Henry Dunbar

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

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The Anglo-Indian finished his luncheon, left the table, and walked to
the window: but Joseph Wilmot still sat with a full glass before him.
The sparkling bubbles had vanished from the clear amber wine; but
although Moselle at half-a-guinea a bottle could scarcely have been a
very common beverage to the ex-convict, he seemed to have no
appreciation of the vintage. He sat with his head bent and his elbow on
his knee; brooding, brooding, brooding.

Henry Dunbar amused himself for about ten minutes looking out at the
busy street--the brightest, airiest, lightest, prettiest High Street in
all England, perhaps; and then turned away from the window and looked at
his old valet. He had been accustomed, five-and-thirty years ago, to be
familiar with the man, and to make a confidant and companion of him, and
he fell into the same manner now, naturally; as if the five-and-thirty
years had never been; as if Joseph Wilmot had never been wronged by him.
He fell into the old way, and treated his companion with that haughty
affability which a monarch may be supposed to exhibit towards his prime
favourite.

"Drink your wine, Wilmot," he exclaimed; "don't sit meditating there, as
if you were a great speculator brooding over the stagnation of the
money-market. I want bright looks, man, to welcome me back to my native
country. I've seen dark faces enough out yonder; and I want to see
smiling and pleasanter faces here. You look as black as if you had
committed a murder, or were plotting one."

The Outcast smiled.

"I've so much reason to look cheerful, haven't I?" he said, in the same
tone he had used when he had declared his acceptance of the banker's
bounty. "I've such a pleasant life before me, and such agreeable
recollections to look back upon. A man's memory seems to me like a book
of pictures that he must be continually looking at, whether he will or
not: and if the pictures are horrible, if he shudders as he looks at
them, if the sight of them is worse than the pain of death to him, he
must look nevertheless. I read a story the other day--at least my girl
was reading it to me; poor child! she tries to soften me with these
things sometimes--and the man who wrote the story said it was well for
the most miserable of us to pray, 'Lord, keep my memory green!' But what
if the memory is a record of crime, Mr. Dunbar? Can we pray that _those_
memories may be kept green? Wouldn't it be better to pray that our
brains and hearts may wither, leaving us no power to look back upon the
past? If I could have forgotten the wrong you did me five-and-thirty
years ago, I might have been a different man: but I couldn't forget it.
Every day and every hour I have remembered it. My memory is as fresh
to-day as it was four-and-thirty years ago, when my wrongs were only a
twelvemonth old."

Joseph Wilmot had said all this almost as if he yielded to an
uncontrollable impulse, and spoke because he must speak, rather than
from the desire to upbraid Henry Dunbar. He had not looked at the
Anglo-Indian; he had not changed his attitude; he had spoken with his
head still bent, and his eyes fixed upon the ground.

Mr. Dunbar had gone back to the window, and had resumed his
contemplation of the street; but he turned round with a gesture of angry
impatience as Joseph Wilmot finished speaking.

"Now, listen to me, Wilmot," he said. "If the firm in St. Gundolph Lane
sent you down here to annoy and insult me directly I set foot upon
British ground, they have chosen a very nice way of testifying their
respect for their chief: and they have made a mistake which they shall
repent having made sooner or later. If you came here upon your own
account, with a view to terrify me, or to extort money from me, you have
made a mistake. If you think to make a fool of me by any maudlin
sentimentality, you make a still greater mistake. I give you fair
warning. If you expect any advantage from me, you must make yourself
agreeable to me. I am a rich man, and know how to recompense those who
please me: but I will not be bored or tormented by any man alive: least
of all by you. If you choose to make yourself useful, you can stay: if
you don't choose to do so, the sooner you leave this room the better for
yourself, if you wish to escape the humiliation of being turned out by
the waiter."

At the end of this speech Joseph Wilmot looked up for the first time. He
was very pale, and there were strange hard lines about his compressed
lips, and a new light in his eyes.

"I am a poor weak fool," he said, quietly; "very weak and very foolish,
when I think there can be anything in that old story to touch your
heart, Mr. Dunbar. I will not offend you again, believe me. I have not
led a very sober life of late years: I've had a touch of _delirium
tremens_, and my nerves are not as strong as they used to be: but I'll
not annoy you again. I'm quite ready to make myself useful in any way
you may require."

"Get me a time-table, then, and let's see about the trains. I don't want
to stay in Southampton all day."

Joseph Wilmot rang, and ordered the time-table; Henry Dunbar studied it.

"There is no express before ten o'clock at night," he said; "and I don't
care about travelling by a slow train. What am I to do with myself in
the interim?"

He was silent for a few moments, turning over the leaves of Bradshaw's
Guide, and thinking.

"How far is it from here to Winchester?" he asked presently.

"Ten miles, or thereabouts, I believe," Joseph answered.

"Ten miles! Very well, then, Wilmot, I'll tell you what I'll do. I've a
friend in the neighbourhood of Winchester, an old college companion, a
man who has a fine estate in Hampshire, and a house near St. Cross. If
you'll order a carriage and pair to be got ready immediately, we'll
drive over to Winchester. I'll go and see my old friend Michael Marston;
we'll dine at the George, and go up to London by the express which
leaves Winchester at a quarter past ten. Go and order the carriage, and
lose no time about it, that's a good fellow."

Half an hour after this the two men left Southampton in an open
carriage, with the banker's portmanteau, dressing-case, and
despatch-box, and Joseph Wilmot's carpet-bag. It was three o'clock when
the carriage drove away from the entrance of the Dolphin Hotel: it
wanted five minutes to four when Mr. Dunbar and his companion entered
the handsome hall of the George.

Throughout the drive the banker had been in very excellent spirits,
smoking cheroots, and admiring the lovely English landscape, the
spreading pastures, the glimpses of woodland, the hills beyond the grey
cathedral city, purple in the distance.

He had talked a good deal, making himself very familiar with his humble
friend. But he had not talked so much or so loudly as Joseph Wilmot. All
gloomy memories seemed to have melted away from this man's mind. His
former moody silence had been succeeded by a manner that was almost
unnaturally gay. A close observer would have detected that his laugh was
a little forced, his loudest merriment wanting in geniality: but Henry
Dunbar was not a close observer. People in Calcutta, who courted and
admired the rich banker, had been wont to praise the aristocratic ease
of his manner, which was not often disturbed by any vulgar demonstration
of his own emotions, and very rarely ruffled by any sympathy with the
joys, or pity for the sorrows, of his fellow-creatures.

His companion's ready wit and knowledge of the world--the very worst
part of the world, unhappily--amused the languid Anglo-Indian: and by
the time the travellers reached Winchester, they were on excellent terms
with each other. Joseph Wilmot was thoroughly at home with his patron;
and as the two men were dressed in the same fashion, and had pretty much
the same nonchalance of manner, it would have been very difficult for a
stranger to have discovered which was the servant and which the master.

One of them ordered dinner for eight o'clock, the best dinner the house
could provide. The luggage was taken up to a private room, and the two
men walked away from the hotel arm-in-arm.

They walked under the shadow of a low stone colonnade, and then turned
aside by the market-place, and made their way into the precincts of the
cathedral. There are quaint old courtyards, and shadowy quadrangles
hereabouts; there are pleasant gardens, where the flowers seem to grow
brighter in the sanctified shade than other flowers that flaunt in the
unhallowed sunshine. There are low old-fashioned houses, with Tudor
windows and ponderous porches, grey gables crowned with yellow
stone-moss, high garden-walls, queer nooks and corners, deep
window-seats in painted oriels, great oaken beams supporting low dark
ceilings, heavy clusters of chimneys half borne down by the weight of
the ivy that clings about them; and over all, the shadow of the great
cathedral broods, like a sheltering wing, preserving the cool quiet of
these cosy sanctuaries.

Beyond this holy shelter fair pastures stretch away to the feet of the
grassy hills: and a winding stream of water wanders in and out: now
hiding in dim groves of spreading elms: now creeping from the darkness,
with a murmuring voice and stealthy gliding motion, to change its very
nature, and become the noisiest brook that ever babbled over sunlit
pebbles on its way to the blue sea.

In one of the grey stone quadrangles close under the cathedral wall, the
two men, still arm-in-arm, stopped to make an inquiry about Mr. Michael
Marston, of the Ferns, St. Cross.

Alas! Ben Bolt, it is a fine thing to sail away to foreign shores and
prosper there; but it is not so pleasant to come home and hear that
Alice is dead and buried; that of all your old companions there is only
one left to greet you; and that even the brook, which rippled through
your boyish dreams, as you lay asleep amongst the rushes on its brink,
has dried up for ever!

Mr. Michael Marston had been dead more than ten, years. His widow, an
elderly lady, was still living at the Ferns.

This was the information which the two men obtained from a verger, whom
they found prowling about the quadrangle, Very little was said. One of
the men asked the necessary questions. But neither of them expressed
either regret or surprise.

They walked away silently, still arm-in-arm, towards the shady groves
and spreading pastures beyond the cathedral precincts.

The verger, who was elderly and slow, called after them in a feeble
voice as they went away:

"Maybe you'd like to see the cathedral, gentlemen; it's well worth
seeing."

But he received no answer. The two men were out of hearing, or did not
care to reply to him.

"We'll take a stroll towards St. Cross, and get an appetite for dinner,"
Mr. Dunbar said, as he and his companion walked along a pathway, under
the shadow of a moss-grown wall, across a patch of meadow-land, and away
into the holy quiet of a grove.

A serene stillness reigned beneath the shelter of the spreading
branches. The winding streamlet rippled along amidst wild flowers and
trembling rushes; the ground beneath the feet of these two idle
wanderers was a soft bed of moss and rarely-trodden grass.

It was a lonely place this grove; for it lay between the meadows and the
high-road. Feeble old pensioners from St. Cross came here sometimes, but
not often. Enthusiastic disciples of old Izaak Walton now and then
invaded the holy quiet of the place: but not often. The loveliest spots
on earth are those where man seldom comes.

This spot was most lovely because of its solitude. Only the gentle
waving of the leaves, the long melodious note of a lonely bird, and the
low whisper of the streamlet, broke the silence.

The two men went into the grove arm-in-arm. One of them was talking, the
other listening, and smoking a cigar as he listened. They went into the
long arcade beneath the over-arching trees, and the sombre shadows
closed about them and hid them from the world.

CHAPTER IX.

HOW HENRY DUNBAR WAITED DINNER.

The old verger was still pottering about the grey quadrangle, sunning
himself in such glimpses of the glorious light as found their way into
that shadowy place, when one of the two gentlemen who had spoken to him
returned. He was smoking a cigar, and swinging his gold-headed cane
lightly as he came along.

"You may as well show me the cathedral," he said to the verger; "I
shouldn't like to leave Winchester without having seen it; that is to
say without having seen it again. I was here forty years ago, when I was
a boy; but I have been in India five-and-thirty years, and have seen
nothing but Pagan temples."

"And very beautiful them Pagan places be, sir, bain't they?" the old man
asked, as he unlocked a low door, leading into one of the side aisles of
the cathedral.

"Oh yes, very magnificent, of course. But as I was not a soldier, and
had no opportunity of handling any of the magnificence in the way of
diamonds and so forth, I didn't particularly care about them."

They were in the shadowy aisle by this time, and Mr. Dunbar was looking
about him with his hat in his hand.

"You didn't go on to the Ferns, then, sir?" said the verger.

"No, I sent my servant on to inquire if the old lady is at home. If I
find that she is, I shall sleep in Winchester to-night, and drive over
to-morrow morning to see her. Her husband was a very old friend of mine.
How far is it from here to the Ferns?"

"A matter of two mile, sir."

Mr. Dunbar looked at his watch.

"Then my man ought to be back in an hour's time," he said; "I told him
to come on to me here. I left him half-way between here and St. Cross."

"Is that other gentleman your servant, sir?" asked the verger, with
unmitigated surprise.

"Yes, that gentleman, as you call him, is, or rather was, my
confidential servant. He is a clever fellow, and I make a companion of
him. Now, if you please, we will see the chapels."

Mr. Dunbar evidently desired to put a stop to the garrulous inclinations
of the verger.

He walked through the aisle with a careless easy step, and with his head
erect, looking about him as he went along: but presently, while the
verger was busy unlocking the door of one of the chapels, Mr. Dunbar
suddenly reeled like a drunken man, and then dropped heavily upon an
oaken bench near the chapel-door.

The verger turned to look at him, and found him wiping the perspiration
from his forehead with his perfumed silk handkerchief.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, smiling at the man's scared face; "my
Indian habits have unfitted me for any exertion. The walk in the
broiling afternoon sun has knocked me up: or perhaps the wine I drank at
Southampton may have had something to do with it," he added, with a
laugh.

The verger ventured to laugh too: and the laughter of the two men echoed
harshly through the solemn place.

For more than an hour Mr. Dunbar amused himself by inspecting the
cathedral. He was eager to see everything, and to know the meaning of
everything. He peered into every nook and corner, going from monument to
monument with the patient talkative old verger at his heels; asking
questions about every thing he saw; trying to decipher half-obliterated
inscriptions upon long-forgotten tombs; sounding the praises of William
of Wykeham; admiring the splendid shrines, the sanctified relics of the
past, with the delight of a scholar and an antiquarian.

The old verger thought that he had never had so pleasant a task as that
of exhibiting his beloved cathedral to this delightful gentleman, just
returned from India, and ready to admire everything belonging to his
native land.

The verger was still better pleased when Mr. Dunbar gave him half a
sovereign as the reward for his afternoon's trouble.

"Thank you, sir, and kindly, to be sure," the old man cackled,
gratefully. "It's very seldom as I get gold for my trouble, sir. I've
shown this cathedral to a dook, sir; but the dook didn't treat me as
liberal as this here, sir."

Mr. Dunbar smiled.

"Perhaps not," he said; "the duke mightn't have been as rich a man as I
am in spite of his dukedom."

"No, to be sure, sir," the old man answered, looking admiringly at the
banker, and sighing plaintively. "It's well to be rich, sir, it is
indeed; and when one have twelve grand-children, and a bed-ridden wife,
one finds it hard, sir; one do indeed."

Perhaps the verger had faint hopes of another half sovereign from this
very rich gentleman.

But Mr. Dunbar seated himself upon a bench near the low doorway by which
he had entered the cathedral, and looked at his watch.

The verger looked at the watch too; it was a hundred-guinea chronometer,
a masterpiece of Benson's workmanship; and Mr. Dunbar's arms were
emblazoned upon the back. There was a locket attached to the massive
gold chain, the locket which contained Laura Dunbar's miniature.

"Seven o'clock," exclaimed the banker; "my servant ought to be here by
this time."

"So he ought, sir," said the verger, who was ready to agree to anything
Mr. Dunbar might say; "if he had only to go to the Ferns, sir, he might
have been back by this time easy."

"I'll smoke a cheroot while I wait for him," the banker said, passing
out into the quadrangle; "he's sure to come to this door to look for
me--I gave him particular orders to do so."

Henry Dunbar finished his cheroot, and another, and the cathedral clock
chimed the three-quarters after seven, but Joseph Wilmot had not come
back from the Ferns. The verger waited upon his patron's pleasure, and
lingered in attendance upon him, though he would fain have gone home to
his tea, which in the common course he would have taken at five o'clock.

"Really this is too bad," cried the banker, as the clock chimed the
three-quarters; "Wilmot knows that I dine at eight, and that I expect
him to dine with me. I think I have a right to a little more
consideration from him. I shall go back to the George. Perhaps you'll be
good enough to wait here, and tell him to follow me."

Mr. Dunbar went away, still muttering, and the verger gave up all
thoughts of his tea, and waited conscientiously. He waited till the
cathedral clock struck nine, and the stars were bright in the dark blue
heaven above him: but he waited in vain. Joseph Wilmot had not come back
from the Ferns.

The banker returned to the George. A small round table was set in a
pleasant room on the first floor; a bright array of glass and silver
glittered under the light of five wax-candles in a silver candelabrum;
and the waiter was beginning to be nervous about the fish.

"You may countermand the dinner," Mr. Dunbar said, with evident
vexation: "I shall not dine till Mr. Wilmot, who is my old confidential
servant--my friend, I may say--returns."

"Has he gone far, sir?"

"To the Ferns, about a mile beyond St. Cross. I shall wait dinner for
him. Put a couple of candles on that writing-table, and bring me my
desk."

The waiter obeyed; he placed a pair of tall wax-candles upon the table;
and then brought the desk, or rather despatch-box, which had cost forty
pounds, and was provided with every possible convenience for a business
man, and every elegant luxury that the most extravagant traveller could
desire. It was like everything else about this man: it bore upon it the
stamp of almost limitless wealth.

Mr. Dunbar took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked his
despatch-box. He was some little time doing this, as he had a difficulty
in finding the right key. He looked up and smiled at the waiter, who was
still hovering about, anxious to be useful.

"I _must_ have taken too much Moselle at luncheon to-day," he said,
laughing, "or, at least, my enemies might say so, if they were to see me
puzzled to find the key of my own desk."

He had opened the box by this time, and was examining one of the
numerous packets of papers, which were arranged in very methodical
order, carefully tied together, and neatly endorsed.

"I am to put off the dinner, then, sir?" asked the waiter.

"Certainly; I shall wait for my friend, however long he may be. I'm not
particularly hungry, for I took a very substantial luncheon at
Southampton. I'll ring the bell if I change my mind."

The waiter departed with a sigh; and Henry Dunbar was left alone with
the contents of the open despatch-box spread out on the table before him
under the light of the tall wax-candles.

For nearly two hours he sat in the same attitude, examining the papers
one after the other, and re-sorting them.

Mr. Dunbar must have been possessed of the very spirit of order and
precision; for, although the papers had been neatly arranged before, he
re-sorted every one of them; tying up the packets afresh, reading letter
after letter, and making pencil memoranda in his pocket-book as he did
so.

He betrayed none of the impatience which is natural to a man who is kept
waiting by another. He was so completely absorbed by his occupation,
that he, perhaps, had forgotten all about the missing man: but at nine
o'clock he closed and locked the despatch-box, jumped up from his seat
and rang the bell.

"I am beginning to feel alarmed about my friend," he said; "will you ask
the landlord to come to me?"

Mr. Dunbar went to the window and looked out while the waiter was gone
upon this errand. The High Street was very quiet, a lamp glimmered here
and there, and the pavements were white in the moonlight. The footstep
of a passer-by sounded in the quiet street almost as it might have
sounded in the solemn cathedral aisle.

The landlord came to wait upon his guest.

"Can I be of any service to you, sir?" he asked, respectfully.

"You can be of very great service to me, if you can find my friend; I am
really getting alarmed about him."

Mr. Dunbar went on to say how he had parted with the missing man in the
grove, on the way to St. Cross, with the understanding that Wilmot was
to go on to the Ferns, and rejoin his old master in the cathedral. He
explained who Joseph Wilmot was, and in what relation he stood towards
him.

"I don't suppose there is any real cause for anxiety," the banker said,
in conclusion; "Wilmot owned to me that he had not been leading a sober
life of late years. He may have dropped into some roadside public-house
and be sitting boozing amongst a lot of country fellows at this moment.
It's really too bad of him."

The landlord shook his head.

"It is, indeed, sir; but I hope you won't wait dinner any longer, sir?"

"No, no; you can send up the dinner. I'm afraid I shall scarcely do
justice to your cook's achievements, for I took a very substantial
luncheon at Southampton."

The landlord brought in the silver soup-tureen with his own hands, and
uncorked a bottle of still hock, which Mr. Dunbar had selected from the
wine-list. There was something in the banker's manner that declared him
to be a person of no small importance; and the proprietor of the George
wished to do him honour.

Mr. Dunbar had spoken the truth as to his appetite for his dinner. He
took a few spoonfuls of soup, he ate two or three mouthfuls of fish, and
then pushed away his plate.

"It's no use," he said, rising suddenly, and walking to the window; "I
am really uneasy about this fellow's absence."

He walked up and down the room two or three times, and then walked back
to the open window. The August night was hot and still; the shadows of
the queer old gabled roofs were sharply defined upon the moonlit
pavement. The quaint cross, the low stone colonnade, the solemn towers
of the cathedral, gave an ancient aspect to the quiet city.

The cathedral clock chimed the half-hour after nine while Mr. Dunbar
stood at the open window looking out into the street.

"I shall sleep here to-night," he said presently, without turning to
look at the landlord, who was standing behind him. "I shall not leave
Winchester without this fellow Wilmot. It is really too bad of him to
treat me in this manner. It is really very much too bad of him, taking
into consideration the position in which he stands towards me."

The banker spoke with the offended tone of a proud and selfish man, who
feels that he has been outraged by his inferior. The landlord of the
George murmured a few stereotyped phrases, expressive of his sympathy
with the wrongs of Henry Dunbar, and his entire reprobation of the
missing man's conduct.

"No, I shall not go to London to-night," Mr. Dunbar said; "though my
daughter, my only child, whom I have not seen for sixteen years, is
waiting for me at my town house. I shall not leave Winchester without
Joseph Wilmot."

"I'm sure it's very good of you, sir," the landlord murmured; "it's very
kind of you to think so much of this--ahem--person."

He had hesitated a little before the last word; for although Mr. Dunbar
spoke of Joseph Wilmot as his inferior and dependant, the landlord of
the George remembered that the missing man had looked quite as much a
gentleman as his companion.

The landlord still lingered in attendance upon Mr. Dunbar. The dishes
upon the table were still hidden under the glistening silver covers.

Surely such an unsatisfactory dinner had never before been served at the
George Hotel.

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