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

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Whether the luckless, hopeless, heartbroken woman, overwhelmed by the

sense of an inscrutable Fate that forbade her every chance of peace or

happiness, had, in her supreme despair, committed the sin of the

suicide, who shall say? It is possible that she had only taken an over-dose of the perilous compound unconsciously, in the dull apathy of her

despair.

 

She was dead. Life for her had been one long humiliation, one long

struggle. And at last, when the cup of happiness had been offered to

her lips, a cruel hand had snatched it away from her.

 

*

 

When Miss Brewer recovered her senses and her power of action, she sent

for Douglas Dale. News of the awful event had got abroad by that time,

through the terrified servants; and two doctors and a policeman were on

the premises. A messenger was easily procured, who tore off in a hansom

to the Temple. As the man ran up the steps leading to Dr. Johnson’s

Buildings, where Dale’s new chambers were situated, he encountered two

ladies on the first landing.

 

“I beg your pardon,” he said, pushing them, however, very decidedly

aside as he spoke, “I must see Mr. Dale; please do not detain him. It

is most important.” The ladies stood aside exchanging frightened and

curious looks, but made no attempt to make their presence known to Mr.

Dale, who came out of his rooms in a few minutes, attended by the

messenger, and passed them without seeming in the least aware of their

presence, and wearing the ghastliest face that ever was seen on mortal

man. That face struck them dumb and motionless, and it was not until

Jarvis had twice asked them their names and business, that the elder

lady replied. “They would call again,” she told him, and handed him

cards bearing the names of “Lady Verner,” “Lady Eversleigh.”

 

*

 

Victor Carrington appeared at Hilton House early in the afternoon. He

had calculated that his work must needs be very near its completion,

and he came prepared to hear of Douglas Dale’s mortal illness.

 

The blow that awaited him was a death-blow. Miss Brewer had told

Douglas all: the lies, the artifices, by which the man Carton had

contrived to make himself a constant visitor in that house. In a

moment, without the mention of the schemer’s real name, Heaven’s light

was let in upon the mystery; the dark enigma was solved, and the woman,

so tenderly loved and so cruelly wronged, was exonerated.

 

Too late—too late! That was the agonizing reflection which smote the

heart of Douglas Dale, with a pain more terrible than the sharpest

death-pang. “I have broken her heart!” he cried. “I have broken that

true, devoted heart!”

 

The appearance of Victor Carrington was the signal for such a burst of

rage as even his iron nature could scarcely brook unshaken.

 

“Miscreant! devil! incarnate iniquity!” cried Douglas, as he grasped

and grappled with the baffled plotter. “You have tried to murder me—

and you have tried to murder her! I might have forgiven you the first

crime—I will drag you to the halter for the second, and think myself

poorly revenged when I hear the rabble yelling beneath your scaffold!”

 

Happily for Carrington, the effects of the poison had reduced his

victim to extreme weakness. The convulsive grasp loosened, the hoarse

voice died into a whisper, and Douglas Dale swooned as helplessly as a

woman.

 

“What does it mean?” asked Victor. “Is this man mad?”

 

“We have all been mad!” returned Miss Brewer, passionately. “The blind,

besotted dupes of your demoniac wickedness! Paulina Durski is dead!”

 

“Dead!”

 

“Yes. There was a quarrel, yesterday, between these two—and he left

her. I found her this morning—dead! I have told him all—the part I

have played at your bidding. I shall tell it again in a court of

justice, I pray God!”

 

“You can tell it when and where you please,” replied Victor, with

horrible calmness. “I shall not be there to hear it.”

 

He walked out of the house. Douglas Dale had not yet recovered

consciousness, and there was no one to hinder Carrington’s departure.

 

For some time he walked on, unconscious whither he went, unable to

grasp or realize the events that had befallen. But at last-dimly,

darkly, grim shapes arose out of the chaos of his brain.

 

There would be a trial—some kind of trial!—Douglas Dale would not be

baffled of vengeance if the law could give it him. His crime—what was

it, if it could be proved? An attempt to murder—an attempt the basest,

the most hideous, and revolting. What hope could he have of mercy—he,

utterly merciless himself, expected no such weakness from his fellow-men.

 

But in this supreme hour of utter defeat, his thoughts did not dwell on

the hazards of the future. The chief bitterness of his soul was the

agony of disappointment—of baffled hope—of humiliation, degradation

unspeakable. He had thought himself invincible, the master of his

fellow-men, by the supremacy of intellectual power, and remorseless

cruelty. And he was what? A baffled trickster, whose every move upon

the great chessboard had been a separate mistake, leading step by step

to the irrevocable sentence—checkmate!

 

The ruined towers of Champfontaine arose before him, as in a vision,

black against a blood-red sky.

 

“I can understand those mad devils of ‘93—I can understand the roll-call of the guillotine—the noyades—the conflagrations—the foul

orgies of murderous drunkards, drunken with blood. Those men had

schemed as I have schemed, and worked as I have worked, and waited as I

have waited—to fail like me!”

 

He had walked far from the West-end, into some dreary road eastward of

the City, choosing by some instinct the quietest streets, before he was

calm enough to contemplate the perils of his position, or to decide

upon the course he should take.

 

A few minutes’ reflection told him that he must fly—Douglas Dale would

doubtless hunt him as a wild beast is hunted. Where was he to go? Was

there any lair, or covert, in all that wide city where he might be

safely hidden from the vengeance of the man he had wronged so deeply?

 

He remembered Captain Halkard’s letter. He dragged the crumpled sheet

of paper from his pocket, and read a few lines. Yes: it was as he had

thought. The “Pandion” was to leave Gravesend at five o’clock next

morning.

 

“I will go to the ice-graves and the bears!” he exclaimed. “Let them

track me there!”

 

Energetic always, no less energetic even in this hour of desperation,

he made his way down to the sailors’ quarter, and spent his few last

pounds in the purchase of a scanty outfit. After doing this, he dined

frugally at a quiet tavern, and then took the steamer for Gravesend.

 

He slept on board the “Pandion.” The place offered him had not been

filled by any one else. It was not a very tempting post, or a very

tempting expedition. The men who had organized it were enthusiasts,

imbued with that fever-thirst of the explorer which has made many

martyrs, from the age of the Cabots to the days of Franklin.

 

The “Pandion” sailed in that gray cheerless morning, her white sails

gleaming ghastly athwart the chill mists of the river, and so vanished

for ever Victor Carrington from the eyes of all men, save those who

went with him. The fate of that expedition was never known. Beneath

what iceberg the “Pandion” found her grave none can tell. Brave and

noble hearts perished with her, and to die with those good men was too

honourable a doom for such a wretch as Victor Carrington.

 

CHAPTER XL.

 

“SO SHALL YE REAP.”

 

Little now remains to be told of this tale of crime and retribution, of

suffering and compensation. Miss Brewer told her dreadful story, as far

as she knew it, with perfect truth; and her evidence, together with the

evidence of the chemist who had supplied Madame Durski from time to

time with the fatal consoler of all her pains and sorrows, made it

clear that the luckless woman, lying quietly in the darkened room at

Hilton House, had died from an over-dose of opium.

 

Douglas Dale could not attend that inquest. He was stricken down with

fever; the fate of the woman he had so loved, so unjustly suspected,

nearly cost him his life, and when he recovered sufficiently, he left

England, not to return for three years. Before his departure he saw

Lady Eversleigh and her mother, and established with them a bond of

friendship as close as that of their kin. He provided liberally for

Miss Brewer, but her rescue from poverty brought her no happiness: she

was a broken-hearted woman.

 

Victor Carrington’s mother retired into a convent, and was probably as

happy as she had ever been. She had loved him but little, whose only

virtue was that he had loved her much.

 

Captain Copplestone’s rapture knew no bounds when he clasped little

Gertrude in his arms once more. He was almost jealous of Rosamond

Jernam, when he found how great a hold she had obtained on the heart of

her charge; but his jealousy was mingled with gratitude, and he joined

Lady Eversleigh in testifying his friendship for the tender-hearted

woman who had protected and cherished the heiress of Raynham in the

hour of her desolation.

 

It is not to be supposed that the world remained long in ignorance of

this romantic episode in the common-place story of every-day life.

 

Paragraphs found their way into the newspapers, no one knew how, and

society marvelled at the good fortune of Sir Oswald’s widow.

 

“That woman’s wealth must be boundless,” exclaimed aristocratic

dowagers, for whom the grip of poverty’s bony fingers had been tight

and cruel. “Her husband left her magnificent estates, and an enormous

amount of funded property; and now a mother drops down from the skies

for her benefit—a mother who is reported to be almost as rich as

herself.”

 

*

 

Amongst those who envied Lady Eversleigh’s good fortune, there was none

whose envy was so bitter as that of her husband’s disappointed nephew,

Sir Reginald.

 

This woman had stood between him and fortune, and it would have been

happiness to him to see her grovelling in the dust, a beggar and an

outcast. Instead of this, he heard of her exaltation, and he hated her

with an intense hatred which was almost childish in its purposeless

fury.

 

He speedily found, however, that life was miserable without his evil

counsellor. The Frenchman’s unabating confidence in ultimate success

had sustained the penniless idler in the darkest day of misfortune. But

now he found himself quite alone; and there was no voice to promise

future triumph. He knew that the game of life had been played to the

last card, and that it was lost.

 

His feeble character was not equal to support the burden of poverty and

despair.

 

He dared not show his face at any of the clubs where he had once been

so distinguished a member; for he knew that the voice of society was

against him.

 

Thus hopeless, friendless, and abandoned by his kind, Sir Reginald

Eversleigh had recourse to the commonest form of consolation. He fled

from a country in which his name had become odious, and took up his

abode in Paris, where he found a miserable lodging in one of the

narrowest alleys in the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg, which was then

a labyrinth of narrow streets and lanes.

 

Here he could afford to buy brandy, for at that date brandy was much