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

what I wish.”

 

“What?”

 

“That we may get home quickly.”

 

“My wish is that we may find no disappointment when we get there,” said

the governess, sadly.

 

“Disappointment!”

 

He started as if he had been struck, and asked what she meant by talking

of disappointment.

 

“I mean this,” she said, speaking rapidly, and with a restless motion of

her thin hands; “I mean that as the end of the voyage draws near, hope

sinks in my heart; and a sick fear comes over me that at the last all

may not be well. The person I go to meet may be changed in his feelings

toward me; or he may retain all the old feeling until the moment of

seeing me, and then lose it in a breath at sight of my poor wan face,

for I was called a pretty girl, Mr. Talboys, when I sailed for Sydney,

fifteen years ago; or he may be so changed by the world as to have grown

selfish and mercenary, and he may welcome me for the sake of my fifteen

years’ savings. Again, he may be dead. He may have been well, perhaps,

up to within a week of our landing, and in that last week may have taken

a fever, and died an hour before our vessel anchors in the Mersey. I

think of all these things, Mr. Talboys, and act the scenes over in my

mind, and feel the anguish of them twenty times a day. Twenty times a

day,” she repeated; “why I do it a thousand times a day.”

 

George Talboys had stood motionless, with his cigar in his hand,

listening to her so intently that, as she said the last words, his hold

relaxed, and the cigar dropped in the water.

 

“I wonder,” she continued, more to herself than to him, “I wonder,

looking back, to think how hopeful I was when the vessel sailed; I never

thought then of disappointment, but I pictured the joy of meeting,

imagining the very words that would be said, the very tones, the very

looks; but for this last month of the voyage, day by day, and hour by

hour my heart sinks and my hopeful fancies fade away, and I dread the

end as much as if I knew that I was going to England to attend a

funeral.”

 

The young man suddenly changed his attitude, and turned his face full

upon his companion, with a look of alarm. She saw in the pale light that

the color had faded from his cheek.

 

“What a fool!” he cried, striking his clinched fist upon the side of the

vessel, “what a fool I am to be frightened at this? Why do you come and

say these things to me? Why do you come and terrify me out of my senses,

when I am going straight home to the woman I love; to a girl whose heart

is as true as the light of Heaven; and in whom I no more expect to find

any change than I do to see another sun rise in tomorrow’s sky? Why do

you come and try to put such fancies in my head when I am going home to

my darling wife?”

 

“Your wife,” she said; “that is different. There is no reason that my

terrors should terrify you. I am going to England to rejoin a man to

whom I was engaged to be married fifteen years ago. He was too poor to

marry then, and when I was offered a situation as governess in a rich

Australian family, I persuaded him to let me accept it, so that I might

leave him free and unfettered to win his way in the world, while I saved

a little money to help us when we began life together. I never meant to

stay away so long, but things have gone badly with him in England. That

is my story, and you can understand my fears. They need not influence

you. Mine is an exceptional case.”

 

“So is mine,” said George, impatiently. “I tell you that mine is an

exceptional case: although I swear to you that until this moment, I have

never known a fear as to the result of my voyage home. But you are

right; your terrors have nothing to do with me. You have been away

fifteen years; all kinds of things may happen in fifteen years. Now it

is only three years and a half this very month since I left England.

What can have happened in such a short time as that?”

 

Miss Morley looked at him with a mournful smile, but did not speak. His

feverish ardor, the freshness and impatience of his nature were so

strange and new to her, that she looked at him half in admiration, half

in pity.

 

“My pretty little wife! My gentle, innocent, loving little wife! Do you

know, Miss Morley,” he said, with all his old hopefulness of manner,

“that I left my little girl asleep, with her baby in her arms, and with

nothing but a few blotted lines to tell her why her faithful husband had

deserted her?”

 

“Deserted her!” exclaimed the governess.

 

“Yes. I was an ensign in a cavalry regiment when I first met my little

darling. We were quartered at a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived

with her shabby old father, a half-pay naval officer; a regular old

humbug, as poor as Job, and with an eye for nothing but the main chance.

I saw through all his shallow tricks to catch one of us for his pretty

daughter. I saw all the pitiable, contemptible, palpable traps he set

for us big dragoons to walk into. I saw through his shabby-genteel

dinners and public-house port; his fine talk of the grandeur of his

family; his sham pride and independence, and the sham tears of his

bleared old eyes when he talked of his only child. He was a drunken old

hypocrite, and he was ready to sell my poor, little girl to the highest

bidder. Luckily for me, I happened just then to be the highest bidder;

for my father, is a rich man, Miss Morley, and as it was love at first

sight on both sides, my darling and I made a match of it. No sooner,

however, did my father hear that I had married a penniless little girl,

the daughter of a tipsy old half-pay lieutenant, than he wrote me a

furious letter, telling me he would never again hold any communication

with me, and that my yearly allowance would stop from my wedding-day.

 

“As there was no remaining in such a regiment as mine, with nothing but

my pay to live on, and my pretty little wife to keep, I sold out,

thinking that before the money was exhausted, I should be sure to drop

into something. I took my darling to Italy, and we lived there in

splendid style as long as my two thousand pounds lasted; but when that

began to dwindle down to a couple of hundred or so, we came back to

England, and as my darling had a fancy for being near that tiresome old

father of hers, we settled at the watering-place where he lived. Well,

as soon as the old man heard that I had a couple of hundred pounds left,

he expressed a wonderful degree of affection for us, and insisted on our

boarding in his house. We consented, still to please my darling, who had

just then a peculiar right to have every whim and fancy of her innocent

heart indulged. We did board with him, and finally he fleeced us; but

when I spoke of it to my little wife, she only shrugged her shoulders,

and said she did not like to be unkind to her ‘poor papa.’ So poor papa

made away with our little stock of money in no time; and as I felt that

it was now becoming necessary to look about for something, I ran up to

London, and tried to get a situation as a clerk in a merchant’s office,

or as accountant, or book-keeper, or something of that kind. But I

suppose there was the stamp of a heavy dragoon about me, for do what I

would I couldn’t get anybody to believe in my capacity; and tired out,

and down-hearted, I returned to my darling, to find her nursing a son

and heir to his father’s poverty. Poor little girl, she was very

low-spirited; and when I told her that my London expedition had failed,

she fairly broke down, and burst in to a storm of sobs and lamentations,

telling me that I ought not to have married her if I could give her

nothing but poverty and misery; and that I had done her a cruel wrong in

making her my wife. By heaven! Miss Morley, her tears and reproaches

drove me almost mad; and I flew into a rage with her, myself, her

father, the world, and everybody in it, and then rail out of the house.

I walked about the streets all that day, half out of my mind, and with a

strong inclination to throw myself into the sea, so as to leave my poor

girl free to make a better match. ‘If I drown myself, her father must

support her,’ I thought; ‘the old hypocrite could never refuse her a

shelter; but while I live she has no claim on him.’ I went down to a

rickety old wooden pier, meaning to wait there till it was dark, and

then drop quietly over the end of it into the water; but while I sat

there smoking my pipe, and staring vacantly at the sea-gulls, two men

came down, and one of them began to talk of the Australian

gold-diggings, and the great things that were to be done there. It

appeared that he was going to sail in a day or two, and he was trying to

persuade his companion to join him in the expedition.

 

“I listened to these men for upward of an hour, following them up and

down the pier, with my pipe in my mouth, and hearing all their talk.

After this I fell into conversation with them myself, and ascertained

that there was a vessel going to leave Liverpool in three days, by which

vessel one of the men was going out. This man gave me all the

information I required, and told me, moreover, that a stalwart young

fellow, such as I was, could hardly fail to do well in the diggings. The

thought flashed upon me so suddenly, that I grew hot and red in the

face, and trembled in every limb with excitement. This was better than

the water, at any rate. Suppose I stole away from my darling, leaving

her safe under her father’s roof, and went and made a fortune in the new

world, and came back in a twelvemonth to throw it into her lap; for I

was so sanguine in those days that I counted on making my fortune in a

year or so. I thanked the man for his information, and late at night

strolled homeward. It was bitter winter weather, but I had been too full

of passion to feel cold, and I walked through the quiet streets, with

the snow drifting in my face, and a desperate hopefulness in my heart.

The old man was sitting drinking brandy-and-water in the little

dining-room; and my wife was up-stairs, sleeping peacefully, with the

baby on her breast. I sat down and wrote a few brief lines, which told

her that I never had loved her better than now, when I seemed to desert

her; that I was going to try my fortune in the new world, and that if I

succeeded I should come back to