A Life's Secret. Henry Wood
requires a deal of waiting on, and there's only me. I'll do what I can to get them home next week, if that will do.'
'I don't know that it will do,' snapped Dobson. 'Miss Florence may be wanting them. A promise is a promise, Mary Baxendale.'
'Yes, it will do, Mary,' cried Florence Hunter, darting forward from some forbidden nook, whence she had heard the colloquy, and following Mary down the steps into the street. A fair sight was that child to look upon, with her white muslin dress, her blue ribbons, her flowing hair, and her sweet countenance, radiant as a summer's morning. 'Mamma is not downstairs yet, or I would ask her—she is ill, too—but I know I do not want them. Never you mind them, and never mind Dobson either, but nurse your mother.'
Dobson drew the young lady back, asking her if such behaviour was not enough to 'scandalize the square;' and Mary Baxendale returned home.
Dr. Bevary paid his visit to Mrs. Baxendale about mid-day. His practised eye saw with certainty what others were only beginning to suspect—that Death had marked her. He wrote a prescription, gave some general directions, said he would call again, and told Mrs. Baxendale she would be better out of bed than in it.
Accordingly, after his departure, she got up and went into the front room, which they made their sitting-room. But the exertion caused her to faint; she was certainly on this day much worse than usual. John Baxendale was terribly concerned, and did not go back to his work after dinner. When the bustle was over, and she seemed pretty comfortable again, somebody burst into the room, without knocking or other ceremony. It was one of the Shucks, a young man of eight, in tattered clothes, and a shock head of hair. He came to announce that Mrs. Hunter's maid was asking for Mary, and little Miss Hunter was there, too, and said, might she come up and see Mrs. Baxendale.
Both were requested to walk up. Dobson had brought a gracious message from her mistress (not graciously delivered, though), that the sewing might wait till it was quite convenient to do it; and Florence produced a jar, which she had insisted upon carrying herself, and had thereby split her grey kid gloves, it being too large for her hands.
'It is black-currant jelly, Mrs. Baxendale,' she said, with the prettiest, kindest air, as she freely sat down by the sick woman's side. 'I asked mamma to let me bring some, for I remember when I was ill I only liked black-currant jelly. Mamma is so sorry to hear you are worse, and she will come to see you soon.'
'Bless your little heart, Miss Florence!' exclaimed the invalid. 'The same dear child as ever—thinking of other people and not of yourself.'
'I have no need to think for myself,' said Florence. 'Everything I want is got ready for me. I wish you did not look so ill. I wish you would have my uncle Bevary to see you. He cures everybody.'
'He has been kind enough to come round to-day, Miss,' spoke up John Baxendale, 'and he'll come again, he says. I hope he will be able to do the missis good. As you be a bit better,' he added to his wife, 'I think I'll go back to my work.'
'Ay, do, John. There's no cause for you to stay at home. It was some sort of weakness, I suppose, that came over me.'
John Baxendale touched his hair to Florence, nodded to Dobson, and went downstairs and out. Florence turned to the open window to watch his departure, ever restless, as a healthy child is apt to be.
'There's Uncle Henry!' she suddenly called out.
Mr. Henry Hunter was walking rapidly down Daffodil's Delight. He encountered John Baxendale as the man went out of his gate.
'Not back at work yet, Baxendale?'
'The missis has been taken worse, sir,' was the man's reply. 'She fainted dead off just now, and I declare I didn't know what to think about her. She's all right again, and I am going round.'
At that moment there was heard a tapping at the window panes, and a pretty little head was pushed out beneath them, nodding and laughing, 'Uncle Henry! How do you do, Uncle Henry?'
Mr. Henry Hunter nodded in reply, and pursued his way, unconscious that the lynx eye of Miss Gwinn was following him, like a hawk watching its prey.
It happened that she had penetrated Daffodil's Delight, hoping to catch Austin Clay at his dinner, which she supposed he might be taking about that hour. She held his address at Peter Quale's from Mrs. Thornimett. Her object was to make a further effort to get from him what he knew of the man she sought to find. Scarcely had she turned into Daffodil's Delight, when she saw Mr. Henry Hunter at a distance. Away she tore after him, and gained upon him considerably. She reached the house of John Baxendale just as he, Baxendale, was re-entering it; for he had forgotten something he must take with him to the yard. Turning her head upon Baxendale for a minute as she passed, Miss Gwinn lost sight of Mr. Henry Hunter.
How had he disappeared? Into the ground? or into a house? or down any obscure passage that might be a short cut between Daffodil's Delight, and some other Delight? or into that cab that was now whirling onwards at such a rate? That he was no longer visible, was certain: and Miss Gwinn was exceeding wroth. She came to the conclusion that he had seen her, and hid himself in the cab, though she had not heard it stop.
But she had seen him spoken to from the window of that house, where the workman had just gone in, and she determined to make inquiries there, and so strode up the path. In the Shucks' kitchen there were only three or four children, too young to give an answer. Miss Gwinn picked her way through them, over the dirt and grease of the floor, and ascended to the sitting-room above. She stood a minute to take in its view.
John Baxendale was on his knees, hunting among some tools at the bottom of a closet; Mary was meekly exhibiting the progress of the nightgowns to Dobson, who sat in state, sour enough to turn milk into curd; the invalid was lying, pale, in her chair; while the young lady appeared to be assisting at the tool-hunting, on her knees also, and chattering as fast as her tongue could go. All looked up at the apparition of the stranger, who stood there gazing in upon them.
'Can you tell me where a gentleman of the name of Lewis lives?' she began, in an indirect, diplomatic, pleasant sort of way, for she no doubt deemed it well to discard violence for tact. In the humour she was in yesterday, she would have said, sharply and imperiously, 'Tell me the name of that man I saw now pass your gate.'
John Baxendale rose. 'Lewis, ma'am? I don't know anybody of the name.'
A pause. 'It is very unfortunate,' she mildly resumed. 'I am in search of the gentleman, and have not got his address. I believe he belongs to this neighbourhood. Indeed, I am almost sure I saw him talking to you just now at the gate—though my sight is none of the clearest from a distance. The same gentleman to whom that young lady nodded.'
'That was my uncle Henry,' called out the child.
'Who?' cried she, sharply.
'It was Mr. Henry Hunter, ma'am, that was,' spoke up Baxendale.
'Mr. Henry Hunter!' she repeated, as she knit her brow on John Baxendale. 'That gentleman is Mr. Lewis.'
'No, that he is not,' said John Baxendale. 'I ought to know, ma'am; I have worked for him for some years.'
Here the mischief might have ended; there's no telling; but that busy little tongue of all tongues—ah! what work they make!—began clapping again.
'Perhaps you mean my papa? Papa's name is Lewis—James Lewis Hunter. But he is never called Mr. Lewis. He is brother to my uncle Henry.'
A wild flush of crimson flashed over Miss Gwinn's sallow face. Something within her seemed to whisper that her search was over. 'It is possible I mistook the one for the other in the distance,' she observed, all her new diplomacy in full play. 'Are they alike in person?' she continued to John Baxendale.
'Not so much alike now, ma'am. In years gone by they were the very model of one another; but Mr. Hunter has grown stout, and it has greatly altered him. Mr. Henry looks just like what Mr. Hunter used to look.'
'And who are you, did you say?' she asked of Florence with an emphasis that would have been quite wild, but that it was in a degree suppressed. 'You are not Mr. Lewis Hunter's daughter?'
'I am,' said Miss Florence.
'And–you have a mother?'
'Of course I have,'