Dead-Sea Fruit E-Book

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

• Herausgeber: Interactive Media
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

Dead-Sea Fruit is a Victorian novel of ambition, identity, and disillusionment. After his mother’s death, gifted young Eustace Thorburn seeks the truth of his parentage and the wrongs done to her. His quest intersects with London society’s fragile reputations, where marriage, desire, and propriety collide. Moving between Belgian canals and English drawing rooms, Braddon exposes the emptiness beneath glittering success and the moral cost of betrayal, secrecy, and social ambition.

Leseprobe

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Dead-Sea Fruit Volume 1

Published by Fractal Press

This edition first published in 2026

Copyright © 2026 Fractal Press

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 9781836101598

Contents

CHAPTER 1.

CHAPTER 2.

CHAPTER 3.

CHAPTER 4.

CHAPTER 5.

CHAPTER 6.

CHAPTER 7.

CHAPTER 8.

CHAPTER 9.

CHAPTER 10.

CHAPTER 11.

CHAPTER 12.

CHAPTER 13.

CHAPTER 14.

CHAPTER 1.

QUITE ALONE.

THE marble image of Hubert Van Eyck stood out against the warm blue sky, and cast a slanting shadow across the sunlit flags. The July afternoon was drawing to a close. Low sunlight shone golden on the canals of Villebrumeuse, and changed every westward-looking window into a casement of gold. Those are no common windows which look out upon the quiet streets and lonely squares of that sleepy Belgian city. No handiwork of modern speculative builder is visible amid that grand old architecture—no flimsy nineteenth-century villa perks its tawdry head among those mediæval splendours—no upstart semi-detached abominations of spurious Gothic, picked out with rainbow-coloured brick, affright the eye by their hideous aspect. To live in Villebrumeuse is to live in the sixteenth century. A quiet calm, as of the past, pervades the shady streets. Green trees reflect themselves in the still waters of the slow canal which creeps athwart the city; and by the side of the tranquil waters there are pleasant walks o’er-shadowed by the umbrage of limes, and wooden benches whereon the peaceful citizens may repose themselves in the evening dusk. In despite of its solemn tranquillity, this Villebrumeuse is not a dreary dwelling-place. If it has drifted from amidst the busy places of this earth—if the blustrous ocean of modern progress has receded from its shores, leaving it far away across a level waste of reef and sand—this quiet city has, at the worst, been left stationary, while the noisy tide sweeps on with all its tumult of success and failure—its prosperous ventures and forgotten wrecks. The peace which pervades Villebrumeuse is the tranquillity of slumber, and not the awful stillness of death. There is a jog-trot prosperity in the place, a comfortable air, which is soothing to the world-worn spirit; but the wrestling, and scuffling, and striving, and struggling of modern commerce is unknown among the quiet merchants, who content themselves with supplying the simple wants of their fellow-citizens in the simplest fashion. And yet this city was once a mart to which the Orient brought her richest merchandise; and in the days gone by, these quaint old squares have been clamorous with the voices of many traders, and bright with the holiday raiment of busy multitudes.

A young Englishman walked slowly up and down the broad flagged square, across which the painter’s statue cast its sombre shadow. He was teacher of English and mathematics in a great public academy near at hand, and his name was Eustace Thorburn. For three years he had held his post in the Villebrumeuse academy; for three years he had done his duty, quietly and earnestly, to the satisfaction of every one concerned in the performance. And yet he was something of an enthusiast, and something of a poet, and possessed many of those attributes which are commonly supposed to constitute a letter of license for the neglect of vulgar every-day duties.

That was an ardent and an ambitious spirit which shone out of Eustace Thorburn’s gray eyes; but if the fiery sword had chafed the scabbard a little during three years of academical routine and Villebrumeuse monotony, the young man had been patient and contented withal. There was a public library in Villebrumeuse to which the tutor had free entrance, and in the mediæval chambers of this institution his leisure had been spent. That dreamy idleness amongst good books had been very pleasant to him; his work in the academy was endurable, despite its tedious and laborious nature; and he had a lurking tenderness for the quaint old city, the slow canals overshadowed by green trees, the simple people, and the old-world customs. Thus, if there were times when the eager spirit would fain have soared to loftier and fairer regions, the young student and teacher had not been altogether unhappy since his destiny had brought him to this place to earn his bread amongst strangers.

Amongst strangers? Were the inhabitants of this Belgian city any more strange to him than all the other inhabitants of this populous earth—except the one man and woman who made the sum-total of his kindred and friends? Amongst strangers? Why, if the statue of Van Eyck could have descended from yonder pedestal, to walk in the streets of the city, the animated effigy could scarcely have been a lonelier creature than the young man who passed to and fro athwart the sloping shadow on the flags this July afternoon.

Looking backward, through the shadows of the past, how many of those images, familiar to most men, were wanting in the mystic pictures that memory presented to Eustace Thorburn! Memory, let him question her never so closely, could not show him any faint tracing of a father’s face flickering dimly athwart the half-consciousness of infancy. Nor could he, in surveying the events of his childhood, recall so much as one visit to a father’s grave, one accidental utterance of a father’s name, one object, however trivial, associated with a father’s existence—a picture, a sword, a book, a watch, a tress of hair. The time had been when he had been wont to question his mother about this missing father; but that was long ago. The time had come, and too quickly in this young man’s life, when a precocious wisdom had checked his questioning, and he had learned to refrain from all reference to a father’s name, as the one subject, of all others, most scrupulously to be avoided by his lips. He was twenty-three years of age, and he had never been told his father’s name or position in the world. For the last ten years of his life it had been a common thing for him to lie awake in the solemn quiet of the night, thinking of that unknown father, and wondering whether he were alive or dead. He knew that he had no claim to the name which he bore, and that he had as good a right to call himself a Guelph or a Plantagenet as he had to call himself Thorburn.

How many childless men upon this earth would have been glad to call Eustace Thorburn son! How many of this world’s magnates, with mighty names to transmit, would have rejoiced with unspeakable rapture, could they have set the joy-bells ringing for the coming of age of such an heir! As there are rare and peerless flowers that adorn inaccessible regions where no hand can gather them, where no eye may delight in their loveliness, so there are friendless creatures in the world who might make the joy of empty hearts, and be the pride of desolate households. The “something in this world amiss,” which the poet has sung of, pervades every social relation. The plaintive wailing of the minor mingles itself with every earthly melody; and it is only by and by that the veil shall be lifted; it is only by and by that the mystic enigma shall be unriddled, and the full chords of perfect harmony peal on our ears, unmarred by that undertone of pain.

Not often has a nobler face looked upward to the countenance of the statue than that which looked at it with a dreamy gaze to-day. The face of the young man was, like the face of the statue, more beautiful by reason of, its nobility of expression than because of its perfect regularity of feature. In Eustace Thorburn’s countenance the intellectual radiance so far surpassed the physical beauty, that those who looked at him for the first time were impressed chiefly by the brightness of his expression, and were likely to take their leave of him in complete ignorance as to the shape of his nose or the modelling of his mouth.

It is but a thankless task to catalogue such a face; the dark gray eyes which pass for black; the mobile mouth which, in one moment, seems formed to express an unbending pride and an indomitable will, and in the next will wreathe itself into such a smile that it must needs appear incapable of any expression but manly tenderness or playful humour; the loosely arranged auburn hair, which gives something of a leonine aspect to the lofty head; the complexion of almost womanly fairness, with a rich glow that comes and goes with every changing impulse or emotion—all these go such a little way towards the individuality of the young Englishman, walking up and down the lonely square during his half-hour’s respite from the monotonous duties of the afternoon.

This half-hour’s holiday was not Mr. Thorburn’s only privilege. He had two hours in every day for his own studies—two hours which he generally spent in the public library, for his ambition had shaped itself into a palpable form, and had mapped the outline of a career. He was to be a man of letters. If he had been a rich man, he would have shut himself in his library and made himself a poet. But as he was nothing but a nameless and penniless stripling, with his bread to earn, he had no right to indulge in the luxury of verse-making. The wide arena of literary labour lay before him, and he had no choice but to force his way into the lists, and fight for any place that might happen to be vacant. Fate might make of him what she would—journalist, novelist, dramatist, magazine hack, penny-a-liner: but she must use him very cruelly before she could quench the fire of his young ambition, or bend the crest with which he was prepared to confront the world.

He had selected for himself this profession of literature chiefly because it was the only calling which demanded no capital from the beginner, and a little because the only kinsman he had in the world was a man who lived by his pen, and who might have prospered and won distinction by means of that fluent pen, had he not chosen to do otherwise.

The half-hour’s respite expired presently, and a great clanging bell in the academy near at hand summoned the pupils to their evening lesson. It was a summons for the master also, and Mr. Thorburn ran across the square and turned into the street on which one side of the academy looked. He pushed open a little wooden door in the big gateway, and passed under the arched entrance; but before going to his class-room, he stopped to examine a rack in which letters addressed to the masters were wont to be kept. He rarely omitted to look at this rack, though he had very few correspondents, and only received about one letter in a fortnight. To-day there was a letter. His heart turned cold as he looked at it, for the envelope was bordered with black, and addressed in the hand of his mother’s brother, who very seldom wrote to him. His mother had been an invalid for a long time, and such a letter as that could have but one fatal meaning. For months he had looked forward to his August holiday, which would enable him to go to England and spend a few happy weeks with that dear mother—and now the holiday would come too late.

He went out into one of the dismal playgrounds, a gravelled yard surrounded by high whitewashed walls, and read his letter.

His tears fell thick and fast upon the flimsy paper as he read. Ten minutes ago, walking to and fro in the sunshine, he had lamented his loneliness, remembering that he had only two friends in the world. He knew now that the dearer of these two was lost to him. The letter told him of his mother’s death.

“There is no need for you to hurry back, my poor lad,” wrote his uncle. “The funeral is to take place to-morrow, and will be over when you get this letter. I saw your mother a fortnight before her death, and she then told me what she could never find the courage to tell you—that the end was very near. It came suddenly at the last, and I was out of the way at the time; but they tell me it was a calm and holy ending. Her last words were of you. She dwelt much on your goodness and devotion, Mrs. Bane tells me. The last two days were spent in prayer, poor innocent soul; and I, who stand in so much greater need of that kind of thing, can’t bring myself to it for half an hour! Poor soul! Bane thinks it was for you she was praying, she repeated your name so often—sometimes in her sleep, sometimes when she was lying in a languid state between sleeping and waking. But she did not wish you to be sent for. ‘It is better that he should be away,’ she said; ‘I think he knew that this day must soon come.’

“And now, my dear boy, try to bear up against this sorrow like a brave, true-hearted lad, as you are. I say nothing of what I feel myself, for there are some things which come with a bad grace from certain people. You know that I loved my sister; though, God knows, I never knew how dearly till yesterday, when I saw the blinds down at Mrs. Bane’s, and guessed what had happened. Remember, Eustace, that so long as I can earn a crust, my sister Celia’s son shall be welcome to his share of it; and though I may be a disreputable acquaintance, I can be a faithful friend. If you are tired of that slow old Belgian city, come back to England. We will manage your establishment here somehow. The impracticable Daniel has a certain kind of influence; and though he rarely cares to use it on his own account,—being so bad a lot that he dare not give himself a decent character,—he will employ it to the uttermost for a spotless nephew.

“Come, then, dear boy; a kind of heart-sickness has come over me, and I want to see the brightest face that I know in this world, and the only face that I love. Come, even if you must needs return to the whitewashed saloons of the Parthenée. There are letters and papers of your poor mother’s which it might be well for you to destroy. My profane hand shall not tamper with them.”

The young man thrust his kinsman’s letter in his breast, and paced the playground slowly for some time, meditating the loss that had come upon him. In one of the big class-rooms near at hand his pupils were waiting for him; and there was wonderment and consternation at this delay in the most punctual of all the masters. His tears had dropped fast upon the letter some time ago; but his eyes were dry now. The dull agony which filled his breast was rather a sense of desolation than a poignant grief. He had seen and known that his mother was fading from this troubled earth before his coming to Belgium; and poverty’s bitterest penalty had been the necessity which had separated him from her. The shadow of this coming sorrow had long darkened the horizon of his young life. The sad reality had come upon him a little sooner than he had expected it, and that was all. He bowed his head, and resigned himself to this affliction; but there was something to which he could not resign himself, and that was the manner of his loss.

“Alone—in a hired lodging—with a poor, ill-paid, hard-working drudge for her sole companion and consoler! O mother, mother, you were too bright a creature for so sad a fate!”

And then there arose before this young man’s eyes one of those pictures which were continually haunting him—the picture of what his life and his mother’s life might have been, had things been different with them. He fancied himself the beloved and acknowledged son of a good and honourable man; he fancied his mother a happy wife. Ah! then how changed all would have been! Sickness and death would have come all the same, perhaps, since there is no earthly barrier that can exclude those dark visitors from happy households. They would have come, the dreaded guests, but with how different an aspect! He made for himself the picture of two death-beds. By one there knelt a group of loving children, weeping silently for a dying mother, while a grief-stricken husband suppressed all outward evidence of his sorrow, lest he should trouble the departing spirit whose earthly tabernacle was supported by his fond arms. And the other death-bed! Alas, how sad the contrast between the two pictures! A woman lying alone in a dingy chamber, abandoned and forgotten by every creature in the world except her son, and even he away from her.

“And for this, as well as for all the rest, we have to thank him!” muttered the young man. His face, which until now had been overshadowed only by a quiet despondency, darkened suddenly as he said this. It was not the first time he had apostrophized a nameless enemy in the same bitter spirit. He had very often abandoned himself to vengeful thoughts about this unknown foe, to whose evil-doing he attributed every sorrow of his own, and all those hidden griefs and silent agonies so patiently endured by his mother. He kept a close account of his mother’s wrongs, and of his own, and he set them all against this person, whom he had never seen and whose name he might never discover.

This nameless enemy was his father.

CHAPTER 2.

A RETROSPECTIVE SURVEY.

FROM the mediæval tranquillity of Villebrumeuse to the dreary desolation of Tilbury Crescent is a sorry change. Instead of the quaint peaked roofs and grand old churches, the verdant avenues and placid water, there are unfinished streets and terraces of raw-looking brick, half-built railway-arches, chasm-like cuttings newly made in the damp clay soil, and patches of rank greensward that mark the site of desolated fields. The sulphurous odours of a brickfield pervade the atmosphere about and around Tilbury Crescent. The din of a distant high-road, the roar of many wheels, and the clamour of excited costermongers, float in occasional gusts of sound upon the dismal stillness of the neighbourhood, where the shrill voices of children, playing hopscotch in an adjacent street, are painfully audible.

Decent poverty has set a seal upon this little labyrinth of streets and squares and crescents and terraces, before the builder’s men have left the newest of the houses, while there are still roofless skeletons at every corner, waiting till the speculator who began them shall have raised enough money to finish them. The neighbourhood lies northward, and the rents of those yellow-brick tenements are cheap. So decent poverty, in all its many guises, comes hitherward for shelter. Newly-married lawyers’ clerks take up their abode in the eight-roomed dwellings, and you shall divine, by the fashion of blinds and curtains, the trim propriety of doorsteps and tiny front gardens, whether the young householders have drawn prizes in the matrimonial lottery. Small tradesmen bring their wares to the little shops, which break out here and there at the corners of the streets, and struggle feebly for a livelihood. Patient young dressmakers exhibit fly-blown fashion-plates in parlour windows, and wait hopefully or despairingly, as the case may be, for custom and patronage. And in more windows than the chance pedestrian would care to count hangs the pasteboard announcement of apartments to let.

Eustace Thorburn came to Tilbury Crescent in the blazing July noontide. He had landed at St. Katherine’s Wharf, and had made his way to this northern suburb on foot. He was rich enough to have ridden in an omnibus, or to have enjoyed the luxury of a hansom, had he been so minded; but he was an ambitious young man, and had cultivated the nobler Spartan virtues from his earliest boyhood. The few pounds in his possession would have to serve him until he returned to the Parthenée, or obtained some new employment; so he had much need to be careful of shillings, and chary even of pence. The walk through the dirty bustling London streets seemed long and weary to him; but his thoughts were more weary than that pedestrian journey under the meridian sun, and the sad memories of his youth were a heavier burden than the carpet-bag he carried slung across his shoulder.

He knocked at the door of one of the shabbiest houses in the crescent, and was admitted by an elderly woman, who was slipshod and slovenly, but who had a good-natured face, which brightened as she recognized the traveller. In the next moment she remembered the sad occasion of his coming, and put on that conventional expression of profound sorrow which people assume so easily for the affliction of others.

“Ah, dear, dear, Mr. Thorburn!” she cried, “I never thought to see you come back like this, and she not here to bid you welcome, poor sweet lamb!”

The young man held up his hand to stay the torrent of sympathy. “Please, don’t talk to me about my mother,” he said, quietly; “I can’t bear it—yet.”

The honest woman looked at him wonderingly. She had been accustomed to deal with people who liked to talk of their griefs, and she did not understand this quiet way of putting aside a sorrow. The mourners whom she had encountered had worn their sackcloth and covered themselves with ashes in the face of the world, and here was a young man who had not so much as a band upon his hat, and who rejected her friendly sympathy!

“I can have my—the old rooms, for a week or so, I suppose, Mrs. Bane?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve took the liberty to put a bill up, thinking as perhaps you might not return from abroad; and if it’s for a week only, perhaps you’d allow the bill to remain? There are so many apartments about this neighbourhood, you see, sir, and people are that pushing now-a-days, that a poor widow-woman has scarcely a chance. It’s a hard thing to be left alone in the world, Mr. Thorburn.”

There was an open wound in the heart of Eustace Thorburn which ignorant hands were always striking.