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

considerably

in his vulture-like beak. He was followed by a tall, stalwart, fine-looking man, with the unmistakeable gait and air of a sailor. As Lady

Eversleigh looked at him in astonishment, Mr. Larkspur said:—

 

“I ain’t much of a believer in Fate in general, but there’s surely a

Fate in this. My lady, this is Captain George Jernam!”

 

*

 

The time had passed slowly and wearily for Rosamond Jernam, and all the

efforts conscientiously made by her husband’s aunt, who liked the girl

better the more she saw of her, and entirely acquitted her of blame in

the mysterious estrangement of the young couple, failed to make her

cheerful. She was wont to roam disconsolately for hours about the

secluded coast, giving free course to her sadness, and cherishing one

dear secret. Rosamond was so much changed in appearance of late that

Susan Jernam began to feel seriously uneasy about her. She had lost her

pretty fresh colour, and her face wore a haggard, weary look; it was

plain to every eye that some hidden grief was preying on her mind. Mrs.

Jernam, though a quiet person, and given to the minding of her own

affairs, was not quite without “cronies,” and to one of these she

confided her anxiety about her niece. The confidante was a certain

Mrs. Miller, a respectable person, but lower in the social scale than

Mrs. Jernam. She was a widow, and lived in a tiny cottage, close to the

beach at Allanbay; she kept no servant, but her trim little dwelling

was always the very pink and pattern of neatness. She was of a silent,

though not a morose temperament. It was generally understood that Mrs.

Miller’s husband had been a seafaring man, and had been drowned many

years before she went to live at Allanbay. She had no relatives, and no

previous acquaintances in that quiet nook; and if she had been a little

higher in the social scale, belonging to that class which requires

introductions, she might have lived a life of unbroken solitude. As it

was, the neighbours made friends with her by degrees, and the poor

widow’s life was not an unhappy or solitary one. Mrs. Jernam had early

learned the particulars of her case, and a friendship had grown up

between them, of which Mrs. Miller duly acknowledged the condescension

on Mrs. Jernam’s part.

 

Mrs. Jernam called on her humble friend one day, to bestow some small

favour, and, to her surprise, found her, not alone as usual, but in the

act of taking leave of a man whose appearance was by no means

prepossessing, and who was apparently very much disconcerted by Mrs.

Jernam’s arrival. Mrs. Jernam immediately proposed to go away and

return on another occasion, but the man, who did not hear her name

mentioned, said, gruffly:

 

“No call, ma’am, no call; I’m going away. Goodbye, Polly. Remember

what you’ve got to do, and do it.” Then he turned off from the cottage-door, and was out of sight in a few moments.

 

Mrs. Miller stood looking at her guest, rather awkwardly, but said at

length:

 

“Pray sit down, ma’am. That’s my brother; the only creature I have

belonging to me in the world.” And here Mrs. Miller sighed, and looked

as if the possession were not an unqualified advantage.

 

“Has he been here long?” asked Mrs. Jernam.

 

“No, ma’am; he only came last night, and is gone again. He came to

bring me a child to take care of, and a great tax it is.”

 

“A child!” said Mrs. Jernam, “whose child?”

 

“That’s more than I can tell you, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Miller; “and

more than he told me. She’s an orphan, he says, and her father was a

seafaring man, like your nephew, as I’ve heard you speak of. And I’m to

have the charge of her for a year, and thirty pounds—it’s handsome, I

don’t deny, but he knows that I’d take good care of any child—and

she’s a pretty dear, to tell the truth, as sweet a little creature as

ever walked. She don’t talk very plain yet, and she says, as well as I

can make it out, as her name is Gerty.”

 

And then Mrs. Miller asked Mrs. Jernam to walk into her little bedroom,

and showed her, lying on a neat humble bed, carefully covered with a

white coverlet, and in the deep sleep of childhood, the infant heiress

of Raynham! If either of the women had only known at whom she was

looking, as they scrutinized the child’s fair face and talked of her

beauty and her innocence in tearful whispers, looking away from the

sleeping form, pitifully, at a little heap of black clothes on a chair

by the bed!

 

“I suppose she’s the child of one of my brother’s old shipmates, as

rose to be better off,” said Mrs. Miller, “for she’s fretted about a

captain, and cried bitter to go to him when I put her to bed.” Then the

two returned to the little parlour, and talked long and earnestly about

the child, about the necessity for Mrs. Miller’s now employing the

services of “a girl,” and about Rosamond Jernam.

 

Rosamond was greatly delighted with the child left in Mrs. Miller’s

care. The little girl interested her deeply, and every day she passed

many hours with her, either at Mrs. Miller’s house or her own. The

grace and beauty of the child were remarkable; and as, with the happy

facility of childhood, she began to recover from the first feeling of

strangeness and fear, the little creature was soon happy in her new,

humble home. She was too young to appreciate and lament the change in

her lot; and, as she was well fed, well cared for, and treated with the

most caressing affection, she was perfectly happy. Rosamond began to

feel hopeful under the influence of the child’s smiles and playful

talk. The time must pass, she told herself, her husband must return to

her, and soon there would be for them a household angel like this one,

to bring peace and happiness permanently to their home.

 

Susan Jernam and Rosamond were much puzzled about this lovely child,

Gerty Smith, as she was called. Not only her looks, but certain little

ways she had, contradicted Mrs. Miller’s theory of her birth, and

though they fully credited the good woman’s statement, and believed her

as ignorant of the truth as themselves, they became convinced that

there was some mystery about this child. Mrs. Miller had never spoken

of her brother until he made his sudden and brief appearance at

Allanbay; and unsuspicious and unlearned in the ways of the world as

Mrs. Jernam was, she had perceived that he belonged to the doubtful

classes. The truth was, that Mrs. Miller could have told them nothing

about her brother beyond the general fact of his being “a bad lot.” She

had heard of him only at rare intervals since he had left his father’s

honest home, in his scampish, incorrigible boyhood, and ran away to

sea. She had heard little good of him, and years had sometimes passed

over during which she knew nothing of his fate. But even in Black

Milsom—thief, murderer, villain, though he was—there was one little

trace of good left. He did care a little for his sister; he did “look

her up” at intervals in his career of crime; he did send her small sums

of money—whence derived she had, happily, no suspicion—when he was

“flush;” and he did hope “Old Polly” would never find out how bad a

fellow he had been. Mrs. Miller’s nature was a very simple and

confiding one, and she never speculated much upon her brother’s doings.

She was pleased to have the charge of the child, and she fulfilled it

to the best of her ability; but those signs and tokens of a higher

station, which Susan Jernam and Rosamond recognized, were quite beyond

her ken.

 

One morning the little household at Susan Jernam’s cottage, consisting

only of the mistress and her maid, was roused by a violent knocking at

the door. Mrs. Jernam was the first to open it, and to her surprise and

alarm, she found Mrs. Miller standing at the door, her face expressing

alarm and grief, and little Gerty, wrapped in a large woollen shawl, in

her arms. Her explanation of what had occurred thus to upset her was at

first incoherent enough, but by degrees Mrs. Jernam learned that Mrs.

Miller had come to entreat her to take care of the child for a day or

two as she was obliged to go to Plymouth at once.

 

“To Plymouth!” said Mrs. Jernam—“how’s that?—but come in, come in”—

and they went into Mrs. Jernam’s spotlessly neat parlour, that parlour

in which Valentine Jernam had been permitted to smoke, and had told his

aunt all his adventures, little recking of the final one then so close

upon him. In the parlour, Mrs. Miller set little Gerty down, and the

child, giddy and confused with her sudden waking, and being thus

carried through the chill morning air, climbed up on the trim little

sofa, and curling herself into a corner of it, sat quite motionless.

Then, her agitation finding vent in tears, Mrs. Miller told Susan

Jernam what had befallen. It was this:—

 

Just as day was dawning, a dog-cart, driven by a gentleman’s servant,

had come to her door—the dog-cart was now standing at a little

distance from Mrs. Jernam’s house—and she had been called out by the

servant, and told that he had been sent to bring her over to Plymouth,

with as little delay as possible. It appeared that her brother, who had

gone to Plymouth after depositing the child with her, had been run over

in the street by a heavy coal-waggon, and severely injured. He had been

carried to a hospital, and was for some time insensible. When he

recovered his speech he was delirious, and the surgeons pronounced his

case hopeless. He was now in a dying state, but conscious; and had been

visited by a clergyman named Colburne, the man’s master, who had

induced him to express contrition for his past life, and to make such

reparation as now lay in his power. The first step towards this, as he

informed Mr. Colburne, was seeing his sister. There was no time to be

lost; the man’s life was fast ebbing; it was only a matter of hours;

and the good clergyman, who had been with the dying man far into the

night before he had succeeded in inducing him to consent to this step,

hurried home, and sent his servant off to Allanbay before daybreak.

 

There was little delay. A few words of earnest sympathy from Mrs.

Jernam, an assurance that the child should be well cared for, and Mrs.

Miller left the house, ran down the road to the dog-cart, climbed into

it, and was driven away.

 

Rosamond came in from her own little dwelling to her aunt’s, at an

early hour that day, and when the first surprise and pleasure of

finding the child there had passed away, the two women fell to

speculating on what kind of revelation it might be which awaited Mrs.

Miller.

 

“Depend upon it, aunt,” said Susan, “we shall hear the truth about

little Gerty now.”

 

*

 

The hours wore solemnly away in the great building, consecrated to

suffering and its relief, in which Black Milsom lay dying, with his

sister kneeling by his bed, while the good clergyman, who had had pity

on the soul of the sinner, sat on the other side, gravely and

compassionately looking at them both. The meeting between the brother

and sister had been very distressing, and