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. Ha 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.”
