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

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 _écarté_. 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 day-time. 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 who tempted them to come night after night, when prudence should have induced them to stay away.

* * * * *


The association between Reginald Eversleigh and Paulina Durski was no new alliance.

Immediately after the death of Sir Oswald Eversleigh, Reginald turned his back upon London, disgusted with the scene of his poverty and humiliation, eager to find forgetfulness of his bitter disappointments in the fever and excitement of a more brilliant city than any to be found in Great Britain. He went to Paris, that capital which he had shunned since the death of Mary Goodwin, but whither he returned eagerly now, thirsting for riot and excitement--any opiate by which he might lull to rest the bitter memories of the past month.

He was familiar with the wildest haunts of that city of dissipation, and he was speedily engulphed in the vortex of vice and folly. If he had been a rich man, this life might have gone on for ever; but without money a man counts for very little in such a circle as that wherein Reginald alone could find delight, and to the inhabitants of that region five hundred a year would seem a kind of pauperism.

Sir Reginald contrived to keep the actual amount of his income a secret locked in his own breast. His acquaintances and associates knew that he was not rich; but they knew no more.

At the French opera-house he saw Paulina Durski for the first time. She was seated in one of the smaller boxes, dressed in pure white, with white camellias in her hair. Her faithful companion, Matilda Brewer, was seated in the shadow of the curtains, and formed a foil for the beautiful Austrian.

Reginald Eversleigh entered the house with a dissipated and fashionable young Parisian--a man who, like his companion, had wasted youth, character, and fortune in the tainted atmosphere of disreputable haunts and midnight assemblies. The two young men took their places in the stalls, and amused themselves between the acts by a scrutiny of the occupants of the house.

Hector Leonce, the Parisian, was familiar with the inmates of every box.

"Do you see that beautiful, fair-haired woman, with the white camellias in her hair?" he said, after he had drawn the attention of the Englishman to several distinguished people. "That is Madame Durski, the young and wealthy widow of an Austrian officer, and one of the most celebrated beauties in Paris."

"She is very handsome," answered Reginald, carelessly; "but hers is a cold style of loveliness--too much like a face moulded out of wax."

"Wait till you see her animated," replied Hector Leonce. "We will go to her box presently."

When the curtain fell on the close of the following act the two men left the stalls, and made their way to Madame Durski's box.

She received them courteously, and Reginald Eversleigh speedily perceived that her beauty, fair and wax-like as it was, did not lack intellectual grace. She talked well, and her manner had the tone of good society. Reginald was surprised to see her attended only by the little Englishwoman, in her dress of threadbare black velvet.

After the opera Sir Reginald and Hector Leonce accompanied Madame Durski to her apartments in the Rue du Faubourg, St. Honoré; and there the baronet beheld higher play than he had ever seen before in a private house presided over by a woman. On this occasion the beautiful widow herself occupied a place at the _rouge et noir_ table, and Reginald beheld enough to enlighten him as to her real character. He saw that with this woman the love of play was a passion: a profound and soul-absorbing delight. He saw the eyes which, in repose, seemed of so cold a brightness, emit vivid flashes of feverish light; he saw the fair blush-rose tinted cheek glow with a hectic crimson--he beheld the woman with her mask thrown aside, abandoned to the influence of her master-passion.

After this night, Reginald Eversleigh was a frequent visitor at the apartments of the Austrian widow. For him, as for her, the fierce excitement of the gaming-table was an irresistible temptation. In her elegantly appointed drawing-rooms he met rich men who were desperate players; but he met few men who were likely to be dupes. Here neither skill nor bribery availed him, and he was dependent on the caprices of chance. The balance was tolerably even, and he left Paris neither richer nor poorer for his acquaintance with Paulina Durski.

But that acquaintance exercised a very powerful influence over his destiny, nevertheless. There was a strange fascination in the society of the Austrian widow--a nameless, indefinable charm, which few were able to resist. A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an adventuress, dangerous to all who approached her.

He knew this, and yet he yielded to the fascination of her presence. Night after night he haunted the rooms in the Rue du Faubourg, St. Honoré. He went there even when he was too poor to play, and could only stand behind Paulina's chair, a patient and devoted cavalier.

For a long time she seemed to be scarcely aware of his devotion. She received him as she received her other guests. She met him always with the same cold smile; the same studied courtesy. But one evening, when he went to her apartments earlier than usual, he found her alone, and in a melancholy mood.

Then, for the first time, he became aware that the life she led was odious to her; that she loathed the hateful vice of which she was the slave. She was wont to be very silent about herself and her own feelings; but that night she cast aside all reserve, and spoke with a passionate earnestness, which made her seem doubly charming to Reginald Eversleigh.

"I