Miriam Gaines - "Grandfather's Love Pie"

Richard F. Burton - "First footsteps in East Africa"

Frederick S. Dellenbaugh - "A Canyon Voyage"

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse - "The Girl on the Boat"

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




"Have you come to bring me any news of my father?" she said. "I am
distracted by this serious calamity."

Laura looked imploringly at the detective. Something in his grave face
frightened her.

"You have come to tell me of some new trouble," she cried.

"No, Miss Dunbar--no, Lady Jocelyn, I have no new trouble to announce to
you. I have come to this house in search of--of the gentleman who went
away last night. I must find him at any cost. All I want is a little
help from you. You may trust to me that he shall be found, and speedily,
if he lives."

"If he lives!" cried Laura, with a sudden terror in her face.

"Surely you do not imagine--you do not fear that----"

"I imagine nothing, Lady Jocelyn. My duty is very simple, and lies
straight before me. I must find the missing man."

"You will find my father," said Laura, with a puzzled expression. "Yes,
I am most anxious that he should be found; and if--if you will accept
any reward for your efforts, I shall be only too glad to give all you
can ask. But how is it that you happen to come here, and to take this
interest in my father? You come from the banking-house, I suppose?"

"Yes," the detective answered, after a pause, "yes, Lady Jocelyn, I come
from the office in St. Gundolph Lane."

Mr. Carter was silent for some few moments, during which his eyes
wandered about the apartment in that professional survey which took in
every detail, from the colour of the curtains and the pattern of the
carpets, to the tiniest porcelain toy in an antique cabinet on one side
of the fireplace. The only thing upon which the detective's glance
lingered was the lamp, which Margaret had extinguished.

"I'm going to ask your ladyship a question," said Mr. Carter, presently,
looking gravely, and almost compassionately, at the beautiful face
before him; "you'll think me impertinent, perhaps, but I hope you'll
believe that I'm only a straightforward business man, anxious to do my
duty in my own line of life, and to do it with consideration for all
parties. You seem very anxious about this missing gentleman; may I ask
if you are very fond of him? It's a strange question, I know, my
lady--or it seems a strange question--but there's more in the answer
than you can guess, and I shall be very grateful to you if you'll answer
it candidly."

A faint flush crept over Laura's face, and the tears started suddenly to
her eyes. She turned away from the detective, and brushed her
handkerchief hastily across those tearful eyes. She walked to the
window, and stood there for a minute or so, looking out.

"Why do you ask me this question?" she asked, rather haughtily.

"I cannot tell you that, my lady, at present," the detective answered;
"but I give you my word of honour that I have a very good reason for
what I do."

"Very well then, I will answer you frankly," said Laura, turning and
looking Mr. Carter full in the face. "I will answer you, for I believe
that you are an honest man. There is very little love between my father
and me. It is our misfortune, perhaps: and it may be only natural that
it should be so, for we were separated from each other for so many
years, that, when at last the day of our meeting came, we met like
strangers, and there was a barrier between us that could never be broken
down. Heaven knows how anxiously I used to look forward to my father's
return from India, and how bitterly I felt the disappointment when I
discovered, little by little, that we should never be to one another
what other fathers and daughters, who have never known the long
bitterness of separation, are to each other. But pray remember that I do
not complain; my father has been very good to me, very indulgent, very
generous. His last act, before the accident which laid him up so long,
was to take a journey to London on purpose to buy diamonds for a
necklace, which was to be his wedding present to me. I do not speak of
this because I care for the jewels; but I am pleased to think that, in
spite of the coldness of his manner, my father had some affection for
his only child."

Mr. Carter was not looking at Laura, he was staring out of the window,
and his eyes had that stolid glare with which they had gazed at Clement
Austin while the cashier told his story.

"A diamond necklace!" he said; "humph--ha, ha--yes!" All this was in an
undertone, that hummed faintly through the detective's closed teeth. "A
diamond-necklace! You've got the necklace, I suppose, eh, my lady?"

"No; the diamonds were bought, but they were never made up."

"The unset diamonds were bought by Mr. Dunbar?"

"Yes, to an enormous amount, I believe. While I was in Paris, my father
wrote to tell me that he meant to delay the making of the necklace until
he was well enough to go on the Continent. He could see no design in
England that at all satisfied him."

"No, I dare say not," answered the detective, "I dare say he'd find it
rather difficult to please himself in that matter."

Laura looked inquiringly at Mr. Carter. There was something
disrespectful, not to say ironical, in his tone.

"I thank you heartily for having been so candid with me, Lady Jocelyn,"
he said; "and believe me I shall have your interests at heart throughout
this matter. I shall go to work immediately; and you may rely upon it, I
shall succeed in finding the missing man."

"You do not think that--that under some terrible hallucination, the
result of his long illness--you don't think that he has committed
suicide?"

"No," Lady Jocelyn, answered the detective, decisively, "there is
nothing further from my thoughts now."

"Thank Heaven for that!"

"And now, my lady, may I ask if you'll be kind enough to let me see Mr.
Dunbar's valet, and to leave me alone with him in these rooms? I may
pick up something that will help me to find your father. By the bye, you
haven't a picture of him--a miniature, a photograph, or anything of that
sort, eh?"

"No, unhappily I have no portrait whatever of my father."

"Ah, that is unlucky; but never mind, we must contrive to get on without
it."

Laura rang the bell. One of the superb footmen, the birds of paradise
who consented to glorify the halls and passages of Maudesley Abbey,
appeared in answer to the summons, and went in search of Mr. Dunbar's
own man--the man who had waited on the invalid ever since the accident.

Having sent for this person, Laura bade the detective good morning, and
went away through the vista of rooms to the other side of the hall, to
that bright modernized wing of the house which Percival Dunbar had
improved and beautified for the granddaughter he idolized.

Mr. Dunbar's own man was only too glad to be questioned, and to have a
good opportunity of discoursing upon the event which had caused such
excitement and consternation. But the detective was not a pleasant
person to talk to, as he had a knack of cutting people short with a
fresh question at the first symptom of rambling; and, indeed, so closely
did he keep his companion to the point, that a conversation with him was
a kind of intellectual hornpipe between a set of fire-irons.

Under this pressure the valet told all he knew about his master's
departure, with very little loss of time by reason of discursiveness.

"Humph!--ha!--ah, yes!" muttered the detective between his teeth; "only
one friend that was at all intimate with your master, and that was a
gentleman called Vernon, lately come to live at Woodbine Cottage,
Lisford Road; used to come at all hours to see your master; was odd in
his ways, and dressed queer; first came on Miss Laura's wedding-day; was
awful shabby then; came out quite a swell afterwards, and was very free
with his money at Lisford. Ah!--humph! You've heard your master and this
gentleman at high words--at least you've fancied so; but, the doors
being very thick, you ain't certain. It might have been only telling
anecdotes. Some gentlemen do swear and row like in telling anecdotes.
Yes, to be sure! You've felt a belt round your master's waist when
you've been lifting him in and out of bed. He wore it under his shirt,
and was always fidgety in changing his shirt, and didn't seem to want
you to see the belt. You thought it was a galvanic belt, or something of
that sort. You felt it once, when you were changing your master's shirt,
and it was all over little knobs as hard as iron, but very small. That's
all you've got to say, except that you've always fancied your master
wasn't quite easy in his mind, and you thought that was because of his
having been suspected in the first place about the Winchester murder."

Mr. Carter jotted down some pencil-notes in his pocket-book while making
this little summary of his conversation with the valet.

Having done this and shut his book, he prowled slowly through the
sitting-room, bed-room, and dressing-room, looking about him, with the
servant close at his heels.

"What clothes did Mr. Dunbar wear when he went away?"

"Grey trousers and waistcoat, small shepherd's plaid, and he must have
taken a greatcoat lined with Russian sable."

"A black coat?"

"No; the coat was dark blue cloth outside."

Mr. Carter opened his pocket-book in order to add another memorandum--

Trousers and waistcoat, shepherd's plaid; coat, dark blue cloth lined
with sable. "How about Mr. Dunbar's personal appearance, eh?"

The valet gave an elaborate description of his master's looks.

"Ha!--humph!" muttered Mr. Carter; "tall, broad-shouldered, hook-nose,
brown eyes, brown hair mixed with grey."

The detective put on his hat after making this last memorandum: but he
paused before the table, on which the lamp was still standing.

"Was this lamp filled last night?" he asked.

"Yes, sir; it was always fresh filled every day."

"How long does it burn?"

"Ten hours."

"When was it lighted?"

"A little before seven o'clock."

Mr. Carter removed the glass shade, and carried the lamp to the
fireplace. He held it up over the grate, and drained the oil.

"It must have been burning till past four this morning," he said.

The valet stared at Mr. Carter with something of that reverential horror
with which he might have regarded a wizard of the middle ages. But Mr.
Carter was in too much haste to be aware of the man's admiration. He had
found out all he wanted to know, and now there was no time to be lost.

He left the Abbey, ran back to the lodge, found his assistant, Mr.
Tibbles, and despatched that gentleman to the Shorncliffe railway
station, where he was to keep a sharp look out for a lame traveller in a
blue cloth coat lined with brown fur. If such a traveller appeared,
Sawney Tom was to stick to him wherever he went; but was to leave a note
with the station-master for his chief's guidance, containing information
as to what he had done.




CHAPTER XLII.

THE HOUSEMAID AT WOODBINE COTTAGE.


In less than a quarter of an hour after leaving the gate of Maudesley
Park, the fly came to a stand-still before Woodbine Cottage. Mr. Carter
paid the man and dismissed the vehicle, and went alone into the little
garden.

He rang a bell on one side of the half-glass door, and had ample leisure
to contemplate the stuffed birds and marine curiosities that adorned the
little hall of the cottage before any one came to answer his summons. He
rang a second time before anyone came, but after a delay of about five
minutes a young woman appeared, with her face tied up in a coloured
handkerchief. The detective asked to see Major Vernon, and the young
woman ushered him into a little parlour at the back of the cottage,
without either delay or hesitation.

The occupant of the cottage was sitting in an arm-chair by the fire.
There was very little light in the room, for the only window looked into
a miniature conservatory, where there were all manner of prickly and
spiky plants of the cactus kind, which had been the delight of the late
owner of Woodbine Cottage.

Mr. Carter looked very sharply at the gentleman sitting in the
easy-chair; but the closest inspection showed him nothing but a
good-looking man, between fifty and sixty years of age, with a
determined-looking mouth, half shaded by a grey moustache.

"I've come to make a few inquiries about a friend of yours, Major
Vernon," the detective said; "Mr. Dunbar, of Maudesley Abbey, who has
been missing since four o'clock this morning."

The gentleman in the easy-chair was smoking a meerschaum. As Mr. Carter
said those two words, "four o'clock," his teeth made a little clicking
noise upon the amber mouthpiece of the pipe.

The detective heard the sound, slight as it was, and drew his inference
from it. Major Vernon had seen Joseph Wilmot, and knew that he had left
the Abbey at four o'clock, and thus gave a little start of surprise when
he found that the exact hour was known to others.

"You know where Mr. Dunbar has gone?" said Mr. Carter, looking still
more sharply at the gentleman in the easy-chair.

"On the contrary, I was thinking of looking in upon him at the Abbey
this evening."

"Humph!" murmured the detective, "then it's no use my asking you any
questions on the subject?"

"None whatever. Henry Dunbar is gone away from the Abbey, you say? Why,
I thought he was still under medical supervision--couldn't move off his
sofa, except to take a turn upon a pair of crutches."

"I believe it was so, but he has disappeared notwithstanding."

"What do you mean by disappeared? He has gone away, I suppose, and he
was free to go away, wasn't he?"

"Oh! of course; perfectly free."

"Then I don't so much wonder that he went," exclaimed the occupant of
the cottage, stooping over the fire, and knocking the ashes out of his
meerschaum. "He'd been tied by the leg long enough, poor devil! But how
is it you're running about after him, as if he was a little boy that had
bolted from his precious mother? You're not the surgeon who was
attending him?"

"No, I'm employed by Lady Jocelyn; in fact, to tell you the honest
truth," said the detective, with a simplicity of manner that was really
charming: "to tell you the honest truth, I'm neither more nor less than
a private detective, and I have come down from London direct to look
after the missing gentleman. You see, Lady Jocelyn is afraid the long
illness and fever, and all that sort of thing, may have had a very bad
effect upon her poor father, and that he's a little bit touched in the
upper story, perhaps;--and, upon my word," added the detective, frankly,
"I think this sudden bolt looks very like it. In which case I fancy we
may look for an attempt at suicide. What do you think, now, Major
Vernon, as a friend of the missing gentleman, eh?"

The Major smiled.

"Upon my word," he said, "I don't think you're so very far away from the
mark. Henry Dunbar has been rather queer in his ways since that railway
smash."

"Just so. I suppose you wouldn't have any objection to my looking about
your house, and round the garden and outbuildings? Your friend _might_
hide himself somewhere about your place. When once they take an
eccentric turn, there's no knowing where to have 'em."

Major Vernon shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't think Dunbar's likely to have got into my house without my
knowledge," he said; "but you are welcome to examine the place from
garret to cellar if that's any satisfaction to you."

He rang a bell as he spoke. It was answered by the girl whose face was
tied up.

"Ah, Betty, you've got the toothache again, have you? A nice excuse for
slinking your work, eh, my girl? That's about the size of your
toothache, I expect! Look here now, this gentleman wants to see the
house, and you're to show him over it, and over the garden too, if he
likes--and be quick about it, for I want my dinner."

The girl curtseyed in an awkward countrified manner, and ushered Mr.
Carter into the hall.

"Betty!" roared the master of the house, as the girl reached the foot of
the stair with the detective; "Betty, come here!"

She went back to her master, and Mr. Carter heard a whispered
conversation, very brief, of which the last sentence only was audible.

That last sentence ran thus:

"And if you don't hold your tongue, I'll make you pay for it."

"Ho, ho!" thought the detective; "Miss Betsy is to hold her tongue, is
she? We'll see about that."

The girl came back to the hall, and led Mr. Carter into the two
sitting-rooms in the front of the house. They were small rooms, with
small furniture. They were old-fashioned rooms, with low ceilings, and
queer cupboards nestling in out-of-the-way holes and corners: and Mr.
Carter had enough work to do in squeezing himself into the interior of
these receptacles, which all smelt, more or less, of chandlery and
rum,--that truly seaman-like spirit having been a favourite beverage
with the late inhabitant of the cottage.

After examining half-a-dozen cupboards in the lower regions, Mr. Carter
and his guide ascended to the upper story.

The girl called Betsy ushered the detective into a bedroom, which she
said was her master's, and where the occupation of the Major was made
manifest by divers articles of apparel lying on the chairs and hanging
on the pegs, and, furthermore, by a powerful effluvium of stale tobacco,
and a collection of pipes and cigar-boxes on the chimney-piece.

The girl opened the door of an impossible-looking little cupboard in a
corner behind a four-post bed; but instead of inspecting the cupboard,
Mr. Carter made a sudden rush at the door, locked it, and then put the
key in his pocket.

"No, thank you, Miss Innocence," he said; "I don't crick my neck, or
break my back, by looking into any more of your cupboards. Just you come
here."

"Here," was the window, before which Mr. Carter planted himself.

The girl obeyed very quietly. She would have been a pretty-looking girl
but for her toothache, or rather, but for the coloured handkerchief
which muffled the lower part of her face, and was tied in a knot at the
top of her head. As it was, Mr. Carter could only see that she had
pretty brown eyes, which shifted left and right as he looked at her.

"Oh, yes, you're an artful young hussy, and no mistake," he said; "and
that toothache's only a judgment upon you. What was that your master
said to you in the parlour just now, eh? What was that he told you to
hold your tongue about, eh?"

Betty shook her head, and began to twist the corner of her apron in her
hands.

"Master didn't say nothing, sir," she said.

"Master didn't say nothing! Your morals and your grammar are about a
match, Miss Betsy; but you'll find yourself rather in the wrong box
by-and-by, my young lady, when you find yourself committed to prison for
perjury; which crime, in a young female, is transportation for life,"
added Mr. Carter, in an awful tone.

"Oh, sir!" cried Betty, "it isn't me; it's master: and he do swear so
when he's in his tantrums. If the 'taters isn't done to his likin', sir,
he'll grumble about them quite civil at first, and then he'll work
hisself up like, and take and throw them at me one by one, and his
language gets worse with every 'tater. Oh, what am I to do, sir! I
daren't go against him. I'd a'most sooner be transported, if it don't
hurt much."

"Don't hurt much!" exclaimed Mr. Carter; "why, there's a ship-load of
cat-o'-nine-tails goes out to Van Diemen's Land every quarter, and
reserved specially for young females!"

"Oh! I'll tell you all about it, sir," cried Mr. Vernon's housemaid;
"sooner than be took up for perjuring, I'll tell you everything."

"I thought so," said Mr. Carter; "but it isn't much you've got to tell
me. Mr. Dunbar came here this morning on horseback, between five and
six?"

"It was ten minutes past six, sir, and I was opening the shutters."

"Precisely."

"And the gentleman came on horseback, sir, and was nigh upon fainting
with the pain of his leg; and he sent me to call up master, and master
helped him off the horse, and took the horse to the stable; and then the
gentleman sat and rested in master's little parlour at the back of the
house; and then they sent me for a fly, and I went to the Rose and Crown
at Lisford, and fetched a fly; and before eight o'clock the gentleman
went away."

Before eight, and it was now past three. Mr. Carter looked at his watch
while the girl made her confession.

"And, oh, please don't tell master as I told you," she said; "oh, please
don't, sir."

There was no time to be lost, and yet the detective paused for a minute,
thinking of what he had just heard.

Had the girl told him the truth; or was this a story got up to throw him
off the scent? The girl's terror of her master seemed genuine. She was
crying now, real tears, that streamed down her pale cheeks, and wetted
the handkerchief that covered the lower part of her face.

"I can find out at the Rose and Crown whether anybody did go away in a
fly," the detective thought.

"Tell your master I've searched the place, and haven't found his
friend," he said to the girl; "and that I haven't got time to wish him
good morning."

The detective said this as he went down stairs. The girl went into the
little rustic porch with him, and directed him to the Rose and Crown at
Lisford.

He ran almost all the way to the little inn; for he was growing
desperate now, with the idea that his man had escaped him.

"Why, he can do anything with such a start," he thought to himself. "And
yet there's his lameness--that'll go against him."

At the Rose and Crown Mr. Carter was informed that a fly had been
ordered at seven o'clock that morning by a young person from Woodbine
Cottage; that the vehicle had not long come in, and that the driver was
somewhere about the stables. The driver was summoned at Mr. Carter's
request, and from him the detective ascertained that a gentleman,
wrapped up to the very nose, and wearing a coat lined with fur, and
walking very lame, had been taken up by him at Woodbine Cottage. This
gentleman had ordered the driver to go as fast as he could to
Shorncliffe station; but on reaching the station, it appeared the
gentleman was too late for the train he wanted to go by, for he came
back to the fly, limping awful, and told the man to drive to Maningsly.
The driver explained to Mr. Carter that Maningsly was a little village
three miles from Shorncliffe, on a by-road. Here the gentleman in the
fur coat had alighted at an ale-house, where he dined, and stopped,
reading the paper and drinking hot brandy-and-water till after one
o'clock. He acted altogether quite the gentleman, and paid for the
driver's dinner and brandy-and-water, as well as his own. At half-after
one he got into the fly, and ordered the man to go back to Shorncliffe
station. At five minutes after two he alighted at the station, where he
paid and dismissed the driver.

This was all Mr. Carter wanted to know.

"You get a fresh horse harnessed in double-quick time," he said, "and
drive me to Shorncliffe station."

While the horse and fly were being got ready, the detective went into
the bar, and ordered a glass of steaming brandy-and-water. He was
accustomed to take liquids in a boiling state, as the greater part of
his existence was spent in hurrying from place to place, as he was
hurrying now.

"Sawney's got the chance this time," he thought. "Suppose he was to sell
me, and go in for the reward?"

The supposition was not a pleasant one, and Mr. Carter looked grave for
a minute or so; but he quickly relapsed into a grim smile.

"I think Sawney knows me too well for that," he said; "I think Sawney is
too well acquainted with me to try _that_ on."

The fly came round to the inn-door while Mr. Carter reflected upon this.
He sprang into the vehicle, and was driven off to the station.

At the Shorncliffe station he found everything very quiet. There was no
train due for some time yet; there was no sign of human life in the
ticket-office or the waiting-rooms.

There was a porter asleep upon his truck on the platform, and there was
one solitary young female sitting upon a bench against the wall, with
her boxes and bundles gathered round her, and an umbrella and a pair of
clogs on her lap.

Upon all the length of the platform there was no sign of Mr. Tibbles,
otherwise Sawney Tom.

Mr. Carter awoke the porter, and sent him to the station-master to ask
if any letter addressed to Mr. Henry Carter had been left in that
functionary's care. The porter went yawning to make this inquiry, and
came back by-and-by, still yawning, to say that there was such a letter,
and would the gentleman please step into the station-master's office to
claim and receive it.

The note was not a long one, nor was it encumbered by any ceremonious
phraseology.

_"Gent in furred coat turned up 2.10, took a ticket for Derby, 1 class,
took ticket for same place self, 2 class.--Yrs to commd, T.T."_

Mr. Carter crumpled up the note and dropped it into his pocket. The
station-master gave him all the information about the trains. There was
a train for Derby at seven o'clock that evening; and for the three and a
half weary hours that must intervene, Mr. Carter was left to amuse
himself as best he might.

"Derby," he muttered to himself, "Derby. Why, he must be going north;
and what, in the name of all that's miraculous, takes him that way?"

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