Henry Dunbar: A NovelBraddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
General
Henry Dunbar: A Novel
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
Fiction
This time Henry Dunbar did not speak so much of his anxiety to get away
upon the second stage of his continental journey. His servant Jeffreys
arrived at Rugby in the course of the day; for the news of the accident
had reached Maudesley Abbey, and it was known that Mr. Dunbar had been
a sufferer.
To-night Henry Dunbar only spoke of the misery of being in a strange
house.
"I want to get back to Maudesley," he said. "If you can manage to take
me there, Mr. Daphney, and look after me until I've got over the
effects of this accident, I shall be very happy to make you any
compensation you please for whatever loss your absence from Rugby might
entail upon you."
This was a very diplomatic speech: Mr. Dunbar knew that the surgeon
would not care to let so rich a patient out of his hands; but he
fancied that Mr. Daphney would have no objection to carrying his
patient in triumph to Maudesley Abbey, to the admiration of the
unprofessional public, and to the aggravation of rival medical men.
He was not mistaken in his estimate of human nature. At the end of the
week he had succeeded in persuading the surgeon to agree to his
removal; and upon the second Monday after the railway accident, Henry
Dunbar was placed in a compartment which was specially prepared for him
in the Shorncliffe train, and was conveyed from Shorncliffe station to
Maudesley Abbey, without undergoing any change of position upon the
road, and very carefully tended throughout the journey by Mr. Daphney
and Jeffreys the valet.
They wheeled Mr. Dunbar's bed into his favourite tapestried chamber,
and laid him there, to drag out long dreary days and nights, waiting
till his broken bones should unite, and he should be free to go whither
he pleased. He was not a very patient sufferer; he bore the pain well
enough, but he chafed perpetually against the delay; and every morning
he asked the surgeon the same question—
"When shall I be strong enough to walk about?"
CHAPTER XXXI.
CLEMENT AUSTIN MAKES A SACRIFICE.
Margaret Wilmot had promised to become the wife of the man she loved;
but she had given that promise very reluctantly, and only upon one
condition. The condition was, that, before her marriage with Clement
Austin took place, the mystery of her father's death should be cleared
up for ever.
"I cannot be your wife so long as the secret of that cruel deed remains
unknown," she said to Clement. "It seems to me as if I have already
been wickedly neglectful of a solemn duty. Who had my father to love
him and remember him in all the world but me? and who should avenge his
death if I do not? He was an outcast from society; and people think it
a very small thing that, after having led a reckless life, he should
die a cruel death. If Henry Dunbar, the rich banker, had been murdered,
the police would never have rested until the assassin had been
discovered. But who cares what became of Joseph Wilmot, except his
daughter? His death makes no blank in the world: except to me—except to
me!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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