"Yes, ma'am," he said, "I have, but I'm here, waiting for an early job."
She gave him a shilling and a smile--not such a smile as she once had to give, but the best that was left her--and went on to the door of the house she lived in. She opened it with a key, and went in.
The boy remained where she had left him, apparently ruminating, and wagging his tousled head sagely.
"Whatever is she up to?" he asked of himself, in perplexity, "It's a rum start, as far as I knows on it, and I means to know more. But how is she in it? I shan't say nothing till I knows more about it." And then Mr. Jim Swain went his way to a more likely quarter for early jobs.
Fortune favoured Mrs. Routh on that morning. She gained her bed-room unseen and unheard, and having hastily undressed, lay down to rest, if rest would come to her--at least to await in quiet the ordinary hour at which the servant was accustomed to call her. It came, and passed; but Harriet did not rise.
She slept a little when all the world was up and busy--slept until the second delivery of letters brought one for her, which the servant took at once to her room.
The letter was from George Dallas, and contained merely a few lines, written when he was on the point of starting, and posted at the river-side. He apologized to Harriet for a mistake which he had made on the previous night. He had taken up Routh's coat instead of his own, and had not discovered the error until he was on his way to the steamer, and it was too late to repair it. He hoped it would not matter, as he had left his own coat at South Molton-street, and no doubt Routh could wear it, on an occasion. When Harriet had read this note, she lay back upon her pillow, and fell into a deep sleep, which was broken by Routh's coming into her room early in the afternoon. He looked pale and haggard, and he stood by the bedside in silence. But she--she sat up, and flung her arms round him with a wonderfully good imitation of her former manner; and when she told him all that had passed, her husband caught her to his breast with passionate fondness and gratitude, and declared over and over again that her ready wit and wonderful fortitude had saved him. Saved him? How, and from what?
[CHAPTER XI.]
AT POYNINGS.
Life at Poynings had its parallel in hundreds of country-houses, of which it was but a type. It was a life essentially English in its character, in its staid respectability, in its dull decorum. There are old French chateaux without number, visible in bygone days to travellers in the banquettes of diligencies, and glimpses of which may still occasionally be caught from the railways, gray, square, four pepper-box turreted old buildings, wherein life is dreary but not decorous, and sad without being staid. It is the day-dream of many an English country gentleman that his house should, in the first place, be respectable, in the second place, comfortable, in the third place, free from damp; after these successes are achieved, he takes no further thought for it; within and without the dulness may be soul-harrowing; that is no affair of his. So long as his dining-room is large enough to contain the four-and-twenty guests who, on selected moonlight nights, are four times in every year bidden to share his hospitality--so long as the important seignorial dignities derivable from the possession of lodge, and stable, and kennel are maintained--so long as the state devolving upon him as justice of the peace, with a scarcely defined hope of one day arriving at the position of deputy-lieutenant, is kept up, vaulting ambition keeps itself within bounds, and the young English country gentleman is satisfied. More than satisfied, indeed, was Mr. Capel Carruthers in the belief that all the requirements above named were properly fulfilled. In his earlier life he had been haunted by a dim conviction that he was rather an ass than otherwise; he remembered that that had been the verdict returned at Rugby, and his reflections on his very short career at Cambridge gave him no reason to doubt the decision of his schoolfellows. Not a pleasant source of reflection even to a man of Mr. Carruthers's blunted feelings; in fact, a depressing, wrong, Radical state of mind, for which there was only one antidote--the thought that he was Mr. Carruthers of Poynings, a certain settled stable position which would have floated its possessor over any amount of imbecility. Carruthers of Poynings! There it was in old county histories, with a genealogy of the family and a charming copper engraving of Poynings at the beginning of the century, with two ladies in powder and hoops fishing in an impossible pond, and a gentleman in a cocked-hat and knee-breeches pointing out nothing in particular to nobody at all. Carruthers of Poynings! All the old armour in the hall, hauberks and breastplates, now propped upon a slight wooden frame, instead of enclosing the big chests and the thews and sinews which they had preserved through the contests of the rival Roses or the Cavaliers and Roundheads--all the old ancestors hanging round the dining-room, soldiers, courtiers, Kentish yeomen, staring with grave eyes at the smug white-whiskered old gentleman, their descendant--all the old tapestry worked by Maud Carruthers, whose husband was killed in the service of Mary Stuart--all the carvings and gildings about the house, all the stained glass in the windows, all the arms and quartering and crests upon the family plate--all whispered to the present representative of the family that he was Carruthers of Poynings, and as such had only to make a very small effort to find life no very difficult matter, even for a person scantily endowed with brains. He tried it accordingly--tried it when a young man, had pursued the course ever since, and found it successful. Any latent suspicion of his own want of wisdom had vanished long since, as how, indeed, could it last? When Mr. Carruthers took his seat as chairman of the magisterial bench at Amherst, he found himself listening with great admiration to the prefatory remarks which he addressed to the delinquent in custody before passing sentence on him, unconscious that those remarks only echoed the magistrate's clerk, who stood close behind him whispering into his ear. When, as was his regular custom, he walked round the barn, where, on rent-days, the tenants were assembled at dinner, and heard his health proposed in glowing terms, and drunk with great enthusiasm--for he was a good and liberal landlord--and when he addressed a few conventional words of thanks in reply, and stroked his white whiskers, and bowed, amidst renewed cheering, how should a thought of his own shortcomings ever dawn upon him?