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

lawyer. But I

couldn’t stand that.”

 

That sneaking lawyer, by which appellation Sir Harry alluded to Mr.

Robert Audley, was standing in the hall, looking at a map of the midland

counties, when Alicia came out of the library, with red eyes, after her

interview with the fox-hunting baronet.

 

Robert, who was short-sighted, had his eyes within half an inch of the

surface of the map as the young lady approached him.

 

“Yes,” he said, “Norwich is in Norfolk, and that fool, young Vincent,

said it was in Herefordshire. Ha, Alicia, is that you?”

 

He turned round so as to intercept Miss Audley on her way to the

staircase.

 

“Yes,” replied his cousin curtly, trying to pass him.

 

“Alicia, you have been crying.”

 

The young lady did not condescend to reply.

 

“You have been crying, Alicia. Sir Harry Towers, of Towers Park, in the

county of Herts, has been making you an offer of his hand, eh?”

 

“Have you been listening at the door, Mr. Audley?”

 

“I have not, Miss Audley. On principle, I object to listen, and in

practice I believe it to be a very troublesome proceeding; but I am a

barrister, Miss Alicia, and able to draw a conclusion by induction. Do

you know what inductive evidence is, Miss Audley?”

 

“No,” replied Alicia, looking at her cousin as a handsome young panther

might look at its daring tormentor.

 

“I thought not. I dare say Sir Harry would ask if it was a new kind of

horse-ball. I knew by induction that the baronet was going to make you

an offer; first, because he came downstairs with his hair parted on the

wrong side, and his face as pale as a tablecloth; secondly, because he

couldn’t eat any breakfast, and let his coffee go the wrong way; and,

thirdly, because he asked for an interview with you before he left the

Court. Well, how’s it to be, Alicia? Do we marry the baronet, and is

poor Cousin Bob to be the best man at the wedding?”

 

“Sir Harry Towers is a noble-hearted young man,” said Alicia, still

trying to pass her cousin.

 

“But do we accept him—yes or no? Are we to be Lady Towers, with a

superb estate in Hertfordshire, summer quarters for our hunters, and a

drag with outriders to drive us across to papa’s place in Essex? Is it

to be so, Alicia, or not?”

 

“What is that to you, Mr. Robert Audley?” cried Alicia, passionately.

“What do you care what becomes of me, or whom I marry? If I married a

chimney-sweep you’d only lift up your eyebrows and say, ‘Bless my soul,

she was always eccentric.’ I have refused Sir Harry Towers; but when I

think of his generous and unselfish affection, and compare it with the

heartless, lazy, selfish, supercilious indifference of other men, I’ve a

good mind to run after him and tell him—”

 

“That you’ll retract, and be my Lady Towers?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then don’t, Alicia, don’t,” said Robert Audley, grasping his cousin’s

slender little wrist, and leading her up-stairs. “Come into the

drawing-room with me, Alicia, my poor little cousin; my charming,

impetuous, alarming little cousin. Sit down here in this mullioned

window, and let us talk seriously and leave off quarreling if we can.”

 

The cousins had the drawing-room all to themselves. Sir Michael was out,

my lady in her own apartments, and poor Sir Harry Towers walking up and

down upon the gravel walk, darkened with the flickering shadows of the

leafless branches in the cold winter sunshine.

 

“My poor little Alicia,” said Robert, as tenderly as if he had been

addressing some spoiled child, “do you suppose that because people don’t

wear vinegar tops, or part their hair on the wrong side, or conduct

themselves altogether after the manner of well-meaning maniacs, by way

of proving the vehemence of their passion—do you suppose because of

this, Alicia Audley, that they may not be just as sensible of the merits

of a dear little warm-hearted and affectionate girl as ever their

neighbors can be? Life is such a very troublesome matter, when all is

said and done, that it’s as well even to take its blessings quietly. I

don’t make a great howling because I can get good cigars one door from

the corner of Chancery Lane, and have a dear, good girl for my cousin;

but I am not the less grateful to Providence that it is so.”

 

Alicia opened her gray eyes to their widest extent, looking her cousin

full in the face with a bewildered stare. Robert had picked up the

ugliest and leanest of his attendant curs, and was placidly stroking the

animal’s ears.

 

“Is this all you have to say to me, Robert?” asked Miss Audley, meekly.

 

“Well, yes, I think so,” replied her cousin, after considerable

deliberation. “I fancy that what I wanted to say was this—don’t marry

the fox-hunting baronet if you like anybody else better; for if you’ll

only be patient and take life easily, and try and reform yourself of

banging doors, bouncing in and out rooms, talking of the stables, and

riding across country, I’ve no doubt the person you prefer will make you

a very excellent husband.”

 

“Thank you, cousin,” said Miss Audley, crimsoning with bright, indignant

blushes up to the roots of her waving brown hair; “but as you may not

know the person I prefer, I think you had better not take upon yourself

to answer for him.”

 

Robert pulled the dog’s ears thoughtfully for some moments.

 

“No, to be sure,” he said, after a pause. “Of course, if I don’t know

him—I thought I did.”

 

“Did you?” exclaimed Alicia; and opening the door with a violence that

made her cousin shiver, she bounced out of the drawing-room.

 

“I only said I thought I knew him,” Robert called after her; and, then,

as he sunk into an easy-chair, he murmured thoughtfully: “Such a nice

girl, too, if she didn’t bounce.”

 

So poor Sir Harry Towers rode away from Audley Court, looking very

crestfallen and dismal.

 

He had very little pleasure in returning to the stately mansion, hidden

among sheltering oaks and venerable beeches. The square, red brick

house, gleaming at the end of a long arcade of leafless trees was to be

forever desolate, he thought, since Alicia would not come to be its

mistress.

 

A hundred improvements planned and thought of were dismissed from his

mind as useless now. The hunter that Jim the trainer was breaking in for

a lady; the two pointer pups that were being reared for the next

shooting season; the big black retriever that would have carried

Alicia’s parasol; the pavilion in the garden, disused since his mother’s

death, but which he had meant to have restored for Miss Audley—all

these things were now so much vanity and vexation of spirit.

 

“What’s the good of being rich if one has no one to help spend one’s

money?” said the young baronet. “One only grows a selfish beggar, and

takes to drinking too much port. It’s a hard thing that a girl can

refuse a true heart and such stables as we’ve got at the park. It

unsettles a man somehow.”

 

Indeed, this unlooked for rejection had very much unsettled the few

ideas which made up the small sum of the baronet’s mind.

 

He had been desperately in love with Alicia ever since the last hunting

season, when he had met her at the county ball. His passion, cherished

through the slow monotony of a summer, had broken out afresh in the

merry winter months, and the young man’s mauvaise honte alone had

delayed the offer of his hand. But he had never for a moment supposed

that he would be refused; he was so used to the adulation of mothers who

had daughters to marry, and of even the daughters themselves; he had

been so accustomed to feel himself the leading personage in an assembly,

although half the wits of the age had been there, and he could only say

“Haw, to be sure!” and “By Jove—hum!” he had been so spoiled by the

flatteries of bright eyes that looked, or seemed to look, the brighter

when he drew near, that without being possessed of one shadow of

personal vanity, he had yet come to think that he had only to make an

offer to the prettiest girl in Essex to behold himself immediately

accepted.

 

“Yes,” he would say complacently to some admiring satellite, “I know I’m

a good match, and I know what makes the gals so civil. They’re very

pretty, and they’re very friendly to a fellow; but I don’t care about

‘em. They’re all alike—they can only drop their eyes and say, ‘Lor’,

Sir Harry, why do you call that curly black dog a retriever?’ or ‘Oh Sir

Harry, and did the poor mare really sprain her pastern shoulder-blade?’

I haven’t got much brains myself, I know,” the baronet would add

deprecatingly; “and I don’t want a strong-minded woman, who writes books

and wears green spectacles; but, hang it! I like a gal who knows what

she’s talking about.”

 

So when Alicia said “No,” or rather made that pretty speech about esteem

and respect, which well-bred young ladies substitute for the obnoxious

monosyllable, Sir Harry Towers felt that the whole fabric of the future

he had built so complacently was shivered into a heap of dingy ruins.

 

Sir Michael grasped him warmly by the hand just before the young man

mounted his horse in the courtyard.

 

“I’m very sorry, Towers,” he said. “You’re as good a fellow as ever

breathed, and would have made my girl an excellent husband; but you know

there’s a cousin, and I think that—”

 

“Don’t say that, Sir Michael,” interrupted the fox-hunter,

energetically. “I can get over anything but that. A fellow whose hand

upon the curb weighs half a ton (why, he pulled the Cavalier’s mouth to

pieces, sir, the day you let him ride the horse); a fellow who turns his

collars down, and eats bread and marmalade! No, no, Sir Michael; it’s a

queer world, but I can’t think that of Miss Audley. There must be some

one in the background, sir; it can’t be the cousin.”

 

Sir Michael shook his head as the rejected suitor rode away.

 

“I don’t know about that,” he muttered. “Bob’s a good lad, and the girl

might do worse; but he hangs back as if he didn’t care for her. There’s

some mystery—there’s some mystery!”

 

The old baronet said this in that semi-thoughtful tone with which we

speak of other people’s affairs. The shadows of the early winter

twilight, gathering thickest under the low oak ceiling of the hall, and

the quaint curve of the arched doorway, fell darkly round his handsome

head; but the light of his declining life, his beautiful and beloved

young wife, was near him, and he could see no shadows when she was by.

 

She came skipping through the hall to meet him, and, shaking her golden

ringlets, buried her bright head on her husband’s breast.

 

“So the last of our visitors is gone, dear, and we’re all alone,” she

said. “Isn’t that nice?”

 

“Yes, darling,” he answered fondly, stroking her bright hair.

 

“Except Mr. Robert Audley. How long is that nephew of yours going to

stay here?”

 

“As long as he likes, my pet; he’s always welcome,” said the baronet;

and then, as if remembering himself, he added, tenderly: “But not unless

his visit is agreeable to you, darling; not if his lazy habits, or his

smoking, or his dogs, or anything about him is displeasing to you.”

 

Lady Audley pursed up her rosy