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

thank for the souls which make us great or small;

and because, while family noses and family chins may descend in orderly

sequence from father to son, from grandsire to grandchild, as the

fashion of the fading flowers of one year is reproduced in the budding

blossoms of the next, the spirit, more subtle than the wind which blows

among those flowers, independent of all earthly rule, owns no order but

the harmonious law of God.

 

“Thank God!” thought Robert Audley; “thank God! it is over. My poor

friend must rest in his unknown grave; and I shall not be the means of

bringing disgrace upon those I love. It will come, perhaps, sooner or

later, but it will not come through me. The crisis is past, and I am

free.”

 

He felt an unutterable relief in this thought. His generous nature

revolted at the office into which he had found himself drawn—the office

of spy, the collector of damning facts that led on to horrible

deductions.

 

He drew a long breath—a sigh of relief at his release. It was all over

now.

 

The fly was crawling out of the gate of the plantation as he thought

this, and he stood up in the vehicle to look back at the dreary

fir-trees, the gravel paths, the smooth grass, and the great

desolate-looking, red-brick mansion.

 

He was startled by the appearance of a woman running, almost flying,

along the carriage-drive by which he had come, and waving a handkerchief

in her uplifted hand.

 

He stared at this singular apparition for some moments in silent wonder

before he was able to reduce his stupefaction into words.

 

“Is it me the flying female wants?” he exclaimed, at last. “You’d

better stop, perhaps” he added, to the flyman. “It is an age of

eccentricity, an abnormal era of the world’s history. She may want me.

Very likely I left my pocket-handkerchief behind me, and Mr. Talboys has

sent this person with it. Perhaps I’d better get out and go and meet

her. It’s civil to send my handkerchief.”

 

Mr. Robert Audley deliberately descended from the fly and walked slowly

toward the hurrying female figure, which gained upon him rapidly.

 

He was rather short sighted, and it was not until she came very near to

him that he saw who she was.

 

“Good Heaven!” he exclaimed, “it’s Miss Talboys.”

 

It was Miss Talboys, flushed and breathless, with a woolen shawl thrown

over her head.

 

Robert Audley now saw her face clearly for the first time, and he saw

that she was very handsome. She had brown eyes, like George’s, a pale

complexion (she had been flushed when she approached him, but the color

faded away as she recovered her breath), regular features, with a

mobility of expression which bore record of every change of feeling. He

saw all this in a few moments, and he wondered only the more at the

stoicism of her manner during his interview with Mr. Talboys. There were

no tears in her eyes, but they were bright with a feverish

luster—terribly bright and dry—and he could see that her lips trembled

as she spoke to him.

 

“Miss Talboys,” he said, “what can I—why—”

 

She interrupted him suddenly, catching at his wrist with her disengaged

hand—she was holding her shawl in the other.

 

“Oh, let me speak to you,” she cried—“let me speak to you, or I shall

go mad. I heard it all. I believe what you believe, and I shall go mad

unless I can do something—something toward avenging his death.”

 

For a few moments Robert Audley was too much bewildered to answer her.

Of all things possible upon earth he had least expected to behold her

thus.

 

“Take my arm, Miss Talboys,” he said. “Pray calm yourself. Let us walk a

little way back toward the house, and talk quietly. I would not have

spoken as I did before you had I known—”

 

“Had you known that I loved my brother?” she said, quickly. “How should

you know that I loved him? How should any one think that I loved him,

when I have never had power to give him a welcome beneath that roof, or

a kindly word from his father? How should I dare to betray my love for

him in that house when I knew that even a sister’s affection would be

turned to his disadvantage? You do not know my father, Mr. Audley. I do.

I knew that to intercede for George would have been to ruin his cause. I

knew that to leave matters in my father’s hands, and to trust to time,

was my only chance of ever seeing that dear brother again. And I

waited—waited patiently, always hoping for the best; for I knew that my

father loved his only son. I see your contemptuous smile, Mr. Audley,

and I dare say it is difficult for a stranger to believe that underneath

his affected stoicism my father conceals some degree of affection for

his children—no very warm attachment perhaps, for he has always ruled

his life by the strict law of duty. Stop,” she said, suddenly, laying

her hand upon his arm, and looking back through the straight avenue of

pines; “I ran out of the house by the back way. Papa must not see me

talking to you, Mr. Audley, and he must not see the fly standing at the

gate. Will you go into the highroad and tell the man to drive on a

little way? I will come out of the plantation by a little gate further

on, and meet you in the road.”

 

“But you will catch cold, Miss Talboys,” remonstrated Robert, looking at

her anxiously, for he saw that she was trembling. “You are shivering

now.”

 

“Not with cold,” she answered. “I am thinking of my brother George. If

you have any pity for the only sister of your lost friend, do what I ask

you, Mr. Audley. I must speak to you—I must speak to you—calmly, if I

can.”

 

She put her hand to her head as if trying to collect her thoughts, and

then pointed to the gate. Robert bowed and left her. He told the man to

drive slowly toward the station, and walked on by the side of the tarred

fence surrounding Mr. Talboys’ grounds. About a hundred yards beyond the

principal entrance he came to a little wooden gate in the fence, and

waited at it for Miss Talboys.

 

She joined him presently, with her shawl still over her head, and her

eyes still bright and tearless.

 

“Will you walk with me inside the plantation?” she said. “We might be

observed on the highroad.”

 

He bowed, passed through the gate, and shut it behind him.

 

When she took his offered arm he found that she was still

trembling—trembling very violently.

 

“Pray, pray calm yourself, Miss Talboys,” he said; “I may have been

deceived in the opinion which I have formed; I may—”

 

“No, no, no,” she exclaimed, “you are not deceived. My brother has been

murdered. Tell me the name of that woman—the woman whom you suspect of

being concerned in his disappearance—in his murder.”

 

“That I cannot do until—”

 

“Until when?”

 

“Until I know that she is guilty.”

 

“You told my father that you would abandon all idea of discovering the

truth—that you would rest satisfied to leave my brother’s fate a

horrible mystery never to be solved upon this earth; but you will not do

so, Mr. Audley—you will not be false to the memory of your friend. You

will see vengeance done upon those who have destroyed him. You will do

this, will you not?”

 

A gloomy shadow spread itself like a dark veil over Robert Audley’s

handsome face.

 

He remembered what he had said the day before at Southampton:

 

“A hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning me onward, upon the

dark road.”

 

A quarter of an hour before, he had believed that all was over, and that

he was released from the dreadful duty of discovering the secret of

George’s death. Now this girl, this apparently passionless girl, had

found a voice, and was urging him on toward his fate.

 

“If you knew what misery to me may be involved in discovering the truth,

Miss Talboys,” he said, “you would scarcely ask me to pursue this

business any farther?”

 

“But I do ask you,” she answered, with suppressed passion—I do ask you.

I ask you to avenge my brother’s untimely death. Will you do so? Yes or

no?”

 

“What if I answer no?”

 

“Then I will do it myself,” she exclaimed, looking at him with her

bright brown eyes. “I myself will follow up the clew to this mystery; I

will find this woman—though you refuse to tell me in what part of

England my brother disappeared. I will travel from one end of the world

to the other to find the secret of his fate, if you refuse to find it

for me. I am of age; my own mistress; rich, for I have money left me by

one of my aunts; I shall be able to employ those who will help me in my

search, and I will make it to their interest to serve me well. Choose

between the two alternatives, Mr. Audley. Shall you or I find my

brother’s murderer?”

 

He looked in her face, and saw that her resolution was the fruit of no

transient womanish enthusiasm which would give way under the iron hand

of difficulty. Her beautiful features, naturally statuesque in their

noble outlines, seemed transformed into marble by the rigidity of her

expression. The face in which he looked was the face of a woman whom

death only could turn from her purpose.

 

“I have grown up in an atmosphere of suppression,” she said, quietly; “I

have stifled and dwarfed the natural feelings of my heart, until they

have become unnatural in their intensity; I have been allowed neither

friends nor lovers. My mother died when I was very young. My father has

always been to me what you saw him to-day. I have had no one but my

brother. All the love that my heart can hold has been centered upon him.

Do you wonder, then, that when I hear that his young life has been ended

by the hand of treachery, that I wish to see vengeance done upon the

traitor? Oh, my God,” she cried, suddenly clasping her hands, and

looking up at the cold winter sky, “lead me to the murderer of my

brother, and let mine be the hand to avenge his untimely death.”

 

Robert Audley stood looking at her with awe-stricken admiration. Her

beauty was elevated into sublimity by the intensity of her suppressed

passion. She was different to all other women that he had ever seen. His

cousin was pretty, his uncle’s wife was lovely, but Clara Talboys was

beautiful. Niobe’s face, sublimated by sorrow, could scarcely have been

more purely classical than hers. Even her dress, puritan in its gray

simplicity, became her beauty better than a more beautiful dress would

have become a less beautiful woman.

 

“Miss Talboys,” said Robert, after a pause, “your brother shall not be

unavenged. He shall not be forgotten. I do not think that any

professional aid which you could procure would lead you as surely to the

secret of this mystery as I can lead you, if you are patient and trust

me.”

 

“I will trust you,” she answered, “for I see that you will help me.”

 

“I believe that it is my destiny to do so,” she said, solemnly.

 

In the whole course of his conversation with Harcourt Talboys, Robert

Audley had carefully