"STRONG AS DEATH."
Unspeakable terror laid its paralysing grasp upon Harriet; upon her
heart, which ceased, it seemed to her, to beat; upon her limbs, which
refused to obey the impulse of her will. Alone she stood upon the
platform, long after the train had disappeared, and thought failed her
with the power of movement; a blank fell upon her. A porter addressed
her, but she stared stupidly in his face, and made no reply.
"The lady's ill," the man said to another; "I had better take her to
the waiting-room, and fetch a cab. If you'll come this way, ma'am--"
Then Harriet's faculties awoke with a start. "No, thank you," she
said; "I must get home." And she walked swiftly and steadily away. Two
of the superior officials were talking together close to the door
through which she had to pass, and she heard one of them say:
"Very quietly done, if it was so; and I'm pretty sure it was; I
couldn't be mistaken in Tatlow."
The words conveyed no meaning, no alarm to Harriet. She went on, and
out into the crowded street. She walked a long way before she felt
that she could bear the restraint, the sitting still implied by
driving in any vehicle. But when she reached Tokenhouse-yard, and
found that nothing was known there of Routh, that no message had been
received from him since he had left that evening, she got into a cab
and went home. No news there, no message, no letter. Nothing for her
to do but wait, to wait as patiently as she could, while the servants
speculated upon the queer state of affairs, commented upon "master's"
absence on the preceding night, and hoped he had not "bolted"--a
proceeding which they understood was not uncommon in the case of
gentlemen of Routh's anomalous and dim profession. Nothing for her to
do but to wait, nothing but the hardest of all tasks, the most
agonizing of all sufferings. And this was the night which was to have
brought her, with utter despair for herself, rest. Rest of body, which
she had never so sorely needed, and had never felt so impossible of
attainment. Her iron strength and endurance were gone now. Her whole
frame ached, her nerves thrilled like the strings of a musical
instrument, a terrible interior distraction and hurry came over her at
intervals, and seemed to sweep away her consciousness of reality
without deadening her sense of suffering. She did not now wonder
whether she was going mad; since she had known the very, very worst of
her own fate, that fear had entirely left her. She wondered now
whether she was dying. Wondered, with some curiosity, but no fear;
wondered, with a vague feeling of the strangeness of the irruption of
utter nothingness into such a chaos of suffering and dread as life had
become to her. There would be rest, but not the consciousness of it;
she would no more exist. A little while ago she would have shrunk from
that, because love remained to her; but now--If she could but know the
worst, know the truth, know that he could not be saved, or that he was
safe, she would not care how soon she ceased to be one of the facts of
the universe. _She_ had never mattered much; she did not much matter
now. But these thoughts crossed her mind vaguely and rarely; for the
most part it was abandoned to the tumultuous agony of her ignorance
and suspense. Still no letter, no message. The time wore on, and it
was nine o'clock when Harriet heard a ring at the door, and a man's
voice asking to see Mrs. Routh. It was not a voice she knew; and even
while she eagerly hoped the man might have come to her from Routh, she
trembled at the thought that he might be the bearer of a communication
from. George Dallas, for whose silence she had been thankful, but
unable to account.
The man was a clerk from Mr. Lowther's office, and his errand was to
deliver to Mrs. Routh a letter, "on very important business," he said,
which he had directions to give into her own hands. He executed his
commission, retired promptly, and Harriet was left alone to find the
solution of all her doubts, the termination of all her suspense, in
Jim Swain's letter.
The approaches to the Mansion House police-court, and the precincts of
the court itself, were densely crowded. All sorts of rumours prevailed
respecting the reported discovery of the mystery which had perplexed
the police and the public in the spring. The arrest of two persons at
different places, and the reports, garbled, exaggerated, and distorted
as they were, of the circumstances which had led to the discovery
which directed suspicion towards the second of the two accused persons
had keenly excited the public curiosity. The proceedings of the
coroner's inquest upon the body of the unknown man had been raked up
and read with avidity; and the oozing out of even the smallest
particulars relative to the two prisoners was eagerly watched for by
the greedy crowd. Curiosity and expectation were obliged to satisfy
themselves for the nonce with the proceedings in the case of Stewart
Routh. George Dallas was unable to appear; since the previous day his
illness had materially increased, and the official medical report
pronounced it to be brain fever. Unconscious of the tremendous danger
in which he stood, oblivious even of the frightful discovery which had
struck him so heavy a blow, George Dallas lay, under suspicion of a
dreadful crime, in prison-ward, and under prison watch and care. So
attention and curiosity centred themselves in Stewart Routh, and the
wildest stories were propagated, the wildest conjectures ran riot.
The prisoner had been brought up, with the customary formalities, at
an early hour, and the examination, which was likely to last some
time, had begun, when Mr. Felton, who was in the court with Mr.
Carruthers, pressed that gentleman's arm, and whispered: "Look there!
To the left, just under the window. Do you see her?"
"I see a woman--yes," replied Mr. Carruthers.
"His wife!" said Mr. Felton, in a tone of compassionate amazement. It
was his wife. Thus Routh and Harriet found themselves face to face
again. As the prisoner's eye, shifting restlessly around him, seeing
curious faces, full of avidity, but not one ray of compassion, fell
upon her, every trace of colour faded out of his cheek, and he drew
one deep, gasping breath. Had she betrayed him? He should soon know;
the story about to be told would soon enlighten him. Did he really
think she had done so? Did he really believe it for one minute? No. He
had tried, in the blind fury of his rage, when he found himself
trapped, balked, hopelessly in the power of the law, and the game
utterly up--when, in the loneliness of the night, he had brooded
savagely over the hopes he had entertained, over the dazzling pictures
his fancy had painted, then he had tried to accuse her, he had hated
and execrated her, and tried to accuse her. But in vain; he was not a
fool, villain as he was, and his common sense forbade the success of
the attempt. And now, when he saw her, her from whom he had last
parted with a cruel blow, and a word that was more cruel, it was as
though all his past life looked out at him through her woful blue
eyes. Awfully it looked at him, and held him fascinated, even to a
brief oblivion of the scene around him. She had raised her veil, not
quite off her face, but so that he could see her distinctly, and when
he looked at her, her lips parted, in a vain heroic attempt to smile.
But they only quivered and closed again, and she knew it, and drew the
veil closely round her face, and sat thenceforth, her head falling
forward upon her breast, her figure quite motionless.
The ordinary business of the place and the occasion went on,
intensified in interest to the spectators by the presence of the
murdered man's father, in the sensational character of a witness.
Harriet's relation to the prisoner was not divined by the public, and
so she passed unnoticed.
Jim Swain was, of course, the chief witness, and he told his story
with clearness and directness, though he was evidently and deeply
affected by the sight of Harriet, whom his quick eye instantly
recognized. She took no notice; she did not change her position, or
raise her veil as the examination of the boy proceeded, as minute by
minute she heard and felt the last chance, the last faint hope of
escape, slip away, and the terrible certainty of doom become clearer
and more imminent. She heard and saw the boy whose story contained the
destruction of hope and life, showed her the utter futility of all the
plans they had concocted, of all the precautions they had taken;
showed her that while they had fenced themselves from the danger
without, the unsuspected ruin was close beside them, always near,
wholly unmoved. It had come, it had happened; all was over, it did not
matter how. There was no room for anger, no power of surprise or
curiosity left in her mind. As the golden locket was produced, and the
identity of the portrait with that of the murdered man was sworn to, a
kind of vision came to her. She saw the bright spring morning once
more, and the lonely bridge; she saw the river with the early sunlight
upon it; she saw herself leaning over the parapet and looking into the
water, as the parcel she had carried thither with careful haste sank
into the depth and was hidden. She saw herself returning homeward, the
dangerous link in the evidence destroyed, passing by the archway,
where a boy lay, whom she had pitied, even then, in her own great and
terrible anguish. If anything could be strange now, it would be
strange to remember what he then had in his possession, to render all
her precaution vain. But she could not feel it so, or think about it;
all things were alike to her henceforth, there was no strangeness or
familiarity in them for evermore. Occasionally, for a minute, the
place she was in seemed to grow unreal to her, and to fade; the next,
she took up the full sense of the words which were being spoken, and
every face in the crowd, every detail of the building, every accident
of the scene, seemed to strike upon her brain through her eyes. She
never looked at Jim, but she saw him distinctly; she saw also the look
with which Routh regarded him.
That look was murderous. As the boy's story made his motives evident,
as it exposed the fallacious nature of the security on which Routh had
built, as it made him see how true had been Harriet's prevision, how
wise her counsel--though he hated her all the more bitterly as the
knowledge grew more and more irresistible--the murderous impulse rose
to fury within him. Standing there a prisoner, helpless, and certain
of condemnation, for he never had a doubt of that, the chain he had
helped to forge by his counsel to Dallas was too strong to be broken;
he would have taken two more lives if he had had the power and the
chance--the boy's, and that accursed woman's. Not his wife's, not
Harriet's; he knew now, he saw now, she had not brought him to this.
But the other, the other who had tempted him and lured him; who had
defeated him, ruined him, and escaped. He knew her shallow character
and her cold heart, and his fierce, vindictive, passionate, sensual
nature was stirred by horrid pangs of fury and powerless hate as he
thought of her--of the triumphant beauty which he had so coveted, of
the wealth he had so nearly clutched--triumphant, and happy, and
powerful still, while he--he! Already the bitterness and blackness of
death were upon him.
And the boy! So powerful, even now, was the egotism of the man's
nature, that he winced under the pain of the defeat the boy had
inflicted upon him--winced under the defeat while he trembled at the
destruction. He had kept him near him, under his hand, that if the
need should arise he might use him as an instrument for the ruin of
George Dallas, and so had provided for his own ruin. The active hate
and persistent plan of another could not have worked more surely
against him than he had himself wrought, and the sense of the boy's
instrumentality became unbearably degrading to him, wounding him where
he was most vulnerable.
Thus all black and evil passions raged in his heart; and as his wife
looked in his face, she read them there as in a printed book, and once
again the feeling of last night came over her, of the strangeness of a
sudden cessation to all this, and also something like a dreary
satisfaction in the knowledge that it was within her power and his to
bid it all cease--to have done with it.
Looking at him, and thinking this, if the strange dream of her mind
may be called thought, the curiosity of the crowd began to anger her a
little. What was the dead man to them, the nameless stranger, that
they should care for the discovery--that they should come here to see
the agony of another man, destined, like the first, to die? The
popular instinct filled her with loathing, but only momentarily; she
forgot to think of it the next minute, and the vagueness came again,
the film and the dimness, and again the acute distinctness of sound,
the intensity of vision.
It was over at length. The prisoner was committed for trial. As he was
removed with the celerity usual on such occasions, Harriet made a
slight sign to the solicitor acting for Routh--a sign evidently
preconcerted, for he approached the magistrate, and addressed him in a
low voice. The reply was favourable to his request, and he, in his
turn, signed to Harriet, who left her place and came to where he was
standing. He placed her in the box, and she stood there firmly, having
bowed to the magistrate, who addressed her:
"You are the prisoner's wife?"
"I am."
"You wish to speak to me?"
"I wish to ask your permission to see my husband before he is
removed."
"You may do so. Take care of the lady."
This to one of the officials. The tone of the magistrate's reply to
Harriet was compassionate, though he spoke briefly; and he looked
intently at her as she bowed again and turned meekly away. He has
said, since then, that he never saw supreme despair in any face
before.
"You have not much time," the policeman said, not unkindly, who
conducted her to the lock-up cell where Routh was. She made no answer,
but went in, and the door was locked behind her. He was sitting on a
bench exactly in front of the door, and the moment she passed it her
eyes met his. Fury and gloom were lowering upon his face; he looked up
sullenly at her, but did not speak. She stood by the door, leaning
against it, and said, in a low tone:
"I have but a little time, they tell me. I am come to learn your will.
It was agreed between us, once, that if the worst came, I should
supply you with the means of disposing of your fate. I remembered that
agreement, and I have brought you _this_."
She put her hand to her bosom, and took out of her dress a small
phial. It contained prussic acid, and was sealed and stoppered with
glass.
He started and groaned, but did not yet speak.
"The worst has come," she said. "I do not say you ought not to face it
out, still I only do as you once desired me to do in such a case. The
decision is with yourself. This is my only opportunity of obeying you,
and I do so."
"The worst has come," he said, in a hoarse voice, not in the least
like his own; "you are sure the worst has come? He said it was a bad
case, a very bad case. Yes, the worst has come."
Her hand was stretched out, the phial in it. He made no attempt to
take it from her. She held it still, and spoke again:
"I have very little time. You will be searched presently, they tell
me, and this will be found, it may be. I have obeyed you to the last,
as from the beginning."
"There's no chance--you are quite sure there is no chance?"
"I am quite sure there is no chance. I have always known, if this
happened, there could be no chance."
He muttered something under his breath.
"I do not hear you," she said. "You are reproaching me, I dare say,
but it is not worth while. If you make no use of this, you will have
time to reproach me as much as you like. If you do make use of it,
reproach is past, with time and life. Have you decided?"
"No," he said; "give it to me. If I use it, it must be very soon--if
not, never."
She laid the phial on the bench beside him, and he took it up, and
placed it in his breast-pocket. She did not touch him, but when she
had laid the phial down, stepped back, and leaned against the door.
"Is there anything you want to know--anything I can tell you?" she
asked. "Again, my time is very short."
"No," he said; "if I make up my mind to go through this, I shall know
all I want; if I don't, I need not know anything."
"Just so," she said, quietly. He looked on the ground, she looked at
him.
"Harriet," he said, suddenly, "I am sorry, I--"
"Hush," she said, flushing scarlet for one brief moment, and putting
out her hand. "No more. All is over, and done with. The past is dead,
and I am dead with it. Not a word of me."
"But if--if--" he touched his coat-pocket. "I must first know what is
to become of you."
"Must you?" she said, and the faintest possible alteration came in her
voice--a little, little softening, and a slight touch of surprise. "I
think you might have known that I shall live until I know you are no
longer living."
"Sorry to interrupt you, ma'am," said the policeman who had brought
Harriet to the cell, unlocking the door with sharp suddenness--"very
sorry, I'm sure; but--"
"I am quite ready," said Harriet; and, as Routh started up, she
turned, and was outside the door in an instant. Two policemen were in
the passage; at the door through which she had been led from the
court, Routh's solicitor was standing. He took her arm in his, and
brought her away by a private entrance. They did not speak till she
was in the street, where she saw, at a little distance, a crowd
collected to watch the exit of the prison-van. He called a cab.
"Where to?"
"My house."
"I will go with you."
"No, thank you. Indeed, I would rather go alone."
"I shall see you this evening."
She bent her head in reply.
When she was seated in the cab she put out her hand to him, and as she
leaned forward he saw her awful face.
"God help you, Mrs. Routh," he said, with intense pity. Then she said,
in a clear low voice, whose tone he remembers, as he remembers the
face, these words:
"There is no God. If there were, there could be no such men as he, and
no such women as I."
When she was a short distance from the police-court, and beyond the
solicitor's sight, she called to the driver from the window that she
had changed her purpose, and desired to be set down at St Paul's
Churchyard.
The arrival of the prison-van at Newgate excited the usual sensation
which it produces among the public who congregate in the neighbourhood
of the prison, to see it discharge its wretched contents; the majority
of the crowd were, as usual, of the dangerous classes; and it would
have afforded matter of speculation to the curious in such things to
look at their faces and calculate, according to the indices there
given, how many of the number would one day take a personal part in a
spectacle similar to that at which they were gazing with a curiosity
which renewed itself daily. On this occasion the sentiment prevalent
on the outside of the grim fortress of crime was shared in an unusual
degree by the officials, and general, not criminal, inhabitants. Not
that a supposed murderer's arrival was any novelty at Newgate, but
that the supposed murderer in the present instance was not of the
class among which society ordinarily recruits its murderers, and the
circumstances both of the crime and of its discovery were exceptional.
Thus, when the gate unclosed by which the prisoners were to be
admitted, the yard was full of spectators.
Four prisoners were committed that day: a burglar and his assistant; a
merchant's clerk who had managed a forgery so remarkably cleverly that
it needed only not to have been found out, to have been a stroke of
brilliant genius; and Stewart Routh. The door was opened, the group
of spectators gathered around. First the burglar, a wiry little man,
more like the tailor of real life than the conventional hero of the
centre-bit and the jemmy. Next, his assistant, an individual of jovial
appearance, tempered with responsibility, like a popular president of
school feasts, or the leader of a village choir. Thirdly, the forger,
remarkable for nothing in his appearance except its abjectness of
fright and bewilderment. These had emerged from the darksome recesses
of the hideous caravan, the first and no slight instalment of their
punishment, and had been received with comparative indifference. A
passing glance was all that was accorded to them by the spectators
waiting the appearance of the "gentleman" who was in such very serious
"trouble."
But the gentleman did not follow his temporary associates, though the
policeman in attendance held the door open, and called to him to "come
on." Then he stepped into the van and up to the compartment in which
Routh had been placed. After an elapse of a full minute he emerged,
and addressing the lookers-on generally, he said:
"There's something queer the matter with him, and I think he's dead!"
A stir and confusion among the crowd, and the governor called for. A
matter-of-fact turnkey advances, saying, in a business-like tone:
"Haul him out, and let's see."
They do haul him out, and they do see. His face is rather bluish in
colour, and his eyes are open, but his hands are clenched, and his
tongue is rigid. And he is quite dead. So there is a great sensation
around the prison. The senseless figure is carried into the prison,
the door is promptly shut, and the rumour spreads through the crowd,
trying to find chinks which do not exist, and to hear sounds
inaudible, that the "murder" case is disposed of, the prisoner having
tried, condemned, and executed himself. And, though the incident is
highly sensational, the general feeling is disappointment.
A woman, plainly dressed and closely veiled, who has been lingering
about the street for some time, and was there when the van arrived,
has seen the figure lifted from the van and has heard the rumour. But
she waits a little while longer, until a policeman comes out of a
side-entrance, and while some eager inquirers, chiefly women, question
him, and he tells them it is quite true, the man committed for trial
for the river-side murder is really dead, she stands by and listens.
Then she draws her shawl closely round her, and shivers, and goes
away. After she has taken a few steps, she falters and sways a little,
but she leans against the wall, her hands pressed upon her breast, but
quietly, attracting no attention, until she has regained her composure
and her breath, and then goes on, along the street, and so out into
Holborn.
"She has not been seen or heard of, at his chambers or at home," said
Mr. Carruthers to Mr. Felton late that evening. "Nothing is known of
her. They say she has no friends; I could not find out from the
servants that she has a single acquaintance even to whose house she
could have gone."
Mr. Felton was infinitely distressed by this news which Mr.
Carruthers, whose active benevolence, guided by the judgment of
others, knew no bounds, brought to his brother-in-law, who was at
length exhausted, and unable to rise. They had heard early in the
afternoon of the death of Routh, and had at once been aroused to the
warmest compassion for Harriet. Clare, having left the unconscious
Mrs. Carruthers tranquilly asleep, had gone to Mr. Felton's lodgings,
and was there when her uncle came in with his report.
"Laura has no suspicion?" asked Mr. Felton.
"Not the slightest. She has no notion that you and George are not
still in Paris. I must say Clare is an admirable girl to keep a secret
and play a part."
Clare blushed a little at her uncle's praise.
"What is to be done now about this unfortunate woman? She must be
found. Apart from every other consideration, George would be
infinitely distressed if any harm came to her."
"I really don't know," said Mr. Carruthers. "There seems to be no clue
to her probable movements, and--Come in." This was in answer to a
knock at the door.
Jim Swain came in, his face full of eagerness:
"Have you found her, sir? Is she at home? Does she know?"
"No, Jim," said Mr. Felton, "she's not at home, and no one knows
anything of her."
"Sir," exclaimed Jim--"miss, I'm sure she's somewheres about the
prison. Has any one thought of lookin' for her there? She'd go there,
sir and miss--she'd go there. Take me with you, and let us go and look
for her. I daren't go alone; she wouldn't listen to me, she wouldn't
look at me; but I'm sure she's there."
"Uncle," said Clare, earnestly, "I am sure he is right--I feel sure
he is right. Pray go; take one of the servants and him. The carriage
is waiting for me; take it and go."
Mr. Carruthers did as she desired. It was wonderful to see the
change that had come over him with the awakening of his better nature.
He had always been energetic, and now he forgot to be pompous and
self-engrossed.
The streets in the dismal quarter of the prison were comparatively
silent and empty when Mr. Carruthers called to the coachman to stop,
and got out of the carriage, Jim descending from the box, and they
began their dismal search. It was not prolonged or difficult.
They found her sitting on the ground, supported by the prison wall, in
an angle where after nightfall there was little resort of footsteps
and but dim light--a corner in which the tired wayfarer might rest,
unquestioned, for a little, by either the policeman or the passer-by.
And no more tired wayfarer had ever sat down to rest, even in the
pitiless London streets, than the woman who had wandered about until
the friendly night had fallen, and had then come there to die, and
have done with it.
They took her to her own home, and when they removed her shawl a slip
of paper, on which George Dallas's name was written, was found pinned
to the front of her dress. It contained these words:
"The boy's story is true. I did not keep the diamonds taken out of the
studs. You sold them when you sold your mother's. I was always sorry
you ever knew us. H. Routh."
* * * * *
George Dallas is in New York with Mr. Felton, who is winding-up all
his affairs, with a view to a permanent residence in England. Jim
Swain, whose education includes the art of writing now, is attached to
the personal service of Mr. Dallas, who is understood to be his
uncle's heir.
Miss Carruthers is at Poynings, not to be tempted by London and its
pleasures; but the absence of the young and beautiful heiress is not
so deeply deplored by "society" as it would be, were it not generally
known that she is engaged.
THE END.
-------------------------------
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.