Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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me. You will be good enough to prepare rooms for myself and my maid.”
“You would like your maid’s bedroom to be adjoining your own, no
doubt, madam?” hazarded the landlady.
“No,” answered Honoria; “I do not wish that; I prefer entire privacy in
my own apartment.”
“As you please, madam—we have plenty of bedrooms.”
The landlady of the “Rose and Crown” ushered her visitors into the best
sitting-room the house afforded—an old-fashioned apartment, with a
wide fireplace, high wooden mantel-piece, and heavily-timbered
ceiling—a room which seemed to belong to the past rather than the
present.
Lady Eversleigh sat by the table in a thoughtful attitude, while the
fire was being lighted and a tray of tea-things arranged for that
refreshment which is most welcome of all others to an Englishwoman.
Jane Payland stood by the opposite angle of the mantel-piece, watching
her mistress with a countenance almost as thoughtful as that of Honoria
herself.
It was in the wintry dusk that these two travellers arrived at Frimley.
Jane Payland walked to one of the narrow, old-fashioned windows, and
looked out into the street, where lights were burning dimly here and
there.
“What a strange old place, ma’am,” she said.
Honoria had forbidden her to say “my lady” since their departure from
Raynham.
“Yes,” her mistress answered, absently; “it is a world-forgotten old
place.”
“But the rest and change will, no doubt, be beneficial, ma’am,” said
Miss Payland, in her most insinuating tone; “and I am sure you must
require change and fresh country air after being pent up in a London
street.”
Lady Eversleigh shook off her abstraction of manner, and turned towards
her servant, with a calm, serious gaze.
“I want change of scene, and the fresh breath of country air, Jane,”
she said, gravely; “but it is not for those I came to Frimley, and you
know that it is not. Why should we try to deceive each other? The
purpose of my life is a very grave one; the secret of my coming and
going is a very bitter secret, and if I do not choose to share it with
you, I withhold nothing that you need care to know. Let me play my part
unwatched and unquestioned. You will find yourself well rewarded by and
by for your forbearance and devotion. Be faithful to me, my good girl;
but do not try to discover the motive of my actions, and believe, even
when they seem most strange to you, that they are justified by one
great purpose.”
Jane Payland’s eyelids drooped before the serious and penetrating gaze
of her mistress.
“You may feel sure of my being faithful, ma’am,” she answered,
promptly; “and as to curiosity, I should be the very last creature upon
this earth to try to pry into your secrets.”
Honoria made no reply to this protestation. She took her tea in
silence, and seemed as if weighed down by grave and anxious thoughts.
After tea she dismissed Jane, who retired to the bedroom allotted to
her, which had been made very comfortable, and enlivened by a wood
fire, that blazed cheerily in the wide grate.
Jane Payland’s bedroom opened out of a corridor, at the end of which
was the door of the sitting-room occupied by Honoria. Jane was,
therefore, able to keep watch upon all who went to and fro from the
sitting-room to the other part of the house. She sat with her door a
little way open for this purpose.
“My lady expects some one to-night, I know,” she thought to herself, as
she seated herself at a little table, and began some piece of fancy-work.
She had observed that during tea Lady Eversleigh had twice looked at
her watch. Why should she be so anxious about the time, if she were not
awaiting some visitor, or message, or letter?
For a long time Jane Payland waited, and watched, and listened, without
avail. No one went along the corridor to the blue parlour, except the
chambermaid who removed the tea-things.
Jane looked at her own watch, and found that it was past nine o’clock.
“Surely my lady can have no visitor to-night?” she thought.
A quarter of an hour after this, she was startled by the creaking sound
of a footstep on the uncarpeted floor of the corridor. She rose hastily
and softly from her chair, crept to the door, and peeped put into the
passage. As she did so, she saw a man approaching, dressed like a
countryman, in a clumsy frieze coat, and with his chin so muffled in a
woollen scarf, and his felt hat drawn so low over his eyes, that there
was nothing visible of him but the end of a long nose.
That long, beak-like nose seemed strangely familiar to Miss Payland;
and yet she could not tell where she had seen it before.
The countryman went straight to the blue parlour, opened the door, and
went in. The door closed behind him, and then Jane Payland heard the
faint sound of voices within the apartment.
It was evident that this countryman was Lady Eversleigh’s expected
guest.
Jane’s wonderment was redoubled by this extraordinary proceeding.
“What does it all mean?” she asked herself. “Is this man some humble
relation of my lady’s? Everyone knows that her birth was obscure; but
no one can tell where she came from. Perhaps this is her native place,
and it is to see her own people she comes here.”
Jane was obliged to be satisfied with this explanation, for no other
was within her reach; but it did not altogether allay her curiosity.
The interview between Lady Eversleigh and her visitor was a long one.
It was half-past ten o’clock before the strange-looking countryman
quitted the blue parlour.
This occurred three days before Christmas-day. On the following evening
another stranger arrived at Frimley by the mail-coach, which passed
through the quiet town at about seven o’clock.
This traveller did not patronise the “Rose and Crown” inn, though the
coach changed horses at that hostelry. He alighted from the outside of
the coach while it stood before the door of the “Rose and Crown,”
waited until his small valise had been fished out of the boot, and then
departed through the falling snow, carrying this valise, which was his
only luggage.
He walked at a rapid pace to the other end of the long, straggling
street, where there was a humbler inn, called the “Cross Keys.” Here he
entered, and asked for a bedroom, with a good fire, and something or
other in the way of supper.
It was not till he had entered the room that the traveller took off the
rough outer coat, the collar of which had almost entirely concealed his
face. When he did so, he revealed the sallow countenance of Victor
Carrington, and the flashing black eyes, which to-night shone with a
peculiar brightness.
After he had eaten a hasty meal, he went out into the inn-yard, despite
the fast-falling snow, to smoke a cigar, he said, to one of the
servants whom he encountered on his way.
He had not been long in the yard, when a man emerged from one of the
adjacent buildings, and approached him in a slow and stealthy manner.
“All right, guv’nor,” said the man, in a low voice; “I’ve been on the
look-out for you for the last two days.”
The man was Jim Hawkins, Mr. Spavin’s groom.
“Is ‘Wild Buffalo’ here?” asked Victor.
“Yes, sir; as safe and as comfortable as if he’d been foaled here.”
“And none the worse for his journey?”
“Not a bit of it, sir. I brought him down by easy stages, knowing you
wanted him kept fresh. And fresh he is—oncommon. P’raps you’d like to
have a look at him.”
“I should.”
The groom led Mr. Carrington to a loose box, and the surgeon had the
pleasure of beholding the bay horse by the uncertain light of a stable
lantern.
The animal was, indeed, a noble specimen of his race.
It was only in the projecting eyeball, the dilated nostril, the
defiant carriage of the head, that his evil temper exhibited itself.
Victor Carrington stood at a little distance from him, contemplating
him in silence for some minutes.
“Have you ever noticed that spot?” asked Victor, presently, pointing to
the white patch inside the animal’s hock.
“Well, sir, one can’t help noticing it when one knows where to look for
it, though p’raps a stranger mightn’t see it. That there spot’s a kind
of a blemish, you see, to my mind; for, if it wasn’t for that, the
brute wouldn’t have a white hair about him.”
“That’s just what I’ve been thinking,” answered Victor. “Now, my friend
is just the sort of man to turn up his nose at a horse with anything in
the way of a blemish about him, especially if he sees it before he has
tried the animal, and found out his merits. But I’ve hit upon a plan
for getting the better of him, and I want you to carry it out for me.”
“I’m your man, guv’nor, whatever it is.”
The surgeon produced a phial from his pocket, and with the phial a
small painters’ brush.
“In this bottle there’s a brown dye,” he said; “and I want you to paint
the white spot with that brown dye after you’ve groomed the ‘Buffalo,’
so that whenever my friend comes to claim the horse the brute may be
ready for him. You must apply the dye three or four times, at short
intervals. It’s a pretty fast one, and it’ll take a good many pails of
water to wash it out.”
Jim Hawkins laughed heartily at the idea of this manoeuvre.
“Why you are a rare deep one, guv’nor,” he exclaimed; “that there game
is just like the canary dodge, what they do so well down Seven Dials
way. You ketches yer sparrer, and you paints him a lively yeller, and
then you sells him to your innocent customer for the finest canary as
ever wabbled in the grove—a little apt to be mopish at first, but
warranted to sing beautiful as soon as ever he gets used to his new
master and missus. And, oh! don’t he just sing beautiful—not at all
neither.”
“There’s the bottle, Hawkins, and there’s the brush. You know what
you’ve got to do.”
“All right, guv’nor.”
“Good night, then,” said Victor, as he left the stable.
He did not stay to finish his cigar under the fast-falling snow; but
walked back to his own room, where he slept soundly.
He was astir very early the next morning. He went down stairs, after
breakfasting in his own room, saw the landlord, and hired a good strong
horse, commonly used by the proprietor of the “Cross Keys” on all his
journeys to and from the market-town and outlying villages.
Victor Carrington mounted this horse, and rode across the Common to the
village of Hallgrove.
He stopped to give his horse a drink of water before a village inn, and
while stopping to do this he asked a few questions of the ostler.
“Whereabouts is Hallgrove Rectory?” he asked.
“About a quarter of a mile farther on, sir,” answered the man; “you
can’t miss it if you keep along that road. A big red house, by the side
of a river.”
“Thanks. This is a great place for hunting, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that it be, sir. The Horsley foxhounds are a’most allus meeting
somewheres about here.”
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