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

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low, wainscoted parlor, while their horses munched some suspicious

mixture of moldy hay and tolerable beans in the tumbledown stables.

Sometimes even the members of the Audley hunt stopped to drink and bait

their horses at the Castle Inn; while, on one grand and

never-to-be-forgotten occasion, a dinner had been ordered by the master

of the hounds for some thirty gentlemen, and the proprietor driven

nearly mad by the importance of the demand.

 

So Luke Marks, who was by no means troubled with an eye for the

beautiful, thought himself very fortunate in becoming the landlord of

the Castle Inn, Mount Stanning.

 

A chaise-cart was waiting in the fog to convey the bride and bridegroom

to their new home; and a few of the villagers, who had known Phoebe from

a child, were lingering around the churchyard gate to bid her good-by.

Her pale eyes were still paler from the tears she had shed, and the red

rims which surrounded them. The bridegroom was annoyed at this

exhibition of emotion.

 

“What are you blubbering for, lass?” he said, fiercely. “If you didn’t

want to marry me you should have told me so. I ain’t going to murder

you, am I?”

 

The lady’s maid shivered as he spoke to her, and dragged her little silk

mantle closely around her.

 

“You’re cold in all this here finery,” said Luke, staring at her costly

dress with no expression of good-will. “Why can’t women dress according

to their station? You won’t have no silk gownds out of my pocket, I can

tell you.”

 

He lifted the shivering girl into the chaise, wrapped a rough great-coat

about her, and drove off through the yellow fog, followed by a feeble

cheer from two or three urchins clustered around the gate.

 

A new maid was brought from London to replace Phoebe Marks about the

person of my lady—a very showy damsel, who wore a black satin gown, and

rose-colored ribbons in her cap, and complained bitterly of the dullness

of Audley Court.

 

But Christmas brought visitors to the rambling old mansion. A country

squire and his fat wife occupied the tapestried chamber; merry girls

scampered up and down the long passages, and young men stared out of the

latticed windows, watching for southerly winds and cloudy skies; there

was not an empty stall in the roomy old stables; an extempore forge had

been set up in the yard for the shoeing of hunters; yelping dogs made

the place noisy with their perpetual clamor; strange servants herded

together on the garret story; and every little casement hidden away

under some pointed gable, and every dormer window in the quaint old

roof, glimmered upon the winter’s night with its separate taper, till,

coming suddenly upon Audley Court, the benighted stranger, misled by the

light, and noise, and bustle of the place, might have easily fallen into

young Marlowe’s error, and have mistaken the hospitable mansion for a

good, old-fashioned inn, such as have faded from this earth since the

last mail coach and prancing tits took their last melancholy journey to

the knacker’s yard.

 

Among other visitors Mr. Robert Audley came down to Essex for the

hunting season, with half a dozen French novels, a case of cigars, and

three pounds of Turkish tobacco in his portmanteau.

 

The honest young country squires, who talked all breakfast time of

Flying Dutchman fillies and Voltigeur colts; of glorious runs of seven

hours’ hard riding over three counties, and a midnight homeward ride of

thirty miles upon their covert hacks; and who ran away from the

well-spread table with their mouths full of cold sirloin, to look at

that off pastern, or that sprained forearm, or the colt that had just

come back from the veterinary surgeon’s, set down Robert Audley,

dawdling over a slice of bread and marmalade, as a person utterly

unworthy of any remark whatsoever.

 

The young barrister had brought a couple of dogs with him; and the

country gentleman who gave fifty pounds for a pointer; and traveled a

couple of hundred miles to look at a leash of setters before be struck a

bargain, laughed aloud at the two miserable curs, one of which had

followed Robert Audley through Chancery Lane, and half the length of

Holborn; while his companion had been taken by the barrister _vi et

armis_ from a coster-monger who was ill-using him. And as Robert

furthermore insisted on having these two deplorable animals under his

easy-chair in the drawing-room, much to the annoyance of my lady, who,

as we know, hated all dogs, the visitors at Audley Court looked upon the

baronet’s nephew as an inoffensive species of maniac.

 

During other visits to the Court Robert Audley had made a feeble show of

joining in the sports of the merry assembly. He had jogged across half a

dozen ploughed fields on a quiet gray pony of Sir Michael’s, and drawing

up breathless and panting at door of some farm-house, had expressed his

intention of following the hounds no further that morning. He had even

gone so far as to put on, with great labor, a pair of skates, with a

view to taking a turn on the frozen surface of the fishpond, and had

fallen ignominously at the first attempt, lying placidly extended on the

flat of his back until such time as the bystanders should think fit to

pick him up. He had occupied the back seat in a dog-cart during a

pleasant morning drive, vehemently protesting against being taken up

hill, and requiring the vehicle to be stopped every ten minutes in order

to readjust the cushions. But this year he showed no inclination for any

of these outdoor amusements, and he spent his time entirely in lounging

in the drawing-room, and making himself agreeable, after his own lazy

fashion, to my lady and Alicia.

 

Lady Audley received her nephew’s attentions in that graceful

half-childish fashion which her admirers found so charming; but Alicia

was indignant at the change in her cousin’s conduct.

 

“You were always a poor, spiritless fellow, Bob,” said the young lady,

contemptuously, as she bounced into the drawing-room in her

riding-habit, after a hunting breakfast, from which Robert had absented

himself, preferring a cup of tea in my lady’s boudoir; “but this year I

don’t know what has come to you. You are good for nothing but to hold a

skein of silk or read Tennyson to Lady Audley.”

 

“My dear, hasty, impetuous Alicia, don’t be violent,” said the young man

imploringly. “A conclusion isn’t a five-barred gate; and you needn’t

give your judgment its head, as you give your mare Atalanta hers, when

you’re flying across country at the heels of an unfortunate fox. Lady

Audley interests me, and my uncle’s county friends do not. Is that a

sufficient answer, Alicia?”

 

Miss Audley gave her head a little scornful toss.

 

“It’s as good an answer as I shall ever get from, you, Bob,” she said,

impatiently; “but pray amuse yourself in your own way; loll in an

easy-chair all day, with those two absurd dogs asleep on your knees;

spoil my lady’s window-curtains with your cigars and annoy everybody in

the house with your stupid, inanimate countenance.”

 

Mr. Robert Audley opened his handsome gray eyes to their widest extent

at this tirade, and looked helplessly at Miss Alicia.

 

The young lady was walking up and down the room, slashing the skirt of

her habit with her riding-whip. Her eyes sparkled with an angry flash,

and a crimson glow burned under her clear brown skin. The young

barrister knew very well, by these diagnostics, that his cousin was in a

passion.

 

“Yes,” she repeated, “your stupid, inanimate countenance. Do you know,

Robert Audley, that with all your mock amiability, you are brimful of

conceit and superciliousness. You look down upon our amusements; you

lift up your eyebrows, and shrug your shoulders, and throw yourself back

in your chair, and wash your hands of us and our pleasures. You are a

selfish, cold-hearted Sybarite—”

 

“Alicia! Good—gracious—me!”

 

The morning paper dropped out of his hands, and he sat feebly staring at

his assailant.

 

“Yes, selfish, Robert Audley! You take home half-starved dogs, because

you like half-starved dogs. You stoop down, and pat the head of every

good-for-nothing cur in the village street, because you like

good-for-nothing curs. You notice little children, and give them

halfpence, because it amuses you to do so. But you lift your eyebrows a

quarter of a yard when poor Sir Harry Towers tells a stupid story, and

stare the poor fellow out of countenance with your lazy insolence. As to

your amiability, you would let a man hit you, and say ‘Thank you’ for

the blow, rather than take the trouble to hit him again; but you

wouldn’t go half a mile out of your way to serve your dearest friend.

Sir Harry is worth twenty of you, though he did write to ask if my

m-a-i-r Atalanta had recovered from the sprain. He can’t spell, or lift

his eyebrows to the roots of his hair; but he would go through fire and

water for the girl he loves; while you—”

 

At this very point, when Robert was most prepared to encounter his

cousin’s violence, and when Miss Alicia seemed about to make her

strongest attack, the young lady broke down altogether, and burst into

tears.

 

Robert sprang from his easy-chair, upsetting his dogs on the carpet.

 

“Alicia, my darling, what is it?”

 

“It’s—it’s—it’s the feather of my hat that got into my eyes,” sobbed

his cousin; and before he could investigate the truth of this assertion

Alicia had darted out of the room.

 

Robert Audley was preparing to follow her, when he heard her voice in

the courtyard below, amidst the tramping of horses and the clamor of

visitors, dogs, and grooms. Sir Harry Towers, the most aristocratic

young sportsman in the neighborhood, had just taken her little foot in

his hand as she sprung into her saddle.

 

“Good Heaven!” exclaimed Robert, as he watched the merry party of

equestrians until they disappeared under the archway. “What does all

this mean? How charmingly she sits her horse! What a pretty figure, too,

and a fine, candid, brown, rosy face: but to fly at a fellow like that,

without the least provocation! That’s the consequence of letting a girl

follow the hounds. She learns to look at everything in life as she does

at six feet of timber or a sunk fence; she goes through the world as she

goes across country—straight ahead, and over everything. Such a nice

girl as she might have been, too, if she’d been brought up in Figtree

Court! If ever I marry, and have daughters (which remote contingency may

Heaven forefend!) they shall be educated in Paper Buildings, take their

sole exercise in the Temple Gardens, and they shall never go beyond the

gates till they are marriageable, when I will walk them straight across

Fleet street to St. Dunstan’s church, and deliver them into the hands of

their husbands.”

 

With such reflections as these did Mr. Robert Audley beguile the time

until my lady re-entered the drawing-room, fresh and radiant in her

elegant morning costume, her yellow curls glistening with the perfumed

waters in which she had bathed, and her velvet-covered sketch-book in

her arms. She planted a little easel upon a table by the window, seated

herself before it, and began to mix the colors upon her palette, Robert

watching her out of his half-closed eyes.

 

“You are sure my cigar does not annoy you, Lady Audley?”

 

“Oh, no indeed; I am quite used to the smell of tobacco. Mr. Dawson, the

surgeon, smoked all the evening when I lived in his house.”

 

“Dawson is a good fellow,