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

baronet, impatiently; “you

talk the usual nonsense women indulge in when they can’t have

everything their own way. It is not in my power to help you to pay your

creditors, and you had much better slip quietly away while you are free

to do so, and before they contrive to get you into prison. You know

what Sheridan said about frittering away his money in paying his debts.

There’s no knowing where to leave off if you once begin that sort of

thing.”

 

“You would have me steal away in secret, like what you English call a

swindler!”

 

“You needn’t dwell upon unpleasant names. Some of the best people in

England have been obliged to cross the water for the same reasons that

render your residence here unpleasant. There’s nothing to be gained by

sentimental talk about the business, my dear Paulina. My friends at the

clubs have begun to grow suspicious of this house, and I don’t think

there’s a chance of my ever winning another sovereign in these rooms.

Why, then, should you remain to be tormented by your creditors? Return

to Paris, where you have twice as many devoted slaves and admirers as

in this detestable straight-laced land of ours. I will slip across as

soon as ever I can settle my affairs here some way or other, and once

more you may be queen of a brilliant salon, while I—”

 

“While you may find a convenient cat’s paw for getting hold of new

plunder,” cried Paulina, with unmitigated scorn. Then, with a sudden

burst of passion, she exclaimed, “Oh, Sir Reginald Eversleigh, I thank

Providence for this interview. At last—at last, I understand you

completely. I have been testing you, Sir Reginald—I have been sounding

your character. I have stooped to beg for help from you, in order that

I might know the broken reed on which I have leaned. And now I can

laugh at you, and despise you. Go, Sir Reginald Eversleigh; this house

is mine—my home—no longer a private gambling-house—no longer a snare

for the delusion of your rich friends. I am no longer friendless. My

debts have been paid—paid by one who, if he had owned but one

sixpence, would have given it to me, content to be penniless himself

for my sake. I have no need of your help. I am not obliged to creep

away in the night like a felon, from the house that has sheltered me. I

can now dare to call myself mistress of this house, unfettered by debt,

untrammelled by the shameful secrets that made my life odious to me;

and my first act as mistress of this house shall be to forbid its doors

to you.”

 

“Indeed, Madame Durski!” cried Reginald, with a sneer; “this is a

wonderful change.”

 

“You thought, perhaps, there were no limits to a woman’s folly,” said

Paulina; “but you see you were wrong. There is an end even to that. And

now, Sir Reginald Eversleigh, I will wish you good evening, and

farewell.”

 

“Is this a farce, Paulina?” asked the baronet, in a voice that was

almost stifled by rage.

 

“No, Sir Reginald, it is a stern reality,” answered Madame Durski,

laying her hand on the bell.

 

Her summons was speedily answered by Carlo Toas.

 

“Carlo, the door,” she said, quietly.

 

The baronet gave her one look—a dark and threatening glance—and then

left the room, followed by the Spaniard, who conducted him to his cab

with every token of grave respect.

 

“Curse her!” muttered Sir Reginald, between his set teeth, as he drove

away from Hilton House. “It must be Douglas Dale who has given her the

power to insult me thus, and he shall pay for her insolence. But why

did Victor bring those two together? An alliance between them can only

result in mischief to me. I must and will fathom his motive for conduct

that seems so incomprehensible.”

 

*

 

Sir Reginald and his fatal ally, Carrington, met on the following day,

and the former angrily related the scene which had been enacted at

Hilton House.

 

“Your influence has been at work there,” he exclaimed. “You have

brought about an alliance between this woman and Douglas Dale.”

 

“I have,” answered Victor, coolly. “Mr. Dale has offered her his hand

and fortune, as well as his heart, and has been accepted.”

 

“You are going to play me false, Victor Carrington!”

 

“Indeed!”

 

“Yes, or else why take such pains to bring about this marriage?”

 

“You are a fool, Reginald Eversleigh, and an obstinate fool, or you

would not harp upon this subject after what I have said. I have told

you that the marriage which you fear will never take place.”

 

“How will you prevent it?”

 

“As easily as I could bring it about, did I choose to do so. Pshaw! my

dear boy, the simple, honest people in this world are so many puppets,

and it needs but the master-mind to pull the strings.”

 

“If this marriage is not intended to take place, why have you brought

about an engagement between Paulina and Douglas?” asked the baronet, in

nowise convinced by what his ally had said. “I have my reasons, and

good ones, though you are too dull of brain to perceive them,” replied

Victor, impatiently. “You and your cousin, Douglas Dale, have been fast

friends, have you not?”

 

“We have.”

 

“Listen to me, then. If he were to die without direct heirs you are the

only person who would profit by his death; and if he, a young; man,

powerful of frame, in robust health, no likely subject for disease,

were to die, leaving you owner of ten thousand a year, and were to die

while in the habit of holding daily intercourse with you, known to be

your friend and companion, is it not just possible that malevolent and

suspicious people might drop strange hints as to the cause of his

death? They might harp upon your motives for wishing him out of the

way. They might dwell upon the fact that you were so much together, and

that you had such opportunities—mark me, Reginald, opportunities—

for tampering with the one solitary life which stood between you and

fortune. They might say all this, might they not?”

 

“Yes,” replied Reginald, in his gloomiest tone, “they might.”

 

“Very well, then, if you take my advice, you will cut your cousin’s

acquaintance from this time. You will take care to let your friends of

the clubs know that he has supplanted you in the affections of the

woman you loved, and that you and he are no longer on speaking terms.

You will cut him publicly at one of your clubs; so that the fact of the

coldness between you may become sufficiently notorious. And when you

have done this, you will start for the Continent.”

 

“Go abroad? But why?”

 

“That is my secret. Remember, you have promised to obey me blindly,”

answered Victor. “You will go abroad; you will let the world know that

you and Douglas Dale are divided by the width of the Channel; you will

leave him free to devote himself to the woman he has chosen for his

wife; and if, while engaged to her, an untimely fate should overtake

this young man—if he, like his elder brother, should be removed from

your pathway, the most malicious scandal-monger that ever lived could

scarcely say that you had any hand in his fate.”

 

“I understand,” murmured Reginald, in a low voice; “I understand.”

 

He said no more. He had grown white to the very lips; and those pale

lips were dry and feverish. But the conversation changed abruptly, and

Douglas Dale’s name was not again mentioned.

 

In the meantime, the betrothed lovers had been very happy and this

interview, which she had always dreaded but felt she could not avoid,

having passed over, Paulina was more at liberty to realize her changed

position, and dwell on her future prospects. She was really happy, but

in her happiness there was some touch of fever, something too much of

nervous excitement. It was not the calm happiness which makes the

crowning joy of an untroubled life. A long career of artificial

excitement, of alternate fears and hopes, the mad delight and madder

despair which makes the gambler’s fever, had unfitted Paulina for the

quiet peace of a spirit at rest. She yearned for rest, but the angel of

rest had been scared away by the long nights of dissipation, and would

not answer to her call.

 

Victor Carrington had fathomed the mystery of her feverish gaiety—her

intervals of dull apathy that was almost despair. In the depth of her

misery she had lulled herself to a false repose by the use of opium;

and even now, when the old miseries were no more, she could not exist

without the poisonous anodyne.

 

“Douglas Dale must be blinded by his infatuation, or he would have

found out the state of the case by this time,” Victor said to himself.

“Circumstances could not be more favourable to my plans. A man who is

blind and deaf, and utterly idiotic under the influence of an absurd

infatuation, one woman whose brains are intoxicated by opium, and

another who would sell her soul for money.”

 

*

 

These incidents, which have occupied so much space in the telling, in

reality did not fill up much time. Only a month had elapsed since

Lionel Dale’s death, when Reginald Eversleigh and Paulina had the

interview described above. And now it seemed as though Fate itself were

conspiring with the conspirators, for the watch kept upon them by

Andrew Larkspur was perforce delayed, and Lady Eversleigh’s designs of

retributive punishment were suspended. A few days after the return of

Mr. Larkspur to town, that gentleman was seized with serious illness,

and for three weeks was unable to leave his bed. Mr. Andrew lay ill

with acute bronchitis, in the lodging-house in Percy Street, and Mrs.

Eden was compelled to wait his convalescence with what patience she

might.

 

*

 

Sir Reginald Eversleigh and Douglas Dale met at the Phoenix Club soon

after Reginald’s interview with Madame Durski.

 

Douglas met his cousin with a quiet and courteous manner, in which

there was no trace of unfriendly feeling: a manner that expressed so

little of any feeling whatever as to be almost negative.

 

It was not so, however, with Sir Reginald. He remembered Victor

Carrington’s advice as to the wisdom of a palpable estrangement between

himself and his cousin, and he took good care to act upon that counsel.

 

This course was, indeed, the only one that would have been at all

agreeable to him.

 

He hated Douglas Dale with all the force of his evil nature, as the

innocent instrument of Sir Oswald’s retribution upon the destroyer of

Mary Goodwin.

 

He envied the young man the advantages which his own bad conduct had

forfeited; and he now had learned to hate him with redoubled intensity,

as the man who had supplanted him in the affections of Paulina Durski.

 

The two men met in the smoking-room of the club at the most fashionable

hour of the day.

 

Nothing could have been more conspicuous than the haughty insolence of

the spendthrift baronet as he saluted his wealthy cousin.

 

“How is it I have not seen you at my chambers in the Temple,

Eversleigh?” asked Douglas, in that calm tone of studied courtesy which

expresses so little.

 

“Because I had no particular reason for calling on you; and because, if

I had wished to see you, I should scarcely have expected to find you