D. J. Medley - "The Church and the Empire"

Thomas Carlyle - "Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History"

Arthur Hornblow - "The Mask"

Mary Antin - "From Plotzk to Boston"

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




"I was fain to confess, with much confusion, that I had not done any one
of these things. And then my mother asked me why, in that case, did I
consider the lady suitable,--which question increased my embarrassment
by tenfold. I could not say that I had engaged her because her eyes were
hazel, and her hair of the same colour; nor could I declare that I had
judged of her proficiency as a teacher of the piano by the exquisite
line of her pencilled eyebrows. So, in this dilemma, I had recourse to a
piece of jesuitry, of which I was not a little proud. I told my dear
mother that Miss Wentworth's head was, from a phrenological point of
view, magnificent, and that the organs of time and tune were developed
to an unusual degree.

"I was almost ashamed of myself when my mother rewarded this falsehood
by a kiss, declaring that I was a dear clever boy, and _such_ a judge of
character, and that she would rather confide in a stranger, upon the
strength of my instinct, than, upon any inferior person's experience.

"After this I could only trust to the chance of Miss Wentworth's
proficiency; and when I went home from the city upon the following
afternoon, my mind was far less occupied with the business events of the
day than with abstruse speculations at to the probabilities with regard
to that young lady's skill upon the piano-forte. It was with an air of
supreme carelessness that I asked my mother whether she had been pleased
with Miss Wentworth.

"'Pleased with her!' cried the good soul; 'why, she plays magnificently,
Clement. Such a touch, such brilliancy! In my young days it was only
concert-players who played like that; but nowadays girls of eighteen and
twenty sit down, and dash away at the keys like a professor. I think
you'll be charmed with her, Clem'--(I'm afraid I blushed as my mother
said this; had I not been charmed with her already?)--'when you hear her
play, for she has expression as well as brilliancy. She is passionately
fond of music, I know; not because she went into any ridiculous
sentimental raptures about it, as some girls do, but because her eyes
lighted up when she told me what a happiness her piano had been to her
ever since she was a child. She gave a little sigh after saying that;
and I fancied, poor girl, that she had perhaps known very little other
happiness.'

"'And her terms, mother?' I said.

"'Oh, you dear commercial Clem, always thinking of terms!' cried my
mother.

"Heaven bless her innocent heart! I had asked that sordid question only
to hide the unreasoning gladness of my heart. What was it to me that
this hazel-eyed girl was engaged to teach my little niece 'Non piu
mesta'? what was it to me that my breast should be all of a sudden
filled with a tumult of glad emotions, and thus shrink from any
encounter with my mother's honest eyes?

"'Well, Clem, the terms are almost ridiculously moderate,' my mother
said, presently. 'There's only one thing that's at all inconvenient,
that is to say, not to me, but I'm afraid _you'll_ think it an
objection.'

"I eagerly asked the nature of this objection. Was there some cold chill
of disappointment in store for me, after all?

"'Well, you see, Clem,' said my mother, with some little hesitation,
'Miss Wentworth is engaged almost all through the day, as her pupils
live at long distances from one another, and she has to waste a good
deal of time in going backwards and forwards; so the only time she can
possibly give Lizzie is either very early in the morning or rather late
in the evening. Now _I_ should prefer the evening, as I should like to
hear the dear child's lessons; but the question is, would _you_ object
to the noise of the piano while you are at home?'

"Would I object? Would I object to the music of the spheres? In spite of
the grand capabilities for falsehood and hypocrisy which had been
developed in my nature since the previous evening, it was as much as I
could do to answer my mother's question deliberately, to the effect that
I didn't think I should mind the music-lessons _much_.

"'You'll be out generally, you know, Clem,' my mother said.

"'Yes,' I replied, 'of course, if I found the music in any way a
nuisance.'

"Coming home from the City the next day, I felt like a schoolboy who
turns his back upon all the hardships of his life, on some sunny summer
holiday. The rattling Hansom seemed a fairy car, that was bearing me in
triumph through a region of brightness and splendour. The sunlit
suburban roads were enchanted glades; and I think I should have been
scarcely surprised to see Aladdin's jewelled fruit hanging on the trees
in the villa gardens, or the gigantic wings of Sinbad's roc
overshadowing the hills of Sydenham. A wonderful transformation had
changed the earth to fairy land, and it was in vain that I fought
against the subtle influence in the air around me.

"Oh, was I in love, was I really in love at last, with a young lady
whose face I had only looked upon eight-and-forty hours before? Was I,
who had flirted with the Miss Balderbys; and half lost my heart to Lucy
Sedwicke, the surgeon's sister; and corresponded for nearly a year with
Clara Carpenter, with the sanction of both our houses, and everything
_en regle_, only to be jilted ignominiously for the sake of an
evangelical curate?--was I, who had railed at the foolish passion--(I
have one of Miss Carpenter's long tresses in the desk on which I am
writing, sealed in a sheet of letter-paper, with Swift's savage
inscription, 'Only a woman's hair,' on the cover)--was I caught at last
by a pair of hazel eyes and a Raffaellesque profile? Were the wings that
had fluttered in so many flames burnt and maimed by the first breath of
this new fire? I was ashamed of my silly fancy in one moment, and proud
of my love in the next. I was ten years younger all of a sudden, and my
heart was all a-glow with chivalrous devotion for this beautiful
stranger. I reasoned with myself, and ridiculed my madness, and yet
yielded like the veriest craven to the sweet intoxication. I gave the
driver of the Hansom five shillings. Had I not a right to pay him a
trifle extra for driving me through fairy-land?

"What had we for dinner that day? I have a vague idea that I ate cherry
tart and roast veal, fried soles, boiled custard, and anchovy sauce, all
mixed together. I know that the meal seemed to endure for the abnormal
period of half-a-dozen hours or so; and yet it was only seven o'clock
when we adjourned to the drawing-room, and Miss Wentworth was not due
until half-past seven. My niece was all in a flutter of expectation, and
ran out of the drawing-room window every now and then to see if the new
governess was coming. She need not have had that trouble, poor child,
had I been inclined to give her information; since, from the chair in
which I had seated myself to read the evening papers, I could see the
road along which Miss Wentworth must come. My eyes wandered very often
from the page before me, and fixed themselves upon this dusty suburban
road; and presently I saw a parasol, rather a shabby one, and then a
slender figure coming quickly towards our gate, and then the face, which
I am weak enough to think the most beautiful face in Christendom.

"Since then Miss Wentworth has come three times a week; and somehow or
other I have never found myself in any way bored by 'Non piu mesta,' or
even the major and minor scales, which, as interpreted by a juvenile
performer, are not especially enthralling to the ear of the ordinary
listener. I read my books or papers, or stroll upon the lawn, while the
lesson is going on, and every now and then I hear Margaret's--I really
must write of her as Margaret; it is such a nuisance to write Miss
Wentworth--pretty voice explaining the importance of a steady position
of the wrist, or the dexterous turning over or under of a thumb, or
something equally interesting. And then, when the lesson is concluded,
my mother rouses herself from her after-dinner nap, and asks Margaret to
take a cup of tea, and even insists on her accepting that feminine
hospitality. And then we sit talking in the tender summer dusk, or in
the subdued light of a shaded lamp on the piano. We talk of books; and
it is wonderful to me to find how Margaret's tastes and opinions
coincide with mine. Miss Carpenter was stupid about books, and used to
call Carlyle nonsensical; and never really enjoyed Dickens half as much
as she pretended. I have lent Margaret some of my books; and a little
shower of withered rose-leaves dropped from the pages of 'Wilhelm
Meister,' after she had returned me the volume. I have put them in an
envelope, and sealed it. I may as well burn Miss Carpenter's hair, by
the way.

"Though it is only a month since the evening on which I saw the card in
the window at Wandsworth, Margaret and I seem to be old friends. After a
year Miss Carpenter and I were as far as ever--farther than ever,
perhaps--from understanding each other; but with Margaret I need no
words to tell me that I am understood. A look, a smile, a movement of
the graceful head, is a more eloquent answer than the most elaborate of
Miss Carpenter's rhapsodies. She was one of those girls whom her friends
call 'gushing;' and she called Byron a 'love,' and Shelley an 'angel:'
but if you tried her with a stanza that hasn't been done to death in
'Gems of Verse,' or 'Strings of Poetic Pearls,' or 'Drawing-room Table
Lyrics,' she couldn't tell whether you were quoting Byron or Ben Jonson.
But with Margaret--Margaret,--sweet name! If it were not that I live in
perpetual terror of the day when the dilettante New Zealander will edit
this manuscript, I think I should write that lovely name over and over
again for a page or so. If the New Zealander should exercise his
editorial discretion, and delete my raptures, it wouldn't matter; but I
might furnish him with the text for an elaborate disquisition on the
manners and customs of English lovers. Let me be reasonable about my
dear love, if I can. My dear love--do I dare to call her that already,
when, for anything I know to the contrary, there may be another
evangelical curate in the background?

"We seem to be old friends; and yet I know so little of her. She shuns
all allusion to her home or her past history. Now and then she has
spoken of her father; always tenderly, but always with a sigh; and I
fancy that a deepening shadow steals over her face when she mentions
that name.

"Friendly as we are, I can never induce her to let me see her home,
though my mother has suggested that I should do so. She is accustomed to
go about by herself, she says, after dark, as well as in the daytime.
She seems as fearless as a modern Una; and that would indeed be a savage
beast which could molest such a pure and lovely creature."




CHAPTER VII.

AFTER FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS.


Joseph Wilmot waited patiently enough, in all outward seeming, for the
arrival of the steamer. Everybody was respectful to him now, paying
deference to his altered guise, and he went where he liked without
question or hindrance.

There were several people waiting for passengers who were expected to
arrive by the _Electra_, and the coming of the steamer was hailed by a
feeble cheer from the bystanders grouped about the landing-place.

The passengers began to come on shore at about eleven o'clock. There
were a good many children and English nursemaids; three or four
military-looking men, dressed in loose garments of grey and nankeen
colour; several ladies, all more or less sunburnt; a couple of ayahs;
three men-servants; and an aristocratic-looking man of about fifty-five,
dressed, unlike the rest of the travellers, in fine broadcloth, with a
black-satin cravat, a gold pin, a carefully brushed hat, and varnished
boots.

His clothes, in fact, were very much of the same fashion as those which
Joseph Wilmot had chosen for himself.

This man was Henry Dunbar; tall and broad-chested, with grey hair and
moustache, and with a haughty smile upon his handsome face.

Joseph Wilmot stood among the little crowd, motionless as a statue,
watching his old betrayer.

"Not much changed," he murmured; "very little changed! Proud, and
selfish, and cruel then--proud, and selfish, and cruel now. He has grown
older, and stouter, and greyer; but he is the same man he was
five-and-thirty years ago. I can see it all in his face."

He advanced as Henry Dunbar landed, and approached the Anglo-Indian.

"Mr. Dunbar, I believe?" he said, removing his hat.

"Yes, I am Mr. Dunbar."

"I have been sent from the office in St. Gundolph Lane, sir," returned
Joseph; "I have a letter for you from Mr. Balderby. I came to meet you,
and to be of service to you."

Henry Dunbar looked at him doubtfully.

"You are not one of the clerks in St. Gundolph Lane?" he said.

"No, Mr. Dunbar."

"I thought as much; you don't look like a clerk; but who are you, then?"

"I will tell you presently, sir. I am a substitute for another person,
who was taken ill upon the road. But there is no time to speak of that
now. I came to be of use to you. Shall I see after your luggage?"

"Yes, I shall be glad if you will do so."

"You have a servant with you, Mr. Dunbar?"

"No, my valet was taken ill at Malta, and I left him behind."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Joseph Wilmot; "that was a misfortune."

A sudden flash of light sparkled in his eyes as he spoke.

"Yes, it was devilish provoking. You'll find the luggage packed, and
directed to Portland Place; be so good as to see that it is sent off
immediately by the speediest route. There is a portmanteau in my cabin,
and my travelling-desk. I require those with me. All the rest can go
on."

"I will see to it, sir."

"Thank you; you are very good. At what hotel are you staying?"

"I have not been to any hotel yet. I only arrived this morning. The
_Electra_ was not expected until to-morrow."

"I will go on to the Dolphin, then," returned Mr. Dunbar; "and I shall
be glad if you will follow me directly you have attended to the luggage.
I want to get to London to-night, if possible."

Henry Dunbar walked away, holding his head high in the air, and swinging
his cane as he went. Ha was one of those men who most confidently
believe in their own merits. The sin he had committed in his youth sat
very lightly upon his conscience. If he thought about that old story at
all, it was only to remember that he had been very badly used by his
father and his Uncle Hugh.

And the poor wretch who had helped him--the clever, bright-faced,
high-spirited lad who had acted as his tool and accomplice--was as
completely forgotten as if he had never existed.

Mr. Dunbar was ushered into a great sunny sitting-room at the Dolphin; a
vast desert of Brussels carpet, with little islands of chairs and tables
scattered here and there. He ordered a bottle of soda-water, sank into
an easy-chair, and took up the _Times_ newspaper.

But presently he threw it down impatiently, and took his watch from his
waistcoat-pocket.

Attached to the watch there was a locket of chased yellow gold. Henry
Dunbar opened this locket, which contained the miniature of a beautiful
girl, with fair rippling hair as bright as burnished gold, and limpid
blue eyes.

"My poor little Laura!" he murmured; "I wonder whether she will be glad
to see me. She was a mere baby when she left India. It isn't likely
she'll remember me. But I hope she may be glad of my coming back--I hope
she may be glad."

He put the locket again in its place, and took a letter from his
breast-pocket. It was directed in a woman's hand, and the envelope was
surrounded by a deep border of black.

"If there's any faith to be put in this, she will be glad to have me
home at last," Henry Dunbar said, as he drew the letter out of its
envelope.

He read one passage softly to himself.

"If anything can console me for the loss of my dear grandfather, it is
the thought that you will come back at last, and that I shall see you
once more. You can never know, dearest father, what a bitter sorrow this
cruel separation has been to me. It has seemed so hard that we who are
so rich should have been parted as we have been, while poor children
have their fathers with them. Money seems such a small thing when it
cannot bring us the presence of those we love. And I do love you, dear
papa, truly and devotedly, though I cannot even remember your face, and
have not so much as a picture of you to recall you to my recollection."

The letter was a very long one, and Henry Dunbar was still reading it
when Joseph Wilmot came into the room.

The Anglo-Indian crushed the letter into his pocket, and looked up
languidly.

"Have you seen to all that?" he asked.

"Yes, Mr. Dunbar; the luggage has been sent off."

Joseph Wilmot had not yet removed his hat. He had rather an undecided
manner, and walked once or twice up and down the room, stopping now and
then, and then walking on again, in an unsettled way; like a man who has
some purpose in his mind, yet is oppressed by a feverish irresolution as
to the performance of that purpose.

But Mr. Dunbar took no notice of this. He sat with the newspaper in his
hand, and did not deign to lift his eyes to his companion, after that
first brief question. He was accustomed to be waited upon, and to look
upon the people who served him as beings of an inferior class: and he
had no idea of troubling himself about this gentlemanly-looking clerk
from St. Gundolph Lane.

Joseph Wilmot stopped suddenly upon the other side of the table, near
which Mr. Dunbar sat, and, laying his hand upon it, said quietly--

"You asked me just now who I was, Mr. Dunbar."

The banker looked up at him with haughty indifference.

"Did I? Oh, yea, I remember; and you told me you came from the office.
That is quite enough."

"Pardon me, Mr. Dunbar, it is not quite enough. You are mistaken: I did
not say I came from the office in St. Gundolph Lane. I told you, on the
contrary, that I came here as a substitute for another person, who was
ordered to meet you."

"Indeed! That is pretty much the same thing. You seem a very agreeable
fellow, and will, no doubt, be quite as useful as the original person
could have been. It was very civil of Mr. Balderby to send some one to
meet me--very civil indeed."

The Anglo-Indian's head sank back upon the morocco cushion of the
easy-chair, and he looked languidly at his companion, with half-closed
eyes.

Joseph Wilmot removed his hat.

"I don't think you've looked at me very closely, have you, Mr. Dunbar?"
he said.

"Have I looked at you closely!" exclaimed the banker. "My good fellow,
what do you mean?"

"Look me full in the face, Mr. Dunbar, and tell me if you see anything
there that reminds you of the past."

Henry Dunbar started.

He opened his eyes widely enough this time, and started at the handsome
face before him. It was as handsome as his own, and almost as
aristocratic-looking. For Nature has odd caprices now and then, and had
made very little distinction between the banker, who was worth half a
million, and the runaway convict, who was not worth sixpence.

"Have I met you before?" he said. "In India?"

"No, Mr. Dunbar, not in India. You know that as well as I do. Carry your
mind farther back. Carry it back to the time before you went to India."

"What then?"

"Do you remember losing a heap of money on the Derby, and being in so
desperate a frame of mind that you took the holster-pistols down from
their place above the chimney-piece in your barrack sitting-room, and
threatened to blow your brains out? Do you remember, in your despair,
appealing to a lad who served you, and who loved you, better perhaps
than a brother would have loved you, though he _was_ your inferior by
birth and station, and the son of a poor, hard-working woman? Do you
remember entreating this boy--who had a knack of counterfeiting other
people's signatures, but who had never used his talent for any guilty
purpose until that hour, so help me Heaven!--to aid you in a scheme by
which your creditors were to be kept quiet till you could get the money
to pay them? Do you remember all this? Yes, I see you do--the answer is
written on your face; and you remember me--Joseph Wilmot."

He struck his hand upon his breast, and stood with his eyes fixed upon
the other's face. They had a strange expression in them, those eyes--a
sort of hungry, eager look, as if the very sight of his old foe was a
kind of food that went some way towards satisfying this man's vengeful
fury.

"I do remember you," Henry Dunbar said slowly. He had turned deadly
pale, and cold drops of sweat had broken out upon his forehead: he wiped
them away with his perfumed cambric handkerchief as he spoke.

"You do remember me?" the other man repeated, with no change in the
expression of his face.

"I do; and, believe me, I am heartily sorry for the past. I dare say you
fancy I acted cruelly towards you on that wretched day in St. Gundolph
Lane; but I really could scarcely act otherwise. I was so harassed and
tormented by my own position, that I could not be expected to get myself
deeper into the mire by interceding for you. However, now that I am my
own master, I can make it up to you. Rely upon it, my good fellow, I'll
atone for the past."

"Atone for the past!" cried Joseph Wilmot. "Can you make me an honest
man, or a respectable member of society? Can you remove the stamp of the
felon from me, and win for me the position I _might_ have held in this
hard world but for you? Can you give me back the five-and-thirty
blighted years of my life, and take the blight from them? Can you heal
my mother's broken heart,--broken, long ago by my disgrace? Can you give
me back the dead? Or can you give me pleasant memories, or peaceful
thoughts, or the hope of God's forgiveness? No, no; you can give me none
of these."

Mr. Henry Dunbar was essentially a man of the world. He was not a
passionate man. He was a gentlemanly creature, very seldom demonstrative
in his manner, and he wished to take life pleasantly.

He was utterly selfish and heartless. But as he was very rich, people
readily overlooked such small failings as selfishness and want of heart,
and were loud in praise of the graces of his manner and the elegance of
his person.

"My dear Wilmot," he said, in no wise startled by the vehemence of his
companion, "all that is so much sentimental talk. Of course I can't give
you back the past. The past was your own, and you might have fashioned
it as you pleased. If you went wrong, you have no right to throw the
blame of your wrong-doing upon me. Pray don't talk about broken hearts,
and blighted lives, and all that sort of thing. I'm a man of the world,
and I can appreciate the exact value of that kind of twaddle. I am sorry
for the scrape I got you into, and am ready to do anything reasonable to
atone for that old business. I can't give you back the past; but I can
give you that for which most men are ready to barter past, present, and
future,--I can give you money."

"How much?" asked Joseph Wilmot, with a half-suppressed fierceness in
his manner.

"Humph!" murmured the Anglo-Indian, pulling his grey moustaches with a
reflective air. "Let me see; what would satisfy you, now, my good
fellow?"

"I leave that for you to decide."

"Very well, then. I suppose you'd be quite contented if I were to buy
you a small annuity, that would keep you straight with the world for the
rest of your life. Say, fifty pounds a year."

"Fifty pounds a year," Joseph Wilmot repeated. He had quite conquered
that fierceness of expression by this time, and spoke very quietly.
"Fifty pounds a year--a pound a week."

"Yes."

"I'll accept your offer, Mr. Dunbar. A pound a week. That will enable me
to live--to live as labouring men live, in some hovel or other; and will
insure me bread every day. I have a daughter, a very beautiful girl,
about the same age as your daughter: and, of course, she'll share my
income with me, and will have as much cause to bless your generosity as
I shall have."

"It's a bargain, then?" asked the East Indian, languidly.

"Oh, yes, it's a bargain. You have estates in Warwickshire and
Yorkshire, a house in Portland Place, and half a million of money; but,
of course, all those things are necessary to you. I shall have--thanks
to your generosity, and as an atonement for all the shame and misery,
the want, and peril, and disgrace, which I have suffered for
five-and-thirty years--a pound a week secured to me for the rest of my
life. A thousand thanks, Mr. Dunbar. You are your own self still, I
find; the same master I loved when I was a boy; and I accept your
generous offer."

He laughed as he finished speaking, loudly but not heartily--rather
strangely, perhaps; but Mr. Dunbar did not trouble himself to notice any
such insignificant fact as the merriment of his old valet.

"Now we have done with all these heroics," he said, "perhaps you'll be
good enough to order luncheon for me."




CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIRST STAGE ON THE JOURNEY HOME.


Joseph Wilmot obeyed his old master, and ordered a very excellent
luncheon, which was served in the best style of the Dolphin; and a
sojourn at the Dolphin is almost a recompense for the pains and
penalties of the voyage home from India. Mr. Dunbar, from the sublime
height of his own grandeur, stooped to be very friendly with his old
valet, and insisted upon Joseph's sitting down with him at the
well-spread table. But although the Anglo-Indian did ample justice to
the luncheon, and washed down a spatchcock and a lobster-salad with
several glasses of iced Moselle, the reprobate ate and drank very
little, and sat for the best part of the time crumbling his bread in a
strange absent manner, and watching his companion's face. He only spoke
when his old master addressed him; and then in a constrained,
half-mechanical way, which might have excited the wonder of any one less
supremely indifferent than Henry Dunbar to the feelings of his
fellow-creatures.

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