Run to Earth by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ready player one ebook TXT) đź“•
Other people were taking very little notice of the singer. The regularpatrons of the 'Jolly Tar' were accustomed to her beauty and hersinging, and thought very little about her. The girl was very quiet,very modest. She came and went under the care of the old blind pianist,whom she called her grandfather, and she seemed to shrink alike fromobservation or admiration.
She began to sing again presently.
She stood by the piano, facing the audience, calm as a statue, with herlarge black eyes looking straight before her. The old man listened toher eagerly, as he played, and nodded fond approval every now and then,as the full, rich
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the rectory now, having evidently been in the river. Seeing we can’t
prove the matter, it’s my opinion we’d better not meddle with it, more
particularly as nothing that we can prove will do Sir Reginald
Eversleigh any harm, and, if either of this precious pair of rascals is
to escape, you don’t want it to be him.”
“Oh, no, no!” said Lady Eversleigh, “he is so much worse than the other
as his added cowardice makes him.”
“Just so. Well, then, if you want to punish him and his agent, this is
certainly not the opportunity. Next to winning, there’s nothing like
thoroughly understanding and acknowledging what you’ve lost, and we
have lost this game, beyond all question. Let us see, now, if we cannot
win the next. If I understand the business right, Mr. Douglas Dale is
his brother’s heir?”
“Yes,” said Lady Eversleigh; “his life only now stands between Sir
Reginald and fortune.”
“Then he will take that life by Carrington’s agency, as I believe he
has taken Lionel Dale’s,” said Mr. Larkspur; “and my idea is that the
proper way to prevent him is to go away from this place, where no good
is to be done, and where any movement will only defeat our purpose, by
putting him on his guard—letting him know he is watched (forewarned,
forearmed, you know)—and set ourselves to watch Carrington in London.”
“Why in London? How do you know he’s there?”
Mr. Larkspur smiled.
“Lord bless your innocence!” he replied. “How do I know it? Why, ain’t
London the natural place for him to be in? Ain’t London the place where
every one that has done a successful trick goes to enjoy it, and every
one that has missed his tip goes to hide himself? I’ll take my davy,
though it’s a thing I don’t like doing in general, that Carrington’s
back in town, living with his mother, as right as a trivet.”
So Lady Eversleigh and Jane Payland travelled up to town again, and
took up their old quarters. And Mr. Larkspur returned, and resumed his
room and his accustomed habits. But before he had been many hours in
London, he had ascertained, by the evidence of his own eyes, that
Victor Carrington was, as he had predicted, in town, living with his
mother, and “as right as a trivet.”
CHAPTER XXV.
A DANGEROUS ALLIANCE.
In the afternoon of the day following that on which Sir Reginald paid a
visit to Victor Carrington, the latter gentleman presented himself at
the door of Hilton House. The frost had again set in, and this time
with more than usual severity. There had been a heavy fall of snow, and
the park-like grounds surrounding Madame Durski’s abode had an almost
fairy-like appearance, the tracery of the leafless trees defined by the
snow that had lodged on every branch, the undulating lawn one bed of
pure white.
He knocked at the door and waited. The woman at the lodge had told him
that it was very unlikely he would be able to see Madame Durski at this
hour of the day, but he had walked on to the house notwithstanding.
It was already nearly four o’clock in the afternoon; but at that hour
Paulina had rarely left her own apartments.
Victor Carrington knew this quite as well as the woman at the lodge,
but he had business to do with another person as well as Paulina
Durski. That other person was the widow’s humble companion.
The door was opened by Carlo Toas, Paulina’s confidential courier and
butler. This man looked very suspiciously at the visitor.
“My mistress receives no one at this hour,” he said.
“I am aware that she does not usually see visitors so early,” replied
Carrington; “but as I come on particular business, and as I come a long
way to see her, she will perhaps make an exception in my favour.”
He produced his card-case as he spoke, and handed the man a card, on
which he had written the following words in pencil:
“_Pray see me, dear madame. I come on really important business, which
will bear no delay. If you cannot see me till your dinner-hour, I will
wait._”
The Spaniard ushered Victor into one of the reception-rooms, which
looked cold and chill in the winter daylight. Except the grand piano,
there was no trace of feminine occupation in the room. It looked like
an apartment kept only for the reception of visitors—an apartment
which lacked all the warmth and comfort of home.
Victor waited for some time, and began to think his message had not
been taken to the mistress of the house, when the door was opened, and
Miss Brewer appeared.
She looked at the visitor with an inquisitive glance as she entered the
room, and approached him softly, with her light, greenish-grey eyes
fixed upon his face.
“Madame Durski has been suffering from nervous headache all day,” she
said, “and has not yet risen. Her dinner-hour is half-past six. If your
business is really of importance, and if you care to wait, she will be
happy to see you then.”
“My business is of real importance; and I shall be very glad to wait,”
answered Victor. “Since Madame Durski is, unhappily, unable to receive
me for some time, I shall gladly avail myself of the opportunity, in
order to enjoy a little conversation with you, Miss Brewer,” he said,
courteously, “always supposing that you are not otherwise engaged.”
“I have no other engagement whatever,” answered the lady, in a cold,
measured voice.
“I wish to speak to you upon very serious business,” continued Victor,
“and I believe that I can venture to address you with perfect candour.
The business to which I allude concerns the interests of Madame Durski,
and I have every reason to suppose that you are thoroughly devoted to
her interests.”
“For whom else should I care?” returned Miss Brewer, with a bitter
laugh. “Madame Durski is the only friend I can count in this world. I
have known her from her childhood—and if I can believe anything good
of my species, which is not very easy for me to do, I can believe that
she cares for me—a little—as she might care for some piece of
furniture which she had been accustomed to see about her from her
infancy, and which she would miss if it were removed.”
“You wrong your friend,” said Victor. “She has every reason to be
sincerely attached to you, and I have little doubt that she is so.”
“What right have you to have little doubt or much doubt about it?”
exclaimed Miss Brewer, contemptuously; “and why do you try to palm off
upon me the idle nonsense which senseless people consider it incumbent
on them to utter? You do not know Paulina Durski—I do. She is a woman
who never in her life cared for more than two things.”
“And these two things are—”
“The excitement of the gaming-table, and the love of your worthless
friend, Sir Reginald Eversleigh.”
“Does she really love my friend?”
“She does. She loves him as few men deserve to be loved—and least of
all that man. She loves him, although she knows that her affection is
unreturned, unappreciated. For his sake she would sacrifice her own
happiness, her own prosperity. Women are foolish creatures, Mr.
Carrington, and you men do wisely when you despise them.”
“I will not enter into the question of my friend’s merits,” said
Victor; “but I know that Madame Durski has won the love of a man who is
worthy of any woman’s affection—a man who is rich, and can elevate her
from her present—doubtful—position.”
The Frenchman uttered these last words with a great appearance of
restraint and hesitation.
“Say, miserable position,” exclaimed Miss Brewer; “for Paulina Durski’s
position is the most degraded that a woman—whose life has been
comparatively sinless—ever occupied.”
“And every day its degradation will become more profound,” said Victor.
“Unless Madame Durski follows my advice, she cannot long remain in
England. In her native city she has little to hope for. In Paris, her
name has acquired an evil odour. What, then, lies before her?”
“Ruin!” exclaimed Miss Brewer, abruptly; “starvation it may be. I know
that our race is nearly run, Mr. Carrington. You need not trouble
yourself to remind me of our misery.”
“If I do remind you of it, I only do so in the hope that I may be able
to serve you,” answered Victor. “I have tasted all the bitterness of
poverty, Miss Brewer. Forgive me, if I ask whether you, too, have been
acquainted with its sting?”
“Have I felt its sting?” cried the poor faded creature. “Who has felt
the tooth of the serpent, Poverty, more cruelly than I? It has pierced
my very heart. From my childhood I have known nothing but poverty.
Shall I tell you my story, Mr. Carrington? I am not apt to speak of
myself, or of my youth; but you have evoked the demon, Memory, and I
feel a kind of relief in speaking of that long-departed time.”
“I am deeply interested in all you say, Miss Brewer. Stranger though I
am, believe me that my interest is sincere.”
As Victor Carrington said this, Charlotte Brewer looked at him with a
sharp, penetrating glance. She was not a woman to be fooled by shallow
hypocrisies. The light of the winter’s day was fading; but even in the
fading light Victor saw the look of sharp suspicion in her pinched
face.
“Why should you be interested in me?” she asked, abruptly.
“Because I believe you may be useful to me,” answered Victor, boldly.
“I do not want to deceive you, Miss Brewer. Great triumphs have been
achieved by the union of two powerful minds.”
I know you to possess a powerful mind; I know you to be a woman above
ordinary prejudices; and I want you to help me, as I am ready to help
you. But you were about to tell me the story of your youth.
“It shall be told briefly,” said Miss Brewer, speaking in a rapid,
energetic manner that was the very reverse of the measured tones she
was wont to use. “I am the daughter of a disgraced man, who was a
gentleman once; but I have forgotten that time, as he forgot it long
before he died.
“My father passed the last ten years of his life in a prison. He died
in that prison, and within those dingy smoke-blackened walls my
childhood was spent—a joyless childhood, without a hope, without a
dream, haunted perpetually by the dark phantom, Poverty. I emerged from
that prison to enter a new one, in the shape of a West-end boarding-school, where I became the drudge and scape-goat of rich citizens’
daughters, heiresses presumptive to the scrapings of tallow-chandlers
and coal-merchants, linen-drapers and cheesemongers. For six years I
endured my fate patiently, uncomplainingly. Not one creature amongst
that large household loved me, or cared for me, or thought whether I
was happy or miserable.
“I worked like a slave. I rose early, and went to bed late, giving my
youth, my health, my beauty—you will smile, perhaps, Mr. Carrington,
but in those days I was accounted a handsome woman—in exchange for
what? My daily bread, and the education which was to enable me to earn
a livelihood hereafter. Some distant relations undertook to clothe me;
and I was dressed in those days about as shabbily as I have been
dressed ever since. In all my life, I never knew the innocent pleasure
which every woman feels in the possession of handsome clothes.
“At eighteen,
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