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

>“if I tell you all I know?”

 

“It may help me. I cannot venture to say more than that, my lady.”

 

“If there is even a chance, I must speak,” replied Honoria. “I will

tell you, then,” she said, throwing herself into a chair, and fixing

her grave, earnest eyes upon the face of her companion. “In order to

tell you what I know of Black Milsom, I must go back to the days of my

childhood. My first memories are bright ones; but they are so vague, so

shadowy, that it is with difficulty I can distinguish realities from

dreams; and yet I believe the things which I remember must have been

real. I have a faint recollection of a darkly beautiful face, that bent

over me as I lay in some bed or cradle, softer and more luxurious than

any bed I ever slept in for many years after that time. I remember a

soft, sweet voice, that sang me to sleep. I remember that in the place

I called home everything was beautiful.”

 

“And do you not even know where this home was?”

 

“I know nothing of its locality. I was too young to remember the names

of persons or places. But I have often fancied it was in Italy.”

 

“In Italy!”

 

“Yes; for the first home which I really remember was a fisherman’s hut,

in a little village within a few miles of Naples. I was the only child

in that miserable hovel—lonely, desolate, miserable, in the power of

two wretches, whose presence filled me with loathing.”

 

“And they were—?”

 

“An old woman, called Andrinetta—I know that, though I called her

‘nurse’ when she was with me in the beautiful home I so dimly

remember—and the man whom you have heard of under the name of Black

Milsom.”

 

“Is he an Italian?” asked Andrew, astonished.

 

“I don’t know,” replied Honoria. “In England he calls himself an

Englishman—in Italy he is supposed to be an Italian. What his real

calling was in those days I do not know; but I feel assured that it

must been dark and unlawful as all his actions have been since that

time. He pretended to get his living like the other fishermen in the

neighbourhood; but he was often idle for a week at a time, and still

more often, absent. I have seen him count over gold and jewels with old

Andrinetta on his return from some expedition. To me he was harsh and

cruel. I hated him, and he knew that I hated him. He ordered me to call

him father, and I was more than once savagely beaten by him because I

refused to do so. Under such treatment, in such a wretched home,

deprived of all natural companionship, I grew wild and strange. My will

was indomitable as the will of my tyrant; and on many occasions I

resisted him boldly. Sometimes I ran away, and wandered for days

together among the neighbouring hills and woods; but I returned always

sooner or later to my miserable shelter, for I knew not where else to

go. My lonely life had made me shrink from all human creatures, except

the two wretches with whom I lived; and when the few neighbours would

have shown me some kindness, I ran from them in wild, unreasoning

terror.”

 

“Strange!” muttered the police-officer.

 

“Yes; a strange history, is it not?” returned Lady Eversleigh. “And you

wonder, no doubt, to hear of such a childhood from the lips of Sir

Oswald Eversleigh’s widow. One day I heard a neighbour reproaching the

man with his cruel treatment of me. ‘It is bad enough to have stolen

the child,’ he said; ‘you shouldn’t beat her as well.’ From that hour I

knew that I was a stolen child. I told him as much one night, and the

next morning he took me to Naples, where, in the most obscure and yet

most crowded part of the city, I lived for some years. ‘Nobody will

trouble himself about you here, my young princess,’ my tyrant said to

me. ‘Children swarm by hundreds in all the alleys; you will only be one

more drop of water in the ocean.’”

 

There was a pause, during which Honoria sat in a meditative attitude,

with her eyes fixed upon vacancy. It seemed as if she was looking back

into the shadowy past.

 

“I cannot tell you how wretched my life was for some time. Andrinetta

had accompanied us to Naples; and soon I saw she was very ill, and she

had fits of violence that approached insanity. Within doors she was my

sole companion. The man only slept in the house, and at times was

absent for months. How he earned his livelihood I knew no more than I

had known in the little sea-side village. I now rarely saw jewels or

gold in his possession; but at night, after he had gone to his chamber,

I often heard the chink of golden coin through the thin partition which

divided my room from his. I think in these days I must have perished

body and soul if Providence had not sent me a friend in the person of a

good Catholic priest—a noble and saintly old man—who visited the

wretched dens of poverty and crime, and who discovered my desolate

state. I need not dwell on that man’s goodness to me; it is, doubtless,

remembered in heaven, whither he may have gone before this time. He

taught me, he comforted me, he rescued me from the abyss of

wretchedness into which I had fallen. I took care to conceal his visits

from my tyrant, for I knew how that wicked heart would revolt against

my redemption from ignorance and misery. When I was fifteen years of

age, Andrinetta died. One day, soon after her death—for me a most

sorrowful day—Tomaso (as they called him there) told me that he was

going to bring me to England, I came with him, and for two years I

remained his companion. I will not speak of that time. I have told you

now all that I can tell.”

 

“But the murder of Valentine Jernam!” exclaimed Andrew. “Suspicion

pointed to this man; and you—you know something of that?”

 

“I will not speak of that now,” replied Honoria. “I have said enough.

The day may come when I may speak more freely; but it has not yet

arrived. Trust me that I will not impede the course of justice where

this man is concerned. And now tell me, does my revelation afford one

ray of light which may help to dispel the darkness that surrounds my

Gertrude’s fate?”

 

“No, I cannot say it does. I cannot find out anything to indicate that

she has been taken far away. I am sure she is in England, and that one

of Milsom’s pals, a man named Wayman—”

 

Lady Eversleigh started, and exclaimed, “I know him! I know him! Go on!

go on!”

 

Larkspur directed a glance of keen and eager curiosity towards Lady

Eversleigh. “You know Wayman?” he said.

 

“Well, well,” she repeated. “I know him to be an unscrupulous ruffian.

If he knows where my child is, he will sell the secret for money, and

we will give him money—any sum; do you think I shall count the cost of

her safety?”

 

“No, no,” said Andrew Larkspur, “but you must not get so excited; keep

quiet—tell me all you know of Wayman, and then we shall see our way.”

 

At this point of the conversation Jane Payland knocked at the door of

her mistress’s sitting-room, and the interview between Honoria and the

police-officer was interrupted.

 

CHAPTER XXXVII.

 

“O, ABOVE MEASURE FALSE!”

 

Victor Carrington was very well content with the state of affairs at

Hilton House in all but one respect. The fulfilment of his purpose was

not approaching with sufficient rapidity. The rich marriage which he

had talked about for Reginald was a pure figment; the virtuous

ironmonger, with the richly dowered daughter, existed only in his

prolific brain—the need of money was growing pressing. He had done

much, but there was still much to do, and he must make haste to do it.

He had also been mistaken on one point of much importance to his

success; he had not calculated on the strength of Douglas Dale’s

constitution. Each day that he dined with Paulina—and the days on

which he did not were exceedingly few—Dale drank a small quantity of

cura�oa, into which Carrington had poured poison of a slow but sure

nature. As the small carafon in which the liquor was placed upon the

table was emptied, the poisoner never found any difficulty in gaining

access to the fresh supply.

 

The antique liquor-chest, with its fittings of Venetian glass was

always kept on the side-board in the dining-room, and was never locked.

Paulina had a habit of losing anything that came into her hands, and

the key of the liquor-chest had long been missing.

 

But the time was passing, and the poison was not telling, as far as he,

the poisoner, could judge from appearances, on Douglas Dale. He never

complained of illness, and beyond a slight lassitude, he did not seem

to have anything the matter with him. This would not do. It behoved

Carrington to expedite matters. His project was to accomplish the death

of Douglas Dale by poison, throwing the burthen of suspicion—should

suspicion arise—upon Paulina. To advance this purpose, he had

industriously circulated reports of the most injurious character

respecting her; so that Douglas Dale, if he had not been blinded and

engrossed by his love, must have seen that he was regarded by the men

whom he was in the habit of meeting even more coldly and curiously than

when he had first boldly announced his engagement to Madame Durski. He

made it known that Douglas Dale had made a will, by which the whole of

his disposable property was bequeathed to Paulina, and circulated a

rumour that the Austrian widow was utterly averse to the intended

marriage, in feeling, and was only contracting it from interested

motives.

 

“If Dale was only out of the way, and his heir had come into the money,

she would rather have Reginald,” was a spiteful saying current among

those who knew the lady and her suitor, and which had its unsuspected

origin with Carrington. Supposing Dale to come to his death by poison,

and that fact to be ascertained, who would be suspected but the woman

who had everything to gain by his death, whose acknowledged lover was

his next heir, and who succeeded by his will to all the property which

did not go immediately into the possession of that acknowledged lover?

The plan was admirably laid, and there was no apparent hitch in it, and

it only remained now for Carrington to accelerate his proceedings. He

still maintained reserve with Reginald Eversleigh, who would go to his

house, and lounge purposelessly about, sullen and gloomy, but afraid to

question the master-mind which had so completely subjugated his weak

and craven nature.

 

The engagement between Paulina and Douglas had lasted nearly two

months, when a cloud overshadowed the horizon which had seemed so

bright.

 

Madame Durski became somewhat alarmed by a change in her lover’s

appearance, which struck her suddenly on one of his visits to the

villa. For some weeks past she had seen him only by lamplight—that

light which gives a delusive brightness to the countenance.

 

To-day she saw him with the cold northern sunlight shining full upon

his face; and for the first time she perceived that he had altered much

of late.

 

“Douglas,” she said, earnestly, “how ill you are looking!”

 

“Indeed!”

 

“Yes; I see it to-day for the first time, and I