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

>him over desert wastes of flat meadow-land and bare cornfields, faintly

tinted with fresh sprouting green. This northern road was strange and

unfamiliar to the young barrister, and the wide expanse of the wintry

landscape chilled him by its aspect of bare loneliness. The knowledge of

the purpose of his journey blighted every object upon which his absent

glances fixed themselves for a moment, only to wander wearily away; only

to turn inward upon that far darker picture always presenting itself to

his anxious mind.

 

It was dark when the train reached the Hull terminus, but Mr. Audley’s

journey was not ended. Amidst a crowd of porters and scattered heaps of

that incongruous and heterogeneous luggage with which travelers incumber

themselves, he was led, bewildered and half asleep, to another train

which was to convey him along the branch line that swept past

Wildernsea, and skirted the border of the German Ocean.

 

Half an hour after leaving Hull, Robert felt the briny freshness of the

sea upon the breeze that blew in at the open window of the carriage, and

an hour afterward the train stopped at a melancholy station, built amid

a sandy desert, and inhabited by two or three gloomy officials, one of

whom rung a terrific peal upon a harshly clanging bell as the train

approached.

 

Mr. Audley was the only passenger who alighted at the dismal station.

The train swept on to the gayer scenes before the barrister had time to

collect his senses, or to pick up the portmanteau which had been

discovered with some difficulty amid a black cavern of baggage only

illuminated by one lantern.

 

“I wonder whether settlers in the backwoods of America feel as solitary

and strange as I feel tonight?” he thought, as he stared hopelessly

about him in the darkness.

 

He called to one of the officials, and pointed to his portmanteau.

 

“Will you carry that to the nearest hotel for me?” he asked—“that is to

say, if I can get a good bed there.”

 

The man laughed as he shouldered the portmanteau.

 

“You can get thirty beds, I dare say, sir, if you wanted ‘em,” he said.

“We ain’t over busy at Wildernsea at this time o’ year. This way, sir.”

 

The porter opened a wooden door in the station wall, and Robert Audley

found himself upon a wide bowling-green of smooth grass, which

surrounded a huge, square building, that loomed darkly on him through

the winter’s night, its black solidity only relieved by two lighted

windows, far apart from each other, and glimmering redly like beacons on

the darkness.

 

“This is the Victoria Hotel, sir,” said the porter. “You wouldn’t

believe the crowds of company we have down here in the summer.”

 

In the face of the bare grass-plat, the tenantless wooden alcoves, and

the dark windows of the hotel, it was indeed rather difficult to imagine

that the place was ever gay with merry people taking pleasure in the

bright summer weather; but Robert Audley declared himself willing to

believe anything the porter pleased to tell him, and followed his guide

meekly to a little door at the side of the big hotel, which led into a

comfortable bar, where the humbler classes of summer visitors were

accommodated with such refreshments as they pleased to pay for, without

running the gantlet of the prim, white-waistcoated waiters on guard at

the principal entrance.

 

But there were very few attendants retained at the hotel in the bleak

February season, and it was the landlord himself who ushered Robert into

a dreary wilderness of polished mahogany tables and horsehair cushioned

chairs, which he called the coffee-room.

 

Mr. Audley seated himself close to the wide steel fender, and stretched

his cramped legs upon the hearthrug, while the landlord drove the poker

into the vast pile of coal, and sent a ruddy blaze roaring upward

through the chimney.

 

“If you would prefer a private room, sir—” the man began.

 

“No, thank you,” said Robert, indifferently; “this room seems quite

private enough just now. If you will order me a mutton chop and a pint

of sherry, I shall be obliged.”

 

“Certainly, sir.”

 

“And I shall be still more obliged if you will favor me with a few

minutes’ conversation before you do so.”

 

“With very great pleasure, sir,” the landlord answered, good-naturedly.

“We see so very little company at this season of the year, that we are

only too glad to oblige those gentlemen who do visit us. Any information

which I can afford you respecting the neighborhood of Wildernsea and its

attractions,” added the landlord, unconsciously quoting a small

hand-book of the watering-place which he sold in the bar, “I shall be

most happy to—”

 

“But I don’t want to know anything about the neighborhood of

Wildernsea,” interrupted Robert, with a feeble protest against the

landlord’s volubility. “I want to ask you a few questions about some

people who once lived here.”

 

The landlord bowed and smiled, with an air which implied his readiness

to recite the biographies of all the inhabitants of the little seaport,

if required by Mr. Audley to do so.

 

“How many years have you lived here?” Robert asked, taking his

memorandum book from his pocket. “Will it annoy you if I make notes of

your replies to my questions?”

 

“Not at all, sir,” replied the landlord, with a pompous enjoyment of the

air of solemnity and importance which pervaded this business. “Any

information which I can afford that is likely to be of ultimate value—”

 

“Yes, thank you,” Robert murmured, interrupting the flow of words. “You

have lived here—”

 

“Six years, sir.”

 

“Since the year fifty-three?”

 

“Since November, in the year fifty-two, sir. I was in business at Hull

prior to that time. This house was only completed in the October before

I entered it.”

 

“Do you remember a lieutenant in the navy, on half-pay, I believe, at

that time, called Maldon?”

 

“Captain Maldon, sir?”

 

“Yes, commonly called Captain Maldon. I see you do remember him.”

 

“Yes, sir. Captain Maldon was one of our best customers. He used to

spend his evenings in this very room, though the walls were damp at that

time, and we weren’t able to paper the place for nearly a twelvemonth

afterward. His daughter married a young officer that came here with his

regiment, at Christmas time in fifty-two. They were married here, sir,

and they traveled on the Continent for six months, and came back here

again. But the gentleman ran away to Australia, and left the lady, a

week or two after her baby was born. The business made quite a sensation

in Wildernsea, sir, and Mrs.—Mrs.—I forgot the name—”

 

“Mrs. Talboys,” suggested Robert.

 

“To be sure, sir, Mrs. Talboys. Mrs. Talboys was very much pitied by the

Wildernsea folks, sir, I was going to say, for she was very pretty, and

had such nice winning ways that she was a favorite with everybody who

knew her.”

 

“Can you tell me how long Mr. Maldon and his daughter remained at

Wildernsea after Mr. Talboys left them?” Robert asked.

 

“Well—no, sir,” answered the landlord, after a few moments’

deliberation. “I can’t say exactly how long it was. I know Mr. Maldon

used to sit here in this very parlor, and tell people how badly his

daughter had been treated, and how he’d been deceived by a young man

he’d put so much confidence in; but I can’t say how long it was before

he left Wildernsea. But Mrs. Barkamb could tell you, sir,” added the

landlord, briskly.

 

“Mrs. Barkamb.”

 

“Yes, Mrs. Barkamb is the person who owns No. 17 North Cottages, the

house in which Mr. Maldon and his daughter lived. She’s a nice, civil

spoken, motherly woman, sir, and I’m sure she’ll tell you anything you

may want to know.”

 

“Thank you, I will call upon Mrs. Barkamb tomorrow. Stay—one more

question. Should you recognize Mrs. Talboys if you were to see her?”

 

“Certainly, sir. As sure as I should recognize one of my own daughters.”

 

Robert Audley wrote Mrs. Barkamb’s address in his pocketbook, ate his

solitary dinner, drank a couple of glasses of sherry, smoked a cigar,

and then retired to the apartment in which a fire had been lighted for

his comfort.

 

He soon fell asleep, worn out with the fatigue of hurrying from place to

place during the last two days; but his slumber was not a heavy one, and

he heard the disconsolate moaning of the wind upon the sandy wastes, and

the long waves rolling in monotonously upon the flat shore. Mingling

with these dismal sounds, the melancholy thoughts engendered by his

joyless journey repeated themselves in never-varying succession in the

chaos of his slumbering brain, and made themselves into visions of

things that never had been and never could be upon this earth, but which

had some vague relation to real events remembered by the sleeper.

 

In those troublesome dreams he saw Audley Court, rooted up from amidst

the green pastures and the shady hedgerows of Essex, standing bare and

unprotected upon that desolate northern shore, threatened by the rapid

rising of a boisterous sea, whose waves seemed gathering upward to

descend and crush the house he loved. As the hurrying waves rolled

nearer and nearer to the stately mansion, the sleeper saw a pale, starry

face looking out of the silvery foam, and knew that it was my lady,

transformed into a mermaid, beckoning his uncle to destruction. Beyond

that rising sea great masses of cloud, blacker than the blackest ink,

more dense than the darkest night, lowered upon the dreamer’s eye; but

as he looked at the dismal horizon the storm-clouds slowly parted, and

from a narrow rent in the darkness a ray of light streamed out upon the

hideous waves, which slowly, very slowly, receded, leaving the old

mansion safe and firmly rooted on the shore.

 

Robert awoke with the memory of this dream in his mind, and a sensation

of physical relief, as if some heavy weight, which had oppressed him all

the night, had been lifted from his breast.

 

He fell asleep again, and did not awake until the broad winter sunlight

shone upon the window-blind, and the shrill voice of the chambermaid at

his door announced that it was half-past eight o’clock. At a

quarter-before ten he had left Victoria Hotel, and was making his way

along the lonely platform in front of a row of shadowless houses that

faced the sea.

 

This row of hard, uncompromising, square-built habitations stretched

away to the little harbor, in which two or three merchant vessels and a

couple of colliers were anchored. Beyond the harbor there loomed, gray

and cold upon the wintry horizon, a dismal barrack, parted from the

Wildernsea houses by a narrow creek, spanned by an iron drawbridge. The

scarlet coat of the sentinel who walked backward and forward between two

cannons, placed at remote angles before the barrack wall, was the only

scrap of color that relieved the neutral-tinted picture of the gray

stone houses and the leaden sea.

 

On one side of the harbor a long stone pier stretched out far away into

the cruel loneliness of the sea, as if built for the especial

accommodation of some modern Timon, too misanthropical to be satisfied

even with the solitude of Wildernsea, and anxious to get still further

away from his fellow-creatures.

 

It was on that pier George Talboys had first met his wife, under the

blazing glory of a midsummer sky, and to the music of a braying band. It

was there that the young cornet had first yielded to that sweet

delusion, that fatal infatuation which had exercised so dark an

influence upon his after-life.