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

>As her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, Phoebe

looked up from her work and spoke to him.

 

“We forgot the brew-house door, Luke,” she said. “Will you come with me

and help me put up the bar?”

 

“The brew-house door can bide for tonight,” said Mr. Marks; “I ain’t

agoin’ to move now. I’ve seated myself for a comfortable smoke.”

 

He took a long clay pipe from a corner of the fender as he spoke, and

began to fill it deliberately.

 

“I don’t feel easy about that brew-house door, Luke,” remonstrated his

wife; “there are always tramps about, and they can get in easily when

the bar isn’t up.”

 

“Go and put the bar up yourself, then, can’t you?” answered Mr. Marks.

 

“It’s too heavy for me to lift.”

 

“Then let it bide, if you’re too fine a lady to see to it yourself.

You’re very anxious all of a sudden about this here brew-house door. I

suppose you don’t want me to open my mouth to this here gent, that’s

about it. Oh, you needn’t frown at me to stop my speaking! You’re always

putting in your tongue and clipping off my words before I’ve half said

‘em; but I won’t stand it.”

 

“Do you hear? I won’t stand it!”

 

Phoebe Marks shrugged her shoulders, folded her work, shut her workbox,

and crossing her hands in her lap, sat with her gray eyes fixed upon her

husband’s bull-like face.

 

“Then you don’t particularly care to live at Mount Stanning?” said

Robert, politely, as if anxious to change the conversation.

 

“No, I don’t,” answered Luke; “and I don’t care who knows it; and, as I

said before, if folks hadn’t been so precious stingy, I might have had a

public in a thrivin’ market town, instead of this tumbledown old place,

where a man has his hair blowed off his head on a windy day. What’s

fifty pound, or what’s a hundred pound—”

 

“Luke! Luke!”

 

“No, you’re not goin’ to stop my mouth with all your ‘Luke, Lukes!’”

answered Mr. Marks to his wife’s remonstrance. “I say again, what’s a

hundred pound?”

 

“No,” answered Robert Audley, with wonderful distinctness, and

addressing his words to Luke Marks, but fixing his eyes upon Phoebe’s

anxious face. “What, indeed, is a hundred pounds to a man possessed of

the power which you hold, or rather which your wife holds, over the

person in question.”

 

“Phoebe’s face, at all times almost colorless, seemed scarcely capable

of growing paler; but as her eyelids drooped under Robert Audley’s

searching glance, a visible change came over the pallid hues of her

complexion.

 

“A quarter to twelve,” said Robert, looking at his watch.

 

“Late hours for such a quiet village as Mount Stanning. Good-night, my

worthy host. Good-night, Mrs. Marks. You needn’t send me my shaving

water till nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

 

ROBERT RECEIVES A VISITOR WHOM HE HAD SCARCELY EXPECTED.

 

Eleven o’clock struck the next morning, and found Mr. Robert Audley

still lounging over the well ordered little breakfast table, with one of

his dogs at each side of his arm-chair, regarding him with watchful eyes

and opened mouths, awaiting the expected morsel of ham or toast. Robert

had a county paper on his knees, and made a feeble effort now and then

to read the first page, which was filled with advertisements of farming

stock, quack medicines, and other interesting matter.

 

The weather had changed, and the snow, which had for the last few days

been looming blackly in the frosty sky, fell in great feathery flakes

against the windows, and lay piled in the little bit of garden-ground

without.

 

The long, lonely road leading toward Audley seemed untrodden by a

footstep, as Robert Audley looked out at the wintry landscape.

 

“Lively,” he said, “for a man used to the fascinations of Temple Bar.”

 

As he watched the snow-flakes falling every moment thicker and faster

upon the lonely road, he was surprised by seeing a brougham driving

slowly up the hill.

 

“I wonder what unhappy wretch has too restless a spirit to stop at home

on such a morning as this,” he muttered, as he returned to the arm-chair

by the fire.

 

He had only reseated himself a few moments when Phoebe Marks entered the

room to announce Lady Audley.

 

“Lady Audley! Pray beg her to come in,” said Robert; and then, as Phoebe

left the room to usher in this unexpected visitor, he muttered between

his teeth—“A false move, my lady, and one I never looked for from you.”

 

Lucy Audley was radiant on this cold and snowy January morning. Other

people’s noses are rudely assailed by the sharp fingers of the grim

ice-king, but not my lady’s; other people’s lips turn pale and blue with

the chilling influence of the bitter weather, but my lady’s pretty

little rosebud of a mouth retained its brightest coloring and cheeriest

freshness.

 

She was wrapped in the very sables which Robert Audley had brought from

Russia, and carried a muff that the young man thought seemed almost as

big as herself.

 

She looked a childish, helpless, babyfied little creature; and Robert

looked down upon her with some touch of pity in his eyes, as she came up

to the hearth by which he was standing, and warmed her tiny gloved hands

at the blaze.

 

“What a morning, Mr. Audley!” she said, “what a morning!”

 

“Yes, indeed! Why did you come out in such weather?”

 

“Because I wished to see you—particularly.”

 

“Indeed!”

 

“Yes,” said my lady, with an air of considerable embarrassment, playing

with the button of her glove, and almost wrenching it off in her

restlessness—“yes, Mr. Audley, I felt that you had not been well

treated; that—that you had, in short, reason to complain; and that an

apology was due to you.”

 

“I do not wish for any apology, Lady Audley.”

 

“But you are entitled to one,” answered my lady, quietly. “Why, my dear

Robert, should we be so ceremonious toward each other? You were very

comfortable at Audley; we were very glad to have you there; but, my

dear, silly husband must needs take it into his foolish head that it is

dangerous for his poor little wife’s peace of mind to have a nephew of

eight or nine and twenty smoking his cigars in her boudoir, and, behold!

our pleasant little family circle is broken up.”

 

Lucy Audley spoke with that peculiar childish vivacity which seemed so

natural to her, Robert looking down almost sadly at her bright, animated

face.

 

“Lady Audley,” he said, “Heaven forbid that either you or I should ever

bring grief or dishonor upon my uncle’s generous heart! Better, perhaps,

that I should be out of the house—better, perhaps, that I had never

entered it!”

 

My lady had been looking at the fire while her nephew spoke, but at his

last words she lifted her head suddenly, and looked him full in the face

with a wondering expression—an earnest, questioning gaze, whose full

meaning the young barrister understood.

 

“Oh, pray do not be alarmed, Lady Audley,” he said, gravely. “You have

no sentimental nonsense, no silly infatuation, borrowed from Balzac or

Dumas fils, to fear from me. The benchers of the Inner Temple will

tell you that Robert Audley is troubled with none of the epidemics whose

outward signs are turn-down collars and Byronic neckties. I say that I

wish I had never entered my uncle’s house during the last year; but I

say it with a far more solemn meaning than any sentimental one.”

 

My lady shrugged her shoulders.

 

“If you insist on talking in enigmas, Mr. Audley,” she said, “you must

forgive a poor little woman if she declines to answer them.”

 

Robert made no reply to this speech.

 

“But tell me,” said my lady, with an entire change of tone, “what could

have induced you to come up to this dismal place?”

 

“Curiosity.”

 

“Curiosity?”

 

“Yes; I felt an interest in that bull-necked man, with the dark-red hair

and wicked gray eyes. A dangerous man, my lady—a man in whose power I

should not like to be.”

 

A sudden change came over Lady Audley’s face; the pretty, roseate flush

faded out from her cheeks, and left them waxen white, and angry flashes

lightened in her blue eyes.

 

“What have I done to you, Robert Audley,” she cried, passionately—“what

have I done to you that you should hate me so?”

 

He answered her very gravely:

 

“I had a friend, Lady Audley, whom I loved very dearly, and since I have

lost him I fear that my feelings toward other people are strangely

embittered.”

 

“You mean the Mr. Talboys who went to Australia?”

 

“Yes, I mean the Mr. Talboys who I was told set out for Liverpool with

the idea of going to Australia.”

 

“And you do not believe in his having sailed for Australia?”

 

“I do not.”

 

“But why not?”

 

“Forgive me, Lady Audley, if I decline to answer that question.”

 

“As you please,” she said, carelessly.

 

“A week after my friend disappeared,” continued Robert, “I posted an

advertisement to the Sydney and Melbourne papers, calling upon him if he

was in either city when the advertisement appeared, to write and tell me

of his whereabouts, and also calling on any one who had met him, either

in the colonies or on the voyage out, to give me any information

respecting him. George Talboys left Essex, or disappeared from Essex, on

the 6th of September last. I ought to receive some answer to this

advertisement by the end of this month. To-day is the 27th; the time

draws very near.”

 

“And if you receive no answer?” asked Lady Audley.

 

“If I receive no answer I shall think that my fears have been not

unfounded, and I shall do my best to act.”

 

“What do you mean by that?”

 

“Ah, Lady Audley, you remind me how very powerless I am in this matter.

My friend might have been made away with in this very inn, and I might

stay here for a twelvemonth, and go away at the last as ignorant of his

fate as if I had never crossed the threshold. What do we know of the

mysteries that may hang about the houses we enter? If I were to go

tomorrow into that commonplace, plebeian, eight-roomed house in which

Maria Manning and her husband murdered their guest, I should have no

awful prescience of that bygone horror. Foul deeds have been done under

the most hospitable roofs; terrible crimes have been committed amid the

fairest scenes, and have left no trace upon the spot where they were

done. I do not believe in mandrake, or in bloodstains that no time can

efface. I believe rather that we may walk unconsciously in an atmosphere

of crime, and breathe none the less freely. I believe that we may look

into the smiling face of a murderer, and admire its tranquil beauty.”

 

My lady laughed at Robert’s earnestness.

 

“You seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects,”

she said, rather scornfully; “you ought to have been a detective police

officer.”

 

“I sometimes think I should have been a good one.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I am patient.”

 

“But to return to Mr. George Talboys, whom we lost sight of in your

eloquent discussion. What if you receive no answer to your

advertisements?”

 

“I shall then consider myself justified in concluding my friend is

dead.”

 

“Yes, and then—?”

 

“I shall examine the effects he left at my chambers.”

 

“Indeed! and what are