The announcement of a lady who wished to see Mrs. Brookes caused the faithful old woman no particular emotion. She was well known and much respected among the neighbours of Poynings, in the humbler sense, and visits from several of their number were ordinary events enough in her life. The announcement found her, not in her own room, but in her mistress's, where she had replaced the portrait of George, and was sitting looking at it with dim eyes and clasped hands. The time had been long in rolling over her weary old head; for though she had passed the period of life in which feeling is very keen, and sorrow has power to torture, and constancy to last, Mrs. Brookes had no other objects to divide her thoughts with Mrs. Carruthers and her son; and day by day the old woman had brooded upon the new trouble which had come to those whom she loved so well. Perplexity mingled with her grief, for she knew not what to think. She had stoutly denied the possibility of George's guilt, in the memorable dialogue which had been the last she had held with his mother; but the faint and fluttering hope she entertained was very different from the confidence she expressed; and now, in the solitude and silence of the great house, in the absence of the absorbing demand which Mrs. Carruthers's condition had made upon all her attention and self-command, her stout old heart sank within her. His mother was gone away from all the scenes and associations which had come to have a terrible meaning. Would she ever return? Ellen hardly knew how she wished to answer this question. It were better and happier perhaps that she never did, that her tired heart should drowsily beat itself to rest in a strange country, and lie hidden under another soil than that her son had stained with blood. Had he done this thing? What of him? Where was he? The orderly house, the well-regulated household, needed little of the old housekeeper's supervision. The absence of the family made little difference. No cleaning-days interrupted the decorous order of things in an establishment in which it would have savoured of indecorum to suppose that the rule of absolute cleanliness was ever superseded. Alterations and repairs were innovating interruptions altogether incompatible with Poynings; and, in fact, there was little or nothing to break the dead level to which old Ellen had looked forward as that of her days when she should be left alone in the stately house, and which had begun to realize itself at once.
Dixon had accompanied her mistress to foreign parts; and it was Martha, housemaid, who told Mrs. Brookes that a lady, who had been shown into her own room, wanted to see her.
"Which, I dare say, she's come after Susan's character," remarked Martha, parenthetically, "for she ain't this side Hamherst, I know."
Mrs. Brookes rose from the chair that she had placed opposite George's picture, took off her spectacles, from which she wiped a suspicious moisture, placed them carefully in her pocket, arranged her cap and shawl, and, without vouchsafing any answer to the speculations of Martha, she took her way slowly to the housekeeper's room. As she crossed the hall she saw a fly standing at the open door; and the driver, a man from Page's, touched his hat to her as she passed.
"I don't know this lady," she thought. "Nobody about here takes a fly to come to Poynings."
Her visitor was seated on the heavy horsehair sofa, which in the winter flanked the fire, but was now drawn close under the window through which George had entered on that memorable night, which came freshly into the memory of the old woman at that moment. As she looked sharply at the figure which rose to greet her, Mrs. Brookes felt in a moment that she was in the presence of a woman with some purpose.
The fixedness of Harriet Routh's face, the effort of a smile--for loneliness told upon her nerves now with rapidity and power--a something forced and painful in her voice, aroused an instinctive fear in Mrs. Brookes, and put her on her guard. She made a stiff bow and a movement with her body, which, when she was younger, would have been a curtsey, but was now only a duck, and asked her visitor's pleasure.
"I have called upon you, Mrs. Brookes," said Harriet, in a sweet and winning tone, "in consequence of a paragraph which I have seen in a newspaper."
It was an unfortunate beginning, for it set the old nurse instantly on her guard by arousing her suspicions, and making her resolve that the blue-eyed, sweet-spoken lady, who looked as if she had a purpose, should get nothing out of her.
"Indeed," she replied, very stiffly. "Please to sit down, ma'am."
Harriet resumed her seat, and began to speak rather quickly. Mrs. Brookes looked at her steadily, immovably, having put on her spectacles for the purpose, but gave her neither encouragement nor assistance by so much as a sound or a nod.
"I am Mrs. Routh," she said, "and a friend of Mr. George Dallas, Mrs. Carruthers's son. It is on his account and for his sake I have come here."
Mrs. Brookes's black-mittened hands pressed each other more closely as they lay clasped together in her lap, but she made no sign.
"I am aware of the unfortunate circumstances which keep Mr. Dallas and his mother apart," continued Harriet, who maintained a watch upon the old woman as steady as her own, but more covert; "and I am afraid he will be much distressed and alarmed if this reaches him without any preparation."
She held out a newspaper as she spoke--a newspaper she had procured at the inn at Amherst, and pointed to the paragraph which recorded the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings and suite for the Continent; and, in addition, the regret with which "we" had learned that the departure in question had been occasioned by the dangerous illness of Mrs. Carruthers. Mrs. Brookes was immensely relieved, but not altogether reassured. She had a vague idea that the business of detection was sometimes intrusted to women, and she still had her doubts of the blue-eyed, sweet-spoken lady whose face indicated a purpose, without betraying it.
"Mr. Dallas knows of his mother's illness," said Mrs. Brookes. "He will not hear of it first from any newspaper."
"Indeed," said Harriet. "I am glad to know that. I am much relieved. Mr. Dallas is so intimate with Mr. Routh, my husband, and we are so much attached to him, that anything which is of importance to him concerns us. I am on my way to Dover, and I thought I would turn out of it a little to inquire into this matter."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Mrs. Brookes, still unsoftened. "May I ask if you have left your house in London?"
"We have for the present," replied Harriet; "indeed, I don't think we shall return there."
Mrs. Brookes looked confused and distressed.
"Excuse me," she said, after an awkward pause, "if I appear at all impertinent. I am George Dallas's old nurse, and more his mother's friend than her servant, and I can't be particular about other people when they are concerned. George Dallas is not as welcome here as he ought to be in his mother's house; you say you know that. If you really are Mrs. Routh, you ought to know more about him than that--more, in fact, than I do."
"Certainly," said Harriet, with unchanged sweetness of tone, and just the least gleam of colour in her cheek, showing that she was approaching her object. "I do know a great deal more about George Dallas than you do, if, as I conclude from your words, nothing has been heard of him since his last visit to his mother."
She paused very slightly, but Mrs. Brookes did not utter a word.
"You are quite right to be cautious, Mrs. Brookes; in such a delicate family matter as this, caution is most essential. Poor George has been so foolish, that he has laid himself open to being harmed either by enemies or injudicious friends; but I assure you, Mrs. Brookes, I am neither. I really am Mrs. Routh, and I am quite in George's confidence, and am here solely with the purpose of saving him any trouble or anxiety I can."
"Where is he?" asked the old woman, suddenly, as if the question were forced upon her.
"He is at Amsterdam, in Holland," replied Harriet, in a frank tone, and changing her seat for one beside Mrs. Brookes, as she spoke; "here are several letters from him. See," and she drew half a dozen sheets of foreign paper, closely written over, from her pocket, and put them into the old woman's hands. She beheld the letters with mingled pleasure and avoidance: they could not answer the question which tormented her, but they relieved her misgivings about her visitor. She felt assured now that she really was speaking to Mrs. Routh, and that the object of her visit was one of kindness to George. The letters were in his well-known hand; the thin paper and the postmarks satisfied her that they came from abroad. He was still out of the country, then; so far there was safety, but she must be cautious still concerning him. What if she could make Harriet the unconscious bearer of a further warning to him--a warning carefully contrived so that none but he should know its meaning, and he should understand it thoroughly? She would try. She had thought all this while she turned the letters over in her hands; then she returned them to Harriet, and said:
"Thank you, ma'am. I see these are from Master George, and it's plain he has great confidence in you. He never answered a letter I sent him: it went to your house."
"All communications for him are addressed to Mr. Routh," said Harriet, "and forwarded at once."
"Well, ma'am, he never told me where he had gone to, or wrote a letter but one to his mother; and when that came, she was too ill to read it, or know anything about it."
"Indeed," said Harriet, in a tone of commiseration; "she must have been taken ill just after he saw her, then?"
"She was," returned Mrs. Brookes, emphatically, "and you, ma'am, know, no doubt, why she saw him, and can understand that his conduct caused her illness."
"Not exactly that," said Harriet. "He told me all that had passed, and described his mother as full of forgiveness and hope, and he even said how well and handsome he thought her looking. George amuses us very much by constantly talking of his mother's beauty; he will be all the more distressed when he hears of her illness, now, and I really think, Mrs. Brookes, it cannot be quite fair to impute it to his conduct."
"It was just that, and nothing else," said the old woman; and her voice shook as she spoke, though she strove to control it. "It was, indeed, ma'am, and you must tell him the truth, without softening it, or making it any better. Tell him that she nearly died of the knowledge of his conduct, and that her mind is weakened, and her memory gone."
"Her memory gone!" exclaimed Harriet. "You don't mean to say it is so bad as that?"
"I do, indeed," said Mrs. Brookes. "And will you tell him exactly what I tell you? Tell him that his mother has forgotten all that led to her illness, all the fear and suspense she underwent. Of course she was frightened at what she had to do, and in suspense until it was done; but I am sure she has not forgotten him, and if he were to see her, or even be mentioned to her suddenly, it might have the worst effect. Be sure to tell him this, and that the only thing he can do to atone for the past in any way is to keep out of his mother's sight. He knows some of this already, for I wrote to him, and he knows from Mr. Carruthers that his mother is gone away."
"From Mr. Carruthers?" said Harriet, in a tone of admirably simulated surprise; "doesheever communicate with George?"
"My master is a very just man," replied Mrs. Brookes, in a stately tone, "and he would not allow his wife's son to be kept in ignorance of his mother's danger. I am sure he will send for him, wherever he may be, if there is no chance of her recovery. I don't say he would send for him sooner."
"Of course Mr. Carruthers has no idea of the cause of Mrs. Carruthers's illness?"
"No, no; it was her fear of his finding out that George had been here, and what for, that brought it on; but, of course, he did not suspect anything."
"It is very strange," said Harriet, musingly; "she seems to have borne all this business perfectly well at the time, and given way completely afterwards. It must have surprisedyouvery much, Mrs. Brookes, though, no doubt, you understand your mistress's constitution."
"Yes," replied the old woman, dryly, and ignoring the beginning of the sentence, "I understand my mistress's constitution."
"I will give your message to Mr. Dallas," said Harriet, rising, "and I had better leave you our temporary address, unless, indeed, you would prefer writing to Mr. Dallas direct."
"No," said Mrs. Brookes, "I have nothing to say. When news of his mother comes from abroad, I will send it to you."
The old woman was constrained and miserable in her visitor's presence, but the hospitality of Poynings must be vindicated; and she felt, besides, that Mrs. Carruthers would, in other days, have been glad of an opportunity of being kind to any one who had been kind to George. So she pressed Harriet to take some refreshment and to prolong her visit. But Harriet would not touch bread or wine in the house, and told Mrs. Brookes she must return to Amherst immediately, to catch the train for Dover. "I dined at the inn in the town," she said, in explanation of her refusal, "as I had to wait awhile before I could get a fly."
"I hope they made you comfortable, ma'am," said Mrs. Brookes, who had resumed, when their interview assumed a commonplace complexion, her head-servant-like manner. "Page's people are obliging, and it is a respectable house."
"Very much so indeed," returned Harriet, carelessly. "The town seems a clean dull sort of place. I had a funeral to look at while I waited for my dinner, and the waiter entertained me with the biography of the deceased."
"I had not heard of a death at Amherst," said Mrs. Brookes, primly. She did not like the flippant tone in which her visitor spoke. "The servants have not been in the town this week."
"An estimable person--one Evans, a tailor, I believe; so the waiter said," Harriet returned, still more carelessly, as she took up her parasol and railway-guide, glanced covertly at the old woman's face, and moved to the door.
Mrs. Brookes stood quite still for several seconds; then she followed Harriet, joined her at the red-baize door which opened into the hall, accompanied her to the great door, where a footman waited, took a respectful leave of her, and then shut herself up in her room, and remained invisible to the household for the remainder of the day.
As Harriet Routh drove back to Amherst, she leaned her head wearily against the uncongenial woodwork of the fly, and summed up the results of her journey.
"Whatever the mother knows, the old woman knows. The old woman is as staunch as steel, and she will conceal her suspicions all the more tenaciously, the stronger they are; and I have strengthened them. What a clever old woman she is, and how brave! If my purpose had been what she suspected, I should have had some real difficulty in getting the information I required. It is clear that nothing is to be feared now, in this direction. Mrs. Brookes will never speak. Mrs. Carruthers is in the best possible condition for our purposes, and her son has no pretext for returning to Poynings, even if the death of the tailor had not made it quite safe for him to do so."
She did not look out upon the fair scene through which she was passing. To her, all beauty of nature was a dead thing; she had no heart-throbs of exultation in "the pomp that fills the summer-circuit of the hills;" no sense of its serene loveliness reached her busy brain, or tempted her troubled brooding eyes. When she occasionally lifted them, in shifting her position, they might have been blind for any knowledge of the sunshine or the greenery that was in them. "I will write to him," she went on in her thoughts, "just what she told me to say. Poor George! It is hard to have to make him believe that he has broken his mother's heart, and turned his mother's brain. He does not deserve it, fool as he is. He is easily persuaded, fortunately. I don't feel fit for much that is not easy, now.--The letter must be sent on at once, and, if I do my part well, and this woman dies, or remains abroad--and I fancy Mr. Carruthers is not the man to bring an imbecile wife back, if he can help it--there's no reason why George should come to England again for years, that I can see."
The driver of the fly pulled up for a minute, and letting down one of the front windows, inquired whether he was to go to the inn or to the railway station. While Harriet was answering his question by desiring him to drive to the station, and looking out of the window, a young girl on horseback, a large black Newfoundland dog galloping by her horse's side, passed the fly. The driver touched his hat respectfully, and the young lady acknowledged the salute with her whip.
"That's Miss Carruthers, ma'am," said the man to Harriet, giving her the information in a manner which duly indicated the local importance of Miss Carruthers. Harriet looked back at the girl, and noted the golden gleam of her beautiful hair, the easy swaying of her graceful figure, the air of youth and refinement which characterized her.
"That's Miss Carruthers, is it?" she thought. "George has never seen her, I fancy, as he never mentioned her to me."
She had some time to wait for the train, and she went into the waiting-room. But she found it already occupied by some cheery, chatty women and children, returning from a holiday excursion. Their idle talk, their careless laughter, jarred with her mood; the children looked askance at her, and hushed their prattle; the women drew close together on the hard high leather bench which lined the room, a solemn mockery of a divan, and moderated their tones to a prim gentility. Harriet perceived the effect her presence produced, smiled slowly, and went out again upon the platform, which she paced from end to end, until the train came up, listening idly to the raised voices and renewed laughter which reached her through the open door.
When all the other passengers had taken their places, Harriet got into a carriage which had no other occupant, and so travelled up to London alone.
Routh was in the house when she reached the Tavistock, and was surprised at her speedy return. She told him how the intelligence she had heard on her arrival at Amherst had simplified her task of investigation. She made her narrative as brief as possible, she spoke in a cold measured voice which had become habitual to her, and which filled Routh with intense concealed irritation; and she never looked at him until she had concluded.
"I'll post the letter from the old fellow at once then," said Routh; "it's only a couple of days late, and Dallas is too careless to notice that. When you write--you'd better not do it for a day or so, lest he might take it into his head to suspect you of a motive--you can tell him about our move."
Harriet acquiesced, and changed the subject to their new residence, a furnished house in May-fair. She would go there on the morrow, she said, and arrange all their little property. Had everything been removed from South Molton-street?
Everything. Routh had seen to it himself, and had employed the boy who was always about there.
"Ay," said Harriet, dreamily, for she was thinking of the time, gone for ever, when she had been happy in the home she had left without one regret or hope. "What of him?"
"Nothing that I can make out," answered Routh, irritably. "But I hate the sort of half-recollection I seem to have of him. There's something in my mind connected with him, and I can't disentangle it."
Harriet looked up at her husband in some surprise, and turned very pale. She had a painful, an indelible remembrance connected with the first time she had seen Jim Swain. But Routh knew nothing of that; so she said nothing; she made no effort to aid his memory. She would avoid the torture when she could. Besides, she was utterly weary in body and in spirits.
Mr. Carruthers's letter reached George Dallas not exactly duly, indeed, but after a delay which would have astonished and exasperated the writer, had he known it, to the last degree.
Stewart Routh and Harriet were very much superior to George Dallas in many mental attributes, and in particular in cunning; but they were incapable of understanding the young man on certain points. One of these points was his love for his mother, with its concomitants of remorse, repentance, and resolution. Not comprehending this mixed feeling, they made a serious miscalculation. The day or two which Harriet allowed to intervene before she wrote the letter which was to prolong George's absence, exactly sufficed to bring him to England.
The shock communicated to George Dallas by his stepfather's letter was violent and terrible in proportion to the resolutions which had been growing up in his mind, and gaining strength and fixedness with each day's absence from the old accustomed scenes of dissipation and sources of temptation. Like all persons of similar temperament, he was easily overcome by agitation, and his eager nature led him to anticipate evil as readily as it caused him to enjoy good thoroughly. He was a strong man physically, but a sickening, weak shudder, such as might have shaken a woman, shook him as he read the few formal lines which conveyed to him so much more than their writer had known or intended. Was it all to be in vain? Was the golden time, the precious opportunity, gone by for ever? Was she to die, or die to him at least, and never to know that his repentance had been real, that the lesson had been effectual, that the reform had been inaugurated?
The terms in which Mr. Carruthers had written to his stepson were as vague as they were formal, and the uncertainty to which the letter condemned him was as agonizing as the misery which it produced. Where was she? He did not know; he had no means of knowing. How great were her sufferings? How imminent was her danger? These points were beyond the reach of his investigation. He knew that he was to blame for his mother's illness; he saw all things now in a new and clear light, and though his was no miraculous reformation, no sudden transformation from sinner to saint, but rather an evidence of mental growth and refinement under the influence of a new order of feelings, working on a singularly pliable temperament, George Dallas was so different to what he had been, that he shrank not only with disgust, but with wonder, from the contemplation of the perverse folly which had led to such results. He had always been dissipated, worthless, and ungrateful, he thought; why had he never realized the guilt of being so before? Why, indeed! Having been blind, now he saw; having been foolish, he had become wise. The ordinary experience, after all, but which every man and woman believes in his or her case exceptional, had come to this young man, but had come laden with exceedingly bitter grief. With swift, sudden fear, too, and stinging self-distrust; for if his mother were indeed lost to him, the great motive, a real one, however tardily acknowledged, would be lost too, and then, how should he, how could he, answer for himself? Just then, in the first keenness of his suffering, in the first thrill of fear which the sense of impending punishment sent through him, he did not think of his love, he drew no strength, no counsel, no consolation from it; the only image before his mind was that of his mother, long bowed down, and now broken, under the accumulated load of grief and disappointment which he had laid upon her. Mr. Carruthers had acted characteristically, George thought, in writing to him, as he had done, merely telling him of his mother's illness and removal, but giving him no address, affording him no opportunity of writing to her. So much he had done for his own conscience' and credit's sake, not actuated by any sympathy for him. The old anger towards his stepfather, the old temptation to lay the blame of all his own ill-conduct on Mr. Carruthers, to regard his banishment from Poynings as cause rather than effect, arose fiercely in George's heart, as he read the curt sentences of the letter over and over again; but they were met and conquered by a sudden softened remembrance of his mother's appeal to him for a just judgment of her husband, whom she loved, and the better nature of the young man, newly and strongly aroused, got the victory.
"No, no," he said impetuously and aloud, "he's not to blame; the fault is mine, and if I am never to have the chance of telling her the truth, I'll tell it to myself at all events."
George's resolution to go to England was soon taken. He must know more than Mr. Carruthers had told him, and only at Poynings could he learn it. It never occurred to him that Mrs. Brookes might have accompanied his mother abroad. His impulsive nature rarely permitted him to foresee any obstacle in the way of a design or a desire, and he acted in this instance with his usual headlong precipitation.
When George Dallas reached London, he found he would have just sufficient time to go to South Molten-street and see Routh or Harriet for a few minutes, before he could catch a train for Amherst. Arrived at Routh's former residence, he was surprised to observe, as he got out of a hansom, that a card, displayed in the parlour window, announced "A drawing-room floor to let." The hall-door was opened at his summons with unusual alacrity, and in reply to his inquiry, the servant, a newly-engaged one who had never seen him before, informed him that Mr. and Mrs. Routh had "left," and were to be found at Queen-street, Mayfair. George stood, for a moment, irresolute in surprise, and the servant repeated the address, fancying he had not heard her. His face was towards the open door, and he turned his head sharply round, as a boy's voice said, in a peculiar pert tone which had an odd indefinite familiarity for his ear:
"Any letters for Mr. Routh to-day, Mary Jane? 'cos, if so, hand 'em over."
The speaker was Mr. James Swain, who had come up behind George Dallas unperceived, and who, when he saw the young man's face, gave an involuntary start, and dropped his saucy manner on the instant.
"Yes, there's three letters and a circ'lar for Mr. Routh," replied Mary Jane, in a sulky tone; "and missis says as she hopes Mr. Routh will put his address in the paper or something, for people is always a comin' and makin' us think as they're lodgers." Then with a glance at George, which seemed to imply that he might not have been considered ineligible in that capacity, Mary Jane went to get the letters, and Dallas addressed Jim Swain. "Are you going back to Mr. Routh's direct?" he asked. "Yes, sir," answered Jim. "I come every day, since they've been gone, to see after letters and messages."
"Then you can take a message from me," said George, pointing the observation with a sixpence. "Tell Mr. Routh Mr. Dallas has come to London, having heard bad news, and has gone to his mother's house. You won't forget?"
"No, sir, I won't forget," said Jim, in a tone of satisfactory assurance.
"Say I expect to get back to-morrow, and will come to see him at once. Mr. Dallas--that's my name, remember."
George then jumped into the hansom again, and was driven away to the railway station.
"Mr. Dallas," said Jim Swain to himself as he walked slowly down the street, carrying the letters confided to him by Mary Jane--"that's your name, is it? I wonder wot you've bin up to, and where you've bin up to it? I shall tellherthe gent's message--nothim."
The night had fallen upon the woods and fields of Poynings, and no light gleamed from the stately old house, save one ray, which shone through the open window of the housekeeper's room. By the casement sat George Dallas, his arm upon the window-sill, his head leaning against his hand, the cool fresh air of the summer night coming gratefully to his flushed and heated face. Opposite, and close to him, sat Mrs. Brookes, still wearing, though their conference had lasted many hours, the look of agitation beyond the strength to bear it which is so painful to see on the faces of the aged. All had been explained between the old woman and the prodigal son of her beloved mistress, and the worst of her fears had been dispelled. George had not the guilt of murder on his soul. The chain of circumstances was indeed as strong as ever, but the old woman did not retain the smallest fear. His word had reassured her--indeed, the first glance at his face, in the midst of the terror and surprise of their meeting, had at once and for ever put her apprehensions to flight. Innocence ofthat, at least, was in his face, in his hurried agitated greeting, in the bewilderment with which he heard her allusion to her letter, in his total unconsciousness of the various emotions which tore her heart among them. She saw, she foresaw, no explanation of the circumstances which had led to the fatal mistake she had made; she saw only that her boy was innocent, and the vastness, the intensity, of the relief sufficed, in the first moments of their meeting, to deprive it of the horror and bitterness with which, had she had any anticipation of such an event, she would have regarded it. But the first relief and the full explanation--all that George had to tell her, all she had to tell him--could not change the facts as regarded Mrs. Carruthers, could not alter the irrevocable, the miserable past.
When the first confusion, excitement, and incoherent mutual questioning had given way to a more settled and satisfactory conversation, Mrs. Brookes told George all that had occurred--the visit of the official gentleman from London, the servants' version of his business, the interview between Mr. Carruthers and Evans, and the suspicion and fear, only too reasonable, to which all the unfortunate circumstances had given rise.
It was with the utmost difficulty that George arrived at a clear understanding of the old woman's narrative, and came to realize how overwhelming was the presumption against him. By degrees he began to recall the circumstances which had immediately preceded and followed his clandestine visit to Poynings. He recalled the remarks he had heard at theMercuryoffice; he remembered that there had been some talk of a murder, and that he had paid no attention to it, but had gone away as soon as possible, and never given the matter another thought. To find himself implicated in a crime of so terrible a nature, to find that circumstances had brought him in contact with such a deed, filled him with horror and stupefaction; to know that his mother had been forced to conceive such a suspicion was, even without the horrible addition of the effect produced on her, suffering far greater than any he had ever known. He felt giddy, sick, and bewildered, and could but look piteously at his faithful old friend, with a white face and wild haggard eyes.
"She believed it?" he said again and again.
"No, George, no; she only feared it, and she could not bear the fear; no wonder, for I could hardly bear it, and I am stronger than she is, and not your mother, after all. But just think, George. You bought the coat from Evans, and the man who wore that coat was seen in the company of the murdered man the last time he was seen alive. I knew there must be some dreadful mistake. I knew you never lifted your hand against any man's life, and that some one else must have got possession of the coat; but your mother said no, that you had worn it when she saw you at Amherst, and nothing could remove the impression. George, what did you do with the coat you bought at Evans's?"
"I had it down here, sure enough," answered George, "and I did wear it when she last saw me. I left it at Mr. Routh's afterwards, by mistake, and took one of his abroad with me; but this is a horrid mystery altogether. Who is the man who has been murdered? What is the motive?"
"I cannot tell you that, George," said Mrs. Brookes; "but I will give you the papers, and then you will know all, and you will understand how much she suffered."
The old woman left George alone for a few minutes, while she went to her bedroom to get the newspapers which she locked securely away at the bottom of a trunk. During her absence the young man strode about the room distractedly, trying in vain to collect his thoughts and set them down steadily to the solution of the terrible mystery which surrounded him.
"Here they are, George," said Ellen, as she entered the room and handed him a roll of newspapers. "Sit down here, by the window, and try to read them quietly. I must leave you now, and tell the servants who you are, and that you are going to stay here to-night--there must be no concealment now; thank God, it's not wanted any longer. Perhaps out of all this evil good may come, my boy."
He had sat down by the window, and was eagerly opening the roll of paper, and seeking the account of the murder. Mrs. Brookes paused by his side for a moment, laid her withered hand gently on his hair, and then left him. A moment after he started up from his chair, and cried out:
"Good God! the man was Deane!"
The shock of this discovery was extreme. Wholly unable as he had been to account for the coincidence which Mrs. Brookes's imperfect story (for, like most persons of her class, she was an unskilful narrator of facts) had unfolded to him, he had never supposed his connection with it real, and now he saw it all, and in a moment perceived the gravity of his situation. The nameless man whom he had seen so often, and yet known so slightly; concerning whom he had speculated often and carelessly; whom no one had recognized; whose singular dress the waiter at the tavern had described in his evidence; the date; all was conclusive. The man murdered was Deane. But who was the murderer? How was it that no one had recognized the body? With all his mysterious ways, in spite of the callous selfishness which had rendered him indifferent to companionship save in the mere pursuit of his pleasures, it seemed wonderful that no one should have been able to identify him.
"There's Routh, now," said George to himself, "hemust have heard of the finding of the body, he must have read the description of the dress; he may have seen the man's fur coat before, though I never did. To be sure, he did not dine with us that day, but he knew where Deane dined and with whom. What can Routh have been about?"
These and a thousand questions of a similar nature George Dallas put to himself, without finding any answer to them, without stilling the tumult in his mind. He tried to arrange the circumstances in their order of occurrence, and to think them out, but in vain; he could not do so yet: all was confusion and vague horror. He had not liked this man. Theirs had been the mere casual association of convenience and amusement--an association, perhaps, the foremost of all those which he was firmly determined never to renew; and yet he could not regard its dreadful ending with indifference. The life which had perverted George had not hardened him, and he could not readily throw off the impression created by the discovery that the man with whom he had joined in the pursuit of reckless and degrading pleasure had died a violent death within so short a time of their last meeting. When Mrs. Brookes came into the room again, the expression of the young man's face terrified her afresh.
"Ellen," he said, "this is a dreadful business, apart from my unhappy complication with it, and what it has cost my dear mother. I knew this unhappy man; he was a Mr. Deane. I dined with him at that tavern in the Strand. I did wear that coat. All the circumstances are correct, though all the inferences are false. I begin to understand it all now; but who can have murdered him, and for what motive, I cannot conceive. The most natural thing in the world was that they would suspect me, as the man who wore the coat. Mr. Evans will recognize me, no doubt, as he told Mr. Carruthers."
"No, no, George; the poor old man is dead," interrupted Mrs. Brookes.
"Dead?" said George. "Well, he seemed an honest fellow, and I am sorry for it; but it makes no difference in my position. When I communicate with the police, I will admit all he could prove."
"Must you do that, George?" asked Mrs. Brookes, wistfully. She had a natural dread of the law in the abstract.
"Of course I must, nurse; I can tell them who the unfortunate man was, and account for him up to a very late hour on the night of the seventeenth of April."
"Take care, George," said the old woman. "If you can't account for yourself afterwards, you can't clear yourself."
The observation was shrewd and sensible. George felt it so, and said, "Never mind that. I am innocent, and when the time comes I shall have no difficulty in proving myself innocent."
"You know best, George," said the old woman, with a resigned sigh; "but tell me, who was this poor man?"
"Sit down and I will tell you all about it."
Then George seated his old friend close beside him, and told her the whole story of his intercourse with Stewart Routh, of his knowledge of Deane, his last meeting with him, their dinner together, the adjournment to the billiard-rooms, the money won by Dallas from Deane, and his leaving town early the next morning for Amherst.
"That was the day they found the body, was it not?" asked Mrs. Brookes.
"Let me see," said George; and he again referred to the newspapers.
"Yes, it was on Wednesday the eighteenth--in the evening. I was down at Amherst then, nurse; that was the day I saw my mother last."
He sighed, but a smile stole over his face also. A cherished memory of that day abode in his heart.
Then Mrs. Brookes questioned George concerning Routh and his wife, and told him of Harriet's visit, and all the emotion and fear which it had caused her. George was touched and grateful.
"That was like her," he said; "she is the truest of friends, a treasure among women. I wonder she did not write to me, though, when she sent on Mr. Carruthers's letter."
The observation passed unnoticed by Mrs. Brookes. Had she asked when the letter had reached George, a discovery, dangerous to the interests of Harriet and Routh, might have been made; but she had very dim notions of continental places and distances, and the time consumed in postal transmission.
"They knew this poor man; did they not know that he was the murdered person?"
"No," said George, "they had no notion of it. How shocked they will be when I tell them of it! Routh will be the best person in the world to tell me how to go about communicating with the police authorities. But now, Ellen, tell me about my mother."
Time went over, and the night fell, and the old woman and the young man still talked together, and she tried to comfort him, and make him believe that all would be well. But George was slow to take such comfort--full of remorse and self-condemnation, of gloom and foreboding. The mercurial temperament of the young man made him a bad subject for such suspense and self-reproach, and though he had no shadow of fear of any trouble to come to him from the evidence on the inquest, there was a dull brooding sense of apprehension over him, against which he had no power, no heart, to strive. So he listened to the story of his mother's illness and departure, the physicians' opinions, and Mr. Carruthers's plans for her benefit and comfort, and darker and darker fell the shadow upon his heart.
"We have had no news since they left Paris," said Mrs. Brookes, in conclusion, "but I expect to see Miss Carruthers to-morrow. She will have a letter from her uncle."
"Miss Carruthers!" said George, lifting up his head with renewed animation. "Has she not gone abroad with them?"
"No," said Mrs. Brookes; "she is staying at the Sycamores, Sir Thomas Boldero's place. Sir Thomas is her uncle on the mother's side. She rides over very often to see me, and I expect her tomorrow."
"At what hour does she generally come?" asked George,
"In the afternoon; after lunch."
"Well, I shall be in London by that time, nurse; so there is no danger of my incurring my stepfather's wrath this time by an encounter with the heiress."
There was a momentary touch of bitterness in George's voice, but his slow sad smile contradicted it.
"Ah, George!" said the old woman. "Take heart. All will be well, and the time will come when you will be welcome here."
"Perhaps so, nurse. In the mean time, you will let me know what news Miss Carruthers brings, and especially where my mother is, and their next move."
That night George Dallas slept for the first time under the roof of the old house at Poynings; but an early hour in the morning found him on his way back to town.
When Clare Carruthers, mounted on Sir Lancelot and escorted by Cæsar, arrived at Poynings on the following afternoon, she was surprised to find Mrs. Brookes looking well and cheerful. The girl had brought good news. Mrs. Carruthers had borne the journey well, and it was proposed that she should leave Paris and proceed to the south of France after the interval of a week. Clare roamed over the house and gardens as usual. She was beautiful as ever, but with a new and graver beauty than of old. There was no observant eye to mark the change, no kindred spirit to note and share the girl's trouble. She was quite alone. When she returned from her ramble, and while her horse was being brought round, she went to Mrs. Brookes's room to bid her good-bye. The old woman took two letters out of her desk, and said: "Do you remember these letters, Miss Carruthers? You brought them to me when Mrs. Carruthers was first taken ill."
"Yes, I remember. What of them?" Clare answered, carelessly.
"Will you have the kindness to enclose them in a large envelope, and direct them to Mr. George Dallas for me?"
"Certainly," said Clare; but she looked a little surprised, for Mrs. Brookes wrote remarkably well for a person of her class.
"I wrote to him lately," said Mrs. Brookes, "and the letter did not reach him; so I suppose I directed it indistinctly."
Clare sat down at the table, and in a large bold hand wrote the address which Harriet had given upon the envelope.
"You are sending Mr. Dallas these letters that he may read them, as his mother is unable?" asked Clare, to whom the forbidden subject of Mrs. Carruthers's son always offered more or less temptation.
"Yes, ma'am," replied the old woman; "I am pretty sure they come from Mr. Felton, and ought to be seen to."
"And who is Mr. Felton?" said Clare, rising and laying down her pen. "I'll post them as I pass through the village," she added.
"Mr. Felton is Mrs. Carruthers's brother," said Mrs. Brookes. "He has been in America many years, but she said something lately about his coming home."
Clare said no more, but took her leave, and went away. She posted the packet for George Dallas at the village, and, as she rode on, her fair face bore the impress of a painful recollection. She was thinking of the morning on which she had ventured to send the warning to him who was so unworthy of the fancies she had cherished--him of whom she could not think without a shudder, of whom she hardly dared to think at all. When the post was delivered the following morning at the Sycamores, a large packet was placed before Miss Carruthers. It was directed to her, and contained two numbers of thePiccadilly, with two instalments of George's serial story, and on the fly leaf of one were the words, "From Paul Ward."