"Do you want me, sir?" he asked, with rather a suspicious glance at the reprobate's shabby dress.
"Yes, Mr. Wilmot, I want to speak to you. You can come into the waiting-room with me, after you've taken your ticket."
The clerk stared aghast. The tone of this shabby-looking stranger was almost one of command.
"I don't know you, my good sir," stammered Sampson; "I never set eyes upon you before; and unless you are a messenger sent after me from the office, you must be under a mistake. You are a stranger to me!"
"I am no stranger, and I am no messenger!" answered the other. "You've got your ticket? That's all right! Now you can come with me."
He walked into a waiting-room, the half-glass doors of which opened out of the office. The room was empty, for it only wanted five minutes to the starting of the train, and the passengers had hurried off to take their seats.
James Wentworth took off his hat, and brushed his rumpled grey hair from his forehead.
"Put on your spectacles, Sampson Wilmot," he said, "and look hard at me, and then tell me if I am a stranger to you."
The old clerk obeyed, nervously, fearfully. His tremulous hands could scarcely adjust his spectacles.
He looked at the reprobate's face for some moments and said nothing. But his breath came quicker and his face grew very pale.
"Ay," said James Wentworth, "look your hardest, and deny me if you can. It will be only wise to deny me; I'm no credit to any one—least of all to a steady respectable old chap like you!"
"Joseph!—Joseph!" gasped the old clerk; "is it you? Is it really my wretched brother? I thought you were dead, Joseph—I thought you were dead and gone!"
"And wished it, I dare say!" the other answered, bitterly. "No, Joseph—no!" cried Sampson Wilmot; "Heaven knows I never wished you ill. Heaven knows I was always sorry for you, and could make excuses for you even when you sank lowest!"
"That's strange!" Joseph muttered, with a sneer; "that's very strange! If you were so precious fond of me, how was it that you stopped in the house of Dunbar and Dunbar? If you had had one spark of natural affection for me, you could never have eaten their bread!"
Sampson Wilmot shook his head sorrowfully.
"Don't be too hard upon me, Joseph," he said, with mild reproachfulness; "if I hadn't stopped at the banking-house your mother might have starved!"
The reprobate made no answer to this; but he turned his face away and sighed.
The bell rang for the starting of the train.
"I must go," Sampson cried. "Give me your address, Joseph, and I will write to you."
"Oh, yes, I dare say!" answered his brother, scornfully; "no, no, that won't do. I've found you, my rich respectable brother, and I'll stick to you. Where are you going?"
"To Southampton."
"What for?"
"To meet Henry Dunbar."
Joseph Wilmot's face grew livid with rage.
The change that came over it was so sudden and so awful in its nature, that the old clerk started back as if he had seen a ghost.
"You are going to meet him?" said Joseph, in a hoarse whisper; "he is in England, then?"
"No; but he is expected to arrive almost immediately. Why do you look like that, Joseph?"
"Why do I look like that?" cried the younger man; "have you grown to be such a mere machine, such a speaking automaton, such a living tool of the men you serve, that all human feeling has perished in your breast? Bah! how should such as you understand what I feel? Hark! the bell's ringing—I'll come with you."
The train was on the point of starting: the two men hurried out to the platform.
"No—no," cried Sampson Wilmot, as his brother stepped after him into the carriage; "no—no, Joseph, don't come with me—don't come with me!"
"I will go with you."
"But you've no ticket."
"I can get one—or you can get me one, for I've no money—at the first station we stop at."
They were seated in a second-class railway carriage by this time. The ticket-collector, running from carriage to carriage, was in too great a hurry to discover that the little bit of pasteboard which Joseph Wilmot exhibited was only a return-ticket to Wandsworth. There was a brief scramble, a banging of doors, and Babel-like confusion of tongues; and then the engine gave its farewell shriek and rushed away.
The old clerk looked very uneasily at his younger brother's face. The livid pallor had passed away, but the strongly-marked eyebrows met in a dark frown.
"Joseph—Joseph!" said Sampson, "Heaven only knows I'm glad to see you, after more than thirty years' separation, and any help I can give you out of my slender means I'll give freely—I will, indeed, Joseph, for the memory of our dear mother, if not for love of you; and I do love you, Joseph—I do love you very dearly still. But I'd rather you didn't take this journey with me—I would, indeed. I can't see that any good can come of it."
"Never you mind what comes of it. I want to talk to you. You're a nice affectionate brother to wish to shuffle me off directly after our first meeting. I want to talk to you, Sampson Wilmot. And I want to see him. I know how the world's used me for the last five-and-thirty years; I want to see how the same world—such a just and merciful world as it is—has treated my tempter and betrayer, Henry Dunbar!"
Sampson Wilmot trembled like a leaf. His health had been very feeble ever since the second shock of paralysis—that dire and silent foe, whose invisible hand had stricken the old man down as he sat at his desk, without one moment's warning. His health was feeble, and the shock of meeting with his brother—this poor lost disgraced brother—whom he had for five-and-twenty years believed to be dead, had been almost too much for him. Nor was this all—unutterable terror took possession of him when he thought of a meeting between Joseph Wilmot and Henry Dunbar. The old man could remember his brother's words:
"Let him consider it a lucky escape, if, when we next meet, he gets off scot free!"
Sampson Wilmot had prayed night and day that such a meeting might never take place. For five-and-thirty years it had been delayed. Surely it would not take place now.
The old clerk looked nervously at his brother's face.
"Joseph," he murmured, "I'd rather you didn't go with me to Southampton; I'd rather you didn't meet Mr. Dunbar. You were very badly treated—cruelly and unjustly treated—nobody knows that better than I. But it's a long time ago, Joseph—it's a very, very 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