Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [best ereader for comics txt] 📗

a long heavy sigh now and then, as if his heart was a-goin' to bust. At last he dropped into a kind of a doze, a stupid sort of sleep, and began to nod over the fire, so I ran and got a blanket and wrapped him in it, and got him to lie down on the press bedstead in the room under this. I sent mother to bed, and I sat by the fire and watched him, and kep' the fire up till it was just upon daybreak, when he 'woke up all of a sudden with a start, and said he must go, directly this minute.

"I begged him not to think of such a thing and told him he warn't fit to move for ever so long; but he said he must go, and he got up, and though he staggered like, and at first could hardly stand steady two minutes together, he wouldn't be beat, and he got me to dress him in his clothes as I'd dried and cleaned as well as I could while he laid asleep. I did manage it at last, but the clothes was awful spoiled, and he looked a dreadful objeck, with his pale face and a great cut on his forehead that I'd washed and tied up with a handkercher. He could only get his coat on by buttoning it on round his neck, for he couldn't put a sleeve upon his broken arm. But he held out agen everything, though he groaned every now and then; and what with the scratches and bruises on his hands, and the cut upon his forehead, and his stiff limbs and broken arm, he'd plenty of call to groan; and by the time it was broad daylight he was dressed and ready to go.

"'What's the nearest town to this upon the London road?' he asked me.

"I told him as the nighest town was Brentwood.

"'Very well, then,' he says, 'if you'll go with me to Brentwood, and take me to some surgeon as'll set my arm, I'll give you a five pound note for that and all your other trouble.'

"I told him that I was ready and willin' to do anything as he wanted done; and asked him if I shouldn't go and see if I could borrow a cart from some of the neighbors to drive him over in, for I told him it was a good six miles' walk.

"He shook his head. No, no, no, he said, he didn't want anybody to know anything about him; he'd rather walk it.

"He did walk it; and he walked like a good 'un, too; though I know as every step he took o' them six miles he took in pain; but he held out as he'd held out before; I never see such a chap to hold out in all my blessed life. He had to stop sometimes and lean agen a gateway to get his breath; but he held out still, till at last we got into Brentwood, and then he says, 'Take me to the nighest surgeon's,' and I waited while he had his arm set in splints, which took a precious long time. The surgeon wanted him to stay in Brentwood till he was better, but he said it warn't to be heard on, he must get up to London without a minute's loss of time; so the surgeon made him as comfortable as he could, considering and tied up his arm in a sling."

Robert Audley started. A circumstance connected with his visit to Liverpool dashed suddenly back upon his memory. He remembered the clerk who had called him back to say there was a passenger who took his berth on board the _Victoria Regia_ within an hour or so of the vessel's sailing; a young man with his arm in a sling, who had called himself by some common name, which Robert had forgotten.

"When his arm was dressed," continued Luke, "he says to the surgeon, 'Can you give me a pencil to write something before I go away?' The surgeon smiles and shakes his head: 'You'll never be able to write with that there hand to-day,' he says, pointin' to the arm as had just been dressed. 'P'raps not,' the young chap answers, quiet enough, 'but I can write with the other,' 'Can't I write it for you?' says the surgeon. 'No, thank you,' answers the other; 'what I've got to write is private. If you can give me a couple of envelopes, I'll be obliged to you.'

"With that the surgeon goes to fetch the envelopes, and the young chap takes a pocket-book out of his coat pocket with his left hand; the cover was wet and dirty, but the inside was clean enough, and he tears out a couple of leaves and begins to write upon 'em as you see; and he writes dreadful awk'ard with his left hand, and he writes slow, but he contrives to finish what you see, and then he puts the two bits o' writin' into the envelopes as the surgeon brings him, and he seals 'em up, and he puts a pencil cross upon one of 'em, and nothing on the other: and then he pays the surgeon for his trouble, and the surgeon says, ain't there nothin' more he can do for him, and can't he persuade him to stay in Brentwood till his arm's better; but he says no, no, it ain't possible; and then he says to me, 'Come along o' me to the railway station, and I'll give you what I've promised.'

"So I went to the station with him. We was in time to catch the train as stops at Brentwood at half after eight, and we had five minutes to spare. So he takes me into a corner of the platform, and he says, 'I wants you to deliver these here letters for me,' which I told him I was willin'. 'Very well, then,' he says; 'look here; you know Audley Court?' 'Yes,' I says, 'I ought to, for my sweetheart lives lady's maid there.' 'Whose lady's maid?' he says. So I tells him, 'My lady's, the new lady what was governess at Mr. Dawson's.' 'Very well, then,' he says; 'this here letter with the cross upon the envelope is for Lady Audley, but you're to be sure to give it into her own hands; and remember to take care as nobody sees you give it.' I promises to do this, and he hands me the first letter. And then he says, 'Do you know Mr. Audley, as is nevy to Sir Michael?' and I said, 'Yes, I've heerd tell on him, and I've heerd as he was a reg'lar swell, but affable and free-spoken' (for I heerd 'em tell on you, you know)," Luke added, parenthetically. "'Now look here,' the young chap says, 'you're to give this other letter to Mr. Robert Audley, whose a-stayin' at the Sun Inn, in the village;' and I tells him it's all right, as I've know'd the Sun ever since I was a baby. So then he gives me the second letter, what's got nothing wrote upon the envelope, and he gives me a five-pound note, accordin' to promise; and then he says, 'Good-day, and thank you for all your trouble,'and he gets into a second-class carriage; and the last I sees of him is a face as white as a sheet of writin' paper, and a great patch of stickin'-plaster criss-crossed upon his forehead."

"Poor George! poor George!"

"I went back to Audley, and I went straight to the Sun Inn, and asked for you, meanin' to deliver both letters faithful, so help me God! then; but the landlord told me as you'd started off that mornin' for London, and he didn't know when you'd come back, and he didn't know the name o' the place where you lived in London, though he said he thought it was in one o' them law courts, such as Westminster Hall or Doctors' Commons, or somethin' like that. So what was I to do? I couldn't send a letter by post, not knowin' where to direct to, and I couldn't give it into your own hands, and I'd been told partickler not to let anybody else know of it; so I'd nothing to do but to wait and see if you come back, and bide my time for givin' of it to you.

"I thought I'd go over to the Court in the evenin'and see Phoebe, and find out from her when there'd be a chance of seein' her lady, for I know'd she could manage it if she liked. So I didn't go to work that day, though I ought to ha' done, and I lounged and idled about until it was nigh upon dusk, and then I goes down to the meadows behind the Court, and there I finds Phoebe sure enough, waitin' agen the wooden door in the wall, on the lookout for me.

"I hadn't been talkin' to her long before I see there was somethink wrong with her and I told her as much.

"Well,' she says, 'I ain't quite myself this evenin', for I had a upset yesterday, and I ain't got over it yet.'

"'A upset,' I says. 'You had a quarrel with your missus, I suppose.'

"She didn't answer me directly, but she smiled the queerest smile as ever I see, and presently she says:

"No, Luke, it weren't nothin' o' that kind; and what's more, nobody could be friendlier toward me than my lady. I think she'd do any think for me a'most; and I think, whether it was a bit o' farming stock and furniture or such like, or whether it was the good-will of a public-house, she wouldn't refuse me anythink as I asked her.'

"I couldn't make out this, for it was only a few days before as she'd told me her missus was selfish and extravagant, and we might wait a long time before we could get what we wanted from her.

"So I says to her, 'Why, this is rather sudden like, Phoebe;' and she says, 'Yes, it is sudden;' and she smiles again, just the same sort of smile as before. Upon that I turns round upon her sharp, and says:

"I'll tell you what it is, my gal, you're a-keepin' somethink from me; somethink you've been told, or somethink you've found out; and if you think you're a-goin' to try that game on with me, you'll find you're very much mistaken; and so I give you warnin'."

"But she laughed it off like, and says, 'Lor' Luke, what could have put such fancies into your head?'

"'Perhaps other people can keep secrets as well as you,' I said, 'and perhaps other people can make friends as well as you. There was a gentleman came here to see your missus yesterday, warn't there--a tall young gentleman with a brown beard?'

"Instead of answering of me like a Christian, my Cousin Phoebe bursts out a-cryin', and wrings her hands, and goes on awful, until I'm dashed if I can make out what she's up to.

"But little by little I got it out of her, for I wouldn't stand no nonsense; find she told me how she'd been sittin' at work at the window of her little room, which was at the top of the house, right up in one of the gables, and overlooked the lime-walk, and the shrubbery and the well, when she see my lady walking with a strange gentleman, and they walked together for a long time, until by-and-by they--"

"Stop!" cried Robert, "I know the rest."

"Well, Phoebe told me all about what she see, and