The Three Brides

“May I ask what this may be?”

“Mr. Gadley then informed me that he had been in the outer room, behind his desk, at the time when Mr. Douglas brought in the letter from my mother, containing the missing cheque, and that after Douglas was gone, he heard Mr. Vivian propose to those within to appropriate the amount to their own debts.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Charnock, this is a very serious charge to bring on the authority of a man in a raving fever.  Was any deposition taken before a magistrate?”

“No,” said Julius.  “Mr. Lipscombe was fetched, but he was unable to speak at the time.  However, on reviving, he spoke as is thus attested,” and he showed Herbert Bowater’s slip of paper.

“Mr. Charnock,” said Mr. Moy, “without the slightest imputation on the intentions of yourself or of young Mr. Bowater, I put it to yourself and Captain Charnock Poynsett, whether you could go before a jury with no fuller attestation than you have in your hand.  We know what Mr. Charnock and Mr. Bowater are.  To a jury they would simply appear—pardon me—a young clergyman, his still more youthful curate, and a sister of mercy, attaching importance to the words of a delirious man; and juries have become very incredulous in such cases.”

“We shall see that,” said Miles sharply.

“The more cautious,” added Mr. Moy, “when it is the raking up of a matter eleven years old, where the witnesses are mostly dead, and where the characters of two gentlemen, also deceased, would be implicated.  Believe me, sir, this firm—I speak as its present head—will be rejoiced to make any compensation to Mrs. Poynsett for what went astray while coming to their hands.  It has been our desire to do so from the very first, as letters of which I have copies testify; but our advances were met in a spirit of enmity, which may perhaps be laid aside now.”

“No so-called compensation can be accepted, but the clearing of Douglas’s character,” said Miles.

“It is a generous feeling,” said Mr. Moy, speaking apparently most dispassionately, though Julius saw his hands trembling below the table; “but even if the word of this delirious man were sufficient, have you reflected, Captain Charnock Poynsett, on the unequal benefit of justifying—allowing that you could justify—a young man who has been dead and forgotten these eleven years, and has no relation living nearer than yourself, at the expense of those also gone, but who have left relations who could ill bear to suffer from such a revelation?”

“Justice is justice, whether a man be dead or alive,” said Miles; “and Douglas is alive to demand his right.”

“Alive!” cried Mr. Moy, starting violently.  “Alive!  Archie Douglas alive!”

“Alive, and in England,” said Julius.  “He slept in my house the night before last.  He never was in the Hippolyta, at all, but has been living in Africa all these years of exile.”

Mr. Moy’s self-command and readiness were all gone.  He sank back in his chair, with his hands over his face.  The brothers looked at one another, fearing he might have a stroke; but he revived in a moment, yet with a totally different expression on his countenance.  The keen, defensive look was gone, there was only something piteously worn and supplicating in the face, as he said—

“Then, gentlemen, I cannot resent anything you may do.  Believe me, but for the assurance of his death, I should have acted very differently long ago.  I will assist you in any way you desire in reinstating Mr. Douglas in public opinion, only, if it be possible, let my wife be spared.  She has recently had the heaviest possible blow; she can bear no more.”

“Mr. Moy, we will do nothing vindictive.  We can answer for my mother and Douglas,” began Julius; but Miles, more sternly, would not let his brother hold out his hand, and said—

“You allow, then, the truth of Gadley’s confession?”

“What has he confessed?” said Moy, still too much the lawyer not to see that his own complicity had never yet been stated.

Julius laid before him his own written record of Gadley’s words, not only involving Moy in the original fraud, but showing how he had bribed the only witness to silence ever since.  The unhappy man read it over, and said—

“Yes, Mr. Charnock, it is all true.  I cannot battle it further.  I am at your mercy.  I would leave you to proclaim the whole to the world; if it were not for my poor wife and her father, I would be glad to do so.  Heaven knows how this has hung upon me for years.”

“I can well believe it,” said Julius, not to be hindered now from grasping Mr. Moy’s hand.

It seemed to be a comfort now to tell the whole story in detail.  Moy, the favoured and trusted articled clerk at first, then the partner, the lover and husband of the daughter, had been a model of steadiness and success so early, that when some men’s youthful follies are wearing off, he had begun to weary of the monotony of the office, and after beginning as Mentor to his young brother-in-law, George Proudfoot, had gradually been carried along by the fascination of Tom Vivian’s society to share in the same perilous pursuits, until both had incurred a debt to him far beyond their powers, while he was likewise so deeply involved, that no bonds of George Proudfoot would avail him.

Then came the temptation of Mrs. Poynsett’s cheque, suggested, perhaps in jest, by Vivian, but growing on them as the feasibility of using it became clear.  It was so easy to make it appear to Archie Douglas that the letter was simply an inquiry for the lost one.  Mr. Proudfoot, the father, was out of reach; Mrs. Poynsett would continue to think the cheque lost in the post; and Tom Vivian undertook to get it presented for payment through persons who would guard against its being tracked.  The sum exceeded the debt, but he would return the overplus to them, and they both cherished the hope of returning it with interest.  Indeed, it had been but a half consent on the part of either, elicited only by the dire alternative of exposure; the envelope and letter were destroyed, and Vivian carried off the cheque to some of the Jews with whom he had had only too many transactions, and they never met him again.

Moy’s part all along had been half cowardice, half ambition.  The sense of that act and of its consequences had gnawed at his heart through all his success; but to cast himself down from his position as partner and son-in-law of Mr. Proudfoot, the keen, clever, trusted, confidential agent of half the families around—to let his wife know his shame and that of her brother, and to degrade his daughter into the daughter of a felon—was more than he could bear; and he had gone on trying to drown the sense of that one lapse in the prosperity of his career and his efforts to place his daughter in the first ranks of society.  No doubt the having done an injury to the Poynsett family had been the true secret of that enmity, more than political, which he had always shown to Raymond; and after thinking Gadley safer out of that office, and having yielded to his solicitations and set him up at the Three Pigeons, he had been almost compelled to bid for popularity by using his position as a magistrate to protect the blackguardism of the town.  He had been meant for better things, and had been dragged on against his conscience and judgment by the exigencies of his unhappy secret; and when the daughter, for whose sake he had sacrificed his better self, had only been led by her position into the follies and extravagances of the worst part of the society into which she had been introduced, and threw herself into the hands of a dissipated gambler, to whom her fortune made her a desirable prey—truly his sin had found him out.

His fight at first had been partly force of habit, but he was so entirely crushed that they could only have pity on him when he put himself so entirely in their hands, only begging for forbearance to his wife and her aged father, and entreating that principal, interest, and compound interest might at once be tendered to Mrs. Poynsett.

The brothers could answer for nothing.  Archie must decide for himself what he would accept as restoration of his character, and Mrs. Poynsett could alone answer as to whether she would accept the compensation.  But neither of them could be hard on one so stricken and sorrowful, and they did not expect hardness from their mother and cousin, especially so far as old Mr. Proudfoot and his daughter were concerned.

That the confession was made, and that Archie should be cleared, was enough for Julius to carry to Herbert’s room, while Miles repaired to his mother.  It was known in the sick-room where the brothers had been, and Julius was watched as he crossed the street by Jenny’s eager eye, and she met him at the door of the outer room with a face of welcome.

“Come in and tell us all,” she said.  “I see it is good news.”  Herbert was quite well enough to bear good news in full detail as he lay, not saying much, but smiling his welcome, and listening with ears almost as eager as his sister’s.  And as Julius told of the crushed and broken man, Jenny’s tears rose to her eyes, and she pressed her brother’s hand and whispered, “Thanks, dear boy!”

“Small thanks to me.”

“Yes, I can enjoy it now,” said Jenny; “thanks to you for forcing the bitterness out of me.”

“Can you bear a little more good news, Herbert?” said Julius.  “Who do you think is to have St. Nicholas?”

“Not William Easterby?  That’s too good to be true.”

“But so it is.  All the Senior Fellows dropped it like a red-hot coal.”

“I thought Dwight wanted to marry?”

“Yes, but the lady’s friends won’t hear of his taking her there; so it has come down to young Easterby.  He can’t be inducted of course yet; but he has written to say he will come down on Saturday and take matters in hand.”

“The services on Sunday?  Oh!” said Herbert, with as great a gasp of relief as if he had been responsible for them; and, indeed, Rosamond declared that both her husband and Mr. Bindon looked like new men since Wil’sbro’ was off their backs.  Archie was coming back that evening.  Jenny much longed to show her two treasures to each other, for it was a useless risk for the healthy man, and the sick one was too weak and tired to wish for a new face, or the trouble of speaking; nay, he could not easily bring himself to cheerful acquiescence in even his favourite Lady Rose taking his sister’s place to set her free for an evening with Archie at the Hall.

Mrs. Poynsett was in the drawing-room.  She had taken courage to encounter the down-stair associations, saying she would make it no sadder for the dear boy than she could help, and so Miles had carried her down to meet one who had been always as one of her own sons.

And thus it was that she gathered him into her embrace, while the great strong man, only then fully realizing all the changes, sobbed uncontrollably beside her.

“My boy, my poor Archie,” she said, “you are come at last.  Did you not know you still had a mother to trust to?”

“I ought to have known it,” said Archie, in a choked voice.  “Oh that I had seen Jenny in London!”

For indeed it had become plain that it had been his flight that had given opportunity and substance to the accusation.  If he had remained, backed by the confidence of such a family as the Poynsetts, Gadley would have seen that testimony in his favour would be the safer and more profitable speculation; and Moy himself, as he had said, would have testified to the innocence of a living man on the spot, though he had let the blame rest on one whom he thought in the depths of the sea.  Archie’s want of moral courage had been his ruin.  It had led him to the scene of temptation rather than resist his companions, and had thus given colour to the accusation, and in the absence of both Joanna and of his cousins, it had prevented him from facing the danger.

This sense made him the more willing to be forbearing, when, after dinner, the whole council sat round to hear in full the history of the interview with Mr. Moy; Anne taking up her position beside Frank, with whom, between her pencil and the finger-alphabet, she had established such a language as to make her his best interpreter of whatever was passing in the room.

“One could not help being sorry for Moy,” said Miles, as he concluded; “he turns out to be but half the villain after all, made so rather by acquiescence than by his own free will.”

“But reaping the profit,” said Mrs. Poynsett.

“Yes, though in ignorance of the injury he was doing, and thus climbing to a height that makes his fall the worse.  I am sorry for old Proudfoot too,” added Julius.  “I believe they have not ventured to tell him of his granddaughter’s marriage.”

“I do not think the gain to me would be at all equal to the loss to them,” said Archie.  “Exposure would be ruin and heartbreak there, and I don’t see what it would do for me.”

“My dear Archie!” exclaimed both Mrs. Poynsett and Joanna, in amazement.

“So long as you and Mr. Bowater are satisfied, I care for little else,” said Archie.

“But your position, my dear,” said Mrs. Poynsett.

“We don’t care much about a man’s antecedents, within a few years, out in the colonies, dear Aunt Julia,” said Archie, smiling.

“You aren’t going back?”

“That depends,” said Archie, his eyes seeking Joanna’s; “but I don’t see what there is for me to do here.  I’m spoilt for a solicitor anyway—”

“We could find an agency, Miles, couldn’t we?—or a farm—”

“Thank you, dear aunt,” said Archie; “I don’t definitely answer, because Mr. Bowater must be consulted; but I have a business out there that I can do, and where I can make a competence that I can fairly offer to Jenny here.  If I came home, as I am now, I should only prey on you in some polite form, and I don’t think Jenny would wish for that alternative.  I must go back any way, as I have told her, and whether to save for her, or to make a home for her there, it must be for her to decide.”

They looked at Jenny.  She was evidently prepared; for though her colour rose a little, her frank eyes looked at him with a confiding smile.

“But we must have justice done to you, my dear boy, whether you stay with us or not,” said Mrs. Poynsett.

“That might have been done if I had not been fool enough to run away,” said Archie; “having done so, the mass of people will only remember that there has been something against me, in spite of any justification.  It is not worth while to blast Moy’s character, and show poor old Proudfoot what a swindler his son was, just for that.  The old man was good to me.  I should like to let it rest while he lives.  If Moy would sign such an exculpation of me as could be shown to Mr. Bowater, and any other whom it might concern, I should be quite willing to have nothing told publicly, at least as long as the old gentleman lives.”

“I think Archie is right,” said Miles, in the pause, with a great effort.

“Yes, right in the highest sense of the word,” said Julius.

“It is Christian,” Anne breathed across to her husband.

“I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Poynsett.

“Let that scoundrel go unhung!” burst from Frank, who had failed to catch the spirit of his interpreter.

“I don’t like it in the abstract, mother,” said Miles; “but you and Frank have not seen the scoundrel in his beaten down state, and, as Archie says, it is hard to blacken the memory of either poor George Proudfoot or Tom Vivian, who have fathers to feel it for them.”

“Poor Tom Vivian’s can hardly be made much blacker,” said Mrs. Poynsett, “nor are Sir Harry’s feelings very acute; but perhaps poor old Proudfoot ought to be spared, and there are considerations as to the Vivian family.  Still, I don’t see how to consent to Archie going into exile again with this stigma upon him.  I am sure Raymond would not, and I do not think Mr. Bowater will.”

“Dear Aunt Julia,” said Archie, affectionately, coming across to her, “it was indeed exile before, when I was dead to all of you; but can it be so now the communication is open, and when I am making or winning my home?” and his eyes brought Jenny to him by her side.

“Yes, dear Mrs. Poynsett,” she said, holding her hand, “I am sure he is right, and that it would spoil all our own happiness to break that poor old father’s heart, and bring him and his wife to disgrace and misery.  When I think of the change in everything since two days back—dear Herbert wrung a sort of forgiveness out of me—I can’t bear to think of anybody being made miserable.”

“And what will your papa say, child?”

“I think he will feel a good deal for old Proudfoot,” said Jenny.  “He rather likes the old man, and has laughed at our hatred of Miss Moy’s pretensions.”

“Then it is settled,” said Archie; “I will write to Moy, for I suppose he had rather not see me, that I will say nothing about it publicly while Mr. Proudfoot lives, and will not show this confession of his, unless it should be absolutely necessary to my character.  Nor after old Proudfoot’s death, will I take any step without notice to him.”

“Much more than he ought to expect,” said Mrs. Poynsett.

“I don’t know,” said Archie.  “If he had refused, it would not have been easy to bring him to the point, I suppose I must have surrendered to take my trial, but after so many years, and with so many deaths, it would have been awkward.”

“And the money, mother,” said Miles, producing a cheque.  “Poor Moy, that was a relief to him.  He said he had kept it ready for years.”  Mrs. Poynsett waved it off as if she did not like to touch it.

“I don’t want it!  Take it, Archie.  Set up housekeeping on it,” she said.  “You are not really going back to that place?”

“Yes, indeed I am; I sail on Tuesday.  Dear good Aunt Julia, how comfortable it is to feel any one caring for me again; but I am afraid even this magnificent present, were it ten times as much, could not keep me; I must go back to fulfil my word to my partner out there, even if I returned at once.”

“And you let him go, Jenny?”

“I must!” said Jenny.  “And only think how different it is now!  For the rest, whether he comes back for me at once, or some years hence, must depend on papa and mamma.”

She spoke with grave content beaming in her eyes, just like herself.  The restoration was still swallowing up everything else.