Henry Dunbar by M. E. Braddon

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

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"It is a case of mental excitement," Clement said. "There may be no
necessity for medical treatment; but I shall feel more comfortable when
you have seen this poor girl."

Clement conducted Mr. Vincent to the sitting-room, which was empty.

"I'll go and see how Miss Wilmot is now," the cashier said. The doctor
gave a scarcely perceptible start as he heard that name of Wilmot. The
murder of Joseph Wilmot had formed the subject of many a long discussion
amongst the towns-people at Shorncliffe, and the familiar name struck
the surgeon's ear.

"But what of that?" thought Mr. Vincent. "The name is not such a very
uncommon one."

Clement went to his mother's room and knocked softly at the door. The
widow came out to him presently.

"How is she now?" Clement asked.

"I can scarcely tell you. Her manner frightens me. She is lying on her
bed as motionless as if she were a corpse, and with her eyes fixed upon
the blank wall opposite to her. When I speak to her, she does not answer
me by so much as a look; but if I go near her she shivers, and gives a
long shuddering sigh. What does it all mean, Clement?"

"Heaven knows, mother. I can only tell you that she has gone through a
meeting which was certainly calculated to have considerable effect upon
her mind. But I had no idea that the effect would be anything like this.
Can the doctor come?"

"Yes; he had better come at once."

Clement returned to the sitting-room, and remained there while Mr.
Vincent went to see Margaret. To Poor Clement it seemed as if the
surgeon was absent nearly an hour, so intolerable was the anguish of
that interval of suspense.

At last, however, the creaking footstep of the medical man sounded in
the corridor. Clement hurried to the door to meet him.

"Well!" he cried, eagerly.

Mr. Vincent shook his head.

"It is a case in which my services can be of very little avail," he
said; "the young lady is suffering from some mental uneasiness, which
she refuses to communicate to her friends. If you could get her to talk
to you, she would no doubt be very much benefited. If she were an
ordinary person, she would cry, and the relief of tears would have a
most advantageous effect upon her mind. Our patient is by no means an
ordinary person She has a very strong will."

"Margaret has a strong will!" exclaimed Clement, with a look of
surprise; "why, she is gentleness itself."

"Very likely; but she has a will of iron, nevertheless. I implored her
to speak to me just now; the tone of her voice would have helped to some
slight diagnosis of her state; but I might as well have implored a
statue. She only shook her head slowly, and she never once looked at me.
However, I will send her a sedative draught, which had better be taken
immediately, and I'll look round in the morning."

Mr. Vincent left the Reindeer, and Clement went to his mother's room.
That loving mother was ready to sympathize with every trouble that
affected her only son. She came out of Margaret's room and went to meet
Clement.

"Is she still the same, mother?" he asked.

"Yes, quite the same. Would you like to see her?"

"Very much."

Mrs. Austin and her son went into the adjoining chamber. Margaret was
lying, dressed in the damp, draggled gown which she had worn that
afternoon, upon the outside of the bed. The dull stony look of her face
filled Clement's mind with an awful terror. He began to fear that she
was going mad.

He sat down upon a chair close by the bed, and watched her for some
moments in silence, while his mother stood by, scarcely less anxious
than himself.

Margaret's arm hung loosely by her side as lifeless in its attitude as
if it had belonged to the dead. Clement took the slender hand in his.
Lie had expected to find it dry and burning with feverish heat; but, to
his surprise, it was cold as ice.

"Margaret," he said, in a low earnest voice, "you know how dearly I have
loved and do love you; you know how entirely my happiness depends upon
yours; surely, my dear one, you will not refuse--you cannot be so cruel
as to keep your sorrow a secret from him who has so good a right to
share it? Speak to me, my darling. Remember what suffering you are
inflicting upon me by this cruel silence."

At last the hazel eyes lost their fixed look, and wandered for a moment
to Clement Austin's face.

"Have pity upon me," the girl said, in a hoarse unnatural voice; "have
compassion upon me, for I need man's mercy as well as the mercy of God.
Have some pity upon me, Clement Austin, and leave me; I will talk to you
to-morrow."

"You will tell me all that has happened?"

"I will talk to you to-morrow," answered Margaret, looking at her lover
with a white, inflexible face; "but leave me now; leave me, or I will
run out of this room, and away from this house. I shall go mad if I am
not left alone!"

Clement Austin rose from his seat near the bedside.

"I am going, Margaret," he said, in a tone of wounded feeling; "but I
leave you with a heavy heart. I did not think there would ever come a
time in which you would reject my sympathy."

"I will talk to you to-morrow," Margaret said, for the second time.

She spoke in a strange mechanical way, as if this had been a set speech
which she had arranged for herself.

Clement stood looking at her for some little time; but there was no
change either in her face or attitude, and the young man went slowly and
sorrowfully from the room.

"I leave her in your hands, mother," he said. "I know how tender and
true a friend she has in you; I leave her in your care, under
Providence. May Heaven have pity upon her and me!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

FAREWELL.

Margaret submitted to take the sedative draught sent by the medical man.
She submitted, at Mrs. Austin's request; but it seemed as if she
scarcely understood why the medicine was offered to her. She was like a
sleep-walker, whose brain is peopled by the creatures of a dream, and
who has no consciousness of the substantial realities that surround him.

The draught Mr. Vincent had spoken of as a sedative turned out to be a
very powerful opiate, and Margaret sank into a profound slumber about a
quarter of an hour after taking the medicine.

Mrs. Austin went to Clement to carry him these good tidings.

"I shall sit up two or three hours, and see how the poor girl goes on,
Clement," the widow said; "but I hope you'll go to bed; I know all this
excitement has worn you out."

"No, mother; I feel no sense of fatigue."

"But you will try to get some rest, to please me? See, dear boy, it's
already nearly twelve o'clock."

"Yes, if you wish it, mother, I'll go to my room," Mr. Austin answered,
quickly.

His room was near those occupied by his mother and Margaret, much nearer
than the sitting-room. He bade Mrs. Austin good night and left her; but
he had no thought of going to bed, or even trying to sleep. He went to
his own room, and walked up and down; going out into the corridor every
now and then, to listen at the door of his mother's chamber.

He heard nothing. Some time between two and three o'clock Mrs. Austin
opened the door of her room, and found her son lingering in the
corridor.

"Is she still asleep, mother?" he asked.

"Yes, and she is sleeping very calmly. I am going to bed now; pray try
to get some sleep yourself, Clem."

"I will, mother."

Clement returned to his room. He was thankful, as he thought that sleep
would bring tranquillity and relief to Margaret's overwrought brain. He
went to bed and fell asleep, for he was exhausted by the fatigue of the
day and the anxiety of the night. Poor Clement fell asleep, and dreamt
that he met Margaret Wilmot by moonlight in the park around Maudesley
Abbey, walking with a DEAD MAN, whose face was strange to him. This was
the last of many dreams, all more or less grotesque or horrible, but
none so vivid or distinct as this. The end of the vision woke Clement
with a sudden shock, and he opened his eyes upon the cold morning light,
which seemed especially cold in this chamber at the Reindeer, where the
paper on the walls was of the palest grey, and every curtain or drapery
of a spotless white.

Clement lost no time over his toilet. He looked at his watch while
dressing, and found that it was between seven and eight. It wanted a
quarter to eight when he left his room, and went to his mother's door to
inquire about Margaret. He knocked softly, but there was no answer; then
he tried the door, and finding it unlocked, opened it a few inches with
a cautious hand, and listened to his mother's regular breathing.

"She is asleep, poor soul," he thought. "I won't disturb her, for she
must want rest after sitting up half last night."

Clement closed the door as noiselessly as he had opened it, and then
went slowly to the sitting-room. There was a struggling fire in the
shining grate; and the indefatigable waiter, who refused to believe in
the extinction of mail-coaches, had laid the breakfast
apparatus--frosty-looking white-and-blue cups and saucers on a snowy
cloth, a cut-glass cream-jug that looked as if it had been made out of
ice, and a brazen urn in the last stage of polish. The breakfast service
was harmoniously adapted to the season, and eminently calculated to
produce a fit of shivering in the sojourner at the Reindeer.

But Clement Austin did not bestow so much as one glance upon the
breakfast-table. He hurried to the bow-window, where Margaret Wilmot was
sitting, neatly dressed in her morning garments, with her shawl on, and
her bonnet lying on a chair near her.

"Margaret!" exclaimed Clement, as he approached the place where Joseph
Wilmot's daughter was sitting; "my dear Margaret, why did you get up so
early this morning, when you so much need rest?"

The girl rose and looked at her lover with a grave and quiet earnestness
of expression; but her face was quite as colourless as it had been upon
the previous night, and her lips trembled a little as she spoke to
Clement.

"I have had sufficient rest," she said, in a low, tremulous voice; "I
got up early because--because--I am going away."

Her two hands had been hanging loosely amongst the fringes of her shawl;
she lifted them now, and linked her fingers together with a convulsive
motion; but she never withdrew her eyes from Clement's face, and her
glance never faltered as she looked at him.

"Going away, Margaret?" the cashier cried; "going away--to-day--this
morning?"

"Yes, by the half-past nine o'clock train."

"Margaret, you must be mad to talk of such a thing."

"No," the girl answered, slowly; "that is the strangest thing of all--I
am not mad. I am going away, Clement--Mr. Austin. I wished to avoid
seeing you. I meant to have written to you to tell you----"

"To tell me what, Margaret?" asked Clement. "Is it I who am going mad;
or am I dreaming all this?"

"It is no dream, Mr. Austin. My letter would have only told you the
truth. I am going away from here because I can never be your wife."

"You can never be my wife! Why not, Margaret?"

"I cannot tell you the reason."

"But you _shall_ tell me, Margaret!" cried Clement, passionately. "I
will accept no sentence such as this until I know the reason for
pronouncing it; I will suffer no imaginary barrier to stand between you
and me. There is some mystery, some mystification in all this, Margaret;
some woman's fancy, which a few words of explanation would set at rest.
Margaret, my pearl! do you think I will consent to lose you so lightly?
My own dear love! do you know me so little as to think that I will part
with you? My love is a stronger passion than you think, Madge; and the
bondage you accepted when you promised to be my wife is a bondage that
cannot so easily be shaken off!"

Margaret watched her lover's face with melancholy, tearless eyes.

"Fate is stronger than love, Clement," she said, mournfully, "I can
never be your wife!"

"Why not?"

"For a reason which you can never know."

"Margaret, I will not submit----"

"You must submit," the girl said, holding up her hand, as if to stop her
lover's passionate words. "You must submit, Clement. This world seems
very hard sometimes, so hard that in a dreadful interval of dull despair
the heavens are hidden from us, and we cannot recognize the Eternal
wisdom guiding the hand that afflicts us. My life seems very hard to me
to-day, Clement. Do not try to make it harder. I am a most unhappy
woman; and in all the world there is only one favour you can grant me.
Let me go away unquestioned; and blot my image from your heart for ever
when I am gone."

"I will never consent to let you go," Clement Austin answered,
resolutely. "You are mine by right of your own most sacred promise,
Margaret. No womanish folly shall part us."

"Heaven knows it is no woman's folly that parts us, Clement," the girl
answered, in a plaintive, tremulous voice.

"What is it, then, Margaret?"

"I can never tell you."

"You will change your mind."

"Never."

She looked at him with an air of quiet resolution stamped upon her
colourless face.

Clement remembered what the doctor had said of his patient's iron will.
Was it possible that Mr. Vincent had been right? Was this gentle girl's
resolution to overrule a strong man's passionate vehemence?

"What is it that can part us, Margaret?" Mr. Austin cried. "What is it?
You saw Mr. Dunbar yesterday?"

The girl shuddered, and over her colourless face there came a livid
shade, which was more deathlike than the marble whiteness that had
preceded it.

"Yes," Margaret Wilmot said, after a pause. "I was--very fortunate. I
gained admission to--Mr. Dunbar's rooms."

"And you spoke to him?"

"Yes."

"Did your interview with him confirm or dissipate your suspicions? Do
you still believe that Henry Dunbar murdered your unhappy father?"

"No," answered Margaret, resolutely; "I do not."

"You do not? The banker's manner convinced you of his innocence, then?"

"I do not believe that Henry Dunbar murdered my--my unhappy father."

It is impossible to describe the tone of anguish with which Margaret
spoke those last three words.

"But something transpired in that interview at Maudesley Abbey,
Margaret? Henry Dunbar told you something--perhaps something about your
dead father--some disgraceful secret which you never heard before; and
you think that the shame of that secret is a burden which I would fear
to carry? You mistake my nature, Margaret, and you commit a cruel
treason against my love. Be my wife, dear one; and if malicious people
should point to you, and say, 'Clement Austin's wife is the daughter of
a thief and a forger,' I would give them back scorn for scorn, and tell
them that I honour my wife for virtues that have been sometimes missing
in the consort of an emperor."

For the first time that morning Margaret's eyes grew dim, but she
brushed away the gathering tears with a rapid movement of her trembling
hand.

"You are a good man, Clement Austin," she said; "and I--wish that I were
better worthy of you. You are a good man; but you are very cruel to me
to-day. Have pity upon me, and let me go."

She drew a pretty little watch from her waist, and looked at the dial.
Then, suddenly remembering that the watch had been Clement's gift, she
took the slender chain from her neck, and handed them both to him.

"You gave me these when I was your betrothed wife, Mr. Austin; I have no
right to keep them now."

She spoke very mournfully; but poor Clement was only mortal. He was a
good man, as Margaret had just declared; but, unhappily, good men are
apt to fly into passions as well as their inferiors in the scale of
morality.

Clement Austin threw the pretty little Genevese toy upon the floor, and
ground it to atoms under the heel of his boot.

"You are cruel and unjust, Mr. Austin," Margaret said.

"I am a man, Miss Wilmot," Clement answered, bitterly; "and I have the
feelings of a man. When the woman I have loved and believed in turns
upon me, and coolly tells me that she means to break my heart, without
so much as deigning to give me a reason for her conduct, I am not so
much a gentleman as to be able to smile politely, and request her to
please herself."

The cashier turned away from Margaret, and walked two at three times up
and down the room. He was in a passion, but grief and indignation were
so intermingled in his breast that he scarcely knew which was uppermost.
But grief and love allied themselves presently, and together were much
too strong for indignation.

Clement Austin went back to the window; Margaret was standing where he
had left her, but she had put on her bonnet and gloves, and was quite
ready to leave the house.

"Margaret," said Mr. Austin, trying to take her hand; but she drew
herself away from him, almost as she had shrunk from him in the corridor
on the previous night; "Margaret, once for all, listen to me. I love
you, and I believe you love me. If this is true, no obstacle on earth
shall part us so long as we live. There is only one condition upon which
I will let you go this day."

"What is that condition?"

"Tell me that I have been fooled by my own egotism. I am twelve years
older than you, Margaret, and there is nothing very romantic or
interesting either in myself or my worldly position. Tell me that you do
not love me. I am a proud man, I will not sue _in formâ pauperis_. If
you do not love me, Margaret, you are free to go."

Margaret bowed her head, and moved slowly towards the door.

"You are going--Miss Wilmot!"

"Yes, I am going. Farewell, Mr. Austin."

Clement caught the retreating girl by her wrist.

"You shall not go thus, Margaret Wilmot!" he cried, passionately--"not
thus! You shall speak to me! You shall speak plainly! You shall speak
the truth! You do not love me?"

"No; I do not love you."

"It was all a farce, then--a delusion--it was all falsehood and trickery
from first to last. When you smiled at me, your smile was a mockery;
when you blushed, your blushes were the simulated blushes of a professed
coquette. Every tender word you have ever spoken to me--every tremulous
cadence in your low voice--every tearful look in the eyes that have
seemed so truthful--all--it has altogether been false--altogether a
delusion--a----"

The strong man covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud.
Margaret watched him with tearless eyes; her lips were convulsively
contracted, but there was no other evidence of emotion in her face.

"Why did you do this, Margaret?" Clement asked at last, in a
heart-rending voice; "why did you do this cruel thing?"

"I will tell you why," the girl answered, slowly and deliberately; "I
will tell you why, Mr. Austin; and then I shall seem utterly despicable
in your eyes, and it will be a very easy thing for you to blot my image
from your heart. I was a poor desolate girl; and I was worse than poor
and desolate, for the stain of my father's shameful history blackened my
name. It was a fine thing for such as me to win the love of an honest
man--a gentleman--who could shelter me from all the troubles of life,
and give me a stainless name and an honourable place in society. I was
the daughter of a returned convict, an outcast, and your love offered me
a splendid chance of redemption from the black depths of disgrace and
misery in which I lived. I was only mortal, Clement Austin; what was
there in my blood that should make me noble, or good, or strong to stand
against temptation? I seized upon the one chance of my miserable life; I
plotted to win your love. Step by step I lured you on until you offered
to make me your wife. That was my end and aim. I triumphed; and for a
time enjoyed my success, and the advantages that it brought me. But I
suppose the worst sinners have some kind of conscience. Mine was
awakened last night, and I resolved to spare you the misery of being
married to a woman who comes of such a race as that from which I
spring."

Nothing could be more callous than the manner with which Margaret Wilmot
had made this speech. Her tones had never faltered. She had spoken
slowly, pausing before every fresh sentence; but she had spoken like a
wretched creature, whose withered heart was almost incapable of womanly
emotion. Clement Austin looked at her with a blank wondering stare.

"Oh! great heavens!" he cried at last; "how could I think it possible
that any man could be as cruelly deceived as I have been by this woman!"

"I may go now, Mr. Austin?" said Margaret.

"Yes, you may go now--_you_, who once were the woman I loved; you, who
have thrown away the beautiful mask I believed in, and revealed to me
the face of a skeleton; you, who have lifted the silver veil of
imagination to show me the hideous ghastliness of reality. Go, Margaret
Wilmot; and may Heaven forgive you!"

"Do you forgive me, Mr. Austin?"

"Not yet. I will pray God to make me strong enough to forgive you!"

"Farewell, Clement!"

If my readers have seen _Manfred_ at Drury Lane, let them remember the
tone in which Miss Rose Leclercq breathed her last farewell to Mr.
Phelps, and they will know how Margaret Wilmot pronounced this mournful
word--love's funeral bell,--

"Farewell, Clement!"

"One word, Miss Wilmot," cried Mr. Austin. "I have loved you too much in
the past ever to become indifferent to your fate. Where are you going?"

"To London."

"To your old apartments at Clapham?"

"Oh, no, no!"

"Have you money--money enough to last you for some time?"

"Yes; I have saved money."

"If you should be in want of help, will you let me help you?"

"Willingly, Mr. Austin. I am not too proud to accept your help in the
hour of my need."

"You will write to me, then, at my mother's, or you will write to my
mother herself, if ever you require assistance. I shall tell my mother
nothing of what has passed between us this day, except that we have
parted. You are going by the half-past nine o'clock train, you say, Miss
Wilmot?"

Clement had only spoken the truth when he said that he was a proud man.
He asked this question in the same business-like tone in which he might
have addressed a lady who was quite indifferent to him.

"Yes, Mr. Austin."

"I will order a fly for you, then. You have five minutes to spare. And I
will send one of the waiters to the station, so that you may have no
trouble about your luggage."

Clement rang the bell, and gave the necessary orders. Then he bowed
gravely to Margaret, and wished her good morning as she left the room.

And this is how Margaret Wilmot parted from Clement Austin.

CHAPTER XXXV.

A DISCOVERY AT THE LUXEMBOURG.

While Henry Dunbar sat in his lonely room at Maudesley Abbey, held
prisoner by his broken leg, and waiting anxiously for the hour in which
he should be allowed the privilege of taking his first experimental
promenade upon crutches, Sir Philip Jocelyn and his beautiful young wife
drove together on the crowded boulevards of the French capital.

They had been southward, and had returned to the gayest capital in all
the world at the time when that capital is at its best and brightest.
They had returned to Paris for the early new year: and, as this year
happened fortunately to be ushered into existence by a sharp frost and a
bright sunny sky, the boulevards were not the black rivers of mud and
slush that they are apt to be in the first days of the infantine year.
Prince Louis Napoleon Buonaparte was only First President as yet; and
Paris was by no means the wonderful city of endless boulevards and
palatial edifices that it has since grown to be under the master hand
which rules and beautifies it, as a lover adorns his mistress. But it
was not the less the most charming city in the universe; and Philip
Jocelyn and his wife were as happy as two children in this paradise of
brick and mortar.

They suited each other so well; they were never tired of each other's
society, or at a stand-still for want of something to say to each other.
They were rather frivolous, perhaps; but a little frivolity may be
pardoned in two people who were so very young and so entirely happy. Sir
Philip may have been a little too much devoted to horses and dogs, and
Laura may have been a shade too enthusiastic upon the subject of new
bonnets, and the jewellery in the Rue de la Paix. But if they idled a
little just now, in this delicious honeymoon-time, when it was so sweet
to be together always, from morning till night, driving in a sleigh with
jingling bells upon the snowy roads in the Bois, sitting on the balcony
at Meurice's at night, looking down into the long lamp-lit street and
the misty gardens, where the trees were leafless and black against the
dark blue sky, they meant to do their duty, and be useful to their
fellow-creatures, when they were settled at Jocelyn's Rock. Sir Philip
had half-a-dozen schemes for free schools, and model cottages with ovens
that would bake everything in the world, and chimneys that would never
smoke. And Laura had her own pet plans. Was she not an heiress, and
therefore specially sent into the world to give happiness to people who
had been born without that pleasant appendage of a silver spoon in their
infantine mouths? She meant to be scrupulously conscientious in the
administration of her talents; and sometimes at church on a Sunday, when
the sermon was particularly awakening, she mentally debated the serious
question as to whether new bonnets, and a pair of Jouvin's gloves daily,
were not sinful; but I think she decided that the new bonnets and gloves
were, on the whole, a pardonable weakness, as being good for trade.

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