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

the hearth,

his arms stretched above the fireplace, as if groping for something in

the chimney.

 

Doubtless this had been the miser’s hiding-place for his hoarded gold,

and the ghost returned to the spot where the living man had been

accustomed to conceal his treasures.

 

Susan darted across the hall, and ran upstairs to her master’s room.

She knocked loudly on the door, crying,—

 

“The ghost, master! the ghost! the old miser’s ghost is in the

kitchen!”

 

“What?” roared the captain, starting suddenly from his peaceful

slumbers.

 

The girl repeated her awful announcement. The captain sprang out of

bed, dressed himself in trousers and dressing-gown, and ran downstairs, the girl close behind him.

 

They were just in time to see the figure, in the red headgear and long

grey dressing-gown, slowly stalking from the scullery door.

 

The captain followed the phantom into the garden; but held himself at a

respectful distance from the figure, as it slowly paced along the

smooth gravel pathway leading towards the laurel hedge.

 

The figure reached the low boundary that divided the garden from the

river bank, crossed it, and vanished amongst the thick white mists that

rose from the water.

 

Joseph Duncombe trembled. A ghost was just the one thing which could

strike terror to the seaman’s bold heart.

 

When the figure had vanished, Captain Duncombe went to the spot where

it had passed out of the garden.

 

Here he found the young laurels beaten and trampled down, as if by the

heavy feet of human intruders.

 

This was strange.

 

He then went to the kitchen, accompanied by Susan Trott, who, although

shivering like an aspen tree, had just sufficient strength of mind to

find a lucifer and light her candle.

 

By the light of this candle Captain Buncombe examined the kitchen.

 

On the hearth, at his feet, he saw something gleaming in the uncertain

light. He stooped to pick up this object, and found that it was a

curious gold coin—a foreign coin, bent in a peculiar manner.

 

This was even yet more strange.

 

The captain put the coin in his pocket.

 

“I’ll take good care of this, my girl,” he said. “It isn’t often a

ghost leaves anything behind him.”

 

*

 

CHAPTER XV.

 

A TERRIBLE RESOLVE.

 

When the hawthorns were blooming in the woods of Raynham, a new life

dawned in the stately chambers of the castle.

 

A daughter was born to the beautiful widow-lady—a sweet consoler in

the hour of her loneliness and desolation. Honoria Eversleigh lifted

her heart to heaven, and rendered thanks for the priceless treasure

which had been bestowed upon her. She had kept her word. From the hour

of her husband’s death she had never quitted Raynham Castle. She had

lived alone, unvisited, unknown; content to dwell in stately solitude,

rarely extending her walks and drives beyond the boundary of the park

and forest.

 

Some few of the county gentry would have visited her; but she would not

consent to be visited by a few. Honoria Eversleigh’s was a proud

spirit; and until the whole county should acknowledge her innocence,

she would receive no one.

 

“Let them think of me or talk of me as they please,” she said; “I can

live my own life without them.”

 

Thus the long winter months passed by, and Honoria was alone in that

abode whose splendour must have seemed cold and dreary to the

friendless woman.

 

But when she held her infant in her arms all was changed She looked

down upon the baby-girl, and murmured softly—

 

“Your life shall be bright and peaceful, dearest, whatever mine may be.

The future looks bleak and terrible for me; but for you, sweet one, it

may be bright and fair.”

 

The young mother loved her child with a passionate intensity; but even

that love could not exclude darker passions from her breast.

 

There was much that was noble in the nature of this woman; but there

was also much that was terrible. From her childhood she had been gifted

with a power of intellect—a strength of will—that lifted her high

above the common ranks of womanhood.

 

A fatal passion had taken possession of her soul after the untimely

death of Sir Oswald; and that passion was a craving for revenge. She

had been deeply wronged, and she could not forgive. She did not even

try to forgive. She believed that revenge was a kind of duty which she

owed, not only to herself, but to the noble husband whom she had lost.

 

The memory of that night of anguish in Yarborough Tower, and that still

darker hour of shame and despair in which Sit Oswald had refused to

believe her innocent, was never absent from the mind of Honoria

Eversleigh. She brooded upon these dark memories. Time could not lessen

their bitterness. Even the soft influence of her infant’s love could

not banish those fatal recollections.

 

Time passed. The child grew and flourished, beautiful to her mother’s

enraptured eyes; and yet, even by the side of that fair baby’s face

arose the dark image of Victor Carrington.

 

For a long time the county people had kept close watch upon the

proceedings of the lady at the castle.

 

The county people discovered that Lady Eversleigh never left Raynham;

that she devoted herself to the rearing of her child as entirely as if

she had been the humblest peasant-woman; and that she expended more

money upon solid works of charity than had ever before been so spent by

any member of the Eversleigh family, though that family had been

distinguished by much generosity and benevolence.

 

The county people shrugged their shoulders contemptuously. They could

not believe in the goodness of this woman, whose parentage no one knew,

and whom every one had condemned.

 

She is playing a part, they thought; she wishes to impress us with the

idea that she is a persecuted martyr—a suffering angel; and she hopes

thus to regain her old footing amongst us, and queen it over the whole

county, as she did when that poor infatuated Sir Oswald first brought

her to Raynham. This was what the county people thought; until one day

the tidings flew far and wide that Lady Eversleigh had left the castle

for the Continent, and that she intended to remain absent for some

years.

 

This seemed very strange; but what seemed still more strange, was the

fact that the devoted mother was not accompanied by her child.

 

The little girl, Gertrude, so named after the mother of the late

baronet, remained at Raynham under the care of two persons.

 

These two guardians were Captain Copplestone, and a widow lady of forty

years of age, Mrs. Morden, a person of unblemished integrity, who had

been selected as protectress and governess of the young heiress.

 

The child was at this time two and a half years of age. Very young, she

seemed, to be thus left by a mother who had appeared to idolize her.

 

The county people shook their heads. They told each other that Lady

Eversleigh was a hypocrite and an actress. She had never really loved

her child—she had played the part of a sorrowing widow and a devoted

mother for two years and a half, in the hope that by this means she

would regain her position in society.

 

And now, finding that this was impossible, she had all of a sudden

grown tired of playing her part, and had gone off to the Continent to

spend her money, and enjoy her life after her own fashion.

 

This was what the world said of Honoria Eversleigh; but if those who

spoke of her could have possessed themselves of her secrets, they would

have discovered something very different from that which they imagined.

 

Lady Eversleigh left the castle in the early part of November

accompanied only by her maid, Jane Payland.

 

A strange time of the year in which to start for the Continent, people

said. It seemed still more strange that a woman of Lady Eversleigh’s

rank and fortune should go on a Continental journey with no other

attendant than a maid-servant.

 

If the eyes of the world could have followed Lady Eversleigh, they

would have made startling discoveries.

 

While it was generally supposed that the baronet’s widow was on her way

to Rome or Naples, two plainly-dressed women took possession of

unpretending lodgings in Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road.

 

The apartments were taken by a lady who called herself Mrs. Eden, and

who required them only for herself and maid. The apartments consisted

of two large drawing-rooms, two bedrooms on the floor above, and a

dressing-room adjoining the best bedroom.

 

The proprietor of the house was a Belgian merchant, called Jacob

Mulck—a sedate old bachelor, who took a great deal of snuff, and

Disquieted himself very little about the world in general, so long as

life went smoothly for himself.

 

The remaining occupant of the house was a medical student, who rented

one of the rooms on the third floor. Another room on the same floor was

to let.

 

Such was the arrangement of the house when Mrs. Eden and her maid took

possession of their apartments.

 

Mr. Jacob Mulck thought he had never seen such a beautiful woman as his

new lodger, when he entered her apartment, to ascertain whether she was

satisfied with the accommodation provided for her.

 

She was sitting in the full light of an unshaded lamp as he entered the

room. Her black silk dress was the perfection of simplicity; its sombre

hues relieved only by the white collar which encircled her slender

throat. Her pale face looked of an ivory whiteness, in contrast to the

dark, deep eyes, and arched brows of sombre brown.

 

The lady pronounced herself perfectly satisfied with all the

arrangements that had been made for her comfort.

 

“I am in London on business of importance,” she said; “and shall,

therefore, receive very little company; but I may have to hold many

interviews with men of business, and I trust that my affairs may not be

made the subject of curiosity or gossip, either in this house or

outside it.”

 

Mr. Mulck declared that he was the last person in the world to talk;

and that his two servants were both elderly women, the very pink of

steadiness and propriety.

 

Having said this, he took his leave; and as he did so, stole one more

glance at the beautiful stranger.

 

She had fallen into an attitude which betrayed complete abstraction of

mind. Her elbow rested on the table by her side; her eyes were shaded

by her hand.

 

Upon that white, slender hand, Jacob Mulck saw diamonds such as are not

often seen upon the fingers of the inhabitants of Percy Street. Mr.

Mulck occasionally dealt in diamonds; and he knew enough about them to

perceive at a glance that the rings worn by his lodger were worth a

small fortune.

 

“Humph!” muttered Mr. Mulck, as he returned to his comfortable sitting-room; “those diamonds tell a tale. There’s something mysterious about

this lodger of mine. However, my rent will be safe—that’s one

comfort.”

 

While the landlord was musing thus, the lodger was employed in a manner

which might well have awakened his curiosity, could he have beheld her

at that moment.

 

She had fallen on her knees before a low easy-chair—her face buried in

her hands, her slender frame shaken by passionate sobs.

 

“My child!” she exclaimed, in almost inarticulate murmurs; “my beloved,

my idol!—it is so bitter to be absent from you! so bitter! so bitter!”