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

still more mystified when she saw

Lady Eversleigh clasp her hands before her face, and stand for a few

moments, motionless and statue-like, as if abandoned to despair.

 

“What does it all mean?” Miss Graham asked herself. “Surely she cannot

intend to elope with this Carrington. She may be wicked; but she cannot

be so insane as to throw away wealth and position for the sake of this

foreign adventurer.”

 

She waited, almost breathless with excitement, crouching amongst the

brushwood at the top of the woody bank, and looking downward towards

the fir-grove, with watchful eyes. She had not to wait long. Victor

appeared in a few minutes, out of breath from running.

 

“Have you given orders about the carriage?”

 

“Yes, I have given all necessary orders.”

 

No more was said. Victor handed Lady Eversleigh into the vehicle, and

drove away—slowly while they were still on the edge of the wood; but

accelerating his pace as they emerged upon the moorland.

 

“It is an elopement!” exclaimed Miss Graham, whose astonishment was

unbounded. “It is an elopement! The infamous creature has gone off

with that penniless young man. And now, Sir Oswald, I think you will

have good reason to repent your fine romantic marriage with a base-born

adventuress, whom nobody ever heard of until she burst forth upon the

world as Lady Eversleigh of Raynham Castle.”

 

Filled with the triumphant delight of gratified malice, Lydia Graham

went back to the broad greensward by the Wizard’s Cave. The gentlemen

had now left the marquee; the full moon was rising, round and yellow,

on the horizon, like a great globe of molten gold. Preparations had

already commenced for the return, and the younger members of the party

were busy discussing the arrangements of the homeward drive.

 

That moonlight drive was looked forward to as one of the chief

pleasures of the excursion; it would afford such glorious opportunities

for flirtation. It would enable romantic young ladies to quote so much

poetry about the moon and the summer night, while poetically-disposed

young gentlemen replied in the same strain. All was animation and

excitement. The champagne and burgundy, the sparkling hock and moselle,

which had been consumed in the marquee, had only rendered the majority

of the gentlemen more gallant and agreeable; and softly-spoken

compliments, and tender pressures of pretty little delicately-gloved

hands, testified to the devotion of the cavaliers who were to escort

the band of fair ones homeward.

 

Lydia Graham hoped that she would be able to take up the thread of her

flirtation with Lord Howden exactly where it had dropped when she had

risen to leave the dinner-table. She had thought it even possible that,

if she could secure a t�te-�-t�te drive home with the weak-brained

young nobleman, she might lure him on until he made a formal proposal,

from which he would find it no easy matter to recede; for Captain

Graham was at his sister’s call, and was a gentleman of no very

yielding temper where his own interests were at stake. He had long been

anxious that his sister should make a wealthy marriage, for her debts

and difficulties annoyed him; and he felt that if she were well

married, he would be able to borrow money of her, instead of being

pestered by her applications for assistance.

 

Miss Graham was doomed to endure a disappointment. Lord Sumner Howden

was one of the few gentleman upon whom iced champagne and moselle had

produced anything but an exhilarating effect. He was dull and stupid,

pallid and sleepy; like some great, greedy schoolboy who has over-eaten himself, and is suffering the consequences of his gluttony.

 

The fair Lydia had the mortification of hearing him tell one of the

grooms to put him into a close carriage, where he could have a nap on

his way home.

 

Reginald Eversleigh took the lordling’s seat in the barouche, which was

the first in the line of carriages for the homeward journey, in spite

of Honoria’s entreaties to Victor Carrington. The young man was almost

as dull and stupid, to all appearance, as Lord Sumner Howden; but,

although he had been drinking deeply, intoxication had nothing to do

with his gloomy silence.

 

He knew that Carrington’s scheme had been ripening day by day; and he

knew also that within a few hours the final blow was to be struck. He

did not know the nature of that intended stroke of treachery; but he

was aware that it would involve misery and humiliation for Sir Oswald,

utter ruin and disgrace for Honoria. The very uncertainty as to the

nature of the cruel plot made it all the more dreadful; and he waited

with no very pleasant feelings for the development of his friend’s

scheme.

 

When all was ready for the start, it was discovered that “dear Lady

Eversleigh” was missing. Servants were sent in every direction to

search for her; but with no avail. Sir Oswald was also missed; but

Plummer, the old groom, informed Mr. Eversleigh that his uncle had left

some hours before; and as some of the party had seen the baronet leave

the dinner-table, in compliance with a sudden summons, this occasioned

little surprise.

 

The next person missed was Victor Carrington. It was Lydia who drew

attention to the fact of his absence.

 

The party waited an hour, while search for Lady Eversleigh was renewed

in every direction, while many of the guests expressed their fears that

something must have happened to her—that she had wandered too far,

and lost her way in the wood—or that she had missed her footing on

the edge of one of the deep pools by the cavern, and had fallen into

the water—or that she had been attacked by ruffians.

 

But in due time it was discovered that Mr. Carrington had been seen to

take a gig from amongst the vehicles; and a lad, who had been in charge

of the gig and the horse belonging to it, told the other servants that

Mr. Carrington had said he wanted the vehicle to drive Lady Eversleigh

home. She was tired, Mr. Carrington had said, and wanted to go home

quietly.

 

This information was brought to Reginald by one of the upper servants;

and the question of Lady Eversleigh’s disappearance being at once set

at rest, the procession of carriages moved away in the moonlight.

 

“It was really too bad of dear Lady Eversleigh to give us such

unnecessary alarm,” said Lydia Graham.

 

The lady who had taken the second place in the barouche agreed with

this remark.

 

“I never was more alarmed in my life,” she said. “I felt sure that

something very dreadful must have happened.”

 

“And to think that Lady Eversleigh should prefer going home in a gig,”

said Lydia, maliciously; “for my part, I think a gig a most unpleasant

vehicle.”

 

The other lady whispered something about Lady Eversleigh’s humble

extraction, and her ignorance of the usages of society.

 

“You can’t wonder at it, my dear,” she murmured. “For my part, I was

surprised to see her so much at her ease in her new position. But, you

see, her ignorance has now betrayed her into a terrible breach of the

proprieties. Her conduct is, to say the least of it, most eccentric;

and you may depend, no one here will ever forget this ride home in a

gig with that clever young surgeon. I don’t suppose Sir Oswald will

very much approve of such conduct.”

 

“Nor I,” said Lydia, in the same subdued tone. “Poor Sir Oswald! What

could he expect when he disgraced himself by such a marriage?”

 

Reginald Eversleigh leaned back in the carriage, with his arum folded,

and his eyes fixed on vacancy, while the ladies gossipped in whispers.

 

*

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

ON YARBOROUGH TOWER.

 

No sooner had Victor Carrington got completely clear of the wood, than

he drove his horse at a gallop.

 

The light gig swayed from side to side, and jolted violently several

times on crossing some obstruction in the way.

 

“You are not afraid?” asked Victor.

 

“I am only afraid of delay,” answered Honoria, calmly; for by this time

she had recovered much of her ordinary firmness, and was prepared to

face her sorrow with at least outward tranquillity. “Tell me, Mr.

Carrington, have you reason to think that my husband is in great

danger?”

 

“I can tell you nothing for certain. You know how stupid the country

people are. The boy who brought the message told me that the gentleman

had been thrown from his horse, and was very much hurt. He was

insensible, and was injured about the head. I gathered from this, and

from the boy’s manner, rather than his words, that the injuries were

very serious.”

 

“Why was Sir Oswald taken to such a wretched place as a ruined tower?”

 

“Because the accident happened near the ruin; and your husband was

found by the people who have charge of the tower.”

 

“And could they take him to no better place?”

 

“No. There is no habitation of any kind within three miles.”

 

No more was said. It was not very easy to talk while flying through the

air at the utmost speed of a spirited horse.

 

The moon bathed the broad moorland in mellow light. The wide expanse of

level turf looked like a sea of black water that had suddenly been

frozen into stillness. Not a tree—not a patch of brushwood, or a

solitary bush—broke the monotony of the scene: but far away against

the moonlit horizon rose a wild and craggy steep, and on the summit of

that steep appeared a massive tower, with black and ruined battlements,

that stood out grimly against the luminous sky.

 

This was Yarborough Tower—a stronghold that had defied many a

besieging force in the obscure past; but of the origin of which little

was now known.

 

Victor Carrington drove the gig up a rough and narrow road that curved

around the sides of the craggy hill, and wound gradually towards the

top.

 

He was obliged to drive slowly here, and Lady Eversleigh had ample

leisure to gaze upwards at the dreary-looking ruin, whose walls seemed

more densely black as they grew nearer and nearer.

 

“What a horrible place!” she murmured. “To think of my husband lying

there—with no better shelter than those ruined walls in the hour of

his suffering.”

 

Honoria Eversleigh looked around her with a shudder, as the gig passed

across a narrow wooden drawbridge that spanned an enormous chasm in the

craggy hill-side.

 

She looked up at the tower. All was dark, and the dismal cry of a raven

suddenly broke the awful stillness with a sound that was even yet more

awful.

 

“Why are there no lights in the windows?” she asked; “surely Sir Oswald

is not lying in the darkness?”

 

“I don’t know. The chamber in which they have placed him may be on the

other side of the tower,” answered Victor, briefly. “And now, Lady

Eversleigh, you must alight. We can go no further with the vehicle, and

I must take it back to the other side of the drawbridge.”

 

They had reached the entrance of the tower, an archway of solid

masonry, over which the ivy hung like a sombre curtain.

 

Honoria alighted, and passed under the black shadow of the arch.

 

“You had better wait till I return, Lady Eversleigh,” said Victor. “You

will scarcely find your way without my help.”

 

Honoria obeyed. Anxious as she was to reach Sir Oswald without a

moment’s unnecessary delay, she felt herself powerless to proceed

without a guide—so dark was the interior of the tower. She heard