"Stewart," said Harriet Routh to her husband in a tone of calm, self-possessed inquiry, on the following day, "what has happened? What occurred yesterday, which you had not the courage to face, and deprived yourself of the power of telling me?"
As Harriet asked him this question, she unconsciously assumed her former manner. Something told her that the cause of Routh's conduct, and of the distress of mind which she read in his face, was not connected with the subject that was torturing her. Anything apart from that, any misfortune, any calamity even, might draw them together again; might teach him anew his need of her, her worth to him--she felt some alarm, but it was strangely mingled with satisfaction. The sharp agony she had endured had impaired her faculties so far, had dulled her clear understanding so far, that the proportions of the dangers in her path had changed places, and the first and greatest danger was this stranger--this beautiful, dreadful woman. In that direction was the terrible impotence, the helpless horror of weakness, which is the worst attribute of human suffering; in every other, there was the power to exercise her faculties, to rally her presence of mind, to call on her fertility of resource, to act for and with him. With him at her side, and in his cause, Harriet was consciously strong; out from a trouble in which he should be arrayed against her, in which he should be her enemy, she shrank, like a leaf from the shrivelling touch of fire.
She was standing by his side as she asked him the question, in the familiar attitude which she had discarded of late. Her composed figure and pale calm face, the small firm white hand, which touched his shoulder with the steady touch he knew so well, the piercing clear blue eyes, all had the old promise in them, of help that had never failed, of counsel that had never misled. He thought of all these things, he felt all these things, but he no longer thought of, or remembered, or looked for the love which had been their motive and their life. He sat moodily, his face pale and frowning, one clenched hand upon his knee, the other restlessly drumming upon the table; his eyes were turned away from her, and for some time after she had spoken he kept a sullen silence.
"Tell me, Stewart," she repeated, in a softer voice, while the hand that touched his shoulder moved gently to his neck and clasped it. "I know there is something wrong, very wrong. Tell me what it is."
He turned and looked full at her.
"Do you remember what you said, Harriet, when that letter came from Poynings--what you said about the hydra and its heads?"
"I remember," she answered. Her pale cheek grew paler; but she drew nearer to his side, and her fingers clasped his neck more closely and more tenderly. "I remember. Another head has sprung up, and is menacing you."
"Yes," he said, half fiercely, half wearily. "This cursed thing is never to be escaped nor forgotten. I believe. I can hardly tell you what has happened, Harry, and even you will hardly see your way out of this."
A touch of feeling for her was in his voice. He really did suffer in the anticipation of the shock she would have to sustain.
"Tell me--tell me," she repeated, faintly, and with a quick involuntary closing of her eyes, which would have told a close observer of constant suffering and apprehension.
"Sit down, Harry." He rose as he spoke, placed her in his chair, and stood before her, holding both her hands in his.
"I have found out that the man we knew as Philip Deane was--was Arthur Felton, George Dallas's cousin, the man they are inquiring about, whom they are expecting here."
She did not utter a cry, a groan, or any sort of sound. She shrank into the chair she was sitting in, as if she cowered for life in a hiding-place, her outstretched hands turned cold and clammy in her husband's grasp. Into her widely opened blue eyes a look of unspeakable horror came, and the paleness of her cheeks turned to ashen gray. Stewart Routh, still standing before her holding her hands, looked at her as the ghastly change came over her face, telling--what words could never tell--of the anguish she was suffering, and thought for a moment that she was dying before his face. The breath came from her lips in heavy gasps, and her low white brow was damp with cold sluggish drops.
"Harriet," said Routh--"Harriet, don't give way like this. It's awful--it's worse than anything I ever thought of, or feared. But don't give way like this."
"I am not giving way," she said. Drawing her hands from his hold, she raised them to her head, and held them pressed to her temples while she spoke. "I will not give way. Trust me, as you have done before. This, then, is what I have felt coming nearer and nearer, like a danger in the dark--this--this dreadful truth. It is better known than vague. Tell me how you have discovered it."
He began to walk up and down the room, and she still sat cowering in her chair, her hands pressing her temples, her eyes, with their horror-stricken looks, following him.
"I discovered it by an extraordinary accident. I have not seen much of Dallas, as you know, and I know nothing in particular about Mr. Felton and his son. But there is a lady here--an American widow--who knows Felton well."
"Yes," said Harriet, with distinctness; and now she sat upright in her chair, and her low white brow was knitted over her horror-stricken eyes. "Yes, I have seen her."
"Have you indeed? Ah! well, then, you know who I mean. She and he were great friends--lovers, I fancy," Routh went on, with painful effort; "and when they parted in Paris, it was with an understanding that they were to meet here just about this time. She met George Dallas, and told him, not that, but something which made him understand that information was to be had from her, and she has appointed an interview with Mr. Felton for to-morrow."
"Yes," repeated Harriet, "I understand. When she and he meet, she will tell him his son is coming here. His son will not come. How did you discover what you have discovered?"
He took out of his pocket a large locket like a golden egg, and opened it by touching a spring. It opened lengthwise, and held it towards Harriet. She looked at one of the photographs which it enclosed, and then, pushing it from her, covered her face with her hands.
"She showed me that yesterday," Routh continued, his throat drier, his voice more hesitating with every word he spoke, "when she told me she was expecting him--and I contrived to secure it."
"For what purpose?" asked Harriet, hoarsely.
"Don't you see, Harriet," he said, earnestly, "that it is quite plain Dallas has never seen a likeness of his cousin, or he must have recognized the face? Evidently Mr. Felton has not one with him. Dallas might not have seen this; but then, on the other hand, he might; and to prevent his seeing it, even for a few hours, until we had time to talk it over, to gain ever so little time, was a great object."
"You took a strange way of gaining time, Stewart," said Harriet. "Had you come home last night in a state to tell me the truth, time would really have been gained. We might have got away this morning."
"Got away!" said Routh. "What do you mean? What good could that do?"
"Can you seriously ask me?" she returned. "Does any other course suggest itself to you?"
"I don't know, Harry. I am bewildered. The shock was so great that the only thing I could think of was to try and forget it for a little. I don't know that I ever in my life deliberately drank for the purpose of confusing my thoughts, or postponing them, before; but I could not help it, Harry. The discovery was so far from any apprehension or fancy I had ever had."
"The time was, Stewart," said Harriet, slowly and with meaning, "when, instead of 'confusing' or 'postponing' any trouble, dread, or difficulty, you would have brought any or all of them to me at once; unhappily for us both, I think that time is past."
He glanced at her sharply and uneasily, and an angry flush passed over his face.
"What cursed folly have you got in your head? Is it not enough that this fresh danger has come down upon me--"
"Upon us, you mean," she interrupted, calmly.
"Well, upon us, then--but you must get up an injured air, and go on with I don't know what folly? Have done with it; this is no time for womanish nonsense--"
"There is so much womanish nonsense about me! There is such reasonableness in your reproach!"
Again he looked angrily at her, as he walked up and down the room with a quicker step. He was uneasy, amazed at the turn she had taken, at the straying of her attention from the tremendous fact he had revealed; but, above and beyond all this, he was afraid of her.
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, and said, "Let it drop, let it drop; let me be as unreasonable as you like, and blame me as much as you please, but be truer to yourself, Harriet, to your own helpful nature, than to yield to such fancies now. This is no time for them. We must look things in the face, and act."
"It is not I, but you, who refuse to look things in the face, Stewart. This woman, whom I do not know, who has not sought my acquaintance, whose name you have not once mentioned before me, but who makes you the confidant of her flirtations and her appointments--she is young and beautiful, is she not?"
"What the devil does it matter whether she is or not?" said Routh, fiercely. "I think you are bent on driving me mad. What has come to you? I don't know you in this new character. I tell you, this woman--"
"Mrs. Bembridge," said Harriet, calmly.
"Mrs. Bembridge, then, has been the means of my making a discovery which is of tremendous importance, and thus she has unconsciously saved me from an awful danger.
"By preventing George Dallas from finding out this fact for a little longer?"
"Precisely so. Now I hope you have come to yourself, Harriet, and will talk rationally about this."
"I will," she said, rising from her chair and approaching him. She placed her hands upon his shoulders, and looked at him with a steady, searching look. "We will talk this out, Stewart, and I will not shrink from anything there is to be said about it; but you must hear me then, in my turn. We are not like other people, Stewart, and our life is not like theirs. Only ruin can come of any discord or disunion between us."
Then she quietly turned away and sat down by the window, with her head a little averted from him, waiting for him to speak. Her voice had been low and thrilling as she said those few words, without a tone of anger in it, and yet the callous man to whom they were addressed heard in them something which sounded like the warning or the menace of doom.
"When Dallas knows what we now know, Harriet," said Routh, "he will come to us and tell us his discovery, and then the position of affairs will be that for which we were prepared, if we had not succeeded in inducing him to be silent about Deane's identity."
"Exactly so," said Harriet; "with the additional difficulty of his having concealed his knowledge."
"Yes," said Routh; "but that is his affair, not ours. He concealed his knowledge because he was compromised. There is nothing to compromise me. I neglected a public duty, certainly, in favour of a private friendship; but that is a venial offence."
It was wonderful to see how the callousness of the man asserted itself. As he arranged the circumstances, and stated them, he began to regain his accustomed ease of manner.
"It is unfortunate that he should be compromised in this double way, and, of course, there will be a great deal to go through, which will be hard to bear, and not easy to manage; but, after all, the thing is only as bad as it was when Dallas came back. Don't you see that, Harriet?"
"I see that, Stewart, but I also see that he will now have a tenfold interest in finding out the truth. Hitherto he might have been content with clearing himself of suspicion, but now he will be the one person most deeply interested in discovering the truth."
"But how can he discover it?" said Routh: his face darkened, and he dropped his voice still lower. "Harriet, have you forgotten that if there be danger from him, there is also the means of turning that danger on himself? Have you forgotten that I can direct suspicion against him tenfold strong............