The same day which had witnessed the departure from Homburg of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers, and the commencement of the journey which had London for its destination, beheld that city in an unusually agreeable aspect in point of weather. The sun was warm and bright; the sadness and sweetness of autumn filled the air, and lent their poetical charm to the prosaic streets, and impressed themselves sensibly and unacknowledged upon the prosaic dwellers therein. People who had no business or pleasure, or combination of both, to call them abroad, went out on that day, and rode or drove or walked, because the rare beauty and charm of the day imperatively required such homage. Women and children were out in the Parks, and, but for the fallen leaves upon the ground, and the peculiar sigh which made itself heard now and again among the trees--a sound which the ear that has once learned to distinguish it never fails to catch when the summer is dead--the summer might be supposed to be still living.
The brightest thoroughfare in London, Piccadilly, was looking very bright that autumn day, with all the windows of the few houses which can lay claim to anything of the beauty of grandeur glittering in the sun, and an astounding display of carriages, considering the season, enlivening the broad sloping road. The Greek Park was dotted over with groups of people, as in the summer-time, and along the broad path beyond the iron railings solitary pedestrians walked or loitered, unmolested by weather, just as it suited their fancy. The few and far-between benches had their occupants, of whom some had books, some cigars, and some babies. Perambulators were not wanting, neither were irascible elderly gentlemen to swear at them. It was happily too hot for hoops.
This exceptional day was at its best and brightest when Harriet Routh came down the street in which she lived, crossed Piccadilly, and entered the Park. She was, as usual, very plainly dressed, and her manner had lost none of its ordinary quietude. Nevertheless, a close observer would have seen that she looked and breathed like a person in need of free fresh air, of movement, of freedom; that though the scene, the place in which she found herself, was indifferent to her, perhaps wholly unobserved by her, the influence upon her physical condition was salutary. She did not cross the grass, but walked slowly, and with her eyes turned earthwards, along the broad path near the railings. Occasionally she looked up, and lifted her head, as if to inhale as much as possible of the fresh air, then fell into her former attitude again, and continued her walk. Her face bore an expression of intense thought--the look of one who had brought a subject out with her in her mind, which subject she was resolved to think out, to look at in every aspect, to bring to a final decision. She kept a straight, clear course in her walk, looking neither to the right nor to the left, pondering deeply, as might have been seen by the steady tension of her low white forehead and the firm set of her lips. At last she paused, when she had traversed the entire length of the walk several times, and looked about her for an unoccupied seat. She descried one, with no nearer neighbour than the figure of a boy, not exactly ragged, but very shabby, extended on the grass beside it, resting on his elbows, with a fur cap pulled down over his eyes, leaving the greater portion of a tangled head exposed to view, and a penny illustrated journal, whose contents, judging by the intentness with which he was devouring them, must have been of a highly sensational character, stretched out on the ground before him. Harriet took no notice of the boy, nor did he perceive her, when she seated herself on the bench by which he lay. She sat down noiselessly, folded her hands, and let her head fall forward, looking out with the distant absorbed gaze which had become habitual to her. She sat very still, and never for a moment did the purpose in her face relax. She was thinking, she was not dreaming.
After a while she looked at her watch, and rose. At the first step which she made on the grass, and towards the railings, her silk dress rustled over the outspread paper from which the boy was reading. She looked down, apologetically; the boy looked up angrily, and then Mr. James Swain jumped up, and made the movement which in his code of manners passed for a bow to Harriet.
"Ah, is it you, Jim?" she said. "Are you not busy to-day?"
"No, mum, I ain't," said Jim. "Mr. Routh hadn't no messages this mornin', and I ain't been lucky since."
"It's a nice day for you to have a little time to yourself," said Harriet. "I hope you got all the commissions I left for you."
"I did, mum, and thank'ee," said Jim. Harriet had remembered the street-boy when she was leaving home, and had charged her servants to employ him. She had not the slightest suspicion of the extensive use which Routh was in the habit of making of his services.
"The windows is to be cleaned," said Jim, suggestively. "There warn't time, mum; you come home so unexpected."
"Very well," said Harriet. "I suppose you can clean them, can't you?"
"Mr. Harris said as I might try," returned Jim. Mr. Harris was the irreproachable man-servant attached to Routh's modest establishment in Mayfair.
Harriet moved on, and Jim Swain stood still, looking after her. She was a puzzle to him, and an object of constant interest. By little and little Jim had come to know a good deal about Stewart Routh and his daily life, and he had abandoned the first theory which had presented itself to his mind, and which had owed its inspiration to the illustrated penny literature which formed his intellectual food. He no longer believed Harriet a persecuted victim of her husband's groundless jealousy. For reasons of his own, equally strong and secret, Mr. James Swain had taken a lively interest in George Dallas, had experienced certain emotions on seeing him, and had taken very kindly to the business of espionage in which Routh had engaged his services, without affording him any indication of its purpose. At first the boy had conceived an idea that Dallas was the object of Harriet's supposed preference and Routh's supposed jealousy, but he abandoned that notion very speedily, and since then he had not succeeded in forming any new theory to his satisfaction. From the conversation of the servants, Jim had learned that Mr. Dallas and Mr. Felton, with whose personal appearance the boy was equally familiar, had gone to the same place in foreign parts as that to which Mr. and Mrs. Routh had gone a little later, and knowing this, Jim thought more and more frequently over certain circumstances which he had kept to himself with extraordinary discretion--discretion, indeed, which nothing but the strongest possible sense of self-interest, as inseparable from its observance, could have enabled him to preserve.
"He don't like him," Jim would say to himself, with frequent repetition, "he don't like him, can't abear him; I knows that precious well. And he can't be afraid of him, as I can see, for he certainly warn't neither in nor near that business, and I'm blest if he knows anythin' about it. Wotever can he want to know all about him for, and keep a-follerin' him about? It ain't for no good as he follers anybody, I'll take my davy." And Mr. James Swain's daily reflections invariably terminated with that formula, which was indeed a simple and accurate statement of the boy's belief. His abandonment of his theories concerning Harriet had worked no change in his mind towards Routh. His familiarity with Routh's servants, his being in a manner free of the house--free, but under the due amount of inspection and suspicion justified by his low estate--enlightened him as to Harriet's domestic position, and made him wonder exceedingly, in his half-simple, half-knowing way, how "the like of her could be spoony on sich a cove as him," which was Mr. James Swain's fashion of expressing his sense of the moral disparity between the husband and wife.
This was the second time that Jim had seen Mrs. Routh since her return from the trip which he had been told was specially undertaken for the benefit of her health. The first time was on the day of her arrival, when Jim had fortunately been "handy," and had helped with the luggage. He had made his observations then upon Harriet's appearance with all his native impudence; for though the element of suspicion, which lent his interest in Harriet something tragic, had died out of it, that interest continued lively; but he had admitted that it was pardonable that she should look "precious blue and funky" after a journey.
But looking at her more attentively on this second occasion, and when there was no journey in the case, Jim arrived at the conclusion that whatever had "ailed" Mrs. Routh before she left home ailed her still.
"Uncommon ill she do look, to be sure," he said to himself, as he crumpled up the exciting fiction which he had been reading, and which "left off" at a peculiarly thrilling crisis, and wedged the illustrated journal into his cap; "uncommon ill. Wot's the good of all them baths and things, if she's to come back lookin' like this--a deal worse, I call it, and much miserabler in her mind? Wotever ails her?"
At this point in his cogitations Jim began to move on, slowly indeed, and keeping his eye on Harriet, who had reached one of the gates of the Park opening into Piccadilly, had passed through it, and was just about to cross to the opposite side. She stood for a moment irresolute, then turned, came through the gate again, and rapidly approached Jim, beckoning him towards her as she came.
She stood still as the boy ran up to her, and pointed to one of the smaller but much decorated houses on the opposite side of the way.
"Jim," she said, "you see that house, where the wide windows are, all one pane, and the bright balconies there, the house with the wide door, and the heavy carved railings?"
"Yes, mum, I see," said Jim.
"Go to that house, and ask if anything has been heard from Mr. Felton. Ask when he is expected--he has taken lodgings there--whether any other gentleman is expected to come with him--and, Jim, be sure to ask in particular whether any letters have been received for Mr. Felton, and sent on to him."
Jim Swain looked at Harriet. There was something strange as well as intelligent in the look, but she saw only the intelligence. It harmonized with the thought in her own mind, and she replied to it:
"You think, perhaps, they may not like to tell you," she said. "Perhaps they may not. But you may tell whoever answers you that Mr. Felton's sister wishes to know--" Jim still looked at her, and Harriet felt that he did so, but this time she did not catch his eye. "Be quick," she said, "and bring me the answer yonder." She pointed to the bench on which she had been sitting, and which was beyond the reach of observation from the house she had indicated, and walked away towards it as she ceased speaking. "It cannot be helped," she said. "The risk is a trifling one at worst, and must be run. I could not put Harris in communication with any one on a false pretext, and I can trust this boy so far not to say he has asked this question for me. I cannot bear it any longer. I must know how much time there is before me. I must have so much certainty; if not, I shall go mad."
She had reached the bench now, and sat down in the former attitude.
"Once before I asked myself," she muttered, "if I was going mad. I did not feel more like it then than now--not so like it, indeed. I knew what he was doing then, I had found him out. But I don't know now--I don't know now. I am in the dark, and the tide is rising."
Jim came back from his errand. He had been civilly answered by a woman-servant. Mr. Felton was expected in a few days; the exact day was not yet named. No letters had been received for him. He had sent no orders relative to the forwarding of any. Having delivered his message so far, Jim Swain hesitated. Harriet understood the reticence, and spared a momentary thought for passing wonderment at this little touch of delicacy in so unpromising a subject for the exhibition of the finer emotions.
"Did the person who answered you ask you any question?" she said.
"No, mum," said Jim, relieved. Harriet said no more, she knew he had not made the false statement which had proved to be needless, and something assured her that there was no necessity that she should caution Jim to say nothing concerning this commission. Now she went away in reality--went home. She ascended the stairs to her room, and looked at her face in a glass as she took her bonnet off, and thought, "I wonder if people can see in my face that I am turning into a coward, and am going mad? I could not knock at that door and ask that simple, natural question for myself--I could not: and a little while ago, since--ay, long-since--I could have done anything. But not now--not now. When the time comes, when the waiting is over, when the suspense is ended, then I may be strong again, if indeed I am not quite mad by then; but now--now I cannot do anything--I cannot even wait."
The fixed look had left her face, and was succeeded by a painful wildness, and an expression almost like that of some present physical terror. She pressed her hands upon her temples and rocked herself to and fro, but there was no wild abandonment of grief in the gesture. Presently she began to moan, but all unconsciously; for catching the sound after a little, she checked it angrily. Then she took up some needlework, but it dropped from her hands after a few minutes. She started up, and said, quite aloud, "It's no use--it's no use; I must have rest!" Then she unlocked her dressing-case, took out a bottle of laudanum, poured some of the contents into a glass of water, drank the mixture, and lay down upon her bed. She was soon in a deep sleep which seemed peaceful and full of rest. It was undisturbed. A servant came into the room, but did not arouse her, and it was understood in the house that "master" would probably not return to dinner.
Mr. James Swain turned his steps in the direction of the delectable region in which his home was situated. He was in so far more fortunate than many of his class that he had a home, though a wretched one. It consisted of a dingy little room at the back of the third story in a rickety house in Strutton-ground, and was shared with a de............