Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  He stopped, half ashamed of his passionate enthusiasm. In those few words he had revealed the secret of his heart: but Laura Dunbar was too innocent to understand the meaning of those eager words.

  Mrs. Madden understood them perfectly; and she smiled approvingly at the young man.

  Arthur Lovell was a great favourite with Laura Dunbar’s nurse. She knew that he adored her young mistress; and she looked upon him as a model of all that is noble and chivalrous.

  She began to fidget with the silver tea-canisters; and then looked significantly at Dora Macmahon. But Miss Macmahon did not understand that significant glance. Her dark eyes — and she had very beautiful eyes, with a grave, half-pensive softness in their sombre depths — were fixed upon the two young faces in the sunny window; the girl’s face clouded with a look of sorrowful perplexity, the young man’s face eloquent with tender meaning. Dora Macmahon’s colour went and came as she looked at that earnest countenance, and the fingers which were absently turning the leaves of her book were faintly tremulous.

  “Your new bonnet’s come home this morning, Miss Dora,” Elizabeth Madden said, rather sharply. “Perhaps you’d like to come up-stairs and have a look at it.”

  “My new bonnet!” murmured Dora, vaguely.

  “La, yes, miss; the new bonnet you bought in Regent Street only yesterday afternoon. I never did see such a forgetful wool-gathering young lady in all my life as you are this blessed morning, Miss Dora.”

  The absent-minded young lady rose suddenly, bewildered by Mrs. Madden’s animated desire for an inspection of the bonnet. But she very willingly left the room with Laura’s old nurse, who was accustomed to have her mandates obeyed even by the wayward heiress of Maudesley Abbey; and Laura was left alone with the young lawyer.

  Miss Dunbar had seated herself once more in the low easy-chair by the window. She sat with her elbow resting on the cushioned arm of the chair, and her head supported by her hand. Her eyes were fixed, and looked straight before her, with a thoughtful gaze that was strange to her: for her nature was as joyous as that of a bird, whose music fills all the wide heaven with one rejoicing psalm.

  Arthur Lovell drew his chair nearer to the thoughtful girl.

  “Laura,” he said, “why are you so silent? I never saw you so serious before, except after your grandfather’s death.”

  “I am thinking of my father,” she answered, in a low, tremulous voice, that was broken by her tears: “I am thinking that, perhaps, he will not love me.”

  “Not love you, Laura! who could help loving you? Oh, if I dared — if I could venture — I must speak, Laura Dunbar. My whole life hangs upon the issue, and I will speak. I am not a poor man, Laura; but you are so divided from the rest of the world by your father’s wealth, that I have feared to speak. I have feared to tell you that which you might have discovered for yourself, had you not been as innocent as your own pet doves in the dovecote at Maudesley.”

  The girl looked at him with wondering eyes that were still wet with unshed tears.

  “I love you, Laura; I love you. The world would call me beneath you in station, now; but I am a man, and I have a man’s ambition — a strong man’s iron will. Everything is possible to him who has sworn to conquer; and for your sake. Laura, for your love I should overcome obstacles that to another man might be invincible. I am going to India, Laura: I am going to carve my way to fame and fortune, for fame and fortune are slaves that come at the brave man’s bidding; they are only masters when the coward calls them. Remember, my beloved one, this wealth that now stands between you and me may not always be yours. Your father is not an old man; he may marry again, and have a son to inherit his wealth. Would to Heaven, Laura, that it might be so! But be that as it may, I despair of nothing if I dare hope for your love. Oh, Laura, dearest, one word to tell me that I may hope! Remember how happy we have been together; little children playing with flowers and butterflies in the gardens at Maudesley; boy and girl, rambling hand-in-hand beside the wandering Avon; man and woman standing in mournful silence by your grandfather’s deathbed. The past is a bond of union betwixt us, Laura. Look back at all those happy days and give me one word, my darling — one word to tell me that you love me.”

  Laura Dunbar looked up at him with a sweet smile, and laid her soft white hand in his.

  “I do love you, Arthur,” she said, “as dearly as I should have loved my brother had I ever known a brother’s love.”

  The young man bowed his head in silence. When he looked up, Laura Dunbar saw that he was very pale.

  “You only love me as a brother, Laura?”

  “How else should I love you?” she asked, innocently.

  Arthur Lovell looked at her with a mournful smile; a tender smile that was exquisitely beautiful, for it was the look of a man who is prepared to resign his own happiness for the sake of her he loves.

  “Enough, Laura,” he said, quietly; “I have received my sentence. You do not love me, dearest; you have yet to suffer life’s great fever.”

  She clasped her hands, and looked at him beseechingly.

  “You are not angry with me, Arthur?” she said.

  “Angry with you, my sweet one!”

  “And you will still love me?”

  “Yes, Laura, with all a brother’s devotion. And if ever you have need of my services, you shall find what it is to have a faithful friend, who holds his life at small value beside your happiness.”

  He said no more, for there was the sound of carriage-wheels below the window, and then a loud double-knock at the hall-door.

  Laura started to her feet, and her bright face grew pale.

  “My father has come!” she exclaimed.

  But it was not her father. It was Mr. Balderby, who had just come from St. Gundolph Lane, where he had received Henry Dunbar’s telegraphic despatch.

  Every vestige of colour faded out of Laura’s face as she recognized the junior partner of the banking-house.

  “Something has happened to my father!” she cried.

  “No, no, Miss Dunbar!” exclaimed Mr. Balderby, anxious to reassure her. “Your father has arrived in England safely, and is well, as I believe. He is staying at Winchester; and he has telegraphed to me to go to him there immediately.”

  “Something has happened, then?”

  “Yes, but not to Mr. Dunbar individually; so far as I can make out by the telegraphic message. I was to come to you here, Miss Dunbar, to tell you not to expect your papa for some few days; and then I am to go on to Winchester, taking a lawyer with me.”

  “A lawyer!” exclaimed Laura.

  “Yes, I am going to Lincoln’s Inn immediately to Messrs. Walford and Walford, our own solicitors.”

  “Let Mr. Lovell go with you,” cried Miss Dunbar; “he always acted as poor grandpapa’s solicitor. Let him go with you.”

  “Yes, Mr. Balderby,” exclaimed the young man, “I beg you to allow me to accompany you. I shall be very glad to be of service to Mr. Dunbar.”

  Mr. Balderby hesitated for a few moments.

  “Well, I really don’t see why you shouldn’t go, if you wish to do so,” he said, presently. “Mr. Dunbar says he wants a lawyer; he doesn’t name any particular lawyer. We shall save time by your going; for we shall be able to catch the eleven o’clock express.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “There’s not a moment to lose. Good morning, Miss Dunbar. We’ll take care of your papa, and bring him to you in triumph. Come, Lovell.”

  Arthur Lovell shook hands with Laura, murmured a few words in her ear, and hurried away with Mr. Balderby.

  She had spoken the death-knell of his dearest hopes. He had seen his sentence in her innocent face; but he loved her still.

  There was something in her virginal candour, her bright young loveliness, that touched the noblest chords of his heart. He loved her with a chivalrous devotion, which, after all, is as natural to the breast of a young Englishman in these modern days, miscalled degenerate, as when the spotless knight King Arthur lov
ed and wooed his queen.

  CHAPTER XI.

  THE INQUEST.

  The coroner’s inquest, which had been appointed to take place at noon that day, was postponed until three o’clock in the afternoon, in compliance with the earnest request of Henry Dunbar.

  When ever was the earnest request of a millionaire refused?

  The coroner, who was a fussy little man, very readily acceded to Mr. Dunbar’s entreaties.

  “I am a stranger in England,” the Anglo-Indian said; “I was never in my life present at an inquest. The murdered man was connected with me. He was last seen in my company. It is vitally necessary that I should have a legal adviser to watch the proceedings on my behalf. Who knows what dark suspicions may arise, affecting my name and honour?”

  The banker made this remark in the presence of four or five of the jurymen, the coroner, and Mr. Cricklewood, the surgeon who had been called in to examine the body of the man supposed to have been murdered. Every one of those gentlemen protested loudly and indignantly against the idea of the bare possibility that any suspicion, or the shadow of a suspicion, could attach to such a man as Mr. Dunbar.

  They knew nothing of him, of course, except that he was Henry Dunbar, chief of the rich banking-house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby, and that he was a millionaire.

  Was it likely that a millionaire would commit a murder?

  When had a millionaire ever been known to commit a murder? Never, of course!

  The Anglo-Indian sat in his private sitting-room at the George Hotel, writing, and examining his papers — perpetually writing, perpetually sorting and re-sorting those packets of letters in the despatch-box — while he waited for the coming of Mr. Balderby.

  The postponement of the coroner’s inquest was a very good thing for the landlord of the Foresters’ Arms. People went in and out, and loitered about the premises, and lounged in the bar, drinking and talking all the morning, and the theme of every conversation was the murder that had been done in the grove on the way to St. Cross.

  Mr. Balderby and Arthur Lovell arrived at the George a few minutes before two o’clock. They were shown at once into the apartment in which Henry Dunbar sat waiting for them.

  Arthur Lovell had been thinking of Laura and Laura’s father throughout the journey from London. He had wondered, as he got nearer and nearer to Winchester, what would be his first impression respecting Mr. Dunbar.

  That first impression was not a good one — no, it was not a good one. Mr. Dunbar was a handsome man — a very handsome man — tall and aristocratic-looking, with a certain haughty pace in his manner that harmonized well with his good looks. But, in spite of all this, the impression which he made upon the mind of Arthur Lovell was not an agreeable one.

  The young lawyer had heard the story of the forgery vaguely hinted at by those who were familiar with the history of the Dunbar family; and he had heard that the early life of Henry Dunbar had been that of a selfish spendthrift.

  Perhaps this may have had some influence upon his feelings in this his first meeting with the father of the woman he loved.

  Henry Dunbar told the story of the murder. The two men were inexpressibly shocked by this story.

  “But where is Sampson Wilmot?” exclaimed Mr. Balderby. “It was he whom I sent to meet you, knowing that he was the only person in the office who remembered you, or whom you remembered.”

  “Sampson was taken ill upon the way, according to his brother’s story,” Mr. Dunbar answered. “Joseph left the poor old man somewhere upon the road.”

  “He did not say where?”

  “No; and, strange to say, I forgot to ask him the question. The poor fellow amused me by old memories of the past on the road between Southampton and this place, and we therefore talked very little of the present.”

  “Sampson must be very ill,” exclaimed Mr. Balderby, “or he would certainly have returned to St. Gundolph Lane to tell me what had taken place.”

  Mr. Dunbar smiled.

  “If he was too ill to go on to Southampton, he would, of course, be too ill to return to London,” he said, with supreme indifference.

  Mr. Balderby, who was a good-hearted man, was distressed at the idea of Sampson Wilmot’s desolation; an old man, stricken with sudden illness, and abandoned to strangers.

  Arthur Lovell was silent: he sat a little way apart from the two others, watching Henry Dunbar.

  At three o’clock the inquest commenced. The witnesses summoned were the two Irishmen, Patrick Hennessy and Philip Murtock, who had found the body in the stream near St. Cross; Mr. Cricklewood, the surgeon; the verger, who had seen and spoken to the two men, and who had afterwards shown the cathedral to Mr. Dunbar; the landlord of the George, and the waiter who had received the travellers and had taken Mr. Dunbar’s orders for the dinner; and Henry Dunbar himself.

  There were a great many people in the room, for by this time the tidings of the murder had spread far and wide. There were influential people present, amongst others, Sir Arden Westhorpe, one of the county magistrates resident at Winchester. Arthur Lovell, Mr. Balderby, and the Anglo-Indian sat in a little group apart from the rest.

  The jurymen were ranged upon either side of a long mahogany table. The coroner sat at the top.

  But before the examination of the witnesses was commenced, the jurymen were conducted into that dismal chamber where the dead man lay upon one of the long tap-room tables. Arthur Lovell went with them; and Mr. Cricklewood, the surgeon, proceeded to examine the corpse, so as to enable him to give evidence respecting the cause of death.

  The face of the dead man was distorted and blackened by the agony of strangulation. The coroner and the jurymen looked at that dead face with wondering, awe-stricken glances. Sometimes a cruel stab, that goes straight home to the heart, will leave the face of the murdered as calm, as the face of a sleeping child.

  But in this case it was not so. The horrible stamp of assassination was branded upon that rigid brow. Horror, surprise, and the dread agony of sudden death were all blended in the expression of the face.

  The jurymen talked a little to one another in scarcely audible whispers, asked a few questions of the surgeon, and then walked softly from the darkened room.

  The facts of the case were very simple, and speedily elicited. But whatever the truth of that awful story might be, there was nothing that threw any light upon the mystery.

  Arthur Lovell, watching the case in the interests of Mr. Dunbar, asked several questions of the witnesses. Henry Dunbar was himself the first person examined. He gave a very simple and intelligible account of all that had taken place from the moment of his landing at Southampton.

  “I found the deceased waiting to receive me when I landed,” he said. “He told me that he came as a substitute for another person. I did not know him at first — that is to say, I did not recognize him as the valet who had been in my service prior to my leaving England five-and-thirty years ago. But he made himself known to me afterwards, and he told me that he had met his brother in London on the sixteenth of this month, and had travelled with him part of the way to Southampton. He also told me that, on the way to Southampton, his brother, Sampson Wilmot, a much older man than the deceased, was taken ill, and that the two men then parted company.”

  Mr. Dunbar had said all this with perfect self-possession, and with great deliberation. He was so very self-possessed, so very deliberate, that it seemed almost as if he had been reciting something which he had learned by heart.

  Arthur Lovell, watching him very intently, saw this, and wondered at it. It is very usual for a witness, even the most indifferent witness, giving evidence about some trifling matter, to be confused, to falter, and hesitate, and contradict himself, embarrassed by the strangeness of his position. But Henry Dunbar was in nowise discomposed by the awful nature of the event which had happened. He was pale; but his firmly-set lips, his erect carriage, the determined glance of his eyes, bore witness to the strength of his nerves and the power of his intellect.

&n
bsp; “The man must be made of iron,” Arthur Lovell thought to himself. “He is either a very great man, or a very wicked one. I almost fear to ask myself which.”

  “Where did the deceased Joseph Wilmot say he left his brother Sampson, Mr. Dunbar?” asked the coroner.

  “I do not remember.”

  The coroner scratched his chin, thoughtfully.

  “That is rather awkward,” he said; “the evidence of this man Sampson might throw some light upon this most mysterious event.”

  Mr. Dunbar then told the rest of his story.

  He spoke of the luncheon at Southampton, the journey from Southampton to Winchester, the afternoon stroll down to the meadows near St. Cross.

  “Can you tell us the exact spot at which you parted with the deceased?” asked the coroner.

  “No,” Mr. Dunbar answered; “you must bear in mind that I am a stranger in England. I have not been in this neighbourhood since I was a boy. My old schoolfellow, Michael Marston, married and settled at the Ferns during my absence in India. I found at Southampton that I should have a few hours on my hands before I could travel express for London, and I came to this place on purpose to see my old friend. I was very much disappointed to find that he was dead. But I thought that I would call upon his widow, from whom I should no doubt hear the history of my poor friend’s last moments. I went with Joseph Wilmot through the cathedral yard, and down towards St. Cross. The verger saw us, and spoke to us as we went by.”

  The verger, who was standing amongst the other witnesses, waiting to be examined, here exclaimed, —

  “Ay, that I did, sir; I remember it well.”

  “At what time did you leave the George?”

  “At a little after four o’clock.”

  “Where did you go then?”

  “I went,” answered Mr. Dunbar, boldly, “into the grove with the deceased, arm-in-arm. We walked together about a quarter of a mile under the trees, and I had intended to go on to the Ferns, to call upon Michael Marston’s widow; but my habits of late years have been sedentary; the heat of the day and the walk together were too much for me. I sent Joseph Wilmot on to the Ferns with a message for Mrs. Marston, asking at what hour she could conveniently receive me to-day; and I returned to the cathedral. Joseph Wilmot was to deliver his message at the Ferns, and rejoin me in the cathedral.”