Run to Earth by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> Run to Earth

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"Where is my husband?" she asked. "I see no lights; I hear no voices;
the place seems like a tomb."

Victor Carrington did not answer her question.

"Come," he said, in a commanding voice. "Follow me, Lady Eversleigh."

He still held her hand, and she obeyed him, making her way with some
difficulty up the steep and winding staircase.

At last she found herself at the top. A narrow doorway opened before
her; and following her companion through this doorway, she emerged on
the roof of the tower.

Around her were the ruined battlements, broken away altogether here and
there; below her was the craggy hill-side, sloping downwards to the
wide expanse of the moorland; above her was the purple sky, flooded
with the calm radiance of the moon; but there was no sign of human
habitation, no sound of a human voice.

"Where is my husband, Mr. Carrington?" she cried, with a wild alarm,
which had but that moment taken possession of her. "This ruin is
uninhabited. I saw the empty rooms, through gaps in the broken wall as
we came up that staircase. Where is my husband?"

"At Raynham Castle, Lady Eversleigh, to the best of my knowledge,"
answered the surgeon, with imperturbable calmness.

He had seated himself on one of the broken battlements, in a lounging
attitude, with one arm leaning on the ruined stone, and he was looking
quietly out at the solitary expanse of barren waste sleeping beneath
the moonlight.

Lady Eversleigh looked at him with a countenance that had grown rigid
with horror and alarm.

"My husband at Raynham--at Raynham!" she repeated, as if she could not
credit the evidence of her own ears. "Am I mad, or are you mad, Mr.
Carrington? My husband at Raynham Castle, you say?"

"I cannot undertake to answer positively for the movements of any
gentleman; but I should say that, at this present moment, Sir Oswald
Eversleigh is in his own house, for which he started some hours ago."

"Then why am I here?"

"To answer that question clearly will involve the telling of a long
story, Lady Eversleigh," answered Victor. "My motive for bringing you
here concerns myself and another person. You are here to farther the
interests of two people, and those two people are Reginald Eversleigh
and your humble servant."

"But the accident? Sir Oswald's danger--"

"I must beg you not to give yourself any further alarm on that subject.
I regret very much that I have been obliged to inflict unnecessary pain
upon a lady. The story of the accident is a little invention of my own.
Sir Oswald is perfectly safe."

"Thank heaven!" cried Honoria, clasping her hands in the fervour of
sudden gratitude; "thank heaven for that!"

Her face looked beautiful, as she lifted it towards the moonlit sky.
Victor Carrington contemplated her with wonder.

"Can it be possible that she loves this man?" he thought. "Can it be
that she has not been acting a part after all?"

Her first thought, on hearing that she had been deceived, was one of
unmingled joy, of deep and heartfelt gratitude. Her second thought was
of the shameful trick that had been played upon her; and she turned to
Victor Carrington with passionate indignation.

"What is the meaning of this juggling, sir?" she cried; "and why have I
been brought to this place?"

"It is a long story, Lady Eversleigh, and I would recommend you to calm
yourself before you listen to it, if you have any wish to understand me
clearly."

"I can stop to listen to no long stories, sir. Your trick is a shameful
and unmanly one, whatever its motive. I beg that you will take me back
to Raynham without a moment's delay; and I would advise you to comply
with my request, unless you wish to draw upon yourself Sir Oswald's
vengeance for the wrong you have done me. I am the last person in the
world to involve my husband in a quarrel; but if you do not immediately
take steps towards restoring me to my own home, I shall certainly let
him know how deeply I have been wronged and insulted."

"I am not afraid of your husband, my dear Lady Eversleigh," answered
the surgeon, with cool insolence; "for I do not think Sir Oswald will
care to take up the cudgels in your defence, after the events of to-
night."

Honoria Eversleigh looked at the speaker with unutterable scorn, and
then turned towards the doorway which communicated with the staircase.

"Since you refuse to assist in my return, I will go alone and
unassisted," she said.

Victor raised his hand with a warning gesture.

"Do not attempt to descend that staircase, my dear Lady Eversleigh," he
said. "In the first place, the steps are slippery, and the descent very
dangerous; and, in the next, you would find yourself unable to go
beyond the archway."

"What do you mean?"

"Oblige me by looking down through that breach in the battlements."

He had risen from his lounging position, and pointed downward as he
spoke.

Involuntarily Honoria followed the indication of his hand.

A cry of horror broke from her lips as she looked below. The drawbridge
no longer spanned the chasm. It had fallen, and hung over the edge of
the abyss, suspended by massive chains. On all sides of the tower
yawned a gulf of some fifteen feet wide.

At first Lady Eversleigh thought that this chasm might only be on one
side of the ruin, but on rushing to the opposite battlements, and
looking down, she saw that it was a moss-grown stone-moat, which
completely encircled the stronghold.

"The warriors of old knew how to build their fortresses, and how to
protect themselves from their foes," said Victor Carrington, as if in
answer to his companion's despairing cry. "Those who built this edifice
and dug that moat, little knew how useful their arrangements would be
in these degenerate days. Do not pace to and fro with that distracted
air, Lady Eversleigh. Believe me, you will do wisely to take things
quietly. You are doomed to remain here till daybreak. This ruin is in
the care of a man who leaves it at a certain hour every evening. When
he leaves, he drops the drawbridge--you must have heard him do it a
little while ago--and no hand but his can raise the chains that support
it; for he only knows the secret of their machinery. He has left the
place for the night. He lives three miles and a half away, at a little
village yonder, which looks only a black speck in the distance, and he
will not return till some time after daybreak."

"And you would keep me a prisoner here--you would detain me in this
miserable place, while my husband is, no doubt, expecting me at
Raynham, perplexed and bewildered by my mysterious absence?"

"Yes, Lady Eversleigh, there will be wonder and perplexity enough on
your account to-night at Raynham Castle."

There was a pause after this.

Honoria sank upon a block of fallen stone, bewildered, terror-
stricken, for the moment powerless to express either her fears or her
indignation, so strange, so completely inexplicable was the position in
which she found herself.

"I am in the power of a maniac," she murmured; "no one but a maniac
could be capable of this wild act. My life is in the power of a madman.
I can but wait the issue. Let me be calm. Oh, merciful heaven, give me
fortitude to face my danger quietly!"

The strength she prayed for seemed to come with the prayer.

The wild beating of her heart slackened a little. She swept the heavy
masses of hair away from her forehead, and bound the fallen plaits in a
knot at the back of her head. She did this almost as calmly as if she
had been making her toilet in her dressing-room at Raynham. Victor
Carrington watched her with surprise.

"She is a wonderful woman," he said to himself; "a noble creature. As
powerful in mind as she is lovely in person. What a pity that I should
make myself the enemy of this woman for the sake of such a mean-
spirited hound as Reginald Eversleigh! But my interests compel me to
run counter to my inclination. It is a great pity. With this woman as
my ally, I might have done greater things than I shall ever do by
myself."

Victor Carrington mused thus while Honoria Eversleigh sat on the edge
of the broken wall, at a few paces from him, looking calmly out at the
purple sky.

She fully believed that she had fallen into the power of a maniac.
What, except madness, could have prompted such conduct as that of
Victor Carrington's?

She knew that there is no defence so powerful as an appearance of
calmness; and it was with tranquillity she addressed her companion,
after that interval of deliberation.

"Now, Mr. Carrington," she said, "since it seems I am your prisoner,
perhaps you will be good enough to inform me why you have brought me to
this place, and what injury I have ever done you that you should
inflict so deep a wrong on me?"

"You have never injured _me_, Lady Eversleigh," replied Victor
Carrington; "but you have injured one who is my friend, and whose
interests are closely linked with mine."

"Who is that friend?"

"Reginald Eversleigh."

"Reginald Eversleigh!" repeated Honoria, with amazement. "In what
manner have I injured Reginald Eversleigh? Is he not my husband's
nephew, and am I not bound to feel interest in his welfare? How, then,
can I have injured him?"

"You have done him the worst wrong that one individual can do another--
you stand between him and fortune. Do you not know that, little more
than a year ago, Reginald Eversleigh was the heir to Raynham and all
its surroundings?"

"I know that; but he was disinherited before I crossed his uncle's
pathway."

"True; but had you _not_ crossed Sir Oswald's path, there is no doubt
Reginald would have been restored to favour. But you have woven your
spells round his kinsman, and his only hope lies in your disgrace--"

"My disgrace!"

"Yes, Lady Eversleigh. Life is a battle, in which the weakest must be
trodden down; you have triumphed hitherto, but the hour of your triumph
is past. Yesterday you were queen of Raynham Castle; to-morrow no
kitchen-wench within its walls will be so low as you."

"What do you mean?" asked Honoria, more and more mystified every moment
by her companion's words.

For the first time, an awful fear took possession 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.
He will not wait in vain_.

"A NAMELESS COUNSELLOR."

A fortnight before, Sir Oswald would have flung such a letter as this
away from him with indignant scorn; but the poison of suspicion had
done its corroding work.

For a little time Sir Oswald hesitated, half-inclined to despise the
mysterious warning. All his better feelings prompted him to disregard
this nameless correspondent--all his noblest impulses urged him to
confide blindly and unquestioningly in the truth of the wife he loved;
but jealousy--that dark and fatal passion--triumphed over every
generous feeling, and he yielded to the influence of his hidden
counsellor.

"No harm can arise from my return to Raynham," he thought. "My friends
yonder are enjoying themselves too much to trouble themselves about my
absence. If this anonymous correspondent is fooling me, I shall soon
discover my mistake."

Having once arrived at this determination, Sir Oswald lost no time in
putting it into execution. He ordered his horse, Orestes, and rode away
as fast as the animal would carry him.

Arrived at Raynham, he inquired if any one had asked for him, but was
told there had not been any visitors at the castle throughout the day.

Again and again Sir Oswald consulted the anonymous letter. It told him
to wait, but for what was he to wait? Half ashamed of himself for
having yielded to the tempter, restless and uneasy in spirit, he
wandered from room to room in the twilight, abandoned to gloomy and
miserable thoughts.

The servants lighted the lamps in the many chambers of Raynham, while
Sir Oswald paced to and fro--now in the long drawing-room; now in the
library; now on the terrace, where the September moon shone broad and
full. It was eleven o'clock when the sound of approaching wheels
proclaimed the return of the picnic party; and until that hour the
baronet had watched and waited without having been rewarded by the
smallest discovery of any kind whatever. He felt bitterly ashamed of
himself for having been duped by so shallow a trick.

"It is the handiwork of some kind friend; the practical joke of some
flippant youngster, who thinks it a delightful piece of humour to play
upon the jealousy of a husband of fifty," mused the baronet, as he
brooded over his folly. "I wish to heaven I could discover the writer
of the epistle. He should find that it is rather a dangerous thing to
trifle with a man's feelings."

Sir Oswald went himself to assist at the reception of his guests. He
expected to see his wife arrive with the rest. For the moment, he
forgot all about his suspicions of the last fortnight. He thought only
of the anonymous letter, and the wrong which he had done Honoria in
being influenced by its dark hints.

If he could have met his wife at that moment, when every impulse of his
heart drew him towards her, all sense of estrangement would have melted
away; all his doubts would have vanished before a smile from her. But
though Sir Oswald found his wife's barouche the first of the carriages,
she was not in it. Lydia Graham told him how "dear Lady Eversleigh" had
caused all the party such terrible alarm.

"I suppose she reached home two hours ago," added the young lady. "She
had more than an hour's start of us; and with that light vehicle and
spirited horse she and Mr. Carrington must have come so rapidly."

"My wife and Mr. Carrington! What do you mean, Miss Graham?"

Lydia explained, and Reginald Eversleigh confirmed her statement. Lady
Eversleigh had left the Wizard's Cave more than an hour before the rest
of the party, accompanied by Mr. Carrington.

No words can describe the consternation of Sir Oswald. He did his best
to conceal his alarm; but the livid hue of his face, the ashen pallor
of his lips, betrayed the intensity of his emotion. He sent out mounted
grooms to search the different roads between the castle and the scene
of the pic-nic; and then he left his guests without a word, and shut
himself in his own apartments, to await the issue of the search.