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Title: Run to Earth

A Novel

Author: M. E. Braddon

Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9102]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on September 6, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUN TO EARTH ***

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Charlie Kirschner and Distributed Proofreaders

[Illustration: “I am in the power of a maniac” Honoria murmured.—Page

100. Henry French, del. E. Evans, sc.]

RUN TO EARTH

A NOVEL

BY THE AUTHOR OF

“LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “AURORA FLOYD”

“ISHMAEL,” “VIXEN,” “WYLLARD’S WEIRD”

ETC. ETC.

CONTENTS.

*

CHAPTER I. WARNED IN A DREAM

CHAPTER II. DONE IN THE DARKNESS

CHAPTER III. DISINHERITED

CHAPTER IV. OUT OF THE DEPTHS

CHAPTER V. “EVIL, BE THOU MY GOOD!”

CHAPTER VI. AULD ROBIN GRAY

CHAPTER VII. “O BEWARE, MY LORD, OF JEALOUSY!”

CHAPTER VIII. AFTER THE PIC-NIC

CHAPTER IX. ON YARBOROUGH TOWER

CHAPTER X. “HOW ART THOU LOST! HOW ON A SUDDEN LOST!”

CHAPTER XI. “THE WILL! THE TESTAMENT!”

CHAPTER XII. A FRIEND IN NEED

CHAPTER XIII. IN YOUR PATIENCE YE ARE STRONG

CHAPTER XIV. A GHOSTLY VISITANT

CHAPTER XV. A TERRIBLE RESOLVE

CHAPTER XVI. WAITING AND WATCHING

CHAPTER XVII. DOUBTFUL SOCIETY

CHAPTER XVIII. AT ANCHOR

CHAPTER XIX. A FAMILIAR TOKEN

CHAPTER XX. ON GUARD

CHAPTER XXI. DOWN IN DORSETSHIRE

CHAPTER XXII. ARCH-TRAITOR WITHIN, ARCH-PLOTTER WITHOUT

CHAPTER XXIII. “ANSWER ME, IF THIS BE DONE?”

CHAPTER XXIV. “I AM WEARY OF MY PART”

CHAPTER XXV. A DANGEROUS ALLIANCE

CHAPTER XXVI. MOVE THE FIRST

CHAPTER XXVII. WEAVE THE WARP, AND WEAVE THE WOOF

CHAPTER XXVIII. PREPARING THE GROUND

CHAPTER XXIX. AT WATCH

CHAPTER XXX. FOUND WANTING

CHAPTER XXXI. “A WORTHLESS WOMAN, MERE COLD CLAY”

CHAPTER XXXII. A MEETING AND AN EXPLANATION

CHAPTER XXXIII. “TREASON HAS DONE HIS WORST”

CHAPTER XXXIV. CAUGHT IN THE TOILS

CHAPTER XXXV. LARKSPUR TO THE RESCUE!

CHAPTER XXXVI. ON THE TRACK

CHAPTER XXXVII. “O, ABOVE MEASURE FALSE!”

CHAPTER XXXVIII. “THY DAY IS COME”

CHAPTER XXXIX. “CONFUSION WORSE THAN DEATH”

CHAPTER XL. “SO SHALL YE REAP”

CHAPTER I.

WARNED IN A DREAM.

Seven-and-twenty years ago, and a bleak evening in March. There are

gas-lamps flaring down in Ratcliff Highway, and the sound of squeaking

fiddles and trampling feet in many public-houses tell of festivity

provided for Jack-along-shore. The emporiums of slop-sellers are

illuminated for the better display of tarpaulin coats and hats, so

stiff of build that they look like so many seafaring suicides, pendent

from the low ceilings. These emporiums are here and there enlivened by

festoons of many-coloured bandana handkerchief’s; and on every pane of

glass in shop or tavern window is painted the glowing representation of

Britannia’s pride, the immortal Union Jack.

Two men sat drinking and smoking in a little parlour at the back of an

old public-house in Shadwell. The room was about as large as a

good-sized cupboard, and was illuminated in the daytime by a window

commanding a pleasant prospect of coal-shed and dead wall. The paper on

the walls was dark and greasy with age; and every bit of clumsy,

bulging deal furniture in the room had been transformed into a kind of

ebony by the action of time and dirt, the greasy backs and elbows of

idle loungers, the tobacco-smoke and beer-stains of half a century.

It was evident that the two men smoking and drinking in this darksome

little den belonged to the seafaring community. In this they resembled

each other; but in nothing else. One was tall and stalwart; the other

was small, and wizen, and misshapen. One had a dark, bronzed face, with

a frank, fearless expression; the other was pale and freckled, and had

small, light-gray eyes, that shifted and blinked perpetually, and

shifted and blinked most when he was talking with most animation. The

first had a sonorous bass voice and a resonant laugh; the second spoke

in suppressed tones, and had a trick of dropping his voice to a whisper

whenever he was most energetic.

The first was captain and half-owner of the brigantine ‘Pizarro’,

trading between the port of London, and the coast of Mexico. The second

was his clerk, factotum, and confidant; half-sailor, half-landsman;

able to take the helm in dangerous weather, if need were; and able to

afford his employer counsel in the most intricate questions of trading

and speculation.

The name of the captain was Valentine Jernam, that of his factotum

Joyce Harker. The captain had found him in an American hospital, had

taken compassion upon him, and had offered him a free passage home. On

the homeward voyage, Joyce Harker had shown himself so handy a

personage, that Captain Jernam had declined to part with him at the end

of the cruise: and from that time, the wizen little hunchback had been

the stalwart seaman’s friend and companion. For fifteen years, during

which Valentine Jernam and his younger brother, George, had been

traders on the high seas, things had gone well with these two brothers;

but never had fortune so liberally favoured their trading as during the

four years in which Joyce Harker had prompted every commercial

adventure, and guided every speculation.

“Four years to-day, Joyce, since I first set eyes upon your face in the

hospital at New Orleans,” said Captain Jernam, in the confidence of

this jovial hour. “‘Why, the fellow’s dead,’ said I. ‘No; he’s only

dying,’ says the doctor. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked I.

‘Home-sickness and empty pockets,’ says the doctor; ‘he was employed in

a gaming-house in the city, got knocked on the head in some row, and

was brought here. We’ve got him through a fever that was likely enough

to have finished him; but there he lies, as weak as a starved rat. He

has neither money nor friends. He wants to get back to England; but he

has no more hope of ever seeing that country than I have of being

Emperor of Mexico.’ ‘Hasn’t he?’ says I; ‘we’ll tell you a different

story about that, Mr. Doctor. If you can patch the poor devil up

between this and next Monday, I’ll take him home in my ship, without

the passage costing him sixpence.’ You don’t feel offended with me for

having called you a poor devil, eh, Joyce?—for you really were, you

know—you really were an uncommonly poor creature just then,” murmured

the captain, apologetically.

“Offended with you!” exclaimed the factotum; “that’s a likely thing.

Don’t I owe you my life? How many more of my countrymen passed me by as

I lay on that hospital-bed, and left me to rot there, for all they

cared? I heard their loud voices and their creaking boots as I lay

there, too weak to lift my eyelids and look at them; but not too weak

to curse them.”

“No, Joyce, don’t say that.”

“But I do say it; and what’s more, I mean it. I’ll tell you what it is,

captain, there’s a general opinion that when a man’s shoulders are

crooked, his mind is crooked too; and that, if his poor unfortunate

legs have shrivelled up small, his heart must have shrivelled up small

to match ‘em. I dare say there’s some truth in the general opinion;

for, you see, it doesn’t improve a man’s temper to find himself cut out

according to a different pattern from that his fellow-creatures have

been made by, and to find his fellow-creatures setting themselves

against him because of that difference; and it doesn’t soften a poor

wretch’s heart towards the world in general, to find the world in

general harder than stone against him, for no better reason than his

poor weak legs and his poor crooked back. But never mind talking about

me and my feelings, captain. I ain’t of so much account as to make it

worth while for a fine fellow like you to waste words upon me. What I

want to know is your plans. You don’t intend to stop down this way, do

you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s a dangerous way for a man who carries his fortune about

him, as you do. I wish you’d make up your mind to bank that money,

captain.”

“Not if I know it,” answered the sailor, with a look of profound

wisdom; “not if I know it, Joyce Harker. I know what your bankers are.

You go to them some fine afternoon, and find a lot of clerks standing

behind a bran new mahogany counter, everything bright, and shining, and

respectable. ‘Can I leave a few hundreds on deposit?’ asks you. ‘Why,

of course you can,’ reply they; and then you hand over your money, and

then they hand you back a little bit of paper. ‘That’s your receipt,’

say they. ‘All right,’ say you; and off you sheer. Perhaps you feel

just a little bit queerish, when you get outside, to think that all

your solid cash has been melted down into that morsel of paper; but

being a light-hearted, easy-going fellow, you don’t think any more of

it, till you come home from your next voyage, and go ashore again, and

want your money; when it’s ten to one if you don’t find your fine new

bank shut up, and your clerks and bran-new mahogany counter vanished.

No, Joyce, I’ll trust no bankers.”

“I’d rather trust the bankers than the people down this way, any day in

the week,” answered the clerk, thoughtfully.

“Don’t you worry yourself, Joyce! The money won’t be in my keeping very

long. George is to meet me in London on the fifth of April, at the

latest, he says, unless winds and waves are more contrary than ever

they’ve been since he’s had to do with them; and you know George is my

banker. I’m only a sleeping partner in the firm of Jernam Brothers.

George takes the money, and George does what he likes with it—puts it

here and there, and speculates in this and speculates in that. You’ve

got a business head of your own, Joyce; you’re one of George’s own

sort; and you are up to all his dodges, which is more than I am.

However, he tells me we’re getting rich, and that’s pleasant enough—

not that I think I should break my heart about it if we were getting

poor. I love the sea because