Run to Earth: A Novel

by M. E. Braddon

The hours wore solemnly away in the great building, consecrated to suffering and its relief, in which Black Milsom lay dying, with his sister kneeling by his bed, while the good clergyman, who had had pity on the soul of the sinner, sat on the other side, gravely and compassionately looking at them both. The meeting between the brother and sister had been very distressing, and the agony exhibited by the poor woman when she was made aware that her brother had acknowledged himself a criminal of the deepest dye, was intense. Calm—almost stupor—had succeeded to her wild grief, and the clergyman had spoken words of consolation and hope to the dying and the living. The surgeons had seen the man for the last time; there was nothing more to be done for him now—nothing to do but to wait for the equal foot approaching with remorseless tread.

It was indeed a fearful catalogue of crime to which the Rev. Philip Colburne had listened, and had written with his own hand at the dying man's dictation. Not often has such a revelation been made to mortal ears, and the two who heard it—the Christian minister and the trembling, horrified sister—felt that the scene could never be effaced from their memories.

With only two items in that awful list this story has to do.

The first is, the murder of Valentine Jernam. As Mrs. Miller heard her brother, with gasping breath and feeble utterance, tell that horrible story, her heart died within her. She knew it well. Who at Allanbay had not heard of the murder of Mrs. Jernam's darling nephew, the bright, popular, kind-hearted seaman, whose coming had been a jubilee in the little port; whose disappearance had made so painful a sensation? She had heard the story from his aunt, and Rosamond had told her how her husband lived in the hope of finding out and punishing his brother's murderer. And now he was found, this murderer, this thief, this guilt-burdened criminal: and he was her only brother, and dying. Ah, well, Valentine Jernam was avenged. Providence had exacted George Jernam's vengeance: the wrath of man was not needed here.

The second crime with which this story has to do was one of old date, one of the earliest in Black Milsom's dreadful career. The dying wretch told Mr. Colburne how he had headed a gang of thieves, chiefly composed of sailors who had deserted their ships, some twenty-one or two years before this time, when retribution had come upon him, and in their company had robbed the villa of an English lady at Florence. This crime had been committed with the connivance and assistance of the Italian woman who was nurse to the English lady's child. Milsom, then a handsome young fellow, had offered marriage to the woman, which offer was accepted; and she had made his taking her and the child with him—for nothing would induce her to leave the infant—a condition of her aid. He did so; but the hardship of her new life soon killed the Italian woman; and the child was left to the mercy of Milsom and an old hag who acted as his drudge and accomplice. What mercy she met with at those hands the reader knows, for that child was the future wife of Sir Oswald Eversleigh. Mr. Colburne listened to this portion of Milsom's confession with intense interest.

"The name?" he asked; "the name of the lady who lived at Florence, the mother of the child? Tell me the name!"

"Verner," said the dying man, in a hoarse whisper, "Lady Verner; the child's name was Anna."

He was very near his end when he finished his terrible story. While Mr. Colburne was trying to speak peace to the poor darkened, frightened, guilty soul, Mrs. Miller knelt by the bedside, sobbing convulsively. Suddenly she remembered the child she had the care of. Had his account of her been true? Was she also the victim of a crime? She waited, with desperate impatience, but with the habitual respect of her class, until Mr. Colburne had ceased to speak. Then she put her lips close to the dying man's ear, and said—

"Thomas, Thomas, for God's sake tell me about the child—who is she? Is what you told me true? If not, set it right—oh, brother, brother, set it right—before it is too late."

The imploring tone of her voice reached her brother's dull ear; a faint spasm, as though he strove in vain to speak, crossed his white drawn lips. But the disfigured head in its ghastly bandages was motionless; the shattered arm in its wrappings made no gesture. In terror, in despair, his sister started to her feet, and looked eagerly, closely, into his face. In vain the white lips parted, the eyelids quivered, a shiver shook the broad, brawny chest—then all was still, and Black Milsom was dead!