Run to Earth by M. E. Braddon

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

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* * * * *

Sir Reginald and his fatal ally, Carrington, met on the following day,
and the former angrily related the scene which had been enacted at
Hilton House.

"Your influence has been at work there," he exclaimed. "You have
brought about an alliance between this woman and Douglas Dale."

"I have," answered Victor, coolly. "Mr. Dale has offered her his hand
and fortune, as well as his heart, and has been accepted."

"You are going to play me false, Victor Carrington!"

"Indeed!"

"Yes, or else why take such pains to bring about this marriage?"

"You are a fool, Reginald Eversleigh, and an obstinate fool, or you
would not harp upon this subject after what I have said. I have told
you that the marriage which you fear will never take place."

"How will you prevent it?"

"As easily as I could bring it about, did I choose to do so. Pshaw! my
dear boy, the simple, honest people in this world are so many puppets,
and it needs but the master-mind to pull the strings."

"If this marriage is not intended to take place, why have you brought
about an engagement between Paulina and Douglas?" asked the baronet, in
nowise convinced by what his ally had said. "I have my reasons, and
good ones, though you are too dull of brain to perceive them," replied
Victor, impatiently. "You and your cousin, Douglas Dale, have been fast
friends, have you not?"

"We have."

"Listen to me, then. If he were to die without direct heirs you are the
only person who would profit by his death; and if he, a young; man,
powerful of frame, in robust health, no likely subject for disease,
were to die, leaving you owner of ten thousand a year, and were to die
while in the habit of holding daily intercourse with you, known to be
your friend and companion, is it not just possible that malevolent and
suspicious people might drop strange hints as to the cause of his
death? They might harp upon your motives for wishing him out of the
way. They might dwell upon the fact that you were so much together, and
that you had such opportunities--mark me, Reginald, _opportunities_--
for tampering with the one solitary life which stood between you and
fortune. They might say all this, might they not?"

"Yes," replied Reginald, in his gloomiest tone, "they might."

"Very well, then, if you take my advice, you will cut your cousin's
acquaintance from this time. You will take care to let your friends of
the clubs know that he has supplanted you in the affections of the
woman you loved, and that you and he are no longer on speaking terms.
You will cut him publicly at one of your clubs; so that the fact of the
coldness between you may become sufficiently notorious. And when you
have done this, you will start for the Continent."

"Go abroad? But why?"

"That is my secret. Remember, you have promised to obey me blindly,"
answered Victor. "You will go abroad; you will let the world know that
you and Douglas Dale are divided by the width of the Channel; you will
leave him free to devote himself to the woman he has chosen for his
wife; and if, while engaged to her, an untimely fate should overtake
this young man--if he, like his elder brother, should be removed from
your pathway, the most malicious scandal-monger that ever lived could
scarcely say that you had any hand in his fate."

"I understand," murmured Reginald, in a low voice; "I understand."

He said no more. He had grown white to the very lips; and those pale
lips were dry and feverish. But the conversation changed abruptly, and
Douglas Dale's name was not again mentioned.

In the meantime, the betrothed lovers had been very happy and this
interview, which she had always dreaded but felt she could not avoid,
having passed over, Paulina was more at liberty to realize her changed
position, and dwell on her future prospects. She was really happy, but
in her happiness there was some touch of fever, something too much of
nervous excitement. It was not the calm happiness which makes the
crowning joy of an untroubled life. A long career of artificial
excitement, of alternate fears and hopes, the mad delight and madder
despair which makes the gambler's fever, had unfitted Paulina for the
quiet peace of a spirit at rest. She yearned for rest, but the angel of
rest had been scared away by the long nights of dissipation, and would
not answer to her call.

Victor Carrington had fathomed the mystery of her feverish gaiety--her
intervals of dull apathy that was almost despair. In the depth of her
misery she had lulled herself to a false repose by the use of opium;
and even now, when the old miseries were no more, she could not exist
without the poisonous anodyne.

"Douglas Dale must be blinded by his infatuation, or he would have
found out the state of the case by this time," Victor said to himself.
"Circumstances could not be more favourable to my plans. A man who is
blind and deaf, and utterly idiotic under the influence of an absurd
infatuation, one woman whose brains are intoxicated by opium, and
another who would sell her soul for money."

* * * * *

These incidents, which have occupied so much space in the telling, in
reality did not fill up much time. Only a month had elapsed since
Lionel Dale's death, when Reginald Eversleigh and Paulina had the
interview described above. And now it seemed as though Fate itself were
conspiring with the conspirators, for the watch kept upon them by
Andrew Larkspur was perforce delayed, and Lady Eversleigh's designs of
retributive punishment were suspended. A few days after the return of
Mr. Larkspur to town, that gentleman was seized with serious illness,
and for three weeks was unable to leave his bed. Mr. Andrew lay ill
with acute bronchitis, in the lodging-house in Percy Street, and Mrs.
Eden was compelled to wait his convalescence with what patience she
might.

* * * * *

Sir Reginald Eversleigh and Douglas Dale met at the Phoenix Club soon
after Reginald's interview with Madame Durski.

Douglas met his cousin with a quiet and courteous manner, in which
there was no trace of unfriendly feeling: a manner that expressed so
little of any feeling whatever as to be almost negative.

It was not so, however, with Sir Reginald. He remembered Victor
Carrington's advice as to the wisdom of a palpable estrangement between
himself and his cousin, and he took good care to act upon that counsel.

This course was, indeed, the only one that would have been at all
agreeable to him.

He hated Douglas Dale with all the force of his evil nature, as the
innocent instrument of Sir Oswald's retribution upon the destroyer of
Mary Goodwin.

He envied the young man the advantages which his own bad conduct had
forfeited; and he now had learned to hate him with redoubled intensity,
as the man who had supplanted him in the affections of Paulina Durski.

The two men met in the smoking-room of the club at the most fashionable
hour of the day.

Nothing could have been more conspicuous than the haughty insolence of
the spendthrift baronet as he saluted his wealthy cousin.

"How is it I have not seen you at my chambers in the Temple,
Eversleigh?" asked Douglas, in that calm tone of studied courtesy which
expresses so little.

"Because I had no particular reason for calling on you; and because, if
I had wished to see you, I should scarcely have expected to find you in
your Temple chambers," answered Sir Reginald. "If report does not belie
you, you spend the greater part of your existence at a certain villa at
Fulham."

There was that in Sir Reginald Eversleigh's tone which attracted the
attention of the men within hearing--almost all of whom were well
acquainted with the careers of the two cousins, and many of whom knew
them personally.

Though the club loungers were too well-bred to listen, it was
nevertheless obvious that the attention of all had been more or less
aroused by the baronet's tone and manner.

Douglas Dale answered, in accents as audible, and a tone as haughty as
the accents and tone of his cousin.

"Report is not likely to belie me," he said, "since there is no mystery
in my life to afford food for gossip. If by a certain villa at Fulham
you mean Hilton House, you are not mistaken. I have the honour to be a
frequent guest at that house."

"It is an honour which many of us have enjoyed," answered Reginald,
with a sneer.

"An honour which I used to find deuced expensive, by Jove!" exclaimed
Viscount Caversham, who was standing near Douglas Dale.

"That was at the time when Sir Reginald Eversleigh usurped the position
of host in Madame Durski's house," replied Douglas. "You would find
things much changed there now, Caversham, were the lady to favour you
by an invitation. When Madame Durski first came to England she was so
unfortunate as to fall into the hands of evil counsellors. She has
learned since to know her friends from her enemies."

"She is a very charming woman," drawled the viscount, laughingly; "but
if you want to keep a balance at your banker's, Dale, I should strongly
advise you to refuse her hospitality."

"Madame Durski will shortly be my wife," replied Douglas, in a voice
loud enough to be heard by the bystanders; "and the smallest word
calculated to cast a slur on her fair fame will be an insult to me--an
insult which I shall know how to resent."

This announcement fell like a thunderbolt in the assembly of
fashionable idlers. All knew the history of the house at Fulham. They
knew of Paulina Durski only as a beautiful, but dangerous, syren, whose
fatal smiles lured men to their ruin. That Douglas Dale should unite
himself to such a woman seemed to them little short of absolute
madness.

Love must be strong indeed which will face the ridicule of mankind
unflinchingly. Douglas Dale knew that, in redeeming Paulina from her
miserable situation, in elevating her to a position that many blameless
and well-born Englishwomen would have gladly accepted, he was making a
sacrifice which the men amongst whom he lived would condemn as the act
of a fool. But he was willing to endure this, painful though it was to
him, for the sake of the woman he loved.

"Better that I should have the scorn of shallow-brained worldlings than
that the blight on her life should continue," he said to himself. "When
she is my wife, no man will dare to question her honour--no woman will
dare to frown upon her when she enters society leaning on my arm."

This is what Douglas Dale repeated to himself very often during his
courtship of Paulina Durski. This is what he thought as he stood erect
and defiant in the crowded room of the Pall Mall club, facing the
curious looks of his acquaintances.

After the first shock there was a dead silence; no voice murmured the
common-place phrases of congratulation which might naturally have
followed such an announcement. If Douglas Dale had just announced that
some dire misfortune had befallen him, the faces of the men around him
could not have been more serious. No one smiled; no one applauded his
choice; not one voice congratulated him on having won for himself so
fair a bride.

That ominous silence told Douglas Dale how terrible was the stigma
which the world had set upon her he so fondly loved. The anguish which
rent his heart during those few moments is not to be expressed by
words. After that most painful silence, he walked to the table at which
it was his habit to sit, and began to read a newspaper. Sir Reginald
watched him furtively for a few moments in silence, and then left the
room.

After this the two cousins met frequently; but they never spoke. They
passed each other with the coldest and most ceremonious salutation. The
idlers of the club perceived this, and commented on the fact.

"Douglas Dale and his cousin are not on speaking terms," they said:
"they have quarrelled about that beautiful Austrian widow, at whose
house there used to be such high play."

In Paulina's society, Douglas tried to forget the cruel shadow which
darkened, and which, in all likelihood, would for ever darken, her
name; and while in her society he contrived to banish from his mind all
bitter thought of the world's harsh verdict and cruel condemnation.

But away from Paulina he was tortured by the recollection of that scene
at the Phoenix Club; tormented by the thought that, let him make what
sacrifice he might, he could never wipe out the stain which those
midnight assemblies of gamesters had left on his future wife's
reputation.

"We will leave England for ever after the marriage," he said to himself
sometimes. "We will make our home in some fair Italian city, where my
Paulina will be respected and admired as if she were a queen, as well
as the loveliest and sweetest of women."

If he asked Paulina where their future life was to be spent she always
replied to him in the same manner.

"Wherever you take me I shall be content," she said. "I can never be
grateful enough for your goodness; I can never repay the debt I owe
you. Let our future be your planning, not mine."

"And you have no wish, no fancy, that I can realize, Paulina?"

"None. Prom my earliest girlhood I have sighed for only one blessing--
peace! You have given me that. What more can I ask at your hands? Ah!
Douglas, I fear my love has already cost you too dearly. The world will
never forgive you for your choice; you, who might make so brilliant a
marriage!"

Her generous feelings once aroused, Paulina could be almost as noble as
her lover. Again and again she implored him to withdraw his promise--to
leave, and to forget her.

"Believe me, Douglas, our engagement is a mistake," she said. "Consider
this before it is too late. You are a proud man where honour is
concerned, and the past life of her whom you marry should be without
spot or blemish. It is not so with me. If I have not sinned as other
women have sinned, I have stooped to be the companion of gamblers and
roues; I have allowed my house to become the haunt of reckless and
dissipated men. Society revenges itself cruelly upon those who break
its laws. Society will neither forget nor forgive my offence."

"I do not live for society, but for you, Paulina," replied Douglas,
passionately; "you are all the world to me. Let me never hear these
arguments again, unless you would have me think that you are weary of
me, and that you only want an excuse for getting rid of me."

"Weary of you!" exclaimed Paulina; "my friend, my benefactor. How can I
ever prove my gratitude for your goodness--your devotion?"

"By learning to love me a little," answered Douglas, tenderly.

"The lesson ought not to be difficult," Paulina murmured.

Could she do less than love this noble friend, this pure-minded and
unselfish adorer?

He came to her one day, accompanied by a solicitor; but before
introducing the man of law, he asked for a private interview with
Paulina, and in this interview gave her a new proof of his devotion.

"In thinking much of our position, dearest, I have been struck with a
sudden terror of the uncertainty of life. What would be your fate,
Paulina, if anything were to happen--if--well, if I were to die
suddenly, as men so often die in this high-pressure age, before
marriage had united our interests? What would be your fate, alone and
helpless, assailed once more by all the perplexities of poverty, and,
perhaps, subject to the mean spite of my cousin, Reginald Eversleigh,
who does not forgive me for having robbed him of his place in your
heart, little as he was worthy of your love?"

"Oh, Douglas!" exclaimed Paulina, "why do you imagine such things? Why
should death assail you?"

"Why, indeed, dearest," returned Douglas, with a smile. "Do not think
that I anticipate so sad a close to our engagement. But it is the duty
of a man to look sharply out for every danger in the pathway of the
woman he is bound to protect. I am a lawyer, remember, Paulina, and I
contemplate the future with the eye of a lawyer. So far as I can secure
you from even the possibility of misfortune, I will do it. I have
brought a solicitor here to-day, in order that he may read you a will
which I have this morning executed in your favour."

"A will!" repeated Madame Durski; "you are only too good to me. But
there is something horrible to my mind in these legal formalities."

"That is only a woman's prejudice. It is the feminine idea that a man
must needs be at the point of death when he makes his will. And now let
me explain the nature of this will," continued Douglas. "I have told
you that if I should happen to die without direct heirs, the estate
left me by Sir Oswald Eversleigh will go to my cousin Reginald. That
estate, from which is derived my income, I have no power to alienate; I
am a tenant for life only. But my income has been double, and sometimes
treble, my expenditure, for my habits have been very simple, and my
life only that of a student in the Temple. My sole extravagance,
indeed, has been the collection of a library. I have, therefore, been
able to save twelve thousand pounds, and this sum is my own to
bequeath. I have made a will, leaving this amount to you, Paulina--
charged only with a small annuity to a faithful old servant--together
with my personal property, consisting only of a few good Italian
pictures, a library of rare old books, and the carvings and decorations
of my roams--all valuable in their way. This is all the law allows me
to give you, Paulina; but it will, at least, secure you from want."

Madame Durski tried to speak; but she was too deeply affected by this
new proof of her lover's generosity. Tears choked her utterance; she
took Douglas Dale's hand in both her own, and lifted it to her lips;
and this silent expression of gratitude touched his heart more than the
most eloquent speech could have affected it.

He led her into the room where the attorney awaited her.

"This gentleman is Mr. Horley," he said, "a friend and adviser in whom
you may place unbounded confidence. My will is to remain in his
possession; and should any untimely fate overtake me, he will protect
your interests. And now, Mr. Horley, will you be good enough to read
the document to Madame Durski, in order that she may understand what
her position would be in case of the worst?"

Mr. Horley read the will. It was as simple and concise as the law
allows any legal document to be; and it made Paulina Durski mistress of
twelve thousand pounds, and property equal to two or three thousand
more, in the event of Douglas Dale's death.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXI.

"A WORTHLESS WOMAN, MERE COLD CLAY."

Neither Lydia Graham nor her brother were quick to recover from the
disappointment caused by the untimely fate of Lionel Dale. Miss Graham
endeavoured to sustain her failing spirits with the hope that in
Douglas she might find a wealthier prize than his brother; but Douglas
was yet to be enslaved by those charms which Lydia herself felt were on
the wane, and by fascinations which twelve years of fashionable
existence had rendered somewhat stale even to the fair Lydia's most
ardent admirers.

It was very bitter--the cup had been so near her lips, when an adverse
destiny had dashed it from her. The lady's grief was painfully sincere.
She did not waste one lamentation on her lover's sad fate, but she most
bitterly regretted her own loss of a rich husband.

She watched and hoped day after day for the promised visit from Douglas
Dale, but he did not come. Every day during visiting hours she wore her
most becoming toilets; she arranged her small drawing-room with the
studied carelessness of an elegant woman; she seated herself in her
most graceful attitudes every time the knocker heralded the advent of a
caller; but it was all so much wasted labour. The only guest whom she
cared to see was not among those morning visitors; and Lydia's heart
began to be oppressed by a sense of despair.

"Well, Gordon, have you heard anything of Douglas Dale?" she asked her
brother, day after day.

One day he came home with a very gloomy face, and when she uttered the
usual question, he answered her in his gloomiest tone.

"I've heard something you'll scarcely care to learn," he said, "as it
must sound the death-knell of all your hopes in that quarter. You know,
Douglas Dale is a member of the Phoenix, as well as the Forum. I don't
belong to the Phoenix, as you also know, but I meet Dale occasionally
at the Forum. Yesterday I lunched with Lord Caversham, a member of the
Phoenix, and an acquaintance of Dale's; and from him I learned that
Douglas Dale has publicly announced his intended marriage with Paulina
Durski."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Lydia.

She had heard of Paulina and the villa at Fulham from her brother, and
she hated the lovely Austrian for the beauty and the fascination which
won her a kind of renown amongst the fops and lordlings--the idlers and
spendthrifts of the fashionable clubs.

"It cannot be true," cried Miss Graham, flushing crimson with anger.
"It is one of Lord Caversham's absurd stories; and I dare say is
without the slightest foundation. I cannot and will not believe that
Douglas Dale would throw himself away upon such a woman as this Madame
Durski."

"You have never seen her?"

"Of course not."

"Then don't speak so very confidently," said Captain Graham, who was
malicious enough to take some pleasure in his sister's discomfiture.
"Paulina Durski is one of the handsomest women I ever saw; not above
five-and-twenty years of age--elegant, fascinating, patrician--a woman
for whose sake a wiser man than Douglas Dale might be willing to
sacrifice himself."

"I will see Mr. Dale," exclaimed Lydia. "I will ascertain from his own
lips whether there is any foundation for this report."

"How will you contrive to see him?" "You must arrange that for me. You
can invite him to dinner."

"I can invite him; but the question is whether he will come. Perhaps,
if you were to write him a note, he would be more flattered than by any
verbal invitation from me."

Lydia was not slow to take this hint. She wrote one of those charming
and flattering epistles which an artful and self-seeking woman of the
world so well knows how to pen. She expressed her surprise and regret
at not having seen Mr. Dale since her return to town--her fear that he
might be ill, her hope that he would accept an invitation to a friendly
dinner with herself and her brother, who was also most anxious about
him.

She was not destined to disappointment. On the following day she
received a brief note from Mr. Dale, accepting her invitation for the
next evening.

The note was very stiffly--nay, almost coldly worded; but Lydia
attributed the apparent lack of warmth to the reserved nature of
Douglas Dale, rather than to any failure of her own scheme.

The fact that he accepted her invitation at all, she considered a proof
of the falsehood of the report about his intended marriage, and a good
omen for herself.

She took care to provide a _recherche_ little dinner for her important
guest, low as the finances of herself and her brother were--and were
likely to be for some time to come. She invited a dashing widow, who
was her obliging friend and neighbour, and who was quite ready to play
propriety for the occasion. Lydia Graham looked her handsomest when
Douglas Dale was ushered into her presence that evening; but she little
knew how indifferent were the eyes that contemplated her bold, dark
beauty; and how, even as he looked at her, Douglas Dale's thoughts
wandered to the fair, pale face of Paulina Durski--that face, which for
him was the loveliest that had ever beamed with light and beauty below
the stars.

The dinner was to all appearance a success. Nothing could be more
cordial or friendly, as it seemed, than that party of four, seated at a
prettily decorated circular table, attended by a well-trained man-
servant--the dashing widow's butler and factotum, borrowed for the
occasion.

Mrs. Marmaduke, the dashing widow, made herself very agreeable, and
took care to engage Captain Graham in conversation all the evening,
leaving Lydia free to occupy the entire attention of Douglas Dale.

That young lady made excellent use of her time. Day by day her chances
of a rich marriage had grown less and less, and day by day she had
grown more and more anxious to secure a position and a home. She had a
very poor opinion of Mr. Dale's intellect, for she believed only in the
cleverness of those bolder and more obtrusive men who make themselves
prominent in every assembly. She thought him a man easily to be
beguiled by honeyed words and bewitching glances, and she had,
therefore, determined to play a bold, if not a desperate game. While
Mrs. Marmaduke and Captain Graham were talking in the front drawing-
room, Lydia contrived to detain her guest in the inner apartment--a
tiny chamber, just large enough to hold a small cottage piano, a stand
of music-books, and a couple of chairs.

Miss Graham seated herself at the piano, and played a few bars with an
absent and somewhat pensive air.