"The lady's ill," the man said to another; "I had better take her to the waiting-room, and fetch a cab. If you'll come this way, ma'am--"
Then Harriet's faculties awoke with a start. "No, thank you," she said; "I must get home." And she walked swiftly and steadily away. Two of the superior officials were talking together close to the door through which she had to pass, and she heard one of them say:
"Very quietly done, if it was so; and I'm pretty sure it was; I couldn't be mistaken in Tatlow."
The words conveyed no meaning, no alarm to Harriet. She went on, and out into the crowded street. She walked a long way before she felt that she could bear the restraint, the sitting still implied by driving in any vehicle. But when she reached Tokenhouse-yard, and found that nothing was known there of Routh, that no message had been received from him since he had left that evening, she got into a cab and went home. No news there, no message, no letter. Nothing for her to do but wait, to wait as patiently as she could, while the servants speculated upon the queer state of affairs, commented upon "master's" absence on the preceding night, and hoped he had not "bolted"--a proceeding which they understood was not uncommon in the case of gentlemen of Routh's anomalous and dim profession. Nothing for her to do but to wait, nothing but the hardest of all tasks, the most agonizing of all sufferings. And this was the night which was to have brought her, with utter despair for herself, rest. Rest of body, which she had never so sorely needed, and had never felt so impossible of attainment. Her iron strength and endurance were gone now. Her whole frame ached, her nerves thrilled like the strings of a musical instrument, a terrible interior distraction and hurry came over her at intervals, and seemed to sweep away her consciousness of reality without deadening her sense of suffering. She did not now wonder whether she was going mad; since she had known the very, very worst of her own fate, that fear had entirely left her. She wondered now whether she was dying. Wondered, with some curiosity, but no fear; wondered, with a vague feeling of the strangeness of the irruption of utter nothingness into such a chaos of suffering and dread as life had become to her. There would be rest, but not the consciousness of it; she would no more exist. A little while ago she would have shrunk from that, because love remained to her; but now--If she could but know the worst, know the truth, know that he could not be saved, or that he was safe, she would not care how soon she ceased to be one of the facts of the universe. She had never mattered much; she did not much matter now. But these thoughts crossed her mind vaguely and rarely; for the most part it was abandoned to the tumultuous agony of her ignorance and suspense. Still no letter, no message. The time wore on, and it was nine o'clock when Harriet heard a ring at the door, and a man's voice asking to see Mrs. Routh. It was not a voice she knew; and even while she eagerly hoped the man might have come to her from Routh, she trembled at the thought that he might be the bearer of a communication from. George Dallas, for whose silence she had been thankful, but unable to account.
The man was a clerk from Mr. Lowther's office, and his errand was to deliver to Mrs. Routh a letter, "on very important business," he said, which he had directions to give into her own hands. He executed his commission, retired promptly, and Harriet was left alone to find the solution of all her doubts, the termination of all her suspense, in Jim Swain's letter.
The approaches to the Mansion House police-court, and the precincts of the court itself, were densely crowded. All sorts of rumours prevailed respecting the reported discovery of the mystery which had perplexed the police and the public in the spring. The arrest of two persons at different places, and the reports, garbled, exaggerated, and distorted as they were, of the circumstances which had led to the discovery which directed suspicion towards the second of the two accused persons had keenly excited the public curiosity. The proceedings of the coroner's inquest upon the body of the unknown man had been raked up and read with avidity; and the oozing out of even the smallest particulars relative to the two prisoners was eagerly watched for by the greedy crowd. Curiosity and expectation were obliged to satisfy themselves for the nonce with the proceedings in the case of Stewart Routh. George Dallas was unable to appear; since the previous day his illness had materially increased, and the official medical report pronounced it to be brain fever. Unconscious of the tremendous danger in which he stood, oblivious even of the frightful discovery which had struck him so heavy a blow, George Dallas lay, under suspicion of a dreadful crime, in prison-ward, and under prison watch and care. So attention and curiosity centred themselves in Stewart Routh, and the wildest stories were propagated, the wildest conjectures ran riot.
The prisoner had been brought up, with the customary formalities, at an early hour, and the examination, which was likely to last some time, had begun, when Mr. Felton, who was in the court with Mr. Carruthers, pressed that gentleman's arm, and whispered: "Look there! To the left, just under the window. Do you see her?"
"I see a woman--yes," replied Mr. Carruthers.
"His wife!" said Mr. Felton, in a tone of compassionate amazement. It was his wife. Thus Routh and Harriet found themselves face to face again. As the prisoner's eye, shifting restlessly around him, seeing curious faces, full of avidity, but not one ray of compassion, fell upon her, every trace of colour faded out of his cheek, and he drew one deep, gasping breath. Had she betrayed him? He should soon know; the story about to be told would soon enlighten him. Did he really think she had done so? Did he really believe it for one minute? No. He had tried, in the blind fury of his rage, when he found himself trapped, balked, hopelessly in the power of the law, and the game utterly up--when, in the loneliness of the night, he had brooded savagely over the hopes he had entertained, over the dazzling pictures his fancy had painted, then he had tried to accuse her, he had hated and execrated her, and tried to accuse her. But in vain; he was not a fool, villain as he was, and his common sense forbade the success of the attempt. And now, when he saw her, her from whom he had last parted with a cruel blow, and a word that was more cruel, it was as though all his past life looked out at him through her woful blue eyes. Awfully it looked at him, and held him fascinated, even to a brief oblivion of the scene around him. She had raised her veil, not quite off her face, but so that he could see her distinctly, and when he looked at her, her lips parted, in a vain heroic attempt to smile. But they only quivered and closed again, and she knew it, and drew the veil closely round her face, and sat thenceforth, her head falling forward upon her breast, her figure quite motionless.
The ordinary business of the place and the occasion went on, intensified in interest to the spectators by the presence of the murdered man's father, in the sensational character of a witness. Harriet's relation to the prisoner was not divined by the public, and so she passed unnoticed.