THE YEARS GONE BY.
Those readers will be disappointed who look for any very romantic
_dénoûment_ of 'A Life's Secret.' The story is a short and sad one.
Suggesting the wretchedness and evil that may result when truth is
deviated from; the lengths to which a blind, unholy desire for revenge
will carry an ill-regulated spirit; and showing how, in the moral
government of the world, sin casts its baleful consequences upon the
innocent as well as the guilty.
When the carriage of Dr. Bevary, containing himself and Miss Gwinn,
drove from Mr. Hunter's door on the unknown errand, he--Mr.
Hunter--staggered to a seat, rather than walked to it. That he was very
ill that day, both mentally and bodily, he was only too conscious of.
Austin Clay had said to him, 'Do not return: I will manage,' or words to
that effect. At present Mr. Hunter felt himself incapable of returning.
He sank down in the easy chair, and closed his eyes, his thoughts
thrown back to the past. An ill-starred past: one that had left its bane
on his after life, and whose consequences had clung to him. It is
impossible but that ill-doing must leave its results behind: the laws of
God and man alike demand it. Mr. Hunter, in early life, had been
betrayed into committing a wrong act; and Miss Gwinn, in the
gratification of her passionate revenge, had visited it upon him all too
heavily. Heavily, most heavily was it pressing upon him now. That
unhappy visit to Wales, which had led to all the evil, was especially
present to his mind this day. A handsome young man, in the first dawn of
manhood, he had gone to the fashionable Welsh watering-place--partly to
renew a waste of strength more imaginary than real; partly in the love
of roving natural to youth; partly to enjoy a few weeks' relaxation. 'If
you want good and comfortable lodgings, go to Miss Gwinn's house on the
South Parade,' some friend, whom he encountered at his journey's end,
had said to him. And to Miss Gwinn's he went. He found Miss Gwinn a
cold, proud woman--it was she whom you have seen--bearing the manners of
a lady. The servant who waited upon him was garrulous, and proclaimed,
at the first interview, amidst other gossip, that her mistress had but a
limited income--a hundred, or a hundred and fifty pounds a year, she
believed; that she preferred to eke it out by letting her drawing-room
and adjoining bed-room, and to live well; rather than to rusticate and
pinch. Miss Gwinn and her motives were nothing to the young sojourner,
and he turned a careless, if not a deaf ear, to the gossip. 'She does
it chiefly for the sake of Miss Emma,' added the girl: and the listener
so far roused himself as to ask apathetically who 'Miss Emma' was. It
was her mistress's young sister, the girl replied: there must be twenty
good years between them. Miss Emma was but nineteen, and had just come
home from boarding-school: her mistress had brought her up ever since
her mother died. Miss Emma was not at home now, but was expected on the
morrow, she went on. Miss Emma was not without her good looks, but her
mistress took care they should not be seen by everybody. She'd hardly
let her go about the house when strangers were in it, lest she should be
met in the passages. Mr. Hunter laughed. Good looks had attractions for
him in those days, and he determined to see for himself, in spite of
Miss Gwinn, whether Miss Emma's looks were so good that they might not
be looked at. Now, by the merest accident--at least, it happened by
accident in the first instance, and not by intention--one chief point of
complication in the future ill was unwittingly led to. In this early
stage of the affair, while the servant maid was exercising her tongue in
these items of domestic news, the friend who had recommended Mr. Hunter
to the apartments, arrived at the house and called out to him from the
foot of the stairs, his high clear voice echoing through the house.
'Lewis! Will you come out and take a stroll?'
Lewis Hunter hastened down, proclaiming his acquiescence, and the maid
proceeded to the parlour of her mistress.
'The gentleman's name is Lewis, ma'am. You said you forgot to ask it of
him.'
Miss Gwinn, methodical in all she did, took a sheet of note-paper and
inscribed the name upon it, 'Mr. Lewis,' as a reminder for the time when
she should require to make out his bill. When Mr. Hunter found out their
error--for the maid henceforth addressed him as 'Mr. Lewis,' or 'Mr.
Lewis, sir'--it rather amused him, and he did not correct the mistake.
He had no motive whatever for concealing his name: he did not wish it
concealed. On the other hand, he deemed it of no importance to set them
right; it signified not a jot to him whether they called him 'Mr. Lewis'
or 'Mr. Hunter.' Thus they knew him as, and believed him to be, Mr.
Lewis only. He never took the trouble to undeceive them, and nothing
occurred to require the mistake to be corrected. The one or two letters
only which arrived for him--for he had gone there for idleness, not to
correspond with his friends--were addressed to the post-office, in
accordance with his primary directions, not having known where he should
lodge.
Miss Emma came home: a very pretty and agreeable girl. In the narrow
passage of the house--one of those shallow residences built for letting
apartments at the sea-side--she encountered the stranger, who happened
to be going out as she entered. He lifted his hat to her.
'Who is that, Nancy?' she asked of the chattering maid.
'It's the new lodger, Miss Emma: Lewis his name is. Did you ever see
such good looks? And he has asked a thousand questions about you.'
Now, the fact was, Mr. Hunter--stay, we will also call him Mr. Lewis for
the time being, as they had fallen into the error, and it may be
convenient to us--had not asked a single question about the young lady,
save the one when her name was first spoken of, 'Who is Miss Emma?'
Nancy had supplied information enough for a 'thousand' questions,
unasked; and perhaps she saw no difference.
'Have you made any acquaintance with Mr. Lewis, Agatha?' Emma inquired
of her sister.
'When do I make acquaintance with the people who take my apartments?'
replied Miss Gwinn, in a tone of reproof. 'They naturally look down upon
me as a letter of lodgings--and I am not one to bear that.'
Now comes the unhappy tale. It shall be glanced at as briefly as
possible in detail; but it is necessary that parts of it should be
explained.
Acquaintanceship sprang up between Mr. Lewis and Emma Gwinn. At first,
they met in the town, or on the beach, accidentally; later, I very much
fear that the meetings were tacitly, if not openly, more intentional.
Both were agreeable, both were young; and a liking for each other's
society arose in each of them. Mr. Lewis found his time hang somewhat
heavily on his hands, for his friend had left; and Emma Gwinn was not
prevented from walking out as she pleased. Only one restriction was laid
upon her by her sister: 'Emma, take care that you make no acquaintance
with strangers, or suffer it to be made with you. Speak to none.'
An injunction which Miss Emma disobeyed. She disobeyed it in a
particularly marked manner. It was not only that she did permit Mr.
Lewis to make acquaintance with her, but she allowed it to ripen into
intimacy. Worse still, the meetings, I say, from having been at first
really accidental, grew to be sought. Sought on the one side as much as
on the other. Ah! young ladies, I wish this little history could be a
warning to you, never to deviate from the strict line of right--never to
stray, by so much as a thoughtless step, from the straight path of duty.
Once allow yourselves to do so, and you know not where it may end.
Slight acts of disobedience, that appear in themselves as the merest
trifles, may yet be fraught with incalculable mischief. The falling into
the habit of passing a pleasant hour of intercourse with Mr. Lewis,
sauntering on the beach in social and intellectual converse--and it was
no worse--appeared a very venial offence to Emma Gwinn. But she did it
in direct disobedience to the command and wish of her sister; and she
knew that she so did it. She knew also that she owed to that sister, who
had brought her up and cared for her from infancy, the allegiance that a
child gives to a mother. In this stage of the affair, she was chiefly to
blame. Mr. Lewis did not suppose that blame attached to him. There was
no reason why he should not while away an occasional hour in pleasant
chat with a young lady; there was no harm in the meetings, taking them
in the abstract. The blame lay with her. It is no excuse to urge that
Miss Gwinn exercised over her a too strict authority, that she kept her
secluded from society with an unusually tight hand. Miss Gwinn had a
motive in this: her sister knew nothing of it, and resented the
restriction as a personal wrong. To elude her vigilance, and walk about
with a handsome young man, seemed a return justifiable, and poor Emma
Gwinn never dreamt of any ill result. At length it was found out by Miss
Gwinn. She did not find out much. Indeed, there was not much to find,
except that there was more friendship between Mr. Lewis and Emma than
there was between Mr. Lewis and herself, and that they often met to
stroll on the beach, and enjoy the agreeable benefit of the sea-breezes.
But that was quite enough for Miss Gwinn. An uncontrollable storm of
passionate anger ensued, which was vented upon Emma. She stood over her,
and forced her to attire herself for travelling, protesting that not
another hour should she pass in the house while Mr. Lewis remained. Then
she started with Emma, to place her under the care of an aunt, who lived
so far off as to be a day's journey.
'It's a shame!' was the comment of sympathetic Nancy, who deemed Miss
Gwinn the most unreasonable woman under the sun. Nancy was herself
engaged to an enterprising porter, to whom she intended to be married
some fine Easter, when they had saved up sufficient to lay in a stock of
goods and chattels. And she forthwith went straight to Mr. Lewis, and
communicated to him what had occurred, giving him Miss Emma's new
address.
'He'll follow her if he have got any spirit,' was her inward thought.
'It's what my Joe would do by me, if I was forced off to desert places
by a old dragon.'
It was precisely what Mr. Lewis did. Upon the return of Miss Gwinn, he
gave notice to quit her house, where he had already stayed longer than
he intended to do originally. Miss Gwinn had no suspicion but that he
returned to his home--wherever that might be.
You may be inclined to ask why Miss Gwinn had fallen into anger so
great. That she loved her young sister with an intense and jealous love
was certain. Miss Gwinn was of a peculiar temperament, and she could not
bear that one spark of Emma's affection should stray from her. Emma, on
the contrary, scarcely cared for her eldest sister: entertaining for her
a very cool regard indeed, not to be called a sisterly one: and the
cause may have lain in the stern manners of Miss Gwinn. Deeply, ardently
as she loved Emma, her manners were to her invariably cold and stern:
and this does not beget love from the young. Emma also resented the
jealous restrictions imposed on her, lest she should make any
acquaintance that might lead to marriage. It had been better possibly
that Miss Gwinn had disclosed to her the reasons that existed against
it. There was madness in the Gwinn family. One of the parents had died
in an asylum, and the medical men suspected (as Miss Gwinn knew) that
the children might be subject to it. She did not fear it for herself,
but she did fear it for Emma: in point of fact, the young girl had
already, some years back, given indications of it. It was therefore Miss
Gwinn's intention and earnest wish--a very right and proper wish--that
Emma should never marry. There was one other sister, Elizabeth, a year
older than Emma. She had gone on a visit to Jersey some little time
before; and, to Miss Gwinn's dismay and consternation, had married a
farmer there, without asking leave. There was nothing for Miss Gwinn but
to bury the dismay within her, and to resolve that Emma should be
guarded more closely than before. But Emma Gwinn, knowing nothing of the
prompting motives, naturally resented the surveillance.
Mr. Lewis followed Emma to her place of retirement. He had really grown
to like her: but the pursuit may have had its rise as much in the boyish
desire to thwart Miss Gwinn--or, as he expressed it, 'to pay her
off'--as in love. However that might have been, Emma Gwinn welcomed him
all too gladly, and the walks were renewed.
It was an old tale, that, which ensued. Thanks to improved manners and
morals, we can say an 'old' tale, in contradistinction to a modern one.
A secret marriage in these days would be looked upon askance by most
people. Under the purest, the most domestic, the wisest court in the
world, manners and customs have taken a turn with us, and society calls
underhand doings by their right name, and turns its back upon them.
Nevertheless, private marriages and run-a-way marriages were not done
away with in the days when James Lewis Hunter contracted his.
I wonder whether one ever took place--where it was contracted in
disobedience and defiance--that did not bring, in some way or other, its
own punishment? To few, perhaps, was it brought home as it was to Mr.
Hunter. No apology can be offered for the step he took: not even his
youth, or his want of experience, or the attachment which had grown up
in his heart for Emma. He knew that his family would have objected to
the marriage. In fact, he dared not tell his purpose. Her position was
not equal to his--at least, old Mr. Hunter, a proud man, would not have
deemed it to be so--and he would have objected on the score of his son's
youth. The worst bar of all would have been the tendency to insanity of
the Gwinns--but of this James Hunter knew nothing. So he took that one
false, blind, irrevocable step of contracting a private marriage; and
the consequences came bitterly home to him. The marriage was a strictly
legal one. James Hunter was honourable enough to take care of that: and
both of them guarded the secret jealously. Emma remained at her aunt's,
and wore her ring inside her dress, attached to a neck ribbon. Her
husband only saw her sometimes; to avoid suspicion he lived chiefly at
his father's home in London. Six months afterwards, Emma Gwinn--nay,
Emma Hunter--lay upon her death-bed. A fever broke out in the
neighbourhood, which she caught; and a different illness also
supervened. Miss Gwinn, apprised of her danger, hastened to her. She
stood over her in a shock of horror--whence had those symptoms arisen,
and what meant that circle of gold that Emma in her delirium kept hold
of on her neck? Medical skill could not save her, and just before her
death, in a lucid interval, she confessed her marriage--the bare fact
only--none of its details; she loved her husband too truly to expose
him to the dire wrath of her sister. And she died without giving the
slightest clue to his real name--Hunter. It was the fever that killed
her.
Dire wrath, indeed! That was scarcely the word for it. Insane wrath
would be better. In Miss Gwinn's injustice (violent people always are
unjust) she persisted in attributing Emma's death to Mr. Lewis. In her
bitter grief, she jumped to the belief that the secret must have preyed
upon Emma's brain in the delirium of fever, and that that prevented her
recovery. It is very probable that the secret did prey upon it, though,
it is to be hoped, not to the extent assumed by Miss Gwinn.
Mr. Lewis knew nothing of the illness. He was in France with his father
at the time it happened, and had not seen his wife for three weeks.
Perhaps the knowledge of his absence abroad, caused Emma not to attempt
to apprise him when first seized; afterwards she was too ill to do so.
But by a strange coincidence he arrived from London the day after the
funeral.
Nobody need envy him the interview with Miss Gwinn. On her part it was
not a seemly one. Glad to get out of the house and be away from her
reproaches, the stormy interview was concluded almost as soon as it had
begun. He returned straight to London, her last words ringing their
refrain on his ears--that his wife was dead and he had killed her: Miss
Gwinn being still in ignorance that his proper name was anything but
Lewis. Following immediately upon this--it was curious that it should be
so--Miss Gwinn received news that her sister Elizabeth, Mrs. Gardener,
was ill in Jersey. She hastened to her: for Elizabeth was nearly, if
not quite, as dear to her as Emma had been. Mrs. Gardener's was a
peculiar and unusual illness, and it ended in a confirmed and hopeless
affection of the brain.
Once more Miss Gwinn's injustice came into play. Just as she had
persisted in attributing Emma's death to Mr. Lewis, so did she now
attribute to him Elizabeth's insanity: that is, she regarded him as its
remote cause. That the two young sisters had been much attached to each
other was undoubted: but to think that Elizabeth's madness came on
through sorrow for Emma's death, or at the tidings of what had preceded
it, was absurdly foolish. The poor young lady was placed in an asylum in
London, of which Dr. Bevary was one of the visiting physicians; he was
led to take an unusual interest in the case, and this brought him
acquainted with Miss Gwinn. Within a year of her being placed there, the
husband, Mr. Gardener, died in Jersey. His affairs turned out to be
involved, and from that time the cost of keeping her there devolved on
Miss Gwinn.
Private asylums are expensive, and Miss Gwinn could only maintain her
sister in one at the cost of giving up her own home. Ill-conditioned
though she was, we must confess she had her troubles. She gave it up
without a murmur: she would have given up her life to benefit either of
those, her young sisters. Retaining but a mere pittance, she devoted all
her means to the comfort of Elizabeth, and found a home with her
brother, in Ketterford. Where she spent her days bemoaning the lost and
cherishing a really insane hatred against Mr. Lewis--a desire for
revenge. She had never come across him, until that Easter Monday, at
Ketterford. And that, you will say, is scarcely correct, since it was
not himself she met then, but his brother. Deceived by the resemblance,
she attacked Mr. Henry Hunter in the manner you remember; and Austin
Clay saved him from the gravel-pit. But the time soon came when she
stood face to face with _him_. It was the hour she had so longed for:
the hour of revenge. What revenge? But for the wicked lie she
subsequently forged, there could have been no revenge. The worst she
could have proclaimed was, that James Lewis Hunter, when he was a young
man, had so far forgotten his duty to himself, and to the world's
decencies, as to contract a secret marriage. He might have got over
that. He had mourned his young wife sincerely at the time, but later
grew to think that all things were for the best--that it was a serious
source of embarrassment removed from his path. Nothing more or less had
he to acknowledge.
What revenge would Miss Gwinn have reaped from this? None. Certainly
none to satisfy one so vindictive as she. It never was clear to herself
what revenge she had desired: all her efforts had been directed to the
discovering of him. She found him a man of social ties. He had married
Louisa Bevary; he had a fair daughter; he was respected by the world:
all of which excited the anger of Miss Gwinn.
Remembering her violent nature, it was only to be expected that Mr.
Hunter should shrink from meeting Miss Gwinn when he first knew she had
tracked him and was in London. He had never told his wife the episode in
his early life, and would very much have disliked its tardy disclosure
to her through the agency of Miss Gwinn. Fifty pounds would he have
willingly given to avoid a meeting with her. But she came to his very
home; so to say, into the presence of his wife and child; and he had to
see her, and make the best of it. You must remember the interview. Mr.
Hunter's agitation _previous_ to it, was caused by the dread of the
woman's near presence, of the disturbance she might make in his
household, of the discovery his wife was in close danger of making--that
he was a widower when she married him, and not a bachelor. Any husband
of the present day might show the same agitation I think under similar
circumstances. But Mr. Hunter did not allow this agitation to sway him
when before Miss Gwinn; once shut up with her, he was cool and calm as a
cucumber; rather defied her than not, civilly; and asked what she meant
by intruding upon him, and what she had to complain of: which of course
was but adding fuel to the woman's flame. It was quite true, all he
said, and there was nothing left to hang a peg of revenge upon. And so
she invented one. The demon of mischief put it into her mind to impose
upon him with the lie that his first wife, Emma, was not dead, but
living. She told him that she (she, herself) had imposed upon him with a
false story in that long-past day, in saying that Emma was dead and
buried. It was another sister who had died, she added--not Emma: Emma
had been ill with the fever, but was recovering; and she had said this
to separate her from him. Emma, she continued, was alive still, a
patient in the lunatic asylum.
It never occurred to Mr. Hunter to doubt the tale. Her passionate
manner, her impressive words, but added to her earnestness, and he came
out from the interview believing that his first wife had not died. His
state of mind cannot be forgotten. Austin Clay saw him pacing the waste
ground in the dark night. His agony and remorse were fearful; the sun of
his life's peace had set: and there could be no retaliation upon her who
had caused it all--Miss Gwinn.
Miss Gwinn, however, did not follow up her revenge. Not because further
steps might have brought the truth to light, but because after a night's
rest she rather repented of it. Her real nature was honourable, and she
despised herself for what she had done. Once it crossed her to undo it;
but she hated Mr. Hunter with an undying hatred, and so let it alone and
went down to Ketterford. One evening, when she had been at home some
days, a spirit of confidence came over her which was very unusual, and
she told her brother of the revenge she had taken. That was quite enough
for Lawyer Gwinn: a glorious opportunity of enriching himself, not to be
missed. He went up to London, and terrified Mr. Hunter out of five
thousand pounds. 'Or I go and tell your wife, Miss Bevary, that she is
not your wife,' he threatened, in his coarse way. Miss Gwinn suspected
that the worthy lawyer had gone to make the most of the opportunity, and
she wrote him a sharp letter, telling him that if he did so--if he
interfered at all--she would at once confess to Lewis Hunter that Emma
was really dead. Not knowing where he would put up in London, she
enclosed this note to Austin Clay, asking him to give it to Lawyer
Gwinn. She took the opportunity, at the same time, of writing a
reproachful letter to Mr. Hunter, in which his past ill-doings and
Emma's present existence were fully enlarged upon. As the reader may
remember, she misdirected the letters: Austin became acquainted with the
(as he could but suppose) dangerous secret; and the note to Lawyer Gwinn
was set alight, sealed. If Austin or his master had but borrowed a
momentary portion of the principles of Gwinn of Ketterford, and peeped
into the letter! What years of misery it would have saved Mr. Hunter!
But when Miss Gwinn discovered that her brother had used the lie to
obtain money, she did not declare the truth. The sense of justice within
her yielded to revenge. She hated Mr. Hunter as she had ever done, and
would not relieve him. A fine life, between them, did they lead Mr.
Hunter. Miss Gwinn protested against every fresh aggression made by the
lawyer; but protested only. In Mr. Hunter's anguish of mind at the
disgrace cast on his wife and child; in his terror lest the truth (as he
assumed it to be) should reach them--and it seemed to be ever
looming--he had lived, as may be said, a perpetual death. And the
disgrace was of a nature that never could be removed; and the terror had
never left him through all these long years.
Dr. Bevary had believed the worst. When he first became acquainted with
Miss Gwinn, she (never a communicative woman) had not disclosed the
previous history of the patient in the asylum. She had given hints of a
sad tale, she even said she was living in hope of being revenged on one
who had done herself and family an injury, but she said no more. Later
circumstances connected with Mr. Hunter and his brother, dating from the
account he heard of Miss Gwinn's attack upon Mr. Henry, had impressed
Dr. Bevary with the belief that James Hunter had really married the poor
woman in the asylum. When he questioned Miss Gwinn, that estimable woman
had replied in obscure hints: and they had so frightened Dr. Bevary that
he dared ask no further. For his sister's sake he tacitly ignored the
subject in future, living in daily thankfulness that Mrs. Hunter was
without suspicion.
But with the dead body of Elizabeth Gardener lying before her, the
enacted lie came to an end. Miss Gwinn freely acknowledged what she had
done, and took little, if any, blame to herself. 'Lewis Hunter spoilt
the happiness of my life,' she said; 'in return I have spoilt his.'
'And suppose my sister, his lawful wife, had been led to believe this
fine tale?' questioned Dr. Bevary, looking keenly at her.
'In that case I should have declared the truth,' said Miss Gwinn. 'I had
no animosity to her. She was innocent, she was also your sister, and she
should never have suffered.'
'How could you know that she remained ignorant?'
'By my brother being able, whenever he would, to frighten Mr. Hunter,'
was the laconic answer.