"My Dear Mrs. Routh,--I am here with my uncle. My mother and Mr. Carruthers are travelling more slowly. We are all to meet in London. Meantime a circumstance has occurred which may prove of great, and must be of some, importance to Mr. Felton and to myself. I am compelled to ask your assistance, which I know you will give me with all your accustomed readiness and kindness.
"Accompanied by my uncle, I went this morning to a jeweller's shop in the Rue de la Paix to order the bracelet you know of to be re-made for my mother. I had not previously undone the packet containing the gold band and the turquoises, which you sealed up and kept in your desk for me, since the day you gave it to me at Homburg. The things were wrapped up in letter-paper, you will remember. I opened the packet on the counter of the jeweller's shop, shook the turquoises into a box he handed me for the purpose, and was holding up the gold band for him to examine, when my uncle, who was looking at the paper I had laid down, suddenly called to me, and pointing to some writing on it--mere memoranda, apparently, of articles to be purchased (I enclose a correct copy)--exclaimed, 'That is Arthur's writing!' I saw at once that it was his writing, and determined to apply to you in the first place for information on the matter. It is now clear that my cousin has passed under another name than his own, and that Routh and perhaps you have known him. There is a date, too, upon the paper--10th of April of this year. You took the paper out of the lower division of your desk. You may be able to tell us all that we have so long been anxious to know, at once. Pray answer this without delay. I think it best not to write to Routh, because my uncle and he are almost strangers, and also, dear Mrs. Routh, because it comes naturally to me to address myself to you. How strange that all this time you and Routh should have known Arthur, and I, living in intimacy with you both, should have been in a manner seeking him! You will, no doubt, be able to tell us everything without an hour's delay; but, in any case, we shall be in London in a week, and shall have Arthur's portrait to show you. I am sure this letter is very ill expressed, but I am still bewildered at the strangeness of the occurrence. Write at once. My room is No. 80.
"Always yours affectionately,
"George Dallas.
"P. S. The jeweller of the Rue de la Paix is a jewel among his tribe. He undertakes to replace the diamonds, and, as far as I can judge--to be sure it's only a little way--with stones just as fine as those I sold at A--, for a third less than the money his Hebrew Dutch confrère gave me. I had a mind to tell him the value of the original diamonds, but I didn't--the honestest of the jewellers is only human, and it might tempt him to raise the price and not the value. But I think he recognized a master-mind in my uncle."
[CHAPTER XXX]
MOVING ON.
Unconscious of the inquietude of her own brother and of her son, happy in a reunion which she had never ventured to hope for, still sufficiently weakened by her illness to be preserved from any mental investigation of "how things had come about," acquiescent and tranquil, Mrs. Carruthers was rapidly getting well. The indelible alteration which her beauty had sustained--for it was beauty still--the beauty of a decade later than when George had seen his mother through the ball-room window at Poynings--had touched her morally as well as physically; and a great calm had come upon her with the silver streaks in her rich dark hair, and the fading of the colour in her cheek.
The relation between George's mother and her husband had undergone an entire change. Mr. Carruthers had been excessively alarmed when he first realized the nature of his wife's illness. He had never come in contact with anything of the kind, and novelty of any description had a tendency to alarm and disconcert Mr. Carruthers of Poynings. But he was not in the least likely to leave any manifest duty undone, and he had devoted himself, with all the intelligence he possessed (which was not much), and all the heart (which was a great deal more than he or anybody else suspected), to the care, attention, and "humouring" which the patient required. From the first, Mrs. Carruthers had been able to recognize this without trying to account for it, and she unconsciously adopted the best possible method of dealing with a disposition like that of her husband. She evinced the most absolute dependence on him, and almost fretful eagerness for his presence, an entire forgetfulness of the former supposed immutable law which had decreed that the convenience and the pleasure of Mr. Carruthers of Poynings were to take precedence, as a matter of course, of all other sublunary things. Indeed, it was merely in a technical sense that, as regarded the little world of Poynings, these had been considered sublunary. Its population concerned themselves infinitely less with the "principalities and powers" than with the accuracy of the temperature of Mr. Carruthers's shaving-water, and the punctuality with which Mr. Carruthers's breakfast, lunch, and dinner were served. It had never occurred to his loving and dutiful wife that any alteration in this principle of life at Poynings could possibly be effected, and thus the more superficial faults of the character of a genuinely worthy man had been strengthened by the irresponsibility of his position until they bade fair to overpower its genuine worth. But all this had changed now, changed in a fashion against which there was no appeal Mr. Carruthers was no longer the first. His hours, his habits, his occupations, had to give way to the exigencies of a misfortune which struck him on the most sensitive point, and which invested him with a responsibility not to be trifled with or shared. It was characteristic of him that he became excessively proud of his care of his wife. The pomposity and importance with which he had been wont to "transact his public business" was now transferred to his superintendence of his patient; and the surveillance and fussiness which had made life rather a burdensome possession to the household and retainers of Poynings impressed themselves upon the physicians and attendants promoted to the honour of serving Mrs. Carruthers, As they were, in the nature of things, only temporary inflictions, and were, besides, accompanied by remarkably liberal remuneration, the sufferers supported them uncomplainingly.
It was also characteristic of Mr. Carruthers that, having made up his mind to receive George Dallas well, he had received him very well, and speedily became convinced that the young man's reformation was genuine, and would be lasting. Also, he had not the least suspicion how largely he was influenced in this direction by Mark Felton's estimate of the young man--an estimate not due to ignorance either, for George had hidden nothing in his past career from his uncle except his acquaintance with Clare Carruthers, and the strange coincidence which connected him with the mysterious murder of the 17th of April. Mr. Carruthers, like all men who are both weak and obstinate, was largely influenced by the opinions of others, provided they were not forced upon him or too plainly suggested to him, but that he was currently supposed to partake or even to originate them. He had not said much to his wife about her son; he had not referred to the past at all.