Run to Earth - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ebook reader .txt) 📗

of her, and she began

to perceive that she was the victim of a foul and villanous plot.

 

“What do you mean?” she repeated, in accents of alarm.

 

“I mean this, Lady Eversleigh—the world judges of people’s actions by

their outward seeming, not by their inward truth. Appearances have

conspired to condemn you. Before to-morrow every creature in Raynham

Castle will believe that you have fled from your home, and with me—”

 

“Fled from my home!”

 

“Yes; how else can your absence to-night—your sudden disappearance

from the pic-nic—be construed?”

 

“If I live, I shall go back to the castle at daybreak to-morrow

morning—go back to denounce your villany—to implore my husband’s

vengeance on your infamy!”

 

“And do you think any one will believe your denunciation? You will go

back too late Lady Eversleigh.”

 

“Oh, villain! villain!” murmured Honoria, in accents of mingled

abhorrence and despair—abhorrence of her companion’s infamy, despair

inspired by the horror of her own position.

 

“You have played for a very high stake, Lady Eversleigh,” said the

surgeon; “and you must not wonder if you have found opponents ready to

encounter your play with a still more desperate, and a still more

dexterous game. When a nameless and obscure woman springs from poverty

and obscurity to rank and riches, she must expect to find others ready

to dispute the prize which she has won.”

 

“And there can exist a wretch calling himself a man, and yet capable of

such an act as this!” cried Honoria, looking upward to the calm and

cloudless sky, as if she would have called heaven to witness the

iniquity of her enemy. “Do not speak to me, sir,” she added, turning to

Victor Carrington, with unutterable scorn. “I believed a few minutes

ago that you were a madman, and I thought myself the victim of a

maniac’s folly. I understand all now. You have plotted nobly for your

friend’s service; and he will, no doubt, reward you richly if you

succeed. But you have not yet succeeded. Providence sometimes seems to

favour the wicked. It his favoured you, so far; but the end has not

come yet.”

 

She turned from him and walked to the opposite side of the tower. Here

she seated herself on the battlemented wall, as calm, in outward

seeming, as if she had been in her own drawing-room. She took out a

tiny jewelled watch; by that soft light she could perceive the figures

on the dial.

 

It was a few minutes after one o’clock. It was not likely that the man

who had charge of the ruins would come to the tower until seven or

eight in the morning. For six or seven hours, therefore, Honoria

Eversleigh was likely to be a prisoner—for six or seven hours she

would have to endure the hateful presence of the man whose treachery

had placed her in this hideous position.

 

Despair reigned in her heart, entire and overwhelming despair. When

released from her prison, she might hurry back to the castle. But who

would believe a story so wild, so improbable, as that which she would

have to tell?

 

Would her husband believe her? Would he, who had to all appearance

withdrawn his love from her for no reason whatever—would he believe in

her purity and truth, when circumstances conspired in damning evidence

of her guilt? A sense of hopeless misery took possession of her heart;

but no cry of anguish broke from her pale lips. She sat motionless as a

statue, with her eyes fixed upon the eastern horizon, counting the

moments as they passed with cruel slowness, watching with yearning gaze

for the first glimmer of morning.

 

Victor Carrington contemplated that statuesque figure, that pale and

tranquil face, with unalloyed admiration. Until to-night he had

despised women as frail, helpless creatures, only made to be flattered

by false words, and tyrannized over by stronger natures than their own.

Among all the women with whom he had ever been associated, his mother

was the only one in whose good sense he had believed, or for whose

intellect he had felt the smallest respect. But now he beheld a woman

of another stamp—a woman whose pride and fortitude were akin to the

heroic.

 

“You endure the unpleasantness of your position nobly, Lady

Eversleigh,” he said; “and I can find no words to express my admiration

of your conduct. It is very hard to find oneself the enemy of a lady,

and, above all, of a lady whose beauty and whose intellect are alike

calculated to inspire admiration. But in this world, Lady Eversleigh,

there is only one rule—only one governing principle by which men

regulate their lives—let them seek as they will to mask the truth with

specious lies, which other men pretend to believe, but do not. That one

rule, that one governing principle, is SELF-INTEREST. For the

advancement of his own fortunes, the man who calls himself honest will

trample on the dearest ties, will sacrifice the firmest friendships.

The game which Reginald Eversleigh and I have played against you is a

desperate one; but Sir Oswald rendered his nephew desperate when he

reduced him, in one short hour, from wealth to poverty—when he robbed

him of expectations that had been his from infancy. A desperate man

will do desperate deeds; and it has been your fate, Lady Eversleigh, to

cross the path of such a man.”

 

He waited, with his eyes fixed on the face of Sir Oswald’s wife. But

during the whole of his speech she had never once looked at him. She

had never withdrawn her eyes from the eastern horizon. Passionless

contempt was expressed by that curving lip, that calm repose of eye and

brow. It seemed as if this woman’s disdain for the plotting villain

into whose power she had fallen absorbed every other feeling.

 

Victor Carrington waited in vain for some reply from those scornful

lips; but none came. He took out his cigar-case, lighted a cigar, and

sat in a meditative attitude, smoking, and looking down moodily at the

black chasm below the base of the tower. For the first time in his life

this man, who was utterly without honour or principle—this man, who

held self-interest as the one rule of conduct—this unscrupulous

trickster and villain, felt the bitterness of a woman’s scorn. He would

have been unmoved by the loudest evidence of his victim’s despair; but

her silent contempt stung him to the quick. The hours dragged

themselves out with a hideous slowness for the despairing creature who

sat watching for the dawn; but at last that long night came to an end,

the chill morning light glimmered faint and gray in the east. It was

not the first time that Sir Oswald’s wife had watched in anguish for

the coming of that light. In that lonely tower, with her heart tortured

by a sense of unutterable agony, there came back to her the memory of

another vigil which she had kept more than two years before.

 

_She heard the dull, plashing sound of a river, the shivering of

rushes, then the noise of a struggle, oaths, a heavy crashing fall, a

groan, and then no more_!

 

Blessed with her husband’s love, she had for a while closed her eyes

upon that horrible picture of the past; but now, in the hour of

despair, it came back to her, hideously distinct, awfully palpable.

 

“How could I hope for happiness?” she thought; “I, the daughter of an

assassin! The sins of one generation are visited on another. A curse is

upon me, and I can never hope for happiness.”

 

The sun rose, and shone broad and full over the barren moorland; but it

was several hours after sunrise before the man who took care of the

ruins came to release the wretched prisoner.

 

He picked up a scanty living by showing the tower to visitors, and he

knew that no visitors were likely to come before nine o’clock in the

morning. It was nearly nine when Honoria saw him approaching in the

distance.

 

It was after nine when he drew up the bridge, and came across it to the

ruined fortress.

 

“You are free from this moment, Lady Eversleigh,” said the surgeon,

whose face looked horribly pale and worn in the broad sunlight. That

night of watching had not been without its agony for him.

 

Honoria did not condescend to notice his words. She took up the plumed

hat, which had been lying among the long grass at her feet. The

delicate feathers were wet and spoiled by the night dew, and she took

them from the fragile hat and flung them away. Her thin, white dress

was heavy with the damp, and clung round her like a shroud. But she had

not felt the chilling night winds.

 

Lady Eversleigh groped her way down the winding staircase, which was

dark even in the daytime—except here and there, where a gap in the

wall let in a patch of light upon the gloomy stones.

 

Under the archway she met the countryman, who uttered a cry on

beholding the white, phantom-like figure.

 

“Oh, Loard!” he cried, when he had recovered from his terror; “I ask

pardon, my lady, but danged if I didn’t teak thee for a ghaist.”

 

“You did not know, when you went away last night, that there was any

one in the tower?”

 

“No, indeed, my lady. I’d been away for a few minutes look’n’ arter a

bit of peg I’ve got in a shed down yander; and when I keame back to let

down th’ drawbridge, I didn’t sing out to ax if there wur any one in

th’ old too-wer, for t’aint often as there be any one at that time of

night.”

 

“Tell me the way to the nearest village,” cried Honoria. “I want to get

some conveyance to take me to Raynham.”

 

“Then you had better go to Edgington, ma’am. That’s four miles from

here—on t’ Raynham ro-ad.”

 

The man pointed out the way to the village of which he spoke; and Lady

Eversleigh set forth across the wide expanse of moorland alone.

 

She had considerable difficulty in finding her way, for there were no

landmarks on that broad stretch of level turf. She wandered out of the

track more than once, and it was one o’clock before she reached the

village of Edgington.

 

Here, after considerable delay, she procured a carriage to take her on

to Raynham; but there was little chance that she could reach the castle

until between three and four o’clock in the afternoon.

 

CHAPTER X.

 

“HOW ART THOU LOST!—HOW ON A SUDDEN LOST!”

 

If Honoria Eversleigh had endured a night of anguish amid the wild

desolation of Yarborough Tower, Sir Oswald had suffered an agony

scarcely less terrible at Raynham. He had been summoned from the

dinner-table in the marquee by one of his servants, who told him that a

boy was waiting for him with a letter, which he would entrust to no one

but Sir Oswald Eversleigh himself.

 

Mystified by the strange character of this message, Sir Oswald went

immediately to see the boy who had brought it. He found a lad waiting

for him under the trees near the marquee. The boy handed him a letter,

which he opened and read immediately.

 

The contents of that letter were well calculated to agitate and disturb

him.

 

The letter was anonymous. It consisted of the following words:—

 

“_If Sir Oswald Eversleigh wishes to be convinced of his wife’s truth

or falsehood, let him ride back to Raynham without a moment’s delay.

There he will receive ample evidence of her real character. He may have

to wait; but the friend who writes this advises him to wait patiently.