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

they? Coats, waistcoats, varnished boots, and

meerschaum pipes, I suppose,” said Lady Audley, laughing.

 

“No; letters—letters from his friends, his old schoolfellows, his

father, his brother officers.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Letters, too, from his wife.”

 

My lady was silent for some few moments, looking thoughtfully at the

fire.

 

“Have you ever seen any of the letters written by the late Mrs.

Talboys?” she asked presently.

 

“Never. Poor soul! her letters are not likely to throw much light upon

my friend’s fate. I dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There

are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, Lady

Audley.”

 

“Ah, you know my hand, of course.”

 

“Yes, I know it very well indeed.”

 

My lady warmed her hands once more, and then taking up the big muff

which she had laid aside upon a chair, prepared to take her departure.

 

“You have refused to accept my apology, Mr. Audley,” she said; “but I

trust you are not the less assured of my feelings toward you.”

 

“Perfectly assured, Lady Audley.”

 

“Then good-by, and let me recommend you not to stay long in this

miserable draughty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism back to

Figtree Court.”

 

“I shall return to town tomorrow morning to see after my letters.”

 

“Then once more good-by.”

 

She held out her hand; he took it loosely in his own. It seemed such a

feeble little hand that he might have crushed it in his strong grasp,

had he chosen to be so pitiless.

 

He attended her to her carriage, and watched it as it drove off, not

toward Audley, but in the direction of Brentwood, which was about six

miles from Mount Stanning.

 

About an hour and a half after this, as Robert stood at the door of the

inn, smoking a cigar and watching the snow falling in the whitened

fields opposite, he saw the brougham drive back, empty this time, to the

door of the inn.

 

“Have you taken Lady Audley back to the Court?” he said to the coachman,

who had stopped to call for a mug of hot spiced ale.

 

“No, sir; I’ve just come from the Brentwood station. My lady started for

London by the 12.40 train.”

 

“For town?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“My lady gone to London!” said Robert, as he returned to the little

sitting-room. “Then I’ll follow her by the next train; and if I’m not

very much mistaken, I know where to find her.”

 

He packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, fastened his dogs together

with a couple of leathern collars and a chain, and stepped into the

rumbling fly kept by the Castle Inn for the convenience of Mount

Stanning. He caught an express that left Brentwood at three o’clock, and

settled himself comfortably in a corner of an empty first-class

carriage, coiled up in a couple of railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in

mild defiance of the authorities.

 

CHAPTER XIX.

 

THE WRITING IN THE BOOK.

 

It was exactly five minutes past four as Mr. Robert Audley stepped out

upon the platform at Shoreditch, and waited placidly until such time as

his dogs and his portmanteau should be delivered up to the attendant

porter who had called his cab, and undertaken the general conduct of his

affairs, with that disinterested courtesy which does such infinite

credit to a class of servitors who are forbidden to accept the tribute

of a grateful public.

 

Robert Audley waited with consummate patience for a considerable time;

but as the express was generally a long train, and as there were a great

many passengers from Norfolk carrying guns and pointers, and other

paraphernalia of a critical description, it took a long while to make

matters agreeable to all claimants, and even the barrister’s seraphic

indifference to mundane affairs nearly gave way.

 

“Perhaps, when that gentleman who is making such a noise about a pointer

with liver-colored spots, has discovered the particular pointer and

spots that he wants—which happy combination of events scarcely seems

likely to arrive—they’ll give me my luggage and let me go. The

designing wretches knew at a glance that I was born to be imposed upon;

and that if they were to trample the life out of me upon this very

platform, I should never have the spirit to bring an action against the

company.”

 

Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he left the porter to

struggle for the custody of his goods, and walked round to the other

side of the station.

 

He heard a bell ring, and looking at the clock, had remembered that the

down train for Colchester started at this time. He had learned what it

was to have an earnest purpose since the disappearance of George

Talboys; and he reached the opposite platform in time to see the

passengers take their seats.

 

There was one lady who had evidently only just arrived at the station;

for she hurried on to the platform at the very moment that Robert

approached the train, and almost ran against that gentleman in her haste

and excitement.

 

“I beg your pardon,” she began, ceremoniously; then raising her eyes

from Mr. Audley’s waistcoat, which was about on a level with her pretty

face, she exclaimed, “Robert, you in London already?”

 

“Yes, Lady Audley; you were quite right; the Castle Inn is a dismal

place, and—”

 

“You got tired of it—I knew you would. Please open the carriage door

for me: the train will start in two minutes.”

 

Robert Audley was looking at his uncle’s wife with rather a puzzled

expression of countenance.

 

“What does it mean?” he thought. “She is altogether a different being to

the wretched, helpless creature who dropped her mask for a moment, and

looked at me with her own pitiful face, in the little room at Mount

Stanning, four hours ago. What has happened to cause the change?”

 

He opened the door for her while he thought this, and helped her to

settle herself in her seat, spreading her furs over her knees, and

arranging the huge velvet mantle in which her slender little figure was

almost hidden.

 

“Thank you very much; how good you are to me,” she said, as he did this.

“You will think me very foolish to travel upon such a day, without my

dear darling’s knowledge too; but I went up to town to settle a very

terrific milliner’s bill, which I did not wish my best of husbands to

see; for, indulgent as he is, he might think me extravagant; and I

cannot bear to suffer even in his thoughts.”

 

“Heaven forbid that you ever should, Lady Audley,” Robert said, gravely.

 

She looked at him for a moment with a smile, which had something defiant

in its brightness.

 

“Heaven forbid it, indeed,” she murmured. “I don’t think I ever shall.”

 

The second bell rung, and the train moved as she spoke. The last Robert

Audley saw of her was that bright defiant smile.

 

“Whatever object brought her to London has been successfully

accomplished,” he thought. “Has she baffled me by some piece of womanly

jugglery? Am I never to get any nearer to the truth, but am I to be

tormented all my life by vague doubts, and wretched suspicions, which

may grow upon me till I become a monomaniac? Why did she come to

London?”

 

He was still mentally asking himself this question as he ascended the

stairs in Figtree Court, with one of his dogs under each arm, and his

railway rugs over his shoulder.

 

He found his chambers in their accustomed order. The geraniums had been

carefully tended, and the canaries had retired for the night under cover

of a square of green baize, testifying to the care of honest Mrs.

Maloney. Robert cast a hurried glance round the sitting-room; then

setting down the dogs upon the hearthrug, he walked straight into the

little inner chamber which served as his dressing-room.

 

It was in this room that he kept disused portmanteaus, battered japanned

cases, and other lumber; and it was in this room that George Talboys had

left his luggage. Robert lifted a portmanteau from the top of a large

trunk, and kneeling down before it with a lighted candle in his hand,

carefully examined the lock.

 

To all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which George

had left it, when he laid his mourning garments aside and placed them in

this shabby repository with all other memorials of his dead wife. Robert

brushed his coat sleeve across the worn, leather-covered lid, upon which

the initials G. T. were inscribed with big brass-headed nails; but Mrs.

Maloney, the laundress, must have been the most precise of housewives,

for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk were dusty.

 

Mr. Audley dispatched a boy to fetch his Irish attendant, and paced up

and down his sitting-room waiting anxiously for her arrival.

 

She came in about ten minutes, and, after expressing her delight in the

return of “the master,” humbly awaited his orders.

 

“I only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here; that is to say, if

anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day—any lady?”

 

“Lady? No, indeed, yer honor; there’s been no lady for the kay; barrin’

it’s the blacksmith.”

 

“The blacksmith!”

 

“Yes; the blacksmith your honor ordered to come to-day.”

 

“I order a blacksmith!” exclaimed Robert. “I left a bottle of French

brandy in the cupboard,” he thought, “and Mrs. M. has been evidently

enjoying herself.”

 

“Sure, and the blacksmith your honor tould to see to the locks,” replied

Mrs. Maloney. “It’s him that lives down in one of the little streets by

the bridge,” she added, giving a very lucid description of the man’s

whereabouts.

 

Robert lifted his eyebrows in mute despair.

 

“If you’ll sit down and compose yourself, Mrs. M.,” he said—he

abbreviated her name thus on principle, for the avoidance of unnecessary

labor—“perhaps we shall be able by and by to understand each other. You

say a blacksmith has been here?”

 

“Sure and I did, sir.”

 

“To-day?”

 

“Quite correct, sir.”

 

Step by step Mr. Audley elicited the following information. A locksmith

had called upon Mrs. Maloney that afternoon at three o’clock, and had

asked for the key of Mr. Audley’s chambers, in order that he might look

to the locks of the doors, which he stated were all out of repair. He

declared that he was acting upon Mr. Audley’s own orders, conveyed to

him by a letter from the country, where the gentleman was spending his

Christmas. Mrs. Maloney, believing in the truth of this statement, had

admitted the man to the chambers, where he stayed about half an hour.

 

“But you were with him while he examined the locks, I suppose?” Mr.

Audley asked.

 

“Sure I was, sir, in and out, as you may say, all the time, for I’ve

been cleaning the stairs this afternoon, and I took the opportunity to

begin my scouring while the man was at work.”

 

“Oh, you were in and out all the time. If you could conveniently give

me a plain answer, Mrs. M., I should be glad to know what was the

longest time that you were out while the locksmith was in my

chambers?”

 

But Mrs. Maloney could not give a plain answer. It might have been ten

minutes; though she didn’t think it was as much. It might have been a

quarter of an hour; but she was sure it wasn’t more. It didn’t seem to

her more than five minutes, but “thim stairs, your honor;”