THE PHILISTINES.
The cold weather, which in the country produced rugged roads and
ice-bound ponds; which frosted the leafless branches of the trees with
a silver tint, and gave a thousand different fantastic but ever lovely
hues and shapes to nature; had no such pleasant refreshing effect in
London, where the frost, ere three hours old, was beaten into mud
under foot, ran drizzling in dirty streams from house-tops, and
subsided into rain and fog before the daylight had disappeared. The
day succeeding that on which George Dallas had entered the town of
Amherst was a thorough specimen of what London can do when put to its
worst. It was bad in the large thoroughfares where the passing crowds
jostled each other ill-temperedly, digging at each other's umbrellas,
and viciously contesting every inch of foot pavement, where the
omnibus-wheels revolved amid mud-ruts, and every passing cab-horse
produced a fountain of slush and spray. But it was even worse in the
bystreets, where an attempt at sweeping had been made, where the mud
lay in a thick slimy, shiny tide between the narrow ridges of
footpath, where the tall houses, so close together that they
completely filtered the air and light and retained nothing but the
darkness and the dirt, were splashed with mud to their first-floor
windows, and whose inhabitants or visitors desirous of crossing the
road had to proceed to the junction with the main street, and, after
tacking across in comparative cleanliness, commence their descent on
the opposite side.
In the front room of the first floor of a house in such a street,
South Molton-street, connecting Oxford-street the plebeian with
Brook-street the superb, just as the feeble glimmer of daylight which
had vouchsafed itself during the day was beginning to wax even
feebler, previous to its sudden departure, a man sat astride a chair,
sunk in thought. He had apparently just entered, for he still wore his
hat and overcoat, though the former was pushed to the back of his
head, and the latter thrown negligently open. He was a tall handsome
man, with keen black eyes glancing sharply, with thick black brows, a
long straight nose, thin tight lips unshrouded by moustache or beard,
and a small round chin. He had full flowing black whiskers, and
the blue line round his mouth showed that the beard was naturally
strong; had he suffered it to grow he might have passed for an
Italian. As it was, there was no mistaking him for anything but an
Englishman--darker, harder-looking than most of his race, but an
Englishman. His face, especially round the eyes, was flushed and
marked and lined, telling of reckless dissipation. There was a
something not exactly fast, but yet slangy, in the cut of his clothes
and in the manner in which he wore them; his attitude as he sat at the
window with his hands clasped in front of him over the back rail of
his chair, his knees straight out and his feet drawn back, as a man
sits a horse at a hunt, was in its best aspect suggestive of the
mess-room: in its worst, of the billiard-room. And yet there was an
indescribable something in the general aspect of the man, in the very
ease of his position, in the shape of the hands clasped in front of
him, in the manner, slight as it was, in which now and again he would
turn on his chair and peer back into the darkness behind him, by which
you would have known that he had had a refined education, and had been
conversant with the manners of society.
Nor would you have been wrong. In Burke's Landed Gentry, the Rouths of
Carr Abbey take up their full quota of pages, and when the county
election for Herefordshire comes off, the liberal agent is forced to
bring to bear all the science he can boast of, to counteract
the influence which the never-failing adhesion of the old family
throws into the Tory scale. Never having risen, never for an
instant having dreamed of demeaning themselves by rising, above
the squirearchy, owners of the largest and best herds in all that
splendid cattle-breeding county, high-sheriffs and chairmen of
quarter-sessions as though by prescriptive right, perpetual presidents
of agricultural societies, and in reality taking precedence
immediately after the lord-lieutenant, the Rouths of Carr Abbey, from
time immemorial, have sent their sons to Oxford and their daughters to
court, and have never, save in one instance, had to blush for their
children.
Save in one instance. The last entry in the old family Bible of Carr
Abbey is erased by a thick black line. The old squire speaks
habitually of "My only son, William;" and should a stranger, dining at
the Abbey, casually refer to the picture, by Lawrence, of two little
boys, one riding a pony, the younger decking a dog's neck with ribbon,
he is, if the squire had not heard his question, motioned in dumb show
to silence, or is replied to by the squire himself that "that boy
is--lost, sir."
That boy, Stewart Routh, the man looking out of the window in South
Molton-street, was captain of the boat at Eton, and first favourite,
for a time, both with the dons and undergraduates at Oxford. Rumours
of high play at cards developing into fact of perpetually sported
"oak," non-attendance at chapel, and frequent shirking of classes,
lessened the esteem in which Mr. Routh was held by the authorities;
and a written confession handed to the dean, after being obtained by
parental pressure, from Mr. Albert Grüntz, of Christ Church, son of
and heir to Mr. Jacob Grüntz, sugar-baker, of St Mary Axe, in the city
of London, and Balmoral-gardens, Hyde-park, a confession to the effect
that he, Mr. A. Grüntz, had lost the sum of two thousand pounds to Mr.
S. Routh, at a game played with dice, and known as French hazard,
procured the dismissal of Mr. S. Routh from the seat of learning. At
Carr Abbey, whither he retired, his stay was shortened by the arrival
of another document from Oxford, this time signed by Lord Hawkhurst,
gentleman commoner of Christ Church, and Arthur Wardroper, of Balliol,
setting forth that Mr. S. Routh, while playing hazard in Mr. Grüntz's
rooms, had been caught there _in flagrante delicto_ in the act of
cheating by "securing," _i.e_. retaining in his fingers, one of the
dice which he should have shaken from the box. It was the receipt of
this letter that caused the squire to make the erasure in the family
Bible, and to look upon his youngest son as dead.
Driven from the paternal roof, Mr. Stewart Routh descended upon the
pleasant town of Boulogne, whence, after a short stay not unmarked by
many victories over the old and young gentlemen who frequent the
card-tables at the Etablissement des Bains, from whom he carried off
desirable trophies, he proceeded to the baths and gambling-houses of
Ems, Homburg, and Baden-Baden. It was at the last-mentioned place, and
when in the very noon and full tide of success, that he was struck
down by a fever, so virulent that the affrighted servants of the hotel
refused to wait upon him. No nurse could be prevailed upon to
undertake to attend him; and he would have been left to die for
want of proper care, had not a young Englishwoman, named Harriet
Creswick, travelling in the capacity of nursery-governess to Lord de
Mauleverer's family (then passing through Baden on their way to winter
in Rome), come to the rescue. Declaring that her countryman should not
perish like a dog, she there and then devoted herself to attendance on
the sick man. It need scarcely be told that Lady de Mauleverer,
protesting against "such extraordinary conduct," intimated to Miss
Creswick that her connection with her noble charges must cease at once
and for ever. But it is noteworthy that in such a man as Stewart Routh
had hitherto proved himself, a spirit of gratitude should have been so
strongly aroused, that when his sense and speech returned to him, in
weak and faltering accents he implored the woman who had so tenderly
nursed him through his illness, to become his wife. It is quite
needless to say that his friends, on hearing of it, averred, some that
he thought he was going to die, and that it did not matter to him what
he did, while it might have pleased the young lady; others, that he
was a particularly knowing card, whose brains had never deserted him,
even when he was at his worst, and that he had discovered in Harriet
Creswick a woman exactly fitted, by physical and mental qualification,
efficiently to help him as his partner in playing the great game of
life. Be it as it may--and people will talk, especially in such
circles--the fact remains that on his sick couch at the Hollandischer
Hof, Baden-Baden, Stewart Routh proposed to Harriet Creswick and was
accepted; that so soon as he could safely be left she departed for
England; and that within a month they were married in London.
Of that one event at least in all his eventful life, Stewart Routh had
never repented. Through all his vicissitudes of fortune his wife had
been by his side, and as, in the long run, chance had been against
him, taking the heaviest portion of his burden on herself. Harriet
Routh's was an untiring, undying, unquestioning love or worship of her
husband. The revelation of his--to say the least of it--loose mode of
life, the shifts and expedients to which he resorted for getting
money, the questionable company in which he habitually lived, would
have told with fatal effect on a devotion less thorough, a passion
more transient. Harriet herself, who had been brought up staidly at an
Institution, which she had only quitted to join the family with whom
she was travelling when she arrived at Baden--Harriet herself at first
shrunk back stunned and stupefied by the revelation of an unknown life
which burst upon her a few days after her marriage. But her love bore
her through it. As the dyer's hand assimilates to that it works in, so
gradually did Harriet Routh endue herself with her husband's tone,
temper, and train of thought, until, having become almost his second
self, she was his most trusted ally, his safest counsellor in all the
strange schemes by which he made out life. In the early days after
their marriage she had talked to him once, only once, and then but for
a few minutes, of reformation, of something better and more reputable,
of doing with less money, to be obtained by the exercise of his
talents in some legitimate manner. And her husband, with the nearest
approach to harshness that before or since he had ever assumed, told
her that his time for that kind of thing was passed and gone for ever,
that she must forget all the childish romance that they had taught her
at the Institution, that she must sink or swim with him, and be
prepared to cast in her lot with that kind of existence which had
become his second nature, and out of which he could never hope to
move. Even if he could move from it, he added, he did not think that
he would wish to do so, and there must be an end to the matter.
There was an end to the matter. From that time forth, Harriet Routh
buried her past, buried her former self, and devoted herself, soul and
body, to her husband. Her influence over him strengthened with each
year that they lived together, and was traceable in many ways. The
fact once faced, that their precarious livelihood was to be earned by
the exercise of sharpness superior to that enjoyed by those with whom
they were brought into contact, Harriet laid herself out at once for
the fulfilment of her new duties, and in a very short time compelled
her husband's surprised laudation of the ease and coolness with which
she discharged them. There were no other women in that strange
society; but if there had been, Harriet would have queened it over
them, not merely by her beauty, but by her bright spirit, her quick
appreciation, her thorough readiness to enter exactly into the fancy
of the moment. The men who lost their money to Routh and his companion
treated her not merely with a punctilio which forbade the smallest
verbal excess, but bore their losses with comparative good humour so
long as Mrs. Routh was present. The men who looked up to Routh as the
arch-concocter of and prime mover in all their dark deeds, had a blind
faith in her, and their first question, on the suggestion of any
scheme, would be "what Mrs. Routh thought of it." Ah, the change, the
change! The favourite pupil of the Institution, who used to take such
close notes of the sermon on Sunday mornings, and illustrate the
chaplain's meaning with such apposite texts from other portions of
Scripture, as quite to astonish the chaplain himself, which perhaps
was not to be wondered at, as the chaplain (a bibulous old gentleman,
who had been appointed on the strength of his social qualities by the
committee, who valued him as "a parson, you know, without any nonsense
about him") was in the habit of purchasing his discourses ready made,
and only just ran them through, on Saturday nights. The show pupil of
the Institution, who did all kinds of arithmetical problems "in her
head," by which the worthy instructors meant without the aid of paper
and pencil--the staid and decorous pupil of the Institution, who, when
after her last examination she was quitting the table loaded with
prizes--books--was called back by the bishop of the diocese, who with
feeble hands pinned a silver medal on to her dress, and said, in a
trembling voice, "I had nearly forgotten the best of all. This is in
testimony of your excellent conduct, my dear." What was become of this
model miss? She was utilizing her talents in a different way. That was
all. The memory which had enabled her to summarize and annotate the
chaplain's sermons now served as her husband's note-book, and was
stored with all kinds of odd information, "good things" to "come off,"
trials of horses, names and fortunes of heirs who had just succeeded
to their estates, lists of their most pressing debts, names of the men
who were supposed to be doubtful in money matters, and with whom it
was thought inexpedient to bet or play--all these matters dwelt in
Harriet Routh's brain, and her husband had only to turn his head and
ask, "What is it, Harry?" to have the information at once. The
arithmetical quickness stood her in good stead, in the calculation of
odds on all kinds of sporting events, on the clear knowledge of which
the success of most of Routh's business depended; and as for the good
conduct--well, the worthy bishop would have held up his hands in pious
horror at the life led by the favourite pupil of the Institution, and
at her surroundings; but against Mrs. Routh, as Mrs. Routh, as the
devoted, affectionate, self-denying, spotless wife, the veriest ribald
in all that loose crew had never ventured to breathe a doubt.
Devoted and affectionate! See her now as she comes quietly into the
room--a small compact partridge of a woman with deep blue eyes in a
very pale face, with smooth shining light brown hair falling on either
side in two long curls, and gathered into a clump at the back of her
head, with an impertinent nose only just redeemed from being a snub,
with a small mouth, and a very provoking pattable chin. See how she
steals behind her husband, her dark linsey dress draping her closely
and easily, and not making the slightest rustle; her round arm showing
its symmetry in her tight sleeve twining round his neck; her plump
shapely hand resting on his head; her pale cheek laid against his
face. Devoted and affectionate! No simulation here.
"Anything gone wrong, Stewart?" she asked, in a very sweet voice.
"No, dear. Why?" said Routh, who was now sitting at a table strewn
with papers, a pen in his right hand, and his left supporting his
handsome worn face.
"You looked gloomy, I thought; but, if you say so, it's all right,"
returned his wife, cheerfully, leaving his side as she spoke, and
proceeding to sweep up the hearth, put on fresh coals, and make the
whole room look comfortable, with a few rapid indefinable touches.
Then she sat down in a low chair by the fire, perfectly still, and
turned her calm pale face to her husband with a business-like air. He
made some idle scratches with his pen in silence, then threw it down,
and, suddenly pushing away his chair, began to walk up and down the
room with long light strides.
"What do you make of Deane, Harriet?" he said, at length, stopping for
a moment opposite his wife, and looking closely at her.
"How do you mean? In character or in probabilities? As regards
himself, or as regards us?"
"Well, both. I cannot make him out; he is so confoundedly cool, and so
infernally sharp. He might be a shrewd man of business, bent on making
a fortune, and a good way on the road to his object; and yet he's
nothing but a man of pleasure, of what your _good_ people would call a
wretched low kind of pleasure too, and is spending the fortune
instead."
"I don't think so, Stewart," his wife said, quietly and impressively.
"I don't think Mr. Deane is spending any very considerable portion of
his fortune, whatever it may be."
Stewart had resumed his walking up and down, but listened to her
attentively.
"I regard him as a curious combination of the man of business with the
man of pleasure. I don't know that we have ever met exactly the kind
of person before. He is as calculating in his pleasures as other men
are in their business."
"I hate the man," said Routh, with an angry frown and a sullen
gesture.
"That's dangerous, Stewart," said Harriet. "You should not allow
yourself either to hate or to like any one in whom you are
speculating. If you do the one, it will make you incautious; if you do
the other, scrupulous. Both are unwise. I do not hate Mr. Deane."
"Fortunately for him, Harry. I think a man would be a great deal safer
with my hatred than with yours."
"Possibly," she said, simply, and the slightest smile just parted her
crimson lips, and showed a momentary gleam of her white, small, even
teeth. "But I do not hate him. I think about him, though; because it
is necessary that I should, and I fancy I have found out what he
really is."
"Have you, by Jove?" interrupted Routh. "Then you've done a clever
thing, Harriet--clever even for you; for of all the close and
impenetrable men I ever met, Deane's the closest and the hardest. When
I'm with him, I always feel as if he were trying to _do_ me somehow,
and as if he would succeed too, though that's not easy. He's as mean
as a Scotch shopkeeper, as covetous as a Jew, as wide awake as a
Yankee. There's a coolness and a constant air of avowed suspicion
about him that drives me mad."
"And yet you ought to have been done with temper and with
squeamishness long ago," said Harriet, in a tone of quiet conviction.
"How often have you told me, Stewart, that to us, in our way of life,
every man must be a puppet, prized in proportion to the readiness with
which he dances to our pulling? What should _we_ care? I am rendered
anxious and uneasy by what you say."
She kept silence for a few moments, and then asked him, in a changed
tone,
"How does your account with him stand?"
"My account!---ah, there's the rub! He's so uncommonly sharp, that
there's little to be done with him. The fellow's a blackguard--more of
a blackguard than I am, I'll swear, and as much of a swindler, at
least, in his capacity for swindling. Only I dare say he has never had
occasion to reduce it to practice. And yet there's a hardly veiled
insolence in his manner to me, at times, for which I'd like to blow
his brains out. He tells me, as plainly as if he said it in words,
that he pays me a commission on his pleasures, such as are of my
procuring, but that he knows to a penny what he intends to pay, and is
not to be drawn into paying a penny more."
Harriet sat thoughtful, and the faintest flush just flickered on her
cheek. "Who are his associates, when he is not with you?"
"He keeps that as close as he keeps everything else," replied Routh;
"but I have no doubt he makes them come cheap, if indeed he does not
get a profit out of them."
"You are taking my view of him, Stewart," said Harriet; then she
added, "He has some motive for acting with such caution, no doubt; but
a flaw may be found in his armour, when we think fit to look for it.
In the mean time, tell me what has set you thinking of him?"
"Dallas's affair, Harriet. I am sorry the poor fellow lost his money
to _him_. Hang it, I'm such a bad fellow myself, so utterly gone
a'coon" (his wife winced, and her pale face turned paler), "that it
comes ill from me to say so, and I wouldn't, except to you. But I am
devilish sorry Deane got the chance of cleaning Dallas out. I like the
boy; he's a stupid fool, but not half bad, and he didn't deserve such
an ill turn of fortune."
"Well," said Harriet, "take comfort in remembering that you helped
him."
She spoke very coldly, and evidently was a stranger to the feelings
which actuated Routh.
"_You_ don't care about it, that's clear," he remarked.
He was standing still now, leaning against the mantelpiece. She rose
and approached him.
"No, Stewart," she said, in her calm sweet voice, which rose a little
as she went on, "I do not. I care for nothing on earth (and I never
look beyond this earth) but _you_. I have no interest, no solicitude,
for any other creature. I cannot feel any, and it is well. Nothing but
this would do in my case."
She stood and looked at him with her deep blue eyes, with her hands
folded before her, and with a sober seriousness in her face
confirmatory of the words she had spoken. He looked at her until she
turned away, and a keen observer might have seen in his face the very
slightest expression of impatience.
"Shall we go into those accounts now?" said Harriet; "we shall just
have time for it, before you go to Flinders'."
She sat down, as she spoke, before a well-appointed writing table,
and, drawing a japan box towards her, opened it, and took out a number
of papers. Routh took a seat beside her, and they were soon deep in
calculations which would have had little interest or meaning for a
third person, had there been one present. By degrees, Routh's face
darkened, and many times he uttered angry oaths; but though Harriet
watched him narrowly, and felt in every nerve the annoyance under
which he was labouring, she preserved her calm manner, and went
steadily on with her task; condensing the contents of several papers
into brief memoranda, carefully tearing up the originals, and placing
the little heaps methodically beside her for consignment to the fire.
At length Routh again stood up, and lounged against the mantelpiece.
"All these _must_ be paid, then, Harry?" he asked, as he lighted a
cigar, and began to smoke sullenly.
"Yes," she answered, cheerfully. "You know, dear, it has always been
our rule, as it has hitherto constituted our safety, to stand well
with our tradespeople, and pay _them_, at least, punctually. We have
never been so much behindhand; and as you are about to take a bolder
flight than usual, it is doubly necessary that we should be
untrammelled. Fancy Flinders getting snubbed by the landlady, or your
being arrested for your tailor's bills, at the time when the new
Company is coming out!"
"Hang it! the bills all seem to be mine," growled Routh, "Where are
yours? Haven't you got any?"
It would have been difficult to induce an unseen witness to believe
how utterly unscrupulous, remorseless, conscienceless a woman Harriet
Routh had become, if he had seen the smile with which she answered her
husband's half-admiring, half-querulous question.
"You know, dear, I don't need much. I have not to keep up appearances
as you have. You are in the celebrated category of those who cannot
afford to be anything but well-dressed. It's no matter for me, but
it's a matter of business for you."
"Ah! I might have known you'd have some self-denying, sensible reason
ready; but the puzzle to me is, that you always _are_ well dressed. By
Jove, you're the neatest woman I know, and the prettiest!"
The smile upon her face brightened, but she only shook her head, and
went on:
"If Dallas does not get the money, or at least some of it, what do you
propose to do? I don't know."
"Do you think he will get the money, Harry? He told _you_ all about
it. What are the odds?"
"I cannot even guess. All depends on his mother. If she is courageous,
and fond of him, she will get it for him, even supposing her immediate
control as small as she believes it to be. If she is not courageous,
her being fond of him will do very little good, and women are mostly
cowards," said Harriet composedly.
"I never calculated much on the chance," said Routh, "and indeed it
would be foolish to take the money if he got it--in that way, at
least; for though I am sorry Deane profited by the young fellow,
that's because I hate Deane. It's all right, for my purpose, that
Dallas should be indebted as largely as may be to me. He's useful in
more ways than one; his connection with the press serves our turn,
Harry, doesn't it? Especially when you work it so well, and give him
such judicious hints, such precious confidences."
(Even such praise as this, the woman's perverted nature craved and
prized.) "You won't need to take the money from him in formal
payment," she said, "if that's what you want to avoid. If he returns
with that sum in his pocket, he will not be long before he--"
A knock at the door interrupted her, and George Dallas entered the
room.
He looked weary and dispirited, and, before the customary greetings
had been exchanged, Routh and Harriet saw that failure had been the
result of experiment. Harriet's eyes sought her husband's face, and
read in it the extent of his discomfiture; and the furtive glance she
turned on Dallas was full of resentment. But it found no expression in
her voice as she asked him commonplace questions about his journey,
and busied herself in setting a chair for him by the fire, putting his
hat aside, and begging him to take off his overcoat. He complied. As
he threw the coat on a chair, he said, with a very moderately
successful attempt at pleasantry:
"I have come back richer than I went, Mrs. Routh, by that elegant
garment, and no more."
"Bowled out, eh?" asked Routh, taking the cigar from his mouth, and
laying it on the mantel-piece.
"Stumped, sir," replied Dallas.
Harriet said nothing.
"That's bad, Dallas."
"Very bad, my dear fellow, but very true. Look here," the young man
continued, with earnestness, "I don't know what to do. I don't, upon
my soul! I saw my mother--"
"Yes?" said Harriet going up to his side. "Well?
"I saw her and--and she is unable to help me; she is, indeed, Mrs.
Routh," for a bitter smile was on Harriet's face, turned full upon
his. "She hasn't the means. I never understood her position until last
night, but I understood it then. She is--" he stopped. All his better
nature forbad his speaking of his mother's position to these people.
Her influence, the gentler, better influence, was over him still.
However transitory it might prove, it had not passed yet. Harriet
Routh knew as well as he did what the impulse was that arrested his
speech.
"You will tell me all about it yet," she thought, and not a sign of
impatience appeared in her face.
"I--I need not bore you with details," he went on. "She could not give
me the money. She made me understand that. But she promised to get it
for me, in some way or other, if the thing is within the reach of
possibility, before a month expires. I know she will do it, but I must
give her time, if it's to be forthcoming, and you must give me time."
"It's unfortunate, Dallas," Routh began, in a cold voice, "and, of
course, it's all very well your talking to me about giving you time,
but how am I to get it? It's no good going over the old story, you
know it as well as I do. There, there," he said, shrugging his
shoulders, "I must try and get old Shadrach to renew. I suppose we may
as well go at once, Dallas." He left the room, followed by Harriet.
George Dallas sat over the fire in an attitude of deep dejection. He
was sick at heart, and the revulsion of feeling that had begun at
Poynings had not yet ceased. "If I could but be done with it all!" he
thought. "But I'm in the groove, I'm in the groove."
"Come along, George," said Routh, who seemed more good-humoured than
before, as he re-entered the room, soberly attired, as became a man
going to do business in the City. "Don't be down-hearted; the old lady
will keep her word. Don't be afraid; and in the mean time, we'll pull
through. Put your coat on, and come along. You'll give us some dinner,
Harriet, won't you? And if Deane calls, ask him to join us. He won't,"
he continued, with a laugh, "because he believes in tavern dinners,
and puts no faith in ours. We're snobs who live in lodgings, George,
you know; but he'll drop in in the evening fast enough."
The application to Mr. Shadrach proved successful, and George Dallas
returned with Stewart Routh to his lodgings, more firmly tied to him
than ever, by the strong bond of an increased money-obligation.
"Pretty tidy terms, weren't they?" Routh asked Dallas, when he had
told Harriet, in answer to her anxious questioning, that the "renewal"
had been arranged.
"Very tidy indeed," said poor George, ruefully: "but, Routh, suppose
when I do get the money, it's not enough. What's to be done then?"
"Never mind about _then_," said Routh, "_now_ is the important matter.
Remember that every _then_ is made of _nows_, and keep your mind easy.
That's philosophy, as Mr. Squeers says. Your present business is to
eat your dinner."
Stewart Routh had thrown off his low spirits, and had all but
succeeded in rousing George Dallas from his. Kindly, convivial, only
occasionally coarse, he was a dangerously pleasant man at all times,
and especially so to George Dallas when Harriet was present; for then
his coarseness was entirely laid aside, and her tact, humour,
intelligence never failed to please, to animate, and to amuse him. The
dinner was a very pleasant one, and, before it had come to a
conclusion, George Dallas began to yield as completely as ever to the
influence of the man whose enviable knowledge of "life" had been the
first medium through which he had attained it. George had forgotten
the renewed bill and his late failure for a while, when the mention of
Deane's name recalled it to his memory.
"Has Deane been here, Harry?" asked Routh.
"No, Stewart, I have been at home all day, but he has not called."
"Ah--didn't happen to want me, no doubt."
"Have you seen much of him lately, Routh?" inquired George Dallas. "I
mean, within the last week or two? While I--while I've been keeping
out of the way?" he said, with a nervous laugh.
"Poor boy, you _have_ been down on your luck," said Routh. "Seen much
of Deane? Oh, yes; he's always about--he's here most days, some time
in the forenoon."
"In the forenoon, is he? Considering the hours he keeps at night, that
surprises me."
"It doesn't surprise _me_. He's very strong--has a splendid
constitution, confound him, and has not given it a shake yet. Drink
doesn't seem to 'trouble' him in the least."
"He's an odd fellow," said George, thoughtfully. "How coolly he won my
money, and what a greenhorn I was, to be sure!! wonder if he would
have lost his own so coolly."
"Not a doubt of it," said Routh; "he'd have been satisfied he would
make it up out of something else. He _is_ an odd fellow, and a deuced
unpleasant fellow to _my_ mind."
Harriet looked at her husband with a glance of caution. It was unlike
Routh to dwell on a mere personal feeling, or to let so much of his
mind be known unnecessarily. He caught the glance and understood it,
but it only angered, without otherwise influencing him.
"A low-lived loafer, if ever there was one," he went on, "but useful
in his way, Dallas. Every man has a weakness; _his_ is to think
himself a first-rate billiard player, while he is only a fourth-rate.
A man under such a delusion is sure to lose his money to any one who
plays better than he does, and I may as well be that man, don't you
see?"
"I see perfectly," said George; "but I wish he had been equally
mistaken in his notions of his card-playing science; it would have
made a serious difference to me."
"Never mind, old fellow," answered Routh; "you shall have your revenge
some day. Finish your wine, and Harriet shall give us some music."
She did so. She gave them some music, such as very few can give--music
which combines perfection of art with true natural feeling. This woman
was a strange anomaly, full of "treasons, stratagems, and spoils," and
yet with music in her soul.
Rather early, George Dallas left the pair, but they sat up late,
talking earnestly. Things were going ill with Stewart Routh. Some of
his choicest and most promising combinations had failed. He had once
or twice experienced a not uncommon misfortune in the lot of such men
as he;--he had encountered men in his own profession who were as
clever as himself, and who, favoured by circumstances and opportunity,
had employed their talents at his expense. The swindler had been
swindled once or twice, the biter had been bitten, and his temper had
not been improved in the process. He was about, as Harriet had said,
to take a new flight this time, in the direction of operations on the
general public, and he had formed designs on Mr. Deane, which did not,
in the increased knowledge he had obtained of that gentleman's
character, and in the present aspect of affairs, look quite so
promising as in the early stage of their acquaintance, six weeks
before. The operations of gentlemen of the Routh fraternity are
planned and executed with a celerity which seems extraordinary to
pursuers of the more legitimate branches of industry. Routh had not
passed many hours in Mr. Deane's society (they had met at a low place
of amusement, the honours of which Routh was doing to a young Oxonian,
full of cash and devoid of brains, whom he had in hand just then),
before he had built an elaborate scheme upon the slender foundation of
that gentleman's boasted wealth and assumed greenness. His subsequent
experience had convinced him of the reality of the first, but had
shown him his mistake as to the last, and gradually his mind, usually
cool and undaunted, became haunted by an ever-burning desire to
possess himself of the money for ever flaunted before his eyes--became
haunted, too, by an unreasonable and blind animosity to the stranger,
who combined profligacy with calculation, unscrupulous vice with
well-regulated economy, and the unbridled indulgence of his passions
with complete coldness of heart and coolness of temper. Routh had no
knowledge of Deane's real position in life, but he had a conviction
that had it been, like his own, that of a professional swindler, he
would have been a dangerous rival, quite capable of reducing his own
occupation and his own profits very considerably. Therefore Routh
hated him.
When the conference between Routh and Harriet came to a conclusion, it
left the woman visibly troubled. When Routh had been for some time
asleep, she still sat by the table, on which her elbows rested, her
head on her hands, and the light shining on her fair brown hair. There
she sat, until the fire died out, and the late wintry dawn came. She
was not unused to such watches; wakefulness was habitual to her, and
care had often kept her company. But no vigil had ever tired her so
much. Her mind was at work, and suffering. When at length she rose
from her chair with an impatient shiver, dark circles were round her
blue eyes, and her pure waxen complexion looked thick and yellow. She
lighted a candle, turned the gas out, and went for a moment to the
window. The cold grey light was beginning to steal through the
shutter, which she opened wide, and then looked out. She set the
candle down, and leaned idly against the window. Weariness and
restlessness were upon her. The street was quite empty, and the houses
opposite looked inexpressibly gloomy. "One would think all the people
in them were dead instead of asleep," she said, half aloud, as she
pulled the blind down with a jerk, and turned away. She went slowly
upstairs to her bed-room, and as she went, she murmured:
"Where will it end? How will it end? It is an awful risk!"