“You mean that my uncle will die within the year?”
“I am subject to presentiments of that kind. I do not think Sir Oswald will see the end of the year!”
“Carrington!” exclaimed Reginald. “Your schemes are hateful. I will have no further dealings with you.”
“Indeed! Then am I to go to Sir Oswald, and tell him the story of last night? Am I to tell him that his wife is innocent?”
“No, no; tell him nothing. Let things stand as they are. The promise of the estate is mine. I have suffered too much from the loss of my position, and I cannot forego my new hopes. But let there be no more guilt — no more plotting. We have succeeded. Let us wait patiently for the end.”
“Yes,” answered the surgeon, coolly, “we will wait for the end; and if the end should come sooner than our most sanguine hopes have led us to expect, we will not quarrel with the handiwork of fate. Now leave me. I see a petticoat yonder amongst the trees. It belongs to some housemaid from the castle, I dare say; and I must see if my eloquence as a wandering merchant cannot win me admission within the walls which I dare not approach as Victor Carrington.”
Reginald opened the gate with his pass-key, and allowed the surgeon to go through into the gardens.
* * * * *
It was dusk when Sir Oswald left the library. He had sent a message to the chief of his guests, excusing himself from attending the dinner-table, on the ground of ill-health. When he knew that all his visitors would be assembled in the dining-room, he left the library, for the first time since he had entered it after breakfast.
He had brooded long and gloomily over his misery, and had come to a determination as to the line of conduct which he should pursue towards his wife. He went now to Lady Eversleigh’s apartments, in order to inform her of his decision; but, to his surprise, he found the rooms empty. His wife’s maid was sitting at needlework by one of the windows of the dressing-room.
“Where is your mistress?” asked Sir Oswald.
“She has gone out, sir. She has left the castle for some little time, I think, sir; for she put on the plainest of her travelling dresses, and she took a small travelling-bag with her. There is a note, sir, on the mantel-piece in the next room. Shall I fetch it?”
“No; I will get it myself. At what time did Lady Eversleigh leave the castle?”
“About two hours ago, sir.”
“Two hours! In time for the afternoon coach to York,” thought Sir Oswald. “Go and inquire if your mistress really left the castle at that time,” he said to the maid.
He went into the boudoir, and took the letter from the mantel-piece. He crushed it into his breast-pocket with the seal unbroken —
“Time enough to discover what new falsehood she has tried to palm upon me,” he thought.
He looked round the empty room — which she was never more to occupy. Her books, her music, were scattered on every side. The sound of her rich voice seemed still to vibrate through the room. And she was gone — for ever! Well, she was a base and guilty creature, and it was better so — infinitely better that her polluting presence should no longer dishonour those ancient chambers, within which generations of proud and pure women had lived and died. But to see the rooms empty, and to know that she was gone, gave him nevertheless a pang.
“What will become of her?” thought Sir Oswald. “She will return to her lover, of course, and he will console her for the sacrifice she has made by her mad folly. Let her prize him while he still lives to console her; for she may not have him long. Why do I think of her? — why do I trouble myself about her? I have my affairs to arrange — a new will to make — before I think of vengeance. And those matters once settled, vengeance shall be my only thought. I have done for ever with love!”
Sir Oswald returned to the library. A lamp burned on the table at which he was accustomed to write. It was a shaded reading-lamp, which made a wide circle of vivid light around the spot where it stood, but left the rest of the room in shadow.
The night was oppressively hot — an August rather than a September night; and, before beginning his work, Sir Oswald flung open one of the broad windows leading out upon the terrace. Then he unlocked a carved oak bureau, and took out a packet of papers. He seated himself at the table, and began to examine these papers.
Among them was the will which he had executed since his marriage. He read this, and then laid it aside. As he did so, a figure approached the wide-open window; an eager face, illuminated by glittering eyes, peered into the room. It was the face of Victor Carrington, hidden beneath the disguise of assumed age, and completely metamorphosed by the dark skin and grizzled beard. Had Sir Oswald looked up and seen that face, he would not have recognized its owner.
After laying aside the document he had read, Sir Oswald began to write. He wrote slowly, meditating upon every word; and after having written for about half an hour, he rose and left the room. The surgeon had never stirred from his post by the window; and as Sir Oswald closed the door behind him, he crept stealthily into the apartment, and to the table where the papers lay. His footstep, light always, made no sound upon the thick velvet pile. He glanced at the contents of the paper, on which the ink was still wet. It was a will, leaving the bulk of Sir Oswald’s fortune to his nephew, Reginald, unconditionally. Victor Carrington did not linger a moment longer than was necessary to convince him of this fact. He hurried back to his post by the window: nor was he an instant too soon. The door opened before he had fairly stepped from the apartment.
Sir Oswald re-entered, followed by two men. One was the butler, the other was the valet, Joseph Millard. The will was executed in the presence of these men, who affixed their signatures to it as witnesses.
“I have no wish to keep the nature of this will a secret from my household,” said Sir Oswald. “It restores my nephew, Mr. Reginald Eversleigh, to his position as heir to this estate. You will henceforth respect him as my successor.”
The two men bowed and retired. Sir Oswald walked towards the window: and Victor Carrington drew back into the shadow cast by a massive abutment of stone-work.
It was not very easy for a man to conceal himself on the terrace in that broad moonlight.
Voices sounded presently, near one of the windows; and a group of ladies and gentlemen emerged from the drawing-room.
“It is the hottest night we have had this summer,” said one of them.
“The house is really oppressive.”
Miss Graham had enchanted her viscount once more, and she and that gentleman walked side by side on the terrace.
“They will discover me if they come this way,” muttered Victor, as he shrank back into the shadow. “I have seen all that I want to see for the present, and had better make my escape while I am safe.”
He stole quietly along by the front of the castle, lurking always in the shadow of the masonry, and descended the terrace steps. From thence he went to the court-yard, on which the servants’ hall opened; and in a few minutes he was comfortably seated in that apartment, listening to the gossip of the servants, who could only speak upon the one subject of Lady Eversleigh’s elopement.
* * * * *
The baronet sat with the newly-made will before him, gazing at the open leaves with fixed and dreamy eyes.
Now that the document was signed, a feeling of doubt had taken possession of him. He remembered how deliberately he had pondered over the step before he had disinherited his nephew; and now that work, which had cost him so much pain and thought, had been undone on the impulse of a moment.
“Have I done right, I wonder?” he asked himself.
The papers which had been tied in the packet containing the old will had been scattered on the table when the baronet unfastened the band that secured them. He took one of these documents up in sheer absence of mind, and opened it.
It was the letter written by the wretched girl who drowned herself in the Seine — the letter of Reginald Eversleigh’s victim — the very letter on the evidence of which Sir Oswald had deci
ded that his nephew was no fitting heir to a great fortune.
The baronet’s brow contracted as he read.
“And it is to the man who could abandon a wretched woman to despair and death, that I am about to leave wealth and power,” he exclaimed. “No; the decision which I arrived at in Arlington Street was a just and wise decision. I have been mad to-day — maddened by anger and despair; but it is not too late to repent my folly. The seducer of Mary Goodwin shall never be the master of Raynham Castle.”
Sir Oswald folded the sheet of foolscap on which the will was written, and held it over the flame of the lamp. He carried it over to the fire-place, and threw it blazing on the empty hearth. He watched it thoughtfully until the greater part of the paper was consumed by the flame, and then went back to his seat.
“My nephews, Lionel and Douglas Dale, shall divide the estate between them,” he thought. “I will send for my solicitor to-morrow, and make a new will.”
* * * * *
Victor Carrington sat in the servants’ hall at Raynham until past eleven o’clock. He had made himself quite at home with the domestics in his assumed character. The women were delighted with the showy goods which he carried in his pack, and which he sold them at prices far below those of the best bargains they had ever made before.
At a few minutes after eleven he rose to bid them good night.
“I suppose I shall find the gates open?” he said.
“Yes; the gates of the court-yard are never locked till half-past eleven,” answered a sturdy old coachman.
The pedlar took his leave; but he did not go out by the court-yard. He went straight to the terrace, along which he crept with stealthy footsteps. Many lights twinkled in the upper windows of the terrace front, for at this hour the greater number of Sir Oswald’s guests had retired to their rooms.
The broad window of the library was still open; but a curtain had been drawn before it, on one side of which there remained a crevice. Through this crevice Victor Carrington could watch the interior of the chamber with very little risk of being discovered.
The baronet was still sitting by the writing-table, with the light of the library-lamp shining full upon him. An open letter was in his hand. It was the letter his wife had left for him. It was not like the letter of a guilty woman. It was quiet, subdued; full of sadness and resignation, rather than of passionate despair.
“I know now that I ought never to have married you, Oswald,” wrote Lady Eversleigh. “The sacrifice which you made for my sake was too great a one. No happiness could well come of such an unequal bargain. You gave me everything, and I could give you so little. The cloud upon my past life was black and impenetrable. You took me nameless, friendless, unknown; and I can scarcely wonder if, at the first breath of suspicion, your faith wavered and your love failed. Farewell, dearest and best of men! You never can know how truly I have loved you; how I have reverenced your noble nature. In all that has come to pass between us since the first hour of our miserable estrangement, nothing has grieved me so deeply as to see your generous soul overclouded by suspicions and doubts, as unworthy of you as they are needless and unfounded. Farewell! I go back to the obscurity from whence you took me. You need not fear for my future. The musical education which I owe to your generous help will enable me to live; and I have no wish to live otherwise than humbly. May heaven bless you!”
HONORIA.
This was all. There were no complaints, no entreaties. The letter seemed instinct with the dignity of truth.
“And she has gone forth alone, unprotected. She has gone back to her lonely and desolate life,” thought the baronet, inclined, for a moment at least, to believe in his wife’s words.
But in the next instant he remembered the evidence of Lydia Graham — the wild and improbable story by which Honoria had tried to account for her absence.
“No no,” he exclaimed; “it is all treachery from first to last. She is hiding herself somewhere near at hand, no doubt to wait the result of this artful letter. And when she finds that her artifices are thrown away — when she discovers that my heart has been changed to adamant by her infamy — she will go back to her lover, if he still lives to shelter her.”
A hundred conflicting ideas confused Sir Oswald’s brain. But one thought was paramount — and that was the thought of revenge. He resolved to send for his lawyer early the next morning, to make a new will in favour of his sister’s two sons, and then to start in search of the man who had robbed him of his wife’s affection. Reginald would, of course, be able to assist him in finding Victor Carrington.
While Sir Oswald mused thus, the man of whom he was thinking watched him through the narrow space between the curtains.
“Shall it be to-night?” thought Carrington. “It cannot be too soon. He might change his mind about his will at any moment; and if it should happen to-night, people will say the shock of his wife’s flight has killed him.”
Sir Oswald’s folded arms rested on the table; his head sank forward on his arms. The passionate emotions of the day, the previous night of agony, had at last exhausted him. He fell into a doze — a feverish, troubled sleep. Carrington watched him for upwards of a quarter of an hour as he slept thus.
“I think he is safe now — and I may venture,” murmured Victor, at the end of that time.
He crept softly into the room, making a wide circle, and keeping himself completely in the shadow, till he was behind the sleeping baronet. Then he came towards the lamp-lit table.
Amongst the scattered letters and papers, there stood a claret jug, a large carafe of water, and an empty glass. Victor drew close to the table, and listened for some moments to the breathing of the sleeper. Then he took a small bottle from his pocket, and dropped a few globules of some colourless liquid into the empty glass. Having done this, he withdrew from the apartment as silently as he had entered it. Twelve o’clock struck as he was leaving the terrace.
“So,” he muttered, “it is little more than three-quarters of an hour since I left the servants’ hall. It would not be difficult to prove an alibi, with the help of a blundering village innkeeper.”
He did not attempt to leave the castle by the court-yard, which he knew would be locked by this time. He had made himself acquainted with all the ins and outs of the place, and had possessed himself of a key belonging to one of the garden gates. Through this gate he passed out into the park, climbed a low fence, and made his way into Raynham village, where the landlord of the “Hen and Chickens” was just closing his doors.
“I have been told by the castle servants that you can give me a bed,” he said.
The landlord, who was always delighted to oblige his patrons in Sir Oswald’s servants’ hall and stables, declared himself ready to give the traveller the best accommodation his house could afford.
“It’s late, sir,” he said; “but we’ll manage to make things comfortable for you.”
So that night the surgeon slept in the village of Raynham. He, too, was worn out by the fatigue of the past twenty-four hours, and he slept soundly all through the night, and slept as calmly as a child.
It was eight o’clock next morning when he went down the steep, old-fashioned staircase of the inn. He found a strange hubbub and confusion below. Awful tidings had just been brought from the castle. Sir Oswald Eversleigh had been found seated in his library, DEAD, with the lamp still burning near him, in the bright summer morning. One of the grooms had come down to the little inn, and was telling his story to all comers, when the pedlar came into the open space before the bar.
“It was Millard that found him,” the man said. “He was sitting, quite calm-like, with his head lying back upon the cushion of his arm-chair. There were papers and open letters scattered all about; and they sent off immediately for Mr. Dalton, the lawyer, to look to the papers, and seal up the locks of drawers and desks, and so on. Mr. Dalton is busy at it now. Mr. Eversleigh is awfully shocked, he is. I never saw such a white face in all my life as his, when he came out into the hall after
hearing the news. It’s a rare fine thing for him, as you may say; for they say Sir Oswald made a new will last night, and left his nephew everything; and Mr. Eversleigh has been a regular wild one, and is deep in debt. But, for all that, I never saw any one so cut up as he was just now.”
“Poor Sir Oswald!” cried the bystanders. “Such a noble gentleman as he was, too. What did he die of Mr. Kimber? — do you know?”
“The doctor says it must have been heart-disease,” answered the groom. “A broken heart, I say; that’s the only disease Sir Oswald had. It’s my lady’s conduct has killed him. She must have been a regular bad one, mustn’t she?”
The story of the elopement had been fully discussed on the previous day at the “Hen and Chickens,” and everywhere else in the village of Raynham. The country gossips shook their heads over Lady Eversleigh’s iniquity, but they said little. This new event was of so appalling a nature, that it silenced even the tongue of gossip for a while.
The pedlar took his breakfast in the little parlour behind the bar, and listened quietly to all that was said by the villagers and the groom.
“And where is my lady?” asked the innkeeper; “she came back yesterday, didn’t she?”
“Yes, and went away again yesterday afternoon,” returned the groom.
“She’s got enough to answer for, she has.”
* * * * *
Terrible indeed was the consternation, which reigned that day at Raynham Castle. Already Sir Oswald’s guests had been making hasty arrangements for their departure; and many visitors had departed even before the discovery of that awful event, which came like a thunderclap upon all within the castle.
Few men had ever been better liked by his acquaintances than Sir Oswald
Eversleigh.
His generous nature, his honourable character, had won him every man’s respect. His great wealth had been spent lavishly for the benefit of others. His hand had always been open to the poor and necessitous. He had been a kind master, a liberal landlord, an ardent and devoted friend. There is little wonder, therefore, if the news of his sudden death fell like an overwhelming blow on all assembled within the castle, and on many more beyond the castle walls.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 436