RELIEF.
We left Mr. Hunter in the easy chair of his dining-room, buried in these
reminiscences of the unhappy past, and quite unconscious that relief of
any sort could be in store for him. And yet it was very near: relief
from two evils, quite opposite in their source. How long he sat there he
scarcely knew; it seemed for hours. In the afternoon he aroused himself
to his financial difficulties, and went out. He remembered that he had
purposed calling that day upon his bankers, though he had no hope--but
rather the certainty of the contrary--that they would help him out of
his financial embarrassments. There was just time to get there before
the bank closed, and Mr. Hunter had a cab called and went down to
Lombard Street. He was shown into the room of the principal partner. The
banker thought how ill he looked. Mr. Hunter's first question was about
the heavy bill that was due that day. He supposed it had been presented
and dishonoured.
'No,' said the banker. 'It was presented and paid.'
A ray of hope lighted up the sadness of Mr. Hunter's face. 'Did you
indeed pay it? It was very kind. You shall be no eventual losers.'
'We did not pay it from our own funds, Mr. Hunter. It was paid from
yours.'
Mr. Hunter did not understand. 'I thought my account had been nearly
drawn out,' he said; 'and by the note I received this morning from you,
I understood you would decline to help me.'
'Your account was drawn very close indeed; but this afternoon, in time
to meet the bill upon its second presentation, there was a large sum
paid in to your credit--two thousand six hundred pounds.'
A pause of blank astonishment on the part of Mr. Hunter. 'Who paid it
in?' he presently asked.
'Mr. Clay. He came himself. You will weather the storm now, Mr. Hunter.'
There was no answering reply. The banker bent forward in the dusk of the
growing evening, and saw that Mr. Hunter was incapable of making one. He
was sinking back in his chair in a fainting fit. Whether it was the
revulsion of feeling caused by the conviction that he _should_ now
weather the storm, or simply the effect of his physical state, Mr.
Hunter had fainted, as quietly as any girl might do. One of the partners
lived at the bank, and Mr. Hunter was conveyed into the dwelling-house.
It was quite evening before he was well enough to leave it. He drove to
the yard. It was just closed for the night, and Mr. Clay was gone. Mr.
Hunter ordered the cab home. He found Austin waiting for him, and he
also found Dr. Bevary. Seeing the latter, he expected next to see Miss
Gwinn, and glanced nervously round.
'She is gone back to Ketterford,' spoke out Dr. Bevary, divining the
fear. 'The woman will never trouble you again. I thought you must be
lost, Hunter. I have been here twice; been home to dinner with Florence;
been round at the yard worrying Clay; and could not come upon you
anywhere.'
'I went to the bank, and was taken ill there,' said Mr. Hunter, who
still seemed anything but himself, and looked round in a bewildered
manner. 'The woman, Bevary--are you sure she's gone quite away? She--she
wanted to beg, I think,' he added, as if in apology for pressing the
question.
'She is _gone_: gone never to return; and you may be at rest,' repeated
the doctor, impressively. 'And so you have been ill at the bankers',
James! Things are going wrong, I suppose.'
'No, they are going right. Austin'--laying his hand upon the young man's
shoulder--'what am I to say? This money can only have come from you.'
'Sir!' said Austin, half laughing.
Mr. Hunter drew Dr. Bevary's attention, pointing to Austin. 'Look at
him, Bevary. He has saved me. But for him, I should have borne a
dishonoured name this day. I went down to Lombard Street, a man without
hope, believing that the blow had been already struck in bills
dishonoured--that my name was on its way to the _Gazette_. I found that
he, Austin Clay, had paid in between two and three thousand pounds to my
credit.'
'I could not put my money to a better use, sir. The two thousand pounds
were left to me, you know: the rest I saved. I was wishing for something
to turn up that I could invest it in.'
'Invest!' exclaimed Mr. Hunter, deep feeling in his tone. 'How do you
know you will not lose it?'
'I have no fear, sir. The strike is at an end, and business will go on
well now.'
'If I did not believe that it would, I would never consent to use it,'
said Mr. Hunter.
It was true. Austin Clay, a provident man, had been advancing his money
to save the credit of his master. Suspecting some such a crisis as this
was looming, he had contrived to hold his funds in available readiness.
It had come, though, sooner than he anticipated.
'How am I to repay you?' asked Mr. Hunter. 'I don't mean the money: but
the obligation.'
A red flush mounted to Austin's brow. He answered hastily, as if to
cover it.
'I do not require payment, sir. I do not look for any.'
Mr. Hunter stood in deep thought, looking at him, but vacantly. Dr.
Bevary was near the mantelpiece, apparently paying no attention to
either of them. 'Will you link your name to mine?' said Mr. Hunter,
moving towards Austin.
'In what manner, sir?'
'By letting the firm be from henceforth Hunter and Clay. I have long
wished this; you are of too great use to me to remain anything less than
a partner, and by this last act of yours, you have earned the right to
be so. Will you object to join your name to one which was so near being
dishonoured?'
He held out his hand as he spoke, and Austin clasped it. 'Oh, Mr.
Hunter!' he exclaimed, in the strong impulse of the moment, 'I wish you
would give me hopes of a dearer reward.'
'You mean Florence,' said Mr. Hunter.
'Yes,' returned Austin, in agitation. 'I care not how long I wait, or
what price you may call upon me to pay for her. As Jacob served Laban
seven years for Rachel, so would I serve for Florence, and think it but
a day, for the love I bear her. Sir, Mrs. Hunter would have given her to
me.'
'My objection is not to you, Austin. Were I to disclose to you certain
particulars connected with Florence--as I should be obliged to do before
she married--you might yourself decline her.'
'Try me, sir,' said Austin, a bright smile parting his lips.
'Ay, try him,' said Dr. Bevary, in his quaint manner. 'I have an idea
that he may know as much of the matter as you do, Hunter. You neither of
you know too much,' he significantly added.
Austin's cheek turned red; and there was that in his tone, his look,
which told Mr. Hunter that he had known the fact, known it for years.
'Oh, sir,' he pleaded, 'give me Florence.'
'I tell you that you neither of you know too much,' said Dr. Bevary.
'But, look here, Austin. The best thing you can do is, to go to my house
and ask Florence whether she will have you. Then--if you don't find it
too much trouble--escort her home.' Austin laughed as he caught up his
hat. A certain prevision, that he should win Florence, had ever been
within him.
Dr. Bevary watched the room-door close, and then drew a chair in front
of his brother-in-law. 'Did it ever strike you that Austin Clay knew
your secret, James?' he began.
'How should it?' returned Mr. Hunter, feeling himself compelled to
answer.
'I do not know how,' said the doctor, 'any more than I know how the
impression, that he did, fixed itself upon me. I have felt sure, this
many a year past, that he was no stranger to the fact, though he
probably knew nothing of the details.'
To the fact! Dr. Bevary spoke with strange coolness.
'When did _you_ become acquainted with it?' asked Mr. Hunter, in a tone
of sharp pain.
'I became acquainted with your share in it at the time Miss Gwinn
discovered that Mr. Lewis was Mr. Hunter. At least, with as much of the
share as I ever was acquainted with until to-day.'
Mr. Hunter compressed his lips. It was no use beating about the bush any
longer.
'James,' resumed the doctor, 'why did you not confide the secret to me?
It would have been much better.'
'To you! Louisa's brother!'
'It would have been better, I say. It might not have lifted the sword
that was always hanging over Louisa's head, or have eased it by one jot;
but it might have eased _you_. A sorrow kept within a man's own bosom,
doing its work in silence, will burn his life away: get him to talk of
it, and half the pain is removed. It is also possible that I might have
made better terms than you, with the rapacity of Gwinn.'
'If you knew it, why did you not speak openly to me?'
Dr. Bevary suppressed a shudder. 'It was one of those terrible secrets
that a third party cannot interfere in uninvited. No: silence was my
only course, so long as you observed silence to me. Had I interfered, I
might have said "Louisa shall leave you!"'
'It is over, so far as she is concerned,' said Mr. Hunter, wiping his
damp brow. 'Let her name rest. It is the thought of her that has well
nigh killed me.'
'Ay, it's over,' responded Dr. Bevary; 'over, in more senses than one.
Do you not wonder that Miss Gwinn should have gone back to Ketterford
without molesting you again?'
'How can I wonder at anything she does? She comes and she goes, with as
little reason as warning.'
Dr. Bevary lowered his voice. 'Have you ever been to see that poor
patient in Kerr's asylum?'
The question excited the anger of Mr. Hunter. 'What do you mean by
asking it?' he cried. 'When I was led to believe her dead, I shaped my
future course according to that belief. I have never acted, nor would I
act, upon any other--save in the giving money to Gwinn, for my wife's
sake. If Louisa was not my wife legally, she was nothing less in the
sight of God.'
'Louisa was your wife,' said Dr. Bevary, quietly. And Mr. Hunter
responded by a sharp gesture of pain. He wished the subject at an end.
The doctor continued--
'James, had you gone, though it had been but for an instant, to see that
unhappy patient of Kerr's, your trammels would have been broken. It was
not Emma, your young wife of years ago.'
'It was not!----What do you say?' gasped Mr. Hunter.
'When Agatha Gwinn found you out, here, in this house, she startled you
nearly to death by telling you that Emma was alive--was a patient in
Kerr's asylum. She told you that, when you had been informed in those
past days of Emma's death, you were imposed upon by a lie--a lie
invented by herself. James, the lie was uttered _then_, when she spoke
to you here. Emma, your wife, did die; and the young woman in the asylum
was her sister.' Mr. Hunter rose. His hands were raised imploringly, his
face was stretched forward in its sad yearning. What!--which was true?
which was he to believe?--'In the gratification of her revenge, Miss
Gwinn concocted the tale that Emma was alive,' resumed Dr. Bevary,
'knowing, as she spoke it, that Emma had been dead years and years. She
contrived to foster the same impression upon me; and the same
impression, I cannot tell how, has, I am sure, clung to Austin Clay.
Louisa was your lawful wife, James.' Mr. Hunter, in the plenitude of his
thankfulness, sank upon his chair, a sobbing burst of emotion breaking
from him, and the drops of perspiration gathering again on his brow.
'That other one, the sister, the poor patient, is dead,' pursued the
doctor. 'As we stood together over her, an hour ago, Miss Gwinn
confessed the imposition. It appeared to slip from her involuntarily, in
spite of herself. I inquired her motive, and she answered, "To be
revenged on you, Lewis Hunter, for the wrong you had done." As you had
marred the comfort of her life, so she in return had marred that of
yours. As she stood in her impotence, looking on the dead, I asked her
which, in her opinion, had inflicted the most wrong, she or you?'
Mr. Hunter lifted his eager face. 'It was a foolish deceit. What did she
hope to gain by it? A word at any time might have exposed it.'
'It seems she did gain pretty well by it,' significantly replied Dr.
Bevary. 'There's little doubt that it was first spoken in the angry rage
of the moment, as being the most effectual mode of tormenting you: and
the terrible dread with which you received it--as I conclude you so did
receive it--must have encouraged her to persist in the lie. James, you
should have confided in me; I might have brought light to bear on it in
some way or other. Your timorous silence has kept me quiet.'
'God be thanked that it is over!' fervently ejaculated Mr. Hunter. 'The
loss of my money, the loss of my peace, they seem to be little in
comparison with the joy of this welcome revelation.'
He sat down as he spoke and bent his head upon his hand. Presently he
looked at his brother-in-law. 'And you think that Clay has suspected
this? And that--suspecting it, he has wished for Florence?'
'I am sure of one thing--that Florence has been his object, his dearest
hope. What he says has no exaggeration in it--that he would serve for
her seven years, and seven to that, for the love he bears her.'
'I have been afraid to glance at such a thing as marriage for Florence,
and that is the reason I would not listen to Austin Clay. With this slur
hanging over her----'
'There is no slur--as it turns out,' interrupted Dr. Bevary. 'Florence
loves him, James; and your wife knew it.'
'What a relief is all this!' murmured Mr. Hunter. 'The woman gone back
to Ketterford! I think I shall sleep to-night.'
'She is gone back, never more to trouble you. We must see how her worthy
brother can be brought to account for obtaining money under false
pretences.'
'I'll make him render back every shilling he has defrauded me of: I'll
bring him to answer for it before the laws of his country,' was the
wronged man's passionate and somewhat confused answer.
But that is more easy to say than to do, Mr. Hunter!
For, a few days subsequent to this, Lawyer Gwinn, possibly scenting that
unpleasant consequences might be in store for him, was quietly steaming
to America in a fine ship; taking all his available substance with him;
and leaving Ketterford and his sister behind.