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

that he is

dead.”

 

It may be that Mr. Talboys’ complexion faded to a paler shade of buff as

Robert said this; but he only elevated his bristling gray eyebrows and

shook his head gently.

 

“No,” he said, “no, I assure you, no.”

 

“I believe that George Talboys died in the month of September.”

 

The girl who had been addressed as Clara, sat with work primly folded

upon her lap, and her hands lying clasped together on her work, and

never stirred when Robert spoke of his friend’s death. He could not

distinctly see her face, for she was seated at some distance from him,

and with her back to the window.

 

“No, no, I assure you,” repeated Mr. Talboys, “you labor under a sad

mistake.”

 

“You believe that I am mistaken in thinking your son dead?” asked

Robert.

 

“Most certainly,” replied Mr. Talboys, with a smile, expressive of the

serenity of wisdom. “Most certainly, my dear sir. The disappearance was

a very clever trick, no doubt, but it was not sufficiently clever to

deceive me. You must permit me to understand this matter a little better

than you, Mr. Audley, and you must also permit me to assure you of three

things. In the first place, your friend is not dead. In the second

place, he is keeping out of the way for the purpose of alarming me, of

trifling with my feelings as a—as a man who was once his father, and of

ultimately obtaining my forgiveness. In the third place, he will not

obtain that forgiveness, however long he may please to keep out of the

way; and he would therefore act wisely by returning to his ordinary

residence and avocations without delay.”

 

“Then you imagine him to purposely hide himself from all who know him,

for the purpose of—”

 

“For the purpose of influencing me,” exclaimed Mr. Talboys, who,

taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that

one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point

of view. “For the purpose of influencing me. He knew the inflexibility

of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew

that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed

purpose of my life, would fail. He therefore tried extraordinary means;

he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time

he discovers that he has not alarmed me, he will return to his old

haunts. When he does so,” said Mr. Talboys, rising to sublimity, “I will

forgive him. Yes, sir, I will forgive him. I shall say to him: You have

attempted to deceive me, and I have shown you that I am not to be

deceived; you have tried to frighten me, and I have convinced you that I

am not to be frightened; you did not believe in my generosity, I will

show you that I can be generous.”

 

Harcourt Talboys delivered himself of these superb periods with a

studied manner, that showed they had been carefully composed long ago.

 

Robert Audley sighed as he heard them.

 

“Heaven grant that you may have an opportunity of saying this to your

son, sir,” he answered sadly. “I am very glad to find that you are

willing to forgive him, but I fear that you will never see him again

upon this earth. I have a great deal to say to you upon this—this sad

subject, Mr. Talboys; but I would rather say it to you alone,” he added,

glancing at the lady in the window.

 

“My daughter knows my ideas upon this subject, Mr. Audley,” said

Harcourt Talboys; “there is no reason why she should not hear all you

have to say. Miss Clara Talboys, Mr. Robert Audley,” he added, waving

his hand majestically.

 

The young lady bent her head in recognition of Robert’s bow.

 

“Let her hear it,” he thought. “If she has so little feeling as to show

no emotion upon such a subject, let her hear the worst I have to tell.”

 

There was a few minutes’ pause, during which Robert took some papers

from his pocket; among them the document which he had written

immediately after George’s disappearance.

 

“I shall require all your attention, Mr. Talboys,” he said, “for that

which I have to disclose to you is of a very painful nature. Your son

was my very dear friend—dear to me for many reasons. Perhaps most of

all dear, because I had known him and been with him through the great

trouble of his life; and because he stood comparatively alone in the

world—cast off by you who should have been his best friend, bereft of

the only woman he had ever loved.”

 

“The daughter of a drunken pauper,” Mr. Talboys remarked,

parenthetically.

 

“Had he died in his bed, as I sometimes thought be would,” continued

Robert Audley, “of a broken heart, I should have mourned for him very

sincerely, even though I had closed his eyes with my own hands, and had

seen him laid in his quiet resting-place. I should have grieved for my

old schoolfellow, and for the companion who had been dear to me. But

this grief would have been a very small one compared to that which I

feel now, believing, as I do only too firmly, that my poor friend has

been murdered.”

 

“Murdered!”

 

The father and daughter simultaneously repeated the horrible word. The

father’s face changed to a ghastly duskiness of hue; the daughter’s face

dropped upon her clasped hands, and was never lifted again throughout

the interview.

 

“Mr. Audley, you are mad!” exclaimed Harcourt Talboys; “you are mad, or

else you are commissioned by your friend to play upon my feelings. I

protest against this proceeding as a conspiracy, and I—I revoke my

intended forgiveness of the person who was once my son!”

 

He was himself again as he said this. The blow had been a sharp one, but

its effect had been momentary.

 

“It is far from my wish to alarm you unnecessarily, sir,” answered

Robert. “Heaven grant that you may be right and I wrong. I pray for it,

but I cannot think it—I cannot even hope it. I come to you for advice.

I will state to you plainly and dispassionately the circumstances which

have aroused my suspicions. If you say those suspicions are foolish and

unfounded I am ready to submit to your better judgment. I will leave

England; and I abandon my search for the evidence wanting to—to confirm

my fears. If you say go on, I will go on.”

 

Nothing could be more gratifying to the vanity of Mr. Harcourt Talboys

than this appeal. He declared himself ready to listen to all that Robert

might have to say, and ready to assist him to the uttermost of his

power.

 

He laid some stress upon this last assurance, deprecating the value of

his advice with an affectation that was as transparent as his vanity

itself.

 

Robert Audley drew his chair nearer to that of Mr. Talboys, and

commenced a minutely detailed account of all that had occurred to George

from the time of his arrival in England to the hour of his

disappearance, as well as all that had occurred since his disappearance

in any way touching upon that particular subject. Harcourt Talboys

listened with demonstrative attention, now and then interrupting the

speaker to ask some magisterial kind of question. Clara Talboys never

once lifted her face from her clasped hands.

 

The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past eleven when Robert

began his story. The clock struck twelve as he finished.

 

He had carefully suppressed the names of his uncle and his uncle’s wife

in relating the circumstances in which they had been concerned.

 

“Now, sir,” he said, when the story had been told, “I await your

decision. You have heard my reasons for coming to this terrible

conclusion. In what manner do these reasons influence you?”

 

“They don’t in any way turn me from my previous opinion,” answered Mr.

Harcourt Talboys, with the unreasoning pride of an obstinate man. “I

still think, as I thought before, that my son is alive, and that his

disappearance is a conspiracy against myself. I decline to become the

victim of that conspiracy,”

 

“And you tell me to stop?” asked Robert, solemnly.

 

“I tell you only this: If you go on, you go on for your own

satisfaction, not for mine. I see nothing in what you have told me to

alarm me for the safety of—your friend.”

 

“So be it, then!” exclaimed Robert, suddenly; “from this moment I wash

my hands of this business. From this moment the purpose of my life shall

be to forget it.”

 

He rose as he spoke, and took his hat from the table on which he had

placed it. He looked at Clara Talboys. Her attitude had never changed

since she had dropped her face upon her hands. “Good morning, Mr.

Talboys,” he said, gravely. “God grant that you are right. God grant

that I am wrong. But I fear a day will come when you will have reason to

regret your apathy respecting the untimely fate of your only son.”

 

He bowed gravely to Mr. Harcourt Talboys and to the lady, whose face was

hidden by her hands.

 

He lingered for a moment looking at Miss Talboys, thinking that she

would look up, that she would make some sign, or show some desire to

detain him.

 

Mr. Talboys rang for the emotionless servant, who led Robert off to the

hall-door with the solemnity of manner which would have been in perfect

keeping had he been leading him to execution.

 

“She is like her father,” thought Mr. Audley, as he glanced for the last

time at the drooping head. “Poor George, you had need of one friend in

this world, for you have had very few to love you.”