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 Père 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
FENTON’S QUEST
This novel was first published serially in Belgravia between April 1870 and April 1871. It tells the story of Gilbert Fenton, an Australian living in London. Fenton falls in love with Marian Nowell, who agrees to marry him despite not reciprocating his feelings. When Marian falls in love with Fenton’s friend Jack, however, she seeks an end to the engagement and Fenton, distraught, leaves for Australia. On his return he finds that Marian has married another, but her unwillingness to reveal the identity of her new husband alerts his suspicions.
Extract from a contemporary review of the novel in The Spectator
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLIII
CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLVI
CHAPTER XLVII
Title page of the first book edition
CHAPTER I
THE COMMON FEVER
A warm summer evening, with a sultry haze brooding over the level landscape, and a Sabbath stillness upon all things in the village of Lidford, Midlandshire. In the remoter corners of the old gothic church the shadows are beginning to gather, as the sermon draws near its close; but in the centre aisle and about the pulpit there is broad daylight still shining-in from the wide western window, across the lower half of which there are tall figures of the Evangelists in old stained glass.
There are no choristers at Lidford, and the evening service is conducted in rather a drowsy way; but there is a solemn air of repose about the gray old church that should be conducive to tranquil thoughts and pious meditations. Simple and earnest have been the words of the sermon, simple and earnest seem the countenances of the congregation, looking reverently upwards at the face of their pastor; and one might fancy, contemplating that grand old church, so much too spacious for the needs of the little flock gathered there to-night, that Lidford was a forgotten, half-deserted corner of this earth, in which a man, tired of the press and turmoil of the world, might find an almost monastic solitude and calm.
So thought a gentleman in the Squire’s pew — a good-looking man of about thirty, who was finishing his first Sunday at Lidford by devout attendance at evening service. He had been thinking a g
ood deal about this quiet country life during the service, wondering whether it was not the best life a man could live, after all, and thinking it all the sweeter because of his own experience, which had lain chiefly in cities.
He was a certain Mr. Gilbert Fenton, an Australian merchant, and was on a visit to his sister, who had married the principal landowner in Lidford, Martin Lister — a man whose father had been called “the Squire.” The lady sat opposite her brother in the wide old family pew to-night — a handsome-looking matron, with a little rosy-cheeked damsel sitting by her side — a damsel with flowing auburn hair, tiny hat and feather, and bright scarlet stockings, looking very much as if she had walked out of a picture by Mr. Millais.
The congregation stood up to sing a hymn when the sermon was ended, and Gilbert Fenton turned his face towards the opposite line of pews, in one of which, very near him, there was a girl, at whom Mrs. Lister had caught her brother looking very often, during the service just concluded.
It was a face that a man could scarcely look upon once without finding his glances wandering back to it afterwards; not quite a perfect face, but a very bright and winning one. Large gray eyes, with a wonderful light in them, under dark lashes and darker brows; a complexion that had a dusky pallor, a delicate semi-transparent olive-tint that one seldom sees out of a Spanish picture; a sweet rosy mouth, and a piquant little nose of no particular order, made up the catalogue of this young lady’s charms. But in a face worth looking at there is always a something that cannot be put into words; and the brightest and best attributes of this face were quite beyond translation. It was a face one might almost call “splendid” — there was such a light and glory about it at some moments. Gilbert Fenton thought so to-night, as he saw it in the full radiance of the western sunlight, the lips parted as the girl sang, the clear gray eyes looking upward.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 476