hebraic character was not strongly marked in any of his features, though it was perceptible to an acute observer in the aquiline nose and the full red lips. He raised his eyes from a small red-leather memorandum-book or diary which he had been studying, as Dallas entered the room, and gave his visitor a grave salutation.
"Am I addressing Mr. Dieverbrug?" said Dallas, in English.
"I am Mr. Dieverbrug," he replied, in the same language, speaking with perfect ease and with very little foreign accentuation, "at your service."
"I have been recommended to come to you. I am, as you have probably already recognized, an Englishman, and I have some jewels for sale, which it may, perhaps, suit you to buy."
"You have them with you?"
"Yes, they are here;" and George took out his cherished case and placed it in Mr. Dieverbrug's hand.
Mr. Dieverbrug opened the case quietly, and walked with it towards the window. He then took out the stones and held them to the light, then taking from his waistcoat pocket a small pair of steel nippers, he picked up each stone separately, breathed upon it, examined it attentively, and then replaced it in the case. When he had gone through this operation with all the stones, he said to George:
"You are not a diamond merchant?"
"No, indeed!" said Dallas, with a half-laugh; "not I."
"You have never," said Mr. Dieverbrug, looking at him steadfastly from under his bushy eyebrows,--"you have never been in a jewel-house?"
"In a jewel-house?" echoed George.
"What you call a jeweller's shop?"
"Never have been in a jeweller's shop? O yes, often."
"Still you fail my meaning. You have never been in a jeweller's shop as employé, as assistant?"
"Assistant at a jeweller's--ah! thank you! now I see what you're aiming at. I've never been an assistant in a jeweller's shop, you ask, which is a polite way of inquiring if I robbed my master of these stones! Thank you very much; if you've that opinion of me, perhaps I had better seek my bargain elsewhere." And George Dallas, shaking all over, and very much flushed in the face, extended his hand for the case.
Mr. Dieverbrug smiled softly as he said, "If I thought that, I would have bid you go about your business at once. There are plenty of merchants at Amsterdam who would buy from you, no matter whence you came; but it is my business to ask such questions as to satisfy myself. Will you have back your diamonds, or shall I ask my questions?"
He spoke in so soft a tone, and he looked so placid and so thoroughly uncaring which way the discussion ended, that George Dallas could scarcely forbear laughing as he replied, "Ask away!"
"Ask away," repeated Mr. Dieverbrug, still with his soft smile. "Well, then, you are not a jeweller's employé; I can tell that by your manner, which also shows me that you are not what you call swell-mob-man--rascal---escroc. So you come to me with valuable diamonds to sell; my questions are, How do you get these diamonds? Who are you?"
For an instant George Dallas paused in his reply, while he felt the blood rise in his cheeks. He next looked Mr. Dieverbrug straight in the face, as he said, "These were family diamonds. I inherited them from my mother--who is dead--and I was advised to come over here to sell them, this being the best market. As to myself, I am a literary man, a contributor to newspapers, and an author."
"Ah, ha! you write in newspapers and books? You are a feuilletonist, author?" As Mr. Dieverbrug said these words he took up a stick which stood by the side of the fireplace and thumped heavily on the floor. His thumping seemed to awaken a kind of smothered response from the regions below them, and before George Dallas had recovered from his surprise, the door was opened, and an old gentleman of fantastic appearance entered the room--a very little man, with an enormous head, which was covered with a tight-fitting little skull-cap, large eyes glaring out of silver-rimmed spectacles, a sallow puckered face fringed with a short stubbly white beard, a large aquiline nose, and thin tight lips. Buttoning immediately under his chin and reaching to his feet--no very long distance--the little man wore a greasy red flannel gaberdine dressing-gown, with flat horn buttons in a row down the front, underneath which appeared a dubiously dirty pair of flannel stockings and bright red-leather slippers. With one hand the little man leaned on an ivory-handled crutch-stick; in the other he carried a yellow-paper covered book--Tauchnitz edition of some English author. As he entered the room he gave a sharp, rapid, comprehensive glance at George through his spectacles, made him a deferential bow, and then took up his position in the closest proximity to Mr. Dieverbrug, who at once addressed him in Dutch with such volubility that George, who had managed to pick up a few words during his stay, from the polyglot and others, failed to comprehend one syllable of what passed between them.
When they had finished their parley, during which both of them looked at the diamonds and then at George, and then waved their fingers in each other's faces, and beat the palms of their hands, and shrugged their shoulders as though they never intended their heads to be again seen, Mr. Dieverbrug turned to George, and said, "This is my brother-in-law, Mr. Schaub, who keeps the bookseller's shop beneath us. He is agent for some English booksellers and newspapers, and knows more about authors than you would think. I should be glad if you would have some talk with him."
"Glad I should have some talk with him?" George Dallas commenced in wonderment; but Mr. Schaub cut in at once:
"Ye-es! Vos glad should have tokes mit eem! Should mit eem converse--sprechen, dis English author!"
"English author?"
"M-ja! m-ja! Wass him, der Schaub"--tapping himself in the middle of his greasy breast with his ivory-handled crutch--"agent von Tauchnitz, Galignani, die LondonTimes, dieMercury, and von all. Wass der Schaub knows all, and der Mynheer is English author, der Schaub must know von the Mynheer!"
George Dallas looked at him for a few moments in great bewilderment, then turned to Mr. Dieverbrug. "Upon my honour," he said, "I should be delighted to carry out your wish and have some talk with this old gentleman, but I don't see my way to preventing the conversation being all on his side. The fact is, I don't understand one word he says!"
With the old sly smile, Mr. Dieverbrug said, "My brother-in-law's talk is perhaps somewhat idiomatic, and one is required to be used to it. What he would convey is, that he, acquainted as he is with English literature and journalism, would like to know what position you hold in it, what you have written, where you have been engaged, and such-like. It is no object of us to disguise to you that he brings his experience to aid me in deciding whether or not I consider myself justified in making a dealing with you for these stones."
"Thanks! I comprehend perfectly, and, of course, cannot object; though," added George, with a smile, "I am afraid I have not as yet made sufficient mark in English literature to render me a classic, or even to have gained a continental reputation for my name. Stay, though. Mr. Schaub, if I understood him rightly, represented himself as agent for one London paper to which I have contributed under my signature--theMercury. You know theMercury, Mr. Schaub? I thought so, and perhaps you have seen some articles there signed Paul Ward?"
"M-ja! m-ja! Wass von die 'Strangers in London,' von Paul Ward, am Nordjten, Hollandischen, Deutschen sea-people, von zailors would call zum visitiren?"
"That's it, sir! Descriptions," continued George, turning to Mr. Dieverbrug, "of the foreign sea-going populations of London."
"M-ja, of Highway, of Shadcliffe, Ratcliffe, Shadwell, vot you call! M-ja, of Paul Ward writings I am acquaint."
"And you are Paul Ward?" asked Mr. Dieverbrug.
"I am that apparently distinguished person," said George. Then Mr. Dieverbrug and Mr. Schaub plunged pell-mell into another conversation, in which though the tongues rattled volubly enough, the shoulders and the eyebrows and the fingers played almost as important parts, the result being that Mr. Dieverbrug turned to George and said, "I am quite satisfied to undertake this affair, Mr. Ward, from what my brother-in-law has said of your position. Another question is, what shall I give you for the stones?"
"From what your brother-in-law has said of my position, Mr. Dieverbrug," said George, "it will, I presume, be apparent to you that I am not likely to be much versed in such matters, and that I must, to a great extent, be dependent on you."
"But have you some notion of price?"
"I have a notion--nothing more."
"And that notion is--?"
"Well, I imagine the worth of these stones is about two hundred and fifty pounds!"
At these words Mr. Schaub gave a short sharp scream of horror, plunging his hands up to the elbows in the pockets of the red flannel gaberdine, and glaring at George through the silver-rimmed glasses. Mr. Dieverbrug was not so wildly affected; he only smiled the soft smile a little more emphatically than before, and said: "There is now no doubt, my dear sir, even if we had doubted it before, of your living in the region of romance! These must be Monte Christo diamonds, of Mr. Dumas's own setting, to judge by the value you place on them--eh?"
"Wass won hondert fifty is vat worths," said Mr. Schaub. But, fortified in his own mind by the opinion of the polyglot waiter, who evidently had not spoken without some knowledge, George at once and peremptorily declined his bid, and so to work they went. The stones were had out again, re-examined, weighed in the brass balances, breathed upon, held up to the light between the steel pincers, and, at length, after a sharp discussion, carried on with most vivid pantomime between the brothers-in-law, Mr. Dieverbrug consented to buy them for one hundred and eighty pounds, and George Dallas accepted his offer. Then from the recesses of a drawer in the little wooden table Mr. Dieverbrug produced a cash-box and counted out the sum in Dutch coin and gulden notes, and handing it to George, and shaking hands with him, the transaction was completed. Completed, so far as Mr. Dieverbrug was concerned; but Mr. Schaub had yet an interest in it. That worthy followed George Dallas down the stairs, and, as he would have made his exit, drew him into the bookseller's shop--a dark dirty den of a place, with old mildewed folios littering the floor, with new works smelling of print and paper ranged along the counter, with countless volumes pile on pile, heaped against the walls. With his skinny yellow hand resting on George's sleeve, the old man stood confronting George in the midst of the heterogeneous assemblage, and peering up into his face through the silver-rimmed glasses, said:
"And so he wos Paul Vart--eh? Dis young man wos Paul Vart, von London aus? And Paul Vart will back to London, and Hollandisch money no good there--eh? Best change for English, and der old Schaub shall change for eem--eh?"
"I'm not going back to London, Mr. Schaub," said George, after a few moments' puzzling over the old man's meaning, "I'm not going back to London; but I shall want to change this money, as I must send some of it, the larger portion, to England by tonight's post, and? am going to the bank to change it."
"Wass! der bank! der nonsense! It is the old Schaub vot vill change! Give de good rates and all! Ach, der old Schaub vot has der English bank-note to send mit dem posttrager! Der old Schaub vot den miser dey call! Der Schaub vill change die gulden for den bank-notes, m-ja?"
"It does not matter to me much who changes it, so long as I get the proper value!" said George with a laugh; "and if the old Schaub, as you call yourself, can give me bank-notes for a hundred and forty-pounds, I'll say done with you at once!"
"Wass vat wos 'done' mit me for a hundert forty pounds! See--first vill make the door to. Let das folk call miser old Schaub, but not let das folk see vot old Schaub misers. Ha, ha!"
So saying the old gentleman closed the door of the shop, and locked it carefully. Then he retired to the back of the counter, removed several heavy old books from one of the shelves, and unlocked a secret closet in the wall. When he turned again to George, whom he had left on the other side of the counter, he had a little roll of English bank-notes in his hand. From this he selected four notes--two of the value of fifty, and two of twenty pounds. These he handed to Dallas, receiving the equivalent in Dutch money.
"I am very much obliged to you indeed, Mr. Schaub," said George. "By doing this for me, you've saved my going to the bank, and a good deal of trouble."
"Obliged to him is not at all, mein goot freund, Vart--Paul Vart," said the old gentleman. "Miser das folk calls old Schaub, but it is not that; he has his leetle commissions, vy not be as vell as banks? Goot deal of money pass through old Schaub's hands, and of vot pass none go clean through, always von little shticks to him fingers!"
That night George Dallas wrote to Stewart Routh, enclosing him the money, and telling him that literary engagements had sprung up which might perhaps keep him some little time from London. The letter despatched, he felt a different man. The tie was loosed, the coupling-chain was broken! No longer enthralled by a debt of gratitude to vice, he could try what he could do to make a name--a name which his mother should not blush to hear--a name which should be murmured with delight by Clare Carruthers!