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. He 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."