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

first to talk of

settling in England.”

 

“And with that assurance my last hope vanishes,” thought George.

 

He had asked the question in the faint hope of hearing that Joseph

Duncombe was far away from England at the time of the murder.

 

A fortnight after the discovery of the Brazilian coin, George Jernam

announced to his wife that he was about to leave her. He was going to

the coast of Africa, he said. He had tried to reconcile himself to a

landsman’s life, and had found it unendurable.

 

The blow fell very heavily on poor Rosamond’s loving heart.

 

“We seemed so happy, George, only two short weeks ago,” she pleaded.

 

“Yes,” he answered, “I tried to be happy; but you see, the life doesn’t

suit me. Tour father couldn’t rest in this house, though he had made

himself such a comfortable home. No more can I rest here. There is a

curse upon the house, perhaps,” he added, with a bitter laugh.

 

Rosamond burst into tears.

 

“Oh, George, you will break my heart,” she cried. “I thought our lives

were to be so happy; and now our happiness ends all at once like a

broken dream. It is because you are weary of me, and of my love, that

you are going away. You promised my father that you would remain with

me till his return.”

 

“I did, Rosamond,” answered her husband, gravely, “and, as I am an

honest man, I meant to keep that promise! I am not weary of your love—

that is as precious to me as ever it was. But you must not continue to

reside beneath this roof. I tell you there is a curse upon this house,

Rosamond, and neither peace nor happiness can be the lot of those who

dwell within its fatal walls. You must go down to Allanbay, where you

may find kind friends, where you may be happy, dear, while I am away.”

 

“But, George, what is all this mystery?”

 

“Ask me no questions, Rosamond, for I can answer none. Believe me when

I tell you that you have no share in the change that has come upon me.

My feelings towards you remain unaltered; but within the last few

weeks I have made a discovery which has struck a death-blow to my

happiness. I go out once more a homeless wanderer, because the quiet of

domestic life has become unbearable to me. I want bustle, danger, hard

work. I want to get away from my own thoughts.”

 

Rosamond in vain implored her husband to tell her more than this. He,

so yielding of old, was on this point inflexible.

 

Before the leaves had begun to fall in the dreary autumn days the

“Albatross” was ready for a new voyage. The first mate took her down to

Plymouth Harbour, there to wait the coming of her captain, who

travelled into Devonshire by mail-coach, taking Rosamond to her future

abode.

 

At any other time Rosamond would have been delighted with the romantic

beauty of that Devonian village, where her husband had selected a

pleasant cottage for her, near his aunt’s abode; but a settled

melancholy had taken possession of the once joyous girl. She had

brooded continually over her husband’s altered conduct, and she had at

last arrived at a terrible conclusion.

 

She believed that he was mad. What but sudden insanity could have

produced so great a change?—a change for which it was impossible to

imagine a cause.

 

“If he had been absent from me for some time, and had returned an

altered creature, I should not be so much bewildered by the change,”

Rosamond said to herself. “But the transformation occurred in an hour.

He saw no strange visitor; he received no letter. No tidings of any

kind could possibly have reached him. He entered my father’s sitting-room a light-hearted, happy man; he came out of it gloomy and

miserable. Can I doubt that the change is something more than any

ordinary alteration of feeling or character?”

 

Poor Rosamond remembered having heard of the fatal effects of

sunstrokes—effects which have sometimes revealed themselves long after

the occurrence of the calamity that caused them; and she told herself

that the change in George Jernam’s nature must needs be the result of

such a calamity.

 

She entreated her husband to consult an eminent physician as to the

state of his health; but she dared not press her request, so coldly was

it received.

 

“Who told you that I was ill?” he asked; “I am not ill. All the

physicians in Christendom could do nothing for me.”

 

After this, Rosamond could say no more. For worlds she would not have

revealed to a stranger her sad suspicion of George Jernam’s insanity.

She could only pray that Providence would protect and guide him in his

roving life.

 

“The excitement and hard work of his existence on board ship may work a

cure,” she thought, trying to be hopeful. “It is very possible that the

calm monotony of a landsman’s life may have produced a bad effect upon

his brain. I can only trust in Providence—I can only pray night and

day for the welfare of him I love so fondly.”

 

And so they parted. George Jernam left his wife with sadness in his

heart; but it was a kind of sadness in which love had little share.

 

“I have thought too much of my own happiness,” he said to himself, “and

I have left my brother’s death unavenged. Have I forgotten the time

when he carried me along the lonely sea-shore in his loving arms? Have

I forgotten the years in which he was father, mother—all the world to

me? No; by heaven! I have not. The time has come when the one thought

of my life must be revenge—revenge upon the murderer of my brother,

whosoever he may be.”

 

*

 

CHAPTER XX.

 

ON GUARD.

 

Mr. Andrew Larkspur, the police-officer, took up his abode in Percy

Street a week after his interview with Lady Eversleigh.

 

For a fortnight after he became an occupant of the house in which she

lived, Honoria received no tidings from him. She knew that he went out

early every morning, and that he returned late every night, and this

was all that she knew respecting his movements.

 

At the end of the fortnight, he came to her late one evening, and

begged to be favoured with an audience.

 

“I shall want at least two hours of your time, ma’am,” he said; “and,

perhaps, you may find it fatiguing to listen to me so late at night. If

you’d rather defer the business till to-morrow morning—”

 

“I would rather not defer it,” answered Lady Eversleigh; “I am ready to

listen to you for as long a time as you choose. I have been anxiously

expecting some tidings of your movements.”

 

“Very likely, ma’am,” replied Mr. Larkspur, coolly; “I know you ladies

are given to impatience, as well as Berlin wool work, and steel beads,

and the pianoforte, and such like. But you see, ma’am, there’s not a

living creature more unlike a race-horse than a police-officer. And

it’s just like you ladies to expect police-officers to be Flying

Dutchmen, in a manner of speaking. I’ve been a hard worker in my time,

ma’am; but I never worked harder, or stuck to my work better, than I

have these last two weeks; and all I can say is, if I ain’t dead-beat,

it’s only because it isn’t in circumstances to dead-beat me.”

 

Lady Eversleigh listened very quietly to this exordium; but a slight,

nervous twitching of her lips every now and then betrayed her

impatience.

 

“I am waiting to hear your news,” she said, presently.

 

“And I’m a-going to tell it, ma’am, in due course,” returned the

police-officer, drawing a bloated leather book from his pocket, and

opening it. “I’ve got all down here in regular order. First and

foremost, the baronet—he’s a bad lot, is the baronet.”

 

“I do not need to hear that from your lips.”

 

“Very likely not, ma’am. But if you set me to watch a gentleman, you

must expect I shall form an opinion about him. The baronet has lodgings

in Villiers Street, uncommon shabby ones. I went in and took a good

survey of him and his lodgings together, in the character of a

bootmaker, taking home a pair of boots, which was intended for a Mr.

Everfield in the next street, says I, and, of course, Everfield and

Eversleigh being a’most the same names, was calculated to lead to

inconvenient mistakes. In the character of the bootmaker, Sir Reginald

Eversleigh tells me to get out of his room, and be—something

uncommonly unpleasant, and unfit for the ears of ladies. In the

character of the bootmaker, I scrapes acquaintance with a young person

employed as housemaid, and very willing to answer questions, and be

drawed out. From the young person employed as housemaid, I gets what I

take the liberty to call my ground-plan of the baronet’s habits;

beginning with his late breakfast, consisting chiefly of gunpowder tea

and cayenne pepper, and ending with the scroop of his latch-key, to be

heard any time from two in the morning to daybreak. From the young

person employed as housemaid, I discover that my baronet always spends

his evenings out of doors, and is known to visit a lady at Fulham very

constant, whereby the young person employed as housemaid supposes he is

keeping company with her. From the same young person I obtain the

lady’s address—which piece of information the young person has

acquired in the course of taking letters to the post. The lady’s

address is Hilton House, Fulham. The lady’s name has slipped my young

person’s memory, but is warranted to begin with a D.”

 

Mr. Larkspur paused to take breath, and to consult the memoranda in the

bloated leather book.

 

“Having ascertained this much, I had done with the young person, for

the time being,” he continued, glibly; “and I felt that my next

business would be at Hilton House. Here I presented myself in the

character of a twopenny postman; but here I found the servants foreign,

and so uncommonly close that they might as well have been so many

marble monuments, for any good that was to be got out of them. Failing

the servants, I fell back upon the neighbours and the tradespeople; and

from the neighbours and the tradespeople I find out that my foreign

lady’s name is Durski, and that my foreign lady gives a party every

night, which party is made up of gentlemen. That is queer, to say the

least of it, thinks I. A lady who gives a party every night, and whose

visitors are all gentlemen, is an uncommonly queer customer. Having

found out this much, my mouth watered to find out more; for a man who

has his soul in his profession takes a pleasure in his work, ma’am; and

if you were to offer to pay such a man double to waste his time, he

couldn’t do it. I tried the neighbours, and I tried the tradespeople,

every way; and work ‘em how I would, I couldn’t get much out of ‘em.

You see, ma’am, there’s scarcely a human habitation within a quarter of

a mile of Hilton House, so, when I say neighbours, I don’t mean

neighbours in the common sense of the word. There might be

assassination going on every night in Hilton House undiscovered, for

there’s no one lives near enough to hear the victims’ groans; and if

there was anything as good for our trade as pork-pie making out of

murdered human victims going nowadays, ma’am, Hilton House would be the