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

proposed

friendly alliance, was to secure a female friend for his adored

Paulina, to gain for her the countenance and protection of a woman

whose place in society was recognized and unassailable?

 

“You will excuse my joining your brother and your friend now, will you

not, Miss Graham? I must, at all events, have taken an early leave of

you, and this conversation has given me much to think of. I shall see

you soon again. Good night!”

 

He moved hastily, passed through the door of the small apartment which,

opened on the staircase, and was gone. Lydia Graham remained alone for

a few moments, in a triumphant reverie, then she joined Gordon Graham

and the bewitching widow, who had been making the most of the

opportunity for indulging in her favourite florid style of flirtation.

 

“I have won,” Lydia said to herself; “and how easily! Poor fellow; his

agitation was really painful. He did not even stop to shake hands with

me.”

 

Mrs. Marmaduke took leave of her dearest Lydia, and her dearest Lydia’s

brother, soon after Douglas Dale had departed, and Miss Graham and her

brother were left t�te-�-t�te.

 

“Well,” said Gordon Graham, with rather a sulky air, “you don’t seem to

have done much execution by your dinner-party, my young lady. Dale went

off in a great hurry, which does not say much for your powers of

fascination.”

 

Lydia gave her head a triumphant little toss as she looked at her

brother.

 

“You are remarkably clever, my dear Gordon,” she said; “but you are apt

to make mistakes occasionally, in spite of your cleverness. What should

you say if I were to tell you that Mr. Dale has this evening almost

made me an offer of his hand?”

 

“You don’t mean to say so?”

 

“I do mean to say so,” answered Lydia, triumphantly. “He is one of that

eccentric kind of people who have their own manner of doing things, and

do not care to tread the beaten track; or it may be that it is only his

reserved nature which renders him strange and awkward in his manner of

avowing himself.”

 

“Never mind how awkwardly the offer has been made, provided it is

genuine,” returned the practical Captain Graham. “But I don’t like

‘almosts.’ Besides, you really must mind what you are about, Lydia; for

I assure you there is no doubt at all about the fact of his engagement.

He stated it himself.”

 

“Well, and suppose he did,” said Lydia, “and suppose some good-for-nothing woman, in an equivocal position, has trapped him into an

offer. Is he the first man who has got into a dilemma of that kind, and

got out of it? He thought I cared for Lionel, and that so there was no

hope for him. I can quite understand his getting himself into an

entanglement of the kind, under such circumstances.”

 

Gordon Graham smiled, a certain satirical smile, intensely irritating

to his sister’s temper (which she called her nerves), and which it was

rather fortunate she did not see. He was perfectly alive to the

omnivorous quality of his sister’s vanity, and perfectly aware that it

had on many occasions led her into a fool’s paradise, whence she had

been ejected into the waste regions of disappointment and bitterness of

spirit. He had been quite willing that she should try the experiment

upon Douglas Dale, to which that gentleman had just been subjected; but

he had not been sanguine as to its results, and he did not implicitly

confide in the very exhilarating statement now made to him by Lydia. If

Douglas Dale’s “almost” proposal meant nothing more than that he would

be glad, or implied that he would be glad to be off with Paulina and on

with Lydia, he did not think very highly of the chances of the latter.

A man of the world, in the worst sense of that widely significant word,

Gordon Graham was inclined to think that Douglas Dale was merely

trifling with his sister, indulging in a “safe” flirtation, under the

aegis of an avowed engagement. Graham felt very anxious to know the

particulars of the conversation between Dale and his sister, in order

to discover how far they bore out his theory; but he knew Lydia too

well to place implicit reliance on any statement of them he might

elicit from her.

 

“Well, but,” said he, “supposing you are right in all this, the

‘entanglement,’ as you call it, exists. How did he explain, or excuse

it?”

 

Lydia smiled, a self-satisfied, contemptuous smile. She was not jealous

of Madame Durski; she despised her. “He did not excuse it; he did not

explain; he knows he has no severity to fear from me. All he needs is

to induce me to acknowledge my affection for him, and then he will soon

rid himself of all obstacles. Don’t be afraid, Gordon; this is a great

falling off from the ambitions I once cherished, the hopes I once

formed; this is a very different kind of thing from Sir Oswald

Eversleigh and Raynham Castle, but I have made up my mind to be content

with it.”

 

Lydia spoke with a kind of virtuous resignation and resolution,

infinitely assuring to her brother. But he was getting tired of the

discussion, and desirous to end it. Anxious as he was to be rid of his

sister, and to effect the riddance on the best possible terms, he did

not mean to be bored by her just then. So he spoke to the point at

once.

 

“That’s rather a queer mode of proceeding,” he said. “You are to avow

your affection for this fine gentleman, and then he is to throw over

another lady in order to reward your devotion. There was a day when

Miss Graham’s pride would have been outraged by a proposition which

certainly seems rather humiliating.”

 

Lydia flushed crimson, and looked at her brother with angry eyes. She

felt the sting of his malicious speech, and knew that it was intended

to wound her.

 

“Pride and I have long parted company,” she answered, bitterly. “I have

learnt to endure degradation as placidly as you do when you condescend

to become the toady and flatterer of richer men than yourself.”

 

Captain Graham did not take the trouble to resent this remark. He

smiled at his sister’s anger, with the air of a man who is quite

indifferent to the opinion of others.

 

“Well, my dear Lydia,” he said, good-humouredly, “all I can say is,

that if you have caught the brother of your late admirer, you are very

lucky. The merest schoolboy knows enough arithmetic to be aware that

ten thousand a year is twice as good as five. And it certainly is not

every woman’s fortune to be able to recover a chance which seemed so

nearly lost as yours when we left Hallgrove. By all means nail him to

his proposition, and let him throw over the lovely Paulina. What a fool

the man must be not to know his mind a little better!”

 

“Madame Durski entrapped him into the engagement,” said Lydia,

scornfully.

 

“Ah, to be sure, women have a way of laying snares of the matrimonial

kind, as you and I know, my dear Lydia. And now, good night. Go and

think about your trousseau in the silence of your own apartment.”

 

Lydia Graham fell asleep that night, secure in the certainty that the

end and aim of her selfish life had been at last attained, and disposed

to regard the interval as very brief that must elapse before Douglas

Dale would come to throw himself at her feet.

 

For a day or two unwonted peace and serenity were observable in Lydia

Graham’s demeanour and countenance. She took even more than the

ordinary pains with her dress; she arranged her little drawing-room

more than ever effectively and with sedulous care, and she remained at

home every afternoon, in spite of fine weather and an unusual number of

invitations. But Douglas Dale made no sign, he did not come, he did not

write, and all his enthusiastic declarations seemed to have ended in

nothing. The truth was that Paulina Durski was ill, and in his anxiety

and uneasiness, Douglas forgot even the existence of Lydia Graham.

 

A vague alarm began to fill Lydia’s mind, and she felt as if the good

establishment, the liberal allowance of pin-money, the equipages, the

clever French maid, the diamonds, and all the other delightful things

which she had looked upon almost as already her own, were suddenly

vanishing away like a dream.

 

Miss Graham was in no very amiable humour when, after a week’s watching

and suspense, she descended to the dining-room, a small and shabbily

furnished apartment, which bore upon it the stamp peculiar to London

lodging-houses—an aspect which is just the reverse of everything we

look for in a home.

 

Gordon Graham was already seated at the breakfast-table.

 

A letter for Miss Graham lay by the side of her breakfast-cup—a bulky

document, with four stamps upon the envelope.

 

Lydia knew the hand too well. It was that of her French milliner,

Mademoiselle Susanne, to whom she owed a sum which she knew never could

be paid out of her own finances. The thought of this debt had been a

perpetual nightmare to her. There was no such thing as bankruptcy for a

lady of fashion in those days; and it was in the power of Mademoiselle

Susanna to put her high-bred creditor into a common prison, and detain

her there until she had passed the ordeal of the Insolvent Debtors’

Court.

 

Lydia opened the packet with a sinking heart. There it was, the awful

bill, with its records of elegant dresses—every one of which had been

worn with the hope of conquest, and all of which had, so far, failed to

attain the hoped-for victory. And at the end of that long list came the

fearful total—close upon three hundred pounds!

 

“I can never pay it!” murmured Lydia; “never! never!”

 

Her involuntary exclamation sounded almost like a cry of despair.

 

Gordon Graham looked up from the newspaper in which he had been

absorbed until this moment, and stared at his sister.

 

“What’s the matter?” he exclaimed. “Oh, I see! it’s a bill—Susanne’s,

I suppose? Well, well, you women will make yourselves handsome at any

cost, and you must pay for it sooner or later. If you can secure

Douglas Dale, a cheque from him will soon settle Mademoiselle Susanne,

and make her your humble slave for the future. But what has gone wrong

with you, my Lydia? Your brow wears a gloomy shade this morning. Have

you received no tidings of your lover?”

 

“Gordon,” said Lydia, passionately, “do not taunt me. I don’t know what

to think. But I have played a desperate game—I have risked all upon

the hazard of this die—and if I have failed I must submit to my fate.

I can struggle no longer; I am utterly weary of a life that has brought

me nothing but disappointment and defeat.”

 

*

 

CHAPTER XXXII.

 

A MEETING AND AN EXPLANATION.

 

For George Jernam’s young wife, the days passed sadly enough in the

pleasant village of Allanbay. Fair as the scene of her life was, to

poor Rosamond it seemed as if the earth were overshadowed by dark

clouds, through which no ray of sunlight could penetrate. The affection

which had sprung up between her and Susan Jernam was deep and strong,

and the only gleam of happiness which Rosamond experienced in her

melancholy existence came from the affection of her husband’s aunt.

 

If Rosamond’s existence was not happy, it was, at least in all outward