by Ellen Wood
‘Miss Gwinn,’ interrupted Austin, at length, ‘I fancy you forget that I am present. Your family affairs have nothing to do with me, and I would prefer not to hear anything about them. I will wish you good day.’
‘True. They have nothing to do with you. I know not why I spoke before you, save that your sight angers me.’
‘Why so?’ Austin could not forbear asking.
‘Because you live on terms of friendship with that man. You are as his right hand in business; you are a welcome guest at his house; you regard and respect the house’s mistress. Boy! but that she has not wilfully injured me; but that she is the sister of Dr. Bevary, I should — —’
‘I cannot listen to any discussion involving the name of Hunter,’ spoke Austin, in a repellant, resolute tone, the colour again flaming in his cheeks. ‘Allow me to bid you good day.’
‘Stay,’ she resumed, in a softer tone, ‘it is not with you personally that I am angry — —’
An interruption came in the person of Lawyer Gwinn. He entered the room without his coat, a pen behind each ear, and a dirty straw hat on his head. It was probably his office attire in warm weather.
‘I thought I heard a strange voice. How do you do, Mr. Clay?’ he exclaimed, with much suavity.
Austin bowed. He said something to the effect that he was on the point of departing, and retreated to the door, bowing his final farewell to Miss Gwinn. Mr. Gwinn followed.
‘Ketterford will have to congratulate you, Mr. Clay,’ he said. ‘I understand you inherit a very handsome sum from Mrs. Thornimett.’
‘Indeed!’ frigidly replied Austin. ‘Mrs. Thornimett’s will is not yet read. But Ketterford always knows everybody’s business better than its own.’
‘Look you, my dear Mr. Clay,’ said the lawyer, holding him by the button-hole. ‘Should you require a most advantageous investment for your money — one that will turn you in cent. per cent. and no risk — I can help you to one. Should your inheritance be of the value of a thousand pounds, and you would like to double it — as all men, of course, do like — just trust it to me; I have the very thing now open.’
Austin shook himself free — rather too much in the manner that he might have shaken himself from a serpent. ‘Whether my inheritance may be of the value of one thousand pounds or of ten thousand, Mr. Gwinn, I shall not require your services in the disposal of it. Good morning.’
The lawyer looked after him as he strode away. ‘So, you carry it with a high hand to me, do you, my brave gentleman! with your vain person, and your fine clothes, and your imperious manner! Take you care! I hold your master under my thumb; I may next hold you!’
‘The vile hypocrite!’ ejaculated Austin to himself, walking all the faster to leave the lawyer’s house behind him. ‘She is bad enough, with her hankering after revenge, and her fits of passion; but she is an angel of light compared to him. Heaven help Mr. Hunter! It would have been sufficient to have had her to fight, but to have him! Ay, Heaven help him!’
‘How d’ye do, Mr. Clay?’
Austin returned the nod of the passing acquaintance, and continued his way, his thoughts reverting to Miss Gwinn.
‘Poor thing! there are times when I pity her! Incomprehensible as the story is to me, I can feel compassion; for it was a heavy wrong done her, looking at it in the best light. She is not all bad; but for the wrong, and for her evil temper, she might have been different. There is something good in the hint I gathered now from her lips, if it be true — that she suffered her own revenge to drop into abeyance, because her brother had pursued Mr. Hunter to drain money from him: she would not go upon him in both ways. Yes, there was something in it both noble and generous, if those terms can ever be applied to — —’
‘Austin Clay, I am sure! How are you?’
Austin resigned his hand to the new comer, who claimed it. His thoughts could not be his own to-day.
The funeral of Mrs. Thornimett took place. Her mortal remains were laid beside her husband, there to repose peacefully until the last trump shall sound. On the return of the mourners to the house, the will was read, and Austin found himself the undoubted possessor of two thousand pounds. Several little treasures, in the shape of books, drawings, and home knicknacks, were also left to him. He saw after the packing of these, and the day following the funeral he returned to London.
It was evening when he arrived; and he proceeded without delay to the house of Mr. Hunter — ostensibly to report himself, really to obtain a sight of Florence, for which his tired heart was yearning. The drawing-room was lighted up, by which he judged that they had friends with them. Mr. Hunter met him in the hall: never did a visitor’s knock sound at his door but Mr. Hunter, in his nervous restlessness, strove to watch who it might be that entered. Seeing Austin, his face acquired a shade of brightness, and he came forward with an outstretched hand.
‘But you have visitors,’ Austin said, when greetings were over, and Mr. Hunter was drawing him towards the stairs. He wore deep mourning, but was not in evening dress.
‘As if anybody will care for the cut of your coat!’ cried Mr. Hunter. ‘There’s Mrs. Hunter wrapped up in a woollen shawl.’
The room was gay with light and dress, with many voices, and with music. Florence was seated at the piano, playing, and singing in a glee with others. Austin, silently greeting those whom he knew as he passed, made his way to Mrs. Hunter. She was wrapped in a warm shawl, as her husband had said; but she appeared better than usual.
‘I am so glad to see you looking well,’ Austin whispered, his earnest tone betraying deep feeling.
‘And I am glad to see you here again,’ she replied, smiling, as she held his hand. ‘We have missed you, Austin. Yes, I feel better! but it is only a temporary improvement. So you have lost poor Mrs. Thornimett. She died before you could reach her.’
‘She did,’ replied Austin, with a grave face. ‘I wish we could get transported to places, in case of necessity as quickly as the telegraph brings us news that we are wanted. A senseless and idle wish, you will say; but it would have served me in this case. She asked after me twice in her last half hour.’
‘Austin,’ breathed Mrs. Hunter, ‘was it a happy death-bed? Was she ready to go?’
‘Quite, quite,’ he answered, a look of enthusiasm illumining his face. ‘She had been ready long.’
‘Then we need not mourn for her; rather praise God that she is taken. Oh, Austin, what a happy thing it must be for such to die! But you are young and hopeful; you cannot understand that, yet.’
So, Mrs. Hunter had learnt that great truth! Some years before, she had not so spoken to the wife of John Baxendale, when she was waiting in daily expectation of being called on her journey. It had come to her ere her time of trial — as the dying woman had told her it would.
The singing ceased, and in the movement which it occasioned in the room, Austin left Mrs. Hunter’s side, and stood within the embrasure of the window, half hidden by the curtains. The air was pleasant on that warm summer night, and Florence, resigning her place at the instrument to some other lady, stole to the window to inhale its freshness. There she saw Austin. She had not heard him enter the room — did not know, in fact, that he was back from Ketterford.
‘Oh!’ she uttered, in the sudden revulsion of feeling that the sight brought to her, ‘is it you?’
He quietly took her hands in his, and looked down at her. Had it been to save her life, she could not have helped betraying emotion.
‘Are you glad to see me, Florence?’ he softly whispered.
She coloured even to tears. Glad! The time might come when she should be able to tell him so; but that time was not yet.
‘Mrs. Hunter is glad of my return,’ he continued, in the same low tone, sweeter to her ear than all music. ‘She says I have been missed. Is it so, Florence?’
‘And what have you been doing?’ asked Florence, not knowing in the least what she said in her confusion, as she left his question unanswered, and drew her hands away from him.
‘I have not been doing much, save the seeing a dear old friend laid in the earth. You know that Mrs. Thornimett is dead. She died before I got there.’
‘Papa told us that. He heard from you two or three times, I think. How you must regret it! But why did they not send for you in time?’
‘It was only the last day that danger was apprehended,’ replied Austin. ‘She grew worse suddenly. You cannot think, Florence, how strangely this gaiety’ — he half turned to the room— ‘contrasts with the scenes I have left: the holy calm of her death-chamber, the laying of her in the grave.’
‘An unwelcome contrast, I am sure it must be.’
‘It jars on the mind. All events, essentially of the world, let them be ever so necessary or useful, must do so, when contrasted with the solemn scenes of life’s close. But how soon we forget those solemn scenes, and live in the world again!’
‘Austin,’ she gently whispered, ‘I do not like to talk of death. It reminds me of the dread that is ever oppressing me.’
‘She looks so much better as to surprise me,’ was his answer, unconscious that it betrayed his undoubted cognisance of the ‘dread’ she spoke of.
‘If it would but last!’ sighed Florence. ‘To prolong mamma’s life, I think I would sacrifice mine.’
‘No, you would not, Florence — in mercy to her. If called upon to lose her you would grow reconciled to it; to do so, is in the order of nature. She could not spare you.’
Florence believed that she never could grow reconciled to it: she often wondered how she should bear it when the time came. But there rose up before her now, as she spoke with Austin, one cheering promise, ‘As thy day is, so shall thy strength be.’
‘What should you say, if I tell you I have come into a fortune!’ resumed Austin, in a lighter tone.
‘I should say — But, is it true?’ broke off Florence.
‘Not true, as you and Mr. Hunter would count fortunes,’ smiled Austin; ‘but true, as poor I, born without silver spoons in my mouth, and expecting to work hard for all I shall ever possess, have looked upon them. Mrs. Thornimett has behaved to me most kindly, most generously; she has bequeathed to me two thousand pounds.’
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said Florence, her glad eyes sparkling. ‘Never call yourself poor again.’
‘I cannot call myself rich, as Mr. and Mrs. Hunter compute riches. But, Florence, it may be a stepping-stone to become so.’
‘A stepping-stone to become what?’ demanded Dr. Bevary, breaking in upon the conference.
‘Rich,’ said Austin, turning to the doctor. ‘I am telling Florence that I have come into some money since I went away.’
Mr. Hunter and others were gathering around them, and the conversation became general. ‘What is that, Clay?’ asked Mr. Hunter. ‘You have come into a fortune, do you say?’
‘I said, not into a fortune, sir, as those accustomed to fortune would estimate it. That great physician, standing there and listening to me, he would laugh at the sum: I daresay he makes more in six months. But it may prove a stepping-stone to fortune, and to — to other desirable things.’
‘Do not speak so vaguely,’ cried the doctor, in his quaint fashion. ‘Define the “desirable things.” Come! it’s my turn now.’
‘I am not sure that they have taken a sufficiently tangible shape as yet, to be defined,’ returned Austin, in the same tone. ‘You might laugh at them for day-dreams.’
Unwittingly his eye rested for a moment upon Florence. Did she deem the day-dreams might refer to her, that her eye-lids should droop, and her cheeks turn scarlet? Dr. Bevary noticed both the look and the signs; Mr. Hunter saw neither.
‘Day-dreams would be enchanting as an eastern fairy-tale, only that they never get realized,’ interposed one of the fair guests, with a pretty simper, directed to Austin Clay and his attractions.
‘I will realize mine,’ he returned, rather too confidently, ‘Heaven helping me!’
‘A better stepping-stone, that help, to rely upon, than the money you have come into,’ said Dr. Bevary, with one of his peculiar nods.
‘True, doctor,’ replied Austin. ‘But may not the money have come from the same helping source? Heaven, you know, vouchsafes to work with humble instruments.’
The last few sentences had been interchanged in a low tone. They now passed into the general circle, and the evening went on to its close.
Austin and Dr. Bevary were the last to leave the house. They quitted it together, and the doctor passed his arm within Austin’s as they walked on.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘and what have you been doing at Ketterford?’
‘I have told you, doctor. Leaving my dear old friend and relative in her grave; and, realizing the fact that she has bequeathed to me this money.’
‘Ah, yes; I heard that,’ returned the doctor. ‘You’ve been seeing friends too, I suppose. Did you happen to meet the Gwinns?’
‘Once. I was passing the house, and Miss Gwinn laid hands upon me from the window, and commanded me in. I got out again as soon as I could. Her brother made his appearance as I was leaving.’
‘And what did he say to you?’ asked the doctor, in a tone meant to be especially light and careless.
‘Nothing; except that he told me if I wanted a safe and profitable investment for the money I had inherited under Mrs. Thornimett’s will, he could help me to one. I cut him very short, sir.’
‘What did she say?’ resumed Dr. Bevary. ‘Did she begin upon her family affairs — as she is rather fond of doing?’
‘Well,’ said Austin, his tone quite as careless as the doctor’s, ‘I did not give her the opportunity. Once, when she seemed inclined to do so, I stopped her; telling her that her private affairs were no concern of mine, neither should I listen to them.’
‘Quite right, my young friend,’ emphatically spoke the doctor.
Not another word was said until they came to Daffodil’s Delight. Here they wished each other good night The doctor continued his way to his home, and Austin turned down towards Peter Quale’s.
But what could be the matter? Had Daffodil’s Delight miscalculated the time, believing it to be day, instead of night? Women leaned out of their windows in night-caps; children had crept from their beds and come forth to tumble into the gutter naked, as some of them literally were; men crowded the doorway of the Bricklayers’ Arms, and stood about with pipes and pint pots; all were in a state of rampant excitement. Austin laid hold of the first person who appeared sober enough to listen to him. It happened to be a woman, Mrs. Dunn.
‘What is this?’ he exclaimed. ‘Have you all come into a fortune?’ the recent conversation at Mr. Hunter’s probably helping him to the remark.
‘Better nor that,’ shrieked Mrs. Dunn. ‘Better nor that, a thousand times! We have circumvented the masters, and got our ends, and now we shall just have all we want — roast goose and apple pudding for dinner, and plenty of beer to wash it down with.’
‘But what is it that you have got?’ pursued Austin, who was completely at sea.
‘Got! why, we have got the STRIKE,’ she replied, in joyful excitement. ‘Pollocks’ men struck to-day. Where have you been, sir, not to have heered on it?’
At that moment a fresh crowd came jostling down Daffodil’s Delight, and Austin was parted from the lady. Indeed, she rushed up to the mob to follow in their wake. Many other ladies followed in their wake — half Daffodil’s Delight, if one might judge by numbers. Shouting, singing, exulting, dancing; it seemed as if they had, for the nonce, gone mad. Sam Shuck, in his long-tailed coat, ornamented with its holes and its slits, was leading the van, his voice hoarse, his face red, his legs and arms executing a war-dance of exaltation. He it was who had got up the excitement and was keeping it up, shouting fiercely: ‘Hurrah for the work of this day! Rule Britanniar! Britons never shall be slaves! The Strike has begun, friends! H — o — o — o — o — o — r — rah! Three cheers for the Strike!’
Yes. The Strike had begun.
CHAPTER IV. AGITATION.
The men of an influential metropolitan building firm had struck, because their employers declined to accede to certain demands, and Daffodil’s Delight was, as you have seen, in a high state of excitement, particularly the female part of it. The men said they struck for a diminution in the hours of labour; the masters told them they struck for an increase of wages. Seeing that the non-contents wanted the hours reduced and not the pay, it appears to me that you may call it which you like.
The Messrs. Hunters’ men — with whom we have to do, for it was they who chiefly filled Daffodil’s Delight — though continuing their work as usual, were in a most unsettled state; as was the case in the trade generally. The smouldering discontent might have died away peacefully enough, and probably would, but that certain spirits made it their business to fan it into a flame.
A few days went on. One evening Sam Shuck posted himself in an angle formed by the wall at the top of Daffodil’s Delight. It was the hour for the men to quit work; and, as they severally passed him on their road home, Sam’s arm was thrust forward, and a folded bit of paper put into their hands. A mysterious sort of missive apparently; for, on opening the paper, it was found to contain only these words, in the long, sprawling hand of Sam himself: ‘Barn at the back of Jim Dunn’s. Seven o’clock.’
