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

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carcases were yet unfinished. The man who had bought the brick and

mortar skeletons had gone through the bankruptcy court while the

paper-hangers were still busy in Brigsome’s Terrace, and had whitewashed

his ceilings and himself simultaneously. Ill luck and insolvency clung

to the wretched habitations. The bailiff and the broker’s man were as

well known as the butcher and the baker to the noisy children who played

upon the waste ground in front of the parlor windows. Solvent tenants

were disturbed at unhallowed hours by the noise of ghostly furniture

vans creeping stealthily away in the moonless night. Insolvent tenants

openly defied the collector of the water-rate from their ten-roomed

strongholds, and existed for weeks without any visible means of

procuring that necessary fluid.

 

Robert Audley looked about him with a shudder as he turned from the

waterside into this poverty-stricken locality. A child’s funeral was

leaving one of the houses as he approached, and he thought with a thrill

of horror that if the little coffin had held George’s son, he would have

been in some measure responsible for the boy’s death.

 

“The poor child shall not sleep another night in this wretched hovel,”

he thought, as he knocked at the door of Mr. Maldon’s house. “He is the

legacy of my best friend, and it shall be my business to secure his

safety.”

 

A slipshod servant girl opened the door and looked at Mr. Audley rather

suspiciously as she asked him, very much through her nose, what he

pleased to want. The door of the little sitting room was ajar, and

Robert could hear the clattering of knives and forks and the childish

voice of little George prattling gayly. He told the servant that he had

come from London, that he wanted to see Master Talboys, and that he

would announce himself; and walking past her, without further ceremony

he opened the door of the parlor. The girl stared at him aghast as he

did this; and as if struck by some sudden and terrible conviction, threw

her apron over her head and ran out into the snow. She darted across the

waste ground, plunged into a narrow alley, and never drew breath till

she found herself upon the threshold of a certain tavern called the

Coach and Horses, and much affected by Mr. Maldon. The lieutenant’s

faithful retainer had taken Robert Audley for some new and determined

collector of poor’s rates—rejecting that gentleman’s account of himself

as an artful fiction devised for the destruction of parochial

defaulters—and had hurried off to give her master timely warning of the

enemy’s approach.

 

When Robert entered the sitting-room he was surprised to find little

George seated opposite to a woman who was doing the honors of a shabby

repast, spread upon a dirty tablecloth, and flanked by a pewter beer

measure. The woman rose as Robert entered, and courtesied very humbly to

the young barrister. She looked about fifty years of age, and was

dressed in rusty widow’s weeds. Her complexion was insipidly fair, and

the two smooth bands of hair beneath her cap were of that sunless,

flaxen hue which generally accompanies pink cheeks and white eyelashes.

She had been a rustic beauty, perhaps, in her time, but her features,

although tolerably regular in their shape, had a mean, pinched look, as

if they had been made too small for her face. This defect was peculiarly

noticeable in her mouth, which was an obvious misfit for the set of

teeth it contained. She smiled as she courtesied to Mr. Robert Audley,

and her smile, which laid bare the greater part of this set of square,

hungry-looking teeth, by no means added to the beauty of her personal

appearance.

 

“Mr. Maldon is not at home, sir,” she said, with insinuating civility;

“but if it’s for the water-rate, he requested me to say that—”

 

She was interrupted by little George Talboys, who scrambled down from

the high chair upon which he had been perched, and ran to Robert Audley.

 

“I know you,” he said; “you came to Ventnor with the big gentleman, and

you came here once, and you gave me some money, and I gave it to gran’pa

to take care of, and gran’pa kept it, and he always does.”

 

Robert Audley took the boy in his arms, and carried him to a little

table in the window.

 

“Stand there, Georgey,” he said, “I want to have a good look at you.”

 

He turned the boy’s face to the light, and pushed the brown curls off

his forehead with both hands.

 

“You are growing more like your father every day, Georgey; and you’re

growing quite a man, too,” he said; “would you like to go to school?”

 

“Oh, yes, please, I should like it very much,” the boy answered,

eagerly. “I went to school at Miss Pevins’ once—day-school, you

know—round the corner in the next street; but I caught the measles, and

gran’pa wouldn’t let me go any more, for fear I should catch the measles

again; and gran’pa won’t let me play with the little boys in the street,

because they’re rude boys; he said blackguard boys; but he said I

mustn’t say blackguard boys, because it’s naughty. He says damn and

devil, but he says he may because he’s old. I shall say damn and devil

when I’m old; and I should like to go to school, please, and I can go

to-day, if you like; Mrs. Plowson will get my frocks ready, won’t you,

Mrs. Plowson?”

 

“Certainly, Master Georgey, if your grandpapa wishes it,” the woman

answered, looking rather uneasily at Mr. Robert Audley.

 

“What on earth is the matter with this woman,” thought Robert as he

turned from the boy to the fair-haired widow, who was edging herself

slowly toward the table upon which little George Talboys stood talking

to his guardian. “Does she still take me for a tax-collector with

inimical intentions toward these wretched goods and chattels; or can the

cause of her fidgety manner lie deeper still. That’s scarcely likely,

though; for whatever secrets Lieutenant Maldon may have, it’s not very

probable that this woman has any knowledge of them.”

 

Mrs. Plowson had edged herself close to the little table by this time,

and was making a stealthy descent upon the boy, when Robert turned

sharply round.

 

“What are you going to do with the child?” he said.

 

“I was only going to take him away to wash his pretty face, sir, and

smooth his hair,” answered the woman, in the most insinuating tone in

which she had spoken of the water-rate. “You don’t see him to any

advantage, sir, while his precious face is dirty. I won’t be five

minutes making him as neat as a new pin.”

 

She had her long, thin arms about the boy as she spoke, and she was

evidently going to carry him off bodily, when Robert stopped her.

 

“I’d rather see him as he is, thank you,” he said. “My time in

Southampton isn’t very long, and I want to hear all that the little man

can tell me.”

 

The little man crept closer to Robert, and looked confidingly into the

barrister’s gray eyes.

 

“I like you very much,” he said. “I was frightened of you when you came

before, because I was shy. I am not shy now—I am nearly six years old.”

 

Robert patted the boy’s head encouragingly, but he was not looking at

little George; he was watching the fair-haired widow, who had moved to

the window, and was looking out at the patch of waste ground.

 

“You’re rather fidgety about some one, ma’am, I’m afraid,” said Robert.

 

She colored violently as the barrister made this remark, and answered

him in a confused manner.

 

“I was looking for Mr. Maldon, sir,” she said; “he’ll be so disappointed

if he doesn’t see you.”

 

“You know who I am, then?”

 

“No, sir, but—”

 

The boy interrupted her by dragging a little jeweled watch from his

bosom and showing it to Robert.

 

“This is the watch the pretty lady gave me,” he said. “I’ve got it

now—but I haven’t had it long, because the jeweler who cleans it is an

idle man, gran’pa says, and always keeps it such a long time; and

gran’pa says it will have to be cleaned again, because of the taxes. He

always takes it to be cleaned when there’s taxes—but he says if he were

to lose it the pretty lady would give me another. Do you know the pretty

lady?”

 

“No, Georgey, but tell me about her.”

 

Mrs. Plowson made another descent upon the boy. She was armed with a

pocket-handkerchief this time, and displayed great anxiety about the

state of little George’s nose, but Robert warded off the dreaded weapon,

and drew the child away from his tormentor.

 

“The boy will do very well, ma’am,” he said, “if you’ll be good enough

to let him alone for five minutes. Now, Georgey, suppose you sit on my

knee, and tell me all about the pretty lady.”

 

The child clambered from the table onto Mr. Audley’s knees, assisting

his descent by a very unceremonious manipulation of his guardian’s

coat-collar.

 

“I’ll tell you all about the pretty lady,” he said, “because I like you

very much. Gran’pa told me not to tell anybody, but I’ll tell you, you

know, because I like you, and because you’re going to take me to school.

The pretty lady came here one night—long ago—oh, so long ago,” said

the boy, shaking his head, with a face whose solemnity was expressive of

some prodigious lapse of time. “She came when I was not nearly so big as

I am now—and she came at night—after I’d gone to bed, and she came up

into my room, and sat upon the bed, and cried—and she left the watch

under my pillow, and she—Why do you make faces at me, Mrs. Plowson? I

may tell this gentleman,” Georgey added, suddenly addressing the widow,

who was standing behind Robert’s shoulder.

 

Mrs. Plowson mumbled some confused apology to the effect that she was

afraid Master George was troublesome.

 

“Suppose you wait till I say so, ma’am, before you stop the little

fellow’s mouth,” said Robert Audley, sharply. “A suspicious person might

think from your manner that Mr. Maldon and you had some conspiracy

between you, and that you were afraid of what the boy’s talk may let

slip.”

 

He rose from his chair, and looked full at Mrs. Plowson as he said this.

The fair-haired widow’s face was as white as her cap when she tried to

answer him, and her pale lips were so dry that she was compelled to wet

them with her tongue before the words would come.

 

The little boy relieved her embarrassment.

 

“Don’t be cross to Mrs. Plowson,” he said. “Mrs. Plowson is very kind to

me. Mrs. Plowson is Matilda’s mother. You don’t know Matilda. Poor

Matilda was always crying; she was ill, she—”

 

The boy was stopped by the sudden appearance of Mr. Maldon, who stood on

the threshold of the parlor door staring at Robert Audley with a

half-drunken, half-terrified aspect, scarcely consistent with the

dignity of a retired naval officer. The servant girl, breathless and

panting, stood close behind her master. Early in the day though it was,

the old man’s speech was thick and confused, as he addressed himself

fiercely to Mrs. Plowson.

 

“You’re a prett’ creature to call yoursel’ sensible woman?” he said.

“Why don’t you take th’ chile ‘way, er wash ‘s face? D’yer want to ruin

me? D’yer want to ‘stroy me? Take th’ chile ‘way! Mr. Audley, sir, I’m

ver’ glad to see yer; ver’ ‘appy to ‘ceive yer in m’ humbl’ ‘bode,” the