"The old gentleman," said Dr. Merle to Mr. Felton, "and a fine old gentleman he is--a little peculiar, but it would not do the world any harm to have a few more of this sort in it--has told me a good deal of the family history intentionally, and some of it unintentionally; and I have not the least doubt that the root of Mrs. Carruthers's disease is simply her son."
"He has given her some trouble, I know," said Mark Felton, with a sigh; "but hardly so much as that comes to, I fancy."
"Well, well, I won't be positive; but I think so. No young man ever tells all the truth about his follies; and, indeed, no middle-aged or old man, for that matter; and rely upon it, his mother knows more than any one else. She will do well, Mr. Felton. She sees him all right, no matter how wrong he may have been; there's nothing gravely amiss now. We may leave her to time now, and her son's society."
"Do you think I may venture to see her soon?"
"Impossible to say, for a day or two, my dear sir; impossible to say. Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Dallas must explain your coming to her. I don't prescribe two shocks, you know, even pleasant ones; and then I have no doubt you will perfect the cure."
Mr. Felton acknowledged the smooth speech with an absent sort of smile, and Dr. Merle took his leave.
"You are sure there is nothing wrong with you, George? You are quite sure you are in no danger?" said Mrs. Carruthers, late in the afternoon of that day, to her son, as she lay quietly on a large sofa drawn close to the window, where the panes were glittering in the dying light. Her face was turned towards him, her dark eyes a little troubled, and not so bright as they had been, resting fondly and with a puzzled expression upon his face, and one thin hand fondly clasped in his. George was lying on the floor beside her sofa, his head resting against her pillow, and the fingers of her other hand were moving softly among his rich brown curls.
"Nothing, indeed, mother. All is well with me--much, much better than I ever expected or hoped; but you must not agitate yourself, or ask any questions. Dr. Merle and Mr. Carruthers have put me on my honour not to talk to you of the past, and we must keep our word, you know;" and the young man tenderly kissed the hand he held in his.
"Yes, yes," she said, in an absent, searching tone; "but there is something--there was something--I--"
"Hush, mother! In the time to come you shall know everything, but for the present you must simply trust me. Indeed, there is nothing wrong. I am here with you, brought here and welcomed by Mr. Carruthers. You remember that he did not like me, and he had good cause; yes, he had good cause, but that is all over now. I am here with his full sanction and approbation, and you must be content to know that, to feel it, and to rest. You have to get strong and well now, mother, and then we shall all be quite happy."
"Yes, George, yes. I can rest now," said his mother. And she nestled down upon her sofa, and he drew the coverings around her, and they both kept silence; and presently, in the autumnal evening, when the moon rose over the dark Taunus, and the lights began to sparkle all over the little white town, Mrs. Carruthers fell asleep, with her hand clasped in that of her son and her worn but always handsome face resting against his brown curls.
The days went by, and with the lapse of each Mrs. Carruthers made an advance towards the recovery of her health and her faculties. Very shortly after their meeting George had spoken to her of his uncle; and though he found it difficult to fix her attention or engage her interest, he succeeded in ascertaining that she remembered all the circumstances of her brother's life, and that he had expressed a wish and intention to come to England.
"Mark is not happy in his son," she said one day to Mr. Carruthers and George, who had been talking to her by preconcerted arrangement on the subject. "I fear he has given him a great deal of trouble. I remember in many of his letters he said he was not blessed, like me, with a son of whom he could be proud."
George reddened violently as his mother's harmless words showed him. how she had concealed all her grief from her brother, and struck him with sudden shame and confusion in his stepfather's presence. Mr. Carruthers felt inexpressibly confused also; und as readiness was not the Grand Lama's forte, he blundered out:
"Well, my dear, never mind about his son. You would be glad to see your brother Mark, wouldn't you?"
Mrs. Carruthers looked earnestly at him as she raised herself from her pillows, and the faint colour in her cheek deepened into a dark flush as she said:
"Glad to see my brother Mark! Indeed I should be. Is he here too?"
So, after long years, the brother and sister met again; and Mark Felton was a little diverted from his anxiety about his son by the interest and affection with which his sister inspired him, and the strong hold which George Dallas gained upon the affections of a man who had been sorely wounded in his own hopes and expectations. He was not under any mistaken impression about his nephew. He knew that George had caused his mother the deepest grief, and had for a long time gone as wrong as a young man could go short of entering on a criminal career. But he divided the good from the evil in his character; he discerned something of the noble and the generous in the young man; and if he laid too much to the account of circumstances, and handled his follies too tenderly, it was because he had himself suffered from all the grief which profligacy, combined with cold and calculating meanness, can inflict upon a parent's heart.
George Dallas yielded easily to the influence of happiness. His gay and pleasant manner was full of fascination, and of a certain easy grace which had peculiar charms for his Transatlantic uncle; and his love for his mother was a constant pleasure to her brother to witness, and an irresistible testimony to the unspoiled nature of the son. True, this affection had not availed to restrain him formerly; but the partial uncle argued that circumstances had been against the boy, and that he had not had fair play. It was not very sound reasoning, but there was nothing to contradict it just at present, and Mr. Felton was content to feel rather than to reason.
Mr. and Mrs. Routh had arrived at Homburg immediately after Mr. Felton and George had reached that place of fashionable resort. Their lodgings were in a more central situation than those of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers, and were within easy reach of all the means of diversion which the wicked little resort of the designing and their dupes commanded. George Dallas did not see much of Routh. He had been disturbed and impressed by Mr. Felton's exceedingly emphatic expression of opinion respecting that gentleman; he had been filled with a vague regret, for which now and then he took himself to task, as ungrateful and whimsical, for having renewed his intimacy with Routh. His levity, his callousness, respecting the dreadful event concerning which he had consulted him, had shocked George at the time, and his sense of them had grown with every hour's consideration of the matter (and they were many) in which he had since engaged. Nothing had occurred to him to reverse or weaken the force of Routh's opinion; but he could not get over his heartlessness. They met, indeed, frequently. They met when George and his uncle, or his stepfather, or both, walked about the town and its environs, or in the gardens; they met when George strolled about the salons of the Kursaal, religiously abstaining from play,--it was strange how the taste for it had passed away from him, and how little he suffered, even at first, in establishing the rule of self-restraint; but they rarely met in private, and they had not had half an hour's conversation in the week which had now elapsed since Routh and Harriet had arrived at Homburg.
But George had seen Harriet daily. Every afternoon he escorted his mother during her drive, and then he called on Mrs. Routh. His visits tortured her, and yet they pleased her too. Above all, there was security in them. She should know everything he was doing; she should be quite sure no other influence, stronger, dangerous, was at work, while he came to her daily, and talked to her in the old frank way. Routh shrank from seeing him, as Harriet well knew, and felt, also, that there was security in his visits to her. "He will keep out of George's way, of course," she said to herself, when she acquiesced in the expediency of following Dallas to Homburg, and the necessity for keeping him strictly in sight, for some time at least. "He will not undertake the daily torture. No; that, too, must be my share. Well, I am tied to the stake, and there is no escape; only an interval of slumber now and then, more or less rare and brief. I don't want to tie him to it also--he could not bear it as I can."
And she bore it well--wonderfully well, on the whole, though the simile of bodily torture is not overdrawn as representing what she endured. By a sort of tacit mutual consent, they never alluded to Deane, or the discovery of the murder. George, who never could bear the sight of a woman's suffering, had a vivid recollection of the terrible emotion she had undergone when he disclosed the truth to her, and determined to avoid the subject for the future. She understood this, but she felt tolerably certain that if any new complication arose, if any occasion of doubt or hesitation presented itself, George would seek her advice. She should not be kept in ignorance, and that was enough. She had ascertained, before they left London, that George had not mentioned the matter to Mr. Felton; and when the young man told her how otherwise complete his explanation with Mr. Felton had been, she felt a degree of satisfaction in the proof of her power and influence afforded by this reticence.
The positive injunction which Mr. Felton had laid upon his nephew aided George's sensitiveness with respect to Harriet. He felt convinced that if his uncle had known her as he knew her, he would have been satisfied to confide to her the trouble and anxiety under which he laboured, and whose origin was assuming, to George's mind, increasing seriousness with every day which passed by without bringing news of Mr. Felton's son. But he would not, however he might find relief and counsel by doing so, discuss with Harriet a matter which he had been positively forbidden to discuss with her husband: he could not ask her secrecy without hurting her by an explanation of Mr. Felton's ill opinion of Routh. So it happened that these two persons met every day, and that much liking, confidence, and esteem existed on the man's part towards the woman, and yet unbroken silence was maintained on the subject which deeply engaged the minds of both. Philip Deane's name was never mentioned by Harriet, nor did Dallas speak of Arthur Felton.
So Mrs. Carruthers improved in health. Mr. Carruthers was very gracious and affable to his stepson, and terribly nervous and anxious about his wife, on whom, if the worthy physician could have been brought to consent, he would have kept Dr. Merle in perpetual attendance, being incapable of recognizing the importance--indeed, almost the existence--of any patient of that gentleman's, except Mrs. Carruthers, of Poynings. Mr. Felton heard nothing of his son, and waited, frequently discussing the subject with Mr. Carruthers and his nephew; and the bright sweet autumn days went on. Afterwards, when George reviewed their course, and pondered on the strange and wayward ways through which his life had lain, he thought of the tranquillity, the lull there had been in that time, with wonder.
The change of scene, the physical effort, a certain inevitable deadening effect produced by the lapse of time, more powerful in cases of extreme excitement than its space would seem to warrant, had had their effect on Harriet's spirits and appearance. She looked more like herself, George thought, when he came to make her his daily visit. Perhaps he had become more accustomed to the change he had noted with solicitude on his return to London; she was certainly more cheerful. He did not take account of the fact that he did not see her in Routh's company, though his uncle's comment on her husband's feelings towards her frequently and painfully recurred to him. Harriet questioned him frequently about his mother, and George, full of gratitude for her kindness and sympathy, spoke freely of her, of his uncle, of the altered position in which he stood with his stepfather, and of his improved condition and hopes. There were only two persons of interest to him whom he did not mention to Harriet. They were Arthur Felton and Clare Carruthers.
"Have you ever been to the Kursaal in the evening?" he asked Harriet one day, as they were talking, and looking at the groups of gaily-dressed men and women lounging past the window where they were seated.
"Yes, I have gone in there once or twice with Stewart; but I got tired of it very soon, and I don't want to go again."
"My uncle met an old acquaintance there last evening," George went on; "he does not particularly care about it either; but we were strolling about the gardens until rather late, and then we went in and had a look at the ball-room. I had been watching a lady for some time, out-and-out the best dancer in the room, when she came up to my uncle and spoke to him, and I find out she is quite a celebrity here."
"Indeed," said Harriet, not vehemently interested.
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