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

of humanity. He was a creature without a conscience—without

a heart.

 

And yet he seemed the most dutiful and devoted of sons.

 

Is it possible that filial love could hold any place in a soul so lost

as his? It is difficult to solve this enigma.

 

Victor Carrington was ambitious; and to gain the object of his ambition

he was willing to steep his soul in guilt. But he was also cautious and

calculating, and he knew that to commit crime with impunity he must so

shape his life as to escape suspicion.

 

He knew that a devoted and affectionate son is always respected by good

men and women; and he had studied human nature too closely not to be

aware that there is more goodness than wickedness in the world, base

though some of earth’s inhabitants may be.

 

The world is easily hoodwinked; and those who watched the life of the

young surgeon were ready to declare that he was a most deserving young

man.

 

He had his reward for this apparent excellence. Patients came to him

without his seeking; and at the time of Honoria Eversleigh’s arrival in

London he had obtained a small but remunerative practice. The money

earned thus enabled him to live. The money he won by his pen in the

medical journals he was able to save.

 

He knew how necessary money was in all the turning-points of life, and

he denied himself every pleasure and every luxury in order to save a

sum which should serve him in time of need.

 

Matilda Carrington was one of those quiet women who seem to take no

interest in the world around them, and to be happy without the

pleasures which delight other women. She lived quite alone, without one

female friend or acquaintance, and she saw little of her son, whose

midnight studies and medical practice absorbed almost every hour of his

existence.

 

Her life, therefore, was one long solitude, and but for the

companionship of her birds and two Angora cats, she would have been

almost as much alone as a prisoner in a condemned cell.

 

There was but one visitor who came often to the cottage, and that was

Sir Reginald Eversleigh. The young baronet contrived to exist, somehow

or other, upon his income of five hundred a year; but, as he had

neither abandoned his old haunts, nor put aside his old vices, the

income, which to a good man would have seemed a handsome competence,

barely enabled him to stave off the demands of his most pressing

creditors by occasional payments on account.

 

He lived a dark and strange existence, occupying a set of shabby-genteel apartments in a street leading out of the Strand; but spending

a great part of his life in a house on the banks of the Thames—a house

that stood amidst grounds of some extent, situated midway between

Chelsea and Fulham.

 

The mistress of this house was a lady who called herself a widow, but

of whose real position the world knew very little.

 

She was said to be of Austrian extraction, and the widow of an Austrian

officer. Her name was Paulina Durski. She had bade farewell to the

fresh bloom of early youth; for at her best she looked thirty years of

age. But her beauty was of that brilliant order which does not need the

charm of girlhood. She was a woman—a grand, queen-like creature. Those

who admired her most compared her to a tall white lily, alike stately

and graceful.

 

She was fair, with that snowy purity of complexion which is so rare a

charm. Her hair was of the palest gold—darker than flaxen, lighter

than auburn—hair that waved in sunny undulations on the broad white

forehead, and imparted an unspeakable innocence to the beautiful face.

 

Such was Paulina Durski. One charm alone was wanting to render this

woman as lovable as she was lovely, and that wan the charm of

expression.

 

There was a lack of warmth in that perfect face. The bright blue eyes

were hard; the rosy lips had been trained to smile on friend or foe, on

stranger or kinsman, with the same artificial smile.

 

Hilton House was the name of the villa by the river-bank. It had

belonged originally to a nobleman; but, on the decay of his fortunes,

had fallen into the hands of a speculator, who intended to occupy it,

but who failed almost immediately after becoming its owner. After this

man’s bankruptcy, the house had for a long time been tenantless. It was

too expensive for some, too lonely for others; and when Madame Durski

saw and took a fancy to the place, she was able to secure it for a

moderate rent. The grounds and the house had been neglected. The rare

and costly shrubs in the gardens were rank and overgrown; the exquisite

decorations of the interior were spoiled by damp.

 

Madame Durski was a person who lived in a certain style; but it

speedily became evident that she was very often at a loss for ready

money. Her furniture arrived from Paris, and her household came also

from that brilliant city. It was the household of a princess; but of a

princess not unfamiliar with poverty.

 

There was a Spanish courier, one Carlo Toas—a strange, silent

creature, whose stately and solemn movements seemed fitted for a

courtly assembly, rather than for the unceremonious gatherings of

modern society. The next person in importance in the household of

Madame Durski was an elderly woman, who attended on the fair Austrian

widow. She was a native of Paris, and her name was Sophie Elser. There

were three other servants, all foreigners, and apparently devoted to

their mistress.

 

The furniture was of a bygone fashion, costly and beautiful of its

kind; but it was furniture which had seen better days. The draperies in

every chamber were of satin or velvet; but the satin was worn and

faded, the velvet threadbare. The pictures, china, plate, the bronzes

and knick-knacks which adorned the rooms, all bore evidence of a

refined and artistic taste. But much of the china was imperfect, and

the plate was of very small extent.

 

The existence of Paulina Durski was one which might well excite

curiosity in the minds of the few neighbours who had the opportunity of

observing her mode of life.

 

This beautiful widow had no female acquaintances, save a humble friend

who lived with her, an Englishwoman, who subsisted upon the charity of

the lovely Paulina.

 

This person never quitted her benefactress. She was constant as her

shadow; a faithful watch-dog, always at hand, yet never obtrusive. She

was a creature who seemed to have been born without eyes and without

ears; so careless was the widow of her presence, so reckless what

secrets were disclosed in her hearing.

 

By daylight the life of Madame Durski and her companion, Miss Brewer,

seemed the dullest existence ever endured by womankind. Paulina rarely

left her own apartment until six in the evening; at which hour, she and

Miss Brewer dined together in her boudoir.

 

They always dined alone. After dinner Paulina returned to her apartment

to dress for the evening, while Miss Brewer retired to her own bedroom

on the upper story, where she arrayed herself invariably in black

velvet.

 

She had never been seen by the visitors at Hilton House in any other

costume than this lustreless velvet. Her age was between thirty and

forty. She might once have had some pretensions to beauty; but her face

was pinched and careworn, and there was a sharp, greedy look in the

small eyes, whose colour was that neutral, undecided tint, that seems

sometimes a pale yellowish brown, anon a blueish green.

 

All day long the two women at Hilton House lived alone. No carriage

approached the gates; no foot-passenger was seen to enter the grounds.

Within and without all was silent and lifeless.

 

But with nightfall came a change. Lights shone in all the lower

windows, music sounded on the still night air, many carriages rolled

through the open gateway—broughams with flashing lamps dashed up to

the marble portico, and hack cabs mingled with the more stylish

equipages.

 

There were very few nights on which Paulina Durski’s saloons were not

enlivened by the presence of many guests. Her visitors were all

gentlemen; but they treated the mistress of the house with as much

respect as if she had been surrounded by women of the highest rank.

Night after night the same men assembled in those faded saloons; night

after night the carriages rolled along the avenue—the flashing lamps

illuminated the darkness. Those who watched the proceedings of the

Austrian widow had good reason to wonder what the attraction was which

brought those visitors so constantly to Hilton House. Many speculations

were formed, and the fair widow’s reputation suffered much at the hands

of her neighbours; but none guessed the real charm of those nightly

receptions.

 

That secret was known only to those within the mansion; and from those

it could not be hidden.

 

The charm which drew so many visitors to the saloons of Madame Durski

was the fatal spell of the gaming-table. The beautiful Paulina opened a

suite of three spacious chambers for the reception of her guests. In

the outer apartment there was a piano; and it was here Paulina sat—

with her constant companion, Matilda Brewer. In the second apartment

were small green velvet-covered tables, devoted to whist and �cart�.

The third, and inner, apartment was much larger than either of the

others, and in this room there was a table for rouge et noir.

 

The door of this inner apartment was papered so as to appear when

closed like a portion of the wall. A heavy picture was securely

fastened upon this papered surface, and the door was lined with iron.

Once closed, this door was not easily to be discovered by the eye of a

stranger; and, even when discovered, it was not easily to be opened.

 

It was secured with a spring lock, which fastened of itself as the door

swung to.

 

This inner apartment had no windows. It was never used in the daytime.

It was a secret chamber, hidden in the very centre of the house; and

only an architect or a detective officer would have been likely to have

discovered its existence. The walls were hung with red cloth, and

Madame Durski always spoke of this apartment as the Red Drawing-room.

Her servants were forbidden to mention the chamber in their

conversation with the neighbours, and the members of the Austrian

widow’s household were too well trained to disobey any such orders.

 

By the laws of England, the existence of a table for rouge et noir is

forbidden. All these precautions were therefore necessary to insure

safety for the guests of Madame Durski.

 

Paulina, herself, never played. Sometimes she sat with Miss Brewer in

the outer chamber, silent and abstracted, while her visitors amused

themselves in the two other rooms; sometimes she seated herself at the

piano, and played soft, plaintive German sonatas, or _Leider ohne

Worte_, for an hour at a time; sometimes she moved slowly to and fro

amongst the gamblers—now lingering for a few moments behind the chair

of one, now glancing at the cards of another.

 

One of her most constant visitors was Reginald Eversleigh. Every night

he drove down to Hilton House in a hack cab. He was generally the first

to arrive and the last to depart.

 

It was also to be observed that almost all the men who assembled in the

drawing-rooms of Hilton House were friends and acquaintances of Sir

Reginald.

 

It was he who introduced them to the lovely widow. It was he