Israel Abrahams - "The Book of Delight and Other Papers"

Bernard Mandeville - "An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War"

James J. Walsh - "Old Time Makers of Medicine"

Andrew Lang - "Prince Prigio"

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




Clement Austin opened the door of Mr. Balderby's parlour; Mr. Dunbar
went in unannounced. The cashier closed the parlour-door and returned to
his desk in the public office.

The junior partner was sitting at an office table near the fire writing,
but he rose as the banker entered the room, and went forward to meet
him.

"You are very punctual, Mr. Dunbar," he said.

"Yes, I am generally punctual."

The two men shook hands, and Mr. Balderby wheeled forward a
morocco-covered arm-chair for his senior partner, and then took his seat
opposite to him, with only the small office table between them.

"It may seem late in the day to bid you welcome to the bank, Mr.
Dunbar," said the junior partner, "but I do so, nevertheless--most
heartily!"

There was a flatness in the accent in which these two last words were
spoken, which was like the sound of a false coin when it falls dead upon
a counter and proclaims itself spurious.

Henry Dunbar did not return his partner's greeting. He was looking round
the room, and remembering the day upon which he had last seen it. There
was very little alteration in the appearance of the dismal city chamber.
There was the same wire-blind before the window, the same solitary tree,
leafless, in the narrow courtyard without. The morocco-covered
arm-chairs had been re-covered, perhaps, during that five-and-thirty
years; but if so, the covering had grown shabby again. Even the Turkey
carpet was in the very stage of dusky dinginess that had distinguished
the carpet on which Henry Dunbar had stood five-and-thirty years before.

"I received your letter announcing your journey to London, and your
desire for a private interview, on Saturday afternoon," Mr. Balderby
said, after a pause. "I have made arrangements to assure our being
undisturbed so long as you may remain here. If you wish to make any
investigation of the affairs of the house, I----"

Mr. Dunbar waved his hand with a deprecatory air.

"Nothing is farther from my thoughts than any such design," he said.
"No, Mr. Balderby, I have only been a man of business because all chance
of another career, which I infinitely preferred, was closed upon me
five-and-thirty years ago. I am quite content to be a sleeping-partner
in the house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby. For ten years prior to my
father's death he took no active part in the business. The house got on
very well without his aid; it will get on equally well without mine. The
business that brings me to London is an entirely personal matter. I am a
rich man, but I don't exactly know how rich I am, and I want to realize
rather a large sum of money."

Mr. Balderby bowed, but his eyebrows went up a little, as if he found it
impossible to control some slight evidence of his surprise.

"Previous to my daughter's marriage I settled upon her the house in
Portland Place and the Yorkshire property. She will have all my money
when I die; and, as Sir Philip Jocelyn is a rich man, she will perhaps
be one of the wealthiest women in England. So far so good. Neither Laura
nor her husband will have any reason for dissatisfaction. But this is
not quite enough, Mr. Balderby. I am not a demonstrative man, and I have
never made any great fuss about my love for my daughter; but I do love
her, nevertheless."

Mr. Dunbar spoke very slowly here, and stopped once or twice to pass his
handkerchief across his forehead, as he had done in the hotel at
Winchester.

"We Anglo-Indians have rather a magnificent way of doing things, Mr.
Balderby" he continued, "when we take it into our heads to do them at
all. I want to give my daughter a diamond-necklace as a wedding present,
and I want it to be such as an Eastern prince or a Rothschild might
offer to his only child. You understand?"

"Oh, perfectly," answered Mr. Balderby; "I shall be most happy to be of
any use to you in the matter."

"All I want is a large sum of money at my command. I may go rather
recklessly to work and make a large investment in this necklace; it will
be something for Lady Jocelyn to bequeath to her children. You and John
Lovell, of Shorncliffe, were the executors to my father's will. You
signed an order for the transfer of my father's money to my account some
time in last September."

"I did, in concurrence with Mr. Lovell."

"Precisely; Lovell wrote me a letter to that effect. My father kept two
accounts here, I believe--a deposit and a drawing account?"

"He did."

"And those two accounts have gone on since my return in the same manner
as during his lifetime?"

"Precisely. The income which Mr. Percival Dunbar set aside for his own
use was seven thousand a year. He rarely, spent as much as that;
sometimes he spent less than half. The balance of this income, and his
double share in the profits of the business, went to the credit of his
deposit account, and various sums have been withdrawn from time to time,
and duly invested under his order."

"Perhaps you can let me see the ledgers containing those two accounts?"

"Most certainly."

Mr. Balderby touched the spring of a handbell upon his table.

"Ask Mr. Austin to bring the daily balance and deposit accounts
ledgers," he said to the person who answered his summons.

Clement Austin appeared five minutes afterwards, carrying two ponderous
morocco-bound volumes.

Mr. Balderby opened both ledgers, and placed them before his senior
partner. Henry Dunbar looked at the deposit account. His eyes ran
eagerly down the long row of figures before him until they came to the
sum total. Then his chest heaved, and he drew a long breath, like a man
who feels almost stifled by some internal oppression.

The last figures in the page were these:

_137,926l. 17s. 2d._

One hundred and thirty-seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-six pounds
seventeen shillings and twopence. The twopence seemed a ridiculous
anti-climax; but business-men are necessarily as exact in figures as
calculating-machines.

"How is this money invested?" asked Henry Dunbar, pointing to the page.
His fingers trembled a little as he did so, and he dropped his hand
suddenly upon the ledger.

"There's fifty thousand in India stock," Mr. Balderby answered, as
indifferently as if fifty thousand pounds more or less was scarcely
worth speaking of; "and there's five-and-twenty in railway debentures,
Great Western. Most of the remainder is floating in Exchequer bills."

"Then you can realize the Exchequer bills?"

Mr. Balderby winced as if some one had trodden upon one of his corns. He
was a banker heart and soul, and he did not at all relish the idea of
any withdrawal of the bank's resources, however firm that establishment
might stand.

"It's rather a large amount of capital to withdraw from the business,"
he said, rubbing his chin, thoughtfully.

"I suppose the bank can afford it!" Mr. Dunbar exclaimed, with a tone of
surprise.

"Oh, yes; the bank can afford it well enough. Our calls are sometimes
heavy. Lord Yarsfield--a very old customer--talks of buying an estate in
Wales; he may come down upon us at any moment for a very stiff sum of
money. However, the capital is yours, Mr. Dunbar; and you've a right to
dispose of it as you please. The Exchequer bills shall be realized
immediately."

"Good; and if you can dispose of the railway bonds to advantage, you may
do so."

"You think of spending----"

"I think of reinvesting the money. I have an offer of an estate north of
the metropolis, which I think will realize cent per cent a few years
hence: but that is an after consideration. At present we have only to do
with the diamond-necklace for my daughter. I shall buy the diamonds
myself, direct from the merchant-importers. You will hold yourself ready
after Wednesday, we'll say, to cash some very heavy cheques on my
account?"

"Certainly, Mr. Dunbar."

"Then I think that is really all I have to say. I shall be happy to see
you at the Clarendon, if you will dine with me any evening that you are
disengaged."

There was very little heartiness in the tone of this invitation; and Mr.
Balderby perfectly understood that it was only a formula which Mr.
Dunbar felt himself called upon to go through. The junior partner
murmured his acknowledgment of Henry Dunbar's politeness; and then the
two men talked together for a few minutes on indifferent subjects.

Five minutes afterwards Mr. Dunbar rose to leave the room. He went into
the passage between Mr. Balderby's parlour and the public offices of the
bank. This passage was very dark; but the offices were well lighted by
lofty plate-glass windows. Between the end of the passage and the outer
doors of the bank, Henry Dunbar saw the figure of a woman sitting near
one of the desks and talking to Clement Austin.

The banker stopped suddenly, and went back to the parlour.

He looked about him a little absently as he re-entered the room.

"I thought I brought a cane," he said.

"I think not," replied Mr. Balderby, rising from before his desk. "I
don't remember seeing one in your hand."

"Ah, then, I suppose I was mistaken."

He still lingered in the parlour, putting on his gloves very slowly, and
looking out of the window into the dismal backyard, where there was a
dingy little wooden door set deep in the stone wall.

While the banker loitered near the window, Clement Austin came into the
room, to show some document to the junior partner. Henry Dunbar turned
round as the cashier was about to leave the parlour.

"I saw a woman just now talking to you in the office. That's not very
business-like, is it, Mr. Austin? Who is the woman?"

"She is a young lady, sir."

"A young lady?"

"Yes, sir."

"What brings her here?"

The cashier hesitated for a moment before he replied, "She--wishes to
see you, Mr. Dunbar," he said, after that brief pause.

"What is her name?--who--who is she?"

"Her name is Wilmot--Margaret Wilmot."

"I know no such person!" answered the banker, haughtily, but looking
nervously at the half-opened door as he spoke.

"Shut that door, sir!" he said, impatiently, to the cashier; "the
draught from the passage is strong enough to cut a man in two. Who is
this Margaret Wilmot?"

"The daughter of that unfortunate man, Joseph Wilmot, who was cruelly
murdered at Winchester!" answered the cashier, very gravely.

He looked Henry Dunbar full in the face as he spoke.

The banker returned his look as unflinchingly as he had done before, and
spoke in a hard, unfaltering voice as he answered: "Tell this person,
Margaret Wilmot, that I refuse to see her to-day, as I refused to see
her in Portland Place, and as I refused to see her at Winchester!" he
said, deliberately. "Tell her that I shall always refuse to see her,
whenever or wherever she makes an attack upon me. I have suffered enough
already on account of that hideous business at Winchester, and I shall
most resolutely defend myself from any further persecution. This young
person can have no possible motive for wishing to see me. If she is poor
and wants money of me, I am ready and willing to assist her. I have
already offered to do so--I can do no more. But if she is in
distress----"

"She is not in distress, Mr. Dunbar," interrupted Clement Austin. "She
has friends who love her well enough to shield her from that."

"Indeed; and you are one of those friends, I suppose, Mr. Austin?"

"I am."

"Prove your friendship, then, by teaching Margaret Wilmot that she has a
friend and not an enemy in me. If you are--as I suspect from your
manner--something more than a friend: if you love her, and she returns
your love, marry her, and she shall have a dowry that no gentleman's
wife need be ashamed to bring to her husband."

There was no anger, no impatience in the banker's voice now, but a tone
of deep feeling. Clement Austin locked at him, astonished by the change
in his manner.

Henry Dunbar saw the look, and it seemed as if he endeavoured to answer
it.

"You have no need to be surprised that I shrink from seeing Margaret
Wilmot," he said. "Cannot you understand that my nerves may be none of
the strongest, and that I cannot endure the idea of an interview with
this girl, who, no doubt, by her persistent pursuit of me, suspects me
of her father's murder? I am an old man, and I have been thirty-five
years in India. My health is shattered, and I have a horror of all
tragic scenes. I have not yet recovered from the shock of that horrible
business at Winchester. Go and tell Margaret Wilmot this: tell her that
I will be her true friend if she will accept that friendship, but that I
will not see her until she has learned to think better of me."

There was something very straightforward, very simple, in all this. For
a time, at least, Clement Austin's mind wavered. Margaret was, perhaps,
wrong, after all, and Henry Dunbar might be an innocent man.

It was Clement who had informed Margaret of Mr. Dunbar's expected
presence here upon this day; and it was on the strength of that
information that the girl had come to St. Gundolph Lane, with the
determination of seeing the man whom she believed to be the murderer of
her father.

Clement returned to the office, where he had left Margaret, in order to
repeat to her Mr. Dunbar's message.

No sooner had the door of the parlour closed upon the cashier than Henry
Dunbar turned abruptly to his junior partner.

"There is a door leading from the yard into a court that connects St.
Gundolph Lane with another lane at the back," he said, "is there not?"

He pointed to the dark little yard outside the window as he spoke.

"Yes, there is a door, I believe."

"Is it locked?"

"No; it is seldom locked till four o'clock; the clerks use it sometimes,
when they go in and out."

"Then I shall go out that way," said Mr. Dunbar, who was almost
breathless in his haste. "You can send the carriage back to the
Clarendon by-and-by. I don't want to see that girl. Good morning."

He hurried out of the parlour, and into a passage leading to the yard,
followed by Mr. Balderby, who wondered at his senior partner's
excitement. The door in the yard was not locked. Henry Dunbar opened it,
went out into the court, and closed the door behind him.

So, for the third time, he escaped from an interview with Margaret
Wilmot.




CHAPTER XXVII.

CLEMENT AUSTIN'S WOOING.


For the third time Margaret Wilmot was disappointed in the hope of
seeing Henry Dunbar. Clement Austin had on the previous evening told her
of the banker's intended visit to the office in St. Gundolph Lane, and
the young music-mistress had made hasty arrangements for the
postponement of her usual duties, in order that she might go to the City
to see Henry Dunbar.

"He will not dare to refuse you," Clement Austin said; "for he must know
that such a refusal would excite suspicion in the minds of the people
about him."

"He must have known that at Winchester, and yet he avoided me there,"
answered Margaret Wilmot; "he must have known it when he refused to see
me in Portland Place. He will refuse to see me to-day, if I ask for an
interview with him. My only chance will be the chance of an accidental
meeting with Him. Do you think that you can arrange this for me, Mr.
Austin?"

Clement Austin readily promised to bring about an apparently accidental
meeting between Margaret and Mr. Dunbar, and this is how it was that
Joseph Wilmot's daughter had waited in the office in St. Gundolph Lane.
She had arrived only five minutes after Mr. Dunbar entered the
banking-house, and she waited very patiently, very resolutely, in the
hope that when Henry Dunbar returned to his carriage she might snatch
the opportunity of speaking to him, of seeing his face, and discovering
whether he was guilty or not.

She clung to the idea that some indefinable expression of his
countenance would reveal the fact of his guilt or innocence. But she
could not dispossess herself of the belief that he was guilty. What
other reason could there be for his persistent avoidance of her?

But, for the third time, she was baffled; and she went home very
despondently, haunted by the image of her dead father; while Henry
Dunbar went back to the Clarendon in a common hack cab, which he picked
up in Cornhill.

Margaret Wilmot found one of her pupils waiting in the pretty little
parlour in the cottage at Clapham, and she was obliged to sit down to
the piano and listen to a fantasia, very badly played, keeping sharp
watch upon the pupil's fingers, for an hour or so, before she was free
to think her own thoughts.

Margaret was very glad when the lesson was over. The pupil was a very
vivacious young lady, who called her music-mistress "dear," and would
have been glad to waste half an hour or so in an animated conversation
about the last new style in bonnets, or the shape of the fashionable
winter mantle, or the popular novel of the month. But Margaret's pale
face seemed a mute appeal for compassion; so Miss Lamberton drew on her
gloves, settled her bonnet before the glass over the mantel-piece, and
tripped away.

Margaret sat by the little round table, with an open book before her.
But she could not read, though the volume was one that had been lent her
by Clement, and though she took a peculiar pleasure in reading any book
that was a favourite of his. She did not read; she only sat with her
eyes fixed, and her face very pale, in the dim light of two candles that
flickered in the draught from the window.

She was aroused from her despondent reverie by a double knock at the
door below, and presently the neat little maid-servant ushered Mr.
Austin into the room.

Margaret started up, a little confused at the advent of this unexpected
visitor. It was the first time that Clement had ever called upon her
alone. He had often been her guest; but, until to-night, he had always
come under his mother's wing to see the pretty music-mistress.

"I am afraid I startled you, Miss Wilmot," he said.

"Oh, no; not at all," answered Margaret; "I was sitting here, quite
idle, thinking----"

"Thinking of your failure of to-day, I suppose?"

"Yes."

There was a pause, during which Margaret seated herself once more by the
little table, while Clement Austin walked up and down the room thinking.

Presently he stopped suddenly, with his elbow leaning upon the corner of
the mantel-piece, opposite Margaret, and looked down at the girl's
thoughtful face. She had blushed when the cashier first entered the
room; but she was very pale now.

"Margaret," said Clement Austin,--it was the first time he had called
his mother's _protegee_ by her Christian name, and the girl looked up at
him with a surprised expression,--"Margaret, that which happened to-day
makes me think that your conviction is only the horrible truth, and that
Henry Dunbar, the sole surviving kinsman of those two men whom I learnt
to honour and revere long ago, when I was a mere boy, is indeed guilty
of your father's death. If so, the cause of justice demands that this
man's crime should be brought to light. I am something of Shakspeare's
opinion; I cannot but believe that 'murder will out,' somehow or other,
sooner or later. But I think that, in this business, the police have
been culpably supine. It seems as if they feared to handle the case to
closely, lest the clue they followed should lead them to Henry Dunbar."

"You think they have been, bribed?"

"No; I don't think that. There seems to be a popular belief, all over
the world, that a man with a million of money can do no wrong. I don't
believe the police have been culpable; they have only been
faint-hearted. They have suffered themselves to be discouraged by the
difficulties of the case. Other crimes have been committed, other work
has arisen for them to do, and they have been obliged to abandon an
investigation which seemed hopeless. This is how criminals escape--this
is how murderers are suffered to be at large; not because discovery is
impossible, but because it can only be effected by a slow and wearisome
process in which so few men have courage to persevere. While the country
is ringing with the record of a great crime--while the murderer is on
his guard night and day, waking and sleeping--the police watch and work:
but by-and-by, when the crime is half forgotten--when security has made
the criminal careless--when the chances of detection are ten-fold--the
police have grown tired, and there is no eye to watch the guilty man's
movements. I know nothing of the science of detection, Margaret; but I
believe that Henry Dunbar was the murderer of your father; and I will do
my uttermost, with God's help, to bring this crime home to him."

The girl's eyes flashed with a proud light, as Clement Austin finished
speaking.

"Will you do this?" she said; "will you bring to light the mystery of my
father's death? Will you bring punishment upon his murderer? It seems a
horrible thing, perhaps, for a woman to wish detection to overtake any
man, however base; but surely it would be more horrible if I were
content to let my father's murder remain unavenged. My poor father! If
he had been a good man, I do not think it would grieve me so much to
remember his cruel death: but he was not a good man--he was not a good
man."

"Let him have been what he may, Margaret, his murderer shall not go
unpunished if I can aid the cause of justice," said Clement Austin. "But
it was not to say this alone that I came here to-night, Margaret. I have
something more to say to you."

There was a tenderness in the cashier's voice as he said these last
words, that brought the blushes back to Margaret's pale cheeks.

"You know that I love you, Margaret," Clement said, in a low, earnest
voice; "you must know that I love you: or if you do not, it is because
there is no sympathy between us, and in that case my love is indeed
hopeless. I have loved you from the first, dear--yes, from the very
first summer twilight in which I saw your pale, pensive face in the
dusky little garden at Wandsworth. The tender interest which I then felt
in you was the first mysterious dawn of love, though I, in my infinite
wisdom, put it down to an artistic admiration for your peculiar beauty.
It was love, Margaret; and it has grown and strengthened in my heart
ever since that summer evening, until it leads me here to-night to tell
you all, and to ask you if there is any hope. Ah, Margaret, you must
have known my love all along! You would have banished me had you felt
that my love was hopeless: you could not have been so cruel as to
deceive me."

Margaret looked up at her lover with a frightened face. Had she done
wrong, then, to be happy in his society, if she did not love him--if she
did not love him! But surely this sudden thrill of triumph and delight
which filled her breast, as Clement spoke to her, must be in some degree
akin to love.

Yes, she loved him; but the bright things of this world were not for
her. Love and Duty fought for the mastery of her pure Soul: and Duty was
the conqueror.

"Oh, Clement!" she said, "do you forget who I am? Do you forget that
letter which I showed you long ago, a letter addressed to my father when
he was a transported felon, suffering the penalty of his crime? Do you
forget who I am, and the taint that is in my blood; the disgrace that
stains my name? I am proud to think that you have loved me, Clement
Austin; but I am no fitting wife for you!"

"You are a noble, true-hearted woman, Margaret; and as such you are a
fitting wife for a king. Besides, I am not such a grandee that I need
look for high lineage in the wife of my choice. I am only a working man,
content to accept a salary for my services; and looking forward
by-and-by to a junior partnership in the house I serve. Margaret, my
mother loves you; and she knows that you are the woman I seek to win as
my wife. Forget the taint upon your dead father's name as freely as I
forget it, dearest; and only answer me one question; Is my love
hopeless?"

"I will never consent to be your wife, Mr. Austin!" Margaret answered,
in a low voice.

"Because you do not love me?"

"Because I will never cause you to blush for the history of your wife's
girlhood."

"That is no answer to my question, Margaret," said Clement Austin,
seating himself by her side, and taking both her hands in his. "I must
ask you to look me full in the face, Miss Wilmot," he added, laughingly,
drawing her towards him as he spoke; "for I begin to fancy you're
addicted to prevarication. Look me in the face, Madge darling, and tell
me that you love me."

But the blushing face would not be turned towards his own. Margaret's
head was still averted.

"Don't ask me," she pleaded; "don't ask me. The day would come when you
would regret your choice. I could not endure that. It would be too
bitter. You have been very kind to me; and it would be a poor return for
your kindness, if----"

"If you were to make me unutterably happy, eh, Margaret? I think it
would be only a proper act of gratitude. Haven't I run all over Clapham,
Brixton, and Wandsworth--to say nothing of an occasional incursion upon
Putney--in order to procure you half-a-dozen pupils? And the very first
favour I demand of you, which is only the gift of this clever little
hand, you have the audacity to refuse me point-blank."

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