Routh

“ I don't think that I could be afraid of anything or any one."
"Not of a man who really loved you with all the force and passion of his heart?" said Routh, in a hoarse whisper, and bending a fierce dark look upon her.
"Certainly not," she replied, lightly; but the colour rose in her cheek, and her breath came a little quicker. "I don't believe in people loving with passion and force, and all that sort of thing. ”

“ It would have required something of more importance than the presence of a boy on the other side of the window to disturb Routh. He was arranging papers with the utmost intentness. The drawers of the bureau were open on either side, the turned-down desk was covered with papers, some tied up in packets, others open: a large sheet, on which lines of figures were traced, lay on the blotting-pad. The dark expression most familiar to it was upon Stewart Routh's face that morning, and the tightly compressed lips never unclosed for a moment as he pursued his task. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Arrived at Routh's former residence, he was surprised to observe, as he got out of a hansom, that a card, displayed in the parlour window, announced "A drawing-room floor to let." The hall-door was opened at his summons with unusual alacrity, and in reply to his inquiry, the servant, a newly-engaged one who had never seen him before, informed him that Mr. and Mrs. Routh had "left," and were to be found at Queen-street, Mayfair. George stood, for a moment, irresolute in surprise, and the servant repeated the address, fancying he had not heard her. ”

“ He stood there, long after George and Harriet had passed out of sight, thinking, with sullen desperate rage, of all she had said. He felt like an animal in a trap. All his care and cunning, all his caution and success, had come to this. It was strange, perhaps--if the probability or the strangeness of anything in such a condition of mind as his can be defined--that he seldom thought of the dead man. No curiosity about him had troubled the triumph of Routh's schemes. He had met so many men in the course of his life who were mere waifs and strays in the world of pleasure and swindling ”

“ I am quite in Routh's power--and--and--I want to get out of it."
She looked up curiously at him. Something in the way he said those words at once alarmed and reassured her.
"In this man's power, George? How? To what extent?"
"I cannot tell you, mother; you would not understand. Don't frighten yourself about it. It is nothing that money cannot settle. I have had a lesson now. You shake your head--well, I know I have had many before, but I will learn from this one."
"I have not the money, George," his mother repeated, "and I cannot possibly procure it for a little time. You must not stay here." ”

“ Perhaps he watched him even more closely than he watched Harriet, but if he did, it was with totally different feelings. Routh had considerable powers of self-command, and could always be civil and apparently good-tempered, no matter what his real humour might be, when it accorded with his interests to be so. But he was not a man to treat inferiors with courtesy, or to refrain from rudeness and brutality where they were safe, and unlikely to do him any discredit. Consequently, servants and other recipients of the outpourings of his temper hated him with a vivid cordiality. ”

“ Calm and still, Harriet Routh stood before her, her head bent forward, her hands clasped and pressed steadily against her waist.
"I have no time to lose," she said, "and the briefest explanation will, in this case, be the best. When that flower fell from your hair over the balcony at the Kursaal at Homburg, it fell at my feet. I was on the terrace beneath. If once, during the time you and he stood there, my husband had looked away from you and over the rail, he would have seen me. But he did not. ”

“ The back parlour, called, of course, the "study" in Routh's house, deserved the name as much or as little as such rooms ordinarily merit it. The master of the house, at least, used the room habitually, reading there a little, and writing a great deal. He had been sitting before a bureau, which occupied a space to the right of the only window in the apartment, for some time, when Harriet came to ask him if the boy, who was cleaning the windows, might go on with that one.
"Certainly," said Routh, absently; "he won't disturb me." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She could not oppose successful art to the ingenious skill with which he was courting his own ruin, to save him. She could not disentangle this thought from the confusion in her brain; she felt only its first thrill of conviction, she only shrank from it with swift, sharp, physical pain, when Routh turned upon her with a torrent of angry and fierce reproaches. ”

“ Let us go; let us get out of the reach of their power."
"By--, I'll put myself out of Dallas's reach by a very simple method, if you don't hold your cursed tongue," said Routh, with such ferocity that Harriet let go her hold of him, and shrank as if he had struck her. "If you don't want me to tell Mr. Felton what has become of his son, and put him on to George's trail myself, you'll drop this kind of thing at once. In fact," he said, with a savage sneer, "I hardly think a better way out of our infernal blunder could be found." ”

“ Routh still kept silence, and still his dark look was bent upon her.
"No, no," she went on, as the rapid trot of the ponies began again to sound pleasantly on the level road, and she turned them out of the forest boundaries towards the town, "I know nothing about all that, except pour rire, as they say in Paris, about everything under the sun, I do believe. To return to Arthur Felton; he is the last person in the world with whom I could imagine any woman could get up anything more serious than the flimsiest flirtation." ”

“ The very stones of the street seem to cry it out, and he has not heard of it; the very air is full of it, and he knows nothing. If anything should prevent his going? But no; nothing will, nothing can. This was the awful danger--this was the certain, the inevitable risk; if I have averted it; if I have saved him, for the time!"
The chill of coming dawn struck cold to her limbs, the sickness of long watching, of fear, and of sleeplessness was at her heart, but Harriet Routh did not lie down on her bed all that dreadful night. ”

“ Felton left London to join Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers at Homburg. From the time of his arrival, and even when he had yielded to the clever arguments which had been adduced to urge him to silence, there was a sense of insecurity, foreboding in Routh's mind; not a trace of the sentimental superstitious terror with which imaginary criminals are invested after the fact, but with the reasonable fear of a shrewd man, in a tremendously dangerous and difficult position, who knows he has made a false move, and looks, with moody perplexity, for the consequences sooner or later. ”

“ But you look ill, Mrs. Routh. Does anything ail you? Is anything wrong?"
"No," she said, hurriedly, "nothing, nothing. Routh has been worried, that's all, and I am very tired."
She pushed the candle further away as she spoke, and, placing her elbow on the table, rested her head on her hand. George looked at her with concern. He had a kind heart and great tenderness for women and children, and he could forget, or, at all events, lay aside his own anxieties in a moment at the sight of suffering in a woman's face. His look of anxious sympathy irritated Harriet ”

“ Routh, "that is what I wish I could tell you. I will not conceal from you that for the moment I am in considerable financial straits, and this case, though my hands are clean enough, God knows, will not make life easier for me. My brother is a mysterious man, whose business often takes him abroad. I have never known even his address, for I write always to a London office from which my communications are forwarded. ”

“ Once, as she did this, a nursemaid with a child in her arms at the back of the platform noticed her, and said to a fellow-servant:
"That woman's face is enough to frighten one; she looks like death!"
But life was strong in Harriet Routh, and hope was strong in her also, a terrible hope, indeed, which to any suffering less than hers would have worn the semblance of despair. ”

“ We want no cleverness of his kind in our work."
"Very well, sir," said George. He was discontented with his uncle, because he had formed what the young man knew in his heart was a just opinion of Routh, and discontented with himself because he could not combat it. "Of course I will speak of your affairs to no one without your permission. But one thing I must say for Routh, I do think he loves his wife."
"And I think he hates her," said Mr. Felton.
They had turned in their walk, and were close by the little garden gate as he uttered these words. At that moment it opened, and a servant appeared. ”

“ He left the room, followed by Harriet.
George Dallas sat over the fire in an attitude of deep dejection. He was sick at heart, and the revulsion of feeling that had begun at Poynings had not yet ceased. "If I could but be done with it all!" he thought. "But I'm in the groove, I'm in the groove."
"Come along, George," said Routh, who seemed more good-humoured than before, as he re-entered the room, soberly attired, as became a man going to do business in the City. "Don't be down-hearted; the old lady will keep her word. ”

“ As the dyer's hand assimilates to that it works in, so gradually did Harriet Routh endue herself with her husband's tone, temper, and train of thought, until, having become almost his second self, she was his most trusted ally, his safest counsellor in all the strange schemes by which he made out life. In the early days after their marriage she had talked to him once, only once, and then but for a few minutes, of reformation, of something better and more reputable, of doing with less money, to be obtained by the exercise of his talents in some legitimate manner. ”

“ When he found the young man amenable beyond his expectations; when he found him unshaken in the convictions with which Harriet had contrived to inspire him and hardly requiring to be supported by his own arguments, his reassurance was inferior to his scorn.
"The fool, the wretched, contemptible idiot!" Routh said, as he looked round his dressing-room that night, and noted one by one the signs which would have betokened to a practised eye preparations for an abrupt departure, "it is hardly worth while to deceive him, and to rule such a creature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor is it necessary that they should; a villain is not, therefore, altogether precluded from likings, or even the feebler forms of friendship, and Dallas was not simply silly and egotistical when he believed that Routh felt kindly and warmly towards him. Still, whether a merciful and occult influence was at work within him or the tide of his feelings had been turned by his stolen interview with his mother, by his being brought into such positive contact with her life and its conditions, and having been made to realize the bitterness he had infused into it, it were vain to inquire. ”