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

no higher purpose

than the infusion of Bohea.

 

“You’ll take a cup of tea with us, Mr. Audley?” she asked, pausing with

the teapot in her hand to look up at Robert, who was standing near the

door.

 

“If you please.”

 

“But you have not dined, perhaps? Shall I ring and tell them to bring

you something a little more substantial than biscuits and transparent

bread and butter?”

 

“No, thank you, Lady Audley. I took some lunch before I left town. I’ll

trouble you for nothing but a cup of tea.”

 

He seated himself at the little table and looked across it at his Cousin

Alicia, who sat with a book in her lap, and had the air of being very

much absorbed by its pages. The bright brunette complexion had lost its

glowing crimson, and the animation of the young lady’s manner was

suppressed—on account of her father’s illness, no doubt, Robert

thought.

 

“Alicia, my dear,” the barrister said, after a very leisurely

contemplation of his cousin, “you’re not looking well.”

 

Miss Audley shrugged her shoulders, but did not condescend to lift her

eyes from her book.

 

“Perhaps not,” she answered, contemptuously. “What does it matter? I’m

growing a philosopher of your school, Robert Audley. What does it

matter? Who cares whether I am well or ill?”

 

“What a spitfire she is,” thought the barrister. He always knew his

cousin was angry with him when she addressed him as “Robert Audley.”

 

“You needn’t pitch into a fellow because he asks you a civil question,

Alicia,” he said, reproachfully. “As to nobody caring about your health,

that’s nonsense. I care.” Miss Audley looked up with a bright smile.

“Sir Harry Towers cares.” Miss Audley returned to her book with a frown.

 

“What are you reading there, Alicia?” Robert asked, after a pause,

during which he had sat thoughtfully stirring his tea.

 

“Changes and Chances.”

 

“A novel?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Who is it by?”

 

“The author of Follies and Faults,” answered Alicia, still pursuing

her study of the romance upon her lap.

 

“Is it interesting?”

 

Miss Audley pursed up her mouth and shrugged her shoulders.

 

“Not particularly,” she said.

 

“Then I think you might have better manners than to read it while your

first cousin is sitting opposite you,” observed Mr. Audley, with some

gravity, “especially as he has only come to pay you a flying visit, and

will be off tomorrow morning.”

 

“Tomorrow morning!” exclaimed my lady, looking up suddenly.

 

Though the look of joy upon Lady Audley’s face was as brief as a flash

of lightning on a summer sky, it was not unperceived by Robert.

 

“Yes,” he said; “I shall be obliged to run up to London tomorrow on

business, but I shall return the next day, if you will allow me, Lady

Audley, and stay here till my uncle recovers.”

 

“But you are not seriously alarmed about him, are you?” asked my lady,

anxiously.

 

“You do not think him very ill?”

 

“No,” answered Robert. “Thank Heaven, I think there is not the slightest

cause for apprehension.”

 

My lady sat silent for a few moments, looking at the empty teacups with

a prettily thoughtful face—a face grave with the innocent seriousness

of a musing child.

 

“But you were closeted such a long time with Mr. Dawson, just now,” she

said, after this brief pause. “I was quite alarmed at the length of your

conversation. Were you talking of Sir Michael all the time?”

 

“No; not all the time?”

 

My lady looked down at the teacups once more.

 

“Why, what could you find to say to Mr. Dawson, or he to say to you?”

she asked, after another pause. “You are almost strangers to each

other.”

 

“Suppose Mr. Dawson wished to consult me about some law business.”

 

“Was it that?” cried Lady Audley, eagerly.

 

“It would be rather unprofessional to tell you if it were so, my lady,”

answered Robert, gravely.

 

My lady bit her lip, and relapsed into silence. Alicia threw down her

book, and watched her cousin’s preoccupied face. He talked to her now

and then for a few minutes, but it was evidently an effort to him to

arouse himself from his revery.

 

“Upon my word, Robert Audley, you are a very agreeable companion,”

exclaimed Alicia at length, her rather limited stock of patience quite

exhausted by two or three of these abortive attempts at conversation.

“Perhaps the next time you come to the Court you will be good enough to

bring your mind with you. By your present inanimate appearance, I

should imagine that you had left your intellect, such as it is,

somewhere in the Temple. You were never one of the liveliest of people,

but latterly you have really grown almost unendurable. I suppose you are

in love, Mr. Audley, and are thinking of the honored object of your

affections.”

 

He was thinking of Clara Talboys’ uplifted face, sublime in its

unutterable grief; of her impassioned words still ringing in his ears as

clearly as when they were first spoken. Again he saw her looking at him

with her bright brown eyes. Again he heard that solemn question: “Shall

you or I find my brother’s murderer?” And he was in Essex; in the little

village from which he firmly believed George Talboys had never departed.

He was on the spot at which all record of his friend’s life ended as

suddenly as a story ends when the reader shuts the book. And could he

withdraw now from the investigation in which he found himself involved?

Could he stop now? For any consideration? No; a thousand times no! Not

with the image of that grief-stricken face imprinted on his mind. Not

with the accents of that earnest appeal ringing on his ear.

 

CHAPTER XXVI.

 

SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.

 

Robert left Audley the next morning by an early train, and reached

Shoreditch a little after nine o’clock. He did not return to his

chambers, but called a cab and drove straight to Crescent Villas, West

Brompton. He knew that he should fail in finding the lady he went to

seek at this address, as his uncle had failed a few months before, but

he thought it possible to obtain some clew to the schoolmistress’ new

residence, in spite of Sir Michael’s ill-success.

 

“Mrs. Vincent was in a dying state, according to the telegraphic

message,” Robert thought. “If I do find her, I shall at least succeed in

discovering whether that message was genuine.”

 

He found Crescent Villas after some difficulty. The houses were large,

but they lay half imbedded among the chaos of brick and rising mortar

around them. New terraces, new streets, new squares led away into

hopeless masses of stone and plaster on every side. The roads were

sticky with damp clay, which clogged the wheels of the cab and buried

the fetlocks of the horse. The desolations—that awful aspect of

incompleteness and discomfort which pervades a new and unfinished

neighborhood—had set its dismal seal upon the surrounding streets which

had arisen about and intrenched Crescent Villas; and Robert wasted forty

minutes by his watch, and an hour and a quarter by the cabman’s

reckoning, in driving up and down uninhabited streets and terraces,

trying to find the Villase; whose chimney-tops were frowning down upon

him black and venerable, amid groves of virgin plaster, undimmed by time

or smoke.

 

But having at last succeeded in reaching his destination, Mr. Audley

alighted from the cab, directed the driver to wait for him at a certain

corner, and set out upon his voyage of discovery.

 

“If I were a distinguished Q.C., I could not do this sort of thing,” he

thought; “my time would be worth a guinea or so a minute, and I should

be retained in the great case of Hoggs vs. Boggs, going forward this

very day before a special jury at Westminster Hall. As it is, I can

afford to be patient.”

 

He inquired for Mrs. Vincent at the number which Mr. Dawson had given

him. The maid who opened the door had never heard that lady’s name; but

after going to inquire of her mistress, she returned to tell Robert that

Mrs. Vincent had lived there, but that she had left two months before

the present occupants had entered the house, “and missus has been here

fifteen months,” the girl added emphatically.

 

“But you cannot tell where she went on leaving here?” Robert asked,

despondingly.

 

“No, sir; missus says she believes the lady failed, and that she left

sudden like, and didn’t want her address to be known in the

neighborhood.”

 

Mr. Audley felt himself at a standstill once more. If Mrs. Vincent had

left the place in debt, she had no doubt scrupulously concealed her

whereabouts. There was little hope, then, of learning her address from

the tradespeople; and yet, on the other hand, it was just possible that

some of her sharpest creditors might have made it their business to

discover the defaulter’s retreat.

 

He looked about him for the nearest shops, and found a baker’s, a

stationer’s, and a fruiterer’s a few paces from the Crescent. Three

empty-looking, pretentious shops, with plate-glass windows, and a

hopeless air of gentility.

 

He stopped at the baker’s, who called himself a pastrycook and

confectioner, and exhibited some specimens of petrified sponge-cake in

glass bottles, and some highly-glazed tarts, covered with green gauze.

 

“She must have bought bread,” Robert thought, as he deliberated before

the baker’s shop; “and she is likely to have bought it at the handiest

place. I’ll try the baker.”

 

The baker was standing behind his counter, disputing the items of a bill

with a shabby-genteel young woman. He did not trouble himself to attend

to Robert Audley until he had settled the dispute, but he looked up as

he was receipting the bill, and asked the barrister what he pleased to

want.

 

“Can you tell me the address of a Mrs. Vincent, who lived at No. 9

Crescent Villas a year and a half ago?” Mr. Audley inquired, mildly.

 

“No, I can’t,” answered the baker, growing very red in the face, and

speaking in an unnecessarily loud voice; “and what’s more, I wish I

could. That lady owes me upward of eleven pound for bread, and it’s

rather more than I can afford to lose. If anybody can tell me where she

lives, I shall be much obliged to ‘em for so doing.”

 

Robert Audley shrugged his shoulders and wished the man good-morning. He

felt that his discovery of the lady’s whereabouts would involve more

trouble than he had expected. He might have looked for Mrs. Vincent’s

name in the Post-Office directory, but he thought it scarcely likely

that a lady who was on such uncomfortable terms with her creditors,

would afford them so easy a means of ascertaining her residence.

 

“If the baker can’t find her, how should I find her?” he thought,

despairingly. “If a resolute, sanguine, active and energetic creature,

such as the baker, fail to achieve this business, how can a lymphatic

wretch like me hope to accomplish it? Where the baker has been defeated,

what preposterous folly it would be for me to try to succeed.”

 

Mr. Audley abandoned himself to these gloomy reflections as he walked

slowly back toward the corner at which he had left the cab. About

half-way between the baker’s shop and this corner he was arrested by

hearing a woman’s step close at his side, and a woman’s voice asking him

to stop. He turned and found himself face to face with the

shabbily-dressed woman whom he had left settling her account with the

baker.