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

at home at

the rectory now, having evidently been in the river. Seeing we can’t

prove the matter, it’s my opinion we’d better not meddle with it, more

particularly as nothing that we can prove will do Sir Reginald

Eversleigh any harm, and, if either of this precious pair of rascals is

to escape, you don’t want it to be him.”

 

“Oh, no, no!” said Lady Eversleigh, “he is so much worse than the other

as his added cowardice makes him.”

 

“Just so. Well, then, if you want to punish him and his agent, this is

certainly not the opportunity. Next to winning, there’s nothing like

thoroughly understanding and acknowledging what you’ve lost, and we

have lost this game, beyond all question. Let us see, now, if we cannot

win the next. If I understand the business right, Mr. Douglas Dale is

his brother’s heir?”

 

“Yes,” said Lady Eversleigh; “his life only now stands between Sir

Reginald and fortune.”

 

“Then he will take that life by Carrington’s agency, as I believe he

has taken Lionel Dale’s,” said Mr. Larkspur; “and my idea is that the

proper way to prevent him is to go away from this place, where no good

is to be done, and where any movement will only defeat our purpose, by

putting him on his guard—letting him know he is watched (forewarned,

forearmed, you know)—and set ourselves to watch Carrington in London.”

 

“Why in London? How do you know he’s there?”

 

Mr. Larkspur smiled.

 

“Lord bless your innocence!” he replied. “How do I know it? Why, ain’t

London the natural place for him to be in? Ain’t London the place where

every one that has done a successful trick goes to enjoy it, and every

one that has missed his tip goes to hide himself? I’ll take my davy,

though it’s a thing I don’t like doing in general, that Carrington’s

back in town, living with his mother, as right as a trivet.”

 

So Lady Eversleigh and Jane Payland travelled up to town again, and

took up their old quarters. And Mr. Larkspur returned, and resumed his

room and his accustomed habits. But before he had been many hours in

London, he had ascertained, by the evidence of his own eyes, that

Victor Carrington was, as he had predicted, in town, living with his

mother, and “as right as a trivet.”

 

CHAPTER XXV.

 

A DANGEROUS ALLIANCE.

 

In the afternoon of the day following that on which Sir Reginald paid a

visit to Victor Carrington, the latter gentleman presented himself at

the door of Hilton House. The frost had again set in, and this time

with more than usual severity. There had been a heavy fall of snow, and

the park-like grounds surrounding Madame Durski’s abode had an almost

fairy-like appearance, the tracery of the leafless trees defined by the

snow that had lodged on every branch, the undulating lawn one bed of

pure white.

 

He knocked at the door and waited. The woman at the lodge had told him

that it was very unlikely he would be able to see Madame Durski at this

hour of the day, but he had walked on to the house notwithstanding.

 

It was already nearly four o’clock in the afternoon; but at that hour

Paulina had rarely left her own apartments.

 

Victor Carrington knew this quite as well as the woman at the lodge,

but he had business to do with another person as well as Paulina

Durski. That other person was the widow’s humble companion.

 

The door was opened by Carlo Toas, Paulina’s confidential courier and

butler. This man looked very suspiciously at the visitor.

 

“My mistress receives no one at this hour,” he said.

 

“I am aware that she does not usually see visitors so early,” replied

Carrington; “but as I come on particular business, and as I come a long

way to see her, she will perhaps make an exception in my favour.”

 

He produced his card-case as he spoke, and handed the man a card, on

which he had written the following words in pencil:

 

“_Pray see me, dear madame. I come on really important business, which

will bear no delay. If you cannot see me till your dinner-hour, I will

wait._”

 

The Spaniard ushered Victor into one of the reception-rooms, which

looked cold and chill in the winter daylight. Except the grand piano,

there was no trace of feminine occupation in the room. It looked like

an apartment kept only for the reception of visitors—an apartment

which lacked all the warmth and comfort of home.

 

Victor waited for some time, and began to think his message had not

been taken to the mistress of the house, when the door was opened, and

Miss Brewer appeared.

 

She looked at the visitor with an inquisitive glance as she entered the

room, and approached him softly, with her light, greenish-grey eyes

fixed upon his face.

 

“Madame Durski has been suffering from nervous headache all day,” she

said, “and has not yet risen. Her dinner-hour is half-past six. If your

business is really of importance, and if you care to wait, she will be

happy to see you then.”

 

“My business is of real importance; and I shall be very glad to wait,”

answered Victor. “Since Madame Durski is, unhappily, unable to receive

me for some time, I shall gladly avail myself of the opportunity, in

order to enjoy a little conversation with you, Miss Brewer,” he said,

courteously, “always supposing that you are not otherwise engaged.”

 

“I have no other engagement whatever,” answered the lady, in a cold,

measured voice.

 

“I wish to speak to you upon very serious business,” continued Victor,

“and I believe that I can venture to address you with perfect candour.

The business to which I allude concerns the interests of Madame Durski,

and I have every reason to suppose that you are thoroughly devoted to

her interests.”

 

“For whom else should I care?” returned Miss Brewer, with a bitter

laugh. “Madame Durski is the only friend I can count in this world. I

have known her from her childhood—and if I can believe anything good

of my species, which is not very easy for me to do, I can believe that

she cares for me—a little—as she might care for some piece of

furniture which she had been accustomed to see about her from her

infancy, and which she would miss if it were removed.”

 

“You wrong your friend,” said Victor. “She has every reason to be

sincerely attached to you, and I have little doubt that she is so.”

 

“What right have you to have little doubt or much doubt about it?”

exclaimed Miss Brewer, contemptuously; “and why do you try to palm off

upon me the idle nonsense which senseless people consider it incumbent

on them to utter? You do not know Paulina Durski—I do. She is a woman

who never in her life cared for more than two things.”

 

“And these two things are—”

 

“The excitement of the gaming-table, and the love of your worthless

friend, Sir Reginald Eversleigh.”

 

“Does she really love my friend?”

 

“She does. She loves him as few men deserve to be loved—and least of

all that man. She loves him, although she knows that her affection is

unreturned, unappreciated. For his sake she would sacrifice her own

happiness, her own prosperity. Women are foolish creatures, Mr.

Carrington, and you men do wisely when you despise them.”

 

“I will not enter into the question of my friend’s merits,” said

Victor; “but I know that Madame Durski has won the love of a man who is

worthy of any woman’s affection—a man who is rich, and can elevate her

from her present—doubtful—position.”

 

The Frenchman uttered these last words with a great appearance of

restraint and hesitation.

 

“Say, miserable position,” exclaimed Miss Brewer; “for Paulina Durski’s

position is the most degraded that a woman—whose life has been

comparatively sinless—ever occupied.”

 

“And every day its degradation will become more profound,” said Victor.

“Unless Madame Durski follows my advice, she cannot long remain in

England. In her native city she has little to hope for. In Paris, her

name has acquired an evil odour. What, then, lies before her?”

 

“Ruin!” exclaimed Miss Brewer, abruptly; “starvation it may be. I know

that our race is nearly run, Mr. Carrington. You need not trouble

yourself to remind me of our misery.”

 

“If I do remind you of it, I only do so in the hope that I may be able

to serve you,” answered Victor. “I have tasted all the bitterness of

poverty, Miss Brewer. Forgive me, if I ask whether you, too, have been

acquainted with its sting?”

 

“Have I felt its sting?” cried the poor faded creature. “Who has felt

the tooth of the serpent, Poverty, more cruelly than I? It has pierced

my very heart. From my childhood I have known nothing but poverty.

Shall I tell you my story, Mr. Carrington? I am not apt to speak of

myself, or of my youth; but you have evoked the demon, Memory, and I

feel a kind of relief in speaking of that long-departed time.”

 

“I am deeply interested in all you say, Miss Brewer. Stranger though I

am, believe me that my interest is sincere.”

 

As Victor Carrington said this, Charlotte Brewer looked at him with a

sharp, penetrating glance. She was not a woman to be fooled by shallow

hypocrisies. The light of the winter’s day was fading; but even in the

fading light Victor saw the look of sharp suspicion in her pinched

face.

 

“Why should you be interested in me?” she asked, abruptly.

 

“Because I believe you may be useful to me,” answered Victor, boldly.

“I do not want to deceive you, Miss Brewer. Great triumphs have been

achieved by the union of two powerful minds.”

 

I know you to possess a powerful mind; I know you to be a woman above

ordinary prejudices; and I want you to help me, as I am ready to help

you. But you were about to tell me the story of your youth.

 

“It shall be told briefly,” said Miss Brewer, speaking in a rapid,

energetic manner that was the very reverse of the measured tones she

was wont to use. “I am the daughter of a disgraced man, who was a

gentleman once; but I have forgotten that time, as he forgot it long

before he died.

 

“My father passed the last ten years of his life in a prison. He died

in that prison, and within those dingy smoke-blackened walls my

childhood was spent—a joyless childhood, without a hope, without a

dream, haunted perpetually by the dark phantom, Poverty. I emerged from

that prison to enter a new one, in the shape of a West-end boarding-school, where I became the drudge and scape-goat of rich citizens’

daughters, heiresses presumptive to the scrapings of tallow-chandlers

and coal-merchants, linen-drapers and cheesemongers. For six years I

endured my fate patiently, uncomplainingly. Not one creature amongst

that large household loved me, or cared for me, or thought whether I

was happy or miserable.

 

“I worked like a slave. I rose early, and went to bed late, giving my

youth, my health, my beauty—you will smile, perhaps, Mr. Carrington,

but in those days I was accounted a handsome woman—in exchange for

what? My daily bread, and the education which was to enable me to earn

a livelihood hereafter. Some distant relations undertook to clothe me;

and I was dressed in those days about as shabbily as I have been

dressed ever since. In all my life, I never knew the innocent pleasure

which every woman feels in the possession of handsome clothes.

 

“At eighteen,