Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [classic literature books txt] 📗

step. The bed-clothes, which were wont to be tossed and tumbled by the restless sleeper, were smooth and undisturbed. Never had Miss Brewer seen her mistress in an attitude so expressive of complete repose.

"Poor thing! she has had a good night after all," thought the companion.

She bent over the quiet figure, the pale face, so statuesque in that calm sleep, and gently touched the white, listless hand.

Yes--this indeed was perfect repose; but it was the repose of death. The bottle from which Paulina had habitually taken a daily modicum of opium, lay on the ground by the bedside, empty.

Whether the luckless, hopeless, heart-broken 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