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

himself a ruined gamester, should have become the dupe of a man whose

reported wealth was as great a sham as his own. But so it was. I

exchanged poverty with one master for poverty with another master. My

new life was an existence of perpetual falsehood and trickery. I

occupied a splendid house in the most fashionable quarter of Vienna;

but that house was maintained by my husband’s winnings at the gaming-table; and it was my task to draw together the dupes whose money was to

support the false semblance of grandeur which surrounded me. The dupes

came. I had my little court of flatterers; but the courtiers paid

dearly for their allegiance to their queen. I was the snare which was

set to entrap the birds whose feathers my husband was to pluck. If I

had been like other women, my position would have been utterly

intolerable to me. I should have found some means of escape from a life

so hateful—a degradation so shameful.”

“And you made no attempt to escape?”

“None. I was a gambler; the vice which had degraded my husband had

degraded me. We had both sunk to the same level, and I had no right to

reproach him for infamy which I shared. We had little affection for

each other. Colonel Durski had sought me only because I was fitted to

adorn his reception-rooms, and attract the dupes who were to suffer by

their acquaintance with him. But if there was little love between us,

we at least never quarrelled. He treated me always with studied

courtesy, and I never upbraided him for the deception by which he had

obtained my hand. My father disappeared suddenly from Vienna, and only

after his departure was it discovered that his fortune had long

vanished, and that he had for several years been completely insolvent.

His creditors tittered a cry of execration; but in great cities the

cries of such victims are scarcely heard. My reception-rooms were still

thronged by aristocratic guests, and no one cared to remember my

father’s infamy. This life had lasted three years, when my husband died

and left me penniless. I sold my jewels, and came to this city, where

for a year and a half I have lived, as my husband lived in Vienna, on

the fortune of the gaming-table. I am growing weary of Paris, and it

may be that Paris is growing weary of me. I suppose I shall go to

London next. And next? Who knows? Ah, Reginald Eversleigh, believe me

there are many moments of my life in which I think that the little walk

from here to the river would cut the knot of all my difficulties. To-night I am surrounded with anxieties, steeped in degradation, hemmed in

by obstacles that shut me out of all peaceful resting-places. To-morrow

I might be lying very quietly in the Morgue.”

“Paulina, for pity’s sake—”

“Ah, me! these are idle words, are they not?” said Madame Durski, with

a weary sigh. “And now I have told you my history, Reginald Eversleigh,

and it is for you to judge whether there is any excuse for such a

creature as I am.”

Sir Reginald pitied this hopeless, friendless, woman as much as it was

in him to pity any one except himself, and tried to utter some words of

consolation.

She looked up at him, as he spoke to her, with a glance in which he saw

a deeper feeling than gratitude.

Then it was that Reginald declared himself the devoted lover of the

woman who had revealed to him the strange story of her life. He told

her of the influence which she exercised over him, the fascination

which he had sought in vain to resist. He declared himself attached to

her by an affection which would know no change, come what might. But he

did not offer this friendless woman the shelter of his name, the

ostensible position which would have been hers had she become his wife.

Even when beneath the sway of a woman’s fascination Reginald Eversleigh

was cold and calculating. Paulina Durski was poor, and doubtless deeply

in debt. She was a gambler, and the companion of gamblers. She was,

therefore, no fitting wife for a man who looked upon marriage as a

stepping-stone by which he might yet redeem his fallen fortunes.

Paulina received his declaration with an air of simulated coldness; but

Reginald Eversleigh could perceive that it was only simulated, and that

he had awakened a real affection in the heart of this desolate woman.

“Do not speak to me of love,” she said; “to me such words can promise

no happiness. My love could only bring shame and misery on the man to

whom it was given. Let me tread my dreary pathway alone, Reginald—

alone to the very end.”

Much was said after this by Reginald and the woman who loved him, and

who was yet too proud to confess her love. Paulina Durski was not an

inexperienced girl, to be persuaded by romantic speeches. She had

acquired knowledge of the world in a hard and bitter school. She could

fully fathom the base selfishness of the man who pretended to love her,

and she understood why it was that he shrank from offering her the only

real pledge of his truth.

“I will speak frankly to you, Paulina,” he said. “I am too poor to

marry.”

“Yes,” she answered, bitterly; “I comprehend. You are too poor to marry

a penniless wife.”

“And I am not likely to find a rich one. But, believe me, that my love

is none the less sincere because I shrink from asking you to ally

yourself to misery.”

“So be it, Sir Reginald. I am willing to accept your love for what it

is—a wise and prudent affection—such as a man of the world may freely

indulge in without fear that his folly may cost him too dearly. You

will come to my house; I shall see you night after night amongst the

reckless idlers who gather round me; you will pay me compliments all

the year round, and bring me bon-bons on New Year’s Day; and some day,

when I have grown old and haggard, you will all at once forget the fact

of our acquaintance, and I shall see you no more. Let it be so. It is

pleasant for a woman to fancy herself beloved, however false the fancy

may be. I will shut my eyes, and dream that you love me, Reginald.”

And this was all. No more was ever said of love between these two; but

from that hour Reginald was more constant than ever in his attendance

on the beautiful widow. The time came when she grew weary of Paris, and

when those who had lost money began to shun the seductive delights of

her nightly receptions. Reginald Eversleigh was not slow to perceive

that the brilliant throng grew thin—the most distinguished guests

“conspicuous by their absence.” He urged Paulina to leave Paris for

London; and he himself selected the lonely villa on the banks of the

Thames, in which he found a billiard-room, lighted from the roof, that

was easily converted into a secret chamber.

It was by his advice that Paulina Durski altered her line of conduct on

taking up her abode in England, and refrained altogether from any

active share in the ruinous amusements for which men frequented her

receptions.

“It was all very well for you to take a hand at �cart�, or to take

your place at the rouge et noir table, in Paris,” Reginald said, when

he discussed this question; “but here it will not do. The English are

full of childish prejudices, and to see a woman at the gaming-table

would shock these prejudices. Let me play for you. I will find the

capital, and we will divide the profits of each night’s speculation.

For your part, you will have only to look beautiful, and to lure the

golden-feathered birds into the net; and sometimes, perhaps, when I am

playing �cart� with one of your admirers, behind whose chair you may

happen to be standing, you may contrive to combine a flattering

interest in his play with a substantial benefit to mine.”

Paulina’s eyelids fell, and a crimson flush dyed her face: but she

uttered no exclamation of anger or disgust. And yet she understood only

too well the meaning of Sir Reginald’s words. She knew that he wished

her to aid him in a deliberate system of cheating. She knew this, and

she did not withdraw her friendship from this man.

Alas, no! she loved him. Not because she believed him to be good and

honourable—not because she was blinded to the baseness of his nature.

She loved him in spite of her knowledge of his real character—she

yielded to the influence of an infatuation which she was so powerless

to resist that she might almost be pardoned for believing herself the

victim of a baleful destiny.

“It is my fate,” she murmured to herself, after this last revelation of

her lover’s infamy. “It must needs be my fate, since women with less

claim to be loved than I possess are so happy as to win the devotion of

good and brave men. It is my fate to love a cheat and trickster, on

whose constancy I have so poor a hold that a breath may sever the

miserable bond that unites us.”

Victor Carrington was one of the first persons whom Reginald Eversleigh

introduced to Madame Durski after her arrival in England. She was

pleased with the quiet and graceful manners of the Frenchman; but she

was at a loss to understand Sir Reginald’s intimate association with a

man who was at once poor and obscure.

She told Sir Reginald as much the next time she saw him alone.

“I know that in most of your friendships convenience and self-interest

reign paramount over what you call sentimentality; and yet you choose

for your friend this Carrington, whom no one knows; and who is, you

tell me, even poorer than yourself. You must have a hidden motive,

Reginald; and a strong one.”

A dark shade passed over the face of the baronet.

“I have my reasons,” he said. “Victor Carrington was once useful to

me—at least he endeavoured to be so. If he failed, the obligation is

none the less; and he is a man who will have his bond.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

AT ANCHOR.

The current of life flowed on at River View Cottage without so much as

a ripple in the shape of an event, after the appalling midnight visit

of Miser Screwton’s ghost, until one summer evening, when Captain

Duncombe came home in very high spirits, bringing with him an old

friend, of whom Miss Duncombe had heard her father talk very often; but

whom she had hitherto never seen.

This was no other than George Jernam, the captain of the “Albatross,”

and the owner of the “Stormy Petrel” and “Pizarro.”

In London the captain of the “Albatross” found plenty of business to

occupy him. He had just returned from an African cruise, and though he

had not forgotten the circumstances which had made his last intended

visit to England only a memorable and melancholy failure, he was in

high spirits.

The first few days hardly sufficed for the talks between George Jernam

and Joyce Harker, who aided him vigorously in the refitting of his

vessel. He had been in London about a week before he fell in with

honest Joe Duncombe. The two men had been fast friends ever since the

day on which George, while still a youngster,