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

was gray; a great many gents wear gray. He asked for the

ticket sharp and short-like, and when he’d got it walked straight out

onto the platform whistling.”

 

“That’s George,” said Robert. “Thank you, Smithers; I needn’t trouble

you any more. It’s as clear as daylight,” he muttered, as he left the

station; “he’s got one of his gloomy fits on him, and he’s gone back to

London without saying a word about it. I’ll leave Audley myself

tomorrow morning; and for tonight—why, I may as well go down to the

Court and make the acquaintance of my uncle’s young wife. They don’t

dine till seven; if I get back across the fields I shall be in time.

Bob—otherwise Robert Audley—this sort of thing will never do; you are

falling over head and ears in love with your aunt.”

 

CHAPTER XI.

 

THE MARK UPON MY LADY’S WRIST.

 

Robert found Sir Michael and Lady Audley in the drawing-room. My lady

was sitting on a music-stool before the grand piano, turning over the

leaves of some new music. She twirled upon the revolving seat, making a

rustling with her silk flounces, as Mr. Robert Audley’s name was

announced; then, leaving the piano, she made her nephew a pretty, mock

ceremonious courtesy.

 

“Thank you so much for the sables,” she said, holding out her little

fingers, all glittering and twinkling with the diamonds she wore upon

them; “thank you for those beautiful sables. How good it was of you to

get them for me.”

 

Robert had almost forgotten the commission he had executed for Lady

Audley during his Russian expedition. His mind was so full of George

Talboys that he only acknowledged nay lady’s gratitude by a bow.

 

“Would you believe it, Sir Michael?” he said. “That foolish chum of mine

has gone back to London leaving me in the lurch.”

 

“Mr. George Talboys returned to town?” exclaimed my lady, lifting her

eyebrows. “What a dreadful catastrophe!” said Alicia, maliciously,

“since Pythias, in the person of Mr. Robert Audley, cannot exist for

half an hour without Damon, commonly known as George Talboys.”

 

“He’s a very good fellow,” Robert said, stoutly; “and to tell the honest

truth, I’m rather uneasy about him.”

 

“Uneasy about him!” My lady was quite anxious to know why Robert was

uneasy about his friend.

 

“I’ll tell you why, Lady Audley,” answered the young barrister. “George

had a bitter blow a year ago in the death of his wife. He has never got

over that trouble. He takes life pretty quietly—almost as quietly as I

do—but he often talks very strangely, and I sometimes think that one

day this grief will get the better of him, and he will do something

rash.”

 

Mr. Robert Audley spoke vaguely, but all three of his listeners knew

that the something rash to which he alluded was that one deed for which

there is no repentance.

 

There was a brief pause, during which Lady Audley arranged her yellow

ringlets by the aid of the glass over the console table opposite to her.

 

“Dear me!” she said, “this is very strange. I did not think men were

capable of these deep and lasting affections. I thought that one pretty

face was as good as another pretty face to them; and that when number

one with blue eyes and fair hair died, they had only to look out for

number two, with dark eyes and black hair, by way of variety.”

 

“George Talboys is not one of those men. I firmly believe that his

wife’s death broke his heart.”

 

“How sad!” murmured Lady Audley. “It seems almost cruel of Mrs. Talboys

to die, and grieve her poor husband so much.”

 

“Alicia was right, she is childish,” thought Robert as he looked at his

aunt’s pretty face.

 

My lady was very charming at the dinner-table; she professed the most

bewitching incapacity for carving the pheasant set before her, and

called Robert to her assistance.

 

“I could carve a leg of mutton at Mr. Dawson’s,” she said, laughing;

“but a leg of mutton is so easy, and then I used to stand up.”

 

Sir Michael watched the impression my lady made upon his nephew with a

proud delight in her beauty and fascination.

 

“I am so glad to see my poor little woman in her usual good spirits once

more,” he said. “She was very down-hearted yesterday at a disappointment

she met with in London.”

 

“A disappointment!”

 

“Yes, Mr. Audley, a very cruel one,” answered my lady. “I received the

other morning a telegraphic message from my dear old friend and

schoolmistress, telling me that she was dying, and that if I wanted to

see her again, I must hasten to her immediately. The telegraphic

dispatch contained no address, and of course, from that very

circumstance, I imagined that she must be living in the house in which I

left her three years ago. Sir Michael and I hurried up to town

immediately, and drove straight to the old address. The house was

occupied by strange people, who could give me no tidings of my friend.

It is in a retired place, where there are very few tradespeople about.

Sir Michael made inquiries at the few shops there are, but, after taking

an immense deal of trouble, could discover nothing whatever likely to

lead to the information we wanted. I have no friends in London, and had

therefore no one to assist me except my dear, generous husband, who did

all in his power, but in vain, to find my friend’s new residence.”

 

“It was very foolish not to send the address in the telegraphic

message,” said Robert.

 

“When people are dying it is not so easy to think of all these things,”

murmured my lady, looking reproachfully at Mr. Audley with her soft blue

eyes.

 

In spite of Lady Audley’s fascination, and in spite of Robert’s very

unqualified admiration of her, the barrister could not overcome a vague

feeling of uneasiness on this quiet September evening.

 

As he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my

lady, his mind wandered away to shady Figtree Court, and he thought of

poor George Talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the

birds and canaries.

 

“I wish I’d never felt any friendliness for the fellow,” he thought. “I

feel like a man who has an only son whose life has gone wrong with him.

I wish to Heaven I could give him back his wife, and send him down to

Ventnor to finish his days in peace.”

 

Still my lady’s pretty musical prattle ran on as merrily and

continuously as the babble in some brook; and still Robert’s thoughts

wandered, in spite of himself, to George Talboys.

 

He thought of him hurrying down to Southampton by the mail train to see

his boy. He thought of him as he had often seen him spelling over the

shipping advertisements in the Times, looking for a vessel to take him

back to Australia. Once he thought of him with a shudder, lying cold and

stiff at the bottom of some shallow stream with his dead face turned

toward the darkening sky.

 

Lady Audley noticed his abstraction, and asked him what he was thinking

of.

 

“George Talboys,” he answered abruptly.

 

She gave a little nervous shudder.

 

“Upon my word,” she said, “you make me quite uncomfortable by the way in

which you talk of Mr. Talboys. One would think that something

extraordinary had happened to him.”

 

“God forbid! But I cannot help feeling uneasy about him.”

 

Later in the evening Sir Michael asked for some music, and my lady went

to the piano. Robert Audley strolled after her to the instrument to turn

over the leaves of her music; but she played from memory, and he was

spared the trouble his gallantry would have imposed upon him.

 

He carried a pair of lighted candles to the piano, and arranged them

conveniently for the pretty musician. She struck a few chords, and then

wandered into a pensive sonata of Beethoven’s. It was one of the many

paradoxes in her character, that love of somber and melancholy melodies,

so opposite to her gay nature.

 

Robert Audley lingered by her side, and as he had no occupation in

turning over the leaves of her music, he amused himself by watching her

jeweled, white hands gliding softly over the keys, with the lace sleeves

dropping away from, her graceful, arched wrists. He looked at her pretty

fingers one by one; this one glittering with a ruby heart; that

encircled by an emerald serpent; and about them all a starry glitter of

diamonds. From the fingers his eyes wandered to the rounded wrists: the

broad, flat, gold bracelet upon her right wrist dropped over her hand,

as she executed a rapid passage. She stopped abruptly to rearrange it;

but before she could do so Robert Audley noticed a bruise upon her

delicate skin.

 

“You have hurt your arm, Lady Audley!” he exclaimed. She hastily

replaced the bracelet.

 

“It is nothing,” she said. “I am unfortunate in having a skin which the

slightest touch bruises.”

 

She went on playing, but Sir Michael came across the room to look into

the matter of the bruise upon his wife’s pretty wrist.

 

“What is it, Lucy?” he asked; “and how did it happen?”

 

“How foolish you all are to trouble yourselves about anything so

absurd!” said Lady Audley, laughing. “I am rather absent in mind, and

amused myself a few days ago by tying a piece of ribbon around my arm so

tightly, that it left a bruise when I removed it.”

 

“Hum!” thought Robert. “My lady tells little childish white lies; the

bruise is of a more recent date than a few days ago; the skin has only

just begun to change color.”

 

Sir Michael took the slender wrist in his strong hand.

 

“Hold the candle, Robert,” he said, “and let us look at this poor little

arm.”

 

It was not one bruise, but four slender, purple marks, such as might

have been made by the four fingers of a powerful hand, that had grasped

the delicate wrist a shade too roughly. A narrow ribbon, bound tightly,

might have left some such marks, it is true, and my lady protested once

more that, to the best of her recollection, that must have been how they

were made.

 

Across one of the faint purple marks there was a darker tinge, as if a

ring worn on one of those strong and cruel fingers had been ground into

the tender flesh.

 

“I am sure my lady must tell white lies,” thought Robert, “for I can’t

believe the story of the ribbon.”

 

He wished his relations good-night and good-by at about half past ten

o’clock; he should run up to London by the first train to look for

George in Figtree Court.

 

“If I don’t find him there I shall go to Southampton,” he said; “and if

I don’t find him there—”

 

“What then?” asked my lady.

 

“I shall think that something strange has happened.”

 

Robert Audley felt very low-spirited as he walked slowly home between

the shadowy meadows; more low-spirited still when he re-entered the

sitting room at Sun Inn, where he and George had lounged together,

staring out of the window and smoking their cigars.

 

“To think,” he said, meditatively, “that it is possible to care so much

for a fellow! But come what may, I’ll go up to town after him the first

thing tomorrow morning; and, sooner than be balked in finding him, I’ll

go to the very end of the world.”

 

With Mr. Audley’s lymphatic nature,