Rev. E. Donald Carr - "A Night in the Snow"

Guibert of Nogent - "The Deeds of God through the Franks"

Luke Limner - "Christmas Comes but Once A Year"

Roger Thompson Finlay - "The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Henry Dunbar

M >> M. E. Braddon >> Henry Dunbar




"Shall I go and speak to this girl?" asked Arthur Lovell. "On no
account! The girl is an impostor. Let her be sent about her business!"

The waiter left the room.

"Pardon me, Mr. Dunbar," said the young lawyer; "but if you will allow
me to make a suggestion, as your legal adviser in this business, I would
really recommend you to see this girl."

"Why?"

"Because the people in a place like this are notorious gossips and
scandal-mongers. If you refuse to see this person, who, at any rate,
calls herself Joseph Wilmot's daughter, they may say----"

"They may say what?" asked Henry Dunbar.

"They may say that it is because you have some special reason for not
seeing her."

"Indeed, Mr. Lovell. Then I am to put myself out of the way--after being
fagged and harassed to death already about this business--and am to see
every adventuress who chooses to trade upon the name of the murdered
man, in order to stop the mouths of the good people of Winchester. I beg
to tell you, my dear sir, that I am utterly indifferent to anything that
may be said of me: and that I shall only study my own ease and comfort.
If people choose to think that Henry Dunbar is the murderer of his old
servant, they are welcome to their opinion: I shall not trouble myself
to set them right."

The waiter re-entered the room as Mr. Dunbar finished speaking.

"The young person says that she must see you, sir," the man said. "She
says that if you refuse to see her, she will wait at the door of this
house until you leave it. My master has spoken to her, sir; but it's no
use: she's the most determined young woman I ever saw."

Mr. Dunbar's face was still hidden by the newspaper. There was a little
pause before he replied.

"Lovell," he said at last, "perhaps you had better go and see this
person. You can find out if she is really related to that unhappy man.
Here is my purse. You can let her have any money you think proper. If
she is the daughter of that wretched man, I should, of course, wish her
to be well provided for. I will thank you to tell her that, Lovell. Tell
her that I am willing to settle an annuity upon her; always on condition
that she does not intrude herself upon me. But remember, whatever I give
is contingent upon her own good conduct, and must not in any way be
taken as a bribe. If she chooses to think and speak ill of me, she is
free to do so. I have no fear of her; nor of any one else."

Arthur Lovell took the millionaire's purse and went down stairs with the
waiter. He found Margaret sitting in the hall. There was no impatience,
no violence in her manner: but there was a steady, fixed, resolute look
in her white face. The young lawyer felt that this girl would not be
easily put off by any denial of Mr. Dunbar.

He ushered Margaret into a private sitting-room leading out of the hall,
and then closed the door behind him. The disappointed waiter lingered
upon the door-mat: but the George is a well-built house, and that waiter
lingered in vain.

"You want to see Mr. Dunbar?" he said.

"Yes, sir!"

"He is very much fatigued by yesterday's business, and he declines to
see you. What is your motive for being so eager to see him?"

"I will tell that to Mr. Dunbar himself."

"You are _really_ the daughter of Joseph Wilmot? Mr. Dunbar seems to
doubt the fact of his having had a daughter."

"Perhaps so. Mr. Dunbar may have been unaware of my existence until this
moment. I did not know until last night what had happened."

She stopped for a moment, half-stifled by a hysterical sob, which she
could not repress: but she very quickly regained her self-control, and
continued, slowly and deliberately, looking earnestly in the young man's
face with her clear brown eyes, "I did not know until last night that my
father's name was Wilmot; he had called himself by a false name--but
last night, after hearing of the--the--murder"--the horrible word seemed
to suffocate her, but she still went bravely on--"I searched a box of my
father's and found this."

She took from her pocket the letter directed to Norfolk Island, and
handed it to the lawyer.

"Read it," she said; "you will see then how my father had been wronged
by Henry Dunbar."

Arthur Lovell unfolded the worn and faded letter. It had been written
five-and-twenty years before by Sampson Wilmot. Margaret pointed to one
passage on the second page.

_"Your bitterness against Henry Dunbar is very painful to me, my dear
Joseph; yet I cannot but feel that your hatred against my employer's son
is only natural. I know that he was the first cause of your ruin; and
that, but for him, your lot in life might have been very different. Try
to forgive him; try to forget him, even if you cannot forgive. Do not
talk of revenge. The revelation of that secret which you hold respecting
the forged bills would bring disgrace not only upon him, but upon his
father and his uncle. They are both good and honourable men, and I think
that shame would kill them. Remember this, and keep the secret of that
painful story."_

Arthur Lovell's face grew terribly grave as he read these lines. He had
heard the story of the forgery hinted at, but he had never heard its
details. He had looked upon it as a cruel scandal, which had perhaps
arisen out of some trifling error, some unpaid debt of honour; some
foolish gambling transaction in the early youth of Henry Dunbar.

But here, in the handwriting of the dead clerk, here was the evidence of
that old story. Those few lines in Sampson Wilmot's letter suggested a
_motive_.

The young lawyer dropped into a chair, and sat for some minutes silently
poring over the clerk's letter. He did not like Henry Dunbar. His
generous young heart, which had yearned towards Laura's father, had sunk
in his breast with a dull, chill feeling of disappointment, at his first
meeting with the rich man.

Still, after carefully sifting the evidence of the coroner's inquest, he
had come to the conclusion that Henry Dunbar was innocent of Joseph
Wilmot's death. He had carefully weighed every scrap of evidence against
the Anglo-Indian; and had deliberately arrived at this conclusion.

But now he looked at everything in a new light. The clerk's letter
suggested a motive, perhaps an adequate motive. The two men had gone
down together into that silent grove, the servant had threatened his
patron, they had quarrelled, and--

No! the murder could scarcely have happened in this way. The assassin
had been armed with the cruel rope, and had crept stealthily behind his
victim. It was not a common murder; the rope and the slip-knot, the
treacherous running noose, hinted darkly at Oriental experiences:
somewhat in this fashion might a murderous Thug have assailed his
unconscious victim.

But then, on the other hand, there was one circumstance that always
remained in Henry Dunbar's favour--that circumstance was the robbery of
the dead man's clothes. The Anglo-Indian might very well have rifled the
pocket-book, and left it empty upon the scene of the murder, in order to
throw the officers of justice upon a wrong scent. That would have been
only the work of a few moments.

But was it probable--was it even possible--that the murderer would have
lingered in broad daylight, with every chance against him, long enough
to strip off the garments of his victim, in order still more effectually
to hoodwink suspicion? Was it not a great deal more likely that Joseph
Wilmot had spent the afternoon drinking in the tap-room of some roadside
public-house, and had rambled back into the grove after dark, to meet
his death at the hands of some every-day assassin, bent only upon
plunder?

All these thoughts passed through Arthur Lovell's mind as he sat with
Sampson's faded letter in his hands. Margaret Wilmot watched him with
eager, scrutinizing eyes. She saw doubt, perplexity, horror, indecision,
all struggling in his handsome face.

But the lawyer felt that it was his duty to act, and to act in the
interests of his client, whatever vaguely-hideous doubts might arise in
his own breast. Nothing but his _conviction_ of Henry Dunbar's guilt
could justify him in deserting his client. He was not convinced; he was
only horror-stricken by the first whisper of doubt.

"Mr. Dunbar declines to see you," he said to Margaret; "and I do not
really see what good could possibly arise out of an interview between
you. In the meantime, if you are in any way distressed--and you must
most likely need assistance at such a time as this--he is quite ready to
help you: and he is also ready to give you permanent help if you require
it."

He opened Henry Dunbar's purse as he spoke, but the girl rose and looked
at him with icy disdain in her fixed white face.

"I would sooner crawl from door to door, begging my bread of the hardest
strangers in this cruel world--I would sooner die from the lingering
agonies of starvation--than I would accept help from Henry Dunbar. No
power on earth will ever induce me to take a sixpence from that man's
hand."

"Why not?"

"_You_ know why not. I can see that knowledge in your face. Tell Mr.
Dunbar that I will wait at the door of this house till he comes out to
speak to me. I will wait until I drop down dead."

Arthur Lovell went back to his client, and told him what the girl said.

Mr. Dunbar was walking up and down the room, with his head bent moodily
upon his breast.

"By heavens!" he cried, angrily, "I will have this girl removed by the
police, if----"

He stopped abruptly, and his head sank once more upon his breast.

"I would most earnestly advise you to see her," pleaded Arthur Lovell;
"if she goes away in her present frame of mind, she may spread a
horrible scandal against you. Your refusing to see her will confirm the
suspicions which----"

"What!" cried Henry Dunbar; "does she dare to suspect me?"

"I fear so."

"Has she said as much?"

"Not in actual words. But her manner betrayed her suspicions. You must
not wonder if this girl is unreasonable. Her father's miserable fate
must have been a terrible blow to her."

"Did you offer her money?"

"I did."

"And she----"

"She refused it."

Mr. Dunbar winced, as if the announcement of the girl's refusal had
stung him to the quick.

"Since it must be so," he said, "I will see this importunate woman. But
not to-day. To-day I must and will have rest. Tell her to come to me
to-morrow morning at ten o'clock. I will see her then."

Arthur Lovell carried this message to Margaret.

The girl looked at him with an earnest questioning glance.

"You are not deceiving me?" she said.

"No, indeed!"

"Mr. Dunbar said that?"

"He did."

"Then I will go away. But do not let Henry Dunbar try to deceive me! for
I will follow him to the end of the world. I care very little where I go
in my search for the man who murdered my father!"

She went slowly away. She went down into the cathedral yard, across
which the murdered man had gone arm-in-arm with his companion. Some
boys, loitering about at the entrance to the meadows, answered all her
questions, and took her to the spot upon which the body had been found.

It was a dull misty day, and there was a low wind wailing amongst the
wet branches of the old trees. The rain-drops from the fading leaves
fell into the streamlet, from whose shallow waters the dead man's face
had looked up to the moonlit sky.

Later in the afternoon, Margaret found her way to a cemetery outside the
town, where, under a newly-made mound of turf, the murdered man lay.

A great many people had been to see this grave, and had been very much
disappointed at finding it in no way different from other graves.

Already the good citizens of Winchester had begun to hint that the grove
near St. Cross was haunted; and there was a vague report to the effect
that the dead man had been seen there, walking in the twilight.

Punctual to the very striking of the clock, Margaret Wilmot presented
herself at the George at the time appointed by Mr. Dunbar.

She had passed a wretched night at a humble inn a little way put of the
town, and had been dreaming all night of her meeting with Mr. Dunbar. In
those troubled dreams she had met the rich man perpetually: now in one
place, now in another: but always in the most unlikely places: yet she
had never seen his face. She had tried to see it; but by some strange
devilry or other, peculiar to the incidents of a dream, it had been
always hidden from her.

The same waiter was lounging in the same attitude at the door of the
hotel. He looked up with an expression of surprise as Margaret
approached him.

"You've not gone, then, miss?" he exclaimed.

"Gone! No! I have waited to see Mr. Dunbar!"

"Well, that's queer," said the waiter; "did he tell you he'd see you?"

"Yes, he promised to see me at ten o'clock this morning."

"That's uncommon queer."

"Why so?" asked Margaret, eagerly.

"Because Mr. Dunbar, and that young gent as was with him, went away, bag
and baggage, by last night's express."

Margaret Wilmot gave no utterance to either surprise or indignation. She
walked quietly away, and went once more to the house of Sir Arden
Westhorpe. She told him what had occurred; and her statement was written
down and signed, as upon the previous day.

"Mr. Dunbar murdered my father!" she said, after this had been done;
"and he's afraid to see me!"

The magistrate shook his head gravely.

"No, no, my dear," he said; "you must not say that. I cannot allow you
to make such an assertion as that. Circumstantial evidence often points
to an innocent person. If Mr. Dunbar had been in any way concerned in
this matter, he would have made a point of seeing you, in order to set
your suspicions at rest. His declining to see you is only the act of a
selfish man, who has already suffered very great inconvenience from this
business, and who dreads the scandal of some tragical scene."




CHAPTER XVI.

IS IT LOVE OR FEAR?


Henry Dunbar and Arthur Lovell slept at the same hotel upon the night of
their journey from Winchester to London; for the banker refused to
disturb his daughter by presenting himself at the house in Portland
Place after midnight.

In this, at least, he showed himself a considerate father.

Arthur Lovell had made every effort in his power to dissuade the banker
from leaving Winchester upon that night, and thus breaking the promise
that he had made to Margaret Wilmot. Henry Dunbar was resolute; and the
young lawyer had no alternative. If his client chose to do a
dishonourable thing, in spite of all that the young man could say
against it, of course it was no business of his. For his own part,
Arthur Lovell was only too glad to get back to London; for Laura Dunbar
was there: and wherever she was, there was Paradise, in the opinion of
this foolish young man.

Early upon the morning after their arrival in London, Henry Dunbar and
the young lawyer breakfasted together in their sitting-room at the
hotel. It was a bright morning, and even London looked pleasant in the
sunshine. Henry Dunbar stood in the window, looking out into the street
below, while the breakfast was being placed upon the table. The hotel
was situated in a new street at the West End.

"You find London very much altered, I dare say, Mr. Dunbar?" said Arthur
Lovell, as he unfolded the morning paper.

"How do you mean altered?" asked the banker, absently.

"I mean, that after so long an absence you must find great improvements.
This street for instance--it has not been built six years."

"Oh, yes, I remember. There were fields upon this spot when I went to
India."

They sat down to breakfast. Henry Dunbar was absent-minded, and ate very
little. When he had drunk a cup of tea, he took out the locket
containing Laura's miniature, and sat silently contemplating it.

By-and-by he unfastened the locket from the chain, and handed it across
the table to Arthur Lovell.

"My daughter is very beautiful, if she is like that," said the banker;
"do you consider it a good likeness?"

The young lawyer looked at the portrait with a tender smile. "Yes," he
said, thoughtfully, "it is very like her--only----"

"Only what?"

"The picture is not lovely enough."

"Indeed! and yet it is very beautiful. Laura resembles her mother, who
was a lovely woman."

"But I have heard your father say, that the lower part of Miss Dunbar's
face--the mouth and chin--reminded him of yours. I must own, Mr.
Dunbar, that I cannot see the likeness."

"I dare say not," the banker answered, carelessly; "you must allow
something for the passage of time, my dear Lovell. and the wear and tear
of a life in Calcutta. I dare say my mouth and chin are rather harder
and sterner in their character than Laura's."

There was nothing more said upon the subject of the likeness; by-and-by
Mr. Dunbar got up, took his hat, and went towards the door.

"You will come with me, Lovell," he said.

"Oh, no, Mr. Dunbar. I would not wish to intrude upon you at such a
time. The first interview between a father and daughter, after a
separation of so many years, is almost sacred in its character. I----"

"Pshaw, Mr. Lovell! I did not think a solicitor's son would be weak
enough to indulge in any silly sentimentality. I shall be very glad to
see my daughter; and I understand from her letters that she will be
pleased to see me. That is all! At the same time, as you know Laura much
better than I do, you may as well come with me."

Mr. Dunbar's looks belied the carelessness of his words. His face was
deadly pale, and there was a singularly rigid expression about his
mouth.

Laura had received no notice of her father's coming. She was sitting at
the same window by which she had sat when Arthur Lovell asked her to be
his wife. She was sitting in the same low luxurious easy-chair, with the
hot-house flowers behind her, and a huge Newfoundland dog--a faithful
attendant that she had brought from Maudesley Abbey--lying at her feet.

The door of Miss Dunbar's morning-room was open: and upon the broad
landing-place outside the apartment the banker stopped suddenly, and
laid his hand upon the gilded balustrade. For a moment it seemed almost
as if he would have fallen: but he leaned heavily upon the bronze
scroll-work of the banister, and bit his lower lip fiercely with his
strong white teeth. Arthur Lovell was not displeased to perceive this
agitation: for he had been wounded by the careless manner in which Henry
Dunbar had spoken of his beautiful daughter. Now it was evident that the
banker's indifference had only been assumed as a mask beneath which the
strong man had tried to conceal the intensity of his feelings.

The two men lingered upon the landing-place for a few minutes; while Mr.
Dunbar looked about him, and endeavoured to control his agitation.
Everything here was new to him: for neither the house in Portland Place,
nor Maudesley Abbey, had been in the possession of the Dunbar family
more than twenty years.

The millionaire contemplated his possessions. Even upon that
landing-place there was no lack of evidence of wealth. A Persian carpet
covered the centre of the floor, and beyond its fringed margin a
tessellated pavement of coloured marbles took new and brighter hues from
the slanting rays of sunlight that streamed in through a wide
stained-glass window upon the staircase. Great Dresden vases of exotics
stood on pedestals of malachite and gold: and a trailing curtain of
purple velvet hung half-way across the entrance to a long suite of
drawing-rooms--a glistening vista of light and splendour.

Mr. Dunbar pushed open the door, and stood upon the threshold of his
daughter's chamber. Laura started to her feet.

"Papa!--papa!" she cried; "I thought that you would come to-day!"

She ran to him and fell upon his breast, half-weeping, half-laughing.
The Newfoundland dog crept up to Mr. Dunbar with his head down: he
sniffed at the heels of the millionaire, and then looked slowly upward
at the man's face with sombre sulky-looking eyes, and began to growl
ominously.

"Take your dog away, Laura!" cried Mr. Dunbar, angrily.

It happened thus that the very first words Henry Dunbar said to his
daughter were uttered in a tone of anger. The girl drew herself away
from him, and looked up almost piteously in her father's face. That face
was as pale as death: but cold, stern, and impassible. Laura Dunbar
shivered as she looked at it. She had been a spoiled child; a pampered,
idolized beauty; and had never heard anything but words of love and
tenderness. Her lips quivered, and the tears came into her eyes.

"Come away, Pluto," she said to the dog; "papa does not want us."

She took the great flapping ears of the animal in her two hands, and led
him out of the room. The dog went with his young mistress submissively
enough: but he looked back at the last moment to growl at Mr. Dunbar.

Laura left the Newfoundland on the landing-place, and went back to her
father. She flung herself for the second time into the banker's arms.

"Darling papa," she cried, impetuously; "my dog shall never growl at you
again. Dear papa, tell me you are glad to come home to your poor girl.
You _would_ tell me so, if you knew how dearly I love you."

She lifted up her lips and kissed Henry Dunbar's impassible face. But
she recoiled from him for the second time with a shudder and a
long-drawn shivering sigh. The lips of the millionaire were as cold as
ice.

"Papa," she cried, "how cold you are! I'm afraid that you are ill!"

He was ill. Arthur Lovell, who stood quietly watching the meeting
between the father and daughter, saw a change come over his client's
face, and wheeled forward an arm-chair just in time for Henry Dunbar to
fall into it as heavily as a log of wood.

The banker had fainted. For the second time since the murder in the
grove near St. Cross he had betrayed violent and sudden emotion. This
time the emotion was stronger than his will, and altogether overcame
him.

Arthur Lovell laid the insensible man flat upon his back on the carpet.
Laura rushed to fetch water and aromatic vinegar from her dressing-room:
and in five minutes Mr. Dunbar opened his eyes, and looked about him
with a wild half-terrified expression in his face. For a moment he
glared fiercely at the anxious countenance of Laura, who knelt beside
him: then his whole frame was shaken by a convulsive trembling, and his
teeth chattered violently. But this lasted only for a few moments. He
overcame it: grinding his teeth, and clenching his strong hands: and
then staggered heavily to his feet.

"I am subject to these fainting fits," he said, with a wan, sickly smile
upon his white face; "and I dreaded this interview on that account: I
knew that it would be too much for me."

He seated himself upon the low sofa which Laura had pushed towards him,
resting his elbows on his knees, and hiding his face in his hands. Miss
Dunbar placed herself beside her father, and wound her arm about his
neck.

"Poor papa," she murmured, softly; "I am so sorry our meeting has
agitated you like this: and to think that I should have fancied you cold
and unkind to me, at the very time when your silent emotion was an
evidence of your love!"

Arthur Lovell had gone through the open window into the conservatory:
but he could hear the girl talking to her father. His face was very
grave: and the same shadow that had clouded it once during the course of
the coroner's inquest rested upon it now.

"An evidence of his love! Heaven grant this may be love," he thought to
himself; "but to me it seems a great deal more like fear!"




CHAPTER XVII.

THE BROKEN PICTURE.


Arthur Lovell stopped at Portland Place for the rest of the day, and
dined with the banker and his daughter in the evening. The dinner-party
was a very cheerful one, as far as Mr. Dunbar and his daughter were
concerned: for Laura was in very high spirits on account of her father's
return, and Dora Macmahon joined pleasantly in the conversation. The
banker had welcomed his dead wife's elder daughter with a speech which,
if a little studied in its tone, was at any rate very kind in its
meaning.

"I shall always be glad to see you with my poor motherless girl," he
said; "and if you can make your home altogether with us, you shall never
have cause to remember that you are less nearly allied to me than Laura
herself."

When he met Arthur and the two girls at the dinner-table, Henry Dunbar
had quite recovered from the agitation of the morning, and talked gaily
of the future. He alluded now and then to his Indian reminiscences, but
did not dwell long upon this subject. His mind seemed full of plans for
his future life. He would do this, that, and the other, at Maudesley
Abbey, in Yorkshire, and in Portland Place. He had the air of a man who
fully appreciates the power of wealth; and is prepared to enjoy all that
wealth can give him. He drank a good deal of wine during the course of
the dinner, and his spirits rose with every glass.

But in spite of his host's gaiety, Arthur Lovell was ill at ease. Do
what he would, he could not shake off the memory of the meeting between
the father and daughter. Henry Dunbar's deadly pallor--that wild, scared
look in his eyes, as they slowly reopened and glared upon Laura's
anxious face--were ever present to the young lawyer's mind.

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