Run to Earth by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

which he may maintain his title.”

There was very little promise in this; but Victor Carrington was,

nevertheless, tolerably well satisfied with the result of the

conversation. He had sown the seeds of doubt and uncertainty in the

baronet’s breast. Time only could bring the harvest. The surgeon was

accustomed to work underground, and knew that all such work must be

slow and laborious.

*

CHAPTER VII.

“O BEWARE, MY LORD, OF JEALOUSY.”

The castle was gay with the presence of many guests. The baronet was

proud to gather old friends and acquaintances round him, in order that

he might show them the fair young wife he had chosen to be the solace

of his declining years. A man of fifty who marries a girl of nineteen

is always subject to the ridicule of scandalous lips, the ironical

jests of pitiless tongues. Sir Oswald Eversleigh knew this, and he

wanted to show the world that he was happy—supremely happy—in the

choice that he had made.

Amongst those who came to Raynham Castle this autumn was one trusted

friend of Sir Oswald, a gruff old soldier, Captain Copplestone, a man

who had never won advancement in the service; but who was known to have

nobly earned the promotion which had never been awarded him.

This man was on brotherly terms with Sir Oswald, and was about the only

creature who had ever dared to utter disagreeable truths to the

baronet. He was very poor; but had never accepted the smallest favour

from the hands of his wealthy friend. Sir Oswald was devoutly attached

to him, and would have gladly opened his purse to him as to a brother;

but he dared not offend the stern old soldier’s pride by even hinting

at such a desire.

Captain Copplestone came to Raynham prepared to remonstrate with his

friend on the folly of his marriage. He arrived when the reception-room

was crowded with other visitors, and be stood by, looking on in grim

disdain, while the newly arrived guests were pressing their

felicitations on Sir Oswald.

By and bye the guests departed to their rooms, and the friends were

left alone.

“Well, old friend,” cried the baronet, stretching out both his hands to

grasp those of the captain in a warmer salutation than that of his

first welcome, “am I to have no word of congratulation from you?”

“What word do you want?” growled Copplestone. “If I tell you the truth,

you won’t like it; and if I were to try to tell you a lie, egad! I

think the syllables would choke me. It has been hard enough for me to

keep patience while all those idiots have been babbling their unmeaning

compliments; and now that they’ve gone away to laugh at you behind your

back, you’d better let me follow their example, and not risk the chance

of a quarrel with an old friend by speaking my mind.”

“You think me a fool, then, Copplestone?”

“Why, what else can I think of you? If a man of fifty must needs go and

marry a girl of nineteen, he can’t expect to be thought a Solon.”

“Ah, Copplestone, when you have seen my wife, you will think

differently.”

“Not a bit of it. The prettier she is, the more fool I shall think you;

for there’ll be so much the more certainty that she’ll make your life

miserable.”

“Here she comes!” said the baronet; “look at her before you judge her

too severely, old friend, and let her face answer for her truth.”

The room in which the two men were standing opened into another and

larger apartment, and through the open folding-doors Captain

Copplestone saw Lady Eversleigh approaching. She was dressed in white—

that pure, transparent muslin in which her husband loved best to see

her—and one large natural rose was fastened amidst her dark hair. As

she drew nearer to the baronet and his friend, the bluff old soldier’s

face softened.

The introduction was made by Sir Oswald, and Honoria held out her hand

with her brightest and most bewitching smile.

“My husband has spoken of you very often, Captain Copplestone,” she

said; “and I feel as if we were old friends rather than strangers. I

have pleasure in bidding welcome to all Sir Oswald’s guests; but not

such pleasure as I feel in welcoming you.”

The soldier extended his bronzed hand, and grasped the soft white

fingers in a pressure that was something like that of an iron vice. He

looked at Lady Eversleigh with a serio-comic expression of

bewilderment, and looked from her to the baronet.

“Well?” asked Sir Oswald, presently, when Honoria had left them.

“Well, Oswald, if the truth must be told, I think you had some excuse

for your folly. She is a beautiful creature; and if there is any faith

to be put in the human countenance, she is as good as she is

beautiful.”

The baronet grasped his friend’s hand with a pressure that was more

eloquent than words. He believed implicitly in the captain’s powers of

penetration, and this favourable judgment of the wife he adored filled

him with gratitude. It was not that the faintest shadow of doubt

obscured his own mind. He trusted her fully and unreservedly; but he

wanted others to trust her also.

*

While Sir Oswald and his friend were enjoying a brief interval of

confidential intercourse, Reginald Eversleigh and Victor Carrington

lounged in a pleasant little sitting-room, smoking their cigars, and

leaning on the stone sill of the wide Gothic window.

They were talking, and talking very earnestly.

“You are a very clever fellow, I know, my dear Carrington,” said

Reginald; “but it is slow work, very slow work, and I don’t see my way

through it.”

“Because you are as impatient as a child who has set his heart on a new

toy,” answered the surgeon, disdainfully. “You complain that the game

is slow, and yet you see one move after another made upon the board—

and made successfully. A month ago you did not believe in the

possibility of a reconciliation between your uncle and yourself; and

yet that reconciliation has come about. A fortnight ago you would have

laughed at the idea of my being here at Raynham, an invited guest; and

yet here I am. Do you think there has been no patient thought necessary

to work out this much of our scheme? Do you suppose that I was on

Thorpe Hill by accident that afternoon?”

“And you hope that something may come of your visit here?”

“I hope that much may come of it. I have already dared to drop hints at

injustice done to you. That idea of injustice will rankle in your

uncle’s mind. I have my plans, Reginald, and you have only to be

patient, and to trust in me.”

“But why should you refuse to tell me the nature of your plans?”

“Because my plans are as yet but half formed. I may soon be able to

speak more plainly. Do you see those two figures yonder, walking in the

pleasaunce?”

“Yes, I see them—my uncle and his wife,” answered Reginald, with a

gesture of impatience.

“They are very happy—are they not? It is quite an Arcadian picture. I

beg you to contemplate it earnestly.”

“What a fool you are, Carrington!” cried the young man, flinging away

his cigar. “If my uncle chooses to make an idiot of himself, that is no

reason why I should watch the evidence of his folly!”

“But there is another reason,” answered Victor, with a sinister look in

his glittering black eyes. “Look at the picture while you may,

Reginald, for you will not have the chance of seeing it very often.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the day is near at hand when Lady Eversleigh will fall

from her high estate. I mean that an elevation as sudden as hers is

often the forerunner of a sudden disgrace. The hour will come when Sir

Oswald will mourn his fatal marriage as the one irrevocable mistake of

his life; and when, in his despair, he will restore you, the disgraced

nephew, to your place, as his acknowledged heir; because you will at

least seem to him more worthy than his disgraced wife.”

“And who is to bring this about?” asked Reginald, gazing at his friend

in complete bewilderment.

“I am,” answered the surgeon; “but before I do so I must have some

understanding as to the price of my services. If the cat who pulled the

chestnuts out of the fire for the benefit of the monkey had made an

agreement beforehand as to how much of the plunder he was to receive

for his pains, the name of the animal would not have become a bye-word

with posterity. When I have worked to win your fortune, I must have my

reward, my dear Reginald.”

“Do you suppose I should be ungrateful?”

“Of course not. But, you see, I don’t ask for your gratitude—I want a

good round sum down on the nail—hard cash. Your uncle’s fortune, if

you get two-thirds of it, will be worth thirty thousand a year; and for

such a fortune you can very well afford to pay me twenty thousand in

ready money within two years of your accession to the inheritance.”

“Twenty thousand!”

“Yes; if you think the sum too much, we will say no more about it. The

business is a very difficult one, and I scarcely care to engage in it.”

“My dear Victor, you bewilder me. I cannot bring myself to believe that

you can bring about my restoration to my old place in my uncle’s will;

but if you do, the twenty thousand shall be yours.”

“Good!” answered the surgeon, in his coolest and most business-like

manner; “I must have it in black and white. You will give me two

promissory notes; one for ten thousand, to fall due a year hence—the

other for the same sum, to fall due in two years.”

“But if I do not get the fortune—and I am not likely to get it within

that time; my uncle’s life is a good one, and—”

“Never mind your uncle’s life. I will give you an undertaking to cancel

those notes of hand if you have not succeeded to the Raynham estates.

And now here are stamps. You may as well fill in the body of the notes,

and sign them at once, and so close the transaction.”

“You are prepared with the stamps?”

“Yes; I am a man of business, although a man of science.”

“Victor,” said Reginald Eversleigh; “you sometimes make me shudder,

There is something almost diabolical about you.”

“But if I drag yonder fair lady down from her high, estate, you would

scarcely care if I were the foul fiend in person,” said Carrington,

looking at his friend with a sardonic smile. “Oh, I think I know you,

Reginald Eversleigh, better than you know me.”

*

Amongst the guests who had arrived at the castle within the last few

days was Lydia Graham, the young lady of whom the baronet had spoken to

his nephew. She was a fascinating girl, with a bold, handsome face,

brilliant gray eyes, an aquiline nose, and a profusion of dark, waving

hair. She was a woman who knew how to make the most of every charm with

which nature had endowed her. She dressed superbly; but with an

extravagance far beyond the limits