Run to Earth: A Novel

by M. E. Braddon

"What has become of the old toper who lives up yonder among the chimney-pots?" cried the porter, suddenly, to the wife of his bosom. "I have not seen him to-day nor yesterday, nor for many days. He must be ill. I will go upstairs and make inquiries by-and-by, when I have leisure."

The porter waited for a leisure half-hour after dark, and then tramped wearily up the steep old staircase with a lighted candle to see after the missing lodger. He might have waited even longer without detriment to Sir Reginald Eversleigh.

The baronet had been dead many days, suffocated by the fumes of his poor little charcoal stove. A trap-door in the roof, which he had been accustomed to open for the ventilation of his garret, had been closed by the wind, and the baronet had passed unconsciously from sleep to death.

He had died, and no one had been aware of his death. The people of the house did not know either his name or his country. His burial was that of an unknown pauper; and the bones of the last male scion of the house of Eversleigh were mingled with the bones of Parisian paupers in the cemetery of Père la Chaise.

While Sir Reginald Eversleigh dragged out the wretched remnant of his existence in a dingy Parisian alley, there was perfect peace and tranquil happiness for the woman against whose fair fame he and Victor Carrington had so basely conspired.

Yes, Anna was at peace; surrounded by friends; delighted day by day to watch the budding loveliness, the sportive grace of Gertrude Eversleigh, the idolized heiress of Raynham. As Lady Eversleigh paced the terraces of an Italian garden, her mother by her side, with Gertrude clinging to her side; as she looked out over the vast domain which owned her as mistress—it might seem that fortune had lavished her fairest gifts into the lap of her who had been once a friendless stranger, singing in the taverns of Wapping.

Wonderful indeed had been the transitions which had befallen her; but even now, when the horizon seemed so fair before her, there were dark shadows upon the past which, in some measure, clouded the brightness of the present, and dimmed the radiance of the future.

She could not forget her night of agony in the house amongst the marshes beyond Ratcliff Highway; she could not cease to lament the loss of that noble friend who had rescued her in the hour of her despair.

The world wondered at the prolonged widowhood of the mistress of Raynham. People were surprised to find that a woman in the golden prime of womanhood and beauty could be constant to the memory of a husband old enough to have been her father. But in due time society learned to accept the fact as a matter of course, and Lady Eversleigh was no longer the subject of hopes and speculations.

Her constant gratitude and friendship for the Jernams suffered no diminution as time went on. The difference in their social position made no difference to her; and no more frequent or more welcome guests were seen at Raynham than Captain Duncombe, his daughter and son-in-law, and honest Joyce Harker. Lady Eversleigh had a particular regard for the man who had so true and faithful a heart, and she would often talk to him; but she never mentioned the subject of that miserable night on which he had seen her down at Wapping. That subject was tacitly avoided by both. There was a pain too intense, a memory too dark, associated with the events of that period.