Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [classic literature books txt] 📗

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 of her, and she began to perceive that she was the victim of a foul and villanous plot.

"What do you mean?" she repeated, in accents of alarm.

"I mean this, Lady Eversleigh--the world judges of people's actions by their outward seeming, not by their inward truth. Appearances have conspired to condemn you. Before to-morrow every creature in Raynham Castle will believe that you have fled from your home, and with me--"

"Fled from my home!"

"Yes; how else can your absence to-night--your sudden disappearance from the pic-nic--be construed?"

"If I live, I shall go back to the castle at daybreak to-morrow morning--go back to denounce your villany--to implore my husband's vengeance on your infamy!"

"And do you think any one will believe your denunciation? You will go back too late Lady Eversleigh."

"Oh, villain! villain!" murmured Honoria, in accents of mingled abhorrence and despair--abhorrence of her companion's infamy, despair inspired by the horror of her own position.

"You have played for a very high stake, Lady Eversleigh," said the surgeon; "and you must not wonder if you have found opponents ready to encounter your play with a still more desperate, and a still more dexterous game. When a nameless and obscure woman springs from poverty and obscurity to rank and riches, she must expect to find others ready to dispute the prize which she has won."

"And there can exist a wretch calling himself a man, and yet capable of such an act as this!" cried Honoria, looking upward to the calm and cloudless sky, as if she would have called heaven to witness the iniquity of her enemy. "Do not speak to me, sir," she added, turning to Victor Carrington, with unutterable scorn. "I believed a few minutes ago that you were a madman, and I thought myself the victim of a maniac's folly. I understand all now. You have plotted nobly for your friend's service; and he will, no doubt, reward you richly if you succeed. But you have not yet succeeded. Providence sometimes seems to favour the wicked. It his favoured you, so far; but the end has not come yet."

She turned from him and walked to the opposite side of the tower. Here she seated herself on the battlemented wall, as calm, in outward seeming, as if she had been in her own drawing-room. She took out a tiny jewelled watch; by that soft light she could perceive the figures on the dial.

It was a few minutes after one o'clock. It was not likely that the man who had charge of the ruins would come to the tower until seven or eight in the morning. For six or seven hours, therefore, Honoria Eversleigh was likely to be a prisoner--for six or seven hours she would have to endure the hateful presence of the man whose treachery had placed her in this hideous position.

Despair reigned in her heart, entire and overwhelming despair. When released from her prison, she might hurry back to the castle. But who would believe a story so wild, so improbable, as that which she would have to tell?

Would her husband believe her? Would he, who had to all appearance withdrawn his love from her for no reason whatever--would he believe in her purity and truth, when circumstances conspired in damning evidence of her guilt? A sense of hopeless misery took possession of her heart; but no cry of anguish broke from her pale lips. She sat motionless as a statue, with her eyes fixed upon the eastern horizon, counting the moments as they passed with cruel slowness, watching with yearning gaze for the first glimmer of morning.

Victor Carrington contemplated that statuesque figure, that pale and tranquil face, with unalloyed admiration. Until to-night he had despised women as frail, helpless creatures, only made to be flattered by false words, and tyrannized over by stronger natures than their own. Among all the women with whom he had ever been associated, his mother was the only one in whose good sense he had believed, or for whose intellect he had felt the smallest respect. But now he beheld a woman of another stamp--a woman whose pride and fortitude were akin to the heroic.

"You endure the unpleasantness of your position nobly, Lady Eversleigh," he said; "and I can find no words to express my admiration of your conduct. It is very hard to find oneself the enemy of a lady, and, above all, of a lady whose beauty and whose intellect are alike calculated to inspire admiration. But in this world, Lady Eversleigh, there is only one rule--only one governing principle by which men regulate their lives--let them seek as they will to mask the truth with specious lies, which other men pretend to believe, but do not. That one rule, that one governing principle, is SELF-INTEREST. For the advancement of his own fortunes, the man who calls himself honest will trample on the dearest ties, will sacrifice the firmest friendships. The game which Reginald Eversleigh and I have played against you is a desperate one; but Sir Oswald rendered his nephew desperate when he reduced him, in one short hour, from wealth to poverty--when he robbed him of expectations that had been his from infancy. A desperate man will do desperate deeds; and it has been your fate, Lady Eversleigh, to cross the path of such a man."

He waited, with his eyes fixed on the face of Sir Oswald's wife. But during the whole of his speech she had never once looked at him. She had never withdrawn her eyes from the eastern horizon. Passionless contempt was expressed by that curving lip, that calm repose of eye and brow. It seemed as if this woman's disdain for the plotting villain into whose power she had fallen absorbed every other feeling.

Victor Carrington waited in vain for some reply from those scornful lips; but none came. He took out his cigar-case, lighted a cigar, and sat in a meditative attitude, smoking, and looking down moodily at the black chasm below the base of the tower. For the first time in his life this man, who was utterly without honour or principle--this man, who held self-interest as the one rule of conduct--this unscrupulous trickster and villain, felt the bitterness of a woman's scorn. He would have been unmoved by the loudest evidence of his victim's despair; but her silent contempt stung him to the quick. The hours dragged themselves out with a hideous slowness for the despairing creature who sat watching for the dawn; but at last that long night came to an end, the chill morning light glimmered faint and gray in the east. It was not the first time that Sir Oswald's wife had watched in anguish for the coming of that light. In that lonely tower, with her heart tortured by a sense of unutterable agony, there came back to her the memory of another vigil which she had kept more than two years before.

_She heard the dull, plashing sound of a river, the shivering of rushes, then the noise of a struggle, oaths, a heavy crashing fall, a groan, and then no more_!

Blessed with her husband's love, she had for a while closed her eyes upon that horrible picture of the past; but now, in the hour of despair, it came back to her, hideously distinct, awfully palpable.

"How could I hope for happiness?" she thought; "I, the daughter of an assassin! The sins of one generation are visited on another. A curse is upon me, and I can never hope for happiness."

The sun rose, and shone broad and full over the barren moorland; but it was several hours after sunrise before the man who took care of the ruins came to release the wretched prisoner.

He picked up a scanty living by showing the tower to visitors, and he knew that no visitors were likely to come before nine o'clock in the morning. It was nearly nine when Honoria saw him approaching in the distance.

It was after nine when he drew up the bridge, and came across it to the ruined fortress.

"You are free from this moment, Lady Eversleigh," said the surgeon, whose face looked horribly pale and worn in the broad sunlight. That night of watching had not been without its agony for him.

Honoria did not condescend to notice his words. She took up the plumed hat, which had been lying among the long grass at her feet. The delicate feathers were wet and spoiled by the night dew, and she took them from the fragile hat and flung them away. Her thin, white dress was heavy with the damp, and clung round her like a shroud. But she had not felt the chilling night winds.

Lady Eversleigh groped her way down the winding staircase, which was dark even in the daytime--except here and there, where a gap in the wall let in a patch of light upon the gloomy stones.

Under the archway she met the countryman, who uttered a cry on beholding the white, phantom-like figure.

"Oh, Loard!" he cried, when he had recovered from his terror; "I ask pardon, my lady, but danged if I didn't teak thee for a ghaist."

"You did not know, when you went away last night, that there was any one in the tower?"

"No, indeed, my lady. I'd been away for a few minutes look'n' arter a bit of peg I've got in a shed down yander; and when I keame back to let down th' drawbridge, I didn't sing out to ax if there wur any