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

in his eye that I don’t at all like. See

how he puts his ears back every now and then; and his nostrils have an

ugly nervous quiver. I wish you’d let your man bring you another horse,

Dale. We’re likely to be crossing some stiffish timber to-day; and,

upon my word, I’m rather suspicious of that brute you’re riding.”

 

“My dear squire, I have tested the horse to the uttermost,” answered

Lionel. “I can positively assure you there is not the slightest ground

for apprehension. The animal is a present from my brother, and Douglas

would be annoyed if I rode any other horse.”

 

“He would be more annoyed if you came to any harm by a horse of his

choosing,” answered the squire. “However I’ll say no more. If you know

the animal, that’s enough. I know you to be both a good rider and a

good judge of a horse.”

 

“Thank you heartily for your advice, notwithstanding, squire,” replied

Lionel, cheerily; “and now I think I’ll ride on and join the ladies.”

 

He broke into a canter, and presently was riding by the side of Miss

Graham, who did not fail to praise the beauty of “Niagara” in a manner

calculated to win the heart of Niagara’s rider.

 

In the exhilarating excitement of the start, Lionel Dale had forgotten

alike the gipsy’s warning and those vague doubts of his cousin Reginald

which had been engendered by that warning. He was entirely absorbed by

the pleasure of the hour, happy to see his friends gathered around him,

and excited by the prospect of a day’s sport.

 

The meeting-place was crowded with horsemen and carriages, country

squires and their sons, gentlemen-farmers on sleek hunters, and humbler

tenant-farmers on their stiff cobs, butchers and innkeepers, all eager

for the chase. All was life, gaiety excitement, noise; the hounds,

giving forth occasional howls and snappish yelpings, expressive of an

impatience that was almost beyond endurance; the huntsman cracking his

whip, and reproving his charges in language more forcible than polite;

the spirited horses pawing the ground; the gentlemen exchanging the

compliments of the season with the ladies who had come up to see the

hounds throw off.

 

At last the important moment arrived, the horn sounded, the hounds

broke away with a rush, and the business of the day had begun.

 

Again the rector’s horse was seized with sudden obstinacy, and again

the rector found it as much as he could do to manage him. An inferior

horseman would have been thrown in that sharp and short struggle

between horse and rider; but Lionel’s firm hand triumphed over the

animal’s temper for the time at least; and presently he was hurrying

onward at a stretching gallop, which speedily carried him beyond the

ruck of riders.

 

As he skimmed like a bird over the low flat meadows, Lionel began to

think that the horse was an acquisition, in spite of the sudden freaks

of temper which had made him so difficult to manage at starting.

 

A horseman who had not joined the hunt, who had dexterously kept the

others in sight, sheltering himself from observation under the fringe

of the wood which crowned a small hill in the neighbourhood of the

meet, was watching all the evolutions of Lionel Dale’s horse closely

through a small field-glass, and soon, perceived that the animal was

beyond the rider’s skill to manage. The stretching gallop which had

reassured Mr. Dale soon carried the rector beyond the watcher’s ken,

and then, as the hunt was out of sight too, he turned his horse from

the shelter he had so carefully selected, and rode straight across

country in an opposite direction.

 

In little more than half an hour after the horseman who had watched

Lionel Dale so closely left the post of observation, a short man,

mounted on a stout pony, which had evidently been urged along at

unusual speed, came along the road, which wound around the hill already

mentioned. This individual wore a heavy, country-made coat, and leather

leggings, and had a handkerchief tied over his hat. This very

unbecoming appendage was stained with blood on the side which covered

the right cheek and the wearer was plentifully daubed and bespattered

with mud, his sturdy little steed being in a similar condition. As he

urged the pony on, his sharp, crafty eyes kept up an incessant

scrutiny, in which his beak-like nose seemed to take an active part.

But there was nothing to reward the curiosity, amounting to anxiety,

with which the short man surveyed the wintry scene around. All was

silent and empty. If the horseman had designed to see and speak with

any member of the hunting-party, he had come too late. He recognized

the fact very soon, and very discontentedly. Without being so great a

genius, as he believed and represented himself, Mr. Andrew Larkspur was

really a very clever and a very successful detective, and he had seldom

been foiled in a better-laid plan than that which had induced him to

follow Lionel Dale to the meet on this occasion. But he had not

calculated on precisely the exact kind of accident which had befallen

him, and when he found himself thrown violently from his pony, in the

middle of a road at once hard, sloppy, and newly-repaired with very

sharp stones, he was both hurt and angry. It did not take him a great

deal of time to get the pony on its legs, and shake himself to rights

again; but the delay, brief as it was, was fatal to his hopes of seeing

Lionel Dale. The meet had taken place, the hunt was in full progress,

far away, and Mr. Andrew Larkspur had nothing for it but to sit

forlornly for awhile upon the muddy pony, indulging in meditations of

no pleasant character, and then ride disconsolately back to Frimley.

 

In the meantime, Nemesis, who had perversely pleased herself by

thwarting the designs of Mr. Larkspur, had hurried those of Victor

Carrington towards fulfilment with incredible speed. He had ridden at a

speed, and for some time in a direction which would, he calculated,

bring him within sight of the hunt, and had just crossed a bridge which

traversed a narrow but deep and rapid river, about three miles distant

from the place where he Andrew Larkspur had taken sad counsel with

himself, when he heard the sound of a horse’s approach, at a

thundering, apparently wholly ungoverned pace. A wild gleam of

triumphant expectation, of deadly murderous hope, lit up his pale

features, as he turned his horse, rendered restive by the noise of the

distant galloping, into a field, close by the road, dismounted, and

tied him firmly to a tree. The hedge, though bare of leaves, was thick

and high, and in the angle which it formed with the tree, the animal

was completely hidden.

 

In a moment after Victor Carrington had done this, and while he

crouched down and looked through the hedge, Lionel Dale appeared in

sight, borne madly along by his unmanageable horse, as he dashed

heedlessly down the road, his rider holding the bridle indeed, but

breathless, powerless, his head uncovered, and one of his stirrup-leathers broken. Victor Carrington’s heart throbbed violently, and a

film came over his eyes. Only for a moment, however; in the next his

sight cleared, and he saw the furious animal, frightened by a sudden

plunge made by the horse tied to the tree, swerve suddenly from the

road, and dash at the swollen, tumbling river. The horse plunged in a

little below the bridge. The rider was thrown out of the saddle head

foremost. His head struck with a dull thud against the rugged trunk of

an ash which hung over the water, and he sank below the brown, turbid

stream. Then Victor Carrington emerged from his hiding-place, and

rushed to the brink of the water. No sign of the rector was to be seen;

and midway across, the horse, snorting and terrified, was struggling

towards the opposite bank. In a moment Carrington, drawing something

from his breast as he went, had run across the bridge, and reached the

spot where the animal was now attempting to scramble up the steep bank.

As Carrington came up, he had got his fore-feet within a couple of feet

of the top, and was just making good his footing below; but the

surgeon, standing close upon the brink, a little to the right of the

struggling brute, stooped down and shot him through the forehead. The

huge carcase fell crashing heavily down, and was sucked under, and

whirled away by the stream. Victor Carrington placed the pistol once

more in his breast, and for some time stood quite motionless gazing oh

the river. Then he turned away, saying,—

 

“They’ll hardly look for him below the bridge—I should say the fox ran

west;” and he letting loose the horse he had ridden, walked along the

road until he reached the turn at which Lionel Dale had come in sight.

There he found the unfortunate rector’s hat, as he had hoped he might

find it, and having carried it back, he placed it on the brink of the

river, and then once more mounted him, and rode, not at any remarkable

speed, in the opposite direction to that in which Hallgrove lay.

 

His reflections were of a satisfactory kind. He had succeeded, and he

cared for nothing but success. When he thought of Sir Reginald

Eversleigh, a contemptuous smile crossed his pale lips. “To work for

such a creature as that,” he said to himself, “would indeed be

degrading; but he is only an accident in the case—I work for myself.”

 

Victor Carrington had discharged his score at the inn that morning, and

sent his valise to London by coach. When the night fell, he took the

saddle off his horse, steeped it in the river, replaced it, quietly

turned the animal loose, and abandoning him to his fate, made his way

to a solitary public-house some miles from Hallgrove, where he had

given a conditional, uncertain sort of rendezvous to Sir Reginald

Eversleigh.

 

*

 

The night had closed in upon the returning huntsmen as they rode

homewards. Not a star glimmered in the profound darkness of the sky.

The moon had not yet risen, and all was chill and dreary in the early

winter night.

 

Miss Graham, her brother Gordon, and Sir Reginald Eversleigh rode

abreast as they approached the manor-house. Lydia had been struck by

the silence of Sir Reginald, but she attributed that silence to

fatigue. Her brother, too, was silent; nor did Lydia herself care to

talk. She was thinking of her triumphs of the previous evening, and of

that morning. She was thinking of the tender pressure with which the

rector had clasped her hand as he bade her good-night; the soft

expression of his eyes as they dwelt on her face, with a long, earnest

gaze. She was thinking of his tender care of her when she mounted her

horse, the gentle touch of his hand as he placed the reins in hers.

Could she doubt that she was beloved?

 

She did not doubt. A thrill of delight ran through her veins as she

thought of the sweet certainty; but it was not the pure delight of a

simple-hearted girl who loves and finds herself beloved. It was the

triumph of a hard and worldly woman, who has devoted the bright years

of her girlhood to ambitious dreams; and who, at last, has reason to

believe that they are about to be realized.

 

“Five thousand a year,” she thought; “it is little, after all, compared

to the fortune that would have been mine had I been lucky enough to

captivate Sir Oswald Eversleigh. It is little compared