Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗
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the pale, resolute face that was turned to him in the moonlight.
“The name of my solicitor is Dunford,” said Honoria, presently; “Mr.
Joseph Dunford, of Gray’s Inn. If you apply to him on your arrival in
London, he will give you the first installment of your pension.”
“Five and twenty pounds!” grumbled Milsom; “a very handsome amount,
upon my word! And you have fifteen thousand a year!”
“I have.”
“May the curse of a black and bitter heart cling to you!” cried the
man.
Lady Eversleigh turned from her companion with a gesture of loathing.
But there was no fear in her heart. She walked slowly back to the gate
leading into the meadow, followed by Milsom, who heaped abusive
epithets upon her at every step. As she entered the meadow, the figure
of the spy drew suddenly back into the shadow of the hedge; from which
it did not emerge till Honoria had disappeared through the little gate
on the opposite side of the field, and the heavy tramp of Milsom’s
footsteps had died away in the distance.
Then the figure came forth into the broad moonlight; and that subdued,
but clear radiance, revealed the pale, thin face of Jane Payland.
*
When Jane Payland was brushing her mistress’s hair that night, she
ventured to sound her as to her future movements, by a few cautions and
respectful questions, to which Lady Eversleigh replied with less than
her usual reticence. From her lady’s answers, the waiting-maid
ascertained that she had no idea of seeking any relaxation in change of
scene, but purposed to reside at Raynham for at least one year.
Jane Payland wondered at the decision of her mistress’s manner. She had
imagined that Lady Eversleigh would be eager to leave a place in which
she found herself the object of disapprobation and contempt.
“If I were her, I would go to France, and be a great lady in Paris—
which is twenty times gayer and more delightful than any place in
stupid, straight-laced old England,” thought Jane Payland. “If I had
her money, I would spend it, and enjoy life, in spite of all the
world.”
“I’m afraid your health will suffer from a long residence at the
castle, my lady,” said Jane, presently, determined to do all in her
power to bring about a change in her mistress’s plans. “After such a
shock as you have had, some distraction must be necessary. When I had
the honour of living with the Duchess of Mountaintour, and we lost the
dear duke, the first thing I said to the duchess, after the funeral,
was—‘Change of scene, your grace, change of scene; nothing like change
of scene when the mind has received a sudden blow.’ The sweet duchess’s
physician actually echoed my words, though he had never heard them; and
within a week of the sad ceremony we started for the Continent, where
we remained a year; at the end of which period the dear duchess was
united to the Marquis of Purpeltown.”
“The duchess was speedily consoled,” replied Lady Eversleigh, with a
smile which was not without bitterness. “No doubt the variety and
excitement of a Continental tour did much towards blotting out all
memory of her dead husband. But I do not wish to forget. I am in no
hurry to obliterate the image of one who was most dear to me.”
Jane Payland looked very searchingly at the pale, earnest face
reflected in the glass.
“For me, that which the world calls pleasure never possessed any
powerful fascination,” continued Honoria, gravely. “My childhood and
youth were steeped in sorrow—sorrow beyond anything you can imagine,
Jane Payland; though I have heard you say that you have seen much
trouble. The remembrance of it comes back to me more vividly than ever
now. Thus it is that I shrink from society, which can give me no real
pleasure. Had I no special reason for remaining at Raynham, I should
not care to leave it”
“But you have a special reason, my lady?” inquired Jane, eagerly.
“I have.”
“May I presume to ask—”
“You may, Jane; and I think I may venture to trust you fully, for I
believe you are my friend. I mean to stay at Raynham, because, in this
hour of sorrow and desolation, Providence has not abandoned me entirely
to despair. I have one bright hope, which renders the thought of my
future endurable to me. I stay at Raynham, because I hope next spring
an heir will be born to Raynham Castle.”
“Oh, what happiness! And you wish the heir to be born at the castle, my
lady?”
“I do! I have been the victim of one plot, but I will not fall
blindfold into a second snare; and there is no infamy which my enemies
are not base enough to attempt. There shall be no mystery about my
life. From the hour of my husband’s death to the hour of his child’s
birth, the friends of that lost husband shall know every act of my
existence. They shall see me day by day. The old servants of the family
shall attend me. I will live in the old house, surrounded by all who
knew and loved Sir Oswald. No vile plotters shall ever be able to say
that there was trick or artifice connected with the birth of that
child. If I live to protect and watch over it, that infant life shall
be guarded against every danger, and defended from every foe. And there
will be many foes ready to assail the inheritor of Raynham.”
“Why so, my lady?”
“Because that young life, and my life, will stand between a villain and
a fortune. If I and my child were both to die, Reginald Eversleigh
would become possessor of the wealth to which he once was the
acknowledged heir. By the terms of Sir Oswald’s will, he receives very
little in the present, but the future has many chances for him. If I
die childless, he will inherit the Raynham estates. If his two cousins,
the Dales, die without direct heirs, he will inherit ten thousand a
year.”
“But that seems only a poor chance after all, my lady. There is no
reason why Sir Reginald Eversleigh should survive you or the two Mr.
Dales.”
“There is no reason, except his own villany,” answered Honoria,
thoughtfully. “There are some men capable of anything. But let us talk
no further on the subject. I have confided my secret to you, Jane
Payland, because I think you are faithfully devoted to my interests.
You know now why I am resolved to remain at Raynham Castle; and you
think my decision wise, do you not?”
“Well, yes; I certainly do, my lady,” answered Jane, after some moments
of hesitation.
“And now leave me. Good night! I have kept you long this evening, I see
by that timepiece. But my thoughts were wandering, and I was
unconscious of the progress of time. Good night!”
Jane Payland took a respectful leave of her mistress, and departed,
absorbed in thought.
“Is she a good woman or a bad one?” she wondered, as she sat by the
fire in her own comfortable apartment. “If she is a bad woman, she’s an
out-and-outer; for she looks one in the face, with those superb black
eyes of hers, as bright and clear as the image of truth itself. She
must be good and true. She must! And yet that night’s absence, and that
story about Yarborough Tower—that seems too much for anybody on earth
to believe.”
CHAPTER XIV.
A GHOSTLY VISITANT.
For nearly three years Thomas Milsom had been far away from London. He
had been arrested on a charge of burglary, within a month of Valentine
Jernam’s death, and condemned to five years’ transportation. In less
than three years, by some kind of artful management, and by the
exercise of consummate hypocrisy, Mr. Milsom had contrived to get
himself free again, and to return to England his own master.
He landed in Scotland, and tramped from Granton to Yorkshire, where an
accidental encounter with an old acquaintance tempted him to linger at
Raynham. The two tramps, scoundrels both, and both alike penniless and
shoeless, had stood side by side at the gates of the park, to see the
stately funeral train pass out.
And thus Thomas Milsom had beheld her whom he called his daughter,—the
girl who had fled, with her old grandfather, from the shelter of his
fatal roof three years before.
After that unprofitable interview with Honoria, Thomas Milsom his face
Londonwards.
“The day will come when you and I will square accounts, my lady,” he
muttered, as he looked up to those battlemented turrets, with a
blasphemous curse, and then turned his back upon Raynham Castle, and
the peaceful little village beneath it.
The direction in which Mr. Milsom betook himself, after he passed the
border-land of waste ground and newly-built houses which separates
London from the country, was the direction of Ratcliff Highway. He
walked rapidly through the crowded streets, in which the crowd grew
thicker as he approached the regions of the Tower. But rapidly as he
walked, the steps of Time were faster. It had been bright noon when he
entered the quiet little town of Barnet. It was night when he first
heard the scraping fiddles and stamping feet of Ratcliff Highway. He
went straight to the ‘Jolly Tar’.
Here all was unchanged. There were the flaring tallow candles, set in a
tin hoop that hung from the low ceiling, dropping hot grease ever and
anon on the loungers at the bar. There was the music—the same Scotch
reels and Irish jigs, played on squeaking fiddles, which were made more
inharmonious by the accompaniment of shrill Pandean pipes. There was
the same crowd of sailors and bare-headed, bare-armed, loud-voiced
women assembled in the stifling bar, the same cloud of tobacco-smoke,
the same Babel of voices to be heard from the concert-room within;
while now and then, amongst the shouts and the laughter, the oaths and
the riot, there sounded the tinkling of the old piano, and the feeble
upper notes of a very poor soprano voice.
Black Milsom had drawn his hat over his eyes before entering the “Jolly
Tar.”
The bar of that tavern was sunk considerably below the level of the
street, and standing on the uppermost of the steps by which Mr.
Wayman’s customers descended to his hospitable abode, Black Milsom was
able to look across the heads of the crowd to the face of the landlord
busy behind his bar.
In that elevated position Black Milsom waited until Dennis Wayman
happened to look up and perceive the stranger on the threshold.
As he did so, Thomas Milsom drew the back of his hand rapidly across
his mouth, with a gesture that was evidently intended as a signal.
The signal was answered by a nod from Wayman, and then Black Milsom
descended the three steps, and pushed his way to the bar.
“Can I have a bed, mate, and a bit of supper?” he asked, in a voice
that was carefully disguised.
“Ay, ay, to be sure you can,” answered Wayman; “you can have everything
that is comfortable and friendly by paying for it. This house is one of
the most hospitable places there is—to those that can pay the
reckoning.”
This rather clumsy joke was received with an applauding guffaw by the
sailors and women next the bar.
“If you’ll step through that door yonder, you’ll find a snug little
room, mate,” said Dennis Wayman, in the tone which he might have used
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