Henry Dunbar by M. E. Braddon

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

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"If Margaret Wilmot's father had done this hateful deed, he must pay the
penalty of his crime, though the broken heart of his innocent daughter
was a sacrifice to his iniquity. If, by a strange fatality, I, who so
dearly loved this girl, had urged on the coming of this fatal day, I had
only been a blind instrument in the mighty hand of Providence, and I had
no cause to regret the revelation of the truth.

"There was only one thing left me. The world would shrink away, perhaps,
from the murderer's daughter; but I, who had seen her nature proved in
the fiery furnace of affliction, knew what a priceless pearl Heaven had
given me in this woman, whose name must henceforward sound vile in the
ears of honest men, and I did not recoil from the horror of my poor
girl's history.

"'If it has been my destiny to bring this great sorrow upon her,' I
thought, 'it shall be my duty to make her future safe and happy."

"But would Margaret ever consent to be my wife, if she discovered that I
had been the means of bringing about the discovery of her father's
crime?

"This was not a pleasant thought, and it was uppermost in my mind while
I sat opposite to the detective, who ate a very hearty dinner, and whose
air of suppressed high spirits was intolerable to me.

"Success is the very wine of life, and it was scarcely strange that Mr.
Carter should feel pleased at having succeeded in finding a clue to the
mystery that had so completely baffled his colleagues. So long as I had
believed in Henry Dunbar's guilt, I had felt no compunction as to the
task I was engaged in. I had even caught something of the detective's
excitement in the chase. But now, now that I knew the shame and anguish
which our discovery must inevitably entail upon the woman I loved, my
heart sank within me, and I hated Mr. Carter for his ardent enjoyment of
his triumph.

"'You don't mind travelling by the mail-train, do you, Mr. Austin?' the
detective said, presently.

"'Not particularly; but why do you ask me?'

"'Because I shall leave Winchester by the mail to-night.'

"'What for?'

"'To get as fast as I can to Maudesley Abbey, where I shall have the
honour of arresting Mr. Joseph Wilmot.'

"So soon! I shuddered at the rapid course of justice when once a
criminal mystery is revealed.

"'But what if you should be mistaken! What if Joseph Wilmot was the
victim and not the murderer?"

"'In that case I shall soon discover my mistake. If the man at Maudesley
Abbey is Henry Dunbar, there must be plenty of people able to identify
him.'

"'But Henry Dunbar has been away five-and-thirty years.'

"'He has; but people don't think much of the distance between England
and Calcutta nowadays. There must be people in England now who knew the
banker in India. I'm going down to the resident magistrate, Mr. Austin;
the man who had Henry Dunbar, or the supposed Henry Dunbar, arrested
last August. I shall leave the clothes in his care, for Joseph Wilmot
will be tried at the Winchester assizes. The mail leaves Winchester at a
quarter before eleven,' added Mr. Carter, looking at his watch as he
spoke; 'so I haven't much time to lose.'

"He took the bundle from the portmanteau, wrapped it in a sheet of brown
paper which the waiter had brought him a few minutes before, and hurried
away. I sat alone brooding over the fire, and trying to reason upon the
events of the day.

"The waiter was moving softly about the room; but though I saw him look
at me wistfully once or twice, he did not speak to me until he was about
to leave the room, when he told me that there was a letter on the
mantelpiece; a letter which had come by the evening post.

"The letter had been staring me in the face all the evening, but in my
abstraction I had never noticed it.

"It was from my mother. I opened it when the waiter had left me, and
read the following lines:

"'MY DEAREST CLEM,--_I was very glad to get your letter this morning,
announcing your safe arrival at Winchester. I dare say I am a foolish
old woman, but I always begin to think of railway collisions, and all
manner of possible and impossible calamities, directly you leave me on
ever so short a journey.

"'I was very much surprised yesterday morning by a visit from Margaret
Wilmot. I was very cool to her at first; for though you never told me
why your engagement to her was so abruptly broken off, I could not but
think she was in some manner to blame, since I knew you too well, my
darling boy, to believe you capable of inconstancy or unkindness. I
thought, therefore, that her visit was very ill-timed, and I let her see
that my feelings towards her were entirely changed.

"'But, oh, Clement, when I saw the alteration in that unhappy girl, my
heart melted all at once, and I could not speak to her coldly or
unkindly. I never saw such a change in any one before. She is altered
from a pretty girl into a pale haggard woman. Her manners are as much
changed as her personal appearance. She had a feverish restlessness that
fidgeted me out of my life; and her limbs trembled every now and then
while she was speaking, and her words seemed to die away as she tried to
utter them. She wanted to see you, she said; and when I told her that
you were out of town, she seemed terribly distressed. But afterwards,
when she had questioned me a good deal, and I told her that you had gone
to Winchester, she started suddenly to her feet, and began to tremble
from head to foot.

"'I rang for wine, and made her take some. She did not refuse to take
it; on the contrary, she drank the wine quite eagerly, and said, 'I hope
it will give me strength. I am so feeble, so miserably weak and feeble,
and I want to be strong. I persuaded her to stop and rest; but she
wouldn't listen to me. She wanted to go back to London, she said; she
wanted to be in London by a particular time. Do what I would, I could
not detain her. She took my hands, and pressed them to her poor pale
lips, and then hurried away, so changed from the bright Margaret of the
past, that a dreadful thought took possession of my mind, and I began to
fear that she was mad.'_

"The letter went on to speak of other things; but I could not think of
anything but my mother's description of Margaret's visit. I understood
her agitation at hearing of my journey to Winchester. She knew that only
one motive could lead me to that place. I knew now that the familiar
figure I had seen in the moonlit street and in the dusky grove was no
phantasm of my over-excited brain. I knew now that it was the figure of
the noble-hearted woman I loved--the figure of the heroic daughter, who
had followed me to Winchester, and dogged my footsteps, in the vain
effort to stand between her father and the penalty of his crime.

"As I had been watched in the street on the previous night, I had been
watched to-night in the grove. The rustling dress, the shadowy figure
melting in the obscurity of the rain-blotted landscape had belonged to
Margaret Wilmot!

"Mr. Carter came in while I was still pondering over my mother's letter.

"'I'm off,' he said, briskly. 'Will you settle the bill, Mr. Austin? I
suppose you'd like to be with me to the end of this business. You'll go
down to Maudesley Abbey with me, won't you?'

"'No,' I said; 'I will have no farther hand in this matter. Do your
duty, Mr. Carter; and the reward I promised shall be faithfully paid to
you. If Joseph Wilmot was the treacherous murderer of his old master, he
must pay the penalty of his crime; I have neither the power nor the wish
to shield him. But he is the father of the woman I love. It is not for
me to help in hunting him to the gallows.'

"Mr. Carter looked very grave.

"'To be sure, sir,' he said; 'I recollect now. I've been so wrapt up in
this business that I forgot the difference it would make to you; but
many a good girl has had a bad father, you know, sir, and----'

"I put up my hand to stop him.

"'Nothing that can possibly happen will lessen my esteem for Miss
Wilmot,' I said. 'That point admits of no discussion.'

"I took out my pocket-book, gave the detective money for his expenses,
and wished him good night.

"When he had left me, I went out into the High Street. The rain was
over, and the moon was shining in a cloudless sky. Heaven knows how I
should have met Margaret Wilmot had chance thrown her in my way
to-night. But my mind was filled with her image; and I walked about the
quiet town, expecting at every turn in the street, at every approaching
footstep sounding on the pavement, to see the figure I had seen last
night. But go where I would I saw no sign of her; so I came back to the
hotel at last, to sit alone by the dull fire, and write this record of
my day's work."

* * * * *

While Clement Austin sat in the lonely sitting-room at the George Inn,
with his rapid pen scratching along the paper before him, a woman walked
up and down the lamp-lit platform at Rugby, waiting for the branch train
which was to take her on to Shorncliffe.

This woman was Margaret Wilmot--the haggard, trembling girl whose
altered manner had so terrified simple-hearted Mrs. Austin.

But she did not tremble now. She had pushed her thick black veil away
from her face, and though no vestige of healthy colour had come back to
her cheeks or lips, her features had a set look of steadfast resolution,
and her eyes looked straight before her, like the eyes of a person who
has one special purpose in view, and will not swerve or falter until
that purpose has been carried out.

There was only one elderly gentleman in the first-class carriage in
which Margaret Wilmot took her seat when the branch train for
Shorncliffe was ready; and as this one fellow-passenger slept throughout
the journey, with his face covered by an expansive silk handkerchief,
Margaret was left free to think her own thoughts.

The girl was scarcely less quiet than her slumbering companion; she sat
in one changeless attitude, with her hands clasped together in her lap,
and her eyes always looking straight forward, as they had looked when
she walked upon the platform. Once she put her hand mechanically to the
belt of her dress, and then shook her head with a sigh as she drew it
away.

"How long the time seems!" she said; "how long! and I have no watch now,
and I can't tell how late it is. If they should be there before me. If
they should be travelling by this train. No, that's impossible. I know
that neither Clement, nor the man that was with him, left Winchester by
the train that took me to London. But if they should telegraph to London
or Shorncliffe?"

She began to tremble at the thought of this possibility. If that grand
wonder of science, the electric telegraph, should be made use of by the
men she dreaded, she would be too late upon the errand she was going on.

The mail train stopped at Shorncliffe while she was thinking of this
fatal possibility. She got out and asked one of the porters to get her a
fly; but the man shook his head.

"There's no flies to be had at this time of night, miss," he said,
civilly enough. "Where do you want to go?"

She dared not tell him her destination; secresy was essential to the
fulfilment of her purpose.

"I can walk," she said; "I am not going very far." She left the station
before the man could ask her any further questions, and went out into
the moonlit country road on which the station abutted. She went through
the town of Shorncliffe, where the diamond casements were all darkened
for the night, and under the gloomy archway, past the dark shadows which
the ponderous castle-towers flung across the rippling water. She left
the town, and went out upon the lonely country road, through patches of
moonlight and shadow, fearless in her self-abnegation, with only one
thought in her mind: "Would she be in time?"

She was very tired when she came at last to the iron gates at the
principal entrance of Maudesley Park. She had heard Clement Austin speak
of a bridle-path through the park to Lisford, and he had told her that
this bridle-path was approached by a gate in the park-fence upwards of a
mile from the principal lodge.

She walked along by this fence, looking for the gate.

She found it at last; a little low wooden gate, painted white, and only
fastened by a latch. Beyond the gate there was a pathway winding in and
out among the trunks of the great elms, across the dry grass.

Margaret Wilmot followed this winding path, slowly and doubtfully, till
she came to the margin of a vast open lawn. Upon the other side of this
lawn she saw the dark frontage of Maudesley Abbey, and three tall
lighted windows gleaming through the night.

CHAPTER XL.

FLIGHT.

The man who called himself Henry Dunbar was lying on the tapestried
cushions of a carved oaken couch that stood before the fire in his
spacious sitting-room. He lay there, listening to the March wind roaring
in the broad chimney, and watching the blazing coals and the crackling
logs of wood.

It was three o'clock in the morning now, and the servants had left the
room at midnight; but the sick man had ordered a huge fire to be made
up--a fire that promised to last for some hours.

The master of Maudesley Abbey was in no way improved by his long
imprisonment. His complexion had faded to a dull leaden hue; his cheeks
were sunken; his eyes looked unnaturally large and unnaturally bright.
Long hours of loneliness, long sleepless nights, and thoughts that from
every diverging point for ever narrowed inwards to one hideous centre,
had done their work of him. The man lying opposite the fire to-night
looked ten years older than the man who gave his evidence so boldly and
clearly before the coroner's jury at Winchester.

The crutches--they were made of some light, polished wood, and were
triumphs of art in their way--leaned against a table close to the couch,
and within reach to the man's hand. He had learned to walk about the
rooms and on the gravel-drive before the Abbey with these crutches, and
had even learned to do without them, for he was now able to set the
lamed foot upon the ground, and to walk a few paces pretty steadily,
with no better support than that of his cane; but as yet he walked
slowly and doubtfully, in spite of his impatience to be about once more.

Heaven knows how many different thoughts were busy in his restless brain
that night. Strange memories came back to him, as he lay staring at the
red chasms and craggy steeps in the fire--memories of a time so long
gone by, that all the personages of that period seemed to him like the
characters in a book, or the figures in a picture. He saw their faces,
and he remembered how they had looked at him; and among these other
faces he saw the many semblances which his own had worn.

O God, how that face had changed! The bright, frank, boyish countenance,
looking eagerly out upon a world that seemed so pleasant; the young
man's hopeful smile; and then--and then, the hard face that grew harder
with the lapse of years; the smile that took no radiance from a light
within; the frown that blackened as the soul grew darker. He saw all
these, and still for ever, amid a thousand distracting ideas, his
thoughts, which were beyond his own volition, concentrated in the one
plague-spot of his life, and held him there, fixed as a wretch bound
hand and foot upon the rack.

"If I could only get away from this place," he said to himself; "if I
could get away, it would all be different. Change of scene, activity,
hurrying from place to place in new countries and amongst strange
people, would have the usual influence upon me. That memory would pass
away then, as other memories have passed; only to be recalled, now and
then, in a dream; or conjured up by some chance allusion dropped from
the lips of strangers, some coincidence of resemblance in a scene, or
face, or tone, or look. _That_ memory cannot be so much worse than the
rest that it should be ineffaceable, where they have been effaced. But
while I stay here, here in this dismal room, where the dropping of the
ashes on the hearth, the ticking of the clock upon the chimney-piece,
are like that torture I have read of somewhere--the drop of water
falling at intervals upon the victim's forehead until the anguish of its
monotony drives him raving mad--while I stay here there is no hope of
forgetfulness, no possibility of peace. I saw him last night, and the
night before last, and the night before that. I see him always when I go
to sleep, smiling at me, as he smiled when we went into the grove. I can
hear his voice, and the words he said, every syllable of those
insignificant words, selfish murmurs about the probability of his being
fatigued in that long walk, the possibility that it would have been
better to hire a fly, and to have driven by the road--bah! What was he
that I should be sorry for him? Am I sorry for him? No! I am sorry for
myself, and for the torture which I have created for myself. O God! I
can see him now as he looked up at me out of the water. The motion of
the stream gave a look of life to his face, and I almost thought he was
still alive, and I had never done that deed."

These were the pleasant fireside thoughts with which the master of
Maudesley Abbey beguiled the hours of his convalescence. Heaven keep our
memories green! exclaims the poet novelist; and Heaven preserve us from
such deeds as make our memories hideous to us!

From such a reverie as this the master of Maudesley Abbey was suddenly
aroused by the sound of a light knocking against one of the windows of
his room--the window nearest him as he lay on the couch.

He started, and lifted himself into a sitting posture.

"Who is there?" he cried, impatiently.

He was frightened, and clasped his two hands upon, his forehead, trying
to think who the late visitant could be. Why should any one come to him
at such an hour, unless--unless _it_ was discovered? There could be no
other justification for such an intrusion.

His breath came short and thick as he thought of this. Had it come at
last, then, that awful moment which he had dreamed of so many
times--that hideous crisis which he had imagined under so many different
aspects? Had it come at last, like this?--quietly, in the dead of the
night, without one moment's warning?--before he had prepared himself to
escape it, or hardened himself to meet it? Had it come now? The man
thought all this while he listened, with his chest heaving, his breath
coming in hoarse gasps, waiting for the reply to his question.

There was no reply except the knocking, which grew louder and more
hurried.

If there can be expression in the tapping of a hand against a pane of
glass, there was expression in that hand--the expression of entreaty
rather than of demand, as it seemed to that white and terror-stricken
listener.

His heart gave a great throb, like a prisoner who leaps away from the
fetters that have been newly loosened.

"What a fool I have been!" he thought. "If it was that, there would be
knocking and ringing at the hall-door, instead of that cautious summons.
I suppose that fellow Vallance has got into some kind of trouble, and
has come in the dead of the night to hound me for money. It would be
only like him to do it. He knows he must be admitted, let him come when
he may."

The invalid gave a groan as he thought this. He got up and walked to the
window, leaning upon his cane as he went.

The knocking still sounded. He was close to the window, and he heard
something besides the knocking--a woman's voice, not loud, but
peculiarly audible by reason of its earnestness.

"Let me in; for pity's sake let me in!"

The man standing at the window knew that voice: only too well, only too
well. It was the voice of the girl who had so persistently followed him,
who had only lately succeeded in seeing him. He drew back the bolts that
fastened the long French window, opened it, and admitted Margaret
Wilmot.

"Margaret!" he cried; "what, in Heaven's name, brings you here at such
an hour as this?"

"Danger!" answered the girl, breathlessly. "Danger to you! I have been
running, and the words seem to choke me as I speak. There's not a moment
to be lost, not one moment. They will be here directly; they cannot fail
to be here directly. I felt as if they had been close behind me all the
way--they may have been so. There is not a moment--not one moment!"

She stopped, with her hands clasped upon her breast. She was incoherent
in her excitement, and knew that she was so, and struggled to express
herself clearly.

"Oh, father!" she exclaimed, lifting her hands to her head, and pushing
the loose tangled hair away from her face; "I have tried to save you--I
have tried to save you! But sometimes I think that is not to be. It may
be God's mercy that you should be taken, and your wretched daughter can
die with you!"

She fell upon her knees, suddenly, in a kind of delirium, and lifted up
her clasped hands.

"O God, have mercy upon him!" she cried. "As I prayed in this room
before--as I have prayed every hour since that dreadful time--I pray
again to-night. Have mercy upon him, and give him a penitent heart, and
wash away his sin. What is the penalty he may suffer here, compared to
that Thou canst inflict hereafter? Let the chastisement of man fall upon
him, so as Thou wilt accept his repentance!"

"Margaret," said Joseph Wilmot, grasping the girl's arm, "are you
praying that I may be hung? Have you come here to do that? Get up, and
tell me what is the matter!"

Margaret Wilmot rose from her knees shuddering, and looking straight
before her, trying to be calm--trying to collect her thoughts.

"Father," she said, "I have never known one hour's peaceful sleep since
the night I left this room. For the last three nights I have not slept
at all. I have been travelling, walking from place to place, until I
could drop on the floor at your feet. I want to tell you--but the
words--the words--won't come--somehow----"

She pointed to her dry lips, which moved, but made no sound. There was a
bottle of brandy and a glass on the table near the couch. Joseph Wilmot
was seldom without that companion. He snatched up the bottle and glass,
poured out some of the brandy, and placed it between his daughter's
lips. She drank the spirit eagerly. She would have drunk living fire,
if, by so doing, she could have gained strength to complete her task.

"You must leave this house directly!" she gasped. "You must go abroad,
anywhere, so long as you are safe out of the way. They will be here to
look for you--Heaven only knows how soon!"

"They! Who?

"Clement Austin, and a man--a detective----"

"Clement Austin--your lover--your confederate? You have betrayed me,
Margaret!"

"I!" cried the girl, looking at her father.

There was something sublime in the tone of that one word--something
superb in the girl's face, as her eyes met the haggard gaze of the
murderer.

"Forgive me, my girl! No, no, you wouldn't do that, even to a loathsome
wretch like me!"

"But you will go away--you will escape from them?"

"Why should I be afraid of them? Let them come when they please, they
have no proof against me."

"No proof? Oh, father, you don't know--you don't know. They have been to
Winchester. I heard from Clement's mother that he had gone there; and I
went after him, and found out where he was--at the inn where you stayed,
where you refused to see me--and that there was a man with him. I waited
about the streets; and at night I saw them both, the man and Clement.
Oh! father, I knew they could have only one purpose in coming to that
place. I saw them at night; and the next day I watched again--waiting
about the street, and hiding myself under porches or in shops, when
there was any chance of my being seen. I saw Clement leave the George,
and take the way towards the cathedral. I went to the cathedral-yard
afterwards, and saw the strange man talking in a doorway with an old
man. I loitered about the cathedral-yard, and saw the man that was with
Clement go away, down by the meadows, towards the grove, to the place
where----"

She stopped, and trembled so violently that she was unable to speak.

Joseph Wilmot filled the glass with brandy for the second time, and put
it to his daughter's lips.

She drank about a teaspoonful, and then went on, speaking very rapidly,
and in broken sentences--

"I followed the man, keeping a good way behind, so that he might not see
that he was followed. He went straight down to the very place where--the
murder was done. Clement was there, and three men. They were there under
the trees, and they were dragging the water."

"Dragging the water! Oh, my God, why were they doing that?" cried the
man, dropping suddenly on the chair nearest to him, and with his face
livid.

For the first time since Margaret had entered the room terror took
possession of him. Until now he had listened attentively, anxiously; but
the ghastly look of fear and horror was new upon his face. He had defied
discovery. There was only one thing that could be used against him--the
bundle of clothes, the marked garments of the murdered man--those fatal
garments which he had been unable to destroy, which he had only been
able to hide. These things alone could give evidence against him; but
who should think of searching for these things? Again and again he had
thought of the bundle at the bottom of the stream, only to laugh at the
wondrous science of discovery which had slunk back baffled by so slight
a mystery, only to fancy the water-rats gnawing the dead man's garments,
and all the oose and slime creeping in and out amongst the folds until
the rotting rags became a very part of the rank river-weeds that crawled
and tangled round them.

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