“A bachelors’ party!” repeated Paulina; “there were no ladies, then, at your cousin’s house?”
“None.”
“Indeed!”
Paulina Durski’s lip curled contemptuously, but she did not openly convict Sir Reginald of the deliberate falsehood he had uttered.
“I am very glad you have come to me,” she said, presently, “because I have urgent need of your help.”
“My dear Paulina, believe me—” began the baronet
“Do not make your protest till you have heard what I have to ask,” said
Madame Durski. “You know how troublesome my creditors had become before
Christmas. The time has arrived when they must be paid, or when I—”
She stopped, and looked searchingly at the face of her companion.
“When you — what?” he asked. “What is the alternative, Paulina?”
“I think you ought to know as well as I,” she answered. “I must either pay those debts or fly from this place, and from this country, disgraced. I appeal to you in this bitter hour of need. Can you not help me — you, who have professed to love me?”
“Surely, Paulina, you cannot doubt my love,” replied Sir Reginald; “unhappily, there is no magical process by which the truest and purest love can transform itself into money. I have not a twenty-pound note in the world.”
“Indeed; and the four hundred and fifty pounds you won from Lord
Caversham just before Christmas — is that money gone?”
“Every shilling of it,” answered Reginald, coolly.
He had notes to the amount of nearly two hundred pounds in his desk; but he was the last man in Christendom to sacrifice money which he himself required, and his luxurious habits kept him always deeply in debt.
“You must have disposed of it very speedily. Surely, it is not all gone, Reginald. I think a hundred would satisfy my creditors, for a time at least.”
“I tell you it is gone, Paulina. I gave you a considerable sum at the time I won the money — you should remember.”
“Yes, I remember perfectly. You gave me fifty pounds — fifty pounds for the support of the house which enabled you to entrap your dupes, while I was the bait to lure them to their ruin. Oh, you have been very generous, very noble; and now that your dupes are tired of being cheated — now that your cat’s paw has become useless to you — I am to leave the country, because you will not sacrifice one selfish desire to save me from disgrace.”
“This is absurd, Paulina,” exclaimed the baronet, impatiently; “you talk the usual nonsense women indulge in when they can’t have everything their own way. It is not in my power to help you to pay your creditors, and you had much better slip quietly away while you are free to do so, and before they contrive to get you into prison. You know what Sheridan said about frittering away his money in paying his debts. There’s no knowing where to leave off if you once begin that sort of thing.”
“You would have me steal away in secret, like what you English call a swindler!”
“You needn’t dwell upon unpleasant names. Some of the best people in England have been obliged to cross the water for the same reasons that render your residence here unpleasant. There’s nothing to be gained by sentimental talk about the business, my dear Paulina. My friends at the clubs have begun to grow suspicious of this house, and I don’t think there’s a chance of my ever winning another sovereign in these rooms. Why, then, should you remain to be tormented by your creditors? Return to Paris, where you have twice as many devoted slaves and admirers as in this detestable straight-laced land of ours. I will slip across as soon as ever I can settle my affairs here some way or other, and once more you may be queen of a brilliant salon, while I—”
“While you may find a convenient cat’s paw for getting hold of new plunder,” cried Paulina, with unmitigated scorn. Then, with a sudden burst of passion, she exclaimed, “Oh, Sir Reginald Eversleigh, I thank Providence for this interview. At last — at last, I understand you completely. I have been testing you, Sir Reginald — I have been sounding your character. I have stooped to beg for help from you, in order that I might know the broken reed on which I have leaned. And now I can laugh at you, and despise you. Go, Sir Reginald Eversleigh; this house is mine — my home — no longer a private gambling-house — no longer a snare for the delusion of your rich friends. I am no longer friendless. My debts have been paid — paid by one who, if he had owned but one sixpence, would have given it to me, content to be penniless himself for my sake. I have no need of your help. I am not obliged to creep away in the night like a felon, from the house that has sheltered me. I can now dare to call myself mistress of this house, unfettered by debt, untrammelled by the shameful secrets that made my life odious to me; and my first act as mistress of this house shall be to forbid its doors to you.”
“Indeed, Madame Durski!” cried Reginald, with a sneer; “this is a wonderful change.”
“You thought, perhaps, there were no limits to a woman’s folly,” said Paulina; “but you see you were wrong. There is an end even to that. And now, Sir Reginald Eversleigh, I will wish you good evening, and farewell.”
“Is this a farce, Paulina?” asked the baronet, in a voice that was almost stifled by rage.
“No, Sir Reginald, it is a stern reality,” answered Madame Durski, laying her hand on the bell.
Her summons was speedily answered by Carlo Toas.
“Carlo, the door,” she said, quietly.
The baronet gave her one look — a dark and threatening glance — and then left the room, followed by the Spaniard, who conducted him to his cab with every token of grave respect.
“Curse her!” muttered Sir Reginald, between his set teeth, as he drove away from Hilton House. “It must be Douglas Dale who has given her the power to insult me thus, and he shall pay for her insolence. But why did Victor bring those two together? An alliance between them can only result in mischief to me. I must and will fathom his motive for conduct that seems so incomprehensible.”
* * * * *
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 mi
ght 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.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 463