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

youth.

 

“You don’t seem much as if you were glad,” said the girl; “you might

look at me, Luke, and tell me if you think my journey has improved me.”

 

“It ain’t put any color into your cheeks, my girl,” he said, glancing up

at her from under his lowering eyebrows; “you’re every bit as white as

you was when you went away.”

 

“But they say traveling makes people genteel, Luke. I’ve been on the

Continent with my lady, through all manner of curious places; and you

know, when I was a child, Squire Horton’s daughters taught me to speak a

little French, and I found it so nice to be able to talk to the people

abroad.”

 

“Genteel!” cried Luke Marks, with a hoarse laugh; “who wants you to be

genteel, I wonder? Not me, for one; when you’re my wife you won’t have

overmuch time for gentility, my girl. French, too! Dang me, Phoebe, I

suppose when we’ve saved money enough between us to buy a bit of a farm,

you’ll be parleyvooing to the cows?”

 

She bit her lip as her lover spoke, and looked away. He went on cutting

and chopping at a rude handle he was fashioning to the stake, whistling

softly to himself all the while, and not once looking at his cousin.

 

For some time they were silent, but by-and-by she said, with her face

still turned away from her companion:

 

“What a fine thing it is for Miss Graham that was, to travel with her

maid and her courier, and her chariot and four, and a husband that

thinks there isn’t one spot upon all the earth that’s good enough for

her to set her foot upon!”

 

“Ay, it is a fine thing, Phoebe, to have lots of money,” answered Luke,

“and I hope you’ll be warned by that, my lass, to save up your wages

agin we get married.”

 

“Why, what was she in Mr. Dawson’s house only three months ago?”

continued the girl, as if she had not heard her cousin’s speech. “What

was she but a servant like me? Taking wages and working for them us

hard, or harder, than I did. You should have seen her shabby clothes,

Luke—worn and patched, and darned and turned and twisted, yet always

looking nice upon her, somehow. She gives me more as lady’s-maid here

than ever she got from Mr. Dawson then. Why, I’ve seen her come out of

the parlor with a few sovereigns and a little silver in her hand, that

master had just given her for her quarter’s salary; and now look at

her!”

 

“Never you mind her,” said Luke; “take care of yourself, Phoebe; that’s

all you’ve got to do. What should you say to a public-house for you and

me, by-and-by, my girl? There’s a deal of money to be made out of a

public-house.”

 

The girl still sat with her face averted from her lover, her hands

hanging listlessly in her lap, and her pale gray eyes fixed upon the

last low streak of crimson dying out behind the trunks of the trees.

 

“You should see the inside of the house, Luke,” she said; “it’s a

tumbledown looking place enough outside; but you should see my lady’s

rooms—all pictures and gilding, and great looking-glasses that stretch

from the ceiling to the floor. Painted ceilings, too, that cost hundreds

of pounds, the housekeeper told her, and all done for her.”

 

“She’s a lucky one,” muttered Luke, with lazy indifference.

 

“You should have seen her while we were abroad, with a crowd of

gentlemen hanging about her; Sir Michael not jealous of them, only proud

to see her so much admired. You should have heard her laugh and talk

with them; throwing all their compliments and fine speeches back at

them, as it were, as if they had been pelting her with roses. She set

everybody mad about her, wherever she went. Her singing, her playing,

her painting, her dancing, her beautiful smile, and sunshiny ringlets!

She was always the talk of a place, as long as we stayed in it.”

 

“Is she at home tonight?”

 

“No; she has gone out with Sir Michael to a dinner party at the Beeches.

They’ve seven or eight miles to drive, and they won’t be back till after

eleven.”

 

“Then I’ll tell you what, Phoebe, if the inside of the house is so

mighty fine, I should like to have a look at it.”

 

“You shall, then. Mrs. Barton, the housekeeper, knows you by sight, and

she can’t object to my showing you some of the best rooms.”

 

It was almost dark when the cousins left the shrubbery and walked slowly

to the house. The door by which they entered led into the servants’

hall, on one side of which was the housekeeper’s room. Phoebe Marks

stopped for a moment to ask the housekeeper if she might take her cousin

through some of the rooms, and having received permission to do so,

lighted a candle at the lamp in the hall, and beckoned to Luke to follow

her into the other part of the house.

 

The long, black oak corridors were dim in the ghostly twilight—the

light carried by Phoebe looking only a poor speck in the broad passages

through which the girl led her cousin. Luke looked suspiciously over his

shoulder now and then, half-frightened by the creaking of his own

hobnailed boots.

 

“It’s a mortal dull place, Phoebe,” he said, as they emerged from a

passage into the principal hall, which was not yet lighted; “I’ve heard

tell of a murder that was done here in old times.”

 

“There are murders enough in these times, as to that, Luke,” answered

the girl, ascending the staircase, followed by the young man.

 

She led the way through a great drawing-room, rich in satin and ormolu,

buhl and inlaid cabinets, bronzes, cameos, statuettes, and trinkets,

that glistened in the dusky light; then through a morning room, hung

with proof engravings of valuable pictures; through this into an

antechamber, where she stopped, holding the light above her head.

 

The young man stared about him, open-mouthed and open-eyed.

 

“It’s a rare fine place,” he said, “and must have cost a heap of money.”

 

“Look at the pictures on the walls,” said Phoebe, glancing at the panels

of the octagonal chamber, which were hung with Claudes and Poussins,

Wouvermans and Cuyps. “I’ve heard that those alone are worth a fortune.

This is the entrance to my lady’s apartments, Miss Graham that was.” She

lifted a heavy green cloth curtain which hung across a doorway, and led

the astonished countryman into a fairy-like boudoir, and thence to a

dressing-room, in which the open doors of a wardrobe and a heap of

dresses flung about a sofa showed that it still remained exactly as its

occupants had left it.

 

“I’ve got all these things to put away before my lady comes home, Luke;

you might sit down here while I do it, I shan’t be long.”

 

Her cousin looked around in gawky embarrassment, bewildered by the

splendor of the room; and after some deliberation selected the most

substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he carefully

seated himself.

 

“I wish I could show you the jewels, Luke,” said the girl; “but I can’t,

for she always keeps the keys herself; that’s the case on the

dressing-table there.”

 

“What, that?” cried Luke, staring at the massive walnut-wood and brass

inlaid casket. “Why, that’s big enough to hold every bit of clothes

I’ve got!”

 

“And it’s as full as it can be of diamonds, rubies, pearls and

emeralds,” answered Phoebe, busy as she spoke in folding the rustling

silk dresses, and laying them one by one upon the shelves of the

wardrobe. As she was shaking out the flounces of the last, a jingling

sound caught her ear, and she put her hand into the pocket.

 

“I declare!” she exclaimed, “my lady has left her keys in her pocket for

once in a way; I can show you the jewelry, if you like, Luke.”

 

“Well, I may as well have a look at it, my girl,” he said, rising from

his chair and holding the light while his cousin unlocked the casket. He

uttered a cry of wonder when he saw the ornaments glittering on white

satin cushions. He wanted to handle the delicate jewels; to pull them

about, and find out their mercantile value. Perhaps a pang of longing

and envy shot through his heart as he thought how he would have liked to

have taken one of them.

 

“Why, one of those diamond things would set us up in life, Phoebe, he

said, turning a bracelet over and over in his big red hands.

 

“Put it down, Luke! Put it down directly!” cried the girl, with a look

of terror; “how can you speak about such things?”

 

He laid the bracelet in its place with a reluctant sigh, and then

continued his examination of the casket.

 

“What’s this?” he asked presently, pointing to a brass knob in the

frame-work of the box.

 

He pushed it as he spoke, and a secret drawer, lined with purple velvet,

flew out of the casket.

 

“Look ye here!” cried Luke, pleased at his discovery.

 

Phoebe Marks threw down the dress she had been folding, and went over to

the toilette table.

 

“Why, I never saw this before,” she said; “I wonder what there is in

it?”

 

There was not much in it; neither gold nor gems; only a baby’s little

worsted shoe rolled up in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock of pale and

silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby’s head. Phoebe’s eyes

dilated as she examined the little packet.

 

“So this is what my lady hides in the secret drawer,” she muttered.

 

“It’s queer rubbish to keep in such a place,” said Luke, carelessly.

 

The girl’s thin lip curved into a curious smile.

 

“You will bear me witness where I found this,” she said, putting the

little parcel into her pocket.

 

“Why, Phoebe, you’re not going to be such a fool as to take that,” cried

the young man.

 

“I’d rather have this than the diamond bracelet you would have liked to

take,” she answered; “you shall have the public house, Luke.”

 

CHAPTER IV.

 

IN THE FIRST PAGE OF “THE TIMES.”

 

Robert Audley was supposed to be a barrister. As a barrister was his

name inscribed in the law-list; as a barrister he had chambers in

Figtree Court, Temple; as a barrister he had eaten the allotted number

of dinners, which form the sublime ordeal through which the forensic

aspirant wades on to fame and fortune. If these things can make a man a

barrister, Robert Audley decidedly was one. But he had never either had

a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief in all

those five years, during which his name had been painted upon one of the

doors in Figtree Court. He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing

fellow, of about seven-and-twenty; the only son of a younger brother of

Sir Michael Audley. His father had left him �400 a year, which his

friends had advised him to increase by being called to the bar; and as

he found it, after due consideration, more trouble to oppose the wishes

of these friends than to eat so many dinners, and to take a set of

chambers in the Temple, he adopted the latter course, and unblushingly

called himself a barrister.

 

Sometimes, when the weather was very hot, and he had exhausted himself

with the exertion of smoking his German pipe,