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

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ravens shrieking hoarsely in the battlements above, and the ivy

flapping in the evening wind; but she could hear nothing else.

 

Victor came back to her in a few minutes. As he rejoined her, there was

a noise of some ponderous object falling, with a grating and rattling

of heavy chains; but Lady Eversleigh was too much absorbed by her own

anxieties to feel any curiosity as to the origin of the sound.

 

“Come,” said Victor; “give me your hand, Lady Eversleigh, and let me

guide you.”

 

She placed her hand in that of the surgeon. He led her to a steep

staircase, formed by blocks of solid stone, which were rendered

slippery by the moss that had gathered on them. It was a winding

staircase, built in a turret which formed one angle of the tower.

Looking upwards, Honoria saw a gap in the roof, through which the

moonlight shone bright. But there was no sign of any other light.

 

“Where is my husband?” she asked. “I see no lights; I hear no voices;

the place seems like a tomb.”

 

Victor Carrington did not answer her question.

 

“Come,” he said, in a commanding voice. “Follow me, Lady Eversleigh.”

 

He still held her hand, and she obeyed him, making her way with some

difficulty up the steep and winding staircase.

 

At last she found herself at the top. A narrow doorway opened before

her; and following her companion through this doorway, she emerged on

the roof of the tower.

 

Around her were the ruined battlements, broken away altogether here and

there; below her was the craggy hill-side, sloping downwards to the

wide expanse of the moorland; above her was the purple sky, flooded

with the calm radiance of the moon; but there was no sign of human

habitation, no sound of a human voice.

 

“Where is my husband, Mr. Carrington?” she cried, with a wild alarm,

which had but that moment taken possession of her. “This ruin is

uninhabited. I saw the empty rooms, through gaps in the broken wall as

we came up that staircase. Where is my husband?”

 

“At Raynham Castle, Lady Eversleigh, to the best of my knowledge,”

answered the surgeon, with imperturbable calmness.

 

He had seated himself on one of the broken battlements, in a lounging

attitude, with one arm leaning on the ruined stone, and he was looking

quietly out at the solitary expanse of barren waste sleeping beneath

the moonlight.

 

Lady Eversleigh looked at him with a countenance that had grown rigid

with horror and alarm.

 

“My husband at Raynham—at Raynham!” she repeated, as if she could not

credit the evidence of her own ears. “Am I mad, or are you mad, Mr.

Carrington? My husband at Raynham Castle, you say?”

 

“I cannot undertake to answer positively for the movements of any

gentleman; but I should say that, at this present moment, Sir Oswald

Eversleigh is in his own house, for which he started some hours ago.”

 

“Then why am I here?”

 

“To answer that question clearly will involve the telling of a long

story, Lady Eversleigh,” answered Victor. “My motive for bringing you

here concerns myself and another person. You are here to farther the

interests of two people, and those two people are Reginald Eversleigh

and your humble servant.”

 

“But the accident? Sir Oswald’s danger—”

 

“I must beg you not to give yourself any further alarm on that subject.

I regret very much that I have been obliged to inflict unnecessary pain

upon a lady. The story of the accident is a little invention of my own.

Sir Oswald is perfectly safe.”

 

“Thank heaven!” cried Honoria, clasping her hands in the fervour of

sudden gratitude; “thank heaven for that!”

 

Her face looked beautiful, as she lifted it towards the moonlit sky.

Victor Carrington contemplated her with wonder.

 

“Can it be possible that she loves this man?” he thought. “Can it be

that she has not been acting a part after all?”

 

Her first thought, on hearing that she had been deceived, was one of

unmingled joy, of deep and heartfelt gratitude. Her second thought was

of the shameful trick that had been played upon her; and she turned to

Victor Carrington with passionate indignation.

 

“What is the meaning of this juggling, sir?” she cried; “and why have I

been brought to this place?”

 

“It is a long story, Lady Eversleigh, and I would recommend you to calm

yourself before you listen to it, if you have any wish to understand me

clearly.”

 

“I can stop to listen to no long stories, sir. Your trick is a shameful

and unmanly one, whatever its motive. I beg that you will take me back

to Raynham without a moment’s delay; and I would advise you to comply

with my request, unless you wish to draw upon yourself Sir Oswald’s

vengeance for the wrong you have done me. I am the last person in the

world to involve my husband in a quarrel; but if you do not immediately

take steps towards restoring me to my own home, I shall certainly let

him know how deeply I have been wronged and insulted.”

 

“I am not afraid of your husband, my dear Lady Eversleigh,” answered

the surgeon, with cool insolence; “for I do not think Sir Oswald will

care to take up the cudgels in your defence, after the events of to-night.”

 

Honoria Eversleigh looked at the speaker with unutterable scorn, and

then turned towards the doorway which communicated with the staircase.

 

“Since you refuse to assist in my return, I will go alone and

unassisted,” she said.

 

Victor raised his hand with a warning gesture.

 

“Do not attempt to descend that staircase, my dear Lady Eversleigh,” he

said. “In the first place, the steps are slippery, and the descent very

dangerous; and, in the next, you would find yourself unable to go

beyond the archway.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Oblige me by looking down through that breach in the battlements.”

 

He had risen from his lounging position, and pointed downward as he

spoke.

 

Involuntarily Honoria followed the indication of his hand.

 

A cry of horror broke from her lips as she looked below. The drawbridge

no longer spanned the chasm. It had fallen, and hung over the edge of

the abyss, suspended by massive chains. On all sides of the tower

yawned a gulf of some fifteen feet wide.

 

At first Lady Eversleigh thought that this chasm might only be on one

side of the ruin, but on rushing to the opposite battlements, and

looking down, she saw that it was a moss-grown stone-moat, which

completely encircled the stronghold.

 

“The warriors of old knew how to build their fortresses, and how to

protect themselves from their foes,” said Victor Carrington, as if in

answer to his companion’s despairing cry. “Those who built this edifice

and dug that moat, little knew how useful their arrangements would be

in these degenerate days. Do not pace to and fro with that distracted

air, Lady Eversleigh. Believe me, you will do wisely to take things

quietly. You are doomed to remain here till daybreak. This ruin is in

the care of a man who leaves it at a certain hour every evening. When

he leaves, he drops the drawbridge—you must have heard him do it a

little while ago—and no hand but his can raise the chains that support

it; for he only knows the secret of their machinery. He has left the

place for the night. He lives three miles and a half away, at a little

village yonder, which looks only a black speck in the distance, and he

will not return till some time after daybreak.”

 

“And you would keep me a prisoner here—you would detain me in this

miserable place, while my husband is, no doubt, expecting me at

Raynham, perplexed and bewildered by my mysterious absence?”

 

“Yes, Lady Eversleigh, there will be wonder and perplexity enough on

your account to-night at Raynham Castle.”

 

There was a pause after this.

 

Honoria sank upon a block of fallen stone, bewildered, terror-stricken, for the moment powerless to express either her fears or her

indignation, so strange, so completely inexplicable was the position in

which she found herself.

 

“I am in the power of a maniac,” she murmured; “no one but a maniac

could be capable of this wild act. My life is in the power of a madman.

I can but wait the issue. Let me be calm. Oh, merciful heaven, give me

fortitude to face my danger quietly!”

 

The strength she prayed for seemed to come with the prayer.

 

The wild beating of her heart slackened a little. She swept the heavy

masses of hair away from her forehead, and bound the fallen plaits in a

knot at the back of her head. She did this almost as calmly as if she

had been making her toilet in her dressing-room at Raynham. Victor

Carrington watched her with surprise.

 

“She is a wonderful woman,” he said to himself; “a noble creature. As

powerful in mind as she is lovely in person. What a pity that I should

make myself the enemy of this woman for the sake of such a mean-spirited hound as Reginald Eversleigh! But my interests compel me to

run counter to my inclination. It is a great pity. With this woman as

my ally, I might have done greater things than I shall ever do by

myself.”

 

Victor Carrington mused thus while Honoria Eversleigh sat on the edge

of the broken wall, at a few paces from him, looking calmly out at the

purple sky.

 

She fully believed that she had fallen into the power of a maniac.

What, except madness, could have prompted such conduct as that of

Victor Carrington’s?

 

She knew that there is no defence so powerful as an appearance of

calmness; and it was with tranquillity she addressed her companion,

after that interval of deliberation.

 

“Now, Mr. Carrington,” she said, “since it seems I am your prisoner,

perhaps you will be good enough to inform me why you have brought me to

this place, and what injury I have ever done you that you should

inflict so deep a wrong on me?”

 

“You have never injured me, Lady Eversleigh,” replied Victor

Carrington; “but you have injured one who is my friend, and whose

interests are closely linked with mine.”

 

“Who is that friend?”

 

“Reginald Eversleigh.”

 

“Reginald Eversleigh!” repeated Honoria, with amazement. “In what

manner have I injured Reginald Eversleigh? Is he not my husband’s

nephew, and am I not bound to feel interest in his welfare? How, then,

can I have injured him?”

 

“You have done him the worst wrong that one individual can do another—

you stand between him and fortune. Do you not know that, little more

than a year ago, Reginald Eversleigh was the heir to Raynham and all

its surroundings?”

 

“I know that; but he was disinherited before I crossed his uncle’s

pathway.”

 

“True; but had you not crossed Sir Oswald’s path, there is no doubt

Reginald would have been restored to favour. But you have woven your

spells round his kinsman, and his only hope lies in your disgrace—”

 

“My disgrace!”

 

“Yes, Lady Eversleigh. Life is a battle, in which the weakest must be

trodden down; you have triumphed hitherto, but the hour of your triumph

is past. Yesterday you were queen of Raynham Castle; to-morrow no

kitchen-wench within its walls will be so low as you.”

 

“What do you mean?” asked Honoria, more and more mystified every moment

by her companion’s words.

 

For the first time, an awful fear took possession