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

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On more than one occasion, lately, Mrs. Smithson had a suspicion that

there was one offender against this rule. The offender in question was

Matthew Brook, the head-coachman, a jovial, burly Briton, with

convivial habits and a taste for politics, who preferred enjoying his

pipe and glass and political discussion in the parlour of the “Hen and

Chickens” public-house to spending his evenings in the servants’-hall

at Raynham Castle.

 

He was rarely home before ten; sometimes not until half-past ten; and

one never-to-be-forgotten night, Mrs. Smithson had heard him, with her

own ears, enter the doors of the castle at the unholy hour of twenty

minutes to eleven!

 

There was one appalling fact of which Mrs. Smithson was entirely

ignorant. And that was the fact that Matthew Brook had entered the

castle by a little half-glass door on several occasions, half an hour

or more after the great oaken door leading into the servants’-hall had

been bolted and barred with all due solemnity before the approving eyes

of the housekeeper herself.

 

The little door in question opened into a small ground-floor bedroom,

in which one of the footmen slept; and nothing was more easy than for

this man to shelter the nightly misdoings of his fellow-servant by

letting him slip quietly through his bedroom, unknown to any member of

the household.

 

James Harwood, the groom was a confirmed gossip; and, of course, he had

not failed to inform his friend, Mr. Maunders, otherwise Black Milsom,

of Matthew Brook’s little delinquencies. Mr. Maunders listened to the

account with interest, as he did to everything relating to affairs in

the household of which Harwood was a member.

 

It was some little time after this conversation that Mr. Milsom was

invited to sup at the castle.

 

Several friendly rubbers were played by Mrs. Trimmer, the cook; Matthew

Brook, the coachman; James Harwood, and Thomas Milsom, known to the

company as Mr. Maunders. Honest Matthew and he were partners; and it

was to be observed, by any one who had taken the trouble to watch the

party, that Milsom paid more attention to his partner than to his

cards, whereby he lost the opportunity of distinguishing himself as a

good whist-player.

 

The whist-party broke up while the cloth was being laid on a large

table for supper, and the men adjourned to the noble old stone

quadrangle, on which the servant’s-hall abutted. James Harwood, Brook,

Milsom, and two of the footmen strolled up and down, smoking under a

cold starlit sky. The apartments occupied by the family were all on the

garden front, and the smoking of tobacco in the quadrangle was not

forbidden.

 

Milsom, who had until this time devoted his attention exclusively to

the coachman, now contrived to place himself next to James Harwood, as

the party paced to and fro before the servants’ quarters.

 

“Which is the little door Brook slips in at when he’s past his time?”

he asked, carelessly, of Harwood, taking care, however, to drop his

voice to a whisper.

 

“We’re just coming to it,” answered the groom; “that little glass door

on my right hand. Steph’s a good-natured fellow, and always leaves his

door unfastened when old Mat is out late. The room he sleeps in was

once a lobby, and opens into the passage; so it comes very convenient

to Brook. Everybody likes old Mat Brook, you see; and there isn’t one

amongst us would peach if he got into trouble.”

 

“And a jolly old chap he is as ever lived,” answered Black Milsom, who

seemed to have taken a wonderful fancy to the convivial coachman.

 

“You come down to my place whenever you like, Mr. Brook,” he said,

presently, putting his arm through that of the coachman, in a very

friendly manner. “You shall be free and welcome to everything I’ve got

in my house. And I know how to brew a decent jorum of punch when I give

my mind to it, don’t I, Jim?”

 

Mr. James Harwood protested that no one else could brew such punch as

that concocted by the landlord of the “Cat and Fiddle.”

 

The supper was a very cheery banquet; ponderous slices of underdone

roast beef disappeared as if by magic, and the consumption of pickles,

from a physiological or sanitary point of view, positively appalling.

After the beef and pickles came a Titanic cheese and a small stack of

celery; while the brown beer pitcher went so often to the barrel that

it is a matter of wonder that it escaped unbroken.

 

At a quarter past ten Mr. Maunders bade his new acquaintance good

night; but before departing he begged, as a great favour, to be

permitted one peep at the grand oak hall.

 

“You shall see it,” cried good-natured Matthew Brook. “It’s a sight

worth coming many a mile to see. Step this way.”

 

He led the way along a dark passage to a door that opened into the

great entrance-hall. It was indeed a noble chamber. Black Milsom stood

for some moments contemplating it in silence, with a reverential stare.

 

“And which may be the back staircase, leading to the little lady’s

rooms?” he asked, presently.

 

“That door opens on to the foot of it,” replied the coachman. “Captain

Coppletone sleeps in the room you come to first, on the first floor;

and the little missy’s rooms are inside his’n.”

 

Gertrude Eversleigh, the heiress of Raynham, was one of those lovely

and caressing children who win the hearts of all around them, and in

whose presence there is a charm as sweet as that which lurks in the

beauty of a flower or the song of a bird. Her mother idolized her, as

we know, even though she could resign herself to a separation from this

loved child, sacrificing affection to the all-absorbing purpose of her

life. Before leaving Raynham Castle, Honoria had summoned the one only

friend upon whom she could rely—Captain Copplestone—the man whose

testimony alone had saved her from the hideous suspicion of murder—the

man who had boldly declared his belief in her innocence.

 

She wrote to him, telling him that she had need of his friendship for

the only child of his dead friend, Sir Oswald; and he came promptly in

answer to her summons, pleased at the idea of seeing the child of his

old comrade.

 

He had read the announcement of the child’s birth in the newspapers,

and had rejoiced to find that Providence had sent a consolation to the

widow in her hour of desolation.

 

“She is like her father,” he said, softly, after he had taken the child

in his arms, and pressed his shaggy moustache to her pure young brow.”

Yes, the child is like my old comrade, Oswald Eversleigh. She has your

beauty, too, Lady Eversleigh, your dark eyes—those wonderful eyes,

which my friend loved to praise.”

 

“I wish to heaven that he had never seen them!” exclaimed Honoria;

“they brought him only evil fortune—anguish—untimely death.”

 

“Come, come!” cried the captain, cheerily; “this won’t do. If the

workings of two villains brought about a breach between you and my poor

friend, and resulted in his untimely end, the sin rests on their guilty

heads, not on yours.”

 

“And the sin shall not go unpunished even upon this earth!” exclaimed

Honoria, with intensity of feeling. “I only live for one purpose,

Captain Copplestone, and that is to strip the masks from the faces of

the two hypocrites and traitors, who, between them, compassed my

disgrace and my husband’s death; and I implore you to aid me in the

carrying out of my purpose.”

 

“How can I do that?” cried the captain. “When I begged you to let me

challenge that scoundrel, Carrington, and fight him—in spite of our

cowardly modern fashion, which has exploded duelling—you implored me

not to hazard my life. I was your only friend, you told me, and if my

life were sacrificed you would be helpless and friendless. I gave way

in order to satisfy you, though I should have liked to send a bullet

through that French scoundrel’s plotting brains.”

 

“And I thank you for your goodness,” answered Lady Eversleigh. “It is

not by the bullet of a brave soldier that Victor Carrington should die.

I will pursue the two villains silently, stealthily, as they pursued

me; and when the hour of my triumph comes, it shall be a real triumph,

not a defeat like that which ended their scheming. But if I stoop to

wear a mask, I ask no such service from you, Captain Copplestone. I ask

you only to take up your abode in this house, and to protect my child

while I am away from home.”

 

“You are really going to leave home?”

 

“For a considerable time.”

 

“And you will tell me nothing about the nature of your schemes?”

 

“Nothing. I shall do no wrong; though I am about to deal with men so

base that the common laws of honour can scarcely apply to any dealings

with them.”

 

“And your mind is set upon this strange scheme?”

 

“My mind is fixed. Nothing on earth can alter my resolution—not even

my love for this child.”

 

Captain Copplestone saw that her determination was not to be reasoned

away, and he made no further attempt to shake her resolve. He promised

that, during her absence from the castle, he would guard Sir Oswald’s

daughter, and cherish her as tenderly as if she had been his own child.

 

It was by the captain’s advice that Mrs. Morden was engaged to act as

governess to the young heiress during her mother’s absence. She was the

widow of one of his brother-officers—a highly accomplished woman, and

a woman of conscientious feelings and high principle.

 

“Never had any creature more need of your protection than my child

has,” said Honoria. “This young life and mine are the sole obstacles

that stand between Sir Reginald Eversleigh and fortune. You know what

baseness and treachery he and his ally are capable of committing. You

cannot, therefore, wonder if I imagine all kinds of dangers for my

darling.”

 

“No,” replied the captain; “I can only wonder that you consent to leave

her.”

 

“Ah, you do not understand. Can you not see that, so long as those two

men exist, their crimes undiscovered, their real nature unsuspected in

the world in which they live, there is perpetual danger for my child?

The task which I have set myself is the task of watching these two men;

and I will do it without flinching. When the hour of retribution

approaches, I may need your aid; but till then let me do my work alone,

and in secret.”

 

This was the utmost that Lady Eversleigh told Captain Copplestone

respecting the motive of her absence from the castle. She placed her

child in his care, trusting in him, under Providence, for the

guardianship of that innocent life; and then she tore herself away.

 

Nothing could exceed the care which the veteran soldier bestowed upon

his youthful charge.

 

It may be imagined, therefore, that nothing short of absolute necessity

would have induced him to leave the neighbourhood of Raynham during the

absence of Lady Eversleigh.

 

Unhappily this necessity arose. Within a fortnight after the night on

which Black Milsom had been invited to supper in the servants’-hall,

Captain Copplestone quitted Raynham Castle for an indefinite period,

for the first time since Lady Eversleigh’s departure.

 

He was seated at breakfast in the pretty sitting-room in the south

wing, which he occupied in common with the heiress and her governess,

when a letter was brought to him by one of the castle servants.

 

“Ben Simmons has just brought this up from the ‘Hen and Chickens,’

sir,” said the