Henry Dunbar

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

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He reached the station three minutes before the train was due, and took
his ticket.

At half-past three he was in London.

But as he was an idle, purposeless man, without friends to visit or
money to spend, he was in no hurry to leave the railway station.

He hated solitude or quiet; and here in this crowded terminus there was
life and bustle and variety enough in all conscience; and all to be seen
for nothing: so he strolled backwards and forwards upon the platform,
watching the busy porters, the eager passengers rushing to and fro, and
meditating as to where he should spend the rest of his afternoon.

By-and-by he stood against a wooden pillar in a doorway, looking at the
cabs, as, one after another, they tore up to the station, and disgorged
their loads.

He had witnessed the arrival of a great many different travellers, when
his attention was suddenly arrested by a little old man, wan and wizen
and near-sighted, feeble-looking, but active, who alighted from a cab,
and gave his small black-leather portmanteau into the hands of a porter.

This man was Sampson Wilmot, the old confidential clerk in the house of
Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby.

James Wentworth followed the old man and the porter.

"I wonder if it _is_ he," he muttered to himself; "there's a
likeness--there's certainly a likeness. But it's so many years ago--so
many years--I don't suppose I should know him. And yet this man recalls
him to me somehow. I'll keep my eye upon the old fellow, at any rate."

Sampson Wilmot had arrived at the station about ten minutes before the
starting of the train. He asked some questions of the porter, and left
his portmanteau in the man's care while he went to get his ticket.

James Wentworth lingered behind, and contrived to look at the
portmanteau.

There was a label pasted on the lid, with an address, written in a
business-like hand--

"MR. SAMPSON WILMOT,
PASSENGER TO SOUTHAMPTON."

James Wentworth gave a long whistle.

"I thought as much," he muttered; "I thought I couldn't be mistaken!"

He went into the ticket-office, where the clerk was standing amongst the
crowd, waiting to take his ticket.

James Wentworth went up close to him, and touched him lightly on the
shoulder.

Sampson Wilmot turned and looked him full in the face. He looked, but
there was no ray of recognition in that look.

"Do you want me, sir?" he asked, with rather a suspicious glance at the
reprobate's shabby dress.

"Yes, Mr. Wilmot, I want to speak to you. You can come into the
waiting-room with me, after you've taken your ticket."

The clerk stared aghast. The tone of this shabby-looking stranger was
almost one of command.

"I don't know you, my good sir," stammered Sampson; "I never set eyes
upon you before; and unless you are a messenger sent after me from the
office, you must be under a mistake. You are a stranger to me!"

"I am no stranger, and I am no messenger!" answered the other. "You've
got your ticket? That's all right! Now you can come with me."

He walked into a waiting-room, the half-glass doors of which opened out
of the office. The room was empty, for it only wanted five minutes to
the starting of the train, and the passengers had hurried off to take
their seats.

James Wentworth took off his hat, and brushed his rumpled grey hair from
his forehead.

"Put on your spectacles, Sampson Wilmot," he said, "and look hard at me,
and then tell me if I am a stranger to you."

The old clerk obeyed, nervously, fearfully. His tremulous hands could
scarcely adjust his spectacles.

He looked at the reprobate's face for some moments and said nothing. But
his breath came quicker and his face grew very pale.

"Ay," said James Wentworth, "look your hardest, and deny me if you can.
It will be only wise to deny me; I'm no credit to any one--least of all
to a steady respectable old chap like you!"

"Joseph!--Joseph!" gasped the old clerk; "is it you? Is it really my
wretched brother? I thought you were dead, Joseph--I thought you were
dead and gone!"

"And wished it, I dare say!" the other answered, bitterly. "No,
Joseph,--no!" cried Sampson Wilmot; "Heaven knows I never wished you
ill. Heaven knows I was always sorry for you, and could make excuses for
you even when you sank lowest!"

"That's strange!" Joseph muttered, with a sneer; "that's very strange!
If you were so precious fond of me, how was it that you stopped in the
house of Dunbar and Dunbar? If you had had one spark of natural
affection for me, you could never have eaten their bread!"

Sampson Wilmot shook his head sorrowfully.

"Don't be too hard upon me, Joseph," he said, with mild reproachfulness;
"if I hadn't stopped at the banking-house your mother might have
starved!"

The reprobate made no answer to this; but he turned his face away and
sighed.

The bell rang for the starting of the train.

"I must go," Sampson cried. "Give me your address, Joseph, and I will
write to you."

"Oh, yes, I dare say!" answered his brother, scornfully; "no, no, _that_
won't do. I've found you, my rich respectable brother, and I'll stick to
you. Where are you going?"

"To Southampton."

"What for?"

"To meet Henry Dunbar."

Joseph Wilmot's face grew livid with rage.

The change that came over it was so sudden and so awful in its nature,
that the old clerk started back as if he had seen a ghost.

"You are going to meet _him_?" said Joseph, in a hoarse whisper; "he is
in England, then?"

"No; but he is expected to arrive almost immediately. Why do you look
like that, Joseph?"

"Why do I look like that?" cried the younger man; "have you grown to be
such a mere machine, such a speaking automaton, such a living tool of
the men you serve, that all human feeling has perished in your breast?
Bah! how should such as you understand what I feel? Hark! the bell's
ringing--I'll come with you."

The train was on the point of starting: the two men hurried out to the
platform.

"No,--no," cried Sampson Wilmot, as his brother stepped after him into
the carriage; "no,--no, Joseph, don't come with me,--don't come with
me!"

"I will go with you."

"But you've no ticket."

"I can get one--or you can get me one, for I've no money--at the first
station we stop at."

They were seated in a second-class railway carriage by this time. The
ticket-collector, running from carriage to carriage, was in too great a
hurry to discover that the little bit of pasteboard which Joseph Wilmot
exhibited was only a return-ticket to Wandsworth. There was a brief
scramble, a banging of doors, and Babel-like confusion of tongues; and
then the engine gave its farewell shriek and rushed away.

The old clerk looked very uneasily at his younger brother's face. The
livid pallor had passed away, but the strongly-marked eyebrows met in a
dark frown.

"Joseph--Joseph!" said Sampson, "Heaven only knows I'm glad to see you,
after more than thirty years' separation, and any help I can give you
out of my slender means I'll give freely--I will, indeed, Joseph, for
the memory of our dear mother, if not for love of you; and I do love
you, Joseph--I do love you very dearly still. But I'd rather you didn't
take this journey with me--I would, indeed. I can't see that any good
can come of it."

"Never you mind what comes of it. I want to talk to you. You're a nice
affectionate brother to wish to shuffle me off directly after our first
meeting. I want to talk to you, Sampson Wilmot. And I want to see _him_.
I know how the world's used _me_ for the last five-and-thirty years; I
want to see how the same world--such a just and merciful world as it
is--has treated my tempter and betrayer, Henry Dunbar!"

Sampson Wilmot trembled like a leaf. His health had been very feeble
ever since the second shock of paralysis--that dire and silent foe,
whose invisible hand had stricken the old man down as he sat at his
desk, without one moment's warning. His health was feeble, and the shock
of meeting with his brother--this poor lost disgraced brother--whom he
had for five-and-twenty years believed to be dead, had been almost too
much for him. Nor was this all--unutterable terror took possession of
him when he thought of a meeting between Joseph Wilmot and Henry Dunbar.
The old man could remember his brother's words:

"Let him consider it a lucky escape, if, when we next meet, he gets off
scot free!"

Sampson Wilmot had prayed night and day that such a meeting might never
take place. For five-and-thirty years it had been delayed. Surely it
would not take place now.

The old clerk looked nervously at his brother's face.

"Joseph," he murmured, "I'd rather you didn't go with me to Southampton;
I'd rather you didn't meet Mr. Dunbar. You were very badly
treated--cruelly and unjustly treated--nobody knows that better than I.
But it's a long time ago, Joseph--it's a very, very long time ago.
Bitter feelings die out of a man's breast as the years roll by--don't
they, Joseph? Time heals all old wounds, and we learn to forgive others
as we hope to be forgiven--don't we, Joseph?"

"_You_ may," answered the reprobate, fiercely; "I don't!"

He said no more, but sat silent, with his arms folded over his breast.

He looked straight before him out of the carriage-window; but he saw no
more of the pleasant landscape,--the fair fields of waving corn, with
scarlet poppies and deep-blue corn flowers, bright glimpses of sunlit
water, and distant villages, with grey church-turrets, nestling among
trees. He looked out of the carriage-window, and some of earth's
pleasantest pictures sped by him; but he saw no more of that
ever-changing prospect than if he had been looking at a blank sheet of
paper.

Sampson Wilmot sat opposite to him, restless and uneasy, watching his
fierce gloomy countenance.

The clerk took a ticket for his brother at the first station the train
stopped at. But still Joseph was silent.

An hour passed by, and he had not yet spoken.

He had no love for his brother. The world had hardened him. The
consequences of his own sins, falling very heavily upon his head, had
embittered his nature. He looked upon the man whom he had once loved and
trusted as the primary cause of his disgrace and misery, and this
thought influenced his opinion of all mankind.

He could not believe in the goodness of any man, remembering, as he did,
how he had once trusted Henry Dunbar.

The brothers were alone in the carriage.

Sampson watched the gloomy face opposite to him for some time, and then,
with a weary sigh, he drew his handkerchief over his face, and sank back
in the corner of the carriage. But he did not sleep. He was agitated and
anxious. A dizzy faintness had seized upon him, and there was a strange
buzzing in his ears, and unwonted clouds before his dim eyes. He tried
to speak once or twice, but it seemed to him as if he was powerless to
form the words that were in his mind.

Then his mind began to grow confused. The hoarse snorting of the engine
sounded monotonously in his ears: growing louder and louder with every
moment; until the noise of it grew hideous and intolerable--a perpetual
thunder, deafening and bewildering him.

The train was fast approaching Basingstoke, when Joseph Wilmot was
suddenly startled from his moody reverie.

There was an awful cause for that sudden start, that look of horror in
the reprobate's face.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STROKE OF DEATH.

The old clerk had fallen from his seat, and lay in a motionless heap at
the bottom of the railway carriage.

The third stroke of paralysis had come upon him; inevitable, no doubt,
long ago; but hastened, it may be, by that unlooked-for meeting at the
Waterloo terminus.

Joseph Wilmot knelt beside the stricken man. He was a vagabond and an
outcast, and scenes of horror were not new to him. He had seen death
under many of its worst aspects, and the grim King of Terrors had little
terror for him. He was hardened, steeped in guilt, and callous as to the
sufferings of others. The love which he bore for his daughter was,
perhaps, the last ray of feeling that yet lingered in this man's
perverted nature.

But he did all he could, nevertheless, for the unconscious old man. He
loosened his cravat, unfastened his waistcoat, and felt for the beating
of his heart.

That heart did beat: very fitfully, as if the old clerk's weary soul had
been making feeble struggles to be released from its frail tabernacle of
clay.

"Better, perhaps, if this should prove fatal," Joseph muttered; "I
should go on alone to meet Henry Dunbar."

The train reached Basingstoke; Joseph put his head out of the open
window, and called loudly to a porter.

The man came quickly, in answer to that impatient summons.

"My brother is in a fit," Joseph cried; "help me to lift him out of the
carriage, and then send some one for a doctor."

The unconscious form was lifted out in the arms of the two strong men.
They carried it into the waiting-room, and laid it on a sofa.

The bell rang, and the Southampton train rushed onward without the two
travellers.

In another moment the whole station was in commotion. A gentleman had
been seized with paralysis, and was dying.

The doctor arrived in less than ten minutes. He shook his head, after
examining his patient.

"It's a bad case," said he; "very bad; but we must do our best. Is there
anybody with this old gentleman?"

"Yes, sir," the porter answered, pointing to Joseph; "this person is
with him."

The country surgeon glanced rather suspiciously at Joseph Wilmot. He
looked a vagabond, certainly--every inch a vagabond; a reckless,
dare-devil scoundrel, at war with society, and defiant of a world he
hated.

"Are you--any--relation to this gentleman?" the doctor asked,
hesitatingly.

"Yes, I am his brother."

"I should recommend his being removed to the nearest hotel. I will send
a woman to nurse him. Do you know if this is the first stroke he has
ever had?"

"No, I do not."

The surgeon looked more suspicious than ever, after receiving this
answer.

"Strange," he said, "that you, who say you are his brother, should not
be able to give me information upon that point."

Joseph Wilmot answered with an air of carelessness that was almost
contemptuous:

"It is strange," he said; "but many stranger things have happened in
this world before now. My brother and I haven't met for years until we
met to-day."

The unconscious man was removed from the railway station to an inn near
at hand--a humble, countrified place, but clean and orderly. Here he was
taken to a bed-chamber, whose old-fashioned latticed windows looked out
upon the dusty road.

The doctor did all that his skill could devise, but he could not restore
consciousness to the paralyzed brain. The soul was gone already. The
body lay, a form of motionless and senseless clay, under the white
counterpane; and Joseph Wilmot, sitting near the foot of the bed,
watched it with a gloomy face.

The woman who was to nurse the sick man came by-and-by, and took her
place by the pillow. But there was very little for her to do.

"Is there any hope of his recovering?" Joseph asked eagerly, as the
doctor was about to leave the room.

"I fear not--I fear there is no hope."

"Will it be over soon?"

"Very soon, I think. I do not believe that he can last more than
four-and-twenty hours."

The surgeon waited for a few moments after saying this, expecting some
exclamation of surprise or grief from the dying man's brother: but there
was none; and with a hasty "good evening" the medical man quitted the
room.

It was growing dusk, and the twilight shadows upon Joseph Wilmot's face
made it, in its sullen gloom, darker even than it had been in the
railway carriage.

"I'm glad of it, I'm glad of it," he muttered; "I shall meet Harry
Dunbar alone."

The bed-chamber in which the sick man lay opened out of a little
sitting-room. Sampson's carpet-bag and portmanteau had been left in this
sitting-room.

Joseph Wilmot searched the pockets in the clothes that had been taken
off his brother's senseless form.

There was some loose silver and a bunch of keys in the waistcoat-pocket,
and a well-worn leather-covered memorandum-book in the breast-pocket of
the old-fashioned coat.

Joseph took these things into the sitting-room, closed the door between
the two apartments, and then rang for lights.

The chambermaid who brought the candles asked if he had dined.

"Yes," he said, "I dined five hours ago. Bring me some brandy."

The girl brought a small decanter of spirit and a wine-glass, set them
on the table, and left the room. Joseph Wilmot followed her to the door,
and turned the key in the lock.

"I don't want any intruders," he muttered; "these country people are
always inquisitive."

He seated himself at the table, poured out a glass of brandy, drank it,
and then drew one of the candles towards him.

He had put the money, the keys, and the memorandum-book, in one of his
own pockets. He took out the memorandum-book first, and examined it.
There were five Bank of England notes for five pounds each in one of the
pockets, and a letter in the other.

The letter was directed to Henry Dunbar, and sealed with the official
seal of the banking-house. The name of Stephen Balderby was written on
the left-hand lower corner of the envelope.

"So, so," whispered Joseph Wilmot, "this is the junior partner's letter
of welcome to his chief. I'll take care of that."

He replaced the letter in the pocket of the memorandum-book, and then
looked at the pencil entries on the different pages.

The last entry was the only memorandum that had any interest for him.

It consisted of these few words--

_"H.D., expected to arrive at Southampton Docks on or about the 19th
inst., per steamer_ Electra; _will be met by Miss Laura D. at Portland
Place."_

"Who's Laura D.?" mused the spy, as he closed the memorandum-book. "His
daughter, I suppose. I remember seeing his marriage in the papers,
twenty years ago. He married well, of course. Fortune made _everything_
smooth for him. He married a lady of rank. Curse him!"

Joseph Wilmot sat for some time with his arms folded upon the table
before him, brooding, brooding, brooding; with a sinister smile upon his
lips, and an ominous light in his eyes.

A dangerous man always--a dangerous man when he was loud, reckless,
brutal, violent: but most of all dangerous when he was most quiet.

By-and-by he took the bunch of keys from his pocket, knelt down before
the portmanteau, and examined its contents.

There was very little to reward his scrutiny--only a suit of clothes, a
couple of clean shirts, and the necessaries of the clerk's simple
toilet. The carpet-bag contained a pair of boots, a hat-brush, a
night-shirt, and a faded old chintz dressing-gown.

Joseph Wilmot rose from his knees after examining these things, and
softly opened the door between the two rooms. There had been no change
in the sick chamber. The nurse still sat by the head of the bed. She
looked round at Joseph, as he opened the door.

"No change, I suppose?" he said.

"No, sir; none."

"I am going out for a stroll, presently. I shall be in again in an
hour's time."

He shut the door again, but he did not go out immediately. He knelt down
once more by the side of the portmanteau, and tore off the label with
his brother's name upon it. He tore a similar label off the carpet-bag,
taking care that no vestige of the clerk's name was left behind.

When he had done this, and thrust the torn labels into his pocket, he
began to walk up and down the room, softly, with his arms folded upon
his breast.

"The _Electra_, is expected to arrive on the nineteenth," he said, in a
low, thoughtful voice, "on or about the nineteenth. She may arrive
either before or after. To-morrow will be the seventeenth. If Sampson
dies, there will be an inquest, no doubt: a post-mortem examination,
perhaps: and I shall be detained till all that is over. I shall be
detained two or three days at least: and in the mean time Henry Dunbar
may arrive at Southampton, hurry on to London, and I may miss the one
chance of meeting that man face to face. I won't be balked of this
meeting--I won't be balked. Why should I stop here to watch by an
unconscious man's death-bed? No! Fate has thrown Henry Dunbar once more
across my pathway: and I won't throw my chance away."

He took up his hat--a battered, shabby-looking white hat, which
harmonized well with his vagabond appearance--and went out, after
stopping for a minute at the bar to tell the landlord that he would be
back in an hour's time.

He went straight to the railway station, and made inquiries as to the
trains.

CHAPTER V.

SINKING THE PAST.

The train from London to Southampton was due in an hour. The clerk who
gave Joseph Wilmot this information asked him how his brother was
getting on.

"He is much better," Joseph answered. "I am going on to Southampton to
execute some important business he was to have done there. I shall come
back early to-morrow morning."

He walked into the waiting-room, and stopped there, seated in the same
attitude the whole time: never stirring, never lifting his head from his
breast: always brooding, brooding, brooding: as he had brooded in the
railway carriage, as he had brooded in the little parlour of the inn. He
took his ticket for Southampton as soon as the office was open, and then
stood on the platform, where there were two or three stragglers, waiting
for the train to come up.

It came at last. Joseph Wilmot sprang into a second-class carriage, took
his seat in the corner, with his hat slouched over his eyes, which were
almost hidden by its dilapidated brim.

It was late when he reached Southampton; but he seemed to be acquainted
with the town, and he walked straight to a small public-house by the
river-side, almost hidden under the shadow of the town wall.

Here he got a bed, and here he ascertained that the _Electra_ had not
yet arrived.

He ate his supper in his own room, though he was requested to take it in
the public apartment. He seemed to shrink from meeting any one, or
talking to any one; and still brooded over his own black thoughts: as he
had brooded at the railway station, in the parlour of the Basingstoke
inn, in the carriage with his brother Sampson.

Whatever his thoughts were, they absorbed him so entirely that he seemed
like a man who walks in his sleep, doing everything mechanically, and
without knowing what he does.

But for all this he was active, for he rose very early the next morning.
He had not had an hour's sleep throughout the night, but had lain in
every variety of restless attitude, tossing first on this side and then
on that: always thinking, thinking, thinking, till the action of his
brain became as mechanical as that of any other machine, and went on in
spite of himself.

He went downstairs, paid the money for his supper and night's lodging to
a sleepy servant-girl, and left the house as the church-clock in an
old-fashioned square hard by struck eight.

He walked straight to the High Street, and entered the shop of a tailor
and general outfitter. It was a stylish establishment, and there was a
languid young man taking down the shutters, who appeared to be the only
person on the establishment just at present.

He looked superciliously enough at Joseph Wilmot, eyeing him lazily from
head to foot, and yawning as he did so.

"You'd better make yourself scarce," he said; "our principal never gives
anything to tramps."

"Your principal may give or keep what he likes," Joseph answered,
carelessly; "I can pay for what I want. Call your master down: or stay,
you'll do as well, I dare say. I want a complete rig-out from head to
heel. Do you understand?"

"I shall, perhaps, when I see the money for it," the languid youth
answered, with a sneer.

"So you've learned the way of the world already, have you, my lad?" said
Joseph Wilmot, bitterly. Then, pulling his brother's memorandum-book
from his pocket, he opened it, and took out the little packet of
bank-notes. "I suppose you can understand these?" he said.

The languid youth lifted his nose, which by its natural conformation
betrayed an aspiring character, and looked dubiously at his customer.

"I can understand as they might be flash uns," he remarked,
significantly.

Mr. Joseph Wilmot growled out an oath, and made a plunge at the young
shopman.

"I said as they _might_ be flash," the youth remonstrated, quite meekly;
"there's no call to fly at me. I didn't mean to give no offence."

"No," muttered Mr. Wilmot; "egad! you'd better _not_ mean it. Call your
master."

The youth retired to obey: he was quite subdued and submissive by this
time.

Joseph Wilmot looked about the shop.

"The cur forgot the till," he muttered; "I might try my hand at that,
if--" He stopped and smiled with a strange, deliberate expression, not
quite agreeable to behold--"if I wasn't going to meet Henry Dunbar."

There was a full-length looking-glass in one corner of the shop. Joseph
Wilmot walked up to it, looked at himself for a few moments in silent
contemplation, and then shook his clenched hand at the reflected image.

"You're a vagabond!" he muttered between his set teeth, "and you look
it! You're an outcast; and you look it! But who set the mark upon you?
Who's to blame for all the evil you have done? Whose treachery made you
what you are? That's the question!"

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