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

>cheaper in France than it is now. Here he could indulge his growing

propensity for strong drink to the uttermost extent of his means, and

could drown his sorrows, and drink destruction to his enemies, in fiery

draughts of cognac.

 

For some years he inhabited the same dirty garret, keeping the key of

his wretched chamber, going up and down the crumbling old staircase

uncared for and unnoticed. Few who had known him in the past would have

recognized the once elegant young man in this latter stage of his

existence. Form and features, complexion and expression, were alike

degraded. The garments worn by him, who had once been the boasted

patron of crack West-end tailors, were now shapeless and hideous. The

dandy of the clubs had become a perambulating mass of rags.

 

Every day when the sun shone he buttoned his greasy, threadbare

overcoat across his breast, and crawled to the public garden of the

Luxembourg, where he might be seen shuffling slipshod along the

sunniest walk, an object of contempt and aversion in the eyes of

nursery-maids and grisettes—a butt for the dare-devil students of

the quarter.

 

Had he any consciousness of his degradation?

 

Yes; that was the undying vulture which preyed upon his entrails—the

consuming fire that was never quenched.

 

During the brief interval of each day in which he was sober, Sir

Reginald Eversleigh was wont to reflect upon the past. He knew himself

to be the wretch and outcast he was; and, looking back at his start in

life, he could but remember how different his career might have been

had he so chosen.

 

In those hours the slow tears made furrows in his haggard cheeks—the

tears of remorse, vain repentance, that came too late for earth; but

not, perhaps, utterly too late for heaven, since, even for this last

and worst of sinners, there might be mercy.

 

Thus his life passed—a changeless routine, unbroken by one bright

interval, one friendly visit, one sign or token to show that there was

any link between this lonely wretch and the rest of humanity.

 

One day the porter, who lived in a little den at the bottom of the

lodging-house staircase, suddenly missed the familiar figure which had

gone by his rabbit-hutch every day for the last six years; the besotted

face that had stared at him morning and evening with the blank,

unseeing gaze of the habitual drunkard.

 

“What has become of the old toper who lives up yonder among the

chimney-pots?” cried the porter, suddenly, to the wife of his bosom. “I

have not seen him to-day nor yesterday, nor for many days. He must be

ill. I will go upstairs and make inquiries by-and-by, when I have

leisure.”

 

The porter waited for a leisure half-hour after dark, and then tramped

wearily up the steep old staircase with a lighted candle to see after

the missing lodger. He might have waited even longer without detriment

to Sir Reginald Eversleigh.

 

The baronet had been dead many days, suffocated by the fumes of his

poor little charcoal stove. A trap-door in the roof, which he had been

accustomed to open for the ventilation of his garret, had been closed

by the wind, and the baronet had passed unconsciously from sleep to

death.

 

He had died, and no one had been aware of his death. The people of the

house did not know either his name or his country. His burial was that

of an unknown pauper; and the bones of the last male scion of the house

of Eversleigh were mingled with the bones of Parisian paupers in the

cemetery of P�re la Chaise.

 

While Sir Reginald Eversleigh dragged out the wretched remnant of his

existence in a dingy Parisian alley, there was perfect peace and

tranquil happiness for the woman against whose fair fame he and Victor

Carrington had so basely conspired.

 

Yes, Anna was at peace; surrounded by friends; delighted day by day to

watch the budding loveliness, the sportive grace of Gertrude

Eversleigh, the idolized heiress of Raynham. As Lady Eversleigh paced

the terraces of an Italian garden, her mother by her side, with

Gertrude clinging to her side; as she looked out over the vast domain

which owned her as mistress—it might seem that fortune had lavished

her fairest gifts into the lap of her who had been once a friendless

stranger, singing in the taverns of Wapping.

 

Wonderful indeed had been the transitions which had befallen her; but

even now, when the horizon seemed so fair before her, there were dark

shadows upon the past which, in some measure, clouded the brightness of

the present, and dimmed the radiance of the future.

 

She could not forget her night of agony in the house amongst the

marshes beyond Ratcliff Highway; she could not cease to lament the loss

of that noble friend who had rescued her in the hour of her despair.

 

The world wondered at the prolonged widowhood of the mistress of

Raynham. People were surprised to find that a woman in the golden prime

of womanhood and beauty could be constant to the memory of a husband

old enough to have been her father. But in due time society learned to

accept the fact as a matter of course, and Lady Eversleigh was no

longer the subject of hopes and speculations.

 

Her constant gratitude and friendship for the Jernams suffered no

diminution as time went on. The difference in their social position

made no difference to her; and no more frequent or more welcome guests

were seen at Raynham than Captain Duncombe, his daughter and son-in-law, and honest Joyce Harker. Lady Eversleigh had a particular regard

for the man who had so true and faithful a heart, and she would often

talk to him; but she never mentioned the subject of that miserable

night on which he had seen her down at Wapping. That subject was

tacitly avoided by both. There was a pain too intense, a memory too

dark, associated with the events of that period.

 

And so the story ends. There is no sound of pleasant wedding bells to

close my record with their merry, jangling chorus. Is it not the fate

of the innocent to suffer in this life for the sins of the wicked? Lady

Eversleigh’s widowhood, Douglas Dale’s lonely life, are the work of

Victor Carrington—a work not to be undone upon this earth. If he has

failed in all else, he has succeeded at least in this: he has ruined

the happiness of two lives. For both his victims time brings peace—a

sober gladness that is not without its charm. For one a child’s

affection—a child’s growing grace of mind and form, bring a happiness

on, clouded at intervals by the dark shadows of past sorrow. But in the

heart of Douglas Dale there is an empty place which can never be filled

upon earth.

 

“Will the Eternal and all-seeing One forgive her for her reckless,

useless life, and shall I meet her among the blest in heaven?” he asks

himself sometimes, and then he remembers the holy words of comfort

unspeakable: “Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I

will give you rest.”

 

Had not Paulina been “weary, and heavy laden,” bowed down by the burden

of a false accusation, friendless, hopeless, from her very cradle?

 

He thought of the illimitable Mercy, and he dared to hope for the day

in which he should meet her he loved “Beyond the Veil.”

 

THE END.

 

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