style="font-size:15px;"> “‘I will go. I consider that I have been harshly treated; but I will go.’”
“And he did go?” said Mr. Balderby.
“He did, sir,” answered the clerk, who had displayed considerable emotion in relating this story of the past. “He did go, sir — he sold his commission, and left England by the Oronoko. But he never took leave of a living creature, and I fully believe that he never in his heart forgave either his father or his uncle. He worked his way up, as you know, sir, in the Calcutta counting-house, and by slow degrees rose to be manager of the Indian branch of the business. He married in 1831, and he has an only child, a daughter, who has been brought up in England since her infancy, under the care of Mr. Percival.”
“Yes,” answered Mr. Balderby, “I have seen Miss Laura Dunbar at her grandfather’s country seat. She is a very beautiful girl, and Percival Dunbar idolized her. But now to return to business, my good Sampson. I believe you are the only person in this house who has ever seen our present chief, Henry Dunbar.”
“I am, sir.”
“So far so good. He is expected to arrive at Southampton in less than a week’s time, and somebody must be there to meet him and receive him. After five-and-thirty years’ absence he will be a perfect stranger in England, and will require a business man about him to manage matters for him, and take all trouble off his hands. These Anglo–Indians are apt to be indolent, you know, and he may be all the worse for the fatigues of the overland journey. Now, as you know him, Sampson, and as you are an excellent man of business, and as active as a boy, I should like you to meet him. Have you any objection to do this?”
“No, sir,” answered the clerk; “I have no great love for Mr. Henry Dunbar, for I can never cease to look upon him as the cause of my poor brother Joseph’s ruin; but I am ready to do what you wish, Mr. Balderby. It’s business, and I’m ready to do anything in the way of business. I’m only a sort of machine, sir — a machine that’s pretty nearly worn out, I fancy, now — but as long as I last you can make what use of me you like, sir. I’m ready to do my duty.”
“I am sure of that, Sampson.”
“When am I to start for Southampton, sir?”
“Well, I think you’d better go to-morrow, Sampson. You can leave London by the afternoon train, which starts at four o’clock. You can see to your work here in the morning, and reach your destination between seven and eight. I leave everything in your hands. Miss Laura Dunbar will come up to town to meet her father at the house in Portland Place. The poor girl is very anxious to see him, as she has not set eyes upon him since she was a child of two years old. Strange, isn’t it, the effect of these long separations? Laura Dunbar might pass her father in the street without recognizing him, and yet her affection for him has been unchanged in all these years.”
Mr. Balderby gave the old clerk a pocket-book containing six five-pound notes.
“You will want plenty of money,” he said, “though, of course, Mr. Dunbar will be well supplied. You will tell him that all will be ready for his reception here. I really am quite anxious to see the new head of the house. I wonder what he is like, now. By the way, it’s rather a singular circumstance that there is, I believe, no portrait of Henry Dunbar in existence. His picture was painted when he was a young man, and exhibited in the Royal Academy; but his father didn’t think the likeness a good one, and sent it back to the artist, who promised to alter and improve it. Strange to say, this artist, whose name I forget, delayed from day to day performing his promise, and at the expiration of a twelvemonth left England for Italy, taking the young man’s portrait with him, amongst a lot of other unframed canvases. This artist never returned from Italy, and Percival Dunbar could never find out his whereabouts, or whether he was dead or alive. I have often heard the old man regret that he possessed no likeness of his son. Our chief was handsome, you say, in his youth?”
“Yes, sir,” Sampson Wilmot answered, “he was very handsome — tall and fair, with bright blue eyes.”
“You have seen Miss Dunbar: is she like her father?”
“No, sir. Her features are altogether different, and her expression is more amiable than his.”
“Indeed! Well, Sampson, we won’t detain you any longer. You understand what you have to do?”
“Yes, sir, perfectly.”
“Very well, then. Good night! By the bye, you will put up at one of the best hotels at Southampton — say the Dolphin — and wait there till the Electra steamer comes in. It is by the Electra that Mr. Dunbar is to arrive. Once more, good evening!”
The old clerk bowed and left the room.
“Well, Austin,” said Mr. Balderby, turning to the cashier, “we may prepare ourselves to meet our new chief very speedily. He must know that you and I cannot be entirely ignorant of the story of his youthful peccadilloes, and he will scarcely give himself airs to us, I should fancy.”
“I don’t know that, Mr. Balderby,” the cashier answered; “if I am any judge of human nature, Henry Dunbar will hate us because of that very crime of his own, knowing that we are in the secret, and will be all the more disagreeable and disdainful in his intercourse with us. He will carry it off with a high hand, depend upon it.”
Chapter 2
Margaret’s Father.
The town of Wandsworth is not a gay place. There is an air of old-world quiet in the old-fashioned street, though dashing vehicles drive through it sometimes on their way to Wimbledon or Richmond Park.
The sloping roofs, the gable-ends, the queer old chimneys, the quaint casement windows, belong to a bygone age; and the traveller, coming a stranger to the little town, might fancy himself a hundred miles away from boisterous London; though he is barely clear of the great city’s smoky breath, or beyond the hearing of her myriad clamorous tongues.
There are lanes and byways leading out of that humble High Street down to the low bank of the river; and in one of these, a pleasant place enough, there is a row of old-fashioned semi-detached cottages, standing in small gardens, and sheltered by sycamores and laburnums from the dust, which in dry summer weather lies thick upon the narrow roadway.
In one of these cottages a young lady lived with her father; a young lady who gave lessons on the piano-forte, or taught singing, for very small remuneration. She wore shabby dresses, and was rarely known to have a new bonnet; but people respected and admired her, notwithstanding; and the female inhabitants of Godolphin Cottages, who gave her good-day sometimes as she went along the dusty lane with her well-used roll of music in her hand, declared that she was a lady bred and born. Perhaps the good people who admired Margaret Wentworth would have come nearer the mark if they had said that she was a lady by right divine of her own beautiful nature, which had never required to be schooled into grace or gentleness.
She had no mother, and she had not even the memory of her mother, who had died seventeen years before, leaving an only child of twelve months old for James Wentworth to keep.
But James Wentworth, being a scapegrace and a reprobate, who lived by means that were a secret from his neighbours, had sadly neglected this only child. He had neglected her, though with every passing year she grew more
