Run to Earth by M. E. Braddon

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

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* * * * *

It was late on the following morning when Miss Brewer entered Paulina's
room, and having softly opened the shutters, drew near the bed with a
noiseless step. The bed-clothes, which were wont to be tossed and
tumbled by the restless sleeper, were smooth and undisturbed. Never had
Miss Brewer seen her mistress in an attitude so expressive of complete
repose.

"Poor thing! she has had a good night after all," thought the
companion.

She bent over the quiet figure, the pale face, so statuesque in that
calm sleep, and gently touched the white, listless hand.

Yes--this indeed was perfect repose; but it was the repose of death.
The bottle from which Paulina had habitually taken a daily modicum of
opium, lay on the ground by the bedside, empty.

Whether the luckless, hopeless, heart-broken woman, overwhelmed by the
sense of an inscrutable Fate that forbade her every chance of peace or
happiness, had, in her supreme despair, committed the sin of the
suicide, who shall say? It is possible that she had only taken an over-
dose of the perilous compound unconsciously, in the dull apathy of her
despair.

She was dead. Life for her had been one long humiliation, one long
struggle. And at last, when the cup of happiness had been offered to
her lips, a cruel hand had snatched it away from her.

* * * * *

When Miss Brewer recovered her senses and her power of action, she sent
for Douglas Dale. News of the awful event had got abroad by that time,
through the terrified servants; and two doctors and a policeman were on
the premises. A messenger was easily procured, who tore off in a hansom
to the Temple. As the man ran up the steps leading to Dr. Johnson's
Buildings, where Dale's new chambers were situated, he encountered two
ladies on the first landing.

"I beg your pardon," he said, pushing them, however, very decidedly
aside as he spoke, "I must see Mr. Dale; please do not detain him. It
is most important." The ladies stood aside exchanging frightened and
curious looks, but made no attempt to make their presence known to Mr.
Dale, who came out of his rooms in a few minutes, attended by the
messenger, and passed them without seeming in the least aware of their
presence, and wearing the ghastliest face that ever was seen on mortal
man. That face struck them dumb and motionless, and it was not until
Jarvis had twice asked them their names and business, that the elder
lady replied. "They would call again," she told him, and handed him
cards bearing the names of "Lady Verner," "Lady Eversleigh."

* * * * *

Victor Carrington appeared at Hilton House early in the afternoon. He
had calculated that his work must needs be very near its completion,
and he came prepared to hear of Douglas Dale's mortal illness.

The blow that awaited him was a death-blow. Miss Brewer had told
Douglas all: the lies, the artifices, by which the man Carton had
contrived to make himself a constant visitor in that house. In a
moment, without the mention of the schemer's real name, Heaven's light
was let in upon the mystery; the dark enigma was solved, and the woman,
so tenderly loved and so cruelly wronged, was exonerated.

Too late--too late! _That_ was the agonizing reflection which smote the
heart of Douglas Dale, with a pain more terrible than the sharpest
death-pang. "I have broken her heart!" he cried. "I have broken that
true, devoted heart!"

The appearance of Victor Carrington was the signal for such a burst of
rage as even his iron nature could scarcely brook unshaken.

"Miscreant! devil! incarnate iniquity!" cried Douglas, as he grasped
and grappled with the baffled plotter. "You have tried to murder me--
and you have tried to murder her! I might have forgiven you the first
crime--I will drag you to the halter for the second, and think myself
poorly revenged when I hear the rabble yelling beneath your scaffold!"

Happily for Carrington, the effects of the poison had reduced his
victim to extreme weakness. The convulsive grasp loosened, the hoarse
voice died into a whisper, and Douglas Dale swooned as helplessly as a
woman.

"What does it mean?" asked Victor. "Is this man mad?"

"We have all been mad!" returned Miss Brewer, passionately. "The blind,
besotted dupes of your demoniac wickedness! Paulina Durski is dead!"

"Dead!"

"Yes. There was a quarrel, yesterday, between these two--and he left
her. I found her this morning--dead! I have told him all--the part I
have played at your bidding. I shall tell it again in a court of
justice, I pray God!"

"You can tell it when and where you please," replied Victor, with
horrible calmness. "I shall not be there to hear it."

He walked out of the house. Douglas Dale had not yet recovered
consciousness, and there was no one to hinder Carrington's departure.

For some time he walked on, unconscious whither he went, unable to
grasp or realize the events that had befallen. But at last-dimly,
darkly, grim shapes arose out of the chaos of his brain.

There would be a trial--some kind of trial!--Douglas Dale would not be
baffled of vengeance if the law could give it him. His crime--what was
it, if it could be proved? An attempt to murder--an attempt the basest,
the most hideous, and revolting. What hope could he have of mercy--he,
utterly merciless himself, expected no such weakness from his fellow-
men.

But in this supreme hour of utter defeat, his thoughts did not dwell on
the hazards of the future. The chief bitterness of his soul was the
agony of disappointment--of baffled hope--of humiliation, degradation
unspeakable. He had thought himself invincible, the master of his
fellow-men, by the supremacy of intellectual power, and remorseless
cruelty. And he was what? A baffled trickster, whose every move upon
the great chessboard had been a separate mistake, leading step by step
to the irrevocable sentence--checkmate!

The ruined towers of Champfontaine arose before him, as in a vision,
black against a blood-red sky.

"I can understand those mad devils of '93--I can understand the roll-
call of the guillotine--the noyades--the conflagrations--the foul
orgies of murderous drunkards, drunken with blood. Those men had
schemed as I have schemed, and worked as I have worked, and waited as I
have waited--to fail like me!"

He had walked far from the West-end, into some dreary road eastward of
the City, choosing by some instinct the quietest streets, before he was
calm enough to contemplate the perils of his position, or to decide
upon the course he should take.

A few minutes' reflection told him that he must fly--Douglas Dale would
doubtless hunt him as a wild beast is hunted. Where was he to go? Was
there any lair, or covert, in all that wide city where he might be
safely hidden from the vengeance of the man he had wronged so deeply?

He remembered Captain Halkard's letter. He dragged the crumpled sheet
of paper from his pocket, and read a few lines. Yes: it was as he had
thought. The "Pandion" was to leave Gravesend at five o'clock next
morning.

"I will go to the ice-graves and the bears!" he exclaimed. "Let them
track me there!"

Energetic always, no less energetic even in this hour of desperation,
he made his way down to the sailors' quarter, and spent his few last
pounds in the purchase of a scanty outfit. After doing this, he dined
frugally at a quiet tavern, and then took the steamer for Gravesend.

He slept on board the "Pandion." The place offered him had not been
filled by any one else. It was not a very tempting post, or a very
tempting expedition. The men who had organized it were enthusiasts,
imbued with that fever-thirst of the explorer which has made many
martyrs, from the age of the Cabots to the days of Franklin.

The "Pandion" sailed in that gray cheerless morning, her white sails
gleaming ghastly athwart the chill mists of the river, and so vanished
for ever Victor Carrington from the eyes of all men, save those who
went with him. The fate of that expedition was never known. Beneath
what iceberg the "Pandion" found her grave none can tell. Brave and
noble hearts perished with her, and to die with those good men was too
honourable a doom for such a wretch as Victor Carrington.

CHAPTER XL.

"SO SHALL YE REAP."

Little now remains to be told of this tale of crime and retribution, of
suffering and compensation. Miss Brewer told her dreadful story, as far
as she knew it, with perfect truth; and her evidence, together with the
evidence of the chemist who had supplied Madame Durski from time to
time with the fatal consoler of all her pains and sorrows, made it
clear that the luckless woman, lying quietly in the darkened room at
Hilton House, had died from an over-dose of opium.

Douglas Dale could not attend that inquest. He was stricken down with
fever; the fate of the woman he had so loved, so unjustly suspected,
nearly cost him his life, and when he recovered sufficiently, he left
England, not to return for three years. Before his departure he saw
Lady Eversleigh and her mother, and established with them a bond of
friendship as close as that of their kin. He provided liberally for
Miss Brewer, but her rescue from poverty brought her no happiness: she
was a broken-hearted woman.

Victor Carrington's mother retired into a convent, and was probably as
happy as she had ever been. She had loved him but little, whose only
virtue was that he had loved her much.

Captain Copplestone's rapture knew no bounds when he clasped little
Gertrude in his arms once more. He was almost jealous of Rosamond
Jernam, when he found how great a hold she had obtained on the heart of
her charge; but his jealousy was mingled with gratitude, and he joined
Lady Eversleigh in testifying his friendship for the tender-hearted
woman who had protected and cherished the heiress of Raynham in the
hour of her desolation.

It is not to be supposed that the world remained long in ignorance of
this romantic episode in the common-place story of every-day life.

Paragraphs found their way into the newspapers, no one knew how, and
society marvelled at the good fortune of Sir Oswald's widow.

"That woman's wealth must be boundless," exclaimed aristocratic
dowagers, for whom the grip of poverty's bony fingers had been tight
and cruel. "Her husband left her magnificent estates, and an enormous
amount of funded property; and now a mother drops down from the skies
for her benefit--a mother who is reported to be almost as rich as
herself."

* * * * *

Amongst those who envied Lady Eversleigh's good fortune, there was none
whose envy was so bitter as that of her husband's disappointed nephew,
Sir Reginald.

This woman had stood between him and fortune, and it would have been
happiness to him to see her grovelling in the dust, a beggar and an
outcast. Instead of this, he heard of her exaltation, and he hated her
with an intense hatred which was almost childish in its purposeless
fury.

He speedily found, however, that life was miserable without his evil
counsellor. The Frenchman's unabating confidence in ultimate success
had sustained the penniless idler in the darkest day of misfortune. But
now he found himself quite alone; and there was no voice to promise
future triumph. He knew that the game of life had been played to the
last card, and that it was lost.

His feeble character was not equal to support the burden of poverty and
despair.

He dared not show his face at any of the clubs where he had once been
so distinguished a member; for he knew that the voice of society was
against him.

Thus hopeless, friendless, and abandoned by his kind, Sir Reginald
Eversleigh had recourse to the commonest form of consolation. He fled
from a country in which his name had become odious, and took up his
abode in Paris, where he found a miserable lodging in one of the
narrowest alleys in the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg, which was then
a labyrinth of narrow streets and lanes.

Here he could afford to buy brandy, for at that date brandy was much
cheaper in France than it is now. Here he could indulge his growing
propensity for strong drink to the uttermost extent of his means, and
could drown his sorrows, and drink destruction to his enemies, in fiery
draughts of cognac.

For some years he inhabited the same dirty garret, keeping the key of
his wretched chamber, going up and down the crumbling old staircase
uncared for and unnoticed. Few who had known him in the past would have
recognized the once elegant young man in this latter stage of his
existence. Form and features, complexion and expression, were alike
degraded. The garments worn by him, who had once been the boasted
patron of crack West-end tailors, were now shapeless and hideous. The
dandy of the clubs had become a perambulating mass of rags.

Every day when the sun shone he buttoned his greasy, threadbare
overcoat across his breast, and crawled to the public garden of the
Luxembourg, where he might be seen shuffling slipshod along the
sunniest walk, an object of contempt and aversion in the eyes of
nursery-maids and _grisettes_--a butt for the dare-devil students of
the quarter.

Had he any consciousness of his degradation?

Yes; that was the undying vulture which preyed upon his entrails--the
consuming fire that was never quenched.

During the brief interval of each day in which he was sober, Sir
Reginald Eversleigh was wont to reflect upon the past. He knew himself
to be the wretch and outcast he was; and, looking back at his start in
life, he could but remember how different his career might have been
had he so chosen.

In those hours the slow tears made furrows in his haggard cheeks--the
tears of remorse, vain repentance, that came too late for earth; but
not, perhaps, utterly too late for heaven, since, even for this last
and worst of sinners, there might be mercy.

Thus his life passed--a changeless routine, unbroken by one bright
interval, one friendly visit, one sign or token to show that there was
any link between this lonely wretch and the rest of humanity.

One day the porter, who lived in a little den at the bottom of the
lodging-house staircase, suddenly missed the familiar figure which had
gone by his rabbit-hutch every day for the last six years; the besotted
face that had stared at him morning and evening with the blank,
unseeing gaze of the habitual drunkard.

"What has become of the old toper who lives up yonder among the
chimney-pots?" cried the porter, suddenly, to the wife of his bosom. "I
have not seen him to-day nor yesterday, nor for many days. He must be
ill. I will go upstairs and make inquiries by-and-by, when I have
leisure."

The porter waited for a leisure half-hour after dark, and then tramped
wearily up the steep old staircase with a lighted candle to see after
the missing lodger. He might have waited even longer without detriment
to Sir Reginald Eversleigh.

The baronet had been dead many days, suffocated by the fumes of his
poor little charcoal stove. A trap-door in the roof, which he had been
accustomed to open for the ventilation of his garret, had been closed
by the wind, and the baronet had passed unconsciously from sleep to
death.

He had died, and no one had been aware of his death. The people of the
house did not know either his name or his country. His burial was that
of an unknown pauper; and the bones of the last male scion of the house
of Eversleigh were mingled with the bones of Parisian paupers in the
cemetery of Pere la Chaise.

While Sir Reginald Eversleigh dragged out the wretched remnant of his
existence in a dingy Parisian alley, there was perfect peace and
tranquil happiness for the woman against whose fair fame he and Victor
Carrington had so basely conspired.

Yes, Anna was at peace; surrounded by friends; delighted day by day to
watch the budding loveliness, the sportive grace of Gertrude
Eversleigh, the idolized heiress of Raynham. As Lady Eversleigh paced
the terraces of an Italian garden, her mother by her side, with
Gertrude clinging to her side; as she looked out over the vast domain
which owned her as mistress--it might seem that fortune had lavished
her fairest gifts into the lap of her who had been once a friendless
stranger, singing in the taverns of Wapping.

Wonderful indeed had been the transitions which had befallen her; but
even now, when the horizon seemed so fair before her, there were dark
shadows upon the past which, in some measure, clouded the brightness of
the present, and dimmed the radiance of the future.

She could not forget her night of agony in the house amongst the
marshes beyond Ratcliff Highway; she could not cease to lament the loss
of that noble friend who had rescued her in the hour of her despair.

The world wondered at the prolonged widowhood of the mistress of
Raynham. People were surprised to find that a woman in the golden prime
of womanhood and beauty could be constant to the memory of a husband
old enough to have been her father. But in due time society learned to
accept the fact as a matter of course, and Lady Eversleigh was no
longer the subject of hopes and speculations.

Her constant gratitude and friendship for the Jernams suffered no
diminution as time went on. The difference in their social position
made no difference to her; and no more frequent or more welcome guests
were seen at Raynham than Captain Duncombe, his daughter and son-in-
law, and honest Joyce Harker. Lady Eversleigh had a particular regard
for the man who had so true and faithful a heart, and she would often
talk to him; but she never mentioned the subject of that miserable
night on which he had seen her down at Wapping. That subject was
tacitly avoided by both. There was a pain too intense, a memory too
dark, associated with the events of that period.

And so the story ends. There is no sound of pleasant wedding bells to
close my record with their merry, jangling chorus. Is it not the fate
of the innocent to suffer in this life for the sins of the wicked? Lady
Eversleigh's widowhood, Douglas Dale's lonely life, are the work of
Victor Carrington--a work not to be undone upon this earth. If he has
failed in all else, he has succeeded at least in this: he has ruined
the happiness of two lives. For both his victims time brings peace--a
sober gladness that is not without its charm. For one a child's
affection--a child's growing grace of mind and form, bring a happiness
on, clouded at intervals by the dark shadows of past sorrow. But in the
heart of Douglas Dale there is an empty place which can never be filled
upon earth.

"Will the Eternal and all-seeing One forgive her for her reckless,
useless life, and shall I meet her among the blest in heaven?" he asks
himself sometimes, and then he remembers the holy words of comfort
unspeakable: "Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I
will give you rest."

Had not Paulina been "weary, and heavy laden," bowed down by the burden
of a false accusation, friendless, hopeless, from her very cradle?

He thought of the illimitable Mercy, and he dared to hope for the day
in which he should meet her he loved "Beyond the Veil."

THE END.