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

and here she

rambled off into a disquisition upon the scouring of stairs in general,

and the stairs outside Robert’s chambers in particular.

 

Mr. Audley sighed the weary sigh of mournful resignation.

 

“Never mind, Mrs. M.,” he said; “the locksmith had plenty of time to do

anything he wanted to do, I dare say, without your being any the wiser.”

 

Mrs. Maloney stared at her employer with mingled surprise and alarm.

 

“Sure, there wasn’t anything for him to stale, your honor, barrin’ the

birds and the geran’ums, and—”

 

“No, no, I understand. There, that’ll do, Mrs. M. Tell me where the man

lives, and I’ll go and see him.”

 

“But you’ll have a bit of dinner first, sir?”

 

“I’ll go and see the locksmith before I have my dinner.”

 

He took up his hat as he announced his determination, and walked toward

the door.

 

“The man’s address, Mrs. M?”

 

The Irishwoman directed him to a small street at the back of St. Bride’s

Church, and thither Mr. Robert Audley quietly strolled, through the miry

slush which simple Londoners call snow.

 

He found the locksmith, and, at the sacrifice of the crown of his hat,

contrived to enter the low, narrow doorway of a little open shop. A jet

of gas was flaring in the unglazed window, and there was a very merry

party in the little room behind the shop; but no one responded to

Robert’s “Hulloa!” The reason of this was sufficiently obvious. The

merry party was so much absorbed in its own merriment as to be deaf to

all commonplace summonses from the outer world; and it was only when

Robert, advancing further into the cavernous little shop, made so bold

as to open the half-glass door which separated him from the

merry-makers, that he succeeded in obtaining their attention.

 

A very jovial picture of the Teniers school was presented to Mr. Robert

Audley upon the opening of this door.

 

The locksmith, with his wife and family, and two or three droppers-in of

the female sex, were clustered about a table, which was adorned by two

bottles; not vulgar bottles of that colorless extract of the juniper

berry, much affected by the masses; but of bona fide port and

sherry—fiercely strong sherry, which left a fiery taste in the mouth,

nut-brown sherry—rather unnaturally brown, if anything—and fine old

port; no sickly vintage, faded and thin from excessive age: but a rich,

full-bodied wine, sweet and substantial and high colored.

 

The locksmith was speaking as Robert Audley opened the door.

 

“And with that,” he said, “she walked off, as graceful as you please.”

 

The whole party was thrown into confusion by the appearance of Mr.

Audley, but it was to be observed that the locksmith was more

embarrassed than his companions. He set down his glass so hurriedly,

that he spilt his wine, and wiped his mouth nervously with the back of

his dirty hand.

 

“You called at my chambers to-day,” Robert said, quietly. “Don’t let me

disturb you, ladies.” This to the droppers-in. “You called at my

chambers to-day, Mr. White, and—”

 

The man interrupted him.

 

“I hope, sir, you will be so good as to look over the mistake,” he

stammered. “I’m sure, sir, I’m very sorry it should have occurred. I was

sent for to another gentleman’s chambers, Mr. Aulwin, in Garden Court;

and the name slipped my memory; and havin’ done odd jobs before for you,

I thought it must be you as wanted me to-day; and I called at Mrs.

Maloney’s for the key accordin’; but directly I see the locks in your

chambers, I says to myself, the gentleman’s locks ain’t out of order;

the gentleman don’t want all his locks repaired.”

 

“But you stayed half an hour.”

 

“Yes, sir; for there was one lock out of order—the door nighest the

staircase—and I took it off and cleaned it and put it on again. I won’t

charge you nothin’ for the job, and I hope as you’ll be as good as to

look over the mistake as has occurred, which I’ve been in business

thirteen years come July, and—”

 

“Nothing of this kind ever happened before, I suppose,” said Robert,

gravely. “No, it’s altogether a singular kind of business, not likely to

come about every day. You’ve been enjoying yourself this evening I see,

Mr. White. You’ve done a good stroke of work to-day, I’ll wager—made a

lucky hit, and you’re what you call ‘standing treat,’ eh?”

 

Robert Audley looked straight into the man’s dingy face as he spoke. The

locksmith was not a bad-looking fellow, and there was nothing that he

need have been ashamed of in his face, except the dirt, and that, as

Hamlet’s mother says, “is common;” but in spite of this, Mr. White’s

eyelids dropped under the young barrister’s calm scrutiny, and he

stammered out some apologetic sort of speech about his “missus,” and his

missus’ neighbors, and port wine and sherry wine, with as much confusion

as if he, an honest mechanic in a free country, were called upon to

excuse himself to Robert Audley for being caught in the act of enjoying

himself in his own parlor.

 

Robert cut him short with a careless nod.

 

“Pray don’t apologize,” he said; “I like to see people enjoy themselves.

Good-night, Mr. White good-night, ladies.”

 

He lifted his hat to “the missus,” and the missus’ neighbors, who were

much fascinated by his easy manner and his handsome face, and left the

shop.

 

“And so,” he muttered to himself as he went back to his chambers, “‘with

that she walked off as graceful as you please.‘Who was it that walked

off; and what was the story which the locksmith was telling when I

interrupted him at that sentence? Oh, George Talboys, George Talboys, am

I ever to come any I nearer to the secret of your fate? Am I coming

nearer to it now, slowly but surely? Is the radius to grow narrower day

by day until it draws a dark circle around the home of those I love? How

is it all to end?”

 

He sighed wearily as he walked slowly back across the flagged

quadrangles in the Temple to his own solitary chambers.

 

Mrs. Maloney had prepared for him that bachelor’s dinner, which, however

excellent and nutritious in itself, has no claim to the special charm of

novelty. She had cooked for him a mutton-chop, which was soddening

itself between two plates upon the little table near the fire.

 

Robert Audley sighed as he sat down to the familiar meal, remembering

his uncle’s cook with a fond, regretful sorrow.

 

“Her cutlets a la Maintenon made mutton seem more than mutton; a

sublimated meat that could scarcely have grown upon any mundane sheep,”

he murmured sentimentally, “and Mrs. Maloney’s chops are apt to be

tough; but such is life—what does it matter?”

 

He pushed away his plate impatiently after eating a few mouthfuls.

 

“I have never eaten a good dinner at this table since I lost George

Talboys,” he said. “The place seems as gloomy as if the poor fellow had

died in the next room, and had never been taken away to be buried. How

long ago that September afternoon appears as I look back at it—that

September afternoon upon which I parted with him alive and well; and

lost him as suddenly and unaccountably as if a trap-door had opened in

the solid earth and let him through to the antipodes!”

 

Mr. Audley rose from the dinner-table and walked over to the cabinet in

which he kept the document he had drawn up relating to George Talboys.

He unlocked the doors of his cabinet, took the paper from the

pigeon-hole marked important, and seated himself at his desk to write.

He added several paragraphs to those in the document, numbering the

fresh paragraphs as carefully as he had numbered the old ones.

 

“Heaven help us all,” he muttered once; “is this paper with which no

attorney has had any hand to be my first brief?”

 

He wrote for about half an hour, then replaced the document in the

pigeon-hole, and locked the cabinet. When he had done this, he took a

candle in his hand, and went into the room in which were his own

portmanteaus and the trunk belonging to George Talboys.

 

He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and tried them one by one. The

lock of the shabby old trunk was a common one, and at the fifth trial

the key turned easily.

 

“There’d be no need for any one to break open such a lock as this,”

muttered Robert, as he lifted the lid of the trunk.

 

He slowly emptied it of its contents, taking out each article

separately, and laying it carefully upon a chair by his side. He handled

the things with a respectful tenderness, as if he had been lifting the

dead body of his lost friend. One by one he laid the neatly folded

mourning garments on the chair. He found old meerschaum pipes, and

soiled, crumpled gloves that had once been fresh from the Parisian

maker; old play-bills, whose biggest letters spelled the names of actors

who were dead and gone; old perfume-bottles, fragrant with essences,

whose fashion had passed away; neat little parcels of letters, each

carefully labeled with the name of the writer; fragments of old

newspapers; and a little heap of shabby, dilapidated books, each of

which tumbled into as many pieces as a pack of cards in Robert’s

incautious hand. But among all the mass of worthless litter, each scrap

of which had once had its separate purpose, Robert Audley looked in vain

for that which he sought—the packet of letters written to the missing

man by his dead wife Helen Talboys. He had heard George allude more than

once to the existence of these letters. He had seen him once sorting the

faded papers with a reverent hand; and he had seen him replace them,

carefully tied together with a faded ribbon which had once been Helen’s,

among the mourning garments in the trunk. Whether he had afterward

removed them, or whether they had been removed since his disappearance

by some other hand, it was not easy to say; but they were gone.

 

Robert Audley sighed wearily as he replaced the things in the empty box,

one by one, as he had taken them out. He stopped with the little heap of

tattered books in his hand, and hesitated for a moment.

 

“I will keep these out,” he muttered, “there maybe something to help me

in one of them.”

 

George’s library was no very brilliant collection of literature. There

was an old Greek Testament and the Eton Latin Grammar; a French pamphlet

on the cavalry sword-exercise; an odd volume of Tom Jones with one half

of its stiff leather cover hanging to it by a thread; Byron’s Don Juan,

printed in a murderous type, which must have been invented for the

special advantage of oculists and opticians; and a fat book in a faded

gilt and crimson cover.

 

Robert Audley locked the trunk and took the books under his arm. Mrs.

Maloney was clearing away the remains of his repast when he returned to

the sitting-room. He put the books aside on a little table in a corner

of the fireplace, and waited patiently while the laundress finished her

work. He was in no humor even for his meerschaum, consoler; the

yellow-papered fictions on the shelves above his head seemed stale and

profitless—he opened a volume of Balzac, but his uncle’s wife’s golden

curls danced and trembled in a glittering haze, alike upon the

metaphysical diablerie of the Peau de Chagrin, and the hideous