The Cloven Foot E-Book

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

• Herausgeber: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 – 4 February 1915) was an English popular novelist of the Victorian era. She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret. Born in London, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was privately educated. Her mother Fanny separated from her father Henry in 1840, when Mary was five. When Mary was ten years old, her brother Edward Braddon left for India and later Australia, where he became Premier of Tasmania. Mary worked as an actress for three years in order to support herself and her mother. In 1860, Mary met John Maxwell (1824–1895), a publisher of periodicals. She started living with him in 1861. However, Maxwell was already married with five children, and his wife was living in an asylum in Ireland. Mary acted as stepmother to his children until 1874, when Maxwell's wife died and they were able to get married. She had six children by him, including the novelist William Babington Maxwell. Braddon was a prolific writer, producing more than 80 novels with inventive plots. The most famous is Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition, and a fortune as a bestseller. It has remained in print since its publication and been dramatised and filmed several times. R. D. Blackmore's anonymous sensation novel Clara Vaughan (1864) was wrongly attributed to her by some critics.

Leseprobe

The Cloven Foot

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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The Heir Presumptive.

Jasper Treverton’s Will.

A Mysterious Visitor.

La Chicot.

A Disappointed Lover.

La Chicot has her Own Way.

‘A Little While Such Lips as Thine to Kiss.’

‘Days that are Over, Dreams that are Done.’

‘And Art Thou Come! And Art Thou True!’

Engaged.

No Trousseau.

An Ill-omened Wedding.

The Settlement.

‘You have but to Say the Word.’

Edward Clare Discovers A Likeness.

Shall it Be ‘Yes’ or ‘NO’?

Murder.

What the Diamonds Were worth.

‘To A Deep Lawny Dell they Came.’

The Church near Camelot.

Halcyon Days.

A Village Iago.

‘In the Meanwhile the Skies ‘Gan Rumble Sore.’

‘And Purple Light Shone over All.’

The Children’s Party.

A Disinterested Parent.

Desrolles is Not Communicative.

Edward Clare Goes on A Voyage of Discovery.

George Gerard.

Thou Art the Man.

Why Don’t you Trust me?

On his Defence.

At the Morgue.

George Gerard in Danger.

On A Voyage of Discovery.

Kergariou’s Wife.

The Tenant from Beechampton.

Celia’s Lovers.

On Suspicion.

Mr. Leopold Asks Irrelevant Questions.

Mrs. Evitt Makes A Revelation.

The Undertaker’s Evidence.

An Old Lady’s Diary.

Three Witnesses.

The Hunt for Desrolles.

Epilogue.

Chapter 1. The Heir Presumptive.

THE air was thick with falling snow, and the country side looked a formless mass of chilly whiteness, as the south-western mail train carried John Treverton on a lonely midnight journey. There were not many people in the train on that bleak night, and Mr. Treverton had a second-class compartment to himself.

He had tried to sleep, but had failed ignominiously in the endeavour, waking with a start, after five minutes’ doze, and remaining broad awake for an hour at a time pondering upon the perplexities of his life, and hating himself for the follies that had made it what it was. It had been a very hard life of late, for the world had gone ill with John Treverton. He had begun his career with a small fortune and a commission in a crack regiment, and, after wasting his patrimony and selling his commission, he was now a gentleman at large, living as best he might, no one but himself knew how.

He was going to a quiet village in Devonshire, a far away nook under the shadow of Dartmoor, in obedience to a telegram that told him a rich kinsman was dying, and summoned him to the death bed. The day had been when he hoped to inherit this kinsman’s property; not because the old man had ever cared for him, but because he, John, was the only relative Jasper Treverton had in the world; but that hope had vanished when the lonely old bachelor adopted an orphan girl to whom he was reported to have attached himself strongly. The ci-devant Captain had never seen this young person, and it is not to be supposed that he cherished very kindly feelings towards her. He had made up his mind that she was a deep and designing creature, who would, of course, play her cards in such a manner as to induce old Jasper Treverton to leave her everything.

‘He never bore me or mine much goodwill,’ John Treverton said to himself, ‘but he might have left his money to me for want of any one else to leave it to, if it hadn’t been for this girl.’

During almost the whole of that dreary night journey he was meditating on this subject, half inclined to be angry with himself for having taken such useless trouble for the sake of a man who was not likely to leave him sixpence.

He was not an utterly bad fellow, this John Treverton, though his better and purer feelings had been a good deal blunted by rough contact with the world. He had a frank winning manner, and a handsome face, a face which had won him the love of more than one woman, with little profit to himself. He was a man of no strong principle, and with a self-indulgent nature, that had led him into wrong-doing very often during the last ten years of his life. He had an easy temper, a habit of looking at the pleasanter side of things, so long as there was any pleasantness in them, and a chronic avoidance of all serious thought, qualities which do not serve to make up a strong character. But the charm of his manner was none the less because of this latent weakness of character, and he was better liked than many better men.

The train stopped at a little rustic station, forty miles westward of Exeter, about an hour after midnight, a dreary building with an open platform, across which the wind blew and the snow drifted as John Treverton alighted, the one solitary passenger to be deposited at this out of the way place. He knew that the house to which he had to go was some miles from the station, and he applied himself at once to the sleepy stationmaster to ascertain if there were any possibility of procuring a conveyance at that time of night.

‘There’s a gig waiting for a gentleman from London,’ the man answered, stifling a yawn, ‘I suppose you are the party, sir.’

‘A gig from Treverton Manor?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Thanks, yes, I am the person that is expected. Civil, at any rate,’ John Treverton added to himself, as he walked off to the gig, wrapped to the eyes in his great coat, and with a railway rug across his shoulder.

He found a gig, with a rough looking individual of the gardener species waiting for him in the snow.

‘Here I am, my man,’ he cried cheerily, ‘have you been waiting long?’

‘No, sir. Miss Malcolm said as how you’d come by this train.’

‘Miss Malcolm sent you for me then?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And how is Mr. Treverton, to-night?’

‘Mortal bad, sir. The doctors say as th’ old gentleman hasn’t many hours to live. And Miss Malcolm, she says to me, “Jacob, you’re to drive home as fast as th’ horse can go, for papa is very anxious to see Mr. John before he dies.” She allus calls the old gentleman papa, you see, sir, he having adopted of her ten years ago, and brought her up as his own daughter like, ever since.’

They had jolted over the uneven stones of a narrow street, the high street of a small settlement which evidently called itself a town, for here, at a point where two narrow lanes branched off from the central thoroughfare, there stood a dilapidated old building of the town hall species, and a vaulted market-place with iron railings, and closely-locked gates shutting in emptiness. John Treverton perceived dimly through the winter darkness an old stone church, and at least three Methodist chapels. Then, all in a moment, the town was gone, and the gig was rattling along a Devonshire lane, between high banks and still higher hedges, above which rose a world of hill and moor, that melted far off into the midnight sky.

‘And your master is very fond of this young lady, Miss Malcolm?’ John Treverton inquired presently, when the horse, after rattling along for a mile and a half at a tremendous pace, was slowly climbing a hill which seemed to lead nowhere in particular, for one could hardly imagine any definite end or aim in a lane that went undulating like a snake amidst a chaos of hills.

‘Oncommon, sir. You see, she’s about the only thing he has ever cared for.’

‘Is she as much liked by other people?’

‘Well, yes, sir, in a general way Miss Malcolm is pretty well liked, but there is some as think her proud—think her a little set up as you may say, by Mr. Treverton’s making so much of her. She’s not one to make friends very easy; the young ladies in the village, Squire Carew’s daughters, and such like, haven’t taken to her as much as they might have done. I’ve heard my wife—as has been parlour-maid at the Manor for the last twenty years—say as much many a time. But Miss Malcolm is a pleasant spoken young lady, for all that, to those she likes, and my Susan has had no fault to find with her. You see all of us has our peculiarities, sir, and it ain’t to be supposed as Miss Malcolm would be without hers,’ the man concluded in an argumentative tone.