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

step in

this terrible career, we must once more revert to the strange visitors

at Frimley.

 

Jane Payland by no means approved of passing Christmas-day in the

uninteresting seclusion of a country inn, with nothing more festive to

look forward to than a specially ordered, but lonely dinner, and

nothing to divert her thoughts but the rural spectacle afforded by the

inn-yard. As to going out for a walk in such weather, she would not

have thought of such a thing, even if she had any one to walk out with;

and to go alone—no—Jane Payland had no fancy for amusement of that

order. The day had been particularly dreary to the lady’s maid, because

the lady had been busily engaged in affairs of which she had no

cognizance, and this ignorance, not a little exasperating even in town,

became well-nigh intolerable to her in the weariness, the idleness, and

the dullness of Frimley. When Lady Eversleigh went out in the dark

evening, accompanied by the mysterious personage in whom Jane Payland

had recognized their fellow-lodger, the amazement which she experienced

produced an agreeable variety in her sensations, and the fact that the

man with the vulture-like beak carried a carpet-bag intensified her

surprise.

 

“Now I’m almost sure she is something to him; and she has come down

here with him to see her people,” said Jane Payland to herself, as she

sat desolately by the fire in her mistress’s room, a well-thumbed novel

lying neglected on her knee; “and she’s mean enough to be ashamed of

them. Well, I don’t think I should be that of my own flesh and blood,

if I was ever so great and so grand. I suppose the bag is full of

presents—I’m sure she might have told me if it was clothes she was

going to give away; I shouldn’t have grudged ‘em to the poor things.”

 

Grumbling a good deal, wondering more, and feasting a little, Jane

Payland got through the time until her mistress returned. But for all

her grumbling, and all her suspicion, the girl was daily growing more

and more attached to her mistress, and her respect was increasing with

her liking. Lady Eversleigh returned to the inn alone late on that

dismal Christmas-night, and she looked worn, troubled, and weary. After

a few kind words to Jane Payland, she dismissed the girl, and went to

bed, very tired and heart-sick. “How am I to prove it?” she asked

herself, as she lay wearily awake. “How am I to prove it? in my

borrowed character I am suspected; in my own, I should not be believed,

or even listened to for a moment. He is a good man, that Lionel Dale,

and he is doomed, I fear.”

 

On the morning of the twenty-sixth Mr. Andrew Larkspur had another long

private conference with Lady Eversleigh, the immediate result of which

was his setting out, mounted on the stout pony which we have seen in

difficulties in a previous chapter, and vainly endeavouring to come up

with Lionel Dale at the hunt. When Mr. Andrew Larkspur arrived at the

melancholy conviction that his errand was a useless one, and that he

must only return to Frimley, and concert with Lady Eversleigh a new

plan of action, he also became aware that he was more hurt and shaken

by his fall than he had at first supposed. When he reached Frimley he

felt exceedingly sick and weak, (“queer,” he expressed it), and was

constrained to tell his anxious and unhappy client that he must go away

and rest if he hoped to be fit for anything in the evening, or on the

next day. “I will see Mr. Dale to-night, if he and I are both alive,”

said Mr. Larkspur; “but if he was there before me I could not say a

word to him now. I don’t mean to say I have not had a hurt or two in

the course of my life before now, but I never was so regularly dead-beat; and that’s the truth.”

 

Thus it happened that the acute Mr. Larkspur was hors de combat just

at the time when his acuteness would have found most employment, and

thus Lady Eversleigh’s project of vengeance received, unconsciously,

the first check. The game of reprisals was, indeed, destined to be

played, but not by her; Providence would do that, in time, in the long

run. Meanwhile, she strove, after her own fashion, to become the

executor of its decrees.

 

The news of Lionel Dale’s sudden disappearance, and the alarm to which

it gave rise, reached the little town of Frimley in due course; but it

was slow to reach the lonely lady at the inn. Lady Eversleigh had taken

counsel with herself after Mr. Larkspur had left her, and had come to

the determination that she would tell Lionel Dale the whole truth. She

resolved to lay before him a full statement of all the circumstances of

her life, to reveal all she knew, and all she suspected concerning Sir

Reginald Eversleigh, and to tell him of Carrington’s presence in her

neighbourhood, as well as the designs which she believed him to

cherish. She told herself that her dead husband’s kinsman could

scarcely refuse to believe her statement, when she reminded him that

she had no object to serve in this revelation but the object of truth

and respect for her husband’s memory. When he, Lionel Dale, could have

rehabilitated her in public opinion by taking his place beside her, he

had not done so; it was too late now, no advance on his part could undo

that which had been done, and he could not therefore think that in

taking this step she was trying to curry favour with him in order to

further her own interest. After debating the question for some time,

she resolved to write a letter, which Larkspur could carry to the

rectory.

 

A great deal of time was consumed by Lady Eversleigh in writing this

letter, and the darkness had fallen long before it was finished. When

she rang for lights, she took no notice of the person who brought them,

and she directed that her dinner should not be served until she rang

for it. Thus no interruption of her task occurred, until Mr. Larkspur,

looking very little the better for his rest and refreshment, presented

himself before her. Lady Eversleigh was just beginning to tell him what

she had done, when he interrupted her, by saying, in a tone which would

have astonished any of his intimates, for there was a touch of real

feeling in it, apart from considerations of business—

 

“I’m afraid we’re too late. I’m very much afraid Carrington has been

one too many for us, and has done the trick.”

 

“What do you mean?” asked Lady Eversleigh, rising, in extreme

agitation, and turning deadly pale. “Has any harm come to Lionel Dale?”

 

Then Mr. Andrew Larkspur told Lady Eversleigh the report which had

reached the town, and of whose truth a secret instinct assured them

both, only too completely. They were, indeed, powerless now; the enemy

had been too strong, too subtle, and too quick for them. Mr. Larkspur

did not remain long with Lady Eversleigh; but having counselled her to

keep silence on the subject, to ask no questions of any one, and to

preserve the letter she had written, which Mr. Larkspur, for reasons of

his own, was anxious to see, he left her, and set off for the rectory.

He reached his destination before the return of the party who had gone

to search for the missing man. He mingled freely, almost unnoticed,

with the servants and the villagers who had crowded about the house and

lodges, and all he heard confirmed him in his belief that the worst had

happened, that Lionel Dale had, indeed, come by his death, either

through the successful contrivance of Carrington, or by an

extraordinary accident, coincident with his enemy’s fell designs. Mr.

Larkspur asked a great many questions of several persons that night,

and as talking to a stranger helped the watchers and loiterers over

some of the time they had to drag through until the genuine

apprehension of some, and the curiosity of others, should be realized

or satisfied, he met with no rebuffs. But, on the other hand, neither

did he obtain any information of value. No stranger had been seen to

join the hunt that day, or noticed lurking about Hallgrove that

morning, and Mr. Larkspur’s own reliable eyes had assured him that

Carrington was not among the recipients of the rector’s hospitality on

Christmas-day. The footman, who had directed the unknown visitor by the

way past the stables to the lower road, did not remember that

circumstance and so it did not come to Mr. Larkspur’s knowledge. When

the party who had led the search for Lionel Dale returned to the

rectory, and the worst was known, Mr. Larkspur went away, after having

arranged with a small boy, who did odd jobs for the gardener at

Hallgrove, that if the body was brought home in the morning, he should

go over to Frimley, on consideration of half-a-crown, and inquire at

the inn for Mr. Bennett.

 

“It’s no good thinking about what’s to be done, till the body’s found,

and the inquest settled,” thought Mr. Larkspur. “I don’t think anything

can be done then, but it’s clear there’s no use in thinking about it

to-night. So I shall just tell my lady so, and get to bed. Confound

that pony!”

 

At a reasonably early hour on the following morning, the juvenile

messenger arrived from Hallgrove, and, on inquiring for Mr. Bennett,

was ushered into the presence of Mr. Larkspur. The intelligence he

brought was brief, but important. The rector’s body had been found,

much disfigured; he had struck against a tree, the doctors said, in

falling into the river, and been killed by the blow, “as well as

drownded,” added the boy, with some appreciation of the additional

piquancy of the circumstance. He was laid out in the library. The fine

folks were gone, or going, except Squire Mordaunt and Sir Reginald, the

rector’s cousin. Mr. Douglas took on about it dreadfully; the bay horse

had come home, with his saddle wet, but he was not hurt or cut about,

as the boy knew of. This was all the boy had to tell.

 

Mr. Larkspur dismissed the messenger, having faithfully paid him the

stipulated half-crown, and immediately sought the presence of Lady

Eversleigh. The realization of all her fears shocked her deeply, and in

the solemnity of the dread event which had occurred she almost lost

sight of her own purpose, it seemed swallowed up in a calamity so

appalling. But Mr. Larkspur was of a tougher and more practical

temperament. He lost no time in setting before his client the state of

the case as regarded herself, and the purpose with which she had gone

to Frimley, now rendered futile. Mr. Larkspur entertained no doubt that

Carrington had been in some way accessory to the death of Lionel Dale,

but circumstances had so favoured the criminal that it would be

impossible to prove his crime.

 

“If I told you all I know about the horse and about the man,” said Mr.

Larkspur, “what good would it do? The man bought a horse very like Mr.

Dale’s, and he rode away from here mounted on that horse, on the same

day that Mr. Dale was drowned. I believe he changed the horses in Mr.

Dale’s stable; but there’s not a tittle of proof of it, and how he

contrived the thing I cannot undertake to say, for no mortal saw him at

the rectory or at the meet; and the horse that every one would be

prepared to swear was the horse that Mr. Dale rode, is safe