Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [world of reading .txt] 📗

to allow a carriage to dash past

them. It was a fly from the village, but Lady Audley’s fair face peeped

out at the window. Dark as it was, she could see the two figures of the

young men black against the dusk.

 

“Who is that?” she asked, putting out her head. “Is it the gardener?”

 

“No, my dear aunt,” said Robert, laughing; “it is your most dutiful

nephew.”

 

He and George stopped by the archway while the fly drew up at the door,

and the surprised servants came out to welcome their master and

mistress.

 

“I think the storm will hold off tonight,” said the baronet looking up

at the sky; “but we shall certainly have it tomorrow.”

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

AFTER THE STORM.

 

Sir Michael was mistaken in his prophecy upon the weather. The storm did

not hold off until next day, but burst with terrible fury over the

village of Audley about half an hour before midnight.

 

Robert Audley took the thunder and lightning with the same composure

with which he accepted all the other ills of life. He lay on a sofa in

the sitting-room, ostensibly reading the five-days-old Chelmsford paper,

and regaling himself occasionally with a few sips from a large tumbler

of cold punch. But the storm had quite a different effect upon George

Talboys. His friend was startled when he looked at the young man’s white

face as he sat opposite the open window listening to the thunder, and

staring at the black sky, rent every now and then by forked streaks of

steel-blue lightning.

 

“George,” said Robert, after watching him for some time, “are you

frightened of the lightning?”

 

“No,” he answered, curtly.

 

“But, dear boy, some of the most courageous men have been frightened of

it. It is scarcely to be called a fear: it is constitutional. I am sure

you are frightened of it.”

 

“No, I am not.”

 

“But, George, if you could see yourself, white and haggard, with your

great hollow eyes staring out at the sky as if they were fixed upon a

ghost. I tell you I know that you are frightened.”

 

“And I tell you that I am not.”

 

“George Talboys, you are not only afraid of the lightning, but you are

savage with yourself for being afraid, and with me for telling you of

your fear.”

 

“Robert Audley, if you say another word to me, I shall knock you down,”

cried George, furiously; having said which, Mr. Talboys strode out of

the room, banging the door after him with a violence that shook the

house. Those inky clouds, which had shut in the sultry earth as if with

a roof of hot iron, poured out their blackness in a sudden deluge as

George left the room; but if the young man was afraid of the lightning,

he certainly was not afraid of the rain; for he walked straight

downstairs to the inn door, and went out into the wet high road. He

walked up and down, up and down, in the soaking shower for about twenty

minutes, and then, re-entering the inn, strode up to his bedroom.

 

Robert Audley met him on the landing, with his hair beaten about his

white face, and his garments dripping wet.

 

“Are you going to bed, George?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But you have no candle.”

 

“I don’t want one.”

 

“But look at your clothes, man! Do you see the wet streaming down your

coat-sleeves? What on earth made you go out upon such a night?”

 

“I am tired, and want to go to bed—don’t bother me.”

 

“You’ll take some hot brandy-and-water, George?”

 

Robert Audley stood in his friend’s way as he spoke, anxious to prevent

his going to bed in the state he was in; but George pushed him fiercely

aside, and, striding past him, said, in the same hoarse voice Robert had

noticed at the Court:

 

“Let me alone, Robert Audley, and keep clear of me if you can.”

 

Robert followed George to his bedroom, but the young man banged the door

in his face, so there was nothing for it but to leave Mr. Talboys to

himself, to recover his temper as best he might.

 

“He was irritated at my noticing his terror of the lightning,” though

Robert, as he calmly retired to rest, serenely indifferent to the

thunder, which seemed to shake him in his bed, and the lightning playing

fitfully round the razors in his open dressing-case.

 

The storm rolled away from the quiet village of Audley, and when Robert

awoke the next morning it was to see bright sunshine, and a peep of

cloudless sky between the white curtains of his bedroom window.

 

It was one of those serene and lovely mornings that sometimes succeed a

storm. The birds sung loud and cheerily, the yellow corn uplifted itself

in the broad fields, and waved proudly after its sharp tussle with the

tempest, which had done its best to beat down the heavy ears with cruel

wind and driving rain half the night through. The vine-leaves clustering

round Robert’s window fluttered with a joyous rustling, shaking the

rain-drops in diamond showers from every spray and tendril.

 

Robert Audley found his friend waiting for him at the breakfast-table.

 

George was very pale, but perfectly tranquil—if anything, indeed, more

cheerful than usual.

 

He shook Robert by the hand with something of that hearty manner for

which he had been distinguished before the one affliction of his life

overtook and shipwrecked him.

 

“Forgive me, Bob,” he said, frankly, “for my surly temper of last night.

You were quite correct in your assertion; the thunderstorm did upset

me. It always had the same effect upon me in my youth.”

 

“Poor old boy! Shall we go up by the express, or shall we stop here and

dine with my uncle tonight?” asked Robert.

 

“To tell the truth, Bob, I would rather do neither. It’s a glorious

morning. Suppose we stroll about all day, take another turn with the rod

and line, and go up to town by the train that leaves here at 6.15 in the

evening?”

 

Robert Audley would have assented to a far more disagreeable proposition

than this, rather than have taken the trouble to oppose his friend, so

the matter was immediately agreed upon; and after they had finished

their breakfast, and ordered a four o’clock dinner, George Talboys took

the fishing-rod across his broad shoulders, and strode out of the house

with his friend and companion.

 

But if the equable temperament of Mr. Robert Audley had been undisturbed

by the crackling peals of thunder that shook the very foundations of the

Sun Inn, it had not been so with the more delicate sensibilties of his

uncle’s young wife. Lady Audley confessed herself terribly frightened of

the lightning. She had her bedstead wheeled into a corner of the room,

and with the heavy curtains drawn tightly round her, she lay with her

face buried in the pillow, shuddering convulsively at every sound of the

tempest without. Sir Michael, whose stout heart had never known a fear,

almost trembled for this fragile creature, whom it was his happy

privilege to protect and defend. My lady would not consent to undress

till nearly three o’clock in the morning, when the last lingering peal

of thunder had died away among the distant hills. Until that hour she

lay in the handsome silk dress in which she had traveled, huddled

together among the bedclothes, only looking up now and then with a

scared face to ask if the storm was over.

 

Toward four o’clock her husband, who spent the night in watching by her

bedside, saw her drop off into a deep sleep, from which she did not

awake for nearly five hours.

 

But she came into the breakfast-room, at half-past nine o’clock, singing

a little Scotch melody, her cheeks tinged with as delicate a pink as the

pale hue of her muslin morning dress. Like the birds and the flowers,

she seemed to recover her beauty and joyousness in the morning sunshine.

She tripped lightly out onto the lawn, gathering a last lingering

rosebud here and there, and a sprig or two of geranium, and returning

through the dewy grass, warbling long cadences for very happiness of

heart, and looking as fresh and radiant as the flowers in her hands. The

baronet caught her in his strong arms as she came in through the open

window.

 

“My pretty one,” he said, “my darling, what happiness to see you your

own merry self again! Do you know, Lucy, that once last night, when you

looked out through the dark-green bed-curtains, with your poor, white

face, and the purple rims round your hollow eyes, I had almost a

difficulty to recognize my little wife in that terrified,

agonized-looking creature, crying out about the storm. Thank God for the

morning sun, which has brought back the rosy cheeks and bright smile! I

hope to Heaven, Lucy, I shall never again see you look as you did last

night.”

 

She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and then was only tall enough to reach

his white beard. She told him, laughing, that she had always been a

silly, frightened creature—frightened of dogs, frightened of cattle,

frightened of a thunderstorm, frightened of a rough sea. “Frightened of

everything and everybody but my dear, noble, handsome husband,” she

said.

 

She had found the carpet in her dressing-room disarranged, and had

inquired into the mystery of the secret passage. She chid Miss Alicia in

a playful, laughing way, for her boldness in introducing two great men

into my lady’s rooms.

 

“And they had the audacity to look at my picture, Alicia,” she said,

with mock indignation. “I found the baize thrown on the ground, and a

great man’s glove on the carpet. Look!”

 

“She held up a thick driving glove as she spoke. It was George’s, which

he had dropped looking at the picture.

 

“I shall go up to the Sun, and ask those boys to dinner,” Sir Michael

said, as he left the Court upon his morning walk around his farm.

 

Lady Audley flitted from room to room in the bright September

sunshine—now sitting down to the piano to trill out a ballad, or the

first page of an Italian bravura, or running with rapid fingers through

a brilliant waltz—now hovering about a stand of hothouse flowers,

doing amateur gardening with a pair of fairy-like, silver-mounted

embroidery scissors—now strolling into her dressing-room to talk to

Phoebe Marks, and have her curls rearranged for the third or fourth

time; for the ringlets were always getting into disorder, and gave no

little trouble to Lady Audley’s maid.

 

My dear lady seemed, on this particular September day, restless from

very joyousness of spirit, and unable to stay long in one place, or

occupy herself with one thing.

 

While Lady Audley amused herself in her own frivolous fashion, the two

young men strolled slowly along the margin of the stream until they

reached a shady corner where the water was deep and still, and the long

branches of the willows trailed into the brook.

 

George Talboys took the fishing-rod, while Robert stretched himself at

full length on a railway rug, and balancing his hat upon his nose as a

screen from the sunshine, fell fast asleep.

 

Those were happy fish in the stream on the banks of which Mr. Talboys

was seated. They might have amused themselves to their hearts’ content

with timid nibbles at this gentleman’s bait without in any manner

endangering their safety; for George only stared vacantly in the water,

holding his rod in a loose, listless hand, and with a strange, far-away

look in his eyes. As