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

stand as they are. The promise of the estate is mine. I have suffered too much from the loss of my position, and I cannot forego my new hopes. But let there be no more guilt--no more plotting. We have succeeded. Let us wait patiently for the end."

"Yes," answered the surgeon, coolly, "we will wait for the end; and if the end should come sooner than our most sanguine hopes have led us to expect, we will not quarrel with the handiwork of fate. Now leave me. I see a petticoat yonder amongst the trees. It belongs to some housemaid from the castle, I dare say; and I must see if my eloquence as a wandering merchant cannot win me admission within the walls which I dare not approach as Victor Carrington."

Reginald opened the gate with his pass-key, and allowed the surgeon to go through into the gardens.

* * * * *


It was dusk when Sir Oswald left the library. He had sent a message to the chief of his guests, excusing himself from attending the dinner- table, on the ground of ill-health. When he knew that all his visitors would be assembled in the dining-room, he left the library, for the first time since he had entered it after breakfast.

He had brooded long and gloomily over his misery, and had come to a determination as to the line of conduct which he should pursue towards his wife. He went now to Lady Eversleigh's apartments, in order to inform her of his decision; but, to his surprise, he found the rooms empty. His wife's maid was sitting at needlework by one of the windows of the dressing-room.

"Where is your mistress?" asked Sir Oswald.

"She has gone out, sir. She has left the castle for some little time, I think, sir; for she put on the plainest of her travelling dresses, and she took a small travelling-bag with her. There is a note, sir, on the mantel-piece in the next room. Shall I fetch it?"

"No; I will get it myself. At what time did Lady Eversleigh leave the castle?"

"About two hours ago, sir."

"Two hours! In time for the afternoon coach to York," thought Sir Oswald. "Go and inquire if your mistress really left the castle at that time," he said to the maid.

He went into the boudoir, and took the letter from the mantel-piece. He crushed it into his breast-pocket with the seal unbroken--

"Time enough to discover what new falsehood she has tried to palm upon me," he thought.

He looked round the empty room--which she was never more to occupy. Her books, her music, were scattered on every side. The sound of her rich voice seemed still to vibrate through the room. And she was gone--for ever! Well, she was a base and guilty creature, and it was better so-- infinitely better that her polluting presence should no longer dishonour those ancient chambers, within which generations of proud and pure women had lived and died. But to see the rooms empty, and to know that she was gone, gave him nevertheless a pang.

"What will become of her?" thought Sir Oswald. "She will return to her lover, of course, and he will console her for the sacrifice she has made by her mad folly. Let her prize him while he still lives to console her; for she may not have him long. Why do I think of her?--why do I trouble myself about her? I have my affairs to arrange--a new will to make--before I think of vengeance. And those matters once settled, vengeance shall be my only thought. I have done for ever with love!"

Sir Oswald returned to the library. A lamp burned on the table at which he was accustomed to write. It was a shaded reading-lamp, which made a wide circle of vivid light around the spot where it stood, but left the rest of the room in shadow.

The night was oppressively hot--an August rather than a September night; and, before beginning his work, Sir Oswald flung open one of the broad windows leading out upon the terrace. Then he unlocked a carved oak bureau, and took out a packet of papers. He seated himself at the table, and began to examine these papers.

Among them was the will which he had executed since his marriage. He read this, and then laid it aside. As he did so, a figure approached the wide-open window; an eager face, illuminated by glittering eyes, peered into the room. It was the face of Victor Carrington, hidden beneath the disguise of assumed age, and completely metamorphosed by the dark skin and grizzled beard. Had Sir Oswald looked up and seen that face, he would not have recognized its owner.

After laying aside the document he had read, Sir Oswald began to write. He wrote slowly, meditating upon every word; and after having written for about half an hour, he rose and left the room. The surgeon had never stirred from his post by the window; and as Sir Oswald closed the door behind him, he crept stealthily into the apartment, and to the table where the papers lay. His footstep, light always, made no sound upon the thick velvet pile. He glanced at the contents of the paper, on which the ink was still wet. It was a will, leaving the bulk of Sir Oswald's fortune to his nephew, Reginald, unconditionally. Victor Carrington did not linger a moment longer than was necessary to convince him of this fact. He hurried back to his post by the window: nor was he an instant too soon. The door opened before he had fairly stepped from the apartment.

Sir Oswald re-entered, followed by two men. One was the butler, the other was the valet, Joseph Millard. The will was executed in the presence of these men, who affixed their signatures to it as witnesses.

"I have no wish to keep the nature of this will a secret from my household," said Sir Oswald. "It restores my nephew, Mr. Reginald Eversleigh, to his position as heir to this estate. You will henceforth respect him as my successor."

The two men bowed and retired. Sir Oswald walked towards the window: and Victor Carrington drew back into the shadow cast by a massive abutment of stone-work.

It was not very easy for a man to conceal himself on the terrace in that broad moonlight.

Voices sounded presently, near one of the windows; and a group of ladies and gentlemen emerged from the drawing-room.

"It is the hottest night we have had this summer," said one of them. "The house is really oppressive."

Miss Graham had enchanted her viscount once more, and she and that gentleman walked side by side on the terrace.

"They will discover me if they come this way," muttered Victor, as he shrank back into the shadow. "I have seen all that I want to see for the present, and had better make my escape while I am safe."

He stole quietly along by the front of the castle, lurking always in the shadow of the masonry, and descended the terrace steps. From thence he went to the court-yard, on which the servants' hall opened; and in a few minutes he was comfortably seated in that apartment, listening to the gossip of the servants, who could only speak upon the one subject of Lady Eversleigh's elopement.

* * * * *


The baronet sat with the newly-made will before him, gazing at the open leaves with fixed and dreamy eyes.

Now that the document was signed, a feeling of doubt had taken possession of him. He remembered how deliberately he had pondered over the step before he had disinherited his nephew; and now that work, which had cost him so much pain and thought, had been undone on the impulse of a moment.

"Have I done right, I wonder?" he asked himself.

The papers which had been tied in the packet containing the old will had been scattered on the table when the baronet unfastened the band that secured them. He took one of these documents up in sheer absence of mind, and opened it.

It was the letter written by the wretched girl who drowned herself in the Seine--the letter of Reginald Eversleigh's victim--the very letter on the evidence of which Sir Oswald had decided that his nephew was no fitting heir to a great fortune.

The baronet's brow contracted as he read.

"And it is to the man who could abandon a wretched woman to despair and death, that I am about to leave wealth and power," he exclaimed. "No; the decision which I arrived at in Arlington Street was a just and wise decision. I have been mad to-day--maddened by anger and despair; but it is not too late to repent my folly. The seducer of Mary Goodwin shall never be the master of Raynham Castle."

Sir Oswald folded the sheet of foolscap on which the will was written, and held it over the flame of the lamp. He carried it over to the fire- place, and threw it blazing on the empty hearth. He watched it thoughtfully until the greater part of the paper was consumed by the flame, and then went back to his seat.

"My nephews, Lionel and Douglas Dale, shall divide the estate between them," he thought. "I will send for my solicitor to-morrow, and make a new will."

* * * * *


Victor Carrington sat in the servants' hall at Raynham until past eleven o'clock. He had made himself quite at home with the domestics in his assumed character. The women were delighted with the showy goods which he carried in his pack, and which he sold them at prices far below those of the best bargains they had ever made before.

At a few minutes after eleven he rose to bid them good night.

"I suppose I shall find the gates open?" he said.

"Yes; the gates of the court-yard are never locked till half-past eleven," answered a sturdy old coachman.

The pedlar took his leave; but he did not go out by the court-yard. He went straight to the terrace, along which he crept with stealthy footsteps. Many lights twinkled in the upper windows of the terrace front, for at this hour the greater number of Sir Oswald's guests had retired to their rooms.

The broad window of the library was still open; but a curtain had been drawn before it, on one side of which there remained a crevice. Through this crevice Victor Carrington could watch the interior of the chamber with very little risk of being discovered.

The baronet was still sitting by the writing-table, with the light of the library-lamp shining full upon him. An open letter was in his hand. It was the letter his wife had left for