Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗
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which he may maintain his title.”
There was very little promise in this; but Victor Carrington was,
nevertheless, tolerably well satisfied with the result of the
conversation. He had sown the seeds of doubt and uncertainty in the
baronet’s breast. Time only could bring the harvest. The surgeon was
accustomed to work underground, and knew that all such work must be
slow and laborious.
*
CHAPTER VII.
“O BEWARE, MY LORD, OF JEALOUSY.”
The castle was gay with the presence of many guests. The baronet was
proud to gather old friends and acquaintances round him, in order that
he might show them the fair young wife he had chosen to be the solace
of his declining years. A man of fifty who marries a girl of nineteen
is always subject to the ridicule of scandalous lips, the ironical
jests of pitiless tongues. Sir Oswald Eversleigh knew this, and he
wanted to show the world that he was happy—supremely happy—in the
choice that he had made.
Amongst those who came to Raynham Castle this autumn was one trusted
friend of Sir Oswald, a gruff old soldier, Captain Copplestone, a man
who had never won advancement in the service; but who was known to have
nobly earned the promotion which had never been awarded him.
This man was on brotherly terms with Sir Oswald, and was about the only
creature who had ever dared to utter disagreeable truths to the
baronet. He was very poor; but had never accepted the smallest favour
from the hands of his wealthy friend. Sir Oswald was devoutly attached
to him, and would have gladly opened his purse to him as to a brother;
but he dared not offend the stern old soldier’s pride by even hinting
at such a desire.
Captain Copplestone came to Raynham prepared to remonstrate with his
friend on the folly of his marriage. He arrived when the reception-room
was crowded with other visitors, and be stood by, looking on in grim
disdain, while the newly arrived guests were pressing their
felicitations on Sir Oswald.
By and bye the guests departed to their rooms, and the friends were
left alone.
“Well, old friend,” cried the baronet, stretching out both his hands to
grasp those of the captain in a warmer salutation than that of his
first welcome, “am I to have no word of congratulation from you?”
“What word do you want?” growled Copplestone. “If I tell you the truth,
you won’t like it; and if I were to try to tell you a lie, egad! I
think the syllables would choke me. It has been hard enough for me to
keep patience while all those idiots have been babbling their unmeaning
compliments; and now that they’ve gone away to laugh at you behind your
back, you’d better let me follow their example, and not risk the chance
of a quarrel with an old friend by speaking my mind.”
“You think me a fool, then, Copplestone?”
“Why, what else can I think of you? If a man of fifty must needs go and
marry a girl of nineteen, he can’t expect to be thought a Solon.”
“Ah, Copplestone, when you have seen my wife, you will think
differently.”
“Not a bit of it. The prettier she is, the more fool I shall think you;
for there’ll be so much the more certainty that she’ll make your life
miserable.”
“Here she comes!” said the baronet; “look at her before you judge her
too severely, old friend, and let her face answer for her truth.”
The room in which the two men were standing opened into another and
larger apartment, and through the open folding-doors Captain
Copplestone saw Lady Eversleigh approaching. She was dressed in white—
that pure, transparent muslin in which her husband loved best to see
her—and one large natural rose was fastened amidst her dark hair. As
she drew nearer to the baronet and his friend, the bluff old soldier’s
face softened.
The introduction was made by Sir Oswald, and Honoria held out her hand
with her brightest and most bewitching smile.
“My husband has spoken of you very often, Captain Copplestone,” she
said; “and I feel as if we were old friends rather than strangers. I
have pleasure in bidding welcome to all Sir Oswald’s guests; but not
such pleasure as I feel in welcoming you.”
The soldier extended his bronzed hand, and grasped the soft white
fingers in a pressure that was something like that of an iron vice. He
looked at Lady Eversleigh with a serio-comic expression of
bewilderment, and looked from her to the baronet.
“Well?” asked Sir Oswald, presently, when Honoria had left them.
“Well, Oswald, if the truth must be told, I think you had some excuse
for your folly. She is a beautiful creature; and if there is any faith
to be put in the human countenance, she is as good as she is
beautiful.”
The baronet grasped his friend’s hand with a pressure that was more
eloquent than words. He believed implicitly in the captain’s powers of
penetration, and this favourable judgment of the wife he adored filled
him with gratitude. It was not that the faintest shadow of doubt
obscured his own mind. He trusted her fully and unreservedly; but he
wanted others to trust her also.
*
While Sir Oswald and his friend were enjoying a brief interval of
confidential intercourse, Reginald Eversleigh and Victor Carrington
lounged in a pleasant little sitting-room, smoking their cigars, and
leaning on the stone sill of the wide Gothic window.
They were talking, and talking very earnestly.
“You are a very clever fellow, I know, my dear Carrington,” said
Reginald; “but it is slow work, very slow work, and I don’t see my way
through it.”
“Because you are as impatient as a child who has set his heart on a new
toy,” answered the surgeon, disdainfully. “You complain that the game
is slow, and yet you see one move after another made upon the board—
and made successfully. A month ago you did not believe in the
possibility of a reconciliation between your uncle and yourself; and
yet that reconciliation has come about. A fortnight ago you would have
laughed at the idea of my being here at Raynham, an invited guest; and
yet here I am. Do you think there has been no patient thought necessary
to work out this much of our scheme? Do you suppose that I was on
Thorpe Hill by accident that afternoon?”
“And you hope that something may come of your visit here?”
“I hope that much may come of it. I have already dared to drop hints at
injustice done to you. That idea of injustice will rankle in your
uncle’s mind. I have my plans, Reginald, and you have only to be
patient, and to trust in me.”
“But why should you refuse to tell me the nature of your plans?”
“Because my plans are as yet but half formed. I may soon be able to
speak more plainly. Do you see those two figures yonder, walking in the
pleasaunce?”
“Yes, I see them—my uncle and his wife,” answered Reginald, with a
gesture of impatience.
“They are very happy—are they not? It is quite an Arcadian picture. I
beg you to contemplate it earnestly.”
“What a fool you are, Carrington!” cried the young man, flinging away
his cigar. “If my uncle chooses to make an idiot of himself, that is no
reason why I should watch the evidence of his folly!”
“But there is another reason,” answered Victor, with a sinister look in
his glittering black eyes. “Look at the picture while you may,
Reginald, for you will not have the chance of seeing it very often.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the day is near at hand when Lady Eversleigh will fall
from her high estate. I mean that an elevation as sudden as hers is
often the forerunner of a sudden disgrace. The hour will come when Sir
Oswald will mourn his fatal marriage as the one irrevocable mistake of
his life; and when, in his despair, he will restore you, the disgraced
nephew, to your place, as his acknowledged heir; because you will at
least seem to him more worthy than his disgraced wife.”
“And who is to bring this about?” asked Reginald, gazing at his friend
in complete bewilderment.
“I am,” answered the surgeon; “but before I do so I must have some
understanding as to the price of my services. If the cat who pulled the
chestnuts out of the fire for the benefit of the monkey had made an
agreement beforehand as to how much of the plunder he was to receive
for his pains, the name of the animal would not have become a bye-word
with posterity. When I have worked to win your fortune, I must have my
reward, my dear Reginald.”
“Do you suppose I should be ungrateful?”
“Of course not. But, you see, I don’t ask for your gratitude—I want a
good round sum down on the nail—hard cash. Your uncle’s fortune, if
you get two-thirds of it, will be worth thirty thousand a year; and for
such a fortune you can very well afford to pay me twenty thousand in
ready money within two years of your accession to the inheritance.”
“Twenty thousand!”
“Yes; if you think the sum too much, we will say no more about it. The
business is a very difficult one, and I scarcely care to engage in it.”
“My dear Victor, you bewilder me. I cannot bring myself to believe that
you can bring about my restoration to my old place in my uncle’s will;
but if you do, the twenty thousand shall be yours.”
“Good!” answered the surgeon, in his coolest and most business-like
manner; “I must have it in black and white. You will give me two
promissory notes; one for ten thousand, to fall due a year hence—the
other for the same sum, to fall due in two years.”
“But if I do not get the fortune—and I am not likely to get it within
that time; my uncle’s life is a good one, and—”
“Never mind your uncle’s life. I will give you an undertaking to cancel
those notes of hand if you have not succeeded to the Raynham estates.
And now here are stamps. You may as well fill in the body of the notes,
and sign them at once, and so close the transaction.”
“You are prepared with the stamps?”
“Yes; I am a man of business, although a man of science.”
“Victor,” said Reginald Eversleigh; “you sometimes make me shudder,
There is something almost diabolical about you.”
“But if I drag yonder fair lady down from her high, estate, you would
scarcely care if I were the foul fiend in person,” said Carrington,
looking at his friend with a sardonic smile. “Oh, I think I know you,
Reginald Eversleigh, better than you know me.”
*
Amongst the guests who had arrived at the castle within the last few
days was Lydia Graham, the young lady of whom the baronet had spoken to
his nephew. She was a fascinating girl, with a bold, handsome face,
brilliant gray eyes, an aquiline nose, and a profusion of dark, waving
hair. She was a woman who knew how to make the most of every charm with
which nature had endowed her. She dressed superbly; but with an
extravagance far beyond the limits
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