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

and I'm to wait for an answer, please, and I'm to take it to him at the 'Hen and Chickens.'"

"How dare you bring Lady Eversleigh a letter given you by a tramp--a begging letter, of course? I wonder at your impudence."

"I didn't go to do no harm," expostulated Master Beckett. "He says to me, he says, 'If her ladyship once sets eyes upon that letter, she'll arnswer it fast enough; and now you cut and run,' he says; 'it's a matter of life and death, it is, and it won't do to waste time over it.'"

These words were rather startling to the mind of Jane Payland. What was she to do? Her own idea was, that the letter was the concoction of some practised impostor, and that it would be an act of folly to take it to her mistress. But what if the letter should be really of importance? What if there should be some meaning in the boy's words? Was it not her duty to convey the letter to Lady Eversleigh?

"Stay here till I return," she said, pointing to a bench in the lobby.

The boy seated himself on the extremest edge of the bench, with his hat on his knees, and Jane Payland left him.

She went straight to the suite of apartments occupied by Lady Eversleigh.

Honoria did not raise her eyes when Jane Payland entered the room. There was a gloomy abstraction in her face, and melancholy engrossed her thoughts.

"I beg pardon for disturbing you, my lady," said Jane; "but a lad from the village has brought a letter, given him by a tramp; and, according to his account, the man talked in such a very strange manner that I thought I really ought to tell you, my lady; and--"

To the surprise of Jane Payland, Lady Eversleigh started suddenly from her seat, and advanced towards her, awakened into sudden life and energy as by a spell.

"Give me the letter," she cried, abruptly.

She took the soiled and crumpled envelope from her servant's hand with a hasty gesture.

"You may go," she said; "I will ring when I want you."

Jane Payland would have given a good deal to see that letter opened; but she had no excuse for remaining longer in the room. So she departed, and went to her lady's dressing-room, which, as well as all the other apartments, opened out of the corridor.

In about a quarter of an hour, Lady Eversleigh's bell rang, and Jane hurried to the morning-room.

She found her mistress still seated by the hearth. Her desk stood open on the table by her side; and on the desk lay a letter, so newly addressed that the ink on the envelope was still wet.

"You will take that to the lad who is waiting," said Honoria, pointing to this newly-written letter.

"Yes, my lady."

Jane Payland departed. On the way between Lady Eversleigh's room and the lobby in the servants' offices, she had ample leisure to examine the letter.

It was addressed--

"_Mr. Brown, at the 'Hen and Chickens_.'"

It was sealed with a plain seal. Jane Payland was very well acquainted with the writing of her mistress, and she perceived at once that this letter was not directed in Lady Eversleigh's usual hand.

The writing had been disguised. It was evident, therefore, that this was a letter which Lady Eversleigh would have shrunk from avowing as her own.

Every moment the mystery grew darker. Jane Payland liked her mistress; but there were two things which she liked still better. Those two things were power and gain. She perceived in the possession of her lady's secrets a high-road to the mastery of both. Thus it happened that, when she had very nearly arrived at the lobby where the boy was waiting, Jane Payland suddenly changed her mind, and darted off in another direction.

She hurried along a narrow passage, up the servants' staircase, and into her own room. Here she remained for some fifteen or twenty minutes, occupied with some task which required the aid of a lighted candle.

At the end of that time she emerged, with a triumphant smile upon her thin lips, and Lady Eversleigh's letter in her hand.

The seal which secured the envelope was a blank seal; but it was not the same as the one with which Honoria Eversleigh had fastened her letter half an hour before.

The abigail carried the letter to the boy, and the boy departed, very well pleased to get clear of the castle without having received any further reproof.

He went at his best speed to the little inn, where he inquired for Mr. Brown.

That gentleman emerged presently from the inn-yard, where he had been hanging about, listening to all that was to be heard, and talking to the ostler.

He took the letter from the boy's hand, and rewarded him with the promised shilling. Then he left the yard, and walked down a lane leading towards the river.

In this unfrequented lane he tore open the envelope, and read his letter.

It was very brief:

"_Since my only chance of escaping persecution is to accede, in some measure, to your demands, I will consent to see you. If you will wait for me to-night, at nine o'clock, by the water-side, to the left of the bridge, I will try to come to that spot at that hour. Heaven grant the meeting may be our last_!"

Exactly as the village church clock struck nine, a dark figure crossed a low, flat meadow, lying near the water, and appeared upon the narrow towing-path by the river's edge. A man was walking on this pathway, his face half hidden by a slouched hat, and a short pipe in his month.

He lifted his hat presently, and bared his head to the cool night breeze. His hair was closely cropped, like that of a convict. The broad moonlight shining fall upon his face, revealed a dark, weather-beaten countenance--the face of the tramp who had stood at the park-gates to watch the passing of Sir Oswald's funeral train--the face of the tramp who had loitered in the stable-yard of the "Hen and Chickens"--the face of the man who had been known in Ratcliff Highway by the ominous name of Black Milsom.

This was the man who waited for Honoria Eversleigh in the moonlight by the quiet river.

He advanced to meet her as she came out of the meadow and appeared upon the pathway.

"Good evening, my lady," he said. "I suppose I ought to be humbly beholden to such a grand lady as you for coming here to meet the likes of me. But it seems rather strange you must needs come out here in secret to see such a very intimate acquaintance as I am, considering as you're the mistress of that great castle up yonder. I must say it seems uncommon hard a man can't pay a visit to his own--"

"Hush!" cried Lady Eversleigh. "Do not call me by _that_ name, if you do not wish to inspire me with a deeper loathing than that which I already feel for you."

"Well, I'm blest!" muttered Mr. Milsom; "that's uncommon civil language from a young woman to--"

Honoria stopped him by a sudden gesture.

"I suppose you expect to profit by this interview?" she said.

"That I most decidedly do expect," answered the tramp.

"In that case, you will carefully avoid all mention of the past, for otherwise you will get nothing from me."

The man responded at first only with a sulky growl. Then, after a brief pause, he muttered--

"I don't want to talk about the past any more than you do, my fine, proud madam. If it isn't a pleasant time for you to remember, it isn't a pleasant time for me to remember. It's all very well for a young woman who has her victuals found for her to give herself airs about the manner other people find _their_ victuals; but a man must live somehow or other. If he can't get his living in a pleasant way, he must get it in an unpleasant way."

After this there was a silence which lasted for some minutes. Lady Eversleigh was trying to control the agitation which oppressed her, despite the apparent calmness of her manner. Black Milsom walked by her side in sullen silence, waiting for her to speak.

The spot was lonely. Lady Eversleigh and her companion were justified in believing themselves unobserved.

But it was not so. Lonely as the spot was, those two were not alone. A stealthy, gliding, female figure, dark and shadowy in the uncertain light, had followed Lady Eversleigh from the castle gates, and that figure was beside her now, as she walked with Black Milsom upon the river bank.

The spy crept by the side of the hedge that separated the river bank from the meadow; and sheltered thus, she was able to distinguish almost every word spoken by the two upon the bank, so clearly sounded their voices in the still night air.

"How did you find me here?" asked Lady Eversleigh, at last.

"By accident. You gave us the slip so cleverly that time you took it into your precious head to cut and run, that, hunt where we would, we were never able to find you. I gave it up for a bad job; and then things went agen me, and I got sent away. But I'm my own master again now; and I mean to make good use of my liberty, I can tell you, my lady. I little knew how you'd feathered your nest while I was on the other side of the water. I little thought how you would turn up at last, when I least expected to see you. You might have knocked me down with a feather yesterday, when that fine funeral came out of the park gates, and I saw your face at the window of one of the coaches. You must have been an uncommonly clever young woman, and an uncommonly sly one, to get a baronite for your husband, and to get a spooney old cove to leave you all his fortune, after behaving so precious bad to him. Did your husband know who you were when he married you?"

"He found me starving in the street of a country town. He knew that I was friendless, homeless, penniless. That knowledge did not prevent him making me his wife."

"Ah! but there was something more he didn't know. He didn't know that you were Black Milsom's daughter; you didn't tell him that, I'll lay a wager."

"I did not tell him that which I know to be a lie," replied Honoria, calmly.

"Oh, it's a lie, is it? You are not my daughter, I suppose?"

"No, Thomas Milsom, I am not--I know and feel that I am not"

"Humph!" muttered Black Milsom, savagely; "if you were not my daughter, how was it that you grew up to call me father?"

"Because I was forced to do so. I remember being told to call you father. I remember being beaten because I refused to do so-- beaten till I submitted from very fear of being beaten to death. Oh, it was a bright and happy childhood, was it not, Thomas Milsom? A childhood to look back to with love and regret. And now, finding that fortune has lifted me out of the gutter into which you flung me, you come to me to demand your share of my good fortune, I