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

him. It was not like the letter of a guilty woman. It was quiet, subdued; full of sadness and resignation, rather than of passionate despair.

"_I know now that I ought never to have married you, Oswald_," wrote Lady Eversleigh. "_The sacrifice which you made for my sake was too great a one. No happiness could well come of such an unequal bargain. You gave me everything, and I could give you so little. The cloud upon my past life was black and impenetrable. You took me nameless, friendless, unknown; and I can scarcely wonder if, at the first breath of suspicion, your faith wavered and your love failed. Farewell, dearest and best of men! You never can know how truly I have loved you; how I have reverenced your noble nature. In all that has come to pass between us since the first hour of our miserable estrangement, nothing has grieved me so deeply as to see your generous soul overclouded by suspicions and doubts, as unworthy of you as they are needless and unfounded. Farewell! I go back to the obscurity from whence you took me. You need not fear for my future. The musical education which I owe to your generous help will enable me to live; and I have no wish to live otherwise than humbly. May heaven bless you_!"

HONORIA.

This was all. There were no complaints, no entreaties. The letter seemed instinct with the dignity of truth.

"And she has gone forth alone, unprotected. She has gone back to her lonely and desolate life," thought the baronet, inclined, for a moment at least, to believe in his wife's words.

But in the next instant he remembered the evidence of Lydia Graham--the wild and improbable story by which Honoria had tried to account for her absence.

"No no," he exclaimed; "it is all treachery from first to last. She is hiding herself somewhere near at hand, no doubt to wait the result of this artful letter. And when she finds that her artifices are thrown away--when she discovers that my heart has been changed to adamant by her infamy--she will go back to her lover, if he still lives to shelter her."

A hundred conflicting ideas confused Sir Oswald's brain. But one thought was paramount--and that was the thought of revenge. He resolved to send for his lawyer early the next morning, to make a new will in favour of his sister's two sons, and then to start in search of the man who had robbed him of his wife's affection. Reginald would, of course, be able to assist him in finding Victor Carrington.

While Sir Oswald mused thus, the man of whom he was thinking watched him through the narrow space between the curtains.

"Shall it be to-night?" thought Carrington. "It cannot be too soon. He might change his mind about his will at any moment; and if it should happen to-night, people will say the shock of his wife's flight has killed him."

Sir Oswald's folded arms rested on the table; his head sank forward on his arms. The passionate emotions of the day, the previous night of agony, had at last exhausted him. He fell into a doze--a feverish, troubled sleep. Carrington watched him for upwards of a quarter of an hour as he slept thus.

"I think he is safe now--and I may venture," murmured Victor, at the end of that time.

He crept softly into the room, making a wide circle, and keeping himself completely in the shadow, till he was behind the sleeping baronet. Then he came towards the lamp-lit table.

Amongst the scattered letters and papers, there stood a claret jug, a large carafe of water, and an empty glass. Victor drew close to the table, and listened for some moments to the breathing of the sleeper. Then he took a small bottle from his pocket, and dropped a few globules of some colourless liquid into the empty glass. Having done this, he withdrew from the apartment as silently as he had entered it. Twelve o'clock struck as he was leaving the terrace.

"So," he muttered, "it is little more than three-quarters of an hour since I left the servants' hall. It would not be difficult to prove an _alibi_, with the help of a blundering village innkeeper."

He did not attempt to leave the castle by the court-yard, which he knew would be locked by this time. He had made himself acquainted with all the ins and outs of the place, and had possessed himself of a key belonging to one of the garden gates. Through this gate he passed out into the park, climbed a low fence, and made his way into Raynham village, where the landlord of the "Hen and Chickens" was just closing his doors.

"I have been told by the castle servants that you can give me a bed," he said.

The landlord, who was always delighted to oblige his patrons in Sir Oswald's servants' hall and stables, declared himself ready to give the traveller the best accommodation his house could afford.

"It's late, sir," he said; "but we'll manage to make things comfortable for you."

So that night the surgeon slept in the village of Raynham. He, too, was worn out by the fatigue of the past twenty-four hours, and he slept soundly all through the night, and slept as calmly as a child.

It was eight o'clock next morning when he went down the steep, old- fashioned staircase of the inn. He found a strange hubbub and confusion below. Awful tidings had just been brought from the castle. Sir Oswald Eversleigh had been found seated in his library, DEAD, with the lamp still burning near him, in the bright summer morning. One of the grooms had come down to the little inn, and was telling his story to all comers, when the pedlar came into the open space before the bar.

"It was Millard that found him," the man said. "He was sitting, quite calm-like, with his head lying back upon the cushion of his arm-chair. There were papers and open letters scattered all about; and they sent off immediately for Mr. Dalton, the lawyer, to look to the papers, and seal up the locks of drawers and desks, and so on. Mr. Dalton is busy at it now. Mr. Eversleigh is awfully shocked, he is. I never saw such a white face in all my life as his, when he came out into the hall after hearing the news. It's a rare fine thing for him, as you may say; for they say Sir Oswald made a new will last night, and left his nephew everything; and Mr. Eversleigh has been a regular wild one, and is deep in debt. But, for all that, I never saw any one so cut up as he was just now."

"Poor Sir Oswald!" cried the bystanders. "Such a noble gentleman as he was, too. What did he die of Mr. Kimber?--do you know?"

"The doctor says it must have been heart-disease," answered the groom. "A broken heart, I say; that's the only disease Sir Oswald had. It's my lady's conduct has killed him. She must have been a regular bad one, mustn't she?"

The story of the elopement had been fully discussed on the previous day at the "Hen and Chickens," and everywhere else in the village of Raynham. The country gossips shook their heads over Lady Eversleigh's iniquity, but they said little. This new event was of so appalling a nature, that it silenced even the tongue of gossip for a while.

The pedlar took his breakfast in the little parlour behind the bar, and listened quietly to all that was said by the villagers and the groom.

"And where is my lady?" asked the innkeeper; "she came back yesterday, didn't she?"

"Yes, and went away again yesterday afternoon," returned the groom. "She's got enough to answer for, she has."

* * * * *


Terrible indeed was the consternation, which reigned that day at Raynham Castle. Already Sir Oswald's guests had been making hasty arrangements for their departure; and many visitors had departed even before the discovery of that awful event, which came like a thunderclap upon all within the castle.

Few men had ever been better liked by his acquaintances than Sir Oswald Eversleigh.

His generous nature, his honourable character, had won him every man's respect. His great wealth had been spent lavishly for the benefit of others. His hand had always been open to the poor and necessitous. He had been a kind master, a liberal landlord, an ardent and devoted friend. There is little wonder, therefore, if the news of his sudden death fell like an overwhelming blow on all assembled within the castle, and on many more beyond the castle walls.

The feeling against Honoria Eversleigh was one of unmitigated execration. No words could be too bitter for those who spoke of Sir Oswald's wife.

It had been thought on the previous evening that she had left the castle for ever, banished by the command of her husband. Nothing, therefore, could have exceeded the surprise which filled every breast when she entered the crowded hall some minutes after the discovery of Sir Oswald's death.

Her face was whiter than marble, and its awful whiteness was contrasted by the black dress which she wore.

"Is this true?" she cried, in accents of despair. "Is he really dead?"

"Yes, Lady Eversleigh," answered General Desmond, an Indian officer, and an old friend of the dead man, "Sir Oswald is dead."

"Let me go to him! I cannot believe it--I cannot--I cannot!" she cried, wildly. "Let me go to him!"

Those assembled round the door of the library looked at her with horror and aversion. To them this semblance of agony seemed only the consummate artifice of an accomplished hypocrite.

"Let me go to him! For pity's sake, let me see him!" she pleaded, with clasped hands. "I cannot believe that he is dead."

Reginald Eversleigh was standing by the door of the library, pale as death--more ghastly of aspect than death itself. He had been leaning against the doorway, as if unable to support himself; but, as Honoria approached, he aroused himself from a kind of stupor, and stretched out his arm to bar her entrance to the death-chamber.

"This is no scene for you, Lady Eversleigh," he said, sternly. "You have no right to enter that chamber. You have no right to be beneath this roof."

"Who dares to banish me?" she asked, proudly. "And who can deny my right?"

"I can do both, as the nearest relative of your dead husband."

"And as the friend of Victor Carrington," answered Honoria, looking fixedly at her accuser. "Oh! it is a marvellous plot, Reginald Eversleigh, and it wanted but this to complete it. My disgrace was the first act in the drama, my husband's death the second. Your friend's treachery accomplished one, you have achieved the other. Sir Oswald Eversleigh has been murdered!"

A suppressed cry of horror broke simultaneously from every lip. As the awful word "murder" was repeated, the doctor, who had been until this moment beside the dead man, came to the door, and opened it.

"Who was it spoke of murder?" he asked.

"It was I," answered Honoria. "I say that my husband's death is no sudden stroke from the hand of heaven! There is