THE AMERICAN LETTERS.
Stewart Routh was as hard a man as could readily be found, but his
hardness was not proof against his meeting with George Dallas, and he
showed Harriet how great a trial it was to him, and how much he feared
his own constancy, when he told her he thought she had better not be
present at their meeting. The curse of an unholy alliance had fallen
upon these two, and was now beginning to make itself felt. Each was
desirous to conceal from the other the devices to which they were
compelled to resort, in order to keep up the false appearances to
which they were condemned; in all their life there was no time in
which they were free from restraint, except in solitude. But, though
the effect was in each case the same, the origin was widely different.
Harriet suffered for her husband's sake; he, entirely for his own. He
had calculated that if anything in his appearance, voice, and manner,
should escape his control, George would be certain to impute it to the
natural feelings of horror and regret with which he would have
received the intelligence conveyed to him by Harriet, of George's
discovery of the identity of the murdered man.
"You had better remain upstairs until I call you," Routh had said to
Harriet, "when Dallas comes to dinner. It will be easier for you," he
added. Harriet was sitting listlessly by her dressing-table while he
spoke, and he stood behind her chair, and looked gloomily at the
reflection of her face in the glass.
She smiled faintly. "Thank you, Stewart," she said; "it will be
easier." Then, after a brief pause, "Would you very much mind my not
going down to dinner at all?"
So far from minding it, Routh instantly felt that her absence would be
a great relief. It would enable him to sound George thoroughly, to
scheme upon whatever discoveries he should make concerning his future
plans; and then, Harriet had done all the hard work, had prepared the
way for him, had got over the difficulty and the danger. A little
unpleasantness, some disagreeable emotion, must indeed be encountered,
that was inevitable, but everything might go off well, and if so,
Harriet's restraining presence, Harriet's face, with its constant
reminder in it, would be much better out of sight.
"Not at all," he answered. "Stay upstairs if you like. I'll tell
Dallas you are a little knocked up, but will be all right in the
morning."
"He will not be surprised, I dare say," she replied, "though it was
not my way to be knocked up formerly."
"Nor to be always harping on one string, either; and I can't say
there's a change for the better," said Routh roughly. Once or twice of
late the innate ruffianism of the man had come out towards her, from
whom it had once been so scrupulously concealed. But she did not heed
it; not a quiver crossed the drooping rigid face, at which Routh once
more glanced covertly before he left the room. It would have been
impossible to tell whether she had even heard him.
Routh went down to the well-appointed dining-room, so different to the
scene of the dinners of which George had formerly partaken, in the
character of his guest. Wherever Harriet was, neatness and propriety
never were absent, but there was something more than neatness and
propriety in Routh's house now. Nevertheless, the look which the
master of the house cast upon the well-laid, well-lighted table, with
its perfect, unobtrusive, unpretentious appointments, was full of
gloom. He wished he had not come down so soon; the inevitable meeting
assumed a more portentous aspect with every minute that it was
delayed; he wished he had not told Harriet to remain in her room. The
fact was, Routh was staggered by the first failure of his plans.
Everything had gone so right with him; his calculations had been
fulfilled so exactly, so unfailingly, until now, and this unexpected
accident had befallen through a blunder of his own. True, Harriet had
met it with amazing tact, and had so treated it, that if only it could
be further dexterously managed, it might be turned to ultimate
advantage and an incalculable strengthening of his position. Let him
keep his thoughts to that view of the question, and keep his nerves
still. Were they going to play him false now, his nerves, which had
never failed him before? So Mr. Stewart Routh passed a very unpleasant
quarter of an hour before his expected guest arrived. He had just had
recourse, as much in weakness as in nervousness, to a flask of brandy
which stood on the sideboard, and had drank off half a glassful, when
a knock at the door was quickly answered by the grave and correct
man-servant, who formed an important and eminently respectable feature
of the improved household of the Rouths, and the well-known quick
tread of Dallas crossed the hall.
"Well, Routh, old fellow!"
"George, my boy; delighted to see you!" and the meeting was over; and
Routh, looking into the young man's face, saw that not a trace of
suspicion rested upon it, and that the material before him was as
plastic as ever.
"Harriet is not very well this evening," said Routh, "and begs you
will excuse her if she does not make her appearance. I undertook to
make it all right, and indeed I am rather glad we should be alone just
at first. I have so much to say and to hear, and Harriet has had a
long talk with you already."
"Yes," said George, and his smile was at once overcast, and his face
darkened into gloom, "I had a long talk with her. Of course, Routh,
she told you the dreadful discovery I have made, and the curious way
in which I am implicated in this ghastly affair."
"She told me all about it, my dear fellow," returned Routh. "But here
comes dinner, and we must postpone discussion until afterwards. I can
only say now that I think Harriet's view of the matter perfectly
correct, and her advice the soundest possible; it generally is, you
know of old." And then Routh made a slight signal suggestive of
caution to his guest, and the two men stood by the fireplace and
talked of trifles while the irreproachable man-servant set the dishes
upon the table, assisted by a neat parlour-maid.
While far more serious thoughts were busy in George's mind, over the
surface of it was passing observation of the changed order of things,
and an amused perception of the alteration in Routh himself. It was as
he had said in his letter--he had assumed the responsibility, the
pose, the prosperity of the genuine plodding "City man;" and he looked
the part to absolute perfection. "And yet," George thought, "he knows
that one who was with us two the last time we met has met with a
violent death; he knows that I am in a position as painful and
perilous as it is extraordinary, and that he is indirectly mixed up
with the dreadful event, and he is as cool and unconcerned as
possible. I suppose it is constitutional, this callousness; but I'm
not sure it is very enviable. However, one thing is certain--it makes
him the very best adviser one can possibly have under such
circumstances. He won't be carried away by the horror of the
circumstances, anyhow."
The dinner proceeded, and George yielded rapidly to the influences
which had been so powerful, and which he had been so determined to
resist, when out of Routh's presence and under the sway of his
penitence and his determination to reform. The conversation of Routh
asserted all its old charm; the man's consummate knowledge of the
world, his varied experience, the perfect refinement and tact which he
could display at will, the apparent putting off of old things, the
tone of utter respectability which abled George's newly-sharpened
conscience to consent to the fascination as readily as his
predilections, had more than ever an irresistible attraction for the
young man. During dinner, which, in the altered state of affairs,
involved the presence of the servant, Routh kept the conversation
almost entirely to Dallas's own doings, plans, and prospects. He knew
Amsterdam well, and talked of Dutch art and the history of the Low
Countries with much skill and fluency. Without an allusion which could
supply material for the curiosity and the gossip of the servants, he
made George understand that the Bohemian element had been completely
banished from his life and its associations; he sketched a plan of
London life for George, moderately prosperous, quite practical, and
entirely inoffensive. He made him, in short, as ready to congratulate
himself on the resumption of their intimacy in the present phase of
his moral being as he had been to rejoice in its formation under
former conditions.
Routh's spirits rose with his senses. He felt a depraved pride in the
devilish skill he possessed in his grand faculty of deception. He
excelled in it, he revelled in its exercise, and he had not enjoyed
it, in this orthodox way, of late. He had been making money, it is
true, and doing some real work as well as a good deal of swindling in
the process, but he had had only the opportunity of using a certain
set of his faculties. His persuasive eloquence, his personal
influence, his skilful and expansive but shrewd falsehood had lain
dormant for some time. As a singer who has lost his voice for a time
suddenly finds the liquid notes filling the air with all their
accustomed power and sweetness, and exults in the recovered faculty,
so Stewart Routh marked the pleasure, the enthusiasm, almost enabling
George to forget the coming painful topic of discussion from which
only a few minutes divided them, as he listened to the voice of the
charmer, who had never before charmed him so wisely nor so well.
At length the wine was set upon the table, and then they were alone;
and by this time, so complete did Routh feel his resumption of power
over George Dallas, that it was with indifference only very little
feigned that he said:
"And now, George, let us go into this sad business about poor Deane.
It has quite floored Harriet, as I dare say you guessed."
"And so you give me the same counsel as Harriet has given me," said
George, when he had to tell his story all over again, and had worked
himself up into a new fit of excitement over the horror of the murder,
and the dreadful idea of the ignorance of the deed in which the dead
man's relatives still remained.
"I do, indeed, George," said Routh, solemnly: "in taking any other
course you will expose yourself to certain difficulty, and, indeed, to
imminently probable danger. While you have been telling all this, I
have been thinking how fortunate it was that I was away at the time,
and so down upon my luck that I never knew or thought about any public
affairs, and so did not hear of the murder except in the vaguest way.
In the peculiar lustre of our London civilization, you know, George,
somebody found dead in the river is so frequent a mote, that nobody
thinks about it."
"Not in a general way," said George; "but they made so much of this,
and were so confident that it was a political affair, I cannot
understand how any of us escaped hearing of it."
"Yes," acquiesced Routh, "it is very extraordinary, but such things do
happen. And rather fortunate, it seems, that they do, for if I had
dropped in on the inquest, it would have been very awkward for you."
"Why?" said George; "after all, the truth must have come out, and all
this misery about my mother would have been avoided."
An evil look from Routh's eye lighted for a moment on the young man's
unconscious face, then glanced away, as he said:
"You forget that all I could have said must have strongly favoured the
notion that the man who wore the coat which the waiter swore to, and
was last seen with Deane, was the last person who ever saw him alive.
If I had had time to think, of course I shouldn't have said a word
about it; but if I had been hurried into speaking, that is what I must
have said. Come, George, you are much too sensitive about this matter.
Of course, I'm sorry for Deane, but I care a great deal more for you,
and I decline to look at any part of this matter except such as
concerns you. As to his relatives, as that part of the business
appears to distress you most keenly, I must set your mind at rest by
informing you that he had not a near relation in the world."
"Indeed!" said George. "How do you know?"
"He told me so," said Routh. "You will say, perhaps, that is not very
trustworthy evidence, but I think we may take it in this particular
instance for more than its general worth. He was the coldest, hardest,
most selfish fellow I ever knew in the whole course of my experience,
which has included a good deal of scoundreldom, and he seemed so
thoroughly to appreciate the advantages of such isolation, that I
believe it really did exist."
"He was certainly a mystery in every way," said George. "Where did he
live? We never knew him--at least I never did--except loafing about at
taverns, and places of the kind."
"I don't know where he lived," said Routh; "he never gave me an
address, or a rendezvous, except at some City eating-house, or
West-end billiard-room."
"How very extraordinary that no one recognized the description! It was
in every way remarkable, and the fur-lined coat must have been known
to some one. If I had seen any mention of the murder, I should have
remembered that coat in a moment."
"Would you?" said Routh. "Well, it would have thrown me off the scent,
for I never happened to see it. An American coat, no doubt. However, I
have a theory, which I think you will agree with, and which is this: I
suspect he had been living somewhere in another name--he told me he
wasn't always known by that of Deane--under not very creditable
circumstances, and as he must have had some property, which, had he
been identified, must have been delivered up to the authorities, those
in the secret have very wisely held their tongues."
"You think there was a woman in the case?"
Routh smiled a superior smile.
"Of course I think so; and knowing as much or as little of the man as
you and I know, we are not likely to blame her much for consulting her
own interests exclusively. This seems a curious case to us, because we
happen to know about it; but just think, in this enormous city, in
this highly criminal age, how common such things must be. How many
persons may not have dropped out of existence since you and I last
met, utterly unknown and uncared for, amid the mass of human beings
here? It is no such rare thing, George, believe me, and you must
listen to reason in this matter, and not run absurd risks to do an
imaginary piece of justice."
This was Harriet's counsel merely put in colder, more worldly words.
Routh watched his listener keenly as he gave it, and saw that his
purpose was gained. He would have been glad now to have turned the
conversation into some other channel; and did partially succeed in
directing it to Dallas's literary prospects and intentions, but only
for a time. George pertinaciously came back to the murder, to his
mother's state, to his apprehensions that she might never recover, and
to his altered feelings towards Mr. Carruthers.
Routh made very effective use of the latter topic. He enlarged upon
the pride and sensitiveness of Mr. Carruthers; adverted to the
pleasure with which, in case of her recovery, his mother would hail
the better state of things for which Mr. Carruthers's letter to his
stepson, combined with George's adoption of a new and steady career,
would afford an opening; and congratulated George upon having been
saved from taking any step which, by bringing public notice upon
himself in so terrible a matter, must have incensed the proud man, and
irritated him against him incalculably.
George was amenable to this line of reasoning, and with only
occasional divergence from the main topic of their discourse, the
evening passed away, and the two men parted for the night, it having
been agreed that Harriet should be taken into consultation in the
morning, and a well-considered letter written to Mr. Carruthers.
George Dallas was in the dining-room on the following morning before
Routh and Harriet came in, and he found a letter directed to himself,
in a hand with which he was unacquainted, on the breakfast-table. He
broke the seal with some alarm and much curiosity. A slip of paper
folded round two thin limp letters formed the enclosure; it bore only
the words; "My dear boy, I forgot to give you these letters. You had
better read them. I think they are from your uncle.--E. B."
George sat down by the window, through which the soft air of a morning
bright and beautiful even in London came refreshingly in. He looked at
the postmarks of the two letters, and broke the seal of that which
bore the earliest date first. As he read the letter, which was long,
and closely written, ail occasional exclamation escaped him, and when
he had finished its perusal, he threw it hastily down, and impatiently
tore open the other. This one, on the contrary, was brief; he had read
the few lines it contained in a few minutes, with a face expressive of
the utmost astonishment, when Harriet, whose noiseless step had
escaped his hearing, entered the room.
Without pausing to exchange the customary greeting, she came quickly
towards him, and asked him "What was the matter? Had he any bad news?"
"Not bad news, but most astonishing, most unexpected news, Mrs. Routh.
These letters have been sent to me from Poynings; they are written to
my mother by my uncle, her only brother, and they announce his
immediate arrival in England. How fortunate that Ellen should have
sent them to me! But I don't know what to do about sending the news to
my mother. She ought to know it. What can I do?"
"Communicate with Mr. Carruthers at once, George," said Harriet, in
the tone of quiet decision with which she was accustomed to settle
matters submitted to her judgment. "He is with her, and knows what she
can bear. Sit down now and have some breakfast, and tell me about this
uncle of yours. I never heard you mention him."
She took her place at the head of the table. She was dressed, as he
had been accustomed to see her, with neatness and taste; there was no
change in her appearance in that respect, yet there was a change--a
change which had struck George painfully yesterday, and which, in the
midst of all the agitation of to-day, he could not keep from noticing.
"Are you well, Mrs. Routh?" he asked her, anxiously. "Are you sure you
are well? I don't like your looks."
"Never mind my looks, George," Harriet said, cheerfully; "I am very
well. Get on with your breakfast and your story. Routh will be here
presently, and I want to know all about it before he comes. He gets
impatient at my feminine curiosity, you know."
The smile with which she spoke was but the ghost of her former smile,
and George still looked at her strangely, but he obeyed her, and
proceeded with his breakfast and his story.
"I don't know very much about my mother's family," he said, "because
they did not like her marriage with my father, and she kept aloof from
them, and her parents were dead before she had the opportunity of
appeasing them by making the fine match they would have considered her
marriage with Mr. Carruthers to be. I know that some of their
relatives were settled in America,--some at New York, some in South
Carolina,--and my mother's brother, Mark Felton--queer name,
puritanical and fanatical, with a touch of the association of
assassination about it--was sent out to New York when quite a child. I
forgot to tell you it was my mother's stepfather and her mother who
objected to her first marriage--her own father died when she was an
infant; and on her mother's second marriage with a Mr. Creswick--a
poor, proud, dissipated fellow, I fancy, though I never heard much
about him--the American branch of the family sent for the boy. My
mother has told me they would have taken her too, and her stepfather
would not have made the least objection--we haven't been lucky in
stepfathers, Mrs. Routh--but her mother would not stand it; and so she
kept her child. Not for many years, for she married my father when she
was only seventeen. Her brother was just twenty then, and had been
taken into the rich American firm of his relatives, and was a
prosperous man. She knew very little of him, of course. I believe he
took the same view of her marriage as her mother had taken; at all
events, the first direct communication between them took place when my
mother was left a handsome and poor young widow, with one boy, who did
not make much delay about proving himself the graceless and ungrateful
son you know him to have been."
George's voice faltered, and an expression of pain crossed his face.
Harriet looked at him kindly, and laid her soft white hand on his.
"That is all over, you know," she said. "You will not err in that way
again."
"But the consequences, Mrs. Routh, the consequences. Think of my
mother _now_. However," and he drew a long breath, and threw his
shoulders back, like a man who tries to shift a burden, "I must go on
with my story. There's not much more to tell, however. My mother might
have had a home for herself and me in her brother's house, but she
could not bear dependence, and has told me often that she regarded
unknown relatives as the most formidable kind of strangers. Her
brother's wife made him resent my mother's determination to remain in
England, and do the best she could for us both on our small means. Of
course, all this was an old story long before I knew anything about
it, and I fancy that it is only lately any correspondence has taken
place between my mother and her brother. From this letter" (he touched
the first he had read) "I can divine the nature of that
correspondence. My mother," said George, sadly, "has appealed to her
brother on behalf of her prodigal son, and her brother has told her
his sorrows in return; they have been heavy, and in one respect not
unlike her own. He, too, has an only son, and seems to find little
happiness in the fact."
"Did you not know of your cousin's existence until now?" asked
Harriet.
"O yes, I knew of it, in a kind of way; in fact, I just knew he
existed, and no more. I don't think my mother knew more. I fancy in
some previous letter he told her of his wife's death, and the general
unsatisfactoriness of Arthur."
"He--your uncle, I mean---is then a widower."
"Yes," replied George. "I won't bother you with the whole of this long
letter, Mrs. Routh; the gist of it is this: My cousin, Arthur Felton,
is not a good son, nor a good anything, I fancy, for I find my uncle
congratulating my mother on my affection for her, my good feeling, in
spite of all--(bless the poor man! he little knew how his words would
wound, and how ill-deserved is the extenuation!)--and prophesying all
manner of good things about me. It appears this hopeful son of his has
been in Europe for some months, and probably in London for some months
too, as my uncle says--stay, here is the passage: 'Arthur has with him
a letter of introduction to you and Mr. Carruthers, some trifles from
this side of the world which I thought you might like, and my
instructions to make his cousin's acquaintance as soon as possible.
You speak of George as living habitually in London; I hope by this
time they have met, are good friends, and are, perhaps, chumming
together. I have not heard from Arthur for some time. He is a careless
correspondent, and not at any time so regardful of the feelings of
other people as he might be. I dare say the first intelligence I shall
have of him from England, as he cannot possibly want money'--that
looks bad, Mrs. Routh," said George, breaking off abruptly, and
looking up at her; "that looks bad--'as he cannot possibly want money,
will be from you. I know you will receive him kindly, and I earnestly
hope he may make a favourable impression on Mr. Carruthers.'" Here
George left off reading the letter, and looked blankly at Harriet.
"And he has never presented himself at Poynings, has he?" she asked.
"Never, that I know of; and of course Ellen Brookes would have told
me, if he had. Besides, you see this letter was late for the mail, and
arrived with this other one. My mother never saw either, and they have
been lying more than six weeks at Poynings."
"No doubt your cousin is still in Paris. All Americans delight in
Paris. He would be in no hurry to leave Paris, depend on it, if he had
no more interesting acquaintance than that of an aunt and a cousin to
make in London, and as much time before him as he chose."
"I should think with you, Mrs. Routh, only that this letter, written
at New York on the 3rd of April, says my uncle had heard from Arthur,
who had merely written him a line from London, saying: 'Here I am.
Particulars by next mail.' The mail brought no particulars, and my
uncle writes to my mother, subsequently to this long letter, which is
cheerful enough, you'll observe, that he is a prey to a presentiment
that something is wrong with Arthur, also that he has conceived the
strongest wish to come to England and see her, and especially to see
me--that he has sufficient money and leisure to gratify the
inclination--that he will wait for the chance of further intelligence
of Arthur, and to arrange certain business matters, a month longer,
and then come to England. He seems to have formed a remarkably
elementary notion of my respected stepfather's manners, customs, and
general disposition, for he proposes to present himself at Poynings
immediately on his arrival, and never appears to entertain the least
misgiving as to the cordiality of his reception. He must have been
astonished at getting no answer to either letter, and I should think
must have had his presentiments considerably sharpened and
strengthened by the fact."
Here George referred to the date of the later of the two letters, and
exclaimed:
"By Jove! I should not be surprised if he were at Poynings now!"
At this moment Routh entered the room, and, in his turn, had the new
aspect of affairs explained to him, but at no great length. He
displayed very little interest in the matter, thought it very probable
that Mr. Felton might have arrived in England, or even at Poynings,
but did not see what George could do in that case.
"You can't go and entertain another man at a house where you haven't
the entrée yourself," he said. "I suppose the old woman will let you
know if he really comes to Poynings. In the mean time, send the
letters on to Mr. Carruthers. You expect to get his address from some
girl or other--his niece, I think I understood Harriet--and ask what
is to be done. It's rather a lucky turn up, Dallas, I take it, and
will help your good-boy intentions towards your stepfather
wonderfully, to have a rich uncle to act as a connecting-link between
you. By the by, he's sure to set you up in life, George, and
periodical literature will be robbed of a shining luminary."
George did not altogether like the tone in which all this was said. It
was a little sneering, and altogether careless. Nothing was so
difficult to Routh, as it always is to men of his class, as the
sustained assumption of interest in any affairs but their own; and now
that his anxieties of the previous day were relieved, and he had no
immediate object in which Dallas was concerned, to gain, he was
impatient of any interruption of his immediate pursuits, and harsh and
rough with him. He sat down, and ate his breakfast hastily, while he
read a heap of letters which lay beside his plate.
"I don't know, indeed," George had replied good-humouredly to the
speech which had jarred upon him; "but you are busy, Routh, and I
won't trouble you with my business just now. Mrs. Routh and I will
discuss the letter to Mr. Carruthers."
"A telegram for Mr. Dallas," said the irreproachable servant, who
entered the room while George was speaking. "Please to sign this,
sir."
Routh looked up from his letters, Harriet set down the teapot, and
quietly taking up the slip of paper which the man had laid upon the
table by George's elbow, signed it with his name, writing it with a
pencil which hung at her waist. The servant left the room, and George
said:
"I was not wrong. This is from my uncle, and it comes from Amherst. He
says: 'Meet me at Morley's Hotel this evening, at six.'"
"Very odd," said Routh. "Well, George, I am sure I wish you all manner
of luck with your American uncle."
He had taken up his hat and gloves as he spoke, and now rang for the
servant, whom he directed to call a hansom. The man went to the door,
and transferred the commission to a street-boy lingering about there,
who ran off, and returned in two minutes with the required vehicle.
George and Routh were standing on the steps as the boy reappeared,
talking. They shook hands, and Routh was stepping into the cab, when
George followed him, and said, in a whisper:
"Was it not extraordinary the boy did not recognize poor Deane?"
"What boy?" said Routh, in astonishment, and stepping back on to the
flagway.
"Why, that boy; the boy you always employ. He brought you my message
the other day. Don't you remember it was he brought your note to poor
Deane that day at the tavern?"
"I did not remember; I did not particularly notice," said Routh.
"Good-bye." And he jumped into the cab, and was driven away.
George went back into the house, eyed curiously by Jim Swain, who
touched his cap as he passed.