Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “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 She had never withdrawn her eyes from the eastern horizon.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 anon
ymous 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.

  Had any fatal accident happened to her and her companion? — or were Honoria Eversleigh and Victor Carrington two guilty creatures, who had abandoned themselves to the folly and madness of a wicked attachment, and had fled together, reckless alike of reputation and fortune?

  He tried to believe that this latter chance was beyond the region of possibility; but horrible suspicions racked his brain as he paced to and fro, waiting for the issue of the search that was being made.

  Better that he should be told that his wife had been found lying dead upon the hard, cruel road, than that he should hear that she had left him for another; a false and degraded creature!

  “Why did she trust herself to the companionship of this man?” he asked himself. “Why did she disgrace herself by leaving her guests in the company of a young man who ought to be little more than a stranger to her? She is no ignorant or foolish girl; she has shown herself able to hold her own in the most trying positions. What madness could have possessed her, that she should bring disgrace upon herself and me by such conduct as this?”

  The grooms came back after a search that had been utterly in vain. No trace of the missing lady had been discovered. Inquiries had been made everywhere along the road, but without result. No gig had been seen to pass between the neighbourhood of the Wizard’s Cave and Raynham Castle.

  Sir Oswald abandoned himself to despair.

  There was no longer any hope: his wife had fled from him. Bitter, indeed, was the penalty which he was called upon to pay for his romantic marriage — his blind confidence in the woman who had fascinated and bewitched him. He bowed his head beneath the blow, and alone, hidden from the cruel gaze of the world, he resigned himself to his misery.

  All that night he sat alone, his head buried in his clasped hands, stunned and bewildered by his agony.

  His valet, Joseph Millard, knocked at the door at the usual hour, anxious to assist at his master’s toilet; but the door was securely locked, and Sir Oswald told his servant that he needed no help. He spoke in a firm voice; for he knew that the valet’s ear would be keen to mark any evidence of his misery. When the man was gone, he rose up for the first time, and looked across the sunlit woods.

  A groan of agony burst from his lips as he gazed upon that beautiful landscape.

  He had brought his young wife to be mistress of this splendid domain. He had shown her that fair scene; and had told her that she was to be queen over all those proud possessions until the day of her death. No hand was ever to rob her of them. They were the free gift of his boundless love! to be shared only by her children, should heaven bless her and her husband with inheritors for this ancient estate. He had never been weary of testifying his devotion, his passionate love; and yet, before she had been his wife three months, she left him for another.

  While he stood before the open window, with these bitter thoughts in his mind, he heard the sound of wheels in the corridor without. The wheels belonged to an invalid chair, used by Captain Copplestone when the gout held him prisoner, a self-propelling chair, in which the captain could make his way where he pleased.

  The captain knocked at his old comrade’s door.

  “Let me in, Oswald” he said; “I want to see you immediately.”

  “Not this morning, my dear Copplestone; I can’t see any one this morning,” answered the baronet.

  “You can see me, Oswald. I must and will see you, and I shall stop here till you let me in.”

  A loud knock at the door with a heavy-headed cane accompanied the close of his speech.

  Sir Oswald opened the door, and admitted the captain, who pushed his chair dexterously through the doorway.

  “Well,” said this eccentric visitor, when Sir Oswald had shut the door, “so you’ve not been to bed all night?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “By your looks, for one thing: and by the appearance of your bed, which I can see through the open door yonder, for another. Pretty goings on, these!”

  “A heavy sorrow has fallen upon me, Copplestone.”

  “Your wife has run away — that’s what you mean, I suppose?”

  “What!” cried Sir Oswald. “It is all known, then?”

  “What is all known?”

  “That my wife has left me.”

  “Well, my dear Oswald, there is a rumour of that kind afloat, and I have come here in consequence of that rumour. But I don’t believe there’s a word of truth in it.”

  The baronet turned from his friend with a bitter smile of derision.

  “I may strive to hoodwink the world, Copplestone,” he said, “but I have no wish to deceive you. My wife has left me — there is no doubt of it.”

  “I don’t believe it,” cried the captain. “No, Oswald Eversleigh, I don’t believe it. You know what I am. I’m not quite like the Miller of Dee, for I do care for somebody; and that somebody is my oldest friend. When I first heard of your marriage, I told you that you were a fool. That was plain-spoken enough, if you like. When I saw your wife, I told you that had changed my mind, and that I thought your folly an excusable one. If ever I saw purity and truth in a woman’s face, I saw them in the face of Lady Eversleigh; and I will stake my life that she is as true as steel.”

  Sir Oswald clasped his friend’s hand, too deeply moved for words. There was unspeakable consolation in such friendship as this. For the first tame since midnight a ray of hope dawned upon
him. He had always trusted in his old comrade’s judgment. Might he not trust in him still?

  When Captain Copplestone left him, he went to his dressing-room, and made even a more than usually careful toilet, and went to face “the world.”

  In the great dining-room he found all his guests assembled, and he took his seat amongst them calmly, though the sight of Honoria’s empty place cut him to the heart.

  Never, perhaps, was a more miserable meal eaten than that breakfast. There were long intervals of silence; and what little conversation there was appeared forced and artificial.

  Perhaps the most self-possessed person — the calmest to all appearance, of the whole party — was Sir Oswald Eversleigh, so heroic an effort had he made over himself, in order to face the world proudly. He had a few words to say to every one; and was particularly courteous to the guests near him. He opened his letters with an unshaking hand. But he abstained from all allusion to his wife, or the events of the previous evening.

  He had finished breakfast, and was leaving the room, when his nephew approached him —

  “Can I speak to you for a few moments alone?” asked Reginald.

  “Certainly. I am going to the library to write my letters. You can go with me, if you like.”

  They went together to the library. As Sir Oswald closed the door, and turned to face his nephew, he perceived that Reginald was deadly pale.

  “What is amiss?” he asked.

  “You ask me that, my dear uncle, at a time when you ought to know that my sympathy for your sorrow—”

  “Reserve your sympathy until it is needed,” answered the baronet, abruptly. “I dare say you mean well, my dear Reginald; but there are some subjects which I will suffer no man to approach.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir. Then, in that case, I can tell you nothing. I fancied that it was my duty to bring you any information that reached me; but I defer to you entirely. The subject is a most unhappy one, and I am glad to be spared the pain involved in speaking of it.”