Run to Earth - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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have it,” he muttered, shaking his brawny fist, as if some phantom
figure were standing before him in the wintry moonlight. “I can afford
to wait; I wouldn’t mind waiting years to get it; but I’ll have it, if
I grow old and gray while I’m watching and plotting for it. I’ll be
patient as Time, but I’ll have it. She has refused me a few hundreds,
has she? I’ll see her there, on the ground at my feet, grovelling like
a beaten dog, offering me half her fortune—all her fortune—her very
life itself! I’ll humble her proud spirit! I’ll bring her grandeur down
to the the dust. She won’t own me for a father, won’t she! Why, if I
choose, she shall tramp barefoot through the mud after me, singing
street-ballads in every town in England, and going round with my
battered old hat to beg for halfpence afterwards. I’ll humble her! I’ll
do it—I’ll do it—as sure as there’s a moon in the sky!”
CHAPTER XXIX.
AT WATCH.
Sanguine as Victor Carrington had been, confidently as he had
calculated upon the fascination which Paulina had exerted over Douglas
Dale, he was not prepared for the news contained in Miss Brewer’s
promised letter, which reached him punctually, a few hours after
Paulina had become the affianced wife of Douglas Dale. This was indeed
success beyond his hopes. He had not expected this result for some
days, at the very earliest, and the surprise and pleasure with which he
learned it were almost equal. Carrington did not believe in good; he
absolutely distrusted and despised human nature, and he never dreamed
of imputing Madame Durski’s conduct to anything but coquetry and
fickleness. “She’s on with the new love, beyond a doubt,” said he to
himself, as he read Miss Brewer’s letter; “whether she’s off with the
old is quite another question, and rests with him rather than with her,
I fancy.”
Victor Carrington’s first move was to present himself before Madame
Durski on the following day, at the hour at which she habitually
received visitors. He took up the confidential conversation which they
had had on the last occasion of their meeting, as if it had not been
dropped in the interval, and came at once to the subject of Douglas
Dale. This plan answered admirably; Paulina was naturally full of the
subject, and the ice of formalism had been sufficiently broken between
her and Victor Carrington, to enable her to refer to the interview
which had taken place between herself and Douglas Dale without any
impropriety. When she had done so, Carrington began to play his part.
He assured Paulina of his warm interest in her, of the influence which
he possessed over Sir Reginald Eversleigh, and the fears which he
entertained of some treacherous proceeding on Reginald’s part which
might place her in a most unpleasant position.
“Reginald has no real love for you,” said Carrington; “he would not
hesitate to sacrifice you to the meanest of his interests, but his
vanity and his temper are such that it is impossible to calculate upon
what sort of folly he may be guilty.”
Paulina Durski was a thorough woman; and, therefore, having utterly
discarded Reginald from her heart, having learned to substitute utter
contempt for love, she was not averse to receiving any information, to
learning any opinion, which tended to justify her change of feeling.
“What harm can he do me with Douglas?” asked Paulina, in alarm.
“Who can tell that, Madame Durski?” replied Carrington. “But this is
not to the purpose. I don’t pretend to be wholly disinterested in this
matter. I tell you plainly I am not so; it is very important to me that
Sir Reginald should marry a woman of fortune, and should not marry
you.”
“He never had any intention of marrying me,” said Paulina, hastily and
bitterly.
“No, I don’t believe he had; but he would have liked very well to have
compromised you in the eyes of society, so that no other man would have
married you, to have bragged of relations existing between you which
never did exist, and to have effectually ruined your fortunes in any
other direction than the gaming-table. Now this I am determined he
shall not do, and as I have more power over him than any one else, it
lies with me to prevent it. What that power springs from, or how I have
hitherto exercised it, you need not inquire, Madame Durski; I only wish
you to believe that I exercise it in this instance for your good, for
your protection.”
Paulina murmured some vague words of acknowledgment. He continued—
“If Reginald Eversleigh knows I am here, constantly cognizant of the
state of affairs, and prepared to act for your advantage, he will not
dare to come here and compromise you by his violent and unreasonable
jealousy; he will be forced—it is needless to explain how—to keep his
envy and rage to himself, and to suppress the enmity with which he
regards Douglas Dale. Let me tell you, Madame Durski, Reginald’s enmity
is no trifling rock ahead in life, and your engaged lover has that rock
to dread.”
Paulina turned very pale.
“Save him from it, Mr. Carrington,” she said, appealingly. “Save him
from it, and let me have a little happiness in this weary world, if
such a thing there be.”
“I will, Madame Durski,” replied Victor. “You have already done as I
have counselled you, and you have no reason to regret the result.”
The soft, dreamy smile of happy love stole over Paulina’s face as she
listened to him.
“Let me be here with you as much as possible, and you will have no
reason to fear Reginald. He is capable of anything, but he is afraid of
me, and if he knows that I am determined to advance the marriage of
yourself and Douglas Dale, he will not venture to oppose it openly. But
there is one condition which I must append to my frequent presence
here”—he spoke as though he were conferring the greatest favour on
her—“Mr. Dale must not know me as Victor Carrington.”
With an expression in which there was something of the suspicious
quickness which Miss Brewer had manifested when Carrington made a
similar statement to her, Paulina asked him why.
Then Victor told her his version of the story of Honoria Eversleigh,
the “unfortunate woman,” whom Douglas Dale’s unhappy and misguided
uncle had raised to such undoubted rank and fortune, and the wild and
absurd accusations the wretched woman had made against him.
“Mr. Dale never saw me,” said Victor, “and I know not whether he was
thoroughly aware of the absurdity, the insanity of this woman’s
accusations. At all events, I don’t wish to recall any unpleasantness
to his mind, and therefore I venture to propose that I should visit
here, and be introduced to him as Mr. Carton. The fraud is a very
harmless one; what do you say, Madame Durski?”
Paulina had her full share of the feminine love of mystery and
intrigue, and she consented at once. “What can the name matter,” she
thought, “if it is really necessary for this man to be here?”
“And there is another consideration which we must take into account,”
said Victor; “it is this. Mr. Dale may not like to find any man
established here, in the degree of intimacy to which (in your
interests) I aspire; and therefore I propose, with your leave, to pass
as a relation of Miss Brewer’s—say, her cousin. This will thoroughly
account for my intimacy here. What do you say, Madame Durski?”
“As you please,” said Paulina, carelessly. “I am sure you are right,
Mr. Carrington—Carton, I mean, and I am sure you mean kindly and well
by me. But how odd it will seem to Charlotte and me, lonely creatures,
waifs and derelicts as we have been so long, to have any one with whom
we can claim even a pretended kinship!”
She spoke with a mingled bitterness and levity which have been painful
to any man of right feelings, but which was pleasant to Victor
Carrington, because it showed him how helpless and ignorant she was,
how her mind had been warped, how ready a tool he had found in her.
When the interview between them came to an end, it had been arranged
that Mr. Dale was to be introduced on the following day at Hilton House
to Miss Brewer’s cousin, Mr. Carton.
The introduction took place. A very short time, well employed in close
observation, sufficed to assure Victor that Douglas Dale was as much in
love as any man need be to be certain of committing any number of
follies, and that Paulina was a changed woman under the influence of
the same soul-subduing sentiment which, though not so strong in her
case, was assuming strength and intensity as each day taught her more
and more of her lover’s moral and intellectual excellence. Douglas Dale
was much pleased with Mr. Carton; and that gentleman did all in his
power to render himself agreeable, and so far succeeded that, before
the close of the evening, he had made a considerable advance towards
establishing a very pleasant intimacy with Sir Reginald Eversleigh’s
cousin.
Victor Carrington, always an observant man, had peculiarly the air of
being on the watch that day during dinner. He noticed everything that
Paulina ate and drank, and he took equal note of Miss Brewer’s and
Douglas Dale’s choice of meats and wines. Miss Brewer drank no wine,
Paulina very little, and Douglas Dale exclusively claret. When the
dinner had reached its conclusion, a stand of liqueurs was placed upon
the table, one of the few art-treasures left to the impoverished
adventuress, rare and fragile Venetian flacons, and tiny goblets of
opal and ruby glass. These glasses were the especial admiration of
Douglas Dale, and Paulina filled the ruby goblet with cura�oa. She
touched the edge of the glass playfully with her lips as she handed it
to her lover; but Victor observed that she did not taste the liqueur.
“You do not affect cura�oa, madame?” he asked, carelessly.
“No; I never take that, or indeed, any other liqueur.”
“And yet you drink scarcely any wine?”
“No,” replied Paulina, indifferently; “I take very little wine.”
“Indeed!”
There was the faintest possible significance in Carrington’s tone as he
said this. He had watched Madame Durski closely during dinner, and he
had noted an excitement in her manner, a nervous vivacity, such as are
generally inspired by something stronger than water. And yet this woman
had taken little else than water during the dinner. And it was to be
observed that the almost febrile gaiety which distinguished her manner
this evening had been as apparent when she first entered the drawing-room as it was now. This was a physiological or psychological enigma,
extremely interesting to Mr. Carrington. He was not slow to find a
solution that was, in his opinion, sufficiently satisfactory. “That
woman takes opium in some form or other,” he said to himself.
Miss Brewer did not touch the liqueur in question, and her cousin took
Maraschino. After a very short interval, Douglas Dale and his new
friend rose to join the ladies. They crossed the hall together, but as
they reached the drawing-room door, Mr. Carrington discovered that he
had dropped a letter in the dining-room, and returned to find it, first
opening the drawing-room door that Dale might pass through it.
All was undisturbed in the dining-room; the table was just as they had
left it. Victor approached the table, took up the carafon containing
cura�oa, and, holding it up to the light with one hand,
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