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

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 _écarté_, 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 _écarté_ 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 the same master-passion swayed both. It was strange that my father, himself a ruined gamester, should have become the dupe of a man whose reported wealth was as great a sham as his own. But so it was. I exchanged poverty with one master for poverty with another master. My new life was an existence of perpetual falsehood and trickery. I occupied a splendid house in the most fashionable quarter of Vienna; but that house was maintained by my husband's winnings at the gaming- table; and it was my task to draw together the dupes whose money was to support the false semblance of grandeur which surrounded me. The dupes came. I had my little court of flatterers; but the courtiers paid dearly for their allegiance to their queen. I was the snare which was set to entrap the birds whose feathers my husband was to pluck. If I had been like other women, my position would have been utterly intolerable to me. I should have found some means of escape from a life so hateful--a degradation so shameful."

"And you made no attempt to escape?"

"None. I was a gambler; the vice which had degraded my husband had degraded me. We had both sunk to the same level, and I had no right to reproach him for infamy which I shared. We had little affection for each other. Colonel Durski had sought me only because I was fitted to adorn his reception-rooms, and attract the dupes who were to suffer by their acquaintance with him. But if there was little love between us, we at least never quarrelled. He treated me always with studied courtesy, and I never upbraided him for the deception by which he had obtained my hand. My father disappeared suddenly from Vienna, and only after his departure was it discovered that his fortune had long vanished, and that he had for several years been completely insolvent. His creditors tittered a cry of execration; but in great cities the cries of such victims are scarcely heard. My reception-rooms were still thronged by aristocratic guests, and no one cared to remember my father's infamy. This life had lasted three years, when my husband died and left me penniless. I sold my jewels, and came to this city, where for a year and a half I have lived, as my husband lived in Vienna, on the fortune of the gaming-table. I am growing weary of Paris, and it may be that Paris is growing weary of me. I suppose I shall go to London next. And next? Who knows? Ah, Reginald Eversleigh, believe me there are many moments of my life in which I think that the little walk from here to the river would cut the knot of all my difficulties. To- night I am surrounded with anxieties, steeped in degradation, hemmed in by obstacles that shut me out of all peaceful resting-places. To-morrow I might be lying very quietly in the Morgue."

"Paulina, for pity's sake--"

"Ah, me! these are idle words, are they not?" said Madame Durski, with a weary sigh. "And now I have told you my history, Reginald Eversleigh, and it is for you to judge whether there is any excuse for such a creature as I am."

Sir Reginald pitied this hopeless, friendless, woman as much as it was in him to pity any one except himself, and tried to utter some words of consolation.

She looked up at him, as he spoke to her, with a glance in which he saw a deeper feeling than gratitude.

Then it was that Reginald declared himself the devoted lover of the woman who had revealed to him the strange story of her life. He told her of the influence which she exercised over him, the fascination which he had sought in vain to resist. He declared himself attached to her by an affection which would know no change, come what might. But he did not offer this friendless woman the shelter of his name, the ostensible position which would have been hers had she become his wife.

Even when beneath the sway of a woman's fascination Reginald Eversleigh was cold and calculating. Paulina Durski was poor, and doubtless deeply in debt. She was a gambler, and the companion of gamblers. She was, therefore, no fitting wife for a man who looked upon marriage as a stepping-stone by which he might yet redeem his fallen fortunes.

Paulina received his declaration with an air of simulated coldness; but Reginald Eversleigh could perceive that it was only simulated, and that he had awakened a real affection in the heart of this desolate woman.

"Do not speak to me of love," she said; "to me such words can promise no happiness. My love could only bring shame and misery on the man to whom it was given. Let me tread my dreary pathway alone, Reginald-- alone to the very end."

Much was said after this by Reginald and the woman who loved him, and who was yet too proud to confess her love. Paulina Durski was not an inexperienced girl, to be persuaded by romantic speeches. She had acquired knowledge of the world in a hard and bitter school. She could fully fathom the base selfishness of the man who pretended to love her, and she understood why it was that he shrank from offering her the only real pledge of his truth.

"I will speak frankly to you, Paulina," he said. "I am too poor to marry."

"Yes," she answered, bitterly; "I comprehend. You are too poor to marry a penniless wife."

"And I am not likely to find a rich one. But, believe me, that my love is none the less sincere because I shrink from asking you to ally yourself to misery."

"So be it, Sir Reginald. I am willing to accept your love for what it is--a wise and prudent affection--such as a man of the world may freely indulge in without fear that his folly may cost him too dearly.