"Oh! no! no!" she cried, as the young man barred her pa.s.sage, to the door; "for pity"s sake don"t detain me, Mr. Austin; don"t detain me, or follow me!"
She pa.s.sed by him, and hurried out of the house. He followed her to the gate, and watched her disappear in the twilight; and then went back to the drawing-room, sighing heavily as he went.
"I have no right to follow her against her own wish," he said to himself. "She has given me no right to interfere with her; or to think of her, for the matter of that."
He threw himself into a chair, and took up a newspaper; but he did not read half-a-dozen lines. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the page before him, thinking of Margaret Wentworth.
"Poor girl!" he said to himself, presently; "poor lonely girl! She is too pure and beautiful for the hard struggles of this world."
Margaret Wentworth walked rapidly along the road that led her back to Wandsworth. She held the folded newspaper clutched tightly against her breast. It was her death-warrant, perhaps. She never paused or slackened her pace until she reached the lane leading down to the water.
She, opened the gate of the simple cottage-garden--there was no need of bolts or locks for the fortification of G.o.dolphin Cottages--and went up to her own little sitting-room,--the room in which her father had told her the secret of his life,--the room in which she had sworn to remember the Henry Dunbar. All was dark and quiet in the house, for the mistress of it was elderly-and old-fashioned in her ways; and Margaret was accustomed to wait upon herself when she came home after nightfall.
She struck a lucifer, lighted her candle, and sat down with the newspaper in her hand. She unfolded it, and examined the pages. She was not long finding what she wanted.
"_The Winchester Murder. Latest Particulars_."
Margaret Wentworth read that horrible story. She read the newspaper record of the cruel deed that had been done--twice--slowly and deliberately. Her eyes were tearless, and there was a desperate courage at her heart; that miserable, agonized heart, which seemed like a block of ice in her breast.
"I swore to remember the name of Henry Dunbar," she said in, a low, sombre voice; "I have good reason to remember it now."
From the first she had no doubt in her mind--from the very first she had but one idea: and that idea was a conviction. Her father had been murdered by his old master. The man Joseph Wilmot was her father: the murderer was Henry Dunbar. The newspaper record told how the murdered man had, according to his own account, met his brother at the Waterloo station upon the afternoon of the 16th of August. That was the very afternoon upon which James Wentworth had left his daughter to go to London by rail.
He had met his old master, the man who had so bitterly injured him; the cold-hearted scoundrel who had so cruelly betrayed him. He had been violent, perhaps, and had threatened Henry Dunbar: and then--then the rich man, treacherous and cold-hearted in his age as in his youth, had beguiled his old valet by a pretended friendship, had lured him into a lonely place, and had there murdered him; in order that all the wicked secrets of the past might be buried with his victim.
As to the robbery of the clothes--the rifling of the pocketbook--that, of course, was only a part of Henry Dunbar"s deep laid scheme.
The girl folded the paper and put it in her breast. It was a strange doc.u.ment to lie against that virginal bosom: and the breast beneath it ached with a sick, cold pain, that was like the pain of death.
Margaret took up her candle, and went into a neatly-kept little room at the back of the house,--the room in which her father had always slept when he stayed in that house.
There was an old box, a battered and dilapidated hair-trunk, with a worn rope knotted about it. The girl knelt down before the box, and put her candle on a chair beside it. Then with her slender fingers she tried to unfasten the knots that secured the cord. This task was not an easy one, and her fingers ached before she had done. But she succeeded at last, and lifted the lid of the trunk.
There were worn and shabby garments, tumbled and dusty, that had been thrown pell-mell into the box: there were broken meerschaum-pipes; old newspapers, pale with age, and with pa.s.sages here and there marked by thick strokes in faded ink. A faint effluvium that arose from the ma.s.s of dilapidated rubbish--the weeds which the great ocean Time casts up upon the sh.o.r.e of the present--testified to the neighbourhood of mice: and scattered about the bottom of the box, amongst loose shreds of tobacco--broken lumps of petrified cavendish--and sc.r.a.ps of paper, there were a few letters.
Margaret gathered together these letters, and examined them. Three of them--very old, faded, and flabby--were directed to "Joseph Wilmot, care of the Governor of Norfolk Island," in a prim, clerk-like hand.
It was an ominous address. Margaret Wentworth bowed her head upon her knees and sobbed aloud.
"He had been very wicked, and had need of a long life of penitence," she thought; "but he has been murdered by Henry Dunbar."
There was no shadow of doubt now in her mind. She had in her own hand the conclusive proof of the ident.i.ty between Joseph Wilmot and her father; and to her this seemed quite enough to prove that Henry Dunbar was the murderer of his old servant. He had injured the man, and it was in the man"s power to do him injury. He had resolved, therefore, to get rid of this old accomplice, this dangerous witness of the past.
This was how Margaret reasoned. That the crime committed in the quiet grove, near St. Cross, was an every-day deed, done for the most pitiful and sordid motives that can tempt a man to shed his brother"s blood, never for a moment entered into her thoughts. Other people might think this in their ignorance of the story of the past.
At daybreak the next morning she left the house, after giving a very brief explanation of her departure to the old woman with whom she lodged. She took the first train to Winchester, and reached the station two hours before noon. She had her whole stock of money with her, but nothing else. Her own wants, her own necessities, had no place in her thoughts. Her errand was a fearful one, for she went to tell so much as she knew of the story of the past, and to bear witness against Henry Dunbar.
The railway official to whom she addressed herself at the Winchester station treated her with civility and good-nature. The pale beauty of her pensive face won her friends wherever she went. It is very hard upon pug-nosed merit and red-haired virtue, that a Grecian profile, or raven tresses, should be such an excellent letter of introduction; but, unhappily, human nature is weak; and while beauty appeals straight to the eye of the frivolous, merit requires to be appreciated by the wise.
"If there is anything I can do for you, miss," the railway official said, politely, "I shall be very happy, I"m sure."
"I want to know about the murder," the girl answered, in a low, tremulous voice, "the murder that was committed----"
"Yes, miss, to be sure. Everybody in Winchester is talking about it; a most mysterious event! But," cried the official, brightening suddenly, "you ain"t a witness, miss, are you? You don"t know anything about----eh?"
He was quite excited at the bare idea that this pretty girl had something to say about the murder, and that he might have the privilege of introducing her to his fellow-citizens. To know anybody who knew anything about Joseph Wilmot"s murder was to occupy a post of some distinction in Winchester just now.
"Yes," Margaret said; "I want to give evidence against Henry Dunbar."
The railway official started, and stared aghast.
"Evidence against Mr. Dunbar, miss?" he said; "why, Mr. Henry Dunbar was dismissed from custody only yesterday afternoon, and is going up to town by the express this night, and everybody in Winchester is full of the shameful way in which he has been treated. Why, as far as that goes, there was no more ground for suspecting Mr. Dunbar--not that has come out yet, at any rate--than there is for suspecting me!" And the porter snapped his fingers contemptuously. "But if you know anything against Mr. Dunbar, why, of course, that alters the case; and it"s yer bounden dooty, miss, to go before the magistrate directly-minute and make yer statement."
The porter could hardly refrain, from smacking his lips with an air of relish as he said this. Distinction had come to him unsought.
"Wait a minute, miss," he said; "I"ll go and ask lief to take you round to the magistrate"s. You"ll never find your way by yourself. The next up isn"t till 12.7--I can be spared."
The porter ran away, presented himself to a higher official, told his story, and obtained a brief leave of absence. Then he returned to Margaret.
"Now, miss," he said, "if you"ll come along with me I"ll take you to Sir Arden Westhorpe"s house. Sir Arden is the gentleman that has taken so much trouble with this case."
On the way through the back-streets of the quiet city the porter would fain have extracted from Margaret all that she had to tell. But the girl would reveal nothing; she only said that she wanted to bear witness against Henry Dunbar.
The porter, upon the other hand, was very communicative. He told his companion what had happened at the adjourned examination.
"There was a deal of applause in the court when Mr. Dunbar was told he might consider himself free," said the porter; "but Sir Arden checked it; there was no need for clapping of hands, he says, or for anything but sorrow that such a wicked deed had been done, and that the cruel wretch as did it should escape. A young man as was in the court told me that them was Sir Arden"s exack words."
They had reached Sir Arden"s house by this time. It was a very handsome house, though it stood in a back sweet; and a grave man-servant, in a linen jacket, admitted Margaret into the oak-panelled hall.
She might have had some difficulty perhaps in seeing Sir Arden, had not the railway porter immediately declared her business. But the name of the murdered man was a pa.s.sport, and she was ushered at once into a low room, which was lined with book-shelves, and opened into an old-fashioned garden.
Here Sir Arden Westhorpe, the magistrate, sat at a table writing. He was an elderly man, with grey hair and whiskers, and with rather a stern expression of countenance. Rut he was a good and a just man; and though Henry Dunbar had been the emperor of half Europe instead of an Anglo-Indian banker, Sir Arden would have committed him for trial had he seen just cause for so doing.
Margaret was in nowise abashed by the presence of the magistrate. She had but one thought in her mind, the thought of her father"s wrongs; and she could have spoken freely in the presence of a king.
"I hope I am not too late, sir," she said; "I hear that Mr. Dunbar has been discharged from custody. I hope I am not too late to bear witness against him."
The magistrate looked up with an expression of surprise. "That will depend upon circ.u.mstances," he said; "that is to say, upon the nature of the statement which you may have to make."
The magistrate summoned his clerk from an adjoining room, and then took down the girl"s information.
But he shook his head doubtfully when Margaret had told him all she had to tell. That which to the impulsive girl seemed proof positive of Henry Dunbar"s guilt was very little when written down in a business-like manner by Sir Arden Westhorpe"s clerk.
"You know your unhappy father to have been injured by Mr. Dunbar, and you think he may have been in the possession of secrets of a damaging nature to that gentleman; but you do not know what those secrets were.
My poor girl, I cannot possibly move in this business upon such evidence as this. The police are at work. This matter will not be allowed to pa.s.s off without the closest investigation, believe me. I shall take care to have your statement placed in the hands of the detective officer who is entrusted with the conduct of this affair. We must wait--we must wait. I cannot bring myself to believe that Henry Dunbar has been guilty of this fearful crime. He is rich enough to have bribed your father to keep silence, if he had any reason to fear what he might say. Money is a very powerful agent, and can buy almost anything. It is rarely that a man, with almost unlimited wealth at his command, finds himself compelled to commit an act of violence."