Henry Dunbar (Mystery Classics Series). Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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.”
Chapter 8
The First Stage on the Journey Home.
Joseph Wilmot obeyed his old master, and ordered a very excellent luncheon, which was served in the best style of the Dolphin; and a sojourn at the Dolphin is almost a recompense for the pains and penalties of the voyage home from India. Mr. Dunbar, from the sublime height of his own grandeur, stooped to be very friendly with his old valet, and insisted upon Joseph’s sitting down with him at the well-spread table. But although the Anglo–Indian did ample justice to the luncheon, and washed down a spatchcock and a lobster-salad with several glasses of iced Moselle, the reprobate ate and drank very little, and sat for the best part of the time crumbling his bread in a strange absent manner, and watching his companion’s face. He only spoke when his old master addressed him; and then in a constrained, half-mechanical way, which might have excited the wonder of any one less supremely indifferent than Henry Dunbar to the feelings of his fellow-creatures.
The Anglo–Indian finished his luncheon, left the table, and walked to the window: but Joseph Wilmot still sat with a full glass before him. The sparkling bubbles had vanished from the clear amber wine; but although Moselle at half-a-guinea a bottle could scarcely have been a very common beverage to the ex-convict, he seemed to have no appreciation of the vintage. He sat with his head bent and his elbow on his knee; brooding, brooding, brooding.
Henry Dunbar amused himself for about ten minutes looking out at the busy street — the brightest, airiest, lightest, prettiest High Street in all England, perhaps; and then turned away from the window and looked at his old valet. He had been accustomed, five-and-thirty years ago, to be familiar with the man, and to make a confidant and companion of him, and he fell into the same manner now, naturally; as if the five-and-thirty years had never been; as if Joseph Wilmot had never been wronged by him. He fell into the old way, and treated his companion with that haughty affability which a monarch may be supposed to exhibit towards his prime favourite.
“Drink your wine, Wilmot,” he exclaimed; “don’t sit meditating there, as if you were a great speculator brooding over the stagnation of the money-market. I want bright looks, man, to welcome me back to my native country. I’ve seen dark faces enough out yonder; and I want to see smiling and pleasanter faces here. You look as black as if you had committed a murder, or were plotting one.”
The Outcast smiled.
“I’ve so much reason to look cheerful, haven’t I?” he said, in the same tone he had used when he had declared his acceptance of the banker’s bounty. “I’ve such a pleasant life before me, and such agreeable recollections to look back upon. A man’s memory seems to me like a book of pictures that he must be continually looking at, whether he will or not: and if the pictures are horrible, if he shudders as he looks at them, if the sight of them is worse than the pain of death to him, he must look nevertheless. I read a story the other day — at least my girl was reading it to me; poor child! she tries to soften me with these things sometimes — and the man who wrote the story said it was well for the most miserable of us to pray, ‘Lord, keep my memory green!’ But what if the memory is a record of crime, Mr. Dunbar? Can we pray that those memories may be kept green? Wouldn’t it be better to pray that our brains and hearts may wither, leaving us no power to look back upon the past? If I could have forgotten the wrong you did me five-and-thirty years ago, I might have been a different man: but I couldn’t forget it. Every day and every hour I have remembered it. My memory is as fresh to-day as it was four-and-thirty years ago, when my wrongs were only a twelvemonth old.”
Joseph Wilmot had said all this almost as if he yielded to an uncontrollable impulse, and spoke because he must speak, rather than from the desire to upbraid Henry Dunbar. He had not looked at the Anglo–Indian; he had not changed his attitude; he had spoken with his head still bent, and his eyes fixed upon the ground.
Mr. Dunbar had gone back to the window, and had resumed his contemplation of the street; but he turned round with a gesture of angry impatience as Joseph Wilmot finished speaking.
“Now, listen to me, Wilmot,” he said. “If the firm in St. Gundolph Lane sent you down here to annoy and insult me directly I set foot upon British ground, they have chosen a very nice way of testifying their respect for their chief: and they have made a mistake which they shall repent having made sooner or later. If you came here upon your own account, with a view to terrify me, or to extort money from me, you have made a mistake. If you think to make a fool of me by any maudlin sentimentality, you make a still greater mistake. I give you fair warning. If you expect any advantage from me, you must make yourself agreeable to me. I am a rich man, and know how to recompense those who please me: but I will not be bored or tormented by any man alive: least of all by you. If you choose to make yourself useful, you can stay: if you don’t choose to do so, the sooner you leave this room the better for yourself, if you wish to escape the humiliation of being turned out by the waiter.”
At the end of this speech Joseph Wilmot looked up for the first time. He was very pale, and there were strange hard lines about his compressed lips, and a new light in his eyes.
“I am a poor weak fool,” he said, quietly; “very weak and very foolish, when I think there can be anything in that old story to touch your heart, Mr. Dunbar. I will not offend you again, believe me. I have not led a very sober life of late years: I’ve had a touch of delirium tremens, and my nerves are not as strong as they used to be: but I’ll not annoy you again. I’m quite ready to make myself useful in any way you may require.”
“Get me a time-table, then, and let’s see about the trains. I don’t want to stay in Southampton all day.”
Joseph Wilmot rang, and ordered the time-table; Henry Dunbar studied it.
“There is no express before ten o’clock at night,” he said; “and I don’t care about travelling by a slow train. What am I to do with myself in the interim?”
He was silent for a few moments, turning over the leaves of Bradshaw’s Guide, and thinking.
“How far is it from here to Winchester?” he asked presently.
“Ten miles, or thereabouts, I believe,” Joseph answered.
“Ten miles! Very well, then, Wilmot, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ve a friend in the neighbourhood of Winchester, an old college companion,