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

alike still and lonely. The village street could have been no more silent and empty if the two rows of houses had been so many vaults in a cemetery.

Black Milsom walked rapidly up the village street, and entered the gardens of the castle by a little iron gate, of which Matthew Brook, the reprobate and offender, had a key. This key Black Milsom had often heard of, and knew that it was always carried by Brook in a small breast-pocket of his overcoat.

From the garden he made his way quickly, silently, to the quadrangle on which Stephen Plumpton's bed-chamber opened.

Here all was dark and silent.

Milsom went straight to the little half-glass door which served both as door and window for the small sleeping-chamber of Stephen Plumpton.

He opened this door with a cautious hand, and stepped softly into the room. Stephen lay with his head half covered with the bed-clothes, and his loud snoring resounded through the chamber.

"The rum-punch has done the trick for you, my friend," Mr. Milsom said to himself.

He crossed the room with slow and stealthy footsteps, opened the door communicating with the rest of the house, and went along the passage leading to the hall.

With cautious steps he groped his way to the door opening on the secondary staircase, and ascended the thickly carpeted staircase within.

Here a lamp was left dimly burning all night, and this lamp showed him another cloth-covered door at the top of the first flight of stairs.

Black Milsom tried this door, and found it also unfastened.

This door, which Black Milsom opened, communicated with the little passage that had been made across the room usually tenanted by Captain Copplestone. Within this room there was a still smaller chamber--little more, indeed, than a spacious closet--in which slept the faithful old servant, Solomon Grundy.

Both the doors were open, and Black Milsom heard the heavy breathing of the old man--the breathing of a sound sleeper.

Beyond the short passage was the door opening into the sitting-room used by the young heiress of Raynham.

Black Milsom had only to push it open. The intruder crept softly across the room, drew aside a curtain, and opened the massive oak door which divided the sitting-room from the bed-room.

Mr. Milsom had taken care to make himself familiar with the smallest details of the castle household, and he had even heard of Mrs. Morden's habit of sleeping within closely drawn curtains, from his general informant, James Harwood, the groom, who had received his information from one of the housemaids, in that temple of gossip--the servants' hall.

Gertrude Eversleigh slept in a white-curtained cot, by the side of Mrs. Morden's bed.

Black Milsom lifted the coverlet, threw it over the face of the sleeping child, and with one strong hand lifted her from her cot, her face still shrouded by the thick down coverlet, which must effectually prevent her cries. With the other hand he snatched up a blanket, and threw it round the struggling form, and then, bundled in coverlet and blanket, he carried the little girl away.

Only when his feet were on the turf, and the castle stood up black behind him, did he withdraw the coverlet from the mouth of the half- suffocated child.

CHAPTER XXXIV.


CAUGHT IN THE TOILS.

Captain Copplestone did not waste half an hour on the road between London and Raynham.

No words can paint his agony of terror, the torture of mind which he endured, as he sat in the post-chaise, watching every landmark of the journey, counting every minute of the tedious hours, and continually putting his head out of the front window, and urging the postillions to greater speed.

He hated himself for having been duped by that forged letter.

"I had no business to leave the child," he kept repeating to himself; "not even to obey her mother. My place was by little Gertrude, and I have been a fool to desert my post. If any harm has come to her in my absence, by the heaven above me, I think I shall be tempted to blow out my brains."

Once having decided that the letter, purporting to be written by Lady Eversleigh, was a forgery, he could not doubt that it formed part of some plot against the household of Raynham Castle.

To Captain Copplestone, who knew that the life of his friend had been sacrificed to the dark plottings of a traitor, this idea was terrible.

"I knew the wretches I had to deal with; I was forewarned that treachery and cunning would be on the watch to do that child wrong," he said to himself, during those hours of self-reproach; "and yet I allowed myself to be duped by the first trick of those hidden foes. Oh, great heaven! grant that I may reach Raynham before they can have taken any fatal advantage of my absence."

It was daybreak when the captain's post-chaise dashed into the village street of Raynham. He murmured a thanksgiving and a prayer, almost in the same breath, as he saw the castle-turrets dark against the chill gray sky.

The vehicle ascended the hill, and stopped before the arched entrance to the castle. An old woman, who acted as portress, opened the carved iron gates. He glanced at her, but did not stop to question her. One word from her would have put an end to all suspense; but in this last moment the soldier had not courage to utter the question which he so dreaded to have answered--Was Gertrude safe?

In another moment that question was answered for Captain Copplestone-- answered completely, without the utterance of a word.

The principal door of the castle was open, and in the doorway stood two men.

One was Mr. Ashburne, the magistrate; the other was Christopher Dimond, the constable of Raynham.

The sight of these two men told Captain Copplestone that his fears were but too surely realized. Something had happened amiss--something of importance--or Gilbert Ashburne, the magistrate, would not be there.

"The child!" gasped the captain; "is she dead--murdered?"

"No, no, not dead," answered Mr. Ashburne.

"Not dead! Thank God!" exclaimed the soldier, in a devout whisper. "What then? What has happened?" he asked, scarcely able to command himself so far as to utter these few words with distinctness. "For pity's sake speak plainly. Can't you see that you are keeping me in torture? What has happened to the child?"

"She has disappeared."

"She has disappeared!" echoed the captain. "I left strict orders that she should not be permitted to stir beyond the castle walls. Who dared to disobey those orders?"

"No one," answered Mr. Ashburne. "Miss Eversleigh was not allowed to quit her own apartments. She disappeared in the night from her own cot, while that cot was in its usual place, beside Mrs. Morden's bed."

"But who could penetrate into that room in the night, when the castle doors are secured against every one? Where is Mrs. Morden? Let me see her; and let every servant of the house be assembled in the great dining-room."

Captain Copplestone gave this order to the butler, who had come out to the hall on hearing the arrival of the post-chaise. The man bowed, and departed on his errand.

"I fear you will gain nothing by questioning the household," said Mr. Ashburne. "I have already made all possible inquiries, assisted by Christopher Dimond here, but can obtain no information that throws the smallest ray of light upon this most mysterious business."

"I thank you," replied the captain; "I am sure you have done all that friendship could suggest; but I should like to question those people myself. This business is a matter of life and death for me."

He went into the great dining-room--the room in which the inquiry had been held respecting the cause of Sir Oswald's death. Mr. Ashburne and Christopher Dimond accompanied him, and the servants of the household came in quietly, two and three at a time, until the lower end of the room was full. Mrs. Morden was the last to come. She made no protestations of her grief--her self-reproach--for she never for a moment imagined that any one could doubt the intensity of her feelings. She stood before the captain, calm, collected, ready to answer his questions promptly and conscientiously.

He questioned the servants one by one, beginning with Mrs. Smithson, the housekeeper, who was ready to declare that no living creature, except the members of the household, could have been within the castle walls on the night of Gertrude Eversleigh's disappearance.

"That anybody could have come into this house and gone out of it in a night, unknown to me, is a moral impossibility," said the housekeeper; "the doors were locked at half-past ten, and the keys were brought in a basket to my room. So, you see it's quite impossible that any one could have come in or gone out before the doors were open in the morning."

"What time was the child's disappearance discovered?"

"At a quarter to five in the morning," answered Mrs. Morden; "before any one in the house was a-stir. My darling has always been in the habit of waking at that hour, to take a little milk, which is left in a glass by her bedside. I woke at the usual time, and rose, in order to give her the milk, and when I looked at her cot, I saw that it was empty. The child was gone. The silk coverlet and one blanket had disappeared with her. I gave the alarm immediately, and in a quarter of an hour the whole household was a-stir."

"And did you hear nothing during that night?" asked the captain, turning suddenly to address Solomon Grundy, who had entered amongst the rest of the servants.

"Nothing, captain."

"Humph," muttered the old soldier, "a sorry watch-dog."

"There is only one entrance to the castle which is at all weakly guarded," said the magistrate, presently; "and that is a small door belonging to the bed-room occupied by one of the footmen. But this man tells me that he was in his room that night at his usual hour, and that the door was locked and bolted in the usual way."

As he said this, the magistrate looked towards the end of the apartment, where Stephen Plumpton stood amongst his fellow servants. The young man had been weak enough, or guilty enough, to commit himself to a false statement; first, because he did not want to betray the misdoings of Matthew Brook, and secondly, because he feared to admit his own culpable carelessness.

"My telling the truth won't bring the child back," he argued with himself. "If it would, I'd speak out fast enough."

"You say that it is impossible that any one can have entered this house, and left it, during that night," said Captain Copplestone to the housekeeper; "and yet some one must have left the house, even if no one entered it, or Gertrude Eversleigh must be hidden within these walls. Has the castle been thoroughly searched? There are stories of children who have hidden themselves in sport, to find the sport end in terrible earnest."

"The castle has been searched from garret to cellar," answered Mrs. Morden. "Mrs. Smithson and I have gone together into every room, and opened every cupboard."

The captain dismissed the assembly, after having asked many questions without result. When this was done, he went alone to the library, where he shut himself in, and seated himself at the writing-table, with pen and ink before him, to