Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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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 one in
th’ old too-wer, for t’aint often as there be any one at that time of
night.”
“Tell me the way to the nearest village,” cried Honoria. “I want to get
some conveyance to take me to Raynham.”
“Then you had better go to Edgington, ma’am. That’s four miles from
here—on t’ Raynham ro-ad.”
The man pointed out the way to the village of which he spoke; and Lady
Eversleigh set forth across the wide expanse of moorland alone.
She had considerable difficulty in finding her way, for there were no
landmarks on that broad stretch of level turf. She wandered out of the
track more than once, and it was one o’clock before she reached the
village of Edgington.
Here, after considerable delay, she procured a carriage to take her on
to Raynham; but there was little chance that she could reach the castle
until between three and four o’clock in the afternoon.
CHAPTER X.
“HOW ART THOU LOST!—HOW ON A SUDDEN LOST!”
If Honoria Eversleigh had endured a night of anguish amid the wild
desolation of Yarborough Tower, Sir Oswald had suffered an agony
scarcely less terrible at Raynham. He had been summoned from the
dinner-table in the marquee by one of his servants, who told him that a
boy was waiting for him with a letter, which he would entrust to no one
but Sir Oswald Eversleigh himself.
Mystified by the strange character of this message, Sir Oswald went
immediately to see the boy who had brought it. He found a lad waiting
for him under the trees near the marquee. The boy handed him a letter,
which he opened and read immediately.
The contents of that letter were well calculated to agitate and disturb
him.
The letter was anonymous. It consisted of the following words:—
“_If Sir Oswald Eversleigh wishes to be convinced of his wife’s truth
or falsehood, let him ride back to Raynham without a moment’s delay.
There he will receive ample evidence of her real character. He may have
to wait; but the friend who writes this advises him to wait patiently.
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