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

giving his evidence. He was still

seated in his invalid-chair—still unable to move without its aid.

 

“Let me answer those questions,” he repeated. “I have only just heard

of Lady Eversleigh’s painful position. I beg to be sworn immediately,

for my evidence may be of some importance to that lady.”

 

Reginald sat down, unable to contest the captain’s right to be heard,

though he would fain have done so.

 

Lady Eversleigh for the first time that day gave evidence of some

slight emotion. She raised her eyes to Captain Copplestone’s bronzed

face with a tearful glance, expressive of gratitude and confidence.

 

The captain was duly sworn, and then proceeded to give his evidence, in

brief, abrupt sentences, without waiting to be questioned.

 

“You ask where Lady Eversleigh spent the night of her husband’s death,

and how she spent it. I can answer both those questions. She spent that

night in my room, nursing a sick old man, who was mad with the tortures

of rheumatic gout, and weeping over Sir Oswald’s refusal to believe in

her innocence.

 

“You’ll ask, perhaps, how she came to be in my apartments on that

night. I’ll answer you in a few words. Before leaving the castle she

came to my room, and asked my old servant to admit her. She had been

very kind and attentive to me throughout my illness. My servant is a

gruff and tough old fellow, but he is grateful for any kindness that’s

shown to his master. He admitted Lady Eversleigh to see me, ill as I

was. She told me the whole story which she told her husband. ‘He

refused to believe me, Captain Copplestone,’ she said; ‘he who once

loved me so dearly refused to believe me. So I come to you, his best

and oldest friend, in the hope that you may think better of me; and

that some day, when I am far away, and time has softened my husband’s

heart towards me, you may speak a good word in my behalf.’ And I did

believe her. Yes, Mr. Eversleigh—or Sir Reginald Eversleigh—I did,

and I do, believe that lady.”

 

“Captain Copplestone,” said the coroner; “we really do not require all

these particulars; the question is—when did Lady Eversleigh enter your

rooms, and when did she quit them?”

 

“She came to me at dusk, and she did not leave my rooms until the next

morning, after the discovery of my poor friend’s death. When she had

told me her story, and her intention of leaving the castle immediately,

I begged her to remain until the next day. She would be safe in my

rooms, I told her. No one but myself and my old servant would know that

she had not really left the castle; and the next day, when Sir Oswald’s

passion had been calmed by reflection, I should be able, perhaps, to

intercede successfully for the wife whose innocence I most implicitly

believed, in spite of all the circumstances that had conspired to

condemn her. Lady Eversleigh knew my influence over her husband; and,

after some persuasion, consented to take my advice. My diabolical gout

happened to be a good deal worse than usual that night, and my friend’s

wife assisted my servant to nurse me, with the patience of an angel, or

a sister of charity. From the beginning to the end of that fatal night

she never left my apartments. She entered my room before the will could

have been executed, and she did not leave it until after her husband’s

death.”

 

“Your evidence is conclusive, Captain Copplestone, and it exonerates

her ladyship from all suspicion,” said the coroner.

 

“My evidence can be confirmed in every particular by my old servant,

Solomon Grundy,” said the captain, “if it requires confirmation.”

 

“It requires none, Captain Copplestone.”

 

Reginald Eversleigh gnawed his bearded lip savagely. This man’s

evidence proved that Lady Eversleigh had not destroyed the will. Sir

Oswald himself, therefore, must have burned the precious document. And

for what reason?

 

A horrible conviction now took possession of the young baronet’s mind.

He believed that Mary Goodwin’s letter had been for the second time

instrumental in the destruction of his prospects. A fatal accident had

thrown it in his uncle’s way after the execution of the will, and the

sight of that letter had recalled to Sir Oswald the stern resolution at

which he had arrived in Arlington Street.

 

Utter ruin stared Reginald Eversleigh in the face. The possessor of an

empty title, and of an income which, to a man of his expensive habits,

was the merest pittance, he saw before him a life of unmitigated

wretchedness. But he did not execrate his own sins and vices for the

misery which they had brought upon him. He cursed the failure of Victor

Carrington’s schemes, and thought of himself as the victim of Victor

Carrington’s blundering.

 

The verdict of the coroner’s jury was an open one, to the effect that

“Sir Oswald Eversleigh died by poison, but by whom administered there

was no evidence to show.”

 

The general opinion of those who had listened to the evidence was that

the baronet had committed suicide. Public opinion around and about

Raynham was terribly against his widow. Sir Oswald had been universally

esteemed and respected, and his melancholy end was looked on as her

work. She had been acquitted of any positive hand is his death; but she

was not acquitted of the guilt of having broken his heart by her

falsehood.

 

Her obscure origin, her utter friendlessness, influenced people against

her. What must be the past life of this woman, who, in the hour of her

widowhood, had not one friend to come forward to support and protect

her?

 

The world always chooses to see the darker side of the picture. Nobody

for a moment imagined that Honoria Eversleigh might possibly be the

innocent victim of the villany of others.

 

The funeral of Sir Oswald Eversleigh was conducted with all the pomp

and splendour befitting the burial of a man whose race had held the

land for centuries, with untarnished fame and honour. The day of the

funeral was dark, cold, and gloomy; stormy winds howled and shrieked

among the oaks and beeches of Raynham Park. The tall firs in the avenue

were tossed to and fro in the blast, like the funereal plumes of that

stately hearse which was to issue at noon from the quadrangle of the

castle.

 

It was difficult to believe that less than a fortnight had elapsed

since that bright and balmy day on which the picnic had been held at

the Wizard’s Cave.

 

Lady Eversleigh had declared her intention of following her husband to

his last resting-place. She had been told that it was unusual for women

of the higher classes to take part in a funeral cort�ge; but she had

stedfastly adhered to her resolution.

 

“You tell me it is not the fashion!” she said to Mr. Ashburne. “I do

not care for fashion, I would offer the last mark of respect and

affection to the husband who was my dearest and truest friend upon this

earth, and without whom the earth is very desolate for me. If the dead

pass at once into those heavenly regions were Divine Wisdom reigns

supreme over all mortal weakness, the emancipated spirit of him who

goes to his tomb this day knows that my love, my faith, never faltered.

If I had wronged him as the world believes, Mr. Ashburne, I must,

indeed, be the most hardened of wretches to insult the dead by my

presence. Accept my determination as a proof of my innocence, if you

can.”

 

“The question of your guilt or innocence is a dark enigma which I

cannot take upon myself to solve, Lady Eversleigh,” answered Gilbert

Ashburne, gravely. “It would be an unspeakable relief to my mind if I

could think you innocent. Unhappily, circumstances combine to condemn

you in such a manner that even Christian charity can scarcely admit the

possibility of your innocence.”

 

“Yes,” murmured the widow, sadly, “I am the victim of a plot so

skilfully devised, so subtly woven, that I can scarcely wonder if the

world refuses to believe me guiltless. And yet you see that honourable

soldier, that brave and true-hearted gentleman, Captain Copplestone,

does not think me the wretch I seem to be.

 

“Captain Copplestone is a man who allows himself to be guided by his

instincts and impulses, and who takes a pride in differing from his

fellow-men. I am a man of the world, and I am unable to form any

judgment which is not justified by facts. If facts combine to condemn

you, Lady Eversleigh, you must not think me harsh or cruel if I cannot

bring myself to acquit you.”

 

During the preceding conversation Honoria Eversleigh had revealed the

most gentle, the most womanly side of her character. There had been a

pleading tone in her voice, an appealing softness in her glances. But

now the expression of her face changed all at once; the beautiful

countenance grew cold and stern, the haughty lip quivered with the

agony of offended pride.

 

“Enough!” she said. “I will never again trouble you, Mr. Ashburne, by

entreating your merciful consideration. Let your judgment be the

judgment of the world. I am content to await the hour of my

justification; I am content to trust in Time, the avenger of all

wrongs, and the consoler of all sorrows. In the meanwhile, I will stand

alone—a woman without a friend, a woman who has to fight her own

battles with the world.”

 

Gilbert Ashburne could not withhold his respect from the woman who

stood before him, queen-like in her calm dignity.

 

“She may be the basest and vilest of her sex,” he thought to himself,

as he left her presence; “but she is a woman whom it is impossible to

despise.”

 

The funeral procession was to leave Raynham at noon. At eleven o’clock

the arrival of Mr. Dale and Mr. Douglas Dale was announced. These two

gentlemen had just arrived at the castle, and the elder of the two

requested the favour of an interview with his uncle’s widow.

 

She was seated in one of the apartments which had been allotted to her

especial use when she arrived, a proud and happy bride, from her brief

honeymoon tour. It was the spacious morning-room which had been sacred

to the late Lady Eversleigh, Sir Oswald’s mother.

 

Here the widow sat in the hour of her desolation, unhonoured, unloved,

without friend or counsellor; unless, indeed, the gallant soldier who

had defended her from the suspicion of a hideous crime might stoop to

befriend her further in her bitter need. She sat alone, uncertain,

after the reading of the dead man’s will, whether she might not be

thrust forth from the doors of Raynham Castle, shelterless, homeless,

penniless, once more a beggar and an outcast.

 

Her heart was so cruelly stricken by the crushing blow that had fallen

upon her; the grief she felt for her husband’s untimely fate was so

deep and sincere, that she thought but little of her own future. She

had ceased to feel either hope or fear. Let fate do its worst. No

sorrow that could come to her in the future, no disgrace, no

humiliation, could equal in bitterness that fiery ordeal through which

she had passed during the last few days.

 

Lionel Dale was ushered into the morning-room while Lady Eversleigh sat

by the hearth, absorbed in gloomy thought.

 

She rose as Lionel Dale entered the room, and received him with stately

courtesy.

 

She was prepared to find herself despised by this young man, who would,

in all probability, very speedily learn, or who had perhaps already

learned, the