Walter H. Eddy - "The Vitamine Manual"

various various - "The Belgian Cookbook"

L. Schipper - "De Liereman"

E.A. Bennett - "Journalism for Women"

A  /  B  /  C  /  D  /  E  /   F  /  G  /  H  /  I  /  J  /   K  /  L  /  M  /  N  /  O   P  /  R  /  S  /  T  /  U  /  V  /  W  /  X  /  Y  /  Z

Henry Dunbar by M. E. Braddon

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




"My mother, who had never in her life refused me anything, did not long
oppose me to-day. A hansom cab rattled me off to the station; and at
five minutes before the half-hour I was on the platform, with my ticket
for Kylmington in my pocket."




CHAPTER XLVII.

THE DAWN.


"The clock of Kylmington church, which was as much behind any other
public timekeeper I had ever encountered as the town of Kylmington was
behind any other town I had ever explored, struck eight as I opened the
little wooden gate of the churchyard, and went into the shade of an
avenue of stunted sycamores, which was supposed to be the chief glory of
Kylmington.

"It was twenty minutes past eight by London time, and the summer sun had
gone down, leaving all the low western sky bathed in vivid yellow light,
which deepened into crimson as I watched it.

"I had been more than an hour and a half in Kylmington. I had taken some
slight refreshment at the principal hotel--a queer, old-fashioned place,
with a ruinous, weedy appearance pervading it, and the impress of
incurable melancholy stamped on the face of every scrap of rickety
furniture and lopsided window-blind. I had taken some slight
refreshment--to this hour I don't know _what_ it was I ate upon that
balmy summer evening, so entirely was my mind absorbed by that bright
hope, which was growing brighter and brighter every moment. I had been
to the stationer's shop, which still bore above its window the faded
letters of the name 'Jakins,' though the last of the Jakinses had long
left Kylmington. I had been to this shop, and from a good-natured but
pensive matron I had heard tidings that made my bright hope a still
brighter certainty.

"I began business by asking if there was any lady in Kylmington who gave
lessons in music and singing.

"'Yes,' Mr. Jakins's successor told me, 'there were two music-mistresses
in the town--one was Madame Carinda, who taught at Grove House, the
fashionable ladies' school; the other was Miss Wilson, whose terms were
lower than Madame Carinda's--though Madame wasn't a bit a foreigner
except by name--and who was much respected in the town. Likewise her
papa, which had been quite the gentleman, attending church twice every
Sunday as regular as the day came round, and being quite a picture of
respectability, with his venerable pious-looking grey hair.'

"I gave a little start as I heard this.

"'Miss Wilson lived with her papa, did she?' I asked.

"'Yes,' the woman told me; 'Miss Wilson had lived with her papa till the
poor old gentleman's death.'

"'Oh, he was dead, then?'

"'Yes, Mr. Wilson had died in the previous December, of a kind of
decline, fading away like, almost unbeknown; and being, oh, so
faithfully nursed and cared for by that blessed daughter of his. And
people did say that he had once been very wealthy, and had lost his
money in some speculation; and the loss of it had preyed upon his mind,
and he had fallen into a settled melancholy like, and was never seen to
smile.'

"The woman opened a drawer as she talked to me, and, after turning over
some papers, took out a card--a card with embossed edges, fly-spotted,
and dusty, and with a little faded blue ribbon attached to it--a card on
which there was written, in the hand I knew so well, an announcement
that Miss Wilson, of the Hermitage, would give instruction in music and
singing for a guinea a quarter.

"I had been about to ask for a description of the young music-mistress,
but I had no need to do so now.

"'Miss Wilson _is_ the young lady I wish to see,' I said. 'Will you
direct me to the Hermitage? I will call there early to-morrow morning.'

"The proprietress of Jakins's, who was, I dare say, something of a
matchmaker, after the manner of all good-natured matrons, smiled
significantly.

"'I know where you could see Miss Wilson, nearer than the Hermitage,'
she said, 'and sooner than to-morrow morning. She works very hard all
day,--poor, dear, delicate-looking young thing; but every evening when
it's tolerably fine, she goes to the churchyard. It's the only walk I've
ever seen her take since her father's death. She goes past my window
regular every night, just about when I'm shutting up, and from my door I
can see her open the gate and go into the churchyard. It's a doleful
walk to take alone at that time of the evening, to be sure, though some
folks think it's the pleasantest walk in all Kylmington.'

"It was in consequence of this conversation that I found myself under
the shadow of the trees while the Kylmington clock was striking eight.

"The churchyard was a square flat, surrounded on all sides by a low
stone wall, beyond which the fields sloped down to the mouth of a river
that widened into the sea at a little distance from Kylmington, but
which hereabouts had a very dingy melancholy look when the tide was out,
as it was to-night.

"There was no living creature except myself in the churchyard as I came
out of the shadow of the trees on to the flat, where the grass grew long
among the unpretending headstones.

"I looked at all the newest stones till I came at last to one standing
in the obscurest corner of the churchyard, almost hidden by the low
wall.

"There was a very brief inscription on this modest headstone; but it was
enough to tell me whose ashes lay buried under the spot on which I
stood.

_"To the Memory of
J. W.
Who died December 19, 1853.
'Lord have mercy upon me, a sinner!'_

"I was still looking at this brief memorial, when I heard a woman's
dress rustling upon the long rank grass, and turning suddenly, saw my
darling coming towards me, very pale, very pensive, but with a kind of
seraphic resignation upon her face which made her seem to me more
beautiful than I had ever seen her before.

"She started at seeing me, but did not faint. She only grew paler than
she had been before, and pressed her two hands on her breast, as if to
still the sudden tumult of her heart.

"I made her take my arm and lean upon it, and we walked up and down the
narrow path talking until the last low line of light faded out of the
dusky sky.

"All that I could say to her was scarcely enough to shake her
resolution--to uproot her conviction that her father's guilt was an
insurmountable barrier between us. But when I told her of my broken
life--when, in the earnestness of my pleading, she perceived the proof
of a constancy that no time could shake, I could see that she wavered.

"'I only want you to be happy, Clement,' she said. 'My former life has
been such an unhappy one, that I tremble at the thought of linking it to
yours. The shame, Clement--think of _that_. How will you answer people
when they ask you the name of your wife?'

"'I will tell them that she has no name, but that which she has honoured
by accepting from me. I will tell them that she is the noblest and
dearest of women, and that her history is a story of unparalleled virtue
and devotion!'

"I sent a telegraphic message to my mother early the next morning; and
in the afternoon the dear soul arrived at Kylmington to embrace her
future daughter. We sat late in the little parlour of the Hermitage; a
dreary cottage, looking out on the flat shore, half sand, half mud, and
the low water lying in greenish pools. Margaret told us of her father's
penitence.

"'No repentance was ever more sincere, Clement,' she said, for she
seemed afraid we should doubt the possibility of penitence in such a
criminal as Joseph Wilmot. 'My poor father--my poor wronged, unhappy
father!--yes, wronged, Clement, you must not forget that; you must never
forget that in the first instance he was wronged, and deeply wronged, by
the man who was murdered. When first we came here, his mind brooded upon
that, and he seemed to look upon what he had done as an ignorant savage
would look upon the vengeance which his heathenish creed had taught him
to consider a justifiable act of retaliation. Little by little I won my
poor father away from such thoughts as these: till by-and-by he grew to
think of Henry Dunbar as he was when they were young men together,
linked by a kind of friendship, before the forging of the bills, and all
the trouble that followed. He thought of his old master as he knew him
first, and his heart was softened towards the dead man's memory; and
from that time his penitence began. He was sorry for what he had done.
No words can describe that sorrow, Clement: and may you never have to
watch, as I have watched, the anguish of a guilty soul! Heaven is very
merciful. If my father had failed to escape, and had been hung, he would
have died hardened and impenitent. God had compassion on him, and gave
him time to repent.'"

_(The end of the story.)_




THE EPILOGUE:

ADDED BY CLEMENT AUSTIN SEVEN YEARS AFTERWARDS.


"My wife and I hear sometimes, through my old friend Arthur Lovell, of
the new master and mistress of Maudesley Abbey, Sir Philip and Lady
Jocelyn, who oscillate between the Rock and the Abbey when they are in
Warwickshire. Lady Jocelyn is a beautiful woman, frank, generous,
noble-hearted, beloved by every creature within twenty miles' radius of
her home, and idolized by her husband. The sad history of her father's
death has been softened by the hand of Time; and she is happy with her
children and her husband in the grand old home that was so long
overshadowed by the sinister presence of the false Henry Dunbar.

"We are very happy. No prying eye would ever read in Margaret's bright
face the sad story of her early life. A new existence has begun for her
as wife and mother. She has little time to think of that miserable past;
but I think that, sound Protestant though she may be in every other
article of faith, amidst all her prayers those are not the least fervent
which she offers up for the guilty soul of her wretched father.

"We are very happy. The secret of my wife's history is hidden in our own
breasts--a dark chapter in the criminal romance of life, never to be
revealed upon earth. The Winchester murder is forgotten amongst the many
other guilty mysteries which are never entirely solved. If Joseph
Wilmot's name is ever mentioned, people suggest that he went to America;
indeed, there are people who go farther, and say they have seen him in
America.

"My mother keeps house for us; and in very nearly seven years'
experience we have never found any disunion to arise from this
arrangement. The pretty Clapham villa is gay with the sound of
children's voices, and the shrill carol of singing birds, and the joyous
barking of Skye terriers. We have added a nursery wing already to one
side of the house, and have balanced it on the other by a vinery, built
after the model of those which adorn the mansion of my senior. The
Misses Balderby have taken what they call a 'great fancy' to my wife,
and they swarm over our drawing-room carpets in blue or pink flounces
very often, on what they call 'social evenings for a little music.' I
find that a little music is only a synonym with the Misses Balderby for
a great deal of noise.

"I love my wife's playing best, though they are kind enough to perform
twenty-page compositions by Bach and Mendelssohn for my amusement: and I
am never happier than on those dusky summer evenings when we sit alone
together in the shadowy drawing-room, and talk to each other, while
Margaret's skilful fingers glide softly over the keys in wandering
snatches of melody that melt and die away like the low breath of the
summer wind."

Audio slideshow: Robert Shaw discusses his production of Sylvia Plath's only play
What is your biggest guilty green secret?

Video: Costa prize winners

A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

He said he decided to stick to type and formatting that could have been created on a typewriter, with the first ten pages duplicating shots of Torrance's work from the film. "I thought 'if he continues to get crazier, what would those pages look like?'" he said. "I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film, became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie, and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.

He's included a spoof review from the blog OverThinkingIt.com on the book's back jacket, which compares it to "the best of Beckett" in its "lack of forward momentum", and considers the struggles of the author, "heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence". "It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power," the review says. "Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint."

So far, Buehler says that around 1,000 people have viewed the book, for sale on Blurb.com for $8.95 in paperback, or $22.95 in hardback, and he's sold "a few" copies, with sales now starting to pick up steam. "A few people have asked me to sign it - they're looking it as a piece of art rather than a funny thing to give to a Kubrick fan," he said. "If you're not a Kubrick or King fan, you might not even get it."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet regains citizenship
Nonagenarian Diana Athill, Irish writer Sebastian Barry and first book winner Sadie Jones talk about their books and their writing after the awards were announced last night