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

lips and looked thoughtfully at the

ground.

 

“It isn’t that,” she said, hesitatingly. “Mr. Audley is a very agreeable

young man, and a very honorable young man; but you know, Sir Michael,

I’m rather a young aunt for such a nephew, and—”

 

“And what, Lucy?” asked the baronet, fiercely.

 

“Poor Alicia is rather jealous of any attention Mr. Audley pays me,

and—and—I think it would be better for her happiness if your nephew

were to bring his visit to a close.”

 

“He shall go tonight, Lucy,” exclaimed Sir Michael. “I am a blind,

neglectful fool not to have thought of this before. My lovely little

darling, it was scarcely just to Bob to expose the poor lad to your

fascinations. I know him to be as good and true-hearted a fellow as ever

breathed, but—but—he shall go tonight.”

 

“But you won’t be too abrupt, dear? You won’t be rude?”

 

“Rude! No, Lucy. I left him smoking in the lime-walk. I’ll go and tell

him that he must get out of the house in an hour.”

 

So in that leafless avenue, under whose gloomy shade George Talboys had

stood on that thunderous evening before the day of his disappearance,

Sir Michael Audley told his nephew that the Court was no home for him,

and that my lady was too young and pretty to accept the attentions of a

handsome nephew of eight-and-twenty.

 

Robert only shrugged his shoulders and elevated his thick, black

eyebrows as Sir Michael delicately hinted all this.

 

“I have been attentive to my lady,” he said. “She interests me;” and

then, with a change in his voice, and an emotion not common to him, he

turned to the baronet, and grasping his hand, exclaimed, “God forbid, my

dear uncle, that I should ever bring trouble upon such a noble heart as

yours! God forbid that the slightest shadow of dishonor should ever fall

upon your honored head—least of all through agency of mine.”

 

The young man uttered these few words in a broken and disjointed fashion

in which Sir Michael had never heard him speak, before, and then turning

away his head, fairly broke down.

 

He left the court that night, but he did not go far. Instead of taking

the evening train for London, he went straight up to the little village

of Mount Stanning, and walking into the neatly-kept inn, asked Phoebe

Marks if he could be accommodated with apartments.

 

CHAPTER XVII.

 

AT THE CASTLE INN.

 

The little sitting-room into which Phoebe Marks ushered the baronet’s

nephew was situated on the ground floor, and only separated by a

lath-and-plaster partition from the little bar-parlor occupied by the

innkeeper and his wife.

 

It seemed as though the wise architect who had superintended the

building of the Castle Inn had taken especial care that nothing but the

frailest and most flimsy material should be used, and that the wind,

having a special fancy for this unprotected spot, should have full play

for the indulgence of its caprices.

 

To this end pitiful woodwork had been used instead of solid masonry;

rickety ceilings had been propped up by fragile rafters, and beams that

threatened on every stormy night to fall upon the heads of those beneath

them; doors whose specialty was never to be shut, yet always to be

banging; windows constructed with a peculiar view to letting in the

draft when they were shut, and keeping out the air when they were open.

The hand of genius had devised this lonely country inn; and there was

not an inch of woodwork, or trowelful of plaster employed in all the

rickety construction that did not offer its own peculiar weak point to

every assault of its indefatigable foe.

 

Robert looked about him with a feeble smile of resignation.

 

It was a change, decidedly, from the luxurious comforts of Audley Court,

and it was rather a strange fancy of the young barrister to prefer

loitering at this dreary village hostelry to returning to his snug

chambers in Figtree Court.

 

But he had brought his Lares and Penates with him, in the shape of his

German pipe, his tobacco canister, half a dozen French novels, and his

two ill-conditioned, canine favorites, which sat shivering before the

smoky little fire, barking shortly and sharply now and then, by way of

hinting for some slight refreshment.

 

While Mr. Robert Audley contemplated his new quarters, Phoebe Marks

summoned a little village lad who was in the habit of running errands

for her, and taking him into the kitchen, gave him a tiny note,

carefully folded and sealed.

 

“You know Audley Court?”

 

“Yes, mum.”

 

“If you’ll run there with this letter tonight, and see that it’s put

safely in Lady Audley’s hands, I’ll give you a shilling.”

 

“Yes, mum.”

 

“You understand? Ask to see my lady; you can say you’ve a message—not a

note, mind—but a message from Phoebe Marks; and when you see her, give

this into her own hand.”

 

“Yes, mum.”

 

“You won’t forget?”

 

“No, mum.”

 

“Then be off with you.”

 

The boy waited for no second bidding, but in another moment was scudding

along the lonely high road, down the sharp descent that led to Audley.

 

Phoebe Marks went to the window, and looked out at the black figure of

the lad hurrying through the dusky winter evening.

 

“If there’s any bad meaning in his coming here,” she thought, “my lady

will know of it in time, at any rate,”

 

Phoebe herself brought the neatly arranged tea-tray, and the little

covered dish of ham and eggs which had been prepared for this

unlooked-for visitor. Her pale hair was as smoothly braided, and her

light gray dress fitted as precisely as of old. The same neutral tints

pervaded her person and her dress; no showy rose-colored ribbons or

rustling silk gown proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper’s wife. Phoebe

Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and

self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no

color from the outer world.

 

Robert looked at her thoughtfully as she spread the cloth, and drew the

table nearer to the fireplace.

 

“That,” he thought, “is a woman who could keep a secret.”

 

The dogs looked rather suspiciously at the quiet figure of Mrs. Marks

gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from

the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob.

 

“Will you pour out my tea for me, Mrs. Marks?” said Robert, seating

himself on a horsehair-covered arm-chair, which fitted him as tightly in

every direction as if he had been measured for it.

 

“You have come straight from the Court, sir?” said Phoebe, as she handed

Robert the sugar-basin.

 

“Yes; I only left my uncle’s an hour ago.”

 

“And my lady, sir, was she quite well?”

 

“Yes, quite well.”

 

“As gay and light-hearted as ever, sir?”

 

“As gay and light-hearted as ever.”

 

Phoebe retired respectfully after having given Mr. Audley his tea, but

as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again.

 

“You knew Lady Audley when she was Miss Lucy Graham, did you not?” he

asked.

 

“Yes, sir. I lived at Mrs. Dawson’s when my lady was governess there.”

 

“Indeed! Was she long in the surgeon’s family?”

 

“A year and a half, sir.”

 

“And she came from London?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“And she was an orphan, I believe?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Always as cheerful as she is now?”

 

“Always, sir.”

 

Robert emptied his teacup and handed it to Mrs. Marks. Their eyes met—a

lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers.

 

“This woman would be good in a witness-box,” he thought; “it would take a

clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination.”

 

He finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs,

and lighted his pipe, while Phoebe carried off the tea-tray.

 

The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through

the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.

 

“There’s a triangular draught from those two windows and the door that

scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment,” murmured Robert; “and

there certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing up to

one’s knees in cold water.”

 

He poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his great coat, rolled a

rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway

rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horsehair

cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-gray wreaths curling

upward to the dingy ceiling.

 

“No,” he murmured, again; “that is a woman who can keep a secret. A

counsel for the prosecution could get very little out of her.”

 

I have said that the bar-parlor was only separated from the sitting-room

occupied by Robert by a lath-and-plaster partition. The young barrister

could hear the two or three village tradesmen and a couple of farmers

laughing and talking round the bar, while Luke Marks served them from

his stock of liquors.

 

Very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlord’s,

for he spoke in a coarse, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner

than any of his customers.

 

“The man is a fool,” said Robert, as he laid down his pipe. “I’ll go and

talk to him by-and-by.”

 

He waited till the few visitors to the Castle had dropped away one by

one, and when Luke Marks had bolted the door upon the last of his

customers, he strolled quietly into the bar-parlor, where the landlord

was seated with his wife.

 

Phoebe was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim workbox,

with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed

place. She was darning the coarse gray stockings that adorned her

husband’s awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had

been my lady’s delicate silken hose.

 

I say that she took no color from external things, and that the vague

air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in

the society of her boorish husband at the Castle Inn as in Lady Audley’s

boudoir at the Court.

 

She looked up suddenly as Robert entered the bar-parlor. There was some

shade of vexation in her pale gray eyes, which changed to an expression

of anxiety—nay, rather of almost terror—as she glanced from Mr. Audley

to Luke Marks.

 

“I have come in for a few minutes’ chat before I go to bed,” said

Robert, settling himself very comfortably before the cheerful fire.

“Would you object to a cigar, Mrs. Marks? I mean, of course, to my

smoking one,” he added, explanatorily.

 

“Not at all, sir.”

 

“It would be a good ‘un her objectin’ to a bit o’ ‘bacca,” growled Mr.

Marks, “when me and the customers smokes all day.”

 

Robert lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of Phoebe’s making that

adorned the chimneypiece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before

he spoke.

 

“I want you to tell me all about Mount Stanning, Mr. Marks,” he said,

presently.

 

“Then that’s pretty soon told,” replied Luke, with a harsh, grating

laugh. “Of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about

the dullest. Not that the business don’t pay pretty tidy; I don’t

complain of that; but I should ha’ liked a public at Chelmsford, or

Brentwood, or Romford, or some place where there’s a bit of life in the

streets; and I might have had it,” he added, discontentedly, “if folks

hadn’t been so precious stingy.”