A Life's Secret

'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–'