Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “No; it’s a business letter. You’d better show me where he lives, if he’s a customer of yours. The business is particular.”

  “Is it? You’re a queer kind of messenger to trust with particular business. Mr. Hawkehurst’s house is the third you come to on the opposite side of the way. But I don’t suppose you’ll find anybody up as late as this. Their lights are out by eleven, in a general way.”

  The third house on the opposite side of the road was half a mile distant from the little run. Lights shone bright in the lower windows as the tramp dragged his tired limbs to the stout oaken gate. The gate was fastened only by a latch, and offered no resistance to the intruder. He crept with stealthy footsteps along the smooth gravel walk, sheltered by dark laurels, on which the light flashed cheerily from those bright windows. Sounds of laughter and of music pealed out upon the wintry air. Shadows flitted across the blinds of the broad bay windows. Philip Sheldon crept into a sheltered nook beside the rustic porch, and sank down exhausted in the shadow of the laurels.

  He sat there in a kind of stupor. He had lost the power of thought, somehow, on that dreary journey. It seemed almost as if he had left some portion of his being out yonder in the cold and darkness. He had difficulty in remembering why he had come to this place, and what that deed was which he meant to do.

  “Hawkehurst,” he muttered to himself—”Hawkehurst, the man who leagued against me with Jedd! I swore to be even with him if ever I found the opportunity — if ever! And George refused me a few shillings; my brother, my only brother, refused to stand my friend!”

  Hawkehurst and George — his only brother — the images of these two men floated confusedly in his brain: he could scarcely separate them. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was still sitting outside his brother’s door, on the staircase in Gray’s Inn, hugging himself in his rags, and cursing his unnatural kinsman’s cruelty; then in the next moment he remembered where he was, and breathed bitter curses upon that unconscious enemy whose laugh pealed out every now and then amid a chorus of light-hearted laughter.

  There was a little Christmas party at Charlottenburgh. Two flys were waiting in the laurel-avenue to convey Mr. Hawkehurst’s guests to distant abodes. The door was opened presently, and all the bustle of departure made itself heard by that wretched wayfarer who found it so difficult to keep his hold upon the consciousness of these things.

  “What is it?” he said to himself—”a party! Hawkehurst has been giving a party.”

  He had lived through too much degradation, he had descended into too deep a gulf of wretchedness, to be conscious of the contrast between his present situation and his position in those days when he had played the host, and seen handsome carriages bear prosperous guests away from his door. In that cycle of misery which he had endured, these things and the memory of them had faded from him as completely as if they had been obliterated by the passage of a century. The hapless wretch tried to give sustained attention to all the animated discussion that attended the departure of the merry guests. Half-a-dozen people seemed to be talking at once. Valentine was giving his friends counsel about the way home.

  “You will keep to the lower road, you know, Fred. Lawsley’s cab can follow yours. You came a couple of miles out of your way. And tell that fellow Battersea Bridge is a mistake.”

  And then followed Charlotte’s friendly questioning about wraps, and hoods, and comforters, and other feminine gear.

  “And when are you coming to dine at Fulham?” cried one voice.

  “I shall certainly get those quadrilles of Offenbach’s,” said another.

  “How delightfully Mr. Lawsley sang that song of Santley’s!”

  And anon a chorus of “Never enjoyed myself more!” “Most delightful evening!” “Pray don’t come out in the cold.” “Thanks; well, yes, yours are always capital.” “No, I won’t light up till I’m on the road.” “Give my book a lift in the D.H., eh, old fellow?” “Are you quite sure that shawl is warm enough?” “Take a rug for your feet.” “Thanks, no.” “Good-night.” “See you on Tuesday.” “Don’t forget the box for D.L.” “All right, old fellow!” “Lower Road, Roehampton Lane, Putney Bridge. Good-night.”

  Among the confusion of voices Philip Sheldon had recognized more than one voice that was familiar to him. There were Charlotte’s gentle tones, and Valentine’s hearty barytone, and another that he knew.

  Diana Paget! Yes, it was her voice. Diana Paget, whom he had cause to hate for her interference with his affairs.

  “A beggar,” he muttered to himself, “and the daughter of a beggar! She was a nice young lady to set herself in opposition to the man who gave her a home.”

  The vehicles drove away, but there was still a little group in the rustic porch. Valentine and Charlotte, with Monsieur and Madame Lenoble, who had come to spend their Christmas with their English friends.

  “How we have been gay this evening!” cried Gustave. “There is nothing like your English interior for that which you call the comfortable, the jolly, you others. Thy friends are the jollity itself, Hawkehurst. And our acting charades, when that we all talked at once, and with a such emphasis on the word we would make to know. Was it not that our spectators were cunning to divine the words? And your friend Lawsley — it is a mixture of Got and Sanson. It is a true genius. Think, then, Diane, while we were amusing ourselves, our girls were at the midnight mass at the Sacré Coeur? Dear pious children, their innocent prayers ascended towards the heavens for we who are absent. Come, Madame Hawkehurst, Diane, it makes cold.”

  “But we are sheltered here. And the stars are so bright after the snow,” said Charlotte. “Do you remember the Christmas-day you spent at the Lawn, Valentine, when we walked in Kensington Gardens together, just when we were first engaged?” the young wife added shyly.

  “Do I not remember? It was the first time the holiness of Christmas came home to my heart. And now let us go back to the drawing-room, and sit round the fire, and tell ghost stories. Lenoble shall give us the legends of Côtenoir.”

  “Valentine,” murmured Charlotte, “do you know that it is nearly one o’clock?”

  “And we must put in an appearance at church to-morrow morning. And Lenoble has to walk to Kingston to early mass. We will postpone our ghost stories to New-Year’s eve. And Lenoble shall read Tennyson’s New Year, to demonstrate his improvement in the English language. Lead the way, Mrs. Hawkehurst; your obedient slave obeys. Mamma is waiting for us in the drawing-room, marvelling at our delay, no doubt. And Nancy Woolper stalks ghost-like through the house, oppressed by the awful responsibility of to-morrow’s pudding.”

  Anon came a clanking of bolts and bars; and Philip Sheldon, for the second time that night, heard a door shut against him. As the voices died away, his consciousness of external things died with him. He fancied himself on the Gray’s-Inn staircase.

  “Don’t be so hard upon me, George,” he muttered faintly. “If my own kith and kin turn against me, whom shall I look to?”

  Mrs. Woolper opened the door early next day, when night was yet at odds with morning. All through the night the silent snow-flakes had been falling thick and fast; and they had woven the shroud of Philip Sheldon. The woman who had watched his infant slumbers forty years before, was the first to look upon him in that deeper sleep, of whose waking we know so little. It was not until she had looked long and closely at the dead face that she knew why it was that the aspect of that countenance had affected her with so strange a pang. She did recognize that altered wretch, and kept her counsel.

  Before the bells rang for morning service the tramp was lying in the dead-house of Kingston Union, whither he had been conveyed very quietly in the early morning, unknown to any one but the constable who superintended the removal, and the servants of Mr. Hawkehurst’s household. Only the next day did Ann Woolper tell Valentine what had happened. There was to be an inquest. It would be well that some one should identify the dead man, and establish the fact of Philip Sheldon’s decease.

  Valenti
ne was able to do this unaided. He attended the inquest, and made arrangements for the outcast’s decent burial; and in due course he gave Mrs. Sheldon notice of her freedom. Beyond that nameless grave whose fancy shall dare follow Philip Sheldon? He died and made no sign. And in the last dread day, when the dead, small and great, from the sea and from the grave, press together at the foot of the great white Throne, and the books of doom are opened; when above shines the city whose light is the glory of God, and below yawns the lake of fire, — what voice shall plead for Philip Sheldon, what entreating cry shall Pity send forth that sentence against him may be stayed?

  Surely none; unless it issue from the lips of that one confiding friend, whose last words upon earth thanked and blessed him, and whose long agonies he watched with unshaken purpose, conscious that in every convulsive change in the familiar face, and every pang that shook the stalwart form, he saw the result of his own work.

  Perhaps at that dread Judgment Day, when every other tongue is silent, the voice of Tom Halliday may be heard pleading for the man who murdered him.

  THE END

  RUN TO EARTH

  Run to Earth was first published in 1868 after being serialised in the London Journal between October 1866 and July 1867 as Diavola; or, the Woman’s Battle. It tells the sensational story of the adventures of the singer Jenny Milsom (aka Honoria Milford) who escapes from her destitute life in order to marry into the peerage. But the threat of disinheritance means that ‘Jenny’ is now in danger of reprisals from her new husband’s jealous relatives.

  Title page of the first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  CHAPTER XXXV.

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII.

  CHAPTER XXXIX.

  CHAPTER XL.

  A ‘yellowback’ edition of the novel

  CHAPTER I.

  WARNED IN A DREAM.

  Seven-and-twenty years ago, and a bleak evening in March. There are gas-lamps flaring down in Ratcliff Highway, and the sound of squeaking fiddles and trampling feet in many public-houses tell of festivity provided for Jack-along-shore. The emporiums of slop-sellers are illuminated for the better display of tarpaulin coats and hats, so stiff of build that they look like so many sea-faring suicides, pendent from the low ceilings. These emporiums are here and there enlivened by festoons of many-coloured bandana handkerchief’s; and on every pane of glass in shop or tavern window is painted the glowing representation of Britannia’s pride, the immortal Union Jack.

  Two men sat drinking and smoking in a little parlour at the back of an old public-house in Shadwell. The room was about as large as a good-sized cupboard, and was illuminated in the day-time by a window commanding a pleasant prospect of coal-shed and dead wall. The paper on the walls was dark and greasy with age; and every bit of clumsy, bulging deal furniture in the room had been transformed into a kind of ebony by the action of time and dirt, the greasy backs and elbows of idle loungers, the tobacco-smoke and beer-stains of half a century.

  It was evident that the two men smoking and drinking in this darksome little den belonged to the seafaring community. In this they resembled each other; but in nothing else. One was tall and stalwart; the other was small, and wizen, and misshapen. One had a dark, bronzed face, with a frank, fearless expression; the other was pale and freckled, and had small, light-gray eyes, that shifted and blinked perpetually, and shifted and blinked most when he was talking with most animation. The first had a sonorous bass voice and a resonant laugh; the second spoke in suppressed tones, and had a trick of dropping his voice to a whisper whenever he was most energetic.

  The first was captain and half-owner of the brigantine ‘Pizarro’, trading between the port of London, and the coast of Mexico. The second was his clerk, factotum, and confidant; half-sailor, half-landsman; able to take the helm in dangerous weather, if need were; and able to afford his employer counsel in the most intricate questions of trading and speculation.

  The name of the captain was Valentine Jernam, that of his factotum Joyce Harker. The captain had found him in an American hospital, had taken compassion upon him, and had offered him a free passage home. On the homeward voyage, Joyce Harker had shown himself so handy a personage, that Captain Jernam had declined to part with him at the end of the cruise: and from that time, the wizen little hunchback had been the stalwart seaman’s friend and companion. For fifteen years, during which Valentine Jernam and his younger brother, George, had been traders on the high seas, things had gone well with these two brothers; but never had fortune so liberally favoured their trading as during the four years in which Joyce Harker had prompted every commercial adventure, and guided every speculation.

  “Four years to-day, Joyce, since I first set eyes upon your face in the hospital at New Orleans,” said Captain Jernam, in the confidence of this jovial hour. “‘Why, the fellow’s dead,’ said I. ‘No; he’s only dying,’ says the doctor. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked I. ‘Home-sickness and empty pockets,’ says the doctor; ‘he was employed in a gaming-house in the city, got knocked on the head in some row, and was brought here. We’ve got him through a fever that was likely enough to have finished him; but there he lies, as weak as a starved rat. He has neither money nor friends. He wants to get back to England; but he has no more hope of ever seeing that country than I have of being Emperor of Mexico.’ ‘Hasn’t he?’ says I; ‘we’ll tell you a different story about that, Mr. Doctor. If you can patch the poor devil up between this and next Monday, I’ll take him home in my ship, without the passage costing him sixpence.’ You don’t feel offended with me for having called you a poor devil, eh, Joyce? — for you really were, you know — you really were an uncommonly poor creature just then,” murmured the captain, apologetically.

  “Offended with you!” exclaimed the factotum; “that’s a likely thing. Don’t I owe you my life? How many more of my countrymen passed me by as I lay on that hospital-bed, and left me to rot there, for all they cared? I heard their loud voices and their creaking boots as I lay there, too weak to lift my eyelids and look at them; but not too weak to curse them.”

  “No, Joyce, don’t say that.”

  “But I do say it; and what’s more, I mean it. I’ll tell you what it is, captain, there’s a general opinion that when a man’s shoulders are crooked, his mind is crooked too; and that, if his poor unfortunate legs have shrivelled up small, his heart must have shrivelled up small to match ‘em. I dare say there’s some truth in the general opinion; for, you see, it doesn’t improve a man’s temper to find himself cut out according to a different pattern from that his fellow-creatures have been made by, and to find his fellow-creatures setting themselves against him because of that difference; and it doesn’t soften a poor wretch’s heart towards the world in general, to find the world in general harder than stone against him, for no better reason than his poor weak legs and his poor crooked back. But never mind talking about me and my feelings, captain. I ain’t of so much account as to make it worth while for a
fine fellow like you to waste words upon me. What I want to know is your plans. You don’t intend to stop down this way, do you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because it’s a dangerous way for a man who carries his fortune about him, as you do. I wish you’d make up your mind to bank that money, captain.”

  “Not if I know it,” answered the sailor, with a look of profound wisdom; “not if I know it, Joyce Harker. I know what your bankers are. You go to them some fine afternoon, and find a lot of clerks standing behind a bran new mahogany counter, everything bright, and shining, and respectable. ‘Can I leave a few hundreds on deposit?’ asks you. ‘Why, of course you can,’ reply they; and then you hand over your money, and then they hand you back a little bit of paper. ‘That’s your receipt,’ say they. ‘All right,’ say you; and off you sheer. Perhaps you feel just a little bit queerish, when you get outside, to think that all your solid cash has been melted down into that morsel of paper; but being a light-hearted, easy-going fellow, you don’t think any more of it, till you come home from your next voyage, and go ashore again, and want your money; when it’s ten to one if you don’t find your fine new bank shut up, and your clerks and bran-new mahogany counter vanished. No, Joyce, I’ll trust no bankers.”

  “I’d rather trust the bankers than the people down this way, any day in the week,” answered the clerk, thoughtfully.

  “Don’t you worry yourself, Joyce! The money won’t be in my keeping very long. George is to meet me in London on the fifth of April, at the latest, he says, unless winds and waves are more contrary than ever they’ve been since he’s had to do with them; and you know George is my banker. I’m only a sleeping partner in the firm of Jernam Brothers. George takes the money, and George does what he likes with it — puts it here and there, and speculates in this and speculates in that. You’ve got a business head of your own, Joyce; you’re one of George’s own sort; and you are up to all his dodges, which is more than I am. However, he tells me we’re getting rich, and that’s pleasant enough — not that I think I should break my heart about it if we were getting poor. I love the sea because it is the sea, and I love my ship for her own sake.”