Run to Earth by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (top books to read .TXT) 📕

by the men he now called his friends.

It was evident that Viscount Caversham suspected that he had been cheated; nor was it likely that he would keep his suspicions secret from the men of his set.

The suspicion once whispered would speedily be repeated by others who had lost money in the saloons of Madame Durski. Hints and whispers would swell into a general cry, and Sir Reginald Eversleigh would find himself tabooed.

The prospect before him looked black as night--a night illumined by one lurid star, and that was the promise of Victor Carrington.

"It is time for me to have done with poverty," he said to himself. "Lord Caversham's insolent innuendoes would be silenced if I had ten thousand a year. It is clear that the game is up at Hilton House. Paulina may as well go back to Paris or Vienna. The pigeons have taken fright, and the hawks must seek a new quarry."

Sir Reginald drove straight from his club to the little cottage beyond Malda Hill. He scarcely expected to find the man whom he had last seen at an inn in Dorsetshire; but, to his surprise, he was conducted immediately to the laboratory, where he discovered Victor Carrington bending over an alembic, which was placed on the top of a small furnace.

The surgeon looked up with a start, and Reginald perceived that he wore the metal mask which he had noticed on a former occasion.

"Who brought you here?" asked Victor, impatiently.

"The servant who admitted me," answered Reginald. "I told her I was your intimate friend, and that I wanted to see you immediately. She therefore brought me here."

"She had no right to do so. However, no matter. When did you return? I scarcely expected to see you in town as soon."

"I scarcely expected to find you hereafter our meeting at Frimley," replied the baronet.

"There was nothing to detain me in the country. I came back some days ago, and have been busy with my old studios in chemistry."

"You still dabble with poisons, I perceive," said Sir Reginald, pointing to the mask which Victor had laid aside on a table near him.

"Every chemist must dabble in poisons, since poison forms an element of all medicines," replied Victor. "And now tell me to what new dilemma of yours do I owe the honour of this visit. You rarely enter this house except when you find yourself desperately in need of my humble services. What is the last misfortune?"

"I have just come from the Phoenix, where I met Caversham, I thought I should be able to get a hundred or so out of him at _écarté_ to-night; but the game is up in that quarter."

"He suspects that he has been--_singularly_ unfortunate?"

"He knows it. No man who was not certain of the fact would have dared to say what he said to me. He insulted me, Carrington-insulted me grossly; and I was not able to resent his insolence."

"Never mind his insolence," answered Victor; "in six months your position will be such that no man will presume to insult you. So the game is up at Hilton House, is it? I thought you were going on a little too fast. And pray what is to be the next move?"

"What can we do? Paulina's creditors are impatient, and she has very little money to give them. My own debts are too pressing to permit of my helping her; and such being the case, the best thing she can do will be to get back to the Continent as soon as she can."

"On no account, my dear Reginald!" exclaimed Carrington. "Madame Durski must not leave Hilton House."

"Why not?"

"Never mind the why. I tell you, Reginald, she must stay. You and I must find enough money to stave off the demands of her sharpest creditors."

"I have not a sixpence to give her," answered the baronet; "I can scarcely afford to pay for the lodging that shelters me, and can still less afford to lend money to other people."

"Not even to the woman who loves you, and whom you profess to love?" said Victor, with a sneer. "What a noble-minded creature you are, Sir Reginald Eversleigh--a pattern of chivalry and devotion! However, Madame Durski must remain; that is essential to the carrying out of my plans. If you will not find the money, I know who will."

"And pray who is this generous knight-errant so ready to rush to the rescue of beauty in distress?"

"Douglas Dale. He is over head and ears in love with the Austrian widow, and will lend her the money she wants. I shall go at once to Madame Durski and give her a few hints as to her line of conduct."

There was a pause, during which the baronet seemed to be thinking deeply.

"Do you think that a wise course?" he asked, at last.

"Do I think what course wise?" demanded his friend.

"The line of conduct you propose. You say Douglas is in love with Paulina, and I myself have seen enough to convince me that you are right. If he is in love with her, he is just the man to sacrifice every other consideration for her sake. What if he should marry her? Would not that be a bad look-out for us?"

"You are a fool, Reginald Eversleigh," cried Victor contemptuously; "you ought to know me better than to fear my discretion. Douglas Dale loves Paulina Durski, and is the very man to sacrifice all worldly interests for her sake; the man to marry her, even were she more unworthy of his love than she is. But he never will marry her, notwithstanding."

"How will you prevent such a marriage?"

"That is my secret. Depend upon it I will prevent it. You remember our compact the night we met at Frimley."

"I do," answered Reginald, in a voice that was scarcely above a whisper.

"Very well; I will be true to my part of that compact, depend upon it. Before this new-born year is out you shall be a rich man."

"I have need of wealth, Victor," replied the baronet, eagerly; "I have bitter need of it. There are men who can endure poverty; but I am not one of them. If my position does not change speedily I may find myself branded with the stigma of dishonour--an outlaw from society. I must be rich at any cost--at any cost, Victor."

"You have told me that before," answered the Frenchman, coolly, "and I have promised that you shall be rich. But if I am to keep my promise, you must submit yourself with unquestioning faith to my guidance. If the path we must tread together is a dark one, tread it blindly. The end will be success. And now tell me when you expect to see Douglas Dale in London."

Sir Reginald explained his cousin's plans, and after a brief conversation left the cottage. He heard Mrs. Carrington's birds twittering in the cold January sunshine, and a passing glimpse through the open doorway of the drawing-room revealed to him the exquisite neatness and purity of the apartment, which even at this season was adorned with a few flowers.

"Strange!" he thought to himself, as he left the house; "any stranger entering that abode would imagine it the very shrine of domestic peace and simple happiness, and yet it is inhabited by a fiend."

He went back to town. He dined alone in his dingy lodging, scarcely daring to show himself at his club--Lord Caversham had spoken so plainly; and had, no doubt, spoken to others still more plainly. Reginald Eversleigh's face grew hot with shame as he remembered the insults he had been obliged to endure with pretended unconsciousness.

He feared to encounter other men who also had been losers at Hilton House, and who might speak as significantly as the viscount had spoken. This man, who violated the laws of heaven and earth with little terror of the Divine vengeance, feared above all to be cut by the men of his set.

This is the slavery which the man of fashion creates for himself--these are the fetters which such men as Reginald Eversleigh forge for their own souls.

But before we trace the progress of Sir Reginald from step to step in this terrible career, we must once more revert to the strange visitors at Frimley.

Jane Payland by no means approved of passing Christmas-day in the uninteresting seclusion of a country inn, with nothing more festive to look forward to than a specially ordered, but lonely dinner, and nothing to divert her thoughts but the rural spectacle afforded by the inn-yard. As to going out for a walk in such weather, she would not have thought of such a thing, even if she had any one to walk out with; and to go alone--no--Jane Payland had no fancy for amusement of that order. The day had been particularly dreary to the lady's maid, because the lady had been busily engaged in affairs of which she had no cognizance, and this ignorance, not a little exasperating even in town, became well-nigh intolerable to her in the weariness, the idleness, and the dullness of Frimley. When Lady Eversleigh went out in the dark evening, accompanied by the mysterious personage in whom Jane Payland had recognized their fellow-lodger, the amazement which she experienced produced an agreeable variety in her sensations, and the fact that the man with the vulture-like beak carried a carpet-bag intensified her surprise.

"Now I'm almost sure she is something to him; and she has come down here with him to see her people," said Jane Payland to herself, as she sat desolately by the fire in her mistress's room, a well-thumbed novel lying neglected on her knee; "and she's mean enough to be ashamed of them. Well, I don't think I should be that of my own flesh and blood, if I was ever so great and so grand. I suppose the bag is full of presents--I'm sure she might have told me if it was clothes she was going to give away; I shouldn't have grudged 'em to the poor things."

Grumbling a good deal, wondering more, and feasting a little, Jane Payland got through the time until her mistress returned. But for all her grumbling, and all her suspicion, the girl was daily growing more and more attached to her mistress, and her respect was increasing with her liking. Lady Eversleigh returned to the inn alone late on that dismal Christmas-night, and she looked worn, troubled, and weary. After a few kind words to Jane Payland, she dismissed the girl, and went to bed, very tired and heart-sick. "How am I to prove it?" she asked herself, as she lay wearily awake. "How am I to prove it? in my borrowed character I am suspected; in my own, I should not be believed, or even listened to for a moment. He is a good man, that Lionel Dale, and he is doomed, I fear."

On the morning of the twenty-sixth Mr. Andrew Larkspur had another long private conference with Lady Eversleigh, the immediate result of which was his setting out, mounted on the stout pony which we have seen in difficulties in a previous chapter, and vainly endeavouring to come up with Lionel Dale at the hunt. When Mr. Andrew Larkspur arrived at the melancholy conviction that his errand was a useless one, and that he must only return to Frimley, and concert with Lady Eversleigh a new plan of action, he also became aware that he was more hurt and shaken by