Run to Earth by M. E. Braddon

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

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There was, however, one circumstance which Captain Duncombe never
mentioned to Harker. That circumstance was the apparition of old
Screwton's ghost. Joe Duncombe was, to tell the truth, a little ashamed
of his credulity on that occasion. He entertained no doubt that he had
been victimized by a clever practical joke, and while he chuckled over
the recollection that it had been an expensive jest to the perpetrator,
who had lost a valuable gold coin by the transaction, he had no fancy
for exposing himself to any further ridicule on the occasion. So the
bluff, imperious, soft-hearted captain issued an ukase commanding
silence on the subject; and silence was observed, not in the least
because Rosamond Duncombe or Susan Trott were afraid of him, but
because Rosamond loved her father, and Susan Trott respected her master
too much to disobey his lightest wish.

There was also one circumstance which Joyce Harker never mentioned to
Captain Duncombe. This circumstance was the identity of the former
occupant of the cottage with the man whom he believed to be the
murderer of Valentine Jernam.

"It is bad enough to live in a place that's said to be haunted," said
Harker to himself, when he visited the cottage for the first time;
"without my telling him that he comes after a man who is certainly a
convict, and probably a murderer."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVII.

DOUBTFUL SOCIETY.

Victor Carrington still lived in the little cottage on the outskirts of
London. Here, with his mother for his only companion, he led a simple,
studious life, which, to any one ignorant of his character, would have
seemed the life of a good and honourable man.

The few neighbours who passed to and fro beneath the wall which
surrounded the cottage, knew nothing of the inner life of its
occupants. They knew only that of all the houses in the neighbourhood
this was the quietest. Yet those who happened to pass the house late at
night always saw a glimmer of light in an upper chamber, and the blue
vapour of smoke rising from one particular chimney.

Those who had occasion to pass the house frequently after dark
perceived that the smoke from this chimney was different from the
common smoke of common chimneys. Sometimes vivid sparks glittered and
flashed upon the darkness. At other times a semi-luminous, green vapour
was seen to issue from the mouth of the chimney.

These facts were spoken about by the neighbours; and by and by people
discovered that the smoke issued from the chimney of Victor
Carrington's laboratory, where the surgeon was frequently employed,
long after midnight, making experiments in the science of chemistry.

The nature of these experiments was known to no one. The few neighbours
who had ever conversed with the French surgeon had heard him declare
that he was a student of the mysteries of electricity. It was,
therefore, supposed that all his experiments were in some manner
connected with that wondrous science.

No one for a moment suspected evil of a young man whose life was sober,
respectable, and laborious, and who went to the little Catholic chapel
every Sunday, with his mother leaning on his arm.

Those who really knew Victor Carrington knew that he was without one
ray of belief in a Divine Ruler, and that he laughed to scorn those
terrors of heavenly vengeance which will sometimes restrain the hand of
the most hardened criminal. He was a wretch who seemed to have been
created without those natural qualities which, in some degree, redeem
the worst of humanity. He was a creature without a conscience--without
a heart.

And yet he seemed the most dutiful and devoted of sons.

Is it possible that filial love could hold any place in a soul so lost
as his? It is difficult to solve this enigma.

Victor Carrington was ambitious; and to gain the object of his ambition
he was willing to steep his soul in guilt. But he was also cautious and
calculating, and he knew that to commit crime with impunity he must so
shape his life as to escape suspicion.

He knew that a devoted and affectionate son is always respected by good
men and women; and he had studied human nature too closely not to be
aware that there is more goodness than wickedness in the world, base
though some of earth's inhabitants may be.

The world is easily hoodwinked; and those who watched the life of the
young surgeon were ready to declare that he was a most deserving young
man.

He had his reward for this apparent excellence. Patients came to him
without his seeking; and at the time of Honoria Eversleigh's arrival in
London he had obtained a small but remunerative practice. The money
earned thus enabled him to live. The money he won by his pen in the
medical journals he was able to save.

He knew how necessary money was in all the turning-points of life, and
he denied himself every pleasure and every luxury in order to save a
sum which should serve him in time of need.

Matilda Carrington was one of those quiet women who seem to take no
interest in the world around them, and to be happy without the
pleasures which delight other women. She lived quite alone, without one
female friend or acquaintance, and she saw little of her son, whose
midnight studies and medical practice absorbed almost every hour of his
existence.

Her life, therefore, was one long solitude, and but for the
companionship of her birds and two Angora cats, she would have been
almost as much alone as a prisoner in a condemned cell.

There was but one visitor who came often to the cottage, and that was
Sir Reginald Eversleigh. The young baronet contrived to exist, somehow
or other, upon his income of five hundred a year; but, as he had
neither abandoned his old haunts, nor put aside his old vices, the
income, which to a good man would have seemed a handsome competence,
barely enabled him to stave off the demands of his most pressing
creditors by occasional payments on account.

He lived a dark and strange existence, occupying a set of shabby-
genteel apartments in a street leading out of the Strand; but spending
a great part of his life in a house on the banks of the Thames--a house
that stood amidst grounds of some extent, situated midway between
Chelsea and Fulham.

The mistress of this house was a lady who called herself a widow, but
of whose real position the world knew very little.

She was said to be of Austrian extraction, and the widow of an Austrian
officer. Her name was Paulina Durski. She had bade farewell to the
fresh bloom of early youth; for at her best she looked thirty years of
age. But her beauty was of that brilliant order which does not need the
charm of girlhood. She was a woman--a grand, queen-like creature. Those
who admired her most compared her to a tall white lily, alike stately
and graceful.

She was fair, with that snowy purity of complexion which is so rare a
charm. Her hair was of the palest gold--darker than flaxen, lighter
than auburn--hair that waved in sunny undulations on the broad white
forehead, and imparted an unspeakable innocence to the beautiful face.

Such was Paulina Durski. One charm alone was wanting to render this
woman as lovable as she was lovely, and that wan the charm of
expression.

There was a lack of warmth in that perfect face. The bright blue eyes
were hard; the rosy lips had been trained to smile on friend or foe, on
stranger or kinsman, with the same artificial smile.

Hilton House was the name of the villa by the river-bank. It had
belonged originally to a nobleman; but, on the decay of his fortunes,
had fallen into the hands of a speculator, who intended to occupy it,
but who failed almost immediately after becoming its owner. After this
man's bankruptcy, the house had for a long time been tenantless. It was
too expensive for some, too lonely for others; and when Madame Durski
saw and took a fancy to the place, she was able to secure it for a
moderate rent. The grounds and the house had been neglected. The rare
and costly shrubs in the gardens were rank and overgrown; the exquisite
decorations of the interior were spoiled by damp.

Madame Durski was a person who lived in a certain style; but it
speedily became evident that she was very often at a loss for ready
money. Her furniture arrived from Paris, and her household came also
from that brilliant city. It was the household of a princess; but of a
princess not unfamiliar with poverty.

There was a Spanish courier, one Carlo Toas--a strange, silent
creature, whose stately and solemn movements seemed fitted for a
courtly assembly, rather than for the unceremonious gatherings of
modern society. The next person in importance in the household of
Madame Durski was an elderly woman, who attended on the fair Austrian
widow. She was a native of Paris, and her name was Sophie Elser. There
were three other servants, all foreigners, and apparently devoted to
their mistress.

The furniture was of a bygone fashion, costly and beautiful of its
kind; but it was furniture which had seen better days. The draperies in
every chamber were of satin or velvet; but the satin was worn and
faded, the velvet threadbare. The pictures, china, plate, the bronzes
and knick-knacks which adorned the rooms, all bore evidence of a
refined and artistic taste. But much of the china was imperfect, and
the plate was of very small extent.

The existence of Paulina Durski was one which might well excite
curiosity in the minds of the few neighbours who had the opportunity of
observing her mode of life.

This beautiful widow had no female acquaintances, save a humble friend
who lived with her, an Englishwoman, who subsisted upon the charity of
the lovely Paulina.

This person never quitted her benefactress. She was constant as her
shadow; a faithful watch-dog, always at hand, yet never obtrusive. She
was a creature who seemed to have been born without eyes and without
ears; so careless was the widow of her presence, so reckless what
secrets were disclosed in her hearing.

By daylight the life of Madame Durski and her companion, Miss Brewer,
seemed the dullest existence ever endured by womankind. Paulina rarely
left her own apartment until six in the evening; at which hour, she and
Miss Brewer dined together in her boudoir.

They always dined alone. After dinner Paulina returned to her apartment
to dress for the evening, while Miss Brewer retired to her own bedroom
on the upper story, where she arrayed herself invariably in black
velvet.

She had never been seen by the visitors at Hilton House in any other
costume than this lustreless velvet. Her age was between thirty and
forty. She might once have had some pretensions to beauty; but her face
was pinched and careworn, and there was a sharp, greedy look in the
small eyes, whose colour was that neutral, undecided tint, that seems
sometimes a pale yellowish brown, anon a blueish green.

All day long the two women at Hilton House lived alone. No carriage
approached the gates; no foot-passenger was seen to enter the grounds.
Within and without all was silent and lifeless.

But with nightfall came a change. Lights shone in all the lower
windows, music sounded on the still night air, many carriages rolled
through the open gateway--broughams with flashing lamps dashed up to
the marble portico, and hack cabs mingled with the more stylish
equipages.

There were very few nights on which Paulina Durski's saloons were not
enlivened by the presence of many guests. Her visitors were all
gentlemen; but they treated the mistress of the house with as much
respect as if she had been surrounded by women of the highest rank.
Night after night the same men assembled in those faded saloons; night
after night the carriages rolled along the avenue--the flashing lamps
illuminated the darkness. Those who watched the proceedings of the
Austrian widow had good reason to wonder what the attraction was which
brought those visitors so constantly to Hilton House. Many speculations
were formed, and the fair widow's reputation suffered much at the hands
of her neighbours; but none guessed the real charm of those nightly
receptions.

That secret was known only to those within the mansion; and from those
it could not be hidden.

The charm which drew so many visitors to the saloons of Madame Durski
was the fatal spell of the gaming-table. The beautiful Paulina opened a
suite of three spacious chambers for the reception of her guests. In
the outer apartment there was a piano; and it was here Paulina sat--
with her constant companion, Matilda Brewer. In the second apartment
were small green velvet-covered tables, devoted to whist and _ecarte_.
The third, and inner, apartment was much larger than either of the
others, and in this room there was a table for _rouge et noir_.

The door of this inner apartment was papered so as to appear when
closed like a portion of the wall. A heavy picture was securely
fastened upon this papered surface, and the door was lined with iron.
Once closed, this door was not easily to be discovered by the eye of a
stranger; and, even when discovered, it was not easily to be opened.

It was secured with a spring lock, which fastened of itself as the door
swung to.

This inner apartment had no windows. It was never used in the day-time.
It was a secret chamber, hidden in the very centre of the house; and
only an architect or a detective officer would have been likely to have
discovered its existence. The walls were hung with red cloth, and
Madame Durski always spoke of this apartment as the Red Drawing-room.
Her servants were forbidden to mention the chamber in their
conversation with the neighbours, and the members of the Austrian
widow's household were too well trained to disobey any such orders.

By the laws of England, the existence of a table for _rouge et noir_ is
forbidden. All these precautions were therefore necessary to insure
safety for the guests of Madame Durski.

Paulina, herself, never played. Sometimes she sat with Miss Brewer in
the outer chamber, silent and abstracted, while her visitors amused
themselves in the two other rooms; sometimes she seated herself at the
piano, and played soft, plaintive German sonatas, or _Leider ohne
Worte_, for an hour at a time; sometimes she moved slowly to and fro
amongst the gamblers--now lingering for a few moments behind the chair
of one, now glancing at the cards of another.

One of her most constant visitors was Reginald Eversleigh. Every night
he drove down to Hilton House in a hack cab. He was generally the first
to arrive and the last to depart.

It was also to be observed that almost all the men who assembled in the
drawing-rooms of Hilton House were friends and acquaintances of Sir
Reginald.

It was he who introduced them to the lovely widow. It was he who
tempted them to come night after night, when prudence should have
induced them to stay away.

* * * * *

The association between Reginald Eversleigh and Paulina Durski was no
new alliance.

Immediately after the death of Sir Oswald Eversleigh, Reginald turned
his back upon London, disgusted with the scene of his poverty and
humiliation, eager to find forgetfulness of his bitter disappointments
in the fever and excitement of a more brilliant city than any to be
found in Great Britain. He went to Paris, that capital which he had
shunned since the death of Mary Goodwin, but whither he returned
eagerly now, thirsting for riot and excitement--any opiate by which he
might lull to rest the bitter memories of the past month.

He was familiar with the wildest haunts of that city of dissipation,
and he was speedily engulphed in the vortex of vice and folly. If he
had been a rich man, this life might have gone on for ever; but without
money a man counts for very little in such a circle as that wherein
Reginald alone could find delight, and to the inhabitants of that
region five hundred a year would seem a kind of pauperism.

Sir Reginald contrived to keep the actual amount of his income a secret
locked in his own breast. His acquaintances and associates knew that he
was not rich; but they knew no more.

At the French opera-house he saw Paulina Durski for the first time. She
was seated in one of the smaller boxes, dressed in pure white, with
white camellias in her hair. Her faithful companion, Matilda Brewer,
was seated in the shadow of the curtains, and formed a foil for the
beautiful Austrian.

Reginald Eversleigh entered the house with a dissipated and fashionable
young Parisian--a man who, like his companion, had wasted youth,
character, and fortune in the tainted atmosphere of disreputable haunts
and midnight assemblies. The two young men took their places in the
stalls, and amused themselves between the acts by a scrutiny of the
occupants of the house.

Hector Leonce, the Parisian, was familiar with the inmates of every
box.

"Do you see that beautiful, fair-haired woman, with the white camellias
in her hair?" he said, after he had drawn the attention of the
Englishman to several distinguished people. "That is Madame Durski, the
young and wealthy widow of an Austrian officer, and one of the most
celebrated beauties in Paris."

"She is very handsome," answered Reginald, carelessly; "but hers is a
cold style of loveliness--too much like a face moulded out of wax."

"Wait till you see her animated," replied Hector Leonce. "We will go to
her box presently."

When the curtain fell on the close of the following act the two men
left the stalls, and made their way to Madame Durski's box.

She received them courteously, and Reginald Eversleigh speedily
perceived that her beauty, fair and wax-like as it was, did not lack
intellectual grace. She talked well, and her manner had the tone of
good society. Reginald was surprised to see her attended only by the
little Englishwoman, in her dress of threadbare black velvet.

After the opera Sir Reginald and Hector Leonce accompanied Madame
Durski to her apartments in the Rue du Faubourg, St. Honore; and there
the baronet beheld higher play than he had ever seen before in a
private house presided over by a woman. On this occasion the beautiful
widow herself occupied a place at the _rouge et noir_ table, and
Reginald beheld enough to enlighten him as to her real character. He
saw that with this woman the love of play was a passion: a profound and
soul-absorbing delight. He saw the eyes which, in repose, seemed of so
cold a brightness, emit vivid flashes of feverish light; he saw the
fair blush-rose tinted cheek glow with a hectic crimson--he beheld the
woman with her mask thrown aside, abandoned to the influence of her
master-passion.

After this night, Reginald Eversleigh was a frequent visitor at the
apartments of the Austrian widow. For him, as for her, the fierce
excitement of the gaming-table was an irresistible temptation. In her
elegantly appointed drawing-rooms he met rich men who were desperate
players; but he met few men who were likely to be dupes. Here neither
skill nor bribery availed him, and he was dependent on the caprices of
chance. The balance was tolerably even, and he left Paris neither
richer nor poorer for his acquaintance with Paulina Durski.

But that acquaintance exercised a very powerful influence over his
destiny, nevertheless. There was a strange fascination in the society
of the Austrian widow--a nameless, indefinable charm, which few were
able to resist. A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed
Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and
confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an
adventuress, dangerous to all who approached her.

He knew this, and yet he yielded to the fascination of her presence.
Night after night he haunted the rooms in the Rue du Faubourg, St.
Honore. He went there even when he was too poor to play, and could only
stand behind Paulina's chair, a patient and devoted cavalier.

For a long time she seemed to be scarcely aware of his devotion. She
received him as she received her other guests. She met him always with
the same cold smile; the same studied courtesy. But one evening, when
he went to her apartments earlier than usual, he found her alone, and
in a melancholy mood.

Then, for the first time, he became aware that the life she led was
odious to her; that she loathed the hateful vice of which she was the
slave. She was wont to be very silent about herself and her own
feelings; but that night she cast aside all reserve, and spoke with a
passionate earnestness, which made her seem doubly charming to Reginald
Eversleigh.

"I am so degraded a creature that, perhaps, you have never troubled
yourself to wonder how I became the thing I am," she said; "and yet you
must surely have marvelled to see a woman of high birth fallen to the
depths in which you find me; fallen so low as to be the companion of
gamesters, a gamester myself. I will tell you the secret of my life."

Reginald Eversleigh lifted his hand with a deprecating gesture.

"Dear madame, tell me nothing, I implore you. I admire and respect
you," he said. "To me, you must always appear the most beautiful of
women, whatever may be the nature of your surroundings."

"Yes, the most beautiful!" echoed Paulina, with passionate scorn. "You
men think that to praise a woman's beauty is to console her for every
humiliation. I have long held that which you call my beauty as the
poorest thing on earth, so little, happiness has its possession won for
me. I will tell you the story of my life. It is the only justification
I have."

"I am ready to listen. So long as you speak of yourself, your words
must have the deepest interest for me."

"I was reared amongst gamesters, Reginald Eversleigh," continued
Paulina Durski, with the same passionate intensity of manner, "My
father was an incorrigible gambler; and before I had emerged from
childhood to girlhood, the handsome fortune which should have been mine
had been squandered. As a girl the rattle of the dice, the clamour of
the _rouge et noir_ table were the most familiar sounds to my ears.
Night after night, night after night, I have kept watch at my own
window, and have seen the lighted windows of my father's rooms, and
have known that grim poverty was drawing nearer and nearer as the long
hours of those sleepless nights went by."

"My poor Paulina!"

"My mother died young, exhausted by the perpetual fever of anxiety
which the gambler's wife is doomed to suffer. She died, and I was left
alone--a woman; beautiful if you will, and, as the world supposed,
heiress to a large fortune; for none knew how entirely the wealth which
should have been mine had melted away in those nights of dissipation
and folly. People knew that my father played, and played desperately;
but few knew the extent of his losses. After my mother's death, my
father insisted on my doing the honours of his house. I received his
friends; I stood by his chair as he played _ecarte_, or sat by his side
and noted the progress of the game at the _rouge et noir_ table. Then
first I felt the fatal passion which I can but believe to be a taint in
my very blood. Slowly and gradually the fascinating vice assumed its
horrible mastery. I watched the progress of the play. I learned to
understand that science which was the one all-absorbing pursuit of
those around me. Then I played myself, first taking a hand at _ecarte_
with some of the younger guests, half in sport, and then venturing a
small golden coin at the _rouge et noir_ table, while my admirers
praised my daring, as if I had been some capricious child. In those
assemblies I was always the only woman, except Matilda Brewer, who was
then my governess. My father would have no female guests at these
nightly orgies. The presence of women would have been a hindrance to
the delights of the gaming-table. At first I felt all the bitterness of
my position. I looked forward with unspeakable dread to the dreary
future in which I should find destitution staring me in the face. But
when once the gamester's madness had seized upon me, I thought no more
of that dreary future; I became as reckless as my father and his
guests; I forgot everything in the excitement of the moment. To be
lucky at the gaming-table was to be happy; to lose was despair. Thus my
youth went by, till the day when my father told me that Colonel Durski
had offered me his hand and fortune, and that I had no alternative but
to accept him."

"Oh, then, your first marriage was no love-match?" cried Reginald,
eagerly.

"A love-match!" exclaimed Paulina, contemptuously. "No; it was a
marriage of convenience, dictated by a father who set less value on his
daughter's happiness than on a good hand of cards. My father told me I
must choose between Leopold Durski and ruin. 'This house cannot shelter
you much longer,' he said. 'For myself there is flight. I can go to
America, and lose my identity in strange cities. I cannot remain in
Vienna, to be pointed at as the beggared Count Veschi. But with you for
my companion I should be tied hand and foot. As a wanderer and an
adventurer, I may prosper alone; but as a wanderer, burdened with a
helpless woman, failure would be certain. It is not a question of
choice, Paulina,' he said, resolutely; 'there is no alternative. You
must become the wife of Leopold Durski.'"