Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗

how can I

find words to thank you?”

 

“You have no need to thank me. I am a rich man, with neither wife nor

child upon whom to waste my money. Besides, if you find the obligation

too heavy to bear, you can repay me when you become a distinguished

singer.”

 

“I will work hard to hasten that day, sir,” answered the girl,

earnestly.

 

Sir Oswald had spoken thus lightly, in order to set his prot�g�e more

at her ease. He saw that her eyes were filled with tears, and moving to

the window to give her time to recover herself, stood for some minutes

looking out into the market-place. Then he came back to his easy chair

by the fire, and addressed her once more.

 

“I shall post up to town this afternoon to make the arrangements of

which I have spoken,” he said; “you, in the meantime, will remain under

the care of Mrs. Willet, to whom I shall entrust the purchase of your

wardrobe. When that has been prepared, you will come straight to my

house in Arlington Street, whence I will myself conduct you to the

school I may have chosen as your residence. Remember, that from to-day

you will begin a new life. Ah, by the bye, there is one other question

I must ask. You have no relations, no associates of the past who are

likely to torment you in the future?”

 

“None. I have no relations who would dare approach me, and I have

always held myself aloof from all associates.”

 

“Good, then the future lies clear before you. And now you can return to

Mrs. Willet. I will see her presently, and make all arrangements for

your comfort.”

 

Honoria curtseyed to her benefactor, and left the room in silence. Her

every gesture and her every tone were those of a lady. Sir Oswald

looked after her with wonder, as she disappeared from the apartment.

 

The landlady of the “Star” was very much surprised when Sir Oswald

Eversleigh requested her to keep the ballad-singer in her charge for a

week, and to purchase for her a simple but thoroughly complete

wardrobe.

 

“And now,” said Sir Oswald, “I confide her to you for a week, Mrs.

Willet, at the end of which time I hope her wardrobe will be ready. I

will write you a cheque for—say fifty pounds. If that is not enough,

you can have more.”

 

“Lor’ bless you, Sir Oswald, it’s more than enough to set her up like a

duchess, in a manner of speaking,” answered the landlady; and then,

seeing Sir Oswald had no more to say to her, she curtseyed and

withdrew.

 

Sir Oswald Eversleigh’s carriage was at the door of the “Star” at noon;

and at ten minutes after twelve the baronet was on his way back to

town.

 

He visited a great many West-end boarding-schools before he found one

that satisfied him in every particular. Had his prot�g�e been his

daughter, or his affianced wife, he could not have been more difficult

to please. He wondered at his own fastidiousness.

 

“I am like a child with a new toy,” he thought, almost ashamed of the

intense interest he felt in this unknown girl.

 

At last he found an establishment that pleased him; a noble old mansion

at Fulham, surrounded by splendid grounds, and presided over by two

maiden sisters. It was a thoroughly aristocratic seminary, and the

ladies who kept it knew how to charge for the advantages of their

establishment. Sir Oswald assented immediately to the Misses Beaumonts’

terms, and promised to bring the expected pupil in less than a week’s

time.

 

“The young lady is a relation, I presume, Sir Oswald?” said the elder

Miss Beaumont.

 

“Yes,” answered the baronet; “she is—a distant relative.”

 

If he had not been standing with his back to the light, the two ladies

might have seen a dusky flush suffuse his face as he pronounced these

words. Never before had he told so deliberate a falsehood. But he had

feared to tell the truth.

 

“They will never guess her secret from her manner,” he thought; “and if

they question her, she will know how to baffle their curiosity.”

 

On the very day that ended the stipulated week, Honoria Milford made

her appearance in Arlington Street. Sir Oswald was in his library,

seated in an easy-chair before the fireplace, with a book in his hand,

but with no power to concentrate his attention to its pages. He was

sitting thus when the door was opened, and a servant announced—

 

“Miss Milford!”

 

Sir Oswald rose from his chair, and beheld an elegant young lady, who

approached him with a graceful timidity of manner. She was simply

dressed in gray merino, a black silk mantle, and a straw bonnet,

trimmed with white ribbon. Nothing could have been more Quaker-like

than the simplicity of this costume, and yet there was an elegance

about the wearer which the baronet had seldom seen surpassed.

 

He rose to welcome her.

 

“You have just arrived in town?” he said.

 

“Yes, Sir Oswald; a hackney-coach brought me here from the coach-office.”

 

“I am very glad to see you,” said the baronet, holding out his hand,

which Honoria Milford touched lightly with her own neatly gloved

fingers; “and I am happy to tell you that I have secured you a home

which I think you will like.”

 

“Oh, Sir Oswald, you are only too good to me. I shall never know how to

thank you.”

 

“Then do not thank me at all. Believe me, I desire no thanks. I have

done nothing worthy of gratitude. An influence stronger than my own

will has drawn me towards you; and in doing what I can to befriend you,

I am only giving way to an impulse which I am powerless to resist.”

 

The girl looked at her benefactor with a bewildered expression, and Sir

Oswald interpreted the look.

 

“Yes,” he said, “you may well be astonished by what I tell you. I am

astonished myself. There is something mysterious in the interest which

you have inspired in my mind.”

 

Although the baronet had thought continually of his prot�g�e during

the past week, he had never asked himself if there might not be some

simple and easy solution possible for this bewildering enigma. He had

never asked himself if it were not just within the limits of

possibility that a man of fifty might fall a victim to that fatal fever

called love.

 

He looked at the girl’s beautiful face with the admiration which every

man feels for the perfection of beauty—the pure, calm, reverential

feeling of an artist, or a poet—and he never supposed it possible that

the day might not be far distant when he would contemplate that lovely

countenance with altered sentiments, with a deeper emotion.

 

“Come to the dining-room, Miss Milford,” he said; “I expected you to-day—I have made all my arrangements accordingly. You must be hungry

after your journey; and as I have not yet lunched, I hope you will

share my luncheon?”

 

Honoria assented. Her manner towards her benefactor was charming in its

quiet grace, deferential without being sycophantic—the manner of a

daughter rather than a dependent Before leaving the library, she looked

round at the books, the bronzes, the pictures, with admiring eyes.

Never before had she seen so splendid an apartment: and she possessed

that intuitive love of beautiful objects which is the attribute of all

refined and richly endowed natures.

 

The baronet placed his ward on one side of the table, and seated

himself opposite to her.

 

No servant waited upon them. Sir Oswald himself attended to the wants

of his guest. He heaped her plate with dainties; he filled her glass

with rare old wine; but she ate only a few mouthfuls, and she could

drink nothing. The novelty of her present position was too full of

excitement.

 

During the whole of the repast the baronet asked her no questions. He

talked as if they had long been known to each other, explaining to her

the merits of the different pictures and statues which she admired,

pleased to find her intelligence always on a level with his own.

 

“She is a wonderful creature,” he thought; “a wonderful creature—a

priceless pearl picked up out of the gutter.”

 

After luncheon Sir Oswald rang for his carriage, and presently Honoria

Milford found herself on her way to her new home.

 

The mansion inhabited by the Misses Beaumont was called “The Beeches.”

It had of old been the seat of a nobleman, and the grounds which

encircled it were such as are rarely to be found within a few miles of

the metropolis; and they would in vain be sought for now. Shabby little

streets and terraces cover the ground where grand old cedars of Lebanon

cast their dark shadows on the smooth turf seven-and-twenty years ago.

 

Honoria Milford was enraptured with the beauty of her new home. That

stately mansion, shut in by noble old trees from all the dust and

clamour of the outer world; those smooth lawns, and exquisitely kept

beds, filled with flowers even in this chill spring weather, must have

seemed beautiful to those accustomed to handsome habitations. What must

they have been then to the wanderer of the streets—the friendless

tramp—who a week ago had depended for a night’s rest on the chance of

finding an empty barn.

 

She looked at her benefactor with eyes that were dim with tears, as the

carriage approached this delightful retreat.

 

“If I were your daughter, you could not have chosen a better place than

this,” she said.

 

“If you were my daughter, I doubt if I could feel a deeper interest in

your fate than I feel now,” answered Sir Oswald, quietly.

 

Miss Beaumont the elder received her pupil with ceremonious kindness.

She looked at the girl with the keen glance of examination which

becomes habitual to the eye of the schoolmistress; but the most severe

scrutiny would have failed to detect anything unladylike or ungraceful

in the deportment of Honoria Milford.

 

“The young lady is charming,” said Miss Beaumont, confidentially, as

the baronet was taking leave; “any one could guess that she was an

Eversleigh. She is so elegant, so patrician in face and manner. Ah, Sir

Oswald, the good old blood will show itself.”

 

The baronet smiled as he bade adieu to the schoolmistress. He had told

Honoria that policy had compelled him to speak of her as a distant

relative of his own; and there was no fear that the girl would betray

herself or him by any awkward admissions.

 

Sir Oswald felt depressed and gloomy as he drove back to town. It

seemed to him as if, in parting from his prot�g�e, he had lost

something that was necessary to his happiness.

 

“I have not spent half a dozen hours in her society,” he thought, “and

yet she occupies my mind more than my nephew, Reginald, who for fifteen

years of my life has been the object of so much hope, so many cares.

What does it all mean? What is the key to this mystery?”

 

*

 

CHAPTER V.

 

“EVIL, BE THOU MY GOOD.”

 

Reginald Eversleigh was handsome, accomplished, agreeable—irresistible

when he chose, many people said; but he was not richly endowed with

those intellectual gifts which lift a man to either the good or bad

eminence. He was weak and vacillating—one minute swayed by a good

influence, a transient touch of penitence, affection, or generosity; in

the next given over entirely to his own selfishness, thinking only of

his own enjoyment. He was apt to