Mary Belle Freeley - "Fair to Look Upon"

Henry James - "The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 1]"

Mary Eales - "Mrs. Mary Eales's receipts. (1733)"

Hippolyte A. Taine - "The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1"

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 returned to the Reindeer, had a brief conversation with
Margaret, and made all arrangements.

At four o'clock that afternoon, Miss Wilmot and her lover left the
Reindeer in a fly; at a quarter to five the fly stopped at the
lodge-gates.

"I will walk to the house," Margaret said; "my coming will attract less
notice. But I may be detained for some time, Clement. Pray, don't wait
for me. Your dear mother will be alarmed if you are very long absent. Go
back to her, and send the fly for me by-and-by."

"Nonsense, Madge. I shall wait for you, however long you may be. Do you
think my heart is not as much engaged in anything that may influence
your fate as even your own can be? I won't go with you to the Abbey; for
it will be as well that Henry Dunbar should remain in ignorance of my
presence in the neighbourhood. I will walk up and down the road here,
and wait for you."

"But you may have to wait so long, Clement."

"No matter how long. I can wait patiently, but I could not endure to go
home and leave you, Madge."

They were standing before the great iron gates as Clement said this. He
pressed Margaret's cold hand; he could feel how cold it was, even
through her glove; and then rang the bell. She looked at him as the gate
was opened; she turned and looked at him with a strangely earnest gaze
as she crossed the boundary of Henry Dunbar's domain, and then walked
slowly along the broad avenue.

That last look had shown Clement Austin a pale resolute face, something
like the countenance of a fair young martyr going quietly to the stake.

He walked away from the gates, and they shut behind him with a loud
clanging noise. Then he went back to them, and watched Margaret's figure
growing dim and distant in the gathering dusk as she approached the
Abbey. A faint glow of crimson firelight reddened the gravel-drive
before the windows of Mr. Dunbar's apartments, and there was a footman
airing himself under the shadow of the porch, with a glimmer of light
shining out of the hall behind him.

"I do not suppose I shall have to wait very long for my poor girl,"
Clement thought, as he left the gates, and walked briskly up and down
the road. "Henry Dunbar is a resolute man; he will refuse to see her
to-day, as he refused before."

Margaret found the footman lolling against the clustered pillars of the
gothic porch, staring thoughtfully at the low evening light, yellow and
red behind the brown trunks of the elms, and picking his teeth with a
gold toothpick.

The sight of the open hall-door, and this languid footman lolling in the
porch, suddenly inspired Margaret Wilmot with a new idea. Would it not
be possible to slip quietly past this man, and walk straight to the
apartments of Mr. Dunbar, unquestioned, uninterrupted?

Clement had pointed out to her the windows of the rooms occupied by the
banker. They were on the left-hand side of the entrance-hall. It would
be impossible for her to mistake the door leading to them. It was dusk,
and she was very plainly dressed, with a black straw bonnet, and a veil
over her face. Surely she might deceive this languid footman by
affecting to be some hanger-on of the household, which of course was a
large one.

In that case she had no right to present herself at the front door,
certainly; but then, before the languid footman could recover from the
first shock of indignation at her impertinence, she might slip past him
and reach the door leading to those apartments in which the banker hid
himself and his guilt.

Margaret lingered a little in the avenue, watching for a favourable
opportunity in which she might hazard this attempt. She waited five
minutes or so.

The curve of the avenue screened her, in some wise, from the man in the
porch, who never happened to roll his languid eyes towards the spot
where she was standing.

A flight of rooks came scudding through the sky presently, very much
excited, and cawing and screeching as if they had been an ornithological
fire brigade hurrying to extinguish the flames of some distant rookery.

The footman, who was suffering acutely from the complaint of not knowing
what to do with himself, came out of the porch and stood in the middle
of the gravelled drive, with his back towards Margaret, staring at the
birds as they flew westward.

This was her opportunity. The girl hurried to the door with a light
step, so light upon the smooth solid gravel that the footman heard
nothing until she was on the broad stone step under the porch, when the
fluttering of her skirt, as it brushed against the pillars, roused him
from a species of trance or reverie.

He turned sharply round, as upon a pivot, and stared aghast at the
retreating figure under the porch.

"Hi, you there, young woman!" he exclaimed, without stirring from his
post; "where are you going to? What's the meaning of your coming to this
door? Are you aware that there's such a place as a servants' 'all and a
servants' hentrance?"

But the languid retainer was too late. Margaret's hand was upon the
massive knob of the door upon the left side of the hall before the
footman had put this last indignant question.

He listened for an apologetic murmur from the young woman; but hearing
none, concluded that she had found her way to the servants' hall, where
she had most likely some business or other with one of the female
members of the household.

"A dressmaker, I dessay," the footman thought. "Those gals spend all
their earnings in finery and fallals, instead of behaving like
respectable young women, and saving up their money against they can go
into the public line with the man of their choice."

He yawned, and went on staring at the rooks, without troubling himself
any further about the impertinent young person who had dared to present
herself at the grand entrance.

Margaret opened the door, and went into the room next the hall.

It was a handsome apartment, lined with books from the floor to the
ceiling; but it was quite empty, and there was no fire burning in the
grate. The girl put up her veil, and looked about her. She was very,
very pale now, and trembled violently; but she controlled her agitation
by a great effort, and went slowly on to the next room.

The second room was empty like the first; but the door between it and
the next chamber was wide open, and Margaret saw the firelight shining
upon the faded tapestry, and reflected in the sombre depths of the
polished oak furniture. She heard the low sound of the light ashes
falling on the hearth, and the shorting breath of a dog.

She knew that the man she sought, and had so long sought without avail,
was in that room. Alone; for there was no murmur of voices, no sound of
any one moving in the apartment. That hour, to which Margaret Wilmot had
looked as the great crisis of her life, had come; and her courage failed
her all at once, and her heart sank in her breast on the very threshold
of the chamber in which she was to stand face to face with Henry Dunbar.

"The murderer of my father!" she thought; "the man whose influence
blighted my father's life, and made him what he was. The man through
whose reckless sin my father lived a life that left him, oh! how sadly
unprepared to die! The man who, knowing this, sent his victim before an
offended God, without so much warning as would have given him time to
think one prayer. I am going to meet _that_ man face to face!"

Her breath came in faint gasps, and the firelit chamber swam before her
eyes as she crossed the threshold of that door, and went into the room
where Henry Dunbar was sitting alone before the low fire.

He was wrapped in crimson draperies of thick woollen stuff, and the
leopard-skin railway rug was muffled about his knees A dog of the
bull-dog breed was lying asleep at the banker's feet, half-hidden in the
folds of the leopard-skin. Henry Dunbar's head was bent over the fire,
and his eyes were closed in a kind of dozing sleep, as Margaret Wilmot
went into the room.

There was an empty chair opposite to that in which the banker sat; an
old-fashioned, carved oak-chair, with a high back and crimson-morocco
cushions. Margaret went softly up to this chair, and laid her hand upon
the oaken framework. Her footsteps made no sound on the thick Turkey
carpet; the banker never stirred from his doze, and even the dog at his
feet slept on.

"Mr. Dunbar!" cried Margaret, in a clear, resolute voice; "awake! it is
I, Margaret Wilmot, the daughter of the man who was murdered in the
grove near Winchester!"

The dog awoke, and snapped at her. The man lifted his head, and looked
at her. Even the fire seemed roused by the sound of her voice! for a
little jet of vivid light leaped up out of the smouldering log, and
lighted the scared face of the banker.

Clement Austin had promised Margaret to wait for her, and to wait
patiently; and he meant to keep his promise. But there are some limits
even to the patience of a lover, though he were the veriest
knight-errant who was ever eager to shiver a lance or hack the edge of a
battle-axe for love of his liege lady. When you have nothing to do but
to walk up and down a few yards of hard dusty high-road, upon a bleak
evening in January, an hour more or less is of considerable importance.
Five o'clock struck about ten minutes after Margaret Wilmot had entered
the park, and Clement thought to himself that even if Margaret were
successful in obtaining an interview with the banker, that interview
would be over before six. But the faint strokes of Lisford-church clock
died away upon the cold evening wind, and Clement was still pacing up
and down, and the fly was still waiting; the horse comfortable enough,
with a rug upon his back and his nose in a bag of oats; the man walking
up and down by the side of the vehicle, slapping his gloved hands across
his shoulders every now and then to keep himself warm. In that long hour
between six and seven, Clement Austin's patience wore itself almost
threadbare. It is one thing to ride into the lists on a prancing steed,
caparisoned with embroidered trappings, worked by the fair hands of your
lady-love, and with the trumpets braying, and the populace shouting, and
the Queen of beauty smiling sweet approval of your prowess: but it is
quite another thing to walk up and down a dusty country road, with the
wind biting like some ravenous animal at the tip of your nose, and no
more consciousness of your legs and arms than if you were a Miss Biffin.

By the time seven o'clock struck, Clement Austin's patience had given up
the ghost; and to impatience had succeeded a vague sense of alarm.
Margaret Wilmot had gone to force herself into this man's presence, in
spite of his reiterated refusal to see her. What if--what if, goaded by
her persistence, maddened by the consciousness of his own guilt, he
should attempt any violence.

Oh, no, no; that was quite impossible. If this man was guilty, his crime
had been deliberately planned, and executed with such a diabolical
cunning, that he had been able so far to escape detection. In his own
house, surrounded by prying servants, he would never dare to assail this
girl by so much as a harsh word.

But, notwithstanding this, Clement was determined to wait no longer. He
would go to the Abbey at once, and ascertain the cause of Margaret's
delay. He rang the bell, went into the park, and ran along the avenue to
the perch. Lights were shining in Mr. Dunbar's windows, but the great
hall-door was closely shut.

The languid footman came in answer to Clement's summons.

"There is a young lady here," Clement said, breathlessly; "a young
lady--with Mr. Dunbar."

"Ho! is that hall?" asked the footman, satirically. "I thought
Shorncliffe town-'all was a-fire, at the very least, from the way you
rung. There _was_ a young pusson with Mr. Dunbar above a hour ago, if
_that's_ what you mean?"

"Above an hour ago?" cried Clement Austin, heedless of the man's
impertinence in his own growing anxiety; "do you mean to say that the
young lady has left?"

"She _have_ left, above a hour ago."

"She went away from this house an hour ago?"

"More than a hour ago."

"Impossible!" Clement said; "impossible!"

"It may be so," answered the footman, who was of an ironical turn of
mind; "but I let her out with my own hands, and I saw her go out with my
own eyes, notwithstanding."

The man shut the door before Clement had recovered from his surprise,
and left him standing in the porch; bewildered, though he scarcely knew
why; frightened, though he scarcely knew what he feared.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

MARGARET'S RETURN.


For some minutes Clement Austin lingered in the porch at Maudesley
Abbey, utterly at a loss as to what he should do next.

Margaret had left the Abbey an hour ago, according to the footman's
statement; but, in that case, where had she gone? Clement had been
walking up and down the road before the iron gates of the park, and they
had not been opened once during the hours in which he had waited outside
them. Margaret could not have left the park, therefore, by the principal
entrance. If she had gone away at all, she must have gone out by one of
the smaller gates--by the lodge-gate upon the Lisford Road, perhaps, and
thus back to Shorncliffe.

"But then, why, in Heaven's name, had Margaret set out to walk home when
the fly was waiting for her at the gates; when her lover was also
waiting for her, full of anxiety to know the result of the step she had
taken?

"She forgot that I was waiting for her, perhaps," Clement thought to
himself. "She may have forgotten all about me, in the fearful excitement
of this night's work."

The young man was by no means pleased by this idea.

"Margaret can love me very little, in that case," he said to himself.
"My first thought, in any great crisis of my life, would be to go to
her, and tell her all that had happened to me."

There were no less than four different means of exit from the park.
Clement Austin knew this, and he knew that it would take him upwards of
two hours to go to all four of them.

"I'll make inquiries at the gate upon the Lisford Road," he said to
himself; "and if I find Margaret has left by that way, I can get the fly
round there, and pick her up between this and Shorncliffe. Poor girl, in
her ignorance of this neighbourhood, she has no idea of the distance she
will have to walk!"

Mr. Austin could not help feeling vexed by Margaret's conduct; but he
did all he could to save the girl from the fatigue she was likely to
entail upon herself through her own folly. He ran to the lodge upon the
Lisford Road, and asked the woman who kept it, if a lady had gone out
about an hour before.

The woman told him that a young lady had gone out an hour and a half
before.

This was enough. Clement ran across the park to the western entrance,
got into the fly, and told the man to drive back to Shorncliffe, by the
Lisford Road, as fast as he could go, and to look out on the way for the
young lady whom he had driven to Maudesley Abbey that afternoon.

"You watch the left side of the road, I'll watch the right," Clement
said.

The driver was cold and cross, but he was anxious to get back to
Shorncliffe, and he drove very fast.

Clement sat with the window down, and the frosty wind blowing full upon
his face as he looted out for Margaret.

But he reached Shorncliffe without having overtaken her, and the fly
crawled under the ponderous archway beneath which the dashing
mail-coaches had rolled in the days that were for ever gone.

"She must have got home before me," the cashier thought; "I shall find
her up-stairs with my mother."

He went up to the large room with the bow-window. The table in the
centre of the room was laid for dinner, and Mrs. Austin was nodding in a
great arm-chair near the fire, with the county newspaper in her lap. The
wax-candles were lighted, the crimson curtains were drawn before the
bow-window, and the room looked altogether very comfortable: but there
was no Margaret.

The widow started up at the sound of the opening of the door and her
son's hurried footsteps.

"Why, Clement," she cried, "how late you are! I seem to have been
sitting dozing here for full two hours; and the fire has been
replenished three times since the cloth was laid for dinner. What have
you been doing, my dear boy?"

Clement looked about him before he answered.

"Yes, I am very late, mother, I know," he said; "but where's Margaret?"

Mrs. Austin stared aghast at her son's question.

"Why, Margaret is with you, is she not?" she exclaimed.

"No, mother; I expected to find her here."

"Did you leave her, then?"

"No, not exactly; that is to say, I----"

Clement did not finish the sentence. He walked slowly up and down the
room thinking, whilst his mother watched him very anxiously.

"My dear Clement," Mrs. Austin exclaimed at last, "you really quite
alarm me. You set out this afternoon upon some mysterious expedition
with Margaret; and though I ask you both where you are going, you both
refuse to satisfy my very natural curiosity, and look as solemn as if
you were about to attend a funeral. Then, after ordering dinner for
seven o'clock, you keep it waiting nearly two hours; and you come in
without Margaret, and seem alarmed at not seeing net here. What does it
all mean, Clement?"

"I cannot tell you, mother."

"What! is this business of to-day, then, a part of your secret?"

"It is," answered the cashier. "I can only say again what I said before,
mother--trust me!"

The widow sighed, and shrugged her shoulders with a deprecating gesture.

"I suppose I _must_ be satisfied, Clem," she said. "But this is the
first time there's ever been anything like a mystery between you and
me."

"It is, mother; and I hope it may be the last."

The elderly waiter, who remembered the coaching days, and pretended to
believe that the Reindeer was not an institution of the past, came in
presently with the first course.

It happened to be one of those days on which fish was to be had in
Shorncliffe; and the first course consisted of a pair of very small
soles and a large cruet-stand. The waiter removed the cover with as
lofty a flourish as if the small soles had been the noblest turbot that
ever made the glory of an aldermannic feast.

Clement seated himself at the dinner-table, in deference to his mother,
and went through the ceremony of dinner; but he scarcely ate half a
dozen mouthfuls. His ears were strained to hear the sound of Margaret's
footstep in the corridor without; and he rejected the waiter's
fish-sauces in a manner that almost wounded the feelings of that
functionary. His mind was racked by anxiety about the missing girl.

Had he passed her on the road? No, that was very improbable; for he had
kept so sharp a watch upon the lonely highway that it was more than
unlikely the familiar figure of her whom he looked for could have
escaped his eager eyes. Had Mr. Dunbar detained her at Maudesley Abbey
against her will? No, no, that was quite impossible; for the footman had
distinctly declared that he had seen his master's visitor leave the
house; and the footman's manner had been innocence itself.

The dinner-table was cleared by-and-by, and Mrs. Austin produced some
coloured wools, and a pair of ivory knitting-needles, and set to work
very quietly by the light of the tall wax-candles; but even she was
beginning to be uneasy at the absence of hot son's betrothed wife.

"My dear Clement," she said at last, "I'm really growing quite uneasy
about Madge. How is it that you left her?"

Clement did not answer this question; but he got up and took his hat
from a side-table near the door.

"I'm uneasy about her absence too, mother," he said, "I'll go and look
for her."

He was leaving the room, but his mother called to him.

"Clement!" she cried, "you surely won't go out without your
greatcoat--upon such a bitter night as this, too!"

But Mr. Austin did not stop to listen to his mother's remonstrance; he
hurried out into the corridor, and shut the door of the room behind him.
He wanted to run away and look for Margaret, though he did not know how
or where to seek for her. Quiescence had become intolerable to him. It
was utterly impossible that he should sit calmly by the fire, waiting
for the coming of the girl he loved.

He was hurrying along the corridor, but he stopped abruptly, for a
well-known figure appeared upon the broad landing at the top of the
stairs. There was an archway at the end of the corridor, and a lamp hung
under the archway. By the light of this lamp, Clement Austin saw
Margaret Wilmot coming towards him slowly: as if she dragged herself
along by a painful effort, and would have been well content to sink upon
the carpeted floor and lie there helpless and inert.

Clement ran to meet her, with his face lighted up by that intense
delight which a man feels when some intolerable fear is suddenly lifted
off his mind.

"Margaret!" he cried; "thank God you have returned! Oh, my dear, if you
only knew what misery your conduct has caused me!"

He held out his arms, but, to his unutterable surprise, the girl
recoiled from him. She recoiled from him with a look of horror, and
shrank against the wall, as if her chief desire was to avoid the
slightest contact with her lover.

Clement was startled by the blank whiteness of her face, the fixed stare
of her dilated eyes. The January wind had blown her hair about her
forehead in loose disordered tresses; her shawl and dress were wet with
melted snow; but the cashier scarcely looked at these. He only saw her
face; his gaze was fascinated by the girl's awful pallor, and the
strange expression of her eyes.

"My darling," he said, "come into the parlour. My mother has been almost
as much alarmed as I have been. Come, Margaret; my poor girl, I can see
that this interview has been too much for you. Come, dear."

Once more he approached her, and again she shrank away from him,
dragging herself along against the wall, and with her eyes still fixed
in the same deathlike stare.

"Don't speak to me, Clement Austin," she cried; "don't approach me.
There is contamination in me. I am no fit associate for an honest man.
Don't come near me."

He would have gone to her, to clasp her in his arms, and comfort her
with soothing, tender words; but there was something in her eyes that
held him at bay, as if he had been rooted to the spot on which he stood.

"Margaret!" he cried.

He followed her, but she still recoiled from him, and, as he held out
his hand to grasp her wrist, she slipped by him suddenly, and rushed
away towards the other end of the corridor.

Clement followed her; but she opened a door at the end of the passage,
and went into Mrs. Austin's room. The cashier heard the key turned
hurriedly in the lock, and he knew that Margaret Wilmot had locked
herself in. The room in which she slept was inside that occupied by Mrs.
Austin.

Clement stood for some moments almost paralyzed by what had happened.
Had he done wrong in seeking to bring about this interview between
Margaret Wilmot and Henry Dunbar? He began to think that he had been
most culpable. This impulsive and sensitive girl had seen her father's
assassin: and the horror of the meeting had been too much for her
impressionable nature, and had produced, for the time at least, a
fearful effect upon her over-wrought brain.

"I must appeal to my mother," Clement thought; "she alone can give me
any help in this business."

He hurried back to the sitting-room, and found his mother still watching
the rapid movements of her ivory knitting-needles. The Reindeer was a
well-built house, solid and old-fashioned, and listeners lurking in the
long passages had small chance of reaping much reward for their pains
unless they found a friendly keyhole.

Mrs. Austin looked up with an expression of surprise as her son
re-entered the room.

"I thought you had gone to look for Margaret," she said.

"There was no occasion to do so, mother; she has returned."

"Thank Heaven for that! I have been quite alarmed by her strange
absence."

"So have I, mother; but I am still more alarmed by her manner, now that
she has returned. I asked you just now to trust me, mother," said
Clement, very gravely. "It is my turn now to confide in you. The
business in which Margaret has been engaged this evening was of a most
painful nature--so painful that I am scarcely surprised by the effect
that it has produced on her sensitive mind. I want you to go to her,
mother. I want you to comfort my poor girl. She has locked herself in
her own room; but she will admit you, no doubt. Go to her, dear mother,
and try and quiet her excitement, while I go for a medical man."

"You think she is ill, then, Clement?"

"I don't know that, mother; but such violent emotion as she has
evidently endured might produce brain-fever. I'll go and look for a
doctor."

Clement hurried down to the hall of the hotel, while his mother went to
seek Margaret. He found the landlord, who directed him to the favourite
Shorncliffe medical man.

Luckily, Mr. Vincent, the surgeon, was at home. He received Clement very
cordially, put on his hat without five minutes delay, and accompanied
Margaret's lover back to the Reindeer.

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