ONCE MORE TIDED OVER.
An air of respectability and the presence of good taste characterized
the house in Queen-street, Mayfair, now occupied by Mr. and Mrs.
Routh. These things were inseparable from a dwelling of Harriet's. She
had the peculiar feminine talent for embellishing the place she lived
in, however simple and small were the means at her disposal. The
lodgings at South Molton-street had never had the comfortless look and
feeling of lodgings, and now there was apparently no lack of money to
make the new home all that a house of its size and capabilities need
be. Harriet moved about her present dwelling, not as she had moved
about her former home, indeed, with happy alacrity, but with the same
present judgment, the same critical eye; and though all she did now
was done mechanically, it was done thoroughly.
Harriet was very restless on the day that was to bring George Dallas
to their new residence. She had duly received his message from Jim
Swain, and though the keen eye of the boy, who was singularly
observant of her in every particular that came under his notice, had
detected that the intelligence imparted a shock to her, she had
preserved her composure wonderfully, in conveying the unwelcome news
to her husband. Routh had received it with far less calmness. He felt
in a moment that the delay of Harriet's projected letter, a delay
prescribed by himself, had induced the return of Dallas, and angry
with himself for the blunder, he was angry with her that she had not
foreseen the risk. He was often angry with Harriet now; a strange kind
of dislike to her arose frequently in his base and ungrateful heart,
and the old relations between them had undergone a change, unavowed by
either, but felt keenly by both. The strength of character on which
Routh knew he could rely to any extent, which he knew would never fail
him or its owner, made him strangely afraid, in the midst of all the
confidence it inspired, and he was constrained in his wife's presence,
and haunted out of it.
Stewart Routh had never been a rough-spoken man; the early tradition
of his education had preserved him from the external coarseness of a
vagabond life, but the underlying influences of an evil temper
asserted themselves at times. Thus when Harriet told him gently, and
with her blue eyes bright with reassuring encouragement, that Dallas
was in England, and would be with them on the morrow, he turned upon
her with an angry oath. She shrank back from him for a moment, but the
next, she said, gently:
"We must meet this, Stewart, like all the rest, and it can be done."
"How?" he said, rudely; "how is it to be met?"
"_I_ will meet it, Stewart," she replied. "Trust me: you have often
done so, and never had cause to regret the consequence. I am changed,
I know. I have not so much quickness and readiness as I had, but I
have no less courage. Remember what my influence over George Dallas
was; it is still unchanged; let me use it to the utmost of my ability.
If it fails, why then"--she spoke very slowly, and leaned her hand
heavily on his shoulder with the words,--"then we have but to do what
I at least have always contemplated."
Their eyes met, and they looked steadily at each other for some
moments; then withdrawing his gaze from her with difficulty, Routh
said, sullenly, "Very well, let it be so; you must see him first: but
I suppose I shall have to see him; I can't escape that, can I?"
She looked at him with a queer glance for a moment, and the shadow of
a smile just flickered over her lips. Could he escape? That was his
thought, his question. Did she ever ask it for herself? But the
impression, irresistible to the woman's keen perception, was only
momentary. She answered the base query instantly.
"No, you cannot; the thing is impossible. But I will see him first,
and alone; then if I succeed with him, no risk can come of your seeing
him; if I fail, the danger must be faced."
He turned sulkily away, and leaned upon the window-frame, looking idly
into the street.
"You don't know when he will be here, I suppose?" he said, presently.
"I do not; but I fancy early in the day."
"It's too bad. I am sick of this. The thing is over now. Why is it
always cropping up?"
He spoke to himself rather than to her; but she heard him, and the
colour flew over her pale face at his words. He left the room soon
after, and then Harriet sat down in the weary way that had become
habitual to her, and murmured:
"It is done and over; and he wonders why it is always cropping up, and
I--"
Stewart Routh did not return home until late that night. Such absences
had become common now, and Harriet made no comment then or ever. How
she passed the hours of solitude he did not inquire, and, indeed, she
could hardly have told. On this particular evening she had employed
herself on the close and attentive perusal of a number of letters.
They were all written by George Dallas, and comprised the whole of his
correspondence with her. She read them with attentive eye and knitted
brow; and when she locked the packet up in her desk again, she looked,
as Mrs. Brookes had seen her, like a woman who had a purpose, and who
clearly saw her way to its fulfilment.
But the next day Harriet was restless. She could do the thing that lay
before her, but she wanted the time for doing it to be come; she
wanted to get it over. If this were weakness, then in this Harriet was
weak.
Immediately after breakfast Stewart Routh went out. Only a few words
had been exchanged between him and Harriet on the subject of George's
expected visit, and Harriet had gone to the drawing-room when George
came. She met him with the old frank welcome which he remembered so
well, and, in answer to his inquiry for Routh, said she was
momentarily expecting him.
"You know what brought me back to England," George said, when he was
seated, and the first greeting was over; "you got my message?"
"That bad news had reached you. Yes," replied Harriet. "I was just
about to write to you. You would have had my letter to-day. I learned
from the newspapers that your mother was ill and--"
"And went to see about it for me. I know all your goodness, Mrs.
Routh, and can never thank you for it half enough. It is only of a
piece, though, with all your goodness to me. You have always been the
best and truest of friends. My old nurse told me all about your visit.
God bless you, Mrs. Routh." And George Dallas took her hand, and, for
the second time in his life, kissed it.
There was a pause, a dangerous pause. Harriet felt it, for her heart
was beating thickly, and her face was not under such command but that
the interested eyes which were looking into it might read the traces
of a deep and painful emotion.
"You have been comforted by your visit to Poynings," she said. "You
have more hope and relief about your mother? Mrs. Brookes has told you
all particulars."
"Yes, Mrs. Routh, I did hear all the particulars, and I also made an
extraordinary and terrible discovery in connection with that illness."
"Indeed!" said Harriet, leaning towards him with the liveliest
interest and concern in every feature of her face. "It is not that the
illness is of a hopeless nature, I hope?"
"I trust not," he said, solemnly; "but, Mrs. Routh, my mother has been
nearly killed by being obliged to suspect me of a dreadful crime."
"A dreadful crime! You, Mr. Dallas! What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Dallas, "that a murder has been committed, in which I
would appear to have been implicated. I know what I am about to tell
you will agitate and distress you, Mrs. Routh, and one of the most
mysterious points of a mysterious subject is, that it should be my lot
to tell it to you." He hesitated, then went on: "I don't know whether
I ought to tell you all that I have heard. I have to consult Routh on
some important matters, so that it is the more unfortunate that he is
out of the way, as no time must be lost in what I have to do."
The occasion had come now, and Harriet was equal to it. It was with a
smile, serious but quite unembarrassed, that she said:
"Don't depose me from the position of your confidant, George." She
called him by his Christian name for the first time. "You know Stewart
has no secret from me. Whatever you would tell to him, tell to me. I
have more time at your disposal than he has, though not more
friendship. In this matter count us as one. Indeed," she added, with a
skilful assumption of playfulness, which did not, however, alter the
gravity of George's manner, "as I am your correspondent, I claim
precedence by prescriptive right."
"I hardly know how to tell you, Mrs. Routh; all the circumstances are
so shocking, and so very, very strange. You and Routh have been rather
surprised, have you not, by the sudden disappearance of Deane? Routh
always thought him an odd, eccentric, unaccountable sort of fellow,
coming nobody knew whence, and likely to go nobody knew whither; but
yet it has surprised you and Routh a little that, since the day we
were to have dined together in the Strand, Deane has never turned up,
hasn't it?"
The strength and self-control which formed such striking features in
Harriet's character were severely tried, almost beyond their limits,
by the expectation of the revelation which George was about to make;
but there was not a questioning tone in her voice, not a quiver on her
lip, as the minutes passed by, while she won him more and more
securely by her calm interest and friendliness. His growing anxiety to
see Routh confirmed her in the belief that he knew all that his mother
and Mrs. Brookes had known. Remembering the agony she had suffered
when she and George had last talked together, and feeling that the
present crisis was scarcely less momentous, she rallied all her
powers--and they were considerable--and asked him boldly what it was
he had to communicate to her. In a voice of the deepest solemnity, he
said, taking her hand in his:
"The man who has been murdered, of whose murder my mother was led to
suspect me, was Philip Deane!"
"Good God!" cried Harriet, and shrunk back in her chair, covering her
face with her hands.
He had reason to say that the news he had to tell her would agitate
and distress her. Her whole frame crept and trembled, and a chill
moisture broke out on her smooth forehead and pale shivering cheeks.
George was alarmed at her distress, and she knew by the intensity of
her emotion, now that the words she had been expecting were spoken,
how much her nervous system had suffered in the long struggle she had
fought out with such success. He tried to calm her, and loved and
admired her all the more for her keen womanly feeling.
"Horrible, most horrible!" she murmured, her eyes still hidden in her
shaking hands. "But how do you know? Tell me all you know."
Then George told her without omission or reservation. She listened
eagerly, greedily, and as the narrative proceeded she became quite
calm. George dwelt on his astonishment that Routh had not made the
discovery which had forced itself on him, but Harriet disposed of that
part of the matter in a moment.
"You forget," she said, "he was not in London. When you came to me, on
your return from Amherst, do you not remember I told you Stewart was
away, hiding from his creditors, poor fellow? He never heard of the
murder, very likely; he never interests himself in such horrors.
Indeed, he never mentioned anything about it to me, and of course he
must have known at once that the man was Deane. The very name of the
tavern in the Strand where he was to have dined himself would have
suggested the idea."
"Precisely so," said George; "that was the thing which puzzled me so
completely, and made me anxious to see him."
"The strangeness of the coincidence," said Harriet, "is as remarkable
as the event is horrible. It only proves how mistaken are our notions
of the laws of chance. What could be more wildly improbable than that,
living in the midst of London, and within constant reach of the talk
and speculation about it, Stewart and I should have known nothing of
the matter?"
"Very extraordinary indeed," said George; "one of those facts which
would be denounced as too unnatural, if they were told in fiction. And
how unfortunate! What a terrible mystery Routh might have cleared up!"
"And yet," Harriet replied, with a furtive glance at Dallas, full of
keen and searching expression, "what could he have told, beyond the
fact that he had known the man under the name of Deane? After all, it
comes to that, and to no more, doesn't it?"
"To no more, my dear Mrs. Routh? To a great deal more. When we tell
the police what we know, there will be not only an identification of
the body, but an explanation of the motive."
"I don't quite understand you," said Harriot; and as she spoke, there
came a click in her throat, as there had come when she and George
Dallas had last spoken together.
Would it ever be over? Should her purpose ever be gained?
"Don't you?" said George, surprised, "and you so quick, too. But no
wonder you are upset by this; it is so dreadful when one has known the
person, is it not? But you _will_ see in a moment that our being able
to depose to the large sum of money and the jewels in the poor
fellow's possession will make the motive quite plain. They have got a
notion now that he was a foreigner, and that the motive was political,
whereas it was of course simply a robbery. He resisted, I suppose, and
was killed in the scuffle."
"Does the report read like that?" asked Harriet, faintly.
"It simply says he was stabbed," said George; "but it is plain that
all the newspapers took up the political-murder notion at once, and
then, of course, their reports would be made to fit their theory. No
doubt some ruffian did it who knew that he had a large sum about him
that day. Very likely he had been traced from the City; he had been
there to get some securities. I can swear to his having told me that,
at all events. How very ill you look, Mrs. Routh! This ghastly story
has been too much for you. I don't think you ever liked poor Deane,
but no one could know of a man's coming to such an untimely end, if he
was ever such a bad fellow, and not feel it, especially you. I wish I
had not said anything. It would have been better for Routh to have
told you this."
"No, no," said Harriet. "Indeed it is better that I should hear it
from you, and you are mistaken in supposing I am so much overcome
entirely on account of--on account of--"
"The murder? Yes?" asked George, looking anxiously at her.
"It is all dreadful; no one in the world can feel it to be more
dreadful than I do," said Harriet, earnestly.
As she spoke she rose from her chair, pushed her hair off her
forehead, and began to walk slowly up and down the room. George sat
still, following her with his eyes, and noting, in all his excitement
and perturbation of spirit, the change which a few weeks had made in
her appearance.
"I am grieved and troubled for you, George. I see in this serious
results for you, and I think more of them."
"For me, Mrs. Routh? What can happen for me in this matter that has
not already happened? My mother has suffered all she can suffer. Time
may or may not restore her. Surely the follies and sins of my life
have been heavily punished. Nothing can undo all this misery; but
nothing can be added to it either. I have only to set the mystery at
rest."
"Take care, George," said Harriet, earnestly; "I am not sure of that.
Let us look at the case in all its bearings. Nothing that you have to
tell can contradict the evidence given at the inquest, and which
directs suspicion against you. You did dine with this wretched man;
you did leave the tavern in his company; you did wear the coat to
which the waiter swears."
"Ah, by the by," said George, "that was the coat I left at your house.
Where is it, Mrs. Routh? It must be produced, of course."
He did not yet perceive that she was trying to shake his
determination; but she answered his question with truly wonderful
carelessness. "The coat; O yes, I remember. You wrote to me about it.
It must be here, of course, unless it has been lost in the flitting
from South Molton-street. He tells me a lot of his things have gone
astray."
"Well," said George, "that's easily found out. Pray go on, Mrs. Routh.
You were saying--"
"I was saying, George, that when you put together all the strange
coincidences in this matter which have led, naturally, it must be
said, to such a conclusion as that the man who wore the coat which you
bought at Amherst is the criminal whom the police want to arrest--I
think you would find it very difficult to prove that you are not the
man!"
"Good God! You are not serious?" cried George.
"I am perfectly serious," Harriet answered. "How can you prove it? How
do I, at this moment, know in a manner which I could demonstrate to
legal satisfaction that you are not the man who did the deed?"
George looked at her in astonishment.
"Of course I _do_ know it--that is, I believe it, which is quite a
different thing; but supposing I did not believe it, supposing my mind
were not made up about it, how would you propose to prove it to me?
Tell me that, and then the strength of my argument, the value of my
advice, will become evident to you, I think."
Still George looked at her, and his colour rose. He was unaccountably
embarrassed by the question. The whole thing had appeared to him as
simple for him as it was terrible for Deane, when Harriet began to
speak. It bore a very different aspect now.
"I--I should prove that I parted with Deane, that night, at the door
of the billiard-rooms where we had been playing."
"Outside the door or inside, before witnesses or alone?" interrupted
Harriet.
"Why, it certainly was outside the door, and we were alone."
"Exactly. Then your having parted with him that night is just what you
cannot prove; and as you cannot prove that, you can prove nothing. Let
me repeat to you your own account of that night's proceedings, and you
will see that you can prove nothing to outweigh the presumptive
evidence against you. You told me this wretched man had money about
him which he boasted of; therefore you knew he was a rich prey. You
had no money--only a few shillings at least; you went to your lodgings
that night, and left them without notice on the following morning,
having paid your landlady with a ten-pound note that had been in this
man's possession. How can you account for that? You went to Amherst,
where you remained, alone, under a feigned name, for four days; you
returned to London, where it can be proved the occurrence was, at the
time, a topic of general discussion, late at night. You went abroad
the following morning, and at Amsterdam you offered certain valuable
diamonds for sale. The diamonds are your mother's, you say, and formed
part of a bracelet given to you by her."
"No, no," said George; "I never would explain that under any
circumstances."
Harriet smiled, but the steadfast earnestness of her manner was not
lessened by the smile, which was just a little contemptuous.
"That is precisely what you would be forced to explain," she
continued. "Certain diamond ornaments were among the articles in the
possession of the murdered man, says the newspaper report," she
pointed to the passage with a steady hand. He read it, and listened in
silence, his face grave and anxious.
"You must account for the diamonds which you sold at Amsterdam; how
are you to prove, otherwise, that they are not those the wretched man
wore when he was seen in your company?"
"I remember his studs and his ring," said George, in a low agitated
voice. "I wonder they have not been traced."
Harriet did not reply for a moment; and the click in her throat was
painfully hard and audible, as she said at length: "They would have
been broken up, of course; and remember, George, they were unset
diamonds you sold at Amsterdam."
George Dallas leaned his elbows on the table, and his head on his
hands. He looked at Harriet, and her face changed when his gaze was
removed--changed to a look of sharp, terrible anxiety, to all the
intentness of one pleading in a desperate cause.
"You must tell the story of your visit to Amherst; you must tell the
truth about your mother and the jewels; moreover, you must prove it.
Can your mother do that for you?"
"No," said George, drearily; "but my old nurse can."
"How? Did she see you on the Wednesday, when you arrived at Amherst t
Did she see you at all until the Monday? Could she swear you were at
Amherst in the interval? And, supposing she could, what would it
avail? Look here, George, this man's body was found on the Wednesday
evening, the eighteenth of April, and the presumption is that it had
been a night and a day in the river. Do you see what this means?" She
put her hand on his shoulder, and grasped it securely. He shrunk from
her light fingers; they hurt his flesh as though they had been steel
bars. She struck the newspaper lying open on the table with the
other hand, and said with a desperate effort, "It means this, George:
The man was found on Wednesday; but the deed was done on Tuesday
night--done, of course, after you left him; but who can prove that? He
was seen alive in your company late on Tuesday night, and he was never
seen alive again. The hours of that night must be accounted for,
George, if you are to prove yourself guiltless. How can you account
for them after the time the waiter saw you leave the tavern together?"
George did not answer. She caught her breath and went on, fixing on
him a sideway look of intense anxiety.
"Can any of the people at the billiard-rooms prove at what hour you
left them? Can any one at your former lodgings prove at what hour you
reached home that night?"
"I don't think we left any one after us at the billiard-room but the
marker," George replied. "By the way, how extraordinary he did not
come forward at the inquest! He must have noticed Deane's odd
appearance, and his diamond studs and things. I should think."
"One would think so," said Harriet; "but I dare say the foreign look
is commonly enough seen in such places. Still the coat must have been
very conspicuous. I forget whether you said you were in the habit of
going to those particular billiard-rooms."
"I did not say anything about it, Mrs. Routh. I never was there but
that once. It is very odd, as you say, about Deane's coat, but the
poor man hadn't it on. After we left the tavern, I said it was an odd,
un-English kind of coat, and too warm, I should think, for the
weather; but he said he had 'the shakes' that day--Yankee for ague,
you know--and had never worn it before in this country. He carried it
over his arm, I remember, the cloth side out, and threw it into a
corner of the billiard-room. I dare say no one saw it."
"Had he put it on when you parted with him?" asked Harriet.
"No," said George; "he was still carrying it over his arm, and I
remember now that I said to him, 'You had better button that trapper's
wrap of yours over all that money you've been staggering under the
weight of.' 'Lightened a little, old fellow, by you,' he said, though
he had paid his losses in a note, not in gold."
Harriet's face was less anxious now.
"Poor fellow!" George went on, with a slight shudder; "how dreadful it
is--such light words, too, as we parted with. When he handed me the
note, he asked for pen and ink, and wrote his name upon it, in full,
over some initials--A. F., I think--and told me a queer story about an
old lady who always indorsed her notes with her name, residence,
and the date of her birth, and how he once traced a forgery by a
bank-note, purporting to come from her, being devoid of those
eccentric inscriptions. He was telling me the story as we went out."
George's discursive fancy had wandered from his own position to the
circumstances which invested Deane's fate with additional sadness to
his mind. Harriet frowned angrily at this proof of his invincibly
light nature, and went on sharply:
"All this adds strength to my argument. But I asked you another
question. Did any one in the house you lodged at know at what hour you
went home that night? Is any one in a position to prove it?"
"No," said George. "I let myself in with a latch-key, and made no
noise. I never did when I could help it, there, the old woman was such
a Tartar."
"Then there is not a flaw in my argument, George," she said, in a
sweet, solemn tone, which, from the first time he had heard it, had
had an irresistible charm for the young man; "there is nothing to be
gained for any one, for any conceivable interest that you are bound to
consider, for any interest, indeed, except the abstract one of the
law, in telling what you know of this matter."
"The man's friends," remonstrated George, who, habitually submissive
to her, did not recoil at the suggestion, as he would infallibly have
recoiled had it come from any other person; "they may not know, they
may be in suspense, in misery."
"I hardly think so," said Harriet, and her blue eyes had their coldest
colour, and her sweet voice its subtlest inflection of scorn. "Did you
ever hear him mention relative or friend. Did you ever know a man so
cold, so callous, so base, so shamelessly devoid of any interest
save in his own pleasure or his own gain? Did you ever know one so
narrow-hearted, so mean-spirited, of so crafty and cruel a nature?"
Her energy quite startled George. She was looking straight before her,
and her hand was raised as though she were tracing a picture as her
mind produced it. "The man was a reptile, George--a cruel snake in his
nature. I don't believe any one on earth ever loved him, except his
mother in his babyhood. I hope she's dead; yes, I trust she's dead!
And that you should peril your safety, drag your mother's name into
the police-courts, rouse all the anger, stab all the pride, of your
stepfather, ruin, or at least greatly injure, your own prospects, by
the revelations you will be forced to make, supposing (which, I
confess, I think most difficult and improbable) you do prove your own
innocence, seems to me utterly monstrous and irrational. Remember, you
can give justice only negative assistance. If you prove that Deane was
the victim, and you not the criminal, you can't tell them who the
criminal is, or give them any information about Deane."
"No," said George, very quickly; "but then, you know, Routh can."
Harriet dropped her hand off his shoulder, and fell into a chair.
"You are overdone, Mrs. Routh," George said, tenderly, as he took her
hand in his, and resumed his old manner of deferential affection. "You
have talked too long and too much about this murder, and it has been
too much for you. I ought to have seen that before. We won't say
another word about it, until I have consulted Routh. How shocked he
will be! I will think of all you have said; but I will do nothing
to-day. I can't even wait to see him now, for I must get down to the
_Mercury_ office by four. I must leave you now."
"You are sure you will do nothing until we have seen you again?"
Harriet said, faintly. "George, let nothing induce you to mention the
matter at the _Mercury_. Only think of the godsend a hint would be to
them."
"I'll take care," said George. "I will not stir in the matter till I
have talked it over thoroughly with you."
"You will stay here, George, of course," said Harriet, kindly, holding
out her hand, but without rising. "We have a room at your disposal
now, you know."
"Thank you, Mrs. Routh, I will; but I don't think I shall be more than
a day or two in London, unless I should be detained by this sad
business."
"Are you going back to Amsterdam?" asked Harriet.
"No," said George; "I am going to my mother."
"I was right," Harriet said, when she was alone, as she lay back in
her chair, pale and exhausted. "I thought the one strong motive, the
motive which, though late aroused, has been strong enough to save
George Dallas from himself, could be powerful now. Twice his mother
has helped, has saved, at his expense, his worst, his involuntary
enemy. There was nothing else to work upon, but that has succeeded."
Harriet was right to a certain extent, but not quite right. Another
motive had helped the end she desired to gain, and George named it to
his own heart as he walked down to the _Mercury_ office by the name of
Clare Carruthers.
"You are a wonderful woman, Harry," said Routh, when Harriet had
concluded the brief statement into which she condensed her report of
the interview between herself and George. But, though he spoke in a
tone of strong admiration, and his face relaxed into a look of intense
relief, he did not hold her in his arms and kiss her passionately now.
"You are a wonderful woman, and this danger is escaped."
She smiled a little bitterly, very sadly, as she said:
"I don't know. At all events, it is once more tided over."