Henry Dunbar (Mystery Classics Series) - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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long time ago. Bitter feelings die out of a man’s breast as the years roll by — don’t they, Joseph? Time heals all old wounds, and we learn to forgive others as we hope to be forgiven — don’t we, Joseph?”

      “You may,” answered the reprobate, fiercely; “I don’t!”

      He said no more, but sat silent, with his arms folded over his breast.

      He looked straight before him out of the carriage-window; but he saw no more of the pleasant landscape — the fair fields of waving corn, with scarlet poppies and deep-blue corn flowers, bright glimpses of sunlit water, and distant villages, with grey church-turrets, nestling among trees. He looked out of the carriage-window, and some of earth’s pleasantest pictures sped by him; but he saw no more of that ever-changing prospect than if he had been looking at a blank sheet of paper.

      Sampson Wilmot sat opposite to him, restless and uneasy, watching his fierce gloomy countenance.

      The clerk took a ticket for his brother at the first station the train stopped at. But still Joseph was silent.

      An hour passed by, and he had not yet spoken.

      He had no love for his brother. The world had hardened him. The consequences of his own sins, falling very heavily upon his head, had embittered his nature. He looked upon the man whom he had once loved and trusted as the primary cause of his disgrace and misery, and this thought influenced his opinion of all mankind.

      He could not believe in the goodness of any man, remembering, as he did, how he had once trusted Henry Dunbar.

      The brothers were alone in the carriage.

      Sampson watched the gloomy face opposite to him for some time, and then, with a weary sigh, he drew his handkerchief over his face, and sank back in the corner of the carriage. But he did not sleep. He was agitated and anxious. A dizzy faintness had seized upon him, and there was a strange buzzing in his ears, and unwonted clouds before his dim eyes. He tried to speak once or twice, but it seemed to him as if he was powerless to form the words that were in his mind.

      Then his mind began to grow confused. The hoarse snorting of the engine sounded monotonously in his ears: growing louder and louder with every moment; until the noise of it grew hideous and intolerable — a perpetual thunder, deafening and bewildering him.

      The train was fast approaching Basingstoke, when Joseph Wilmot was suddenly startled from his moody reverie.

      There was an awful cause for that sudden start, that look of horror in the reprobate’s face.

      Chapter 4

       The Stroke of Death.

       Table of Contents

      The old clerk had fallen from his seat, and lay in a motionless heap at the bottom of the railway carriage.

      The third stroke of paralysis had come upon him; inevitable, no doubt, long ago; but hastened, it may be, by that unlooked-for meeting at the Waterloo terminus.

      Joseph Wilmot knelt beside the stricken man. He was a vagabond and an outcast, and scenes of horror were not new to him. He had seen death under many of its worst aspects, and the grim King of Terrors had little terror for him. He was hardened, steeped in guilt, and callous as to the sufferings of others. The love which he bore for his daughter was, perhaps, the last ray of feeling that yet lingered in this man’s perverted nature.

      But he did all he could, nevertheless, for the unconscious old man. He loosened his cravat, unfastened his waistcoat, and felt for the beating of his heart.

      That heart did beat: very fitfully, as if the old clerk’s weary soul had been making feeble struggles to be released from its frail tabernacle of clay.

      “Better, perhaps, if this should prove fatal,” Joseph muttered; “I should go on alone to meet Henry Dunbar.”

      The train reached Basingstoke; Joseph put his head out of the open window, and called loudly to a porter.

      The man came quickly, in answer to that impatient summons.

      “My brother is in a fit,” Joseph cried; “help me to lift him out of the carriage, and then send some one for a doctor.”

      The unconscious form was lifted out in the arms of the two strong men. They carried it into the waiting-room, and laid it on a sofa.

      The bell rang, and the Southampton train rushed onward without the two travellers.

      In another moment the whole station was in commotion. A gentleman had been seized with paralysis, and was dying.

      The doctor arrived in less than ten minutes. He shook his head, after examining his patient.

      “It’s a bad case,” said he; “very bad; but we must do our best. Is there anybody with this old gentleman?”

      “Yes, sir,” the porter answered, pointing to Joseph; “this person is with him.”

      The country surgeon glanced rather suspiciously at Joseph Wilmot. He looked a vagabond, certainly — every inch a vagabond; a reckless, dare-devil scoundrel, at war with society, and defiant of a world he hated.

      “Are you — any — relation to this gentleman?” the doctor asked, hesitatingly.

      “Yes, I am his brother.”

      “I should recommend his being removed to the nearest hotel. I will send a woman to nurse him. Do you know if this is the first stroke he has ever had?”

      “No, I do not.”

      The surgeon looked more suspicious than ever, after receiving this answer.

      “Strange,” he said, “that you, who say you are his brother, should not be able to give me information upon that point.”

      Joseph Wilmot answered with an air of carelessness that was almost contemptuous:

      “It is strange,” he said; “but many stranger things have happened in this world before now. My brother and I haven’t met for years until we met to-day.”

      The unconscious man was removed from the railway station to an inn near at hand — a humble, countrified place, but clean and orderly. Here he was taken to a bed-chamber, whose old-fashioned latticed windows looked out upon the dusty road.

      The doctor did all that his skill could devise, but he could not restore consciousness to the paralyzed brain. The soul was gone already. The body lay, a form of motionless and senseless clay, under the white counterpane; and Joseph Wilmot, sitting near the foot of the bed, watched it with a gloomy face.

      The woman who was to nurse the sick man came by-and-by, and took her place by the pillow. But there was very little for her to do.

      “Is there any hope of his recovering?” Joseph asked eagerly, as the doctor was about to leave the room.

      “I fear not — I fear there is no hope.”

      “Will it be over soon?”

      “Very soon, I think. I do not believe that he can last more than four-and-twenty hours.”

      The surgeon waited for a few moments after saying this, expecting some exclamation of surprise or grief from the dying man’s brother: but there was none; and with a hasty “good evening” the medical man quitted the room.

      It was growing dusk, and the twilight shadows upon Joseph Wilmot’s face made it, in its sullen gloom, darker even than it had been in the railway carriage.

      “I’m glad of it, I’m glad of it,” he muttered; “I shall meet Harry Dunbar alone.”

      The bed-chamber in which the sick man lay opened out of a little sitting-room. Sampson’s carpet-bag and portmanteau had been left in this sitting-room.

      Joseph Wilmot searched the pockets in the clothes

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