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

Paulina Durski mistress of

twelve thousand pounds, and property equal to two or three thousand

more, in the event of Douglas Dale’s death.

 

*

 

CHAPTER XXXI.

 

“A WORTHLESS WOMAN, MERE COLD CLAY.”

 

Neither Lydia Graham nor her brother were quick to recover from the

disappointment caused by the untimely fate of Lionel Dale. Miss Graham

endeavoured to sustain her failing spirits with the hope that in

Douglas she might find a wealthier prize than his brother; but Douglas

was yet to be enslaved by those charms which Lydia herself felt were on

the wane, and by fascinations which twelve years of fashionable

existence had rendered somewhat stale even to the fair Lydia’s most

ardent admirers.

 

It was very bitter—the cup had been so near her lips, when an adverse

destiny had dashed it from her. The lady’s grief was painfully sincere.

She did not waste one lamentation on her lover’s sad fate, but she most

bitterly regretted her own loss of a rich husband.

 

She watched and hoped day after day for the promised visit from Douglas

Dale, but he did not come. Every day during visiting hours she wore her

most becoming toilets; she arranged her small drawing-room with the

studied carelessness of an elegant woman; she seated herself in her

most graceful attitudes every time the knocker heralded the advent of a

caller; but it was all so much wasted labour. The only guest whom she

cared to see was not among those morning visitors; and Lydia’s heart

began to be oppressed by a sense of despair.

 

“Well, Gordon, have you heard anything of Douglas Dale?” she asked her

brother, day after day.

 

One day he came home with a very gloomy face, and when she uttered the

usual question, he answered her in his gloomiest tone.

 

“I’ve heard something you’ll scarcely care to learn,” he said, “as it

must sound the death-knell of all your hopes in that quarter. You know,

Douglas Dale is a member of the Phoenix, as well as the Forum. I don’t

belong to the Phoenix, as you also know, but I meet Dale occasionally

at the Forum. Yesterday I lunched with Lord Caversham, a member of the

Phoenix, and an acquaintance of Dale’s; and from him I learned that

Douglas Dale has publicly announced his intended marriage with Paulina

Durski.”

 

“Impossible!” exclaimed Lydia.

 

She had heard of Paulina and the villa at Fulham from her brother, and

she hated the lovely Austrian for the beauty and the fascination which

won her a kind of renown amongst the fops and lordlings—the idlers and

spendthrifts of the fashionable clubs.

 

“It cannot be true,” cried Miss Graham, flushing crimson with anger.

“It is one of Lord Caversham’s absurd stories; and I dare say is

without the slightest foundation. I cannot and will not believe that

Douglas Dale would throw himself away upon such a woman as this Madame

Durski.”

 

“You have never seen her?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“Then don’t speak so very confidently,” said Captain Graham, who was

malicious enough to take some pleasure in his sister’s discomfiture.

“Paulina Durski is one of the handsomest women I ever saw; not above

five-and-twenty years of age—elegant, fascinating, patrician—a woman

for whose sake a wiser man than Douglas Dale might be willing to

sacrifice himself.”

 

“I will see Mr. Dale,” exclaimed Lydia. “I will ascertain from his own

lips whether there is any foundation for this report.”

 

“How will you contrive to see him?” “You must arrange that for me. You

can invite him to dinner.”

 

“I can invite him; but the question is whether he will come. Perhaps,

if you were to write him a note, he would be more flattered than by any

verbal invitation from me.”

 

Lydia was not slow to take this hint. She wrote one of those charming

and flattering epistles which an artful and self-seeking woman of the

world so well knows how to pen. She expressed her surprise and regret

at not having seen Mr. Dale since her return to town—her fear that he

might be ill, her hope that he would accept an invitation to a friendly

dinner with herself and her brother, who was also most anxious about

him.

 

She was not destined to disappointment. On the following day she

received a brief note from Mr. Dale, accepting her invitation for the

next evening.

 

The note was very stiffly—nay, almost coldly worded; but Lydia

attributed the apparent lack of warmth to the reserved nature of

Douglas Dale, rather than to any failure of her own scheme.

 

The fact that he accepted her invitation at all, she considered a proof

of the falsehood of the report about his intended marriage, and a good

omen for herself.

 

She took care to provide a recherch� little dinner for her important

guest, low as the finances of herself and her brother were—and were

likely to be for some time to come. She invited a dashing widow, who

was her obliging friend and neighbour, and who was quite ready to play

propriety for the occasion. Lydia Graham looked her handsomest when

Douglas Dale was ushered into her presence that evening; but she little

knew how indifferent were the eyes that contemplated her bold, dark

beauty; and how, even as he looked at her, Douglas Dale’s thoughts

wandered to the fair, pale face of Paulina Durski—that face, which for

him was the loveliest that had ever beamed with light and beauty below

the stars.

 

The dinner was to all appearance a success. Nothing could be more

cordial or friendly, as it seemed, than that party of four, seated at a

prettily decorated circular table, attended by a well-trained man-servant—the dashing widow’s butler and factotum, borrowed for the

occasion.

 

Mrs. Marmaduke, the dashing widow, made herself very agreeable, and

took care to engage Captain Graham in conversation all the evening,

leaving Lydia free to occupy the entire attention of Douglas Dale.

 

That young lady made excellent use of her time. Day by day her chances

of a rich marriage had grown less and less, and day by day she had

grown more and more anxious to secure a position and a home. She had a

very poor opinion of Mr. Dale’s intellect, for she believed only in the

cleverness of those bolder and more obtrusive men who make themselves

prominent in every assembly. She thought him a man easily to be

beguiled by honeyed words and bewitching glances, and she had,

therefore, determined to play a bold, if not a desperate game. While

Mrs. Marmaduke and Captain Graham were talking in the front drawing-room, Lydia contrived to detain her guest in the inner apartment—a

tiny chamber, just large enough to hold a small cottage piano, a stand

of music-books, and a couple of chairs.

 

Miss Graham seated herself at the piano, and played a few bars with an

absent and somewhat pensive air.

 

“That is a mournful melody,” said Douglas. “I don’t think I ever heard

it before.”

 

“Indeed!” murmured Lydia; “and yet I think it is very generally known.

The air is pretty, is it not? But the words are ultra-sentimental.”

 

And then she began to sing softly—

 

“I do not ask to offer thee

A timid love like mine;

I lay it, as the rose is laid,

On some immortal shrine.”

 

“I think the words are rather pretty,” said Douglas.

 

“Do you?” murmured Miss Graham; and then she stopped suddenly, looking

downward, with one of those conscious blushes which were always at her

command.

 

There was a pause. Douglas Dale stood by the music-stand, listlessly

turning over a volume of songs.

 

Lydia was the first to break the silence.

 

“Why did you not come to see us sooner, Mr. Dale?” she asked. “You

promised me you would come.”

 

“I have been too much engaged to come,” answered Douglas.

 

This reply sounded almost rude; but to Lydia this unpolished manner

seemed only the result of extreme shyness, and, indeed, embarrassment,

which to her appeared proof positive of her intended victim’s

enthralment.

 

Her eyes grew bright with a glance of triumph.

 

“I shall win,” she thought to herself; “I shall win.”

 

“Have you really wished to see me?” asked Douglas, after another pause.

 

“I did indeed wish to see you,” she murmured, in tremulous tones.

 

“Indeed!” said Douglas, in a tone that might mean astonishment,

delight, or anything else. “Well, Miss Graham, that was very kind of

you. I go out very little, and never except to the houses of intimate

friends.”

 

“Surely you number us—my brother, I mean—among that privileged

class,” said Lydia, once more blushing bewitchingly.

 

“I do, indeed,” said Douglas Dale, in a candid, kind, unembarrassed

tone, which, if she had been a little less under the dominion of that

proverbially blinding quality, vanity, would have been the most

discouraging of all possible tones, to the schemes which she had

formed; “I never forget how high you stood in my poor brother’s esteem,

Miss Graham; indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, I thought there

was a much warmer feeling than that, on his part.”

 

Lydia hardly knew how to take this observation. In one sense it was

flattering, in another discouraging. If the belief brought Douglas Dale

into easier relations with her, if it induced him to feel that a bond

of friendship, cemented by the memory of the past, subsisted between

them, so much the better for her purpose; but if he believed that this

supposed love of Lionel’s had been returned, and proposed to cultivate

her on the mutual sympathy, or “weep with thee, tear for tear,”

principle, so much the worse. The position was undeniably embarrassing

even to a young lady of Miss Lydia Graham’s remarkable strength of

mind, and savoir faire. But she extricated herself from it, without

speaking, by some wonderful management of her eyes, and a slight

deprecatory movement of her shoulders, which made even Douglas Dale, a

by no means ready man, though endowed with deep feelings and strong

common sense, understand, as well as if she had spoken, that Lionel had

indeed entertained feelings of a tender nature towards her, but that

she had not returned them by any warmer sentiment than friendship. It

was admirably well done; and the next sentence which Douglas Dale spoke

was certainly calculated to nourish Lydia’s hopes.

 

“He might have sustained a terrible grief, then, had he lived longer,”

said Douglas; “but I see this subject pains you, Miss Graham; I will

touch upon it no more. But perhaps you will allow the recollection of

what we must both believe to have been his feelings and his hopes, to

plead with you for me.”

 

“For you, Mr. Dale!” and Lydia Graham’s breast heaved with genuine

emotion, and her voice trembled with no artificial faltering.

 

“Yes, Miss Graham, for me. I need a friend, such a friend as you could

be, if you would, to counsel and to aid me. But, pardon me, I am

detaining you, and you have another guest.” (How ardently Lydia Graham

wished she had not invited the accommodating widow to play propriety!)

“You will permit me to visit you soon again, and we will speak of much

which cannot now be discussed. May I come soon?”

 

As he spoke these hope-inspiring words, there was genuine eagerness in

the tone of Douglas Dale’s voice, there was brightness in his frank

eyes. No wonder Lydia held the story her brother had told her in

scornful disbelief; no wonder she felt all the glow of the fulfilment

of long-deferred hope. What would have been her sensations had she

known that Douglas Dale’s only actuating motive in the