CLEMENT'S STORY.—BEFORE THE DAWN.
"I went back to my mother's house a broken and a disappointed man. I
had solved the mystery of Margaret's conduct, and at the same time had
set a barrier between myself and the woman I loved.
"Was there any hope that she would ever be my wife? Reason told me that
there was none. In her eyes I must henceforth appear the man who had
voluntarily set himself to work to discover her father's guilt, and
track him to the gallows.
"_Could_ she ever again love me with this knowledge in her mind? Could
she ever again look me in the face, and smile at me, remembering this?
The very sound of my name must in future be hateful to her.
"I knew the strength of my noble girl's love for her reprobate father.
I had seen the force of that affection tested by so many cruel trials.
I had witnessed my poor girl's passionate grief at Joseph Wilmot's
supposed death: and I had seen all the intensity of her anguish when
the secret of his existence, which was at the same time the secret of
his guilt, became known to her.
"'She renounced me then, rather than renounce that guilty wretch,' I
thought; 'she will hate me now that I have been the means of bringing
his most hideous crime to light.'
"Yes, the crime was hideous—almost unparalleled in horror. The
treachery which had lured the victim to his death seemed almost less
horrible than the diabolical art which had fixed upon the name of the
murdered man the black stigma of a suspected crime.
"But I knew too well that, in all the blackness of his guilt, Margaret
Wilmot would cling to her father as truly, as tenderly, as she had
clung to him in those early days when the suspicion of his
worthlessness had been only a dark shadow for ever brooding between the
man and his only child. I knew this, and I had no hope that she would
ever forgive me for my part in the weaving of that strange chain of
evidence which made the condemnation of Joseph Wilmot.
"These were the thoughts that tormented me during the first fortnight
after my return from the miserable journey to Winchester; these were
the thoughts for ever revolving in my tired brain while I waited for
tidings from the detective.
"During all that time it never once occurred to me that there was any
chance, however remote, of Joseph Wilmot's escape from his pursuer.
"I had seen the science of the detective police so invariably
triumphant over the best-planned schemes of the most audacious
criminals, that I should have considered—had I ever debated the
question, which I never did—Joseph Wilmot's evasion of justice an
actual impossibility. It was most likely that he would be taken at
Maudesley Abbey entirely unprepared, in his ignorance of the fatal
discovery at Winchester; an easy prey to the experienced detective.
"Indeed, I thought that his immediate arrest was almost a certainty;
and every morning, when I took up the papers, I expected to see a
prominent announcement to the effect that the long-undiscovered
Winchester mystery was at last solved, and that the murderer had been
taken by one of the detective police.
"But the papers gave no tidings of Joseph Wilmot; and I was surprised,
at the end of a week's time, to read the account of a detective's
skirmish on board a schooner some miles off Hull, which had resulted in
the drowning of one Stephen Vallance, an old offender. The detective's
name was given as Henry Carter. Were there two Henry Carters in the
small band of London detective police? or was it possible that my Henry
Carter could have given up so profitable a prize as Joseph Wilmot in
order to pursue unknown criminals upon the high seas? A week after I
had read of this mysterious adventure, Mr. Carter made his appearance
at Clapham, very grave of aspect and dejected of manner.
"'It's no use, sir,' he said; 'it's humiliating to an officer of my
standing in the force; but I'd better confess it freely. I've been
sold, sir—sold by a young woman too, which makes it three times as
mortifying, and a kind of insult to the male sex in general!'
"My heart gave a great throb.
"'Do you mean that Joseph Wilmot has escaped? I asked.
"He has, sir; as clean as ever a man escaped yet. He hasn't left this
country, not to my belief, for I've been running up and down between
the different outports like mad. But what of that? If he hasn't left
the country, and if he doesn't mean to leave the country, so much the
better for him, and so much the worse for those that want to catch him.
It's trying to leave England that brings most of 'em to grief, and
Joseph Wilmot's an old enough hand to know that. I'll wager he's living
as quiet and respectable as any gentleman ever lived yet.'
"Mr. Carter went on to tell me the whole story of his disappointments
and mortifications. I could understand all now: the moonlit figure in
the Winchester street, the dusky shadow beneath the dripping branches
in the grove. I could understand all now: my poor girl—my poor, brave
girl.
"When I was alone, I rendered up my thanks to Heaven for the escape of
Joseph Wilmot. I had done nothing to impede the course of justice,
though I had known full well that the punishment of the evil-doer would
crush the bravest and purest heart that ever beat in an innocent
woman's bosom. I had not dared to attempt any interposition between
Joseph Wilmot and the punishment of his crime; but I was, nevertheless,
most heartily thankful that Providence had suffered him to escape that
hideous earthly doom which is supposed to be the wisest means of
ridding society of a wretch.
"But for the wretch himself, surely long years of penitence must make a
better expiation of his guilt than that one short agony—those few
spasmodic throes, which render his death such a pleasant spectacle for
a sight-seeing populace.
"I was glad, for the sake of the guilty and miserable creature himself,
that Joseph Wilmot had escaped. I was still gladder for the sake of
that dear hope which was more to me than any hope on earth—the hope of
making Margaret my wife.
"'There will be no hideous recollection interwoven with my image now,'
I thought; 'she will forgive me when I tell her the history of my
journey to Winchester. She will let me take her away from the
companionship that must be loathsome to her, in spite of her devotion.
She will let me bring her to a happy home as my cherished wife.'
"I thought this, and then in the next moment I feared that Margaret
might cling persistently to the dreadful duty of her life—the duty of
shielding and protecting a criminal; the duty of teaching a wicked man
to repent of his sins.
"I inserted an advertisement in the Times newspaper, assuring Margaret
of my unalterable love and devotion, which no circumstances could
lessen, and imploring her to write to me. Of course the advertisement
was so worded as to give no clue to the identity of the person to whom
it was addressed. The acutest official in Scotland Yard could have
gathered nothing from the lines 'From C. to M.,' so like other appeals
made through the same medium.
"But my advertisement remained unanswered—no letter came from Margaret.
"The weeks and months crept slowly past. The story of the evidence of
the clothes found at Winchester was made public, together with the
history of Joseph Wilmot's flight and escape. The business created a
considerable sensation, and Lord Herriston himself went down to
Winchester to witness the exhumation of the remains of the man who had
been buried under the name of Joseph Wilmot.
"The dead man's face was no longer recognizable. Only by induction was
the identity of Henry Dunbar ever established: but the evidence of the
identity was considered conclusive by all who were interested in the
question. Still I doubt whether, in the fabric of circumstantial
evidence against Joseph Wilmot, legal sophistry could not have
discovered some loophole by which the murderer might have escaped the
full penalty of his crime.
"The remains were removed from Winchester to Lisford Church, where
Percival Dunbar was buried in a vault beneath the chancel. The murdered
man's coffin was placed beside that of his father, and a simple marble
tablet recording the untimely death of Henry Dunbar, cruelly and
treacherously assassinated in a grove near Winchester, was erected by
order of Lady Jocelyn, who was abroad with her husband when the story
of her father's death was revealed to her.
"The weeks and months crept by. The revelation of Joseph Wilmot's guilt
left me free to return to my old position in the house of Dunbar,
Dunbar, and Balderby. But I had no heart to go back to the old business
now the hope that had made my commonplace city life so bright seemed
for ever broken. I was surprised, however, into a confession of the
truth by the good-natured junior partner, who lived near us on Clapham
Common, and who dropped in sometimes as he went by my mother's gate, to
while away an idle half-hour in some political discussion.
"He insisted upon my returning to the office directly he heard the
secret of my resignation. The business was now entirely his; for there
had been no one to succeed Henry Dunbar, and Mr. John Lovell had sold
the dead man's interest on behalf of his client, Lady Jocelyn. I went
back to my old post, but not to remain long in my old position; for a
week after my return Mr. Balderby made me an offer which I considered
as generous as it was flattering, and which I ultimately and somewhat
reluctantly accepted.
"By means of this new and most liberal arrangement, which demanded from
me a very moderate amount of capital, I became junior partner in the
firm, which was now conducted under the names of Dunbar, Dunbar,
Balderby, and Austin. The double Dunbar was still essential to us,
though the last of the male Dunbars was dead and buried under the
chancel of Lisford Church. The old name was the legitimate stamp of our
dignity as one of the oldest Anglo-Indian banking firms in the city of
London.
"My new life was smooth enough, and there was so much business to be
got through, so much responsibility vested in my hands—for Mr. Balderby
was getting fat and lazy, as regarded affairs in the City, though
untiring in the production of more forced pine-apples and hothouse
grapes than he could consume or give away—that I had not much leisure
in which to think of the one sorrow of my life. A City man may break
his heart for disappointed love, but he must do it out of business
hours if he pretends to be an honourable man: for every sorrowful
thought which wanders to the loved and lost is a separate treason
against the 'house' he serves.
"Smoking my after-dinner cigar in the narrow pathways and miniature
shrubberies of my mother's garden, I could venture to think of my lost
Margaret; and I did think of her, and pray for her with as fervent
aspirations as ever rose from a man's faithful heart. And in the dusky
stillness of the evening, with the faint odour of dewy flowers round
me, and distant stars shining dimly in that far-off opal sky; against
which the branches of the elms looked so black and dense, I used to
beguile myself—or it may be that the influence of the scene and hour
beguiled me—into the thought that my separation from Margaret could be
only a temporary one. We loved each other so truly! And after all, what
under heaven is stronger than love? I thought of my poor girl in some
lonely, melancholy place, hiding with her guilty father; in daily
companionship with a miserable wretch, whose life must be made hideous
to himself by the memory of his crime. I thought of the
self-abnegation, the heroic devotion, which made Margaret strong enough
to endure such an existence as this: and out of my belief in the
justice of Heaven there grew up in my mind the faith in a happier life
in store for my noble girl.
"My mother supported me in this faith. She knew all Margaret's story
now, and she sympathized with my love and admiration for Joseph
Wilmot's daughter. A woman's heart must have been something less than
womanly if it could have failed to appreciate my darling's devotion:
and my mother was about the last of womankind to be wanting in
tenderness and compassion for any one who had need of her pity and was
worthy of her love.
"So we both cherished the thought of the absent girl in our minds,
talking of her constantly on quiet evenings, when we sat opposite to
each other in the snug lamp-lit drawing-room, unhindered by the
presence of guests. We did not live by any means a secluded or gloomy
life, for my mother was fond of pleasant society: and I was quite as
true to Margaret while associating with agreeable people, and hearing
cheerful voices buzzing round me, as I could have been in a hermitage
whose stillness was only broken by the howling of the storm.
"It was in the dreariest part of the winter which followed Joseph
Wilmot's escape that an incident occurred which gave me a
strangely-mingled feeling of pleasure and pain. I was sitting one
evening in my mother's breakfast-parlour—a little room situated close
to the hall-door—when I heard the ringing of the bell at the
garden-gate. It was nine o'clock at night, a bitter wintry night, in
which I should least have expected any visitor. So I went on reading my
paper, while my mother speculated about the matter.
"Three minutes after the bell had rung, our parlour-maid came into the
room, and placed something on the table before me.
"'A parcel, sir,' she said, lingering a little; perhaps in the hope
that, in my eager curiosity, I might immediately open the packet, and
give her an opportunity of satisfying her own desire for information.
"I put aside my newspaper, and looked down at the object before me.
"Yes, it was a parcel—a small oblong box—about the size of those
pasteboard receptacles which are usually associated with Seidlitz
powders—an oblong box, neatly packed in white paper, secured with
several seals, and addressed to Clement Austin, Esq., Willow Bank,
Clapham.
"But the hand, the dear, well-known hand, which had addressed the
packet—my blood thrilled through my veins as I recognized the familiar
characters.
"'Who brought this parcel?' I asked, starting from my comfortable
easy-chair, and going straight out into the hall.
"The astonished parlour-maid told me that the packet had been given her
by a lady, 'a lady who was dressed in black, or dark things,' the girl
said, 'and whose face was quite hidden by a thick veil.' After leaving
the small packet, this lady got into a cab a few paces from our gate,
the girl added, 'and the cab had tore off as fast as it could tear!'
"I went out into the open yard, and looked despairingly London-wards.
There was no vestige of any cab: of course there had been ample time
for the cab in question to get far beyond reach of pursuit. I felt
almost maddened with this disappointment and vexation. It was Margaret,
Margaret herself most likely, who had come to my door; and I had lost
the opportunity of seeing her.
"I stood staring blankly up and down the road for some time, and then
went back to the parlour, where my mother, with pardonable weakness,
had pounced upon the packet, and was examining it with eyes opened to
their widest extent.
"'It is Margaret's hand!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, do open—do, please, open
it directly. What on earth can it be?'
"I tore off the white paper covering, and revealed just such an object
as I had expected to see—a box, a common-place pasteboard box, tied
securely across and across with thin twine. I cut the twine and opened
the box. At the top there was a layer of jewellers' wool, and on that
being removed, my mother gave a little shriek of surprise and
admiration.
"The box contained a fortune—a fortune in the shape of unset diamonds,
lying as close together as their nature would admit—unset diamonds,
which glittered and flashed upon us in the lamplight.
"Inside the lid there was a folded paper, upon, which the following
lines were written in the dear hand, the never-to-be-forgotten hand:
"'EVER-DEAREST CLEMENT,—_The sad and miserable secret which led to our
parting is a secret no longer. You know all, and you have no doubt
forgiven, and perhaps in part forgotten, the wretched woman to whom
your love was once so dear, and to whom the memory of your love will
ever lie a consolation and a happiness. If I dared to pray to you to
think pitifully of that most unhappy man whose secret is now known to
you, I would do so; but I cannot hope for so much mercy from men: I can
only hope it from God, who in His supreme wisdom alone can fathom the
mysteries of a repentant heart. I beg of you to deliver to Lady Jocelyn
the diamonds I place in your hands. They belong of right to her; and I
regret to say they only represent a part of the money withdrawn from
the funds in the name of Henry Dunbar. Good-bye, dear and generous
friend; this it the last you will ever hear of one whose name must
sound odious to the ears of honest men. Pity me, and forget me; and may
a happier woman be to you that which I can never be!_ M.W.'
"This was all. Nothing could be firmer than the tone of this letter, in
spite of its pensive gentleness. My poor girl could not be brought to
believe that I should hold it no disgrace to make her my wife, in spite
of the hideous story connected with her name. In my vexation and
disappointment, I appealed once more to the unfailing friend of parted
or persecuted lovers, the Jupiter of Printing-House Square.
"'_Margaret_,' I wrote in the advertisement which adorned the second
column of the _Times_ Supplement on twenty consecutive occasions, '_I
hold you to your old promise, and consider the circumstances of our
parting as in no manner a release from your old engagement. The
greatest wrong you can inflict upon me will be inflicted by your
desertion_. C. A.'
"This advertisement was as useless as its predecessor. I looked in vain
for any answer.
"I lost no time in fulfilling the commission intrusted to me. I went
down to Shorncliffe, and delivered the box of diamonds into the hands
of John Lovell, the solicitor; for Lady Jocelyn was still on the
Continent. He packed the box in paper, and made me seal it with my
signet-ring, in the presence of one of his clerks, before he put it
away in an iron safe near his desk.
"When this was done, and when the _Times_ advertisement had been
inserted for the twentieth time without eliciting any reply, I gave
myself up to a kind of despair about Margaret. She had failed to see my
advertisement, I thought; for she would scarcely have been so
hard-hearted as to leave it unanswered. She had failed to see this
advertisement, as well as the previous appeal made to her through the
same medium, and she would no doubt fail to see any other. I had reason
to know that she was, or had been, in England, for she would scarcely
have intrusted the diamonds to strange hands; but it was only too
likely that she had chosen the very eve of her own and her father's
departure for some distant country as the most fitting time at which to
leave the valuable parcel with me.
"'Her influence over her father must be complete,' I thought, 'or he
would scarcely have consented to surrender such a treasure as the
diamonds. He has most likely retained enough to pay the passage out to
America for himself and Margaret; and my poor darling will wander with
her wretched father into some remote corner of the United States, where
she will be hidden from me for ever.'
"I remembered with unspeakable pain how wide the world was, and how
easy it would be for the woman I loved to be for ever lost to me.
"I gave myself up to despair; it was not resignation, for my life was
empty and desolate without Margaret; try as I might to carry my burden
quietly, and put a brave face upon my sorrow. Up to the time of
Margaret's appearance on that bleak winter's night, I had cherished the
hope—or even more than hope—the belief that we should be reunited: but
after that night the old faith in a happy future crumbled away, and the
idea that Joseph Wilmot's daughter had left England grew little by
little into conviction.
"I should never see her again. I fully believed this now. There was
never to be any more sunshine in my life: and there was nothing for me
to do but to resign myself to the even tenor of an existence in which
the quiet duties of a business career would leave little time for any
idle grief or lamentation. My sorrow was a part of my life: but even
those who knew me best failed to fathom the depth of that sorrow. To
them I seemed only a grave business man, devoted to the dry details of
a business life.
"Eighteen months had passed since the bleak winter's night on which the
box of diamonds had been intrusted to me; eighteen months, so slow and
quiet in their course that I was beginning to feel myself an old man,
older than many old men, inasmuch as I had outlived the wreck of the
one bright hope which had made life dear to me. It was midsummer time,
and the counting-house in St. Gundolph Lane, and the parlour in
which—in virtue of my new position—I had now a right to work, seemed
peculiarly hot and frowsy, dusty and obnoxious. My work being
especially hard at this time knocked me up; and I was compelled, under
pain of solemn threats from my mother's pet medical attendant, to stay
at home, and take two or three days' rest. I submitted, very
unwillingly; for however dusty and stifling the atmosphere in St.
Gundolph Lane might be, it was better to be there, victorious over my
sorrow, by means of man's grandest ally in the battle with black
care—to wit, hard work—than to be lying on the sofa in my mother's
pleasant drawing-room, listening to the cheery click of two
knitting-needles, and thinking of my wasted life.
"I submitted, however, to take the three days' holiday; and on the
second day, after a couple of hours' penance on the sofa, I got up,
languid and tired still, but bent on some employment by which I might
escape from the sad monotony of my own thoughts.
"'I think I'll go into the next room and put my papers to rights,
mother,' I said.
"My dear indulgent mother remonstrated: I was to rest and keep myself
quiet, she said, and not to worry myself about papers and tiresome
things of that kind, which appertained only to the office. But I had my
own way, and went into the little room, where there were flowers
blooming and caged birds singing in the open window.
"This room was a sort of snuggery, half library, half
breakfast-parlour, and it was in this room my mother and I had been
sitting on the night on which the diamonds had been brought to me.
"On one side of the fireplace stood my mother's work-table, on the
other the desk at which I wrote, whenever I wrote any letters at home—a
ponderous old-fashioned office desk, with a row of drawers on each
side, a deep well in the centre, and under that a large waste-paper
basket, full of old envelopes and torn scraps of letters.
"I wheeled a comfortable chair up to the desk, and began my task. It
was a very long one, and involved a great deal of folding, sorting, and
arranging of documents, which perhaps were scarcely worth the trouble I
took with them. At any rate, the work kept my fingers employed, though
my mind still brooded over the old trouble.
"I sat for nearly three hours; for it was a very long time since I had
had a day's leisure, and the accumulation of letters, bills, and
receipts was something very formidable. At last all was done, the
letters and bills endorsed and tied into neat packets that would have
done credit to a lawyer's office; and I flung myself back in my chair
with a sigh of relief.
"But I had not finished my work yet; for I drew out the waste-paper
basket presently, and emptied its contents upon the floor, in order
that I might make sure of there being no important paper thrown by
chance amongst them, before I consigned them to be swept away by the
housemaid.
"I tossed over the chaotic fragments, the soiled envelopes, the
circulars of enterprising Clapham tradesmen, and all the other rubbish
that had accumulated within the last two years. The dust floated up to
my face and almost blinded me.
"Yes, there was something of consequence amongst the papers—something,
at least, which I should have held it sacrilegious to consign to Molly,
the housemaid—the wrapper of the box containing the diamonds; the paper
wrapper, directed in the dear hand I loved, the hand of Margaret
Wilmot.
"I must have left the wrapper on the table on the night when I received
the box, and one of the servants had no doubt put it into the
waste-paper basket. I picked up the sheet of paper and folded it
neatly; it was a very small treasure for a lover to preserve, perhaps:
but then I had so few relics of the woman who was to have been my wife.
"As I folded the paper, I looked, half in absence of mind, at the stamp
in the corner. It was an old-fashioned sheet of Bath post, stamped with
the name of the stationer who had sold it—Jakins, Kylmington.
Kylmington; yes, I remembered there was a town in Hampshire,—a kind of
watering-place, I believed,—called Kylmington! And the paper had been
bought there—and if so, it was more than likely that Margaret had been
there.
"Could it be so? Could it be really possible that in this sheet of
paper I had found a clue which would help me to trace my lost love?
Could it be so? The new hope sent a thrill of sudden life and energy
through my veins. Ill—worn out, knocked up by over-work? Who could dare
to say I was any thing of the kind? I was as strong as Hercules.
"I put the folded paper in the breast-pocket of my coat, and took down
Bradshaw. Dear Bradshaw, what an interesting writer you seemed to me on
that day! Yes, Kylmington was in Hampshire; three hours and a half from
London, with due allowance for delays in changing carriages. There was
a train would convey me from Waterloo to Kylmington that afternoon—a
train that would leave Waterloo at half-past three.
"I looked at my watch. It was half-past two. I had only an hour for all
my preparations and the drive to Waterloo. I went to the drawing-room,
where my mother was still sitting at work near the open window. She
started when she saw my face, for my new hope had given it a strange
brightness.
"'Why, Clem,' she said, 'you look as pleased as if you'd found some
treasure among your papers.'
"'I hope I have, mother. I hope and believe that I have found a clue
that will enable me to trace Margaret.'
"'You don't mean it?'
"'I've found the name of a town which I believe to be the place where
she was staying before she brought those diamonds to me. I am going
there to try and discover some tidings of her. I am going at once.
Don't look anxious, dear mother; the journey to Kylmington, and the
hope that takes me there, will do me more good than all the drugs in
Mr. Bainham's surgery. Be my own dear indulgent mother, as you have
always been, and pack me a couple of clean shirts in a portmanteau. I
shall come back to-morrow night, I dare say, as I've only three days'
leave of absence from the office.'
"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."