Run to Earth - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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contents of a small phial into it with the other. He watched the one
liquid mingling with the other until no further traces of the operation
were visible; and then setting the carafon softly down where he had
found it, went smiling across the hall and joined the ladies.
CHAPTER XXX.
FOUND WANTING.
Reginald Eversleigh was in complete ignorance of Victor Carrington’s
proceedings, when he received the letter summoning him to an interview
with his friend at a stated time. Carrington’s estimate of Reginald’s
character was quite correct. All this time his vanity had been chafing
under Paulina’s silence and apparent oblivion of him.
He had not received any letter from Paulina, fond as she had been of
writing to him long, half-despairing letters, full of complaint against
destiny, and breathing in every line that hopeless love which the
beautiful Austrian woman had so long wasted on the egotist and coward,
whose baseness she had half suspected even while she still clung to
him.
Sir Reginald had been in the habit of receiving these letters as coolly
as if they had been but the fitting tribute to his transcendant merits.
“Poor Paulina!” he murmured sometimes, as he folded the perfumed pages,
after running his eyes carelessly over their contents; “poor Paulina!
how devotedly she loves me. And what a pity she hasn’t a penny she can
call her own. If she were a great heiress, now, what could be more
delightful than this devotion? But, under existing circumstances, it is
nothing but an embarrassment—a bore. Unfortunately, I cannot be brutal
enough to tell her this plainly: and so matters go on. And I fear, in
spite of all my hints, she may believe in the possibility of my
ultimately making a sacrifice of my prospects For her sake.”
This was how Reginald Eversleigh felt, while Paulina was scattering at
his feet the treasures of a disinterested affection.
He had been vain and selfish from boyhood, and his vices grew stronger
with increasing years. His nature was hardened, and not chastened, by
the trials and disappointments which had befallen him.
In the hour of his poverty and degradation it had been a triumph for
him to win the devotion of a woman whom many men—men better than
himself—had loved in vain.
It was a rich tribute to the graces of him who had once been the
irresistible Reginald Eversleigh, the favourite of fashionable drawing-rooms.
Thus it was that, when Paulina’s letters suddenly ceased, Sir Reginald
was at once mortified and indignant. He had made up his mind to obey
Victor’s suggestion, or rather, command, by abstaining from either
visiting or writing to Paulina; but he had not been prepared for a
similar line of proceeding on her part, and it hurt his vanity much.
She had ceased to write. Could she have ceased to care for him? Could
any one else, richer—more disinterested—have usurped his place in her
heart?
The baronet remembered what Victor Carrington had said about Douglas
Dale; but he could not for one moment believe that his cousin—a man
whom he considered infinitely beneath him—had the power to win Paulina
Durski’s affection.
“She may perhaps encourage him,” he said to himself, “especially now
that his income is doubled. She might even accept him as a husband—
women are so mercenary. But her heart will never cease to be mine.”
Sir Reginald waited a week, a fortnight, but there came no letter from
Paulina. He called on Carrington, according to appointment, but his
friend had changed his mind, or his tactics, and gave him no
explanation.
Victor had been a daily visitor at Hilton House during the week which
had intervened since the day he had dined there and been introduced to
Douglas Dale. His observation had enabled him to decide upon
accelerating the progress of his designs. The hold which Paulina had
obtained upon Douglas Dale’s affection was secure; he had proposed to
her much sooner than Victor had anticipated; the perfect understanding
and confidence subsisting between them rendered the cautious game which
he had intended to play unnecessary, and he did not now care how soon a
final rupture between Paulina and Reginald should take place. Indeed,
for two of his purposes—the establishment of an avowed quarrel between
Douglas Dale and his cousin, Sir Reginald, and the infliction of ever-growing injury on Paulina’s reputation,—the sooner such a rupture
could be brought about the better. Therefore Victor Carrington assumed
a tone of reserve and mystery, which did not fail to exasperate Sir
Reginald.
“Do not question me, Reginald,” he said. “You are afflicted with a lack
of moral courage, and your want of nerve would only enfeeble my hand.
Know nothing—expect nothing. Those who are at work for you know how to
do their work quietly. Oh, by the way, I want you to sign a little
document—very much the style of thing you gave me at Raynham Castle.”
Nothing could be more careless than the Frenchman’s tone and manner as
he said this; but the document in question was a deed of gift, by which
Reginald Eversleigh bestowed upon Victor Carrington the clear half of
whatever income should arise to him, from real or personal property,
from the date of the first day of June following.
“I am to give you half my income?”
“Yes, my dear Reginald, after the first of next June. You know that I
am working laboriously to bring about good fortune for you. You cannot
suppose that I am working for nothing. If you do not choose to sign
this document, neither do I choose to devote myself any longer to your
interest.”
“And what if you fail?”
“If I fail, the document in question is so much waste paper, since you
have no income at present, nor are likely to have any income between
this and next June, unless by my agency.”
The result was the same as usual. Reginald signed the deed, without
even taking the trouble to study its full bearing.
“Have you seen Paulina lately?” he asked, afterwards.
“Not very lately.”
“I don’t know what’s amiss with her,” exclaimed Reginald, peevishly;
“she has not written to me to ask explanation of my absence and
silence.”
“Perhaps she grew tired of writing to a person who valued her letters
so lightly.”
“I was glad enough to hear from her,” answered Reginald; “but I could
not be expected to find time to answer all her letters. Women have
nothing better to do than to scribble long epistles.”
“Perhaps Madame Durski has found some one who will take the trouble to
answer her letters,” said Victor.
After this, the two men parted, and Reginald Eversleigh called a cab,
in which he drove down to Hilton House.
He might have stayed away much longer, in self-interested obedience to
Carrington, had he been sure of Paulina’s unabated devotion; but he was
piqued by her silence, and he wanted to discover whether there was a
rival in the field.
He knew Madame Durski’s habits, and that it was not till late in the
afternoon that she was to be seen.
It was nearly six o’clock when he drove up to the door of Hilton House.
Carlo Toas admitted him, and favoured him with a searching and somewhat
severe scrutiny, as he led the way to the drawing-room in which Paulina
was wont to receive her guests.
Here Sir Reginald felt some little surprise, and a touch of
mortification, on beholding the aspect of things. He had expected to
find Paulina pensive, unhappy, perhaps ill. He had expected to see her
agitated at his coming. He had pondered much upon the cessation of her
letters; and he had told himself that she had ceased to write because
she was angry with him—with that anger which exists only where there
is love.
To his surprise, he found her brilliant, radiant, dressed in her most
charming style.
Never had he seen her looking more beautiful or more happy.
He pressed the widow’s hand tenderly, and contemplated her for some
moments in silence.
“My dear Paulina,” he said at last, “I never saw you looking more
lovely than to-night. And yet to-night I almost feared to find you
ill.”
“Indeed; and why so?” she asked. Her tone was the ordinary tone of
society, from which it was impossible to draw any inference.
“Because it is so long since I heard from you.”
“I have grown tired of writing letters that were rarely honoured by
your notice.”
“So, so,” thought the baronet; “I was right. She is offended.”
“To what do I owe this visit?” asked Madame Durski.
“She is desperately angry,” thought the baronet. “My dear Paulina,” he
said, aloud, “can you imagine that your letters were indifferent to me?
I have been busy, and, as you know, I have been away from London.”
“Yes,” she said; “you spent your Christmas very agreeably, I believe.”
“Not at all, I assure you. A bachelors’ party in a country parsonage is
one of the dullest things possible, to say nothing of the tragical
event which ended my visit,” added Reginald, his cheek paling as he
spoke.
“A bachelors’ party!” repeated Paulina; “there were no ladies, then, at
your cousin’s house?”
“None.”
“Indeed!”
Paulina Durski’s lip curled contemptuously, but she did not openly
convict Sir Reginald of the deliberate falsehood he had uttered.
“I am very glad you have come to me,” she said, presently, “because I
have urgent need of your help.”
“My dear Paulina, believe me—” began the baronet
“Do not make your protest till you have heard what I have to ask,” said
Madame Durski. “You know how troublesome my creditors had become before
Christmas. The time has arrived when they must be paid, or when I—”
She stopped, and looked searchingly at the face of her companion.
“When you—what?” he asked. “What is the alternative, Paulina?”
“I think you ought to know as well as I,” she answered. “I must either
pay those debts or fly from this place, and from this country,
disgraced. I appeal to you in this bitter hour of need. Can you not
help me—you, who have professed to love me?”
“Surely, Paulina, you cannot doubt my love,” replied Sir Reginald;
“unhappily, there is no magical process by which the truest and purest
love can transform itself into money. I have not a twenty-pound note in
the world.”
“Indeed; and the four hundred and fifty pounds you won from Lord
Caversham just before Christmas—is that money gone?”
“Every shilling of it,” answered Reginald, coolly.
He had notes to the amount of nearly two hundred pounds in his desk;
but he was the last man in Christendom to sacrifice money which he
himself required, and his luxurious habits kept him always deeply in
debt.
“You must have disposed of it very speedily. Surely, it is not all
gone, Reginald. I think a hundred would satisfy my creditors, for a
time at least.”
“I tell you it is gone, Paulina. I gave you a considerable sum at the
time I won the money—you should remember.”
“Yes, I remember perfectly. You gave me fifty pounds—fifty pounds for
the support of the house which enabled you to entrap your dupes, while
I was the bait to lure them to their ruin. Oh, you have been very
generous, very noble; and now that your dupes are tired of being
cheated—now that your cat’s paw has become useless to you—I am to
leave the country, because you will not sacrifice one selfish desire to
save me from disgrace.”
“This is absurd, Paulina,” exclaimed the
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