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

“A NAMELESS COUNSELLOR.”

A fortnight before, Sir Oswald would have flung such a letter as this

away from him with indignant scorn; but the poison of suspicion had

done its corroding work.

For a little time Sir Oswald hesitated, half-inclined to despise the

mysterious warning. All his better feelings prompted him to disregard

this nameless correspondent—all his noblest impulses urged him to

confide blindly and unquestioningly in the truth of the wife he loved;

but jealousy—that dark and fatal passion—triumphed over every

generous feeling, and he yielded to the influence of his hidden

counsellor.

“No harm can arise from my return to Raynham,” he thought. “My friends

yonder are enjoying themselves too much to trouble themselves about my

absence. If this anonymous correspondent is fooling me, I shall soon

discover my mistake.”

Having once arrived at this determination, Sir Oswald lost no time in

putting it into execution. He ordered his horse, Orestes, and rode away

as fast as the animal would carry him.

Arrived at Raynham, he inquired if any one had asked for him, but was

told there had not been any visitors at the castle throughout the day.

Again and again Sir Oswald consulted the anonymous letter. It told him

to wait, but for what was he to wait? Half ashamed of himself for

having yielded to the tempter, restless and uneasy in spirit, he

wandered from room to room in the twilight, abandoned to gloomy and

miserable thoughts.

The servants lighted the lamps in the many chambers of Raynham, while

Sir Oswald paced to and fro—now in the long drawing-room; now in the

library; now on the terrace, where the September moon shone broad and

full. It was eleven o’clock when the sound of approaching wheels

proclaimed the return of the picnic party; and until that hour the

baronet had watched and waited without having been rewarded by the

smallest discovery of any kind whatever. He felt bitterly ashamed of

himself for having been duped by so shallow a trick.

“It is the handiwork of some kind friend; the practical joke of some

flippant youngster, who thinks it a delightful piece of humour to play

upon the jealousy of a husband of fifty,” mused the baronet, as he

brooded over his folly. “I wish to heaven I could discover the writer

of the epistle. He should find that it is rather a dangerous thing to

trifle with a man’s feelings.”

Sir Oswald went himself to assist at the reception of his guests. He

expected to see his wife arrive with the rest. For the moment, he

forgot all about his suspicions of the last fortnight. He thought only

of the anonymous letter, and the wrong which he had done Honoria in

being influenced by its dark hints.

If he could have met his wife at that moment, when every impulse of his

heart drew him towards her, all sense of estrangement would have melted

away; all his doubts would have vanished before a smile from her. But

though Sir Oswald found his wife’s barouche the first of the carriages,

she was not in it. Lydia Graham told him how “dear Lady Eversleigh” had

caused all the party such terrible alarm.

“I suppose she reached home two hours ago,” added the young lady. “She

had more than an hour’s start of us; and with that light vehicle and

spirited horse she and Mr. Carrington must have come so rapidly.”

“My wife and Mr. Carrington! What do you mean, Miss Graham?”

Lydia explained, and Reginald Eversleigh confirmed her statement. Lady

Eversleigh had left the Wizard’s Cave more than an hour before the rest

of the party, accompanied by Mr. Carrington.

No words can describe the consternation of Sir Oswald. He did his best

to conceal his alarm; but the livid hue of his face, the ashen pallor

of his lips, betrayed the intensity of his emotion. He sent out mounted

grooms to search the different roads between the castle and the scene

of the pic-nic; and then he left his guests without a word, and shut

himself in his own apartments, to await the issue of the search.

Had any fatal accident happened to her and her companion?—or were

Honoria Eversleigh and Victor Carrington two guilty creatures, who had

abandoned themselves to the folly and madness of a wicked attachment,

and had fled together, reckless alike of reputation and fortune?

He tried to believe that this latter chance was beyond the region of

possibility; but horrible suspicions racked his brain as he paced to

and fro, waiting for the issue of the search that was being made.

Better that he should be told that his wife had been found lying dead

upon the hard, cruel road, than that he should hear that she had left

him for another; a false and degraded creature!

“Why did she trust herself to the companionship of this man?” he asked

himself. “Why did she disgrace herself by leaving her guests in the

company of a young man who ought to be little more than a stranger to

her? She is no ignorant or foolish girl; she has shown herself able to

hold her own in the most trying positions. What madness could have

possessed her, that she should bring disgrace upon herself and me by

such conduct as this?”

The grooms came back after a search that had been utterly in vain. No

trace of the missing lady had been discovered. Inquiries had been made

everywhere along the road, but without result. No gig had been seen to

pass between the neighbourhood of the Wizard’s Cave and Raynham Castle.

Sir Oswald abandoned himself to despair.

There was no longer any hope: his wife had fled from him. Bitter,

indeed, was the penalty which he was called upon to pay for his

romantic marriage—his blind confidence in the woman who had fascinated

and bewitched him. He bowed his head beneath the blow, and alone,

hidden from the cruel gaze of the world, he resigned himself to his

misery.

All that night he sat alone, his head buried in his clasped hands,

stunned and bewildered by his agony.

His valet, Joseph Millard, knocked at the door at the usual hour,

anxious to assist at his master’s toilet; but the door was securely

locked, and Sir Oswald told his servant that he needed no help. He

spoke in a firm voice; for he knew that the valet’s ear would be keen

to mark any evidence of his misery. When the man was gone, he rose up

for the first time, and looked across the sunlit woods.

A groan of agony burst from his lips as he gazed upon that beautiful

landscape.

He had brought his young wife to be mistress of this splendid domain.

He had shown her that fair scene; and had told her that she was to be

queen over all those proud possessions until the day of her death. No

hand was ever to rob her of them. They were the free gift of his

boundless love! to be shared only by her children, should heaven bless

her and her husband with inheritors for this ancient estate. He had

never been weary of testifying his devotion, his passionate love; and

yet, before she had been his wife three months, she left him for

another.

While he stood before the open window, with these bitter thoughts in

his mind, he heard the sound of wheels in the corridor without. The

wheels belonged to an invalid chair, used by Captain Copplestone when

the gout held him prisoner, a self-propelling chair, in which the

captain could make his way where he pleased.

The captain knocked at his old comrade’s door.

“Let me in, Oswald” he said; “I want to see you immediately.”

“Not this morning, my dear Copplestone; I can’t see any one this

morning,” answered the baronet.

“You can see me, Oswald. I must and will see you, and I shall stop

here till you let me in.”

A loud knock at the door with a heavy-headed cane accompanied the close

of his speech.

Sir Oswald opened the door, and admitted the captain, who pushed his

chair dexterously through the doorway.

“Well,” said this eccentric visitor, when Sir Oswald had shut the door,

“so you’ve not been to bed all night?”

“How do you know that?”

“By your looks, for one thing: and by the appearance of your bed, which

I can see through the open door yonder, for another. Pretty goings on,

these!”

“A heavy sorrow has fallen upon me, Copplestone.”

“Your wife has run away—that’s what you mean, I suppose?”

“What!” cried Sir Oswald. “It is all known, then?”

“What is all known?”

“That my wife has left me.”

“Well, my dear Oswald, there is a rumour of that kind afloat, and I

have come here in consequence of that rumour. But I don’t believe

there’s a word of truth in it.”

The baronet turned from his friend with a bitter smile of derision.

“I may strive to hoodwink the world, Copplestone,” he said, “but I have

no wish to deceive you. My wife has left me—there is no doubt of it.”

“I don’t believe it,” cried the captain. “No, Oswald Eversleigh, I

don’t believe it. You know what I am. I’m not quite like the Miller of

Dee, for I do care for somebody; and that somebody is my oldest friend.

When I first heard of your marriage, I told you that you were a fool.

That was plain-spoken enough, if you like. When I saw your wife, I

told you that had changed my mind, and that I thought your folly an

excusable one. If ever I saw purity and truth in a woman’s face, I saw

them in the face of Lady Eversleigh; and I will stake my life that she

is as true as steel.”

Sir Oswald clasped his friend’s hand, too deeply moved for words. There

was unspeakable consolation in such friendship as this. For the first

tame since midnight a ray of hope dawned upon him. He had always

trusted in his old comrade’s judgment. Might he not trust in him

still?

When Captain Copplestone left him, he went to his dressing-room, and

made even a more than usually careful toilet, and went to face “the

world.”

In the great dining-room he found all his guests assembled, and he took

his seat amongst them calmly, though the sight of Honoria’s empty place

cut him to the heart.

Never, perhaps, was a more miserable meal eaten than that breakfast.

There were long intervals of silence; and what little conversation

there was appeared forced and artificial.

Perhaps the most self-possessed person—the calmest to all appearance,

of the whole party—was Sir Oswald Eversleigh, so heroic an effort had

he made over himself, in order to face the world proudly. He had a few

words to say to every one; and was particularly courteous to the guests

near him. He opened his letters with an unshaking hand. But he

abstained from all allusion to his wife, or the events of the previous

evening.

He had finished breakfast, and was leaving the room, when his nephew

approached him—

“Can I speak to you for a few moments alone?” asked Reginald.

“Certainly. I am going to the library to write my letters. You can go

with me, if you like.”

They went together to the library. As Sir Oswald closed the door, and

turned to face his nephew, he perceived that Reginald was deadly pale.

“What is amiss?” he asked.

“You ask me that, my dear uncle, at a