Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- Performer: -
Book online «Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗». Author Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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. You
will come to my house; I shall see you night after night amongst the
reckless idlers who gather round me; you will pay me compliments all
the year round, and bring me bon-bons on New Year’s Day; and some day,
when I have grown old and haggard, you will all at once forget the fact
of our acquaintance, and I shall see you no more. Let it be so. It is
pleasant for a woman to fancy herself beloved, however false the fancy
may be. I will shut my eyes, and dream that you love me, Reginald.”
And this was all. No more was ever said of love between these two; but
from that hour Reginald was more constant than ever in his attendance
on the beautiful widow. The time came when she grew weary of Paris, and
when those who had lost money began to shun the seductive delights of
her nightly receptions. Reginald Eversleigh was not slow to perceive
that the brilliant throng grew thin—the most distinguished guests
“conspicuous by their absence.” He urged Paulina to leave Paris for
London; and he himself selected the lonely villa on the banks of the
Thames, in which he found a billiard-room, lighted from the roof, that
was easily converted into a secret chamber.
It was by his advice that Paulina Durski altered her line of conduct on
taking up her abode in England, and refrained altogether from any
active share in the ruinous amusements for which men frequented her
receptions.
“It was all very well for you to take a hand at �cart�, or to take
your place at the rouge et noir table, in Paris,” Reginald said, when
he discussed this question; “but here it will not do. The English are
full of childish prejudices, and to see a woman at the gaming-table
would shock these prejudices. Let me play for you. I will find the
capital, and we will divide the profits of each night’s speculation.
For your part, you will have only to look beautiful, and to lure the
golden-feathered birds into the net; and sometimes, perhaps, when I am
playing �cart� with one of your admirers, behind whose chair you may
happen to be standing, you may contrive to combine a flattering
interest in his play with a substantial benefit to mine.”
Paulina’s eyelids fell, and a crimson flush dyed her face: but she
uttered no exclamation of anger or disgust. And yet she understood only
too well the meaning of Sir Reginald’s words. She knew that he wished
her to aid him in a deliberate system of cheating. She knew this, and
she did not withdraw her friendship from this man.
Alas, no! she loved him. Not because she believed him to be good and
honourable—not because she was blinded to the baseness of his nature.
She loved him in spite of her knowledge of his real character—she
yielded to the influence of an infatuation which she was so powerless
to resist that she might almost be pardoned for believing herself the
victim of a baleful destiny.
“It is my fate,” she murmured to herself, after this last revelation of
her lover’s infamy. “It must needs be my fate, since women with less
claim to be loved than I possess are so happy as to win the devotion of
good and brave men. It is my fate to love a cheat and trickster, on
whose constancy I have so poor a hold that a breath may sever the
miserable bond that unites us.”
Victor Carrington was one of the first persons whom Reginald Eversleigh
introduced to Madame Durski after her arrival in England. She was
pleased with the quiet and graceful manners of the Frenchman; but she
was at a loss to understand Sir Reginald’s intimate association with a
man who was at once poor and obscure.
She told Sir Reginald as much the next time she saw him alone.
“I know that in most of your friendships convenience and self-interest
reign paramount over what you call sentimentality; and yet you choose
for your friend this Carrington, whom no one knows; and who is, you
tell me, even poorer than yourself. You must have a hidden motive,
Reginald; and a strong one.”
A dark shade passed over the face of the baronet.
“I have my reasons,” he said. “Victor Carrington was once useful to
me—at least he endeavoured to be so. If he failed, the obligation is
none the less; and he is a man who will have his bond.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
AT ANCHOR.
The current of life flowed on at River View Cottage without so much as
a ripple in the shape of an event, after the appalling midnight visit
of Miser Screwton’s ghost, until one summer evening, when Captain
Duncombe came home in very high spirits, bringing with him an old
friend, of whom Miss Duncombe had heard her father talk very often; but
whom she had hitherto never seen.
This was no other than George Jernam, the captain of the “Albatross,”
and the owner of the “Stormy Petrel” and “Pizarro.”
In London the captain of the “Albatross” found plenty of business to
occupy him. He had just returned from an African cruise, and though he
had not forgotten the circumstances which had made his last intended
visit to England only a memorable and melancholy failure, he was in
high spirits.
The first few days hardly sufficed for the talks between George Jernam
and Joyce Harker, who aided him vigorously in the refitting of his
vessel. He had been in London about a week before he fell in with
honest Joe Duncombe. The two men had been fast friends ever since the
day on which George, while still a youngster,
Comments (0)