A Life's Secret Part 40

Mr. Hunter was deeply agitated. 'As the breath went out of my wife's body, I thanked G.o.d that He had taken her--that she was removed from the wicked machinations of you and yours. But for the bitter wrong dealt out to me by your wicked sister Agatha, I should have mourned for her with regrets and tears. You have made my life into a curse: I purchased your silence that you should not render hers one. The fear and the thraldom are alike over.'

Mr. Gwinn laughed significantly. 'Your daughter lives.'

'She does. In saying that I will make her cognisant of this, rather than supply you with another sixpence, you may judge how firm is my determination.'

'It will be startling news for her.'

'It will: should it come to the telling. Better that she hear it, and make the best and the worst of it, than that I should reduce her to utter poverty--and your demands, supplied, would do that. The news will not kill her--as it might have killed her mother.'

Did Lawyer Gwinn feel baffled? For a minute or two he seemed to be at a loss for words. 'I will have money,' he exclaimed at length. 'You have tried to stand out against it before now.'

'Man! do you know that I am on the brink of ruin?' uttered Mr. Hunter, in deep excitement, 'and that it is you who have brought me to it?' But for the money supplied to you, I could have weathered successfully this contest with my workmen, as my brother and others are weathering it. If you have any further claim against me,' he added in a spirit of mocking bitterness, 'bring it against my bankruptcy, for that is looming near.'

'I will not stir from your house without a cheque for the money.'

'This house is sanctified by the presence of the dead,' reverently spoke Mr. Hunter. 'To have any disturbance in it would be most unseemly. Do not force me to call in a policeman.'

'As a policeman was once called into you, in the years gone by,' Lawyer Gwinn was beginning with a sneer: but Mr. Hunter raised his voice and his hand.

'Be still! Coward as I have been, in one sense, in yielding to your terms, I have never been coward enough to permit _you_ to allude, in my presence, to the past. I never will. Go from my house quietly, sir: and do not attempt to re-enter it.'

Mr. Hunter broke from the man--for Gwinn made an effort to detain him--opened the door, and called to the servant, who came forward.

'Show this person to the door, Richard.'

An instant's hesitation with himself whether it should be compliance or resistance, and Gwinn of Ketterford went forth.

'Richard,' said Mr. Hunter, as the servant closed the hall-door.--'Sir?'

'Should that man ever come here again, do not admit him. And if he shows himself troublesome, call a policeman to your aid.' And then Mr. Hunter shut himself in the room, and burst into heavy tears, such as are rarely shed by man.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LITTLE BOY AT REST.

No clue whatever had been obtained to the a.s.sailants of John Baxendale.

The chief injury lay in the ribs. Two or three of them were broken: the head was also much bruised and cut. He had been taken into his own home and there attended to: it was nearer than the hospital: though the latter would have been the better place. Time had gone on since, and he was now out of danger. Never would John Baxendale talk of the harshness of masters again--though, indeed, he never much talked of it. The moment Mr. Hunter heard of the a.s.sault, he sent round his own surgeon, directed Austin to give Baxendale a sovereign weekly, and caused strengthening delicacies to be served from his own house. And that was the same man whom you heard forbidding his wife and daughter to forward aid to Darby's starving children. Yes; but Mr. Hunter denied the aid upon principle: Darby would not work. It pleased him far more to accord it to Baxendale than to deny it to Darby: the one course gladdened his heart, the other pained it. The surgeon who attended was a particular friend of Dr. Bevary's, and the Doctor, in his quaint, easy manner, contrived to let Baxendale know that there would be no bill for him to pay.

It was late when Austin reached Baxendale's room the evening of Mrs.

Hunter's death. Tidings of which had already gone abroad. 'Oh, sir,'

uttered the invalid, straining his eyes on him from the sick-bed, before Austin had well entered, 'is the news true?'

'It is,' sadly replied Austin. 'She died this afternoon.'

'It is a good lady gone from among us. Does the master take on much?'

'I have not seen him since. Death came on, I believe, rather suddenly at the last.'

'Poor Mrs. Hunter!' wailed Baxendale. 'Hers is not the only spirit that is this evening on the wing,' he added, after a pause. 'That boy of Darby's is going, Mary'--looking on the bright sovereign put into his hands by Austin--'suppose you get this changed, and go down there and take 'em a couple of s.h.i.+llings? It's hard to have a cupboard quite empty when death's a visitor.'

Mary came up from the far end of the room, and put on her shawl with alacrity. She looked but a shadow herself. Austin wondered how Mr.

Hunter would approve of any of his s.h.i.+llings finding their way to Darby's; but he said nothing against it. But for the strongly expressed sentiments of Mr. Hunter, Austin would have given away right and left, to relieve the distress around him: although, put him upon principle, and he agreed fully with Mr. Hunter. Mary got change for the sovereign, and took possession of a couple of s.h.i.+llings. It was a bitterly cold evening; but she was well wrapped up. Though not permanently better, Mary was feeling stronger of late: in her simple faith, she believed G.o.d had mercifully spared her for a short while, that she might nurse her father. She knew, just as well as did Dr. Bevary, that it would not be for long. As she went along she met Mrs. Quale.

'The child is gone,' said the latter, hearing where Mary was going.

'Poor child! Is he really dead?'

Mrs. Quale nodded. Few things upset her equanimity. 'And I am keeping my eyes open to look out for Darby,' she added. 'His wife asked me if I would. She is afraid'--dropping her voice--'that he may do something rash.'

'Why?' breathed Mary, in a tone of horror, understanding the allusion.

'Why!' vehemently repeated Mrs. Quale; 'why, because he reflects upon himself--that's why. When he saw that the breath was really gone out of the poor little body--and that's not five minutes ago--he broke out like one mad. Them quiet natures in ordinary be always the worst if they get upset; though it takes a good deal to do it. He blamed himself, saying that if he had been in work, and able to get proper food for the boy, it would not have happened; and he cursed the Trades Unions for misleading him, and bringing him to what he is. There's many another cursing the Unions on this inclement night, or my name's not Nancy Quale.' She turned back with Mary, and they entered the home of the Darbys. Grace, unable to get another situation, partly through the baker's wife refusing her a character, partly because her clothes were in pledge, looked worn and thin, as she stood trying to hush the youngest child, then crying fretfully. Mrs. Darby sat in front of the small bit of fire, the dead boy on her knees, pressed to her still, just as Mrs. Quale had left her.

'He won't hunger any more,' she said, lifting her face to Mary, the hot tears running from it.

Mary stooped and kissed the little cold face. 'Don't grieve,' she murmured. 'It would be well for us all if we were as happy as he.'

'Go and speak to him,' whispered the mother to Mrs. Quale, pointing to a back door, which led to a sort of open scullery. 'He has come in, and is gone out there.'

Leaning against the wall, in the cold moonlight, stood Robert Darby.

Mrs. Quale was not very good at consolation: finding fault was more in her line. 'Come, Darby, don't take on so: it won't do no good,' was the best she could say. 'Be a man.' He seized hold of her, his shaking hands trembling, while he spoke bitter words against the Trades Unions. 'Don't speak so, Robert Darby,' was the rejoinder of Mrs. Quale. 'You are not obliged to join the Trades' Unions; therefore there's no need to curse 'em. If you and others kept aloof from them, they'd soon die away.'

'They have proved a curse to me and mine'--and the man's voice rose to a shriek, in his violent emotion. 'But for them, I should have been at work long ago.'

'Then I'd go to work at once, if it was me, and put the curse from me that way,' concluded Mrs. Quale.

With the death of the child, things had come to so low an ebb in the Darby household, as to cause sundry kind gossipers to suggest, and to spread the suggestion as a fact, that the parish would have the honour of conducting the interment. Darby would have sold himself first. He was at Mr. Hunter's yard on the following morning before daylight, and the instant the gates were opened presented himself to the foreman as a candidate for work. That functionary would not treat with him. 'We have had so many of you old hands just coming on for a day or two, and then withdrawing again, through orders of the society, or through getting frightened at being threatened, that Mr. Clay said I was to take back no more s.h.i.+lly-shallyers.'

'Try me!' feverishly cried Darby. 'I will not go from it again.'

'No,' said the foreman. 'You can speak to Mr. Clay.'

'Darby,' said Austin, when the man appeared before him, 'will you pa.s.s your word to me to remain? Here men come; they sign the doc.u.ment, they have work a.s.signed them; and in a day or so, I hear that they have left again. It causes no end of confusion to us, for work to be taken up and laid down in that way.'

'Take me on, and try me, sir. I'll stick to it as long as there's a stroke of work to do--unless they tread me to pieces as they did Baxendale. I never was cordial for the society, sir. I obeyed it, and yet a doubt was always upon me whether I might not be doing wrong. I am sure of it now. The society has worked harm to me and mine, and I will never belong to it again.'

'Others have said as much of the society, and have returned to it the next day,' remarked Mr. Clay.

'Perhaps so, sir. They hadn't seen one of their children die, that they'd have laid down their own lives to save--but that they had not _worked_ to save. I have. Take me on, sir! He can't be buried till I have earned the wherewithal to pay for it. I'll stand to my work from henceforth--over hours, if I can get it.'

Austin wrote a word on a card, and desired Darby to carry it to the foreman. 'You can go to work at once,' he said.

'I'll take work too, sir, if I can get it,' exclaimed another man, who had come up in time to hear Austin's last words.

'What! is it you, Abel White?' exclaimed Austin, with a half-laugh. 'I thought you made a boast that if the whole lot of hands came back to work, you never would, except upon your own terms.'