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

fatally certain

indication that he is preparing to spread his wings for a flight. George

never forgot the hour in which he had first become bewitched by

Lieutenant Maldon’s pretty daughter, and however she might have changed,

the image which had charmed him then, unchanged and unchanging,

represented her in his heart.

 

Robert Audley left Southampton by a train which started before daybreak,

and reached Wareham station early in the day. He hired a vehicle at

Wareham to take him over to Grange Heath.

 

The snow had hardened upon the ground, and the day was clear and frosty,

every object in the landscape standing in sharp outline against the cold

blue sky. The horses’ hoofs clattered upon the ice-bound road, the iron

shoes striking on the ground that was almost as iron as themselves. The

wintry day bore some resemblance to the man to whom Robert was going.

Like him, it was sharp, frigid, and uncompromising: like him, it was

merciless to distress and impregnable to the softening power of

sunshine. It would accept no sunshine but such January radiance as would

light up the bleak, bare country without brightening it; and thus

resembled Harcourt Talboys, who took the sternest side of every truth,

and declared loudly to the disbelieving world that there never had been,

and never could be, any other side.

 

Robert Audley’s heart sunk within him as the shabby hired vehicle

stopped at a stern-looking barred fence, and the driver dismounted to

open a broad iron gate which swung back with a clanking noise and was

caught by a great iron tooth, planted in the ground, which snapped at

the lowest bar of the gate as if it wanted to bite.

 

This iron gate opened into a scanty plantation of straight-limbed

fir-trees, that grew in rows and shook their sturdy winter foliage

defiantly in the very teeth of the frosty breeze. A straight graveled

carriage-drive ran between these straight trees across a smoothly kept

lawn to a square red-brick mansion, every window of which winked and

glittered in the January sunlight as if it had been that moment cleaned

by some indefatigable housemaid.

 

I don’t know whether Junius Brutus was a nuisance in his own house, but

among other of his Roman virtues, Mr. Talboys owned an extreme aversion

to disorder, and was the terror of every domestic in his establishment.

 

The windows winked and the flight of stone steps glared in the sunlight,

the prim garden walks were so freshly graveled that they gave a sandy,

gingery aspect to the place, reminding one unpleasantly of red hair. The

lawn was chiefly ornamented with dark, wintry shrubs of a funereal

aspect which grew in beds that looked like problems in algebra; and the

flight of stone steps leading to the square half-glass door of the hall

was adorned with dark-green wooden tubs containing the same sturdy

evergreens.

 

“If the man is anything like his house,” Robert thought, “I don’t wonder

that poor George and he parted.”

 

At the end of a scanty avenue the carriage-drive turned a sharp corner

(it would have been made to describe a curve in any other man’s grounds)

and ran before the lower windows of the house. The flyman dismounted at

the steps, ascended them, and rang a brass-handled bell, which flew back

to its socket, with an angry, metallic snap, as if it had been insulted

by the plebeian touch of the man’s hand.

 

A man in black trousers and a striped linen jacket, which was evidently

fresh from the hands of the laundress, opened the door. Mr. Talboys was

at home. Would the gentleman send in his card?

 

Robert waited in the hall while his card was taken to the master of the

house.

 

The hall was large and lofty, paved with stone. The panels of the oaken

wainscot shone with the same uncompromising polish which was on every

object within and without the red-bricked mansion.

 

Some people are so weak-minded as to affect pictures and statues. Mr.

Harcourt Talboys was far too practical to indulge in any foolish

fancies. A barometer and an umbrella-stand were the only adornments of

his entrance-hall.

 

Robert Audley looked at these while his name was being submitted to

George’s father.

 

The linen-jacketed servant returned presently. He was a square,

pale-faced man of almost forty, and had the appearance of having

outlived every emotion to which humanity is subject.

 

“If you will step this way, sir,” he said, “Mr. Talboys will see you,

although he is at breakfast. He begged me to state that everybody in

Dorsetshire was acquainted with his breakfast hour.”

 

This was intended as a stately reproof to Mr. Robert Audley. It had,

however, very small effect upon the young barrister. He merely lifted

his eyebrows in placid deprecation of himself and everybody else.

 

“I don’t belong to Dorsetshire,” he said. “Mr. Talboys might have known

that, if he’d done me the honor to exercise his powers of ratiocination.

Drive on, my friend.”

 

The emotionless man looked at Robert Audley with a vacant stare of

unmitigated horror, and opening one of the heavy oak doors, led the way

into a large dining-room furnished with the severe simplicity of an

apartment which is meant to be ate in, but never lived in; and at top of

a table which would have accommodated eighteen persons Robert beheld Mr.

Harcourt Talboys.

 

Mr. Talboys was robed in a dressing-gown of gray cloth, fastened about

his waist with a girdle. It was a severe looking garment, and was

perhaps the nearest approach to the toga to be obtained within the range

of modern costume. He wore a buff waistcoat, a stiffly starched cambric

cravat, and a faultless shirt collar. The cold gray of his dressing gown

was almost the same as the cold gray of his eyes, and the pale buff of

his waistcoat was the pale buff of his complexion.

 

Robert Audley had not expected to find Harcourt Talboys at all like

George in his manners or disposition, but he had expected to see some

family likeness between the father and the son. There was none. It would

have been impossible to imagine any one more unlike George than the

author of his existence. Robert scarcely wondered at the cruel letter he

received from Mr. Talboys when he saw the writer of it. Such a man could

scarcely have written otherwise.

 

There was a second person in the large room, toward whom Robert glanced

after saluting Harcourt Talboys, doubtful how to proceed. This second

person was a lady, who sat at the last of a range of four windows,

employed with some needlework, the kind which is generally called plain

work, and with a large wicker basket, filled with calicoes and flannels,

standing by her.

 

The whole length of the room divided this lady from Robert, but he could

see that she was young, and that she was like George Talboys.

 

“His sister!” he thought in that one moment, during which he ventured to

glance away from the master of the house toward the female figure at the

window. “His sister, no doubt. He was fond of her, I know. Surely, she

is not utterly indifferent as to his fate?”

 

The lady half rose from her seat, letting her work, which was large and

awkward, fall from her lap as she did so, and dropping a reel of cotton,

which rolled away upon the polished oaken flooring beyond the margin of

the Turkey carpet.

 

“Sit down, Clara,” said the hard voice of Mr. Talboys.

 

That gentleman did not appear to address his daughter, nor had his face

been turned toward her when she rose. It seemed as if he had known it by

some social magnetism peculiar to himself; it seemed, as his servants

were apt disrespectfully to observe, as if he had eyes in the back of

his head.

 

“Sit down, Clara,” he repeated, “and keep your cotton in your workbox.”

 

The lady blushed at this reproof, and stooped to look for the cotton.

Mr. Robert Audley, who was unabashed by the stern presence of the master

of the house, knelt on the carpet, found the reel, and restored it to

its owner; Harcourt Talboys staring at the proceeding with an expression

of unmitigated astonishment.

 

“Perhaps, Mr. –-, Mr. Robert Audley!” he said, looking at the card

which he held between his finger and thumb, “perhaps when you have

finished looking for reels of cotton, you will be good enough to tell me

to what I owe the honor of this visit?”

 

He waved his well-shaped hand with a gesture which might have been

admired in the stately John Kemble; and the servant, understanding the

gesture, brought forward a ponderous red-morocco chair.

 

The proceeding was so slow and solemn, that Robert had at first thought

that something extraordinary was about to be done; but the truth dawned

upon him at last, and he dropped into the massive chair.

 

“You may remain, Wilson,” said Mr. Talboys, as the servant was about to

withdraw; “Mr. Audley would perhaps like coffee.”

 

Robert had eaten nothing that morning, but he glanced at the long

expanse of dreary tablecloth, the silver tea and coffee equipage, the

stiff splendor, and the very little appearance of any substantial

entertainment, and he declined Mr. Talboys’ invitation.

 

“Mr. Audley will not take coffee, Wilson,” said the master of the house.

“You may go.”

 

The man bowed and retired, opening and shutting the door as cautiously

as if he were taking a liberty in doing it at all, or as if the respect

due to Mr. Talboys demanded his walking straight through the oaken panel

like a ghost in a German story.

 

Mr. Harcourt Talboys sat with his gray eyes fixed severely on his

visitor, his elbows on the red-morocco arms of his chair, and his

finger-tips joined. It was the attitude in which, had he been Junius

Brutus, he would have sat at the trial of his son. Had Robert Audley

been easily to be embarrassed, Mr. Talboys might have succeeded in

making him feel so: as he would have sat with perfect tranquility upon

an open gunpowder barrel lighting his cigar, he was not at all disturbed

upon this occasion. The father’s dignity seemed a very small thing to

him when he thought of the possible causes of the son’s disappearance.

 

“I wrote to you some time since, Mr. Talboys,” he said quietly, when he

saw that he was expected to open the conversation.

 

Harcourt Talboys bowed. He knew that it was of his lost son that Robert

came to speak. Heaven grant that his icy stoicism was the paltry

affectation of a vain man, rather than the utter heartlessness which

Robert thought it. He bowed across his finger-tips at his visitor. The

trial had begun, and Junius Brutus was enjoying himself.

 

“I received your communication, Mr. Audley,” he said. “It is among other

business letters: it was duly answered.”

 

“That letter concerned your son.”

 

There was a little rustling noise at the window where the lady sat, as

Robert said this: he looked at her almost instantaneously, but she did

not seem to have stirred. She was not working, but she was perfectly

quiet.

 

“She’s as heartless as her father, I expect, though she is like George,”

thought Mr. Audley.

 

“If your letter concerned the person who was once my son, perhaps, sir,”

said Harcourt Talboys, “I must ask you to remember that I have no longer

a son.”

 

“You have no reason to remind me of that, Mr. Talboys,” answered Robert,

gravely; “I remember it only too well. I have fatal reason to believe

that you have no longer a son. I have bitter cause to think