THE FALLING OF THE SWORD.
Stewart Routh left his house in Mayfair at an early hour on the day
following that which had witnessed the eccentric proceedings and
subsequent resolution of Jim Swain. Things were prospering with him;
and the vague dread which had fallen on him had been dissipated. Hope
and defiance divided his mind between them. His speculations were all
doing well; there was money to be had--money easy to be realized, on
which he could lay his hand at very short notice, and there was
triumphant successful love. So much had hope to feed on--assuredly no
insufficient aliment. Defiance reared itself against Fate. The time
was drawing near, approaching with fearfully rapid strides, when the
contingency, long contemplated, successfully eluded for a period
beyond his expectation, kept off by such unlikely accidents and
combinations as might almost have justified his daring faith in his
luck, but recognized of late as inevitable, must be realized, when the
identity of the murdered man must be known, and the perilous
investigation must begin. So be it, he was ready to meet the danger if
it must be met; but he hoped no such necessity would arise. His
influence over the beautiful woman whom he now really loved with all
the passion he had at first feigned was becoming every day stronger
and more complete. He knew that the strength of his nature had subdued
her; she had no pride, she had only vanity; and Stewart Routh made the
mistake to which selfish and interested natures are prone. He forgot
to calculate upon the influence of selfishness and calculation when
their employ must necessarily be in opposition to him. His egotism
injured the balance of his intellect, and now he had not the aid of
Harriet's calm, cool, unerring judgment in his scheme to restore that
balance. His position with regard to Harriet was the most troublesome
topic of his thoughts just now. He tried to forget it often, but he
did not succeed; not that any sentimental obstacle to the most
complete oblivion presented itself. Routh never bestowed a backward
glance upon the life of self-sacrifice and devotion to him, of
fidelity which, however depraved in its manifestations, was still
fidelity, fond and true as the best man who ever lived an honest and
virtuous life in the face of heaven and earth might be proud to
inspire, which had been that of the woman whom he had deliberately
betrayed, and was now prepared deliberately to abandon. He would have
sneered at such a suggestion as a contemptible weakness. Harriet had
been undeniably useful to him. He did not attempt to deny the fact to
himself; but circumstances had arisen which prevented his making use
of her in the future, and consequently, as this instrument was
unfortunately living, intelligent, peculiarly acute, and animated by
one of the strongest of human passions, had become dangerous. Harriet
had been agreeable to him too--it has been said that he had loved her
after his fashion; but this had been all over months ago; and the
deadest of all mortal things, to a man of Stewart Routh's stamp, is a
dead love; it has not even the dreary faculty of ghostliness--it
cannot haunt. The uncomplaining, active, hard-working, inventive,
untiring comrade, the passionately loving wife, the shrewd,
unscrupulous, undaunted, steel-nerved colleague, was nothing more to
him now than a dangerously sharp-witted, suspicious woman, who knew a
great deal too much about him, and was desperately in his way. The
exhilaration of his spirits and the partial intoxication of his new
passion had done away with the fear of Harriet which had taken
possession of him, but they had intensified his dislike, and one
thought presented itself with peculiar distinctness to Stewart Routh
as he went City-wards that morning. It was:
"If it was only to get out of her sight, to be rid of her for ever,
what a relief it would be!"
He had been at some pains to keep up appearance with his wife since
their return to London. To the step which he meditated a quarrel with
her was in no way necessary; and in the event of his failing to bring
his plans to maturity before the inevitable discovery, it was all
important that they should be agreed on the line of action to be
taken. Harriet could not, indeed, oppose him successfully in his
determination, if the occasion should arise, to throw the charge of
the murder upon George Dallas; but she might render his position
extremely perilous if she did not second him. What reason had he to
fear? The estrangement between them had been growing wider, it was
true, but it had not been exclusively of his making; she had held
aloof from him as much as he from her, and he acknowledged that, if no
infidelity had existed upon his part, it would still have taken place.
From the moment they ceased to be comrades in expedients, and became
accomplices in crime, the consequences made themselves felt. Routh did
not believe in blessings or in curses, but he did not dispute the
inevitable result of two persons finding out the full extent of each
other's wickedness--that those two persons, if obliged to live
together, will find it rather uncomfortable. The worst accomplice a
man can have is his wife, he had often thought; women always have some
scruple lurking somewhere about them, a hankering after the ideal, for
the possibility of respecting a man in some degree. When he had been
forced to see and to believe in the intensity of his wife's silent
sufferings, it had occurred to him more than once to think, "she would
not be so miserable if she had done it herself; she would have been
much jollier. Nothing ever will cure some women of sentiment."
Did it ever occur to him that it had not been worth his while to do
what he had done? that, on the whole, it had not paid? No, never.
Routh had been angry with Harriet when the matter had been brought up
between them, had complained that it was always "cropping up;" but the
truth was, he thought of it himself much more frequently than it was
impressed on him by any allusion from without; and he never ceased to
remind himself that the deed had been necessary, indispensable. It had
brought him money when money must have been had, or all must have
ended for him; it had brought him money when money meant a clearing
and brightening of his sky, an utter change in his life, the cessation
of a hazardous and ignoble warfare, the restoration to a peaceful and
comparatively safe career. He was in a difficult position now, it was
true--a position in which there was peril to be surmounted only by
dauntlessness, prudence, and coolness; but he was dauntless, prudent,
and cool. Had all this never been, what might have been his position?
When Deane and he had met, his luck had been almost at its lowest;
and, in the comradeship which had ensued, there had always been
burning anger and intense humiliation on Routh's part, and cool,
sneering, heartless boasting on Deane's. Routh was the cleverer man of
the two, and incomparably the greater villain; but Deane had elements
of rascality in him which even Routh had felt himself entitled to
despise. And he had hated him. Routh, in his cool manner of thinking
things over, had not failed to take this feeling into due account. He
would not have killed Deane only because he hated him; he was too true
to his principles to incur so tremendous a risk for the simple
gratification of even the worst sentiment, of even sentiment
intensified into a passion, but he allowed it sufficient weight and
influence effectually to bar the entrance of a regret when the larger
object had also been attained. He had no pity for his victim, not even
the physical sensation which is experienced by men whose organization
and associations are not of the brutal kind, when temper,
circumstances, or sudden temptation have impelled them to deeds of
cruelty; he had hated Deane too much for that. He never thought of the
crime he had committed without dwelling on the conduct which had made
him resolve upon it. How the man had played with his necessities, had
tricked him with compromising confidences, had duped him with false
promises, had led him to the very brink of the abyss, and there had
struggled with him--with him, a desperate man! Fool--fool! one must go
over the brink, then; and who should it but be the weaker? who should
hold his ground but the stronger--but he who had everything to gain?
He thought over all these things again to-day, methodically, arranging
the circumstances as they had occurred in his mind. He recalled the
hours of suspense through which he had lived on that day when Deane
had promised to bring him a sum of money, representing his own
interest in the mining company, which sum was to secure to Routh the
position he had striven hard to attain, and rescue him from the
consequences of a fraudulent transfer of shares which he had already
effected. It had come to a question of hours, and the impatience and
suspense had almost worn out Routh's strong nerves, almost deprived
him of his self-command. How well he remembered it; how he lived
through all that time again! It had never been so vivid in his
remembrance, with all the vitality of hate and anger, often as he had
thought of it, as it was to-day.
The heartless trifling, the petty insolence of the rich rascal, who
little guessed the strength and resolution, the daring and
desperation, of the greater, if worse, villain, came back as freshly
to Stewart Routh's vindictive memory as if he had not had his ghastly
revenge and his miserable triumph months ago, as if he had suffered
and winced under them but yesterday. And that yesterday! What a
glorious day in his life it had been! Presently he would think about
that, and nothing but that; but now he must pursue his task of memory
to the end. For he was not his own master in this. Once set to
thinking of it, to living it all over again, he had no power to
abridge the history.
He had to remember the hours during which he had waited for Deane's
coming, for the payment of the promised money; he had to remember how
they waned, and left him sick with disappointment, maddened with
apprehension; how he had determined he would keep the second
appointment with Deane: he did not fear his failing in that, because
it was for his own pleasure; and then, for the first time in his life,
had felt physically unable to endure suspense, to keep up appearances.
He had to remember how he had shrunk from the coarse insolence with
which he knew Deane would sport with his fears and his suspense in the
presence of George Dallas, unconscious of their mutual position; how
all-important it was that, until he had wrung from Deane the promised
money, he should keep his temper. He had to remember how the idea that
the man who had so far broken faith with him already, and might break
faith with him altogether, and so ruin him utterly (for if he had
failed then, and been detected, hope would have been at an end for
him), was within a few yards of him, perhaps with the promised money
in his pocket, at that moment, had occurred to him with a strange
fascination. How it had intensified his hatred of Deane; how it had
deepened his sense of his own degradation; how it had made him rebel
against and curse his own poverty, and filled his heart with
malediction on the rich man who owned that money which meant safety
and success to him. He had to remember how Deane had given no answer
to his note, temperately worded and reasonable (Harriet had kept to
the letter of the truth in what she had said of it to George Dallas),
but had left him to all the tortures of suspense. He had to remember
how the desire to know whether Deane really had had all day in his
possession the money he had promised him, and had kept him expecting,
grew imperative, implacable, irresistible; how he had hung about the
tavern, and discovered by Deane's boasting words to his companion that
he had guessed aright, had followed them, determined to have an answer
from Deane. He had to remember how he strove with anger, with some
remnants of his former pride, which tortured him with savage
longings for revenge, while he waited about in the purlieus of the
billiard-rooms whither Deane and Dallas had gone. He remembered how
lonely and blank, how quiet and dreary, the street had become by the
time the two came out of the house together and parted, in his
hearing, with some careless words. He had to remember how he
confronted Deane, and was greeted with a taunt; how he had borne it;
how the man had played with his suspense, and ostentatiously displayed
the money which the other had vainly watched and waited for all day;
and then, suddenly assuming an air of friendliness and confidence, had
led him away Citywards, without betraying his place of residence,
questioning him about George Dallas. He had to remember how this had
embittered and intensified his anger, and how a sudden fear had sprung
up in his mind that Deane had confided to Dallas the promises he had
made to him, and the extent to which their "business" relations had
gone. A dexterous question or two had relieved this apprehension, and
then he had once more turned the conversation on the subject in which
he was so vitally interested. He had to remember--and how vividly he
did remember, with what an awakening of the savage fury it had called
into life, how Deane had met this fresh attempt--with what a cool and
tranquil assertion that he had changed his mind, had no further
intention of doing any business in Routh's line--was going out of
town, indeed, on the morrow, to visit some relations in the country,
too long neglected, and had no notion when they should meet again.
And then--then Stewart Routh had to remember how he had killed the man
who had taunted, deceived, treated him cruelly; how he had killed him,
and robbed him, and gone home and told his wife--his comrade, his
colleague, his dauntless, unscrupulous Harriet. He had to remember
more than all this, and he hated to remember it. But the obligation
was upon him; he could not forget how she had acted, after the first
agony had passed over, the first penalty inflicted by her physical
weakness, which she had spurned and striven against. So surely as his
memory was forced to reproduce all that had gone before, it was
condemned to revive all that had come after. But he did not soften
towards her that day, no, not in the least, though never had his
recollection been so detailed, so minute, so calm. No, he hated her.
She wearied him; she had ceased to be of any service to him; she was a
constant torment to him. So he came back to the idea with which his
reflections had commenced, and, as he entered on the perusal of the
mass of papers which awaited his attention in his "chambers" in
Tokenhouse-yard--for he shared the business-abode of the invisible
Flinders now--he repeated:
"What a relief it would be to get away from her for ever!" Only a few
days now, and the end must come. He was a brave man in his evil way,
and he made his calculations coolly, and scanned his criminal
combinations without any foolish excess of confidence, but with
well-grounded expectation. For a little longer it would not be
difficult to keep on fair terms with Harriet, especially as she had
renewed her solitary mode of life, and he had taken the precaution of
pretending to a revived devotion to play, since the auspicious
occasion on which he had won so largely at Homburg. Thus his absence
from home was accounted for; and as she had not the slightest
suspicion that Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge was in London, had never
displayed the least jealousy, except on the one occasion when he had
shown her the locket, and had unhesitatingly accepted his explanation
of their sudden return to England, he had no reason to trouble himself
about her. To sedulously avoid exciting her suspicion and jealousy
now, and when the proper time should arrive, to confirm the one and
arouse the other so effectually by desertion, infidelity, and insult,
as to drive her at once to free herself from him by the aid of the
law--this was his scheme. It looked well; he knew Harriet, he
thought, thoroughly, and he might safely calculate upon the course she
would adopt. It was strange, if human inconsistency can ever be
strange, that Stewart Routh, a man of eminently vindictive
disposition, entirely forgot to take into account that the woman thus
desperately injured might also seek her revenge, which would consist
in declining to take her own freedom at the price of giving him his.
Perhaps if the depths of that dark heart had been sounded, the
depths beyond its own consciousness--the unvisited, unquestioned,
profound--it would have been discovered that this man was so entirely
accustomed to the devotion of the woman who loved him with a desperate
though intelligent love, that even in her utmost despair and extreme
outrage of wrong he felt assured she would do that which it was his
will she should do.
During all this mental review he had hardly bestowed a thought on
George Dallas. He would be safe enough in the end, if the worst came
to the worst. It had suited him to magnify the strength of the chain
of coincidences, which looked like evidence, in discussing them with
George, and he had magnified it; it suited him to diminish that
strength in discussing them with himself, and he diminished it. A good
deal of suffering and disgrace to all the "Felton-Dallas-Carruthers
connection," as he insolently phrased it in his thoughts, must come to
pass, of course, but no real danger. And if it were not so? Well, in
that case, he really could not afford to care. When he had wanted
money, Deane (he still thought of him by that name) had had to give
way to that imperative need. Now he wanted safety, and Dallas must pay
its price. There was something of the sublime of evil in this man's
sovereign egotism. As he turned his mind away from the path it had
been forced to tread to the end, he thought, "there is a touch of the
whimsical in everything; in this it is the demi-semi-relationship
between Harriet and these people. I suppose the sensitive lady of
Poynings never heard of her stepfather Creswick's niece."
A letter for Mr. Routh, a delicate, refined-looking letter, sealed
with the daintiest of monograms, the thick board-like envelope
containing a sheet of paper to match, on which only a few lines are
scrawled. But as Stewart Routh reads them, his sinister dark eyes
gleam with pleasure and triumph, and his handsome evil face is deeply
flushed.
"Bearer waits." Mr. Routh writes an answer to the letter, short but
ardent, if any one had now been there to judge by the expression of'
his face while he was writing it. He calls his clerk, who takes the
letter to "bearer;" but that individual has been profiting by the
interval to try the beer in a closely adjacent beer-shop, and the
letter is laid upon a table in the passage leading to Stewart Routh's
rooms, to await his return from the interesting investigation.
Another letter for Mr. Routh, and this time also "bearer waits."
Waits, too, in the passage, and sees the letter lying on the table,
and has plenty of time to read the address before the experimenting
commissionaire returns, has it handed to him, and trudges off with it.
Presently the door at the end of the passage opens, and Routh comes
out. "Who brought me a letter just now?" he says to the clerk, and
then stops short, and turns to "bearer."
"O, it's you, Jim, is it? Take this to Mrs. Routh."
Then Stewart Routh went back to his room, and read again the note to
which he had just replied. It was from Harriet, and contained only
these words:
"Come home at the first possible moment. A letter from G. D., detained
by accident for two days, has just come, and is of the utmost
importance. _Let nothing detain you_."
The joy and triumph in his face had given way to fury; he muttered
angry oaths as he tore the note up viciously.
"All the more reason if the worst has come--or is nearer than we
thought--that I should strike the decisive blow to-day. She has all
but made up her mind--she must make it quite up to-day. This is
Tuesday; the Asia sails on Saturday. A letter from Dallas only cannot
bring about the final crash: nothing can really happen till he is
here. If I have only ordinary luck, we shall be out of harm's way by
then."
A little later Stewart Routh made certain changes in his dress, very
carefully, and departed from Tokenhouse-yard in a hansom, looking as
unlike a man with any cares, business or other kind, upon his mind as
any gentleman in all London. "Queen's-gate, Kensington," he said to
the driver; and the last words of the letter, daintily sealed, and
written on board-like paper, which was in his breast-pocket at that
moment, were:
"_I will wait for you in the carriage at Queen's-gate_."
"I'm glad I see'd that 'ere letter," said Jim Swain to himself, as,
deeply preoccupied by the circumstances of the preceding day, he faced
towards Routh's house, "because when I put Mr. Dallas on this here
lay, I needn't let out as I spied 'em home. I can 'count for knowin'
on the place permiskus." And then, from an intricate recess of his
dirty pocket, much complicated with crumbs and fragments of tobacco,
Jim pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper. "Teddy wrote it down quite
right," he said, and he smoothed out the paper, and transferred it,
for safer keeping, to his cap, in which he had deposited the missive
with which he was charged.
When Jim Swain arrived at his destination, and the door was opened to
him, Harriet was in the hall. She seemed surprised that he had brought
her a written answer. She had expected merely a verbal reply, telling
her how soon Routh would be home. Jim pulled his cap off hastily,
taken by surprise at seeing her, and while he handed her the note,
looked at her with a full renewal of all the compassion for her which
had formerly filled his untaught but not untender heart. He guessed
rightly that he had brought her something that would pain her: She
looked afraid of the note during the moment she held it unopened in
her hand; but she did not think only of herself, she did not forget to
be kind to him.
"Go down to the kitchen, and cook will give you some dinner, Jim," she
said, as she went into the dining-room and shut the door; and the boy
obeyed her with an additional sense of hatred and suspicion against
Routh at his heart.
"I'm beginning to make it all out now," he thought, as he disposed of
his dinner in most unusual silence. "The other one put Routh up to it
all, out of spite of some kind. It was a plant of _hers_, it was; and
this here good 'un--for she _is_ good--is a-sufferin' for it all,
while he's a carryin' on." Shortly after Jim Swain took a rueful leave
of the friendly cook, and departed by the area-gate. Having reached
Piccadilly, he stood still for a moment, pondering, and then took a
resolution, in pursuance of which he approached the house at which he
had made a similar inquiry the day before, and again asked if there
was any news of Mr. Felton. "Yes," the servant replied; "a telegram
had been received from Paris. The rooms were to be ready on the
following day. Mr. Felton and Mr. Dallas were coming by the tidal
train."
"I've a mind to go back and tell her," said Jim to himself. "She must
want to know for some particular reason, or she wouldn't have sent me
to ask yesterday, and she wouldn't have let me catch her out in
tellin' a crammer if there warn't somethin' in it. But no," said Jim
sagely, "I won't. I'll wait for Mr. Dallas; there ain't long to wait
now."
Jim Swain's resolution had an important consequence, which came about
in a very ordinary and trifling way. If the boy had gone back to
Routh's house, and had been admitted into the hall, he would have seen
a piece of paper lying on the door-mat, on which his quick eyes would
instantly have recognized the calligraphic feat of his accomplished
friend, Teddy Smith; and he would have regained possession of it. But
Jim did not return, and the paper lay there undisturbed for some
hours--lay there, indeed, until it was seen by the irreproachable
Harris when he went to light the gas, picked up, perused by him, and
taken to his mistress, who was sitting in the drawing-room quite
unoccupied. She looked up as the servant entered; and when the room
was lighted, he saw that she was deadly pale, but took no notice of
the paper which he placed on the table beside her. Some time after he
had left the room her glance fell upon it, and she stretched out her
hand wearily, and took it up, with a vague notion that it was a
tax-gatherer's notice. But Harriet Routh, whose nerves had once been
proof against horror, dread, suffering, danger, or surprise, started
as if she had been shot when she saw, written upon the paper: "Mrs.
Bembridge, 4 Hollington-square, Brompton."