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

social

horrors of “Cousine Bette.” The volume dropped from his hand, and he

sat wearily watching Mrs. Maloney as she swept up the ashes on the

hearth, replenished the fire, drew the dark damask curtains, supplied

the simple wants of the canaries, and put on her bonnet in the disused

clerk’s office, prior to bidding her employer good-night. As the door

closed upon the Irishwoman, he arose impatiently from his chair, and

paced up and down the room.

 

“Why do I go on with this,” he said, “when I know that it is leading me,

step by step, day by day, hour by hour, nearer to that conclusion which,

of all others, I should avoid? Am I tied to a wheel, and must I go with

its every revolution, let it take me where it will? Or can I sit down

here tonight and say I have done my duty to my missing friend, I have

searched for him patiently, but I have searched in vain? Should I be

justified in doing this? Should I be justified in letting the chain

which I have slowly put together, link by link, drop at this point, or

must I go on adding fresh links to that fatal chain until the last rivet

drops into its place and the circle is complete? I think, and I believe,

that I shall never see my friend’s face again; and that no exertion of

mine can ever be of any benefit to him. In plainer, crueler words I

believe him to be dead. Am I bound to discover how and where he died? or

being, as I think, on the road to that discovery, shall I do a wrong to

the memory of George Talboys by turning back or stopping still? What am

I to do?—what am I to do?”

 

He rested his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. The

one purpose which had slowly grown up in his careless nature until it

had become powerful enough to work a change in that very nature, made

him what he had never been before—a Christian; conscious of his own

weakness; anxious to keep to the strict line of duty; fearful to swerve

from the conscientious discharge of the strange task that had been

forced upon him; and reliant on a stronger hand than his own to point

the way which he was to go. Perhaps he uttered his first earnest prayer

that night, seated by his lonely fireside, thinking of George Talboys.

When he raised his head from that long and silent revery, his eyes had a

bright, determined glance, and every feature in his face seemed to wear

a new expression.

 

“Justice to the dead first,” he said; “mercy to the living afterward.”

 

He wheeled his easy-chair to the table, trimmed the lamp, and settled

himself to the examination of the books.

 

He took them up, one by one, and looked carefully through them, first

looking at the page on which the name of the owner is ordinarily

written, and then searching for any scrap of paper which might have been

left within the leaves. On the first page of the Eton Latin Grammar the

name of Master Talboys was written in a prim, scholastic hand; the

French pamphlet had a careless G.T. scrawled on the cover in pencil, in

George’s big, slovenly calligraphy: the Tom Jones had evidently been

bought at a book-stall, and bore an inscription, dated March 14th, 1788,

setting forth that the book was a tribute of respect to Mr. Thos.

Scrowton, from his obedient servant, James Anderley; the Don Juan and

the Testament were blank. Robert Audley breathed more freely; he had

arrived at the last but one of the books without any result whatever,

and there only remained the fat gilt-and-crimson-bound volume to be

examined before his task was finished.

 

It was an annual of the year 1845. The copper-plate engravings of lovely

ladies, who had flourished in that day, were yellow and spotted with

mildew; the costumes grotesque and outlandish; the simpering beauties

faded and commonplace. Even the little clusters of verses (in which the

poet’s feeble candle shed its sickly light upon the obscurities of the

artist’s meaning) had an old-fashioned twang; like music on a lyre,

whose strings are slackened by the damps of time. Robert Audley did not

stop to read any of the mild productions. He ran rapidly through the

leaves, looking for any scrap of writing or fragment of a letter which

might have been used to mark a place. He found nothing but a bright ring

of golden hair, of that glittering hue which is so rarely seen except

upon the head of a child—a sunny lock, which curled as naturally as the

tendril of a vine; and was very opposite in texture, if not different in

hue, to the soft, smooth tresses which the landlady at Ventnor had given

to George Talboys after his wife’s death. Robert Audley suspended his

examination of the book, and folded this yellow lock in a sheet of

letter paper, which he sealed with his signet-ring, and laid aside, with

the memorandum about George Talboys and Alicia’s letter, in the

pigeon-hole marked important. He was going to replace the fat annual

among the other books, when he discovered that the two blank leaves at

the beginning were stuck together. He was so determined to prosecute his

search to the very uttermost, that he took the trouble to part these

leaves with the sharp end of his paper-knife, and he was rewarded for

his perseverance by finding an inscription upon one of them. This

inscription was in three parts, and in three different hands. The first

paragraph was dated as far back as the year in which the annual had been

published, and set forth that the book was the property of a certain

Miss Elizabeth Ann Bince, who had obtained the precious volume as a

reward for habits of order, and for obedience to the authorities of

Camford House Seminary, Torquay. The second paragraph was dated five

years later, and was in the handwriting of Miss Bince herself, who

presented the book, as a mark of undying affection and unfading esteem

(Miss Bince was evidently of a romantic temperament) to her beloved

friend, Helen Maldon. The third paragraph was dated September, 1853, and

was in the hand of Helen Maldon, who gave the annual to George Talboys;

and it was at the sight of this third paragraph that Mr. Robert Audley’s

face changed from its natural hue to a sickly, leaden pallor.

 

“I thought it would be so,” said the young man, shutting the book with a

weary sigh. “God knows I was prepared for the worst, and the worst has

come. I can understand all now. My next visit must be to Southampton. I

must place the boy in better hands.”