IN THE BALANCE.
Not one word came from Mrs. Carruthers for full six weeks. The hope
which had sprung up in George Dallas's breast after the interview with
his mother in the housekeeper's room had gone through the various
stages common to unfulfilled desires in men of sanguine temperaments.
It had been very bright at first, and when no letter came after the
lapse of a week, it had begun to grow dim, and then he had endeavoured
to reason with himself that the very fact of no letter coming ought to
be looked upon as a good sign, as showing that "something was doing."
Then the absence of any news caused his hope to flicker until the
recollection of the old adage, that "no news was good news," made it
temporarily bright again; then as the time for payment of the renewed
bill grew nearer and nearer, so did George Dallas's prospects become
gloomier and yet more gloomy, and at last the light of hope went out,
and the darkness of despair reigned paramount in his bosom. What could
his mother be about? She must have pretended that she had some bill of
her own to pay, and that the money was immediately required; old
Carruthers must have questioned her about it, and there must have been
a row; she must have tried to "collar" the amount out of the
housekeeping--no! the sum was too large; that was absurd! She had old
friends--people who knew and loved her well, and she must have asked
some of them to lend it to her, and probably been refused; old friends
always refuse to lend money. She must have tried--confound it all, he
did not know, he could not guess what she had tried! All he did know,
to his sorrow, was, that she had not sent the money; all he knew,
to his joy, was, that though he was constantly seeing Stewart Routh,
that worthy lad, as yet, uttered no word of discontent at its
non-appearance.
Not he! In the hand which Stewart Routh was at that moment playing in
the greater game of life, the card representing a hundred and forty
pounds was one on which he bestowed very little attention. It might,
or it might not, form part of the odd trick, either way: but it had
very little influence on his strategy and finesse. There were times
when a five-pound note might have turned his chance, but this was not
one of them. Driven into a corner, pressed for the means of
discharging paltry debts, harassed by dunning creditors, Stewart Routh
would have needed and claimed the money due to him by George Dallas.
Present circumstances were more favourable, and he only needed George
Dallas's assistance in his schemes. For, Stewart Routh's measures for
raising money were of all kinds and of all dimensions; the elephant's
trunk of his genius could pick up a five-pound-note bet from a flat at
_écarté_, or could move the lever of a gigantic city swindle. And he
was "in for a large thing" just at this time. Men attending
professionally at the betting-ring at the great steeplechase then
coming off, noticed Routh's absence with wonder, and though he
occasionally looked in at two or three of the second-rate sporting
clubs of which he was a member, he was listless and preoccupied. If he
took a hand at cards, though from mere habit he played closely and
cautiously, yet he made no great points, and was by no means, as
usual, the dashing Paladin round whose chair men gathered thickly, and
whose play they backed cheerily. No! The paltry gains of the dice-box
and cards paled before the glamour of the fortune to be made in
companies and shares; the elephant's trunk was to show its strength
now, as well as its dexterity, and the genius which had hitherto been
confined to "bridging" a pack of cards, or "securing" a die, talking
over a flat or winning money of a greenhorn, was to have its vent in
launching a great City Company. Of this scheme Dallas knew nothing. A
disinherited man, with neither name nor influence, would have been
utterly useless; but he was reserved for possible contingencies. Routh
was always sending to him to call, always glad to see him when he
called, and never plagued him with allusions to his debt. But in their
interviews nothing but mere generalities were discussed, and George
noticed that he always received a hint to go whenever Mr. Deane was
announced.
But although Stewart Routh was seen but seldom in his usual haunts, he
was by no means inactive or neglectful of his own interests. Day after
day he spent several hours in the City, diligently engaged in the
formation of his new Company, a grand undertaking for working some
newly-discovered silver mines in the Brazils; and day after day were
his careful scheming, his elaborate plotting, his vivacious daring,
and his consummate knowledge of the world, rewarded by the steady
progress which the undertaking made. The temporary offices in
Tokenhouse-yard were besieged with inquirers; good brokers with City
names of high standing offered their services; splendid reports came
from the engineers, who had been sent out to investigate the state of
the mines. Only one thing was wanting, and that was capital; capital,
by hook or by crook, Mr. Stewart Routh must have, and was determined
to have. If the affair were to be launched, the brokers said, the next
week must see it done; and the difficulty of raising the funds for the
necessary preliminary expenses was becoming day by day more and more
palpable and insurmountable to Stewart Routh.
The interval of time that had witnessed so much activity on the part
of Mr. Stewart Routh, and had advanced his schemes close to a
condition of imminent crisis, had been productive of nothing new or
remarkable in the existence of George Dallas. That is to say, on the
surface of it. He was still leading the desultory life of a man who,
with an intellectual and moral nature capable of better deeds and
nobler aspirations, is incurably weak, impulsive, and swayed by a love
of pleasure; a man incapable of real self-control, and with whom the
gratification of the present is potent, above all suggestions or
considerations of the contingencies of the future. He worked a little,
and his talent was beginning to tell on the popularity of the paper
for which he worked, The Mercury, and on the perceptions of its
proprietors. George Dallas was a man in whose character there were
many contradictions. With much of the fervour of the poetic
temperament, with its sensuousness and its sensitiveness, he had a
certain nonchalance about him, a fitful indifference to external
things, and a spasmodic impatience of his surroundings. This latter
was apt to come over him at times when he was apparently merriest, and
it had quite as much to do with his anxiety to get his debt to Routh
discharged, and to set himself free from Routh, as any moral sense of
the danger of keeping such company, or any moral consciousness of the
waste of his life, and the deterioration of his character. George
Dallas had no knowledge of the true history of Routh's career; of the
blacker shades of his character he was entirely ignorant. In his eyes
Routh was a clever man and a good-for-nothing, a "black sheep" like
himself, a sheep for whose blackness Dallas (as he did in his own
case) held circumstances, the white sheep, anything and everything
except the man himself, to blame. He was dimly conscious that his
associate was stronger than he, stronger in will, stronger in
knowledge of men, and somehow, though he never defined or acknowledged
the feeling to himself, he mistrusted and feared him. He liked him,
too, he felt grateful to him for his help; he did not discern the
interested motives which actuated him, and, indeed, they were but
small, and would by no means have accounted for all Routh's
proceedings towards Dallas. Nor is it necessary that they should; a
villain is not, therefore, altogether precluded from likings, or even
the feebler forms of friendship, and Dallas was not simply silly and
egotistical when he believed that Routh felt kindly and warmly towards
him. Still, whether a merciful and occult influence was at work within
him or the tide of his feelings had been turned by his stolen
interview with his mother, by his being brought into such positive
contact with her life and its conditions, and having been made to
realize the bitterness he had infused into it, it were vain to
inquire. Whatever his motives, however mixed their nature or confused
their origin, he was filled, whenever he was out of Routh's presence,
and looked his life in the face, with an ardent longing to
"cut the whole concern," as he phrased it in his thoughts. And
Harriet?--for the "whole concern" included her, and he was forced to
remember--Harriet, the only woman whose society he liked--Harriet, whom
he admired with an admiration as pure and respectful as he could have
felt for her, had he met her in the least equivocal, nay, even in the
most exalted position. Well, he would be very sorry to lose Harriet,
but, after all, she cared only for Routh; and he was dangerous. "I
must turn over a new leaf, for _her_ sake" (he meant for his
mother's); "and I can't turn it while they are at my elbows." From
which conviction on the part of George it is sufficiently evident that
Routh and Harriet had ample reason to apprehend that Dallas, on whom
they desired to retain a hold, for more reasons than one, was slipping
through their fingers.
George Dallas was more than usually occupied with such thoughts one
morning, six weeks after his unsuccessful visit to Poynings. He had
been very much with Routh and Deane during this period, and yet he had
begun to feel aware, with a jealous and suspicious sense of it, too,
that he really knew very little of what they had been about. They met
in the evening, in pursuit of pleasure, and they abandoned themselves
to it; or they met at Routh's lodgings, and Dallas surrendered himself
to the charm which Harriet's society always had for him. But he had
begun to observe of late that there was no reference to the occupation
of the earlier part of the day, and that while there was apparently a
close bond of mutual confidence or convenience between Routh and
Deane, there was some under-current of mutual dislike.
"If my mother can only get me out of this scrape, and I can get the
_Piccadilly_ people to take my serial," said George Dallas to himself
one morning, when April was half gone, and "the season" was half come,
"I shall get away somewhere, and go in for work in earnest." He
looked, ruefully enough, round the wretched little bed-room, at whose
small window he was standing, as he spoke; and he thought impatiently
of his debt to his coarse shrewish landlady, and of the small
liabilities which hampered him as effectually as the great one. It was
later than his usual hour of rising, and he felt ill and despondent:
not anxious to face the gay, rich, busy world outside, and still less
inclined for his own company and waking thoughts in the shabby little
den he tenanted. A small room, a mere apology for a sitting-room, was
reached through a rickety folding-door, which no human ingenuity could
contrive to keep shut if any one opened the other door leading to the
narrow passage, and the top of the steep dark staircase. Through this
yawning aperture George lounged disconsolately into the little room
beyond, eyeing with strong disfavour the preparations for his
breakfast, which preparations chiefly consisted of a dirty table-cloth
and a portion of a stale loaf, popularly known as a "heel." But his
gaze travelled further, and brightened; for on the cracked and
blistered wooden chimney-piece lay a letter in his mother's hand. He
darted at it, and opened it eagerly, then held it for a moment in his
hand unread. His face turned very pale, and he caught his breath once
or twice as he muttered:
"Suppose it's to say she can't do anything at all." But the fear, the
suspense were over with the first glance at his mother's letter. She
wrote:
"Poynings, 13th April, 1861.
"My Dear George,--I have succeeded in procuring you the money, for
which you tell me you have such urgent need. Perhaps if I admired, and
felt disposed to act up to, a lofty standard of sentimental
generosity, I should content myself with making this announcement, and
sending you the sum which you assure me will release you from your
difficulties, and enable you to commence the better life on which you
have led me to hope you are resolved. But not only do the
circumstances under which I have contrived to get this money for you
make it impossible for me to act in this way, but I consider I should
be very wrong, and quite wanting in my duty, if I failed to make you
understand, at the cost of whatever pain to myself, the price I have
had to pay for the power of aiding you.
"You have occasioned me much suffering, George. You, my only child, to
whom I looked in the first dark days of my early bereavement, with
such hope and pride as I cannot express, and as only a mother can
understand--you have darkened my darkness and shadowed my joy, you
have been the source of my deepest anxiety, though not the less for
that, as you well know, the object of my fondest love. I don't write
this to reproach you--I don't believe in the efficacy of reproach; but
merely to tell you the truth--to preface another truth, the full
significance of which it may prove very beneficial to you to
understand. Sorrow I have known through you, and shame I have
experienced for you. You have cost me many tears, whose marks can
never be effaced from my face or my heart; you have cost me infinite
disappointment, bitterness, heart-sickness, and domestic wretchedness;
but now, for the first time, you cost me shame on my own account. Many
and great as my faults and shortcomings have been through life, deceit
was equally abhorrent to my nature and foreign to my habits. But for
you, George, for your sake, to help you in this strait, to enable you
to release yourself from the trammels in which you are held, I have
descended to an act of deceit and meanness, the recollection of which
must for ever haunt me with a keen sense of humiliation. I retain
enough of my former belief in you, my son, to hope that what no other
argument has been able to effect, this confession on my part may
accomplish, and that you, recognizing the price at which I have so far
rescued you, may pause, and turn from, the path leading downward into
an abyss of ruin, from which no effort of mine could avail to snatch
you. I have procured the money you require, by an expedient suggested
to me accidentally, just when I had begun utterly to despair of ever
being able to accomplish my ardent desire, by a conversation which
took place at dinner between Mr. Carruthers and his family solicitor,
Mr. Tatham. The conversation turned on a curious and disgraceful
family story which had come under his knowledge lately. I need not
trouble you to read, nor myself to write, its details; you will learn
them when I see you, and give you the money; and I do not doubt, I
dare not doubt, George, that you will feel all I expect you to feel
when you learn to how deliberate, laborious, and mean a deception I
have descended for your sake. I can never do the same thing again; the
expedient is one that it is only possible to use once, and which is
highly dangerous even in that one instance. So, if even you were bad
and callous enough to calculate upon a repetition of it, which I could
not believe, my own dear boy, I am bound to tell you that it never
could be. Unless Mr. Carruthers should change his mind, consequent
upon an entire, radical, and most happy change in your conduct, all
pecuniary assistance on my part must be entirely impossible. I say
this, thus strongly, out of the kindest and best motives towards you.
Your unexpected appearance and application agitated and distressed me
very much; not but that the sight of you, under any circumstances,
must always give me pleasure, however closely pursued and overtaken by
pain. For several days I was so completely upset by the recollection
of your visit, and the strong and desperate necessity that existed for
repressing all traces of such feelings, that I was unable to think
over the expedients by which I might procure the money you required.
Then as I began to grow a little quieter, accident gave me the hint
upon which I have acted secretly and safely. Come down to Poynings in
three days from this time. Mr. Carruthers is at present away at an
agricultural meeting at York, and I can see you at Amherst, without
difficulty or danger. Go to the town, but not to the inn. Wait about
until you see my carriage. This is the 13th. I shall expect you on the
17th, by which day I hope to have the money ready for you.
"And now, my dear boy, how shall I end this letter? What shall I say?
What can I say that I have not said again and again, and with sadly
little effect, as you will not deny! But I forbear, and I hope. A
feeling that I cannot define, an instinct, tells me that a crisis in
my life is near. And what can such a crisis in my life mean, except in
reference to you, my beloved and only child? In your hands lies all
the future, all the disposition of the 'few and evil' years which
remain to me. How are you going to deal with them? Is the love, which
can never fail or falter, to be tried and wounded to the end, George,
or is it to see any fruition in this world? Think over this question,
my son, and let me read in your face, when I see you, that the answer
is to be one of hope. You are much changed, George, the bitterness is
succeeding the honey in your mouth; you are 'giving your strength for
that which is not meat, and your labour for that which satisfieth
not,' and though all the lookers-on at such a career as yours can see,
and always do see, its emptiness and insufficiency plainly, what does
their wisdom, their experience, avail? But if wisdom and experience
come to _yourself_, that makes all the difference. If _you_ have
learned, and I venture to hope you _have_, that the delusive light is
but a 'Will of the Wisp,' you will cease to pursue it. Come to me,
then, my boy. I have kept my word to you, at such a cost as you can
hardly estimate, seeing that no heart can impart _all_ its bitterness
to another; will you keep yours to me?
"C. L. Carruthers."
"What does she mean? What can she mean?" George Dallas asked himself
this question again and again, as he stood looking at the letter in
his hand. "What has _she_ done? A mean and deliberate deceit--some
dishonourable transaction? My mother could not do anything deserving
to be so called. It is impossible. Even if she could contemplate such
a thing, she would not know how to set about it. God bless her!"
He sat down by the table, drew the dingy Britannia-metal teapot over
beside his cup, and sat with his hand resting idly upon the distorted
handle, still thinking less of the relief which the letter had brought
him, than of the mysterious terms in which it was couched.
"She can't have got it out of Carruthers without his knowing anything
about it?" he mused. "No; besides, getting it from him at all, is
precisely the thing she told me she could not do. Well, I must wait to
know; but how good of her to get it! Who's the fellow who says a man
can have only one mother? By Jove, how right he is!"
Then George ate his breakfast hastily, and, putting the precious
letter in his breast-pocket, went to Routh's lodgings.
"I dare say they're not up," he thought, as he knocked at the door,
and patiently waited the lingering approach of the slipshod servant.
"Routh was as late as I was last night, and I know she always sits up
for him."
He was right; they had not yet appeared in the sitting-room, and he
had time for a good deal of walking up and down, and much cogitation
over his mother's letter, before Harriet appeared. She was looking
anxious, Dallas thought, so he stepped forward even more eagerly than
usual, and told her in hurried tones of gladness that the post had
brought him good news, and that his mother was going to give him the
money.
"I don't know how she has contrived to get it, Mrs. Routh," he said.
"Does she not tell you, then?" asked Harriet, as she eyed with some
curiosity the letter which Dallas had taken out of his pocket, and
which he turned about in his hand, as he stood talking to her. As she
spoke, he replaced the letter in his pocket, and sat down.
"No," he answered, moodily, "she does not; but she did not get it
easily, I know--not without a very painful self-sacrifice; but here's
Routh."
"Ha! Dallas, my boy," said Routh, after he had directed one fleeting
glance of inquiry towards his wife, and almost before he had fairly
entered the room. "You're early--any news?"
"Very good news," replied Dallas; and he repeated the information he
had already given Harriet. Routh received it with a somewhat feigned
warmth, but Dallas was too much excited by his own feelings to
perceive the impression which the news really produced on Routh.
"Is your letter from the great Mr. Carruthers himself?" said Routh;
"from the provincial magnate who has the honour of being stepfather to
you--your magnificent three-tailed bashaw?"
"Oh dear no!" said the young man grimly; "not from him. My letter is
from my mother."
"And what has she to say?" asked Harriet quickly.
"She tells me she will very shortly be able to let me have the sum I
require."
"The deuce she will!" said Routh. "Well, I congratulate you, my boy! I
may say I congratulate all of us, for the matter of that; but it's
rather unexpected, isn't it? I thought Mrs. Carruthers told you, when
you saw her so lately, that the chances of her bleeding that charming
person, her husband, were very remote."
"She did say so, and she was right; it's not from him she's going to
get the money. Thank Heaven for that!"
"Certainly, if you wish it, though I'm not sure that we're right
in being over-particular whence the money comes, so that it does
come when one wants it. What is that example in the Eton Latin
Grammar--'I came to her in season, which is the chief thing of all?'
But if not from Mr. Carruthers, where does she get the money?"
"I--I don't know; but she does not get it without some horrible
self-sacrifice; you may depend on that."
"My dear George, Mrs. Carruthers's case is not a singular one. We none
of us get money without an extraordinary amount of self-sacrifice."
"Not a singular one! No, by George, you're right there, Routh," said
the young man bitterly; "but does that make it any lighter for her to
bear, or any better for me to reflect upon? There are hundreds of
vagabond sons in England at this moment, I dare say, outcasts--sources
of shame and degradation to their mothers, utterly useless to any one.
I swear, when I think of what my mother must have gone through to
raise this money, when I think of the purpose for which it is
required, I thoroughly loathe myself, and feel inclined to put a
pistol to my head or a razor to my throat. However, once free,
I--there--that's the old cant again!"
As the young man said these words, he rose from his chair, and fell
to pacing the room with long strides. Stewart Routh looked up sternly
at him from under his bent brows, and was about to speak; but Harriet
held up a finger deprecatingly, and when George Dallas seated himself
again, and, with his face on his hands, remained moodily gazing at the
table, she stole behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
"I know you would not intentionally wound _me_, Mr. Dallas," she said.
"I say, you would not intentionally wound _me_," she repeated,
apparently in answer to his turning sharply round and staring at her
in surprise; "but you seem to forget that it was I who counselled your
recent visit to your mother, and suggested your asking her for this
sum of money, which you were bound in honour to pay, and without the
payment of which you--who have always represented yourself as most
dear to her--would have been compromised for ever. I am sorry I did
so, now that I see my intentions were misunderstood, and I say so
frankly."
"I swear to you, Har--Mrs. Routh--I had not the slightest idea
of casting the least imputation on your motives; I was only
thinking--You know I'm a little hot on the subject of my mother,
not without reason, perhaps, for she's been a perfect angel to me,
and--one can't expect other people to enter into these things, and, of
course, it was very absurd. But you must forget it, please, Mrs.
Routh, and you too, Stewart. If I spoke sharply or peevishly, don't
mind it, old fellow!"
"I?" said Routh, with a crisp laugh. "I _don't_ mind it; and I dare say
I was very provoking; but you see I never knew what it was to have a
mother, and I'm not much indebted to my other parent. As to the money,
George--these are hard times, but if the payment of it is to drive a
worthy lady to distress, or is to promote discord between you and me,
why, in friendship's name, keep it, I say!"
"You're a good fellow, Stewart," said Dallas, putting out his hand;
"and you, Mrs. Routh, have forgiven me?" Though she only bowed her
head slightly, she looked down into his face with a long, steady,
earnest gaze. "There's an end of it, then, I trust," he continued; "we
never have had words here, and I hope we're not going to begin now. As
for the money, that must be paid. Whatever my mother has had to do is
as good as done, and need not be whined over. Besides, I know you want
the money, Stewart."
"That's simply to say that I am in my normal state. I always want
money, my dear George."
"You shall have this, at all events. And now I must be off, as I have
some work to do for the paper. See you very soon again. Good-bye,
Stewart. The cloud has quite passed away, Mrs. Routh?"
She said "Quite," as she gave him her hand, and their eyes met. There
was eager inquiry in his glance; there was calm, steadfast earnestness
in hers. Then he shook hands with Routh, and left the room.
The moment the door closed behind him; the smile faded away from
Routh's face, and the stern look which it always wore when he was
preoccupied and thoughtful settled down upon it For a few minutes he
was silent; then he said in a low voice: "Harriet, for the first time
in your life, I suppose, you very nearly mismanaged a bit of business
I intrusted to you."
His wife looked at him with wonder-lifted brows. "I, Stewart? Not
intentionally, I need not tell you. But how?"
"I mean this business of George's. Did not you advise him to go down
and see his mother?"
"I did. I told him he must get the money from her."
"A mistake, Harry, a mistake!" said Routh, petulantly. "Getting the
money means paying us; paying us means breaking with us?"
"Breaking with us?"
"Nothing less. Did you not hear him when the remorseful fit was on him
just now? And don't you know that he's wonderfully young, considering
all things, and has kept the bloom on his feelings in a very
extraordinary manner? Did you not hear him mutter something about
'once free'? I did not like that, Harry."
"Yes, I heard him say those words," replied Harriet. "It was my
hearing them that made me go up to him and speak as I did."
"That was quite right, and had its effect. One does not know what he
might have done if he had turned rusty just then. And it is essential
that there should not be a rupture between us now."
"George Dallas shall not dream of breaking with us; at least, he shall
not carry out any such idea; I will take care of that," said Harriet,
"though I think you overrate his usefulness to us."
"Do I? I flatter myself there is no man in London forced to gain his
bread by his wits who has a better eye for a tool than myself. And I
tell you, Harry, that during all the time we have been leading this
shifty life together, we have never had any one so suitable to our
purposes as George Dallas."
"He is certainly wonderfully amenable."
"Amenable? He is a good deal more than that; he is devoted. You know
whose doing that is, Harry, and so do I. Why, when you laid your hand
on his shoulder I saw him shiver like a leaf, and the first few words
from you stilled what I thought was going to be a heavy storm."
She looked up anxiously into his face, but the smile had returned to
his lips, and his brow was unclouded. Not perfectly satisfied, she
suffered her eyes to drop again.
"I know perfectly well," pursued Routh, "that the manner in which
Dallas has stuck to us has been owing entirely to the influence you
have over him, and which is natural enough. He is a bright young
fellow, impressionable as we all are----" again her eyes were raised
to his face, "--at his age; and though from the scrapes he has got
into, and his own natural love of play (more developed in him than in
any other man I ever met), though these things keep him down, he is
innately a gentleman. You are the only woman of refinement and
education to whose society he has access, and as, at the same time,
you have a sweet face and an enormous power of will, it is not
extraordinary that he should be completely under your influence."
"Don't you overrate that same influence, Stewart?" she asked with a
faint smile.
"No man knows better how to appraise the value of his own goods--and
you are my goods, are you not, Harry, and out and away, the best of
all my goods? Not that that's saying much. No; I understand these
things, and I understand you, and having perfect confidence and trust
in you, I stand by and watch the game."
"And you're never jealous, Stewart?" she asked, with a half-laugh, but
with the old expression of anxious interest in her eyes.
"Jealous, Harry? Not I, my love! I tell you, I have perfect trust and
confidence in you, and I know your thorough devotion to our affairs.
Let us get back to what we were talking about at first--what was it
exactly?"
Her eyes had dropped again at the commencement of his reply, but she
raised them as he finished speaking, and said, "We were discussing the
amount of George Dallas's usefulness to us."
"Exactly. His usefulness is greater than it seems. There is nothing so
useful in a life like ours as the outward semblance of position. I
don't mean the mere get up; that most fools can manage; but the
certain something which proclaims to his fellows and his inferiors
that a man has had education and been decently bred. There are very
few among our precious acquaintances who could not win Dallas's coat
off his back, at cards, or billiards, or betting, but there is not one
whom I could present to any young fellow of the smallest appreciation
whom I might pick up. Even if their frightful appearance were not
sufficiently against them--and it is--they would say or do something
in the first few minutes which would awake suspicion, whereas Dallas,
even in his poverty-stricken clothes of the last few weeks, looks like
a gentleman, and talks and behaves like one."
"Yes," said Harriet, reflecting, "he certainly does; and that's a
great consideration, Stewart?"
"Incalculable! Besides, though he is a thorough gambler at heart, he
has some other visible profession. His 'connection with the press,' as
he calls it, seems really to be a fact; he could earn a decent salary
if he stuck to it. From a letter he showed me, I make out that they
seem to think well of him at the newspaper office; and mind you,
Harriet, he might be uncommonly useful to us some day in getting
things kept out of the papers, or flying a few rumours which would
take effect in the money-market or at Tattersall's. Do you see all
that, Harry?"
"I see it," she replied; "I suppose you're right."
"Eight? Of course I am! George Dallas is the best ally--and the
cheapest--we have ever had, and he must be kept with us."
"You harp upon that 'kept with us.' Are you still so persuaded that he
wishes to shake us off?"
"I am. I feel convinced, from that little outburst to-night, that he
is touched by this unexplained sacrifice on the part of his mother,
and that in his present frame of mind he would give anything to send
us adrift and get back into decent life. I feel this so strongly,
Harriet," continued Routh, rising from his seat, crossing to the
mantelshelf, and taking a cigar, "that I think even your influence
would be powerless to restrain him, unless--"
"Unless what? Why do you pause?" she asked, looking up at him with a
clear steadfast gaze.
"Unless," said Routh, slowly puffing at his newly-lighted cigar,
"unless we get a fresh and a firm hold on him. He will pay that
hundred and forty pounds. Once paid that hold is gone, and with it
goes our ally!"
"I see what you mean," said Harriet, after a pause, with a short
mirthless laugh. "He must be what they call in the East 'compromised.'
We are plague-stricken. George Dallas must be seen to brush shoulders
with us. His garments must be known to have touched ours. Then the
uninfected will cast him out, and he will be reduced to herd with us."
"You are figurative, Harry, but forcible: you have hit my meaning
exactly. But the main point still remains--_how_ is he to be
'compromised'?"
"It is impossible to settle that hurriedly," she replied, pushing her
hair back from her forehead. "But it must be done effectually, and the
step which he is led to take, and which is to bind him firmly to us,
must be irrevocable. Hush! Come in!"
These last words were in reply to a knock at the room door. A dirty
servant-girl put her tangled head into the room, and announced "Mr.
Deane" as waiting down-stairs. This statement was apparently
incorrect, for the girl had scarcely made it before she disappeared,
as though pulled back, and a man stepped past her, and made one stride
into the middle of the room, where he stood looking round him with a
suspicious leer.
He was a young man, apparently not more than two or three and twenty,
judging by his figure and his light active movements; but cunning and
deceit had stamped such wrinkles round his eyes, and graven such lines
round his mouth, as are seldom to be seen in youth. His eyes, of a
greenish-gray hue, were small and deeply sunk in his head; his
cheek-bones were high, his cheeks fringed by a very small scrap of
whisker running into a dirt-coloured tuft of hair growing underneath
his chin. His figure was tall and; angular, his arms and legs long and
awkward, his hands and feet large and ill-shaped. He wore a large
thick overcoat with broad fur collar and cuffs, and a hood (also
fur-lined) hanging back on his shoulders. With the exception of a very
slight strip of ribbon, he had no cravat underneath his long limp
turnover collar, but stuck into his shirt-front was a large and
handsome diamond pin.
"Why, what the 'tarnal," he commenced, placing his arms a-kimbo and
without removing his hat--"what the 'tarnal, as they say down west, is
the meaning of this little game? I come here pretty smart often, don't
I? I come in gen'lly right way, don't I? Why does that gal go totin'
up in front of me to-day to see if you would see me, now?"
"Some mistake, eh?"
"Not a bit of it! Gal was all right, gal was. What I want to know is,
what was up? Was you a practisin' any of your little hankey-pankeys
with the pasteboards? Was you a bitin' in a double set of scrip of the
new company to do your own riggin' of the market? Or was it a little
bit of quiet con-nubiality with the mar-darm here in which you didn't
want to be disturbed?"
Stewart Routh's face had been growing darker and darker as this speech
proceeded, and at the allusion to his wife his lips began to move; but
they were stopped by a warning pressure underneath the table from
Harriet's foot.
"You're a queer fellow, Deane!" he said, in a subdued voice. "The fact
is, we have a new servant here, and she did not recognize you as
_l'ami de la maison_, and so stood on the proprieties, I suppose."
"O, that's it, eh? I don't know about the proprieties; but when the
gal knows more of me, she'll guess I'm one of 'em. Nothing improper
about me--no loafin' rowdy ways, such as some of your friends have.
Pay my way as I go, ask no favours, and don't expect none." He gave
his trousers pockets a ringing slap as he spoke, and looked round with
a sneering laugh.
"There, there! It's all right; now sit down, and have a glass of wine,
and tell us the news."
"No," he said, "thank'ee. I've been liquoring up in the City, where
I've been doin' a little business--realizing some of them Lake Eries
and Michigans as I told you on. Spanking investments they were, and
have turned up trumps."
"I hope you're in the hands of an honest broker," said Routh. "I could
introduce you to one who--"
"Thank'ee, I have a great man to broke for me, recommended to me from
t'other side by his cousin who leads Wall-street, New York City. I
have given him the writings, and am going to see him on Tuesday, at
two, when I shall trouser the dollars to the tune of fifteen thousand
and odd, if markets hold up, I reckon."
"And you'll bring some of that to us in Tokenhouse-yard," said Routh
eagerly. "You recollect what I showed you, that I--"
"O yes!" said Deane, again with the sinister smile. "You could talk a
'coon's hind leg off, you could, Routh. But I shall just keep my
dollars in my desk for a few days. Tokenhouse-yard can wait a little,
can't it? just to see how things eventuate, you know."
"As you please," said Routh. "One thing is certain, Deane; you need no
Mentor in your business, whatever you may do in your pleasures."
"Flatter myself, need none in neither," said the young man, with a
baleful grin. "Eh, look here, now: talking of pleasures, come and dine
with me on Tuesday at Barton's, at five. I've asked Dallas, and we'll
have a night of it. Tuesday, the 17th, mind. Sorry to take your
husband away, Mrs. R., but I'll make up for it, some day. Perhaps
you'll come and dine with me some day, Mis R., without R.?"
"Not I, Mr. Deane," said Harriet, with a laugh. "You're by far too
dangerous a man."
Mr. Deane was gone; and again Stewart Routh sat over the table,
scribbling figures on his blotting-pad.
"What are you doing, Stewart?"
"Five dollars to the pound--fifteen thousand," he said, "three
thousand pounds! When did he say he would draw it?"
"On Tuesday, the--the day you dine with him."
"The day I dine with him! Keep it in his desk, he said, for a few
days! He has grown very shy about Tokenhouse-yard. He hasn't been
there for a week. The day I dine with him!" He had dropped his pen,
and was slowly passing his hand over his chin.
"Stewart," said Harriet, going behind him and putting her arm round
his neck--"Stewart, I know what thought you're busy with, but--"
"Do you, Harry?" said he, disengaging himself, but not unkindly--"do
you? Then keep it to yourself, my girl, and get to bed. We must have
that, Harry, in one way or another; we must have it."
She took up a candle, pressed her lips to his forehead, and went to
her room without a word. But for full ten minutes she remained
standing before the dressing-table buried in thought, and again she
muttered to herself: "A great risk! A great risk!"