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

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. Honor�; 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.

Honor�. 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 am so degraded a creature that, perhaps, you have never troubled

yourself to wonder how I became the thing I am,” she said; “and yet you

must surely have marvelled to see a woman of high birth fallen to the

depths in which you find me; fallen so low as to be the companion of

gamesters, a gamester myself. I will tell you the secret of my life.”

 

Reginald Eversleigh lifted his hand with a deprecating gesture.

 

“Dear madame, tell me nothing, I implore you. I admire and respect

you,” he said. “To me, you must always appear the most beautiful of

women, whatever may be the nature of your surroundings.”

 

“Yes, the most beautiful!” echoed Paulina, with passionate scorn. “You

men think that to praise a woman’s beauty is to console her for every

humiliation. I have long held that which you call my beauty as the

poorest thing on earth, so little, happiness has its possession won for

me. I will tell you the story of my life. It is the only justification

I have.”

 

“I am ready to listen. So long as you speak of yourself, your words

must have the deepest interest for me.”

 

“I was reared amongst gamesters, Reginald Eversleigh,” continued

Paulina Durski, with the same passionate intensity of manner, “My

father was an incorrigible gambler; and before I had emerged from

childhood to girlhood, the handsome fortune which should have been mine

had been squandered. As a girl the rattle of the dice, the clamour of

the rouge et noir table were the most familiar sounds to my ears.

Night after night, night after night, I have kept watch at my own

window, and have seen the lighted windows of my father’s rooms, and

have known that grim poverty was drawing nearer and nearer as the long

hours of those sleepless nights went by.”

 

“My poor Paulina!”

 

“My mother died young, exhausted by the perpetual fever of anxiety

which the gambler’s wife is doomed to suffer. She died, and I was left

alone—a woman; beautiful if you will, and, as the world supposed,

heiress to a large fortune; for none knew how entirely the wealth which

should have been mine had melted away in those nights of dissipation

and folly. People knew that my father played, and played desperately;

but few knew the extent of his losses. After my mother’s death, my

father insisted on my doing the honours of his house. I received his

friends; I stood by his chair as he played �cart�, or sat by his side

and noted the progress of the game at the rouge et noir table. Then

first I felt the fatal passion which I can but believe to be a taint in

my very blood. Slowly and gradually the fascinating vice assumed its

horrible mastery. I watched the progress of the play. I learned to

understand that science which was the one all-absorbing pursuit of

those around me. Then I played myself, first taking a hand at �cart�

with some of the younger guests, half in sport, and then venturing a

small golden coin at the rouge et noir table, while my admirers

praised my daring, as if I had been some capricious child. In those

assemblies I was always the only woman, except Matilda Brewer, who was

then my governess. My father would have no female guests at these

nightly orgies. The presence of women would have been a hindrance to

the delights of the gaming-table. At first I felt all the bitterness of

my position. I looked forward with unspeakable dread to the dreary

future in which I should find destitution staring me in the face. But

when once the gamester’s madness had seized upon me, I thought no more

of that dreary future; I became as reckless as my father and his

guests; I forgot everything in the excitement of the moment. To be

lucky at the gaming-table was to be happy; to lose was despair. Thus my

youth went by, till the day when my father told me that Colonel Durski

had offered me his hand and fortune, and that I had no alternative but

to accept him.”

 

“Oh, then, your first marriage was no love-match?” cried Reginald,

eagerly.

 

“A love-match!” exclaimed Paulina, contemptuously. “No; it was a

marriage of convenience, dictated by a father who set less value on his

daughter’s happiness than on a good hand of cards. My father told me I

must choose between Leopold Durski and ruin. ‘This house cannot shelter

you much longer,’ he said. ‘For myself there is flight. I can go to

America, and lose my identity in strange cities. I cannot remain in

Vienna, to be pointed at as the beggared Count Veschi. But with you for

my companion I should be tied hand and foot. As a wanderer and an

adventurer, I may prosper alone; but as a wanderer, burdened with a

helpless woman, failure would be certain. It is not a question of

choice, Paulina,’ he said, resolutely; ‘there is no alternative. You

must become the wife of Leopold Durski.’”

 

“And you consented?”

 

“I ask you, Reginald Eversleigh, could I refuse? For me, love was a

word which had no meaning. Leopold Durski was more than double my age;

but in outward seeming he was a gentleman. He was reported to be

wealthy; he had a high position at the Austrian Court. I was so utterly

helpless, so desolate, so despairing, that it is scarcely strange if I

accepted the fate my father pressed upon me, careless as to a future

which held no joy for me, beyond the pleasure of the gaming-table. I

left the house of one gambler to ally myself to the fortunes of

another, for Leopold Durski was my father’s companion and friend, and