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

into a river, and from a river became an ocean, till the village

on the hill receded far away out of sight and only a great waste of

waters rolled where it once had been. She dreamt that she saw the

messenger, now one person, now another, but never any probable person,

hindered by a hundred hinderances, now startling and terrible, now

ridiculous and trivial, but never either natural or probable; and going

down into the quiet house with the memory of these dreams strong upon

her, she had been bewildered by the stillness which had betokened that

the tidings had not yet come.

 

And now her mind underwent a complete change. She no longer wished to

delay the dreaded intelligence. She wished the agony, whatever it was to

be, over and done with, the pain suffered, and the release attained. It

seemed to her as if the intolerable day would never come to an end, as

if her mad wishes had been granted, and the progress of time had

actually stopped.

 

“What a long day it has been!” exclaimed Alicia, as if taking up the

burden of my lady’s thoughts; “nothing but drizzle and mist and wind!

And now that it’s too late for anybody to go out, it must needs be

fine,” the young lady added, with an evident sense of injury.

 

Lady Audley did not answer. She was looking at the stupid one-handed

clock, and waiting for the news which must come sooner or later, which

could not surely fail to come very speedily.

 

“They have been afraid to come and tell him,” she thought; “they have

been afraid to break the news to Sir Michael. Who will come to tell it,

at last, I wonder? The rector of Mount Stanning, perhaps, or the doctor;

some important person at least.”

 

If she could have gone out into the leafless avenues, or onto the high

road beyond them; if she could have gone so far as that hill upon which

she had so lately parted with Phoebe, she would have gladly done so. She

would rather have suffered anything than that slow suspense, that

corroding anxiety, that metaphysical dryrot in which heart and mind

seemed to decay under an insufferable torture. She tried to talk, and by

a painful effort contrived now and then to utter some commonplace

remark. Under any ordinary circumstances her companion would have

noticed her embarrassment, but Miss Audley, happening to be very much

absorbed by her own vexations, was quite as well inclined to be silent

as my lady herself. The monotonous walk up and down the graveled pathway

suited Alicia’s humor. I think that she even took a malicious pleasure

in the idea that she was very likely catching cold, and that her Cousin

Robert was answerable for her danger. If she could have brought upon

herself inflammation of the lungs, or ruptured blood-vessels, by that

exposure to the chill March atmosphere, I think she would have felt a

gloomy satisfaction in her sufferings.

 

“Perhaps Robert might care for me, if I had inflammation of the lungs,”

she thought. “He couldn’t insult me by calling me a bouncer then.

Bouncers don’t have inflammation of the lungs.”

 

I believe she drew a picture of herself in the last stage of

consumption, propped up by pillows in a great easy-chair, looking out of

a window in the afternoon sunshine, with medicine bottles, a bunch of

grapes and a Bible upon a table by her side, and with Robert, all

contrition and tenderness, summoned to receive her farewell blessing.

She preached a whole chapter to him in that parting benediction, talking

a great deal longer than was in keeping with her prostrate state, and

very much enjoying her dismal castle in the air. Employed in this

sentimental manner, Miss Audley took very little notice of her

stepmother, and the one hand of the blundering clock had slipped to six

by the time Robert had been blessed and dismissed.

 

“Good gracious me!” she cried, suddenly—“six o’clock, and I’m not

dressed.”

 

The half-hour bell rung in a cupola upon the roof while Alicia was

speaking.

 

“I must go in, my lady,” she said. “Won’t you come?”

 

“Presently,” answered Lady Audley. “I’m dressed, you see.”

 

Alicia ran off, but Sir Michael’s wife still lingered in the quadrangle,

still waited for those tidings which were so long coming.

 

It was nearly dark. The blue mists of evening had slowly risen from the

ground. The flat meadows were filled with a gray vapor, and a stranger

might have fancied Audley Court a castle on the margin of a sea. Under

the archway the shadows of fastcoming night lurked darkly, like traitors

waiting for an opportunity to glide stealthily into the quadrangle.

Through the archway a patch of cold blue sky glimmered faintly, streaked

by one line of lurid crimson, and lighted by the dim glitter of one

wintry-looking star. Not a creature was stirring in the quadrangle but

the restless woman who paced up and down the straight pathways,

listening for a footstep whose coming was to strike terror to her soul.

She heard it at last!—a footstep in the avenue upon the other side of

the archway. But was it the footstep? Her sense of hearing, made

unnaturally acute by excitement, told her that it was a man’s

footstep—told even more, that it was the tread of a gentleman, no

slouching, lumbering pedestrian in hobnailed boots, but a gentleman who

walked firmly and well.

 

Every sound fell like a lump of ice upon my lady’s heart. She could not

wait, she could not contain herself, she lost all self-control, all

power of endurance, all capability of self-restraint, and she rushed

toward the archway.

 

She paused beneath its shadow, for the stranger was close upon her. She

saw him, oh, God! she saw him in that dim evening light. Her brain

reeled, her heart stopped beating. She uttered no cry of surprise, no

exclamation of terror, but staggered backward and clung for support to

the ivied buttress of the archway. With her slender figure crouched into

the angle formed by the buttress and the wall which it supported, she

stood staring at the new-comer.

 

As he approached her more closely her knees sunk under her, and she

dropped to the ground, not fainting, or in any manner unconscious, but

sinking into a crouching attitude, and still crushed into the angle of

the wall, as if she would have made a tomb for herself in the shadow of

that sheltering brickwork.

 

“My lady!”

 

The speaker was Robert Audley. He whose bedroom door she had

double-locked seventeen hours before at the Castle Inn.

 

“What is the matter with you?” he said, in a strange, constrained

manner. “Get up, and let me take you indoors.”

 

He assisted her to rise, and she obeyed him very submissively. He took

her arm in his strong hand and led her across the quadrangle and into

the lamplit hall. She shivered more violently than he had ever seen any

woman shiver before, but she made no attempt at resistance to his will.

 

CHAPTER XXXIV.

 

MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.

 

“Is there any room in which I can talk to you alone?” Robert Audley

asked, as he looked dubiously round the hall.

 

My lady only bowed her head in answer. She pushed open the door of the

library, which had been left ajar. Sir Michael had gone to his

dressing-room to prepare for dinner after a day of lazy enjoyment,

perfectly legitimate for an invalid. The apartment was quite empty, only

lighted by the blaze of the fire, as it had been upon the previous

evening.

 

Lady Audley entered the room, followed by Robert, who closed the door

behind him. The wretched, shivering woman went to the fireplace and

knelt down before the blaze, as if any natural warmth, could have power

to check that unnatural chill. The young man followed her, and stood

beside her upon the hearth, with his arm resting upon the chimneypiece.

 

“Lady Audley,” he said, in a voice whose icy sternness held out no hope

of any tenderness or compassion, “I spoke to you last-night very

plainly, but you refused to listen to me. Tonight I must speak to you

still more plainly, and you must no longer refuse to listen to me.”

 

My lady, crouching before the fire with her face hidden in her hands,

uttered a low, sobbing sound which was almost a moan, but made no other

answer.

 

“There was a fire last night at Mount Stanning, Lady Audley,” the

pitiless voice proceeded; “the Castle Inn, the house in which I slept,

was burned to the ground. Do you know how I escaped perishing in that

destruction?”

 

“No.”

 

“I escaped by a most providential circumstance which seems a very simple

one. I did not sleep in the room which had been prepared for me. The

place seemed wretchedly damp and chilly, the chimney smoked abominably

when an attempt was made at lighting a fire, and I persuaded the servant

to make me up a bed on the sofa in the small ground-floor sitting-room

which I had occupied during the evening.”

 

He paused for a moment, watching the crouching figure. The only change

in my lady’s attitude was that her head had fallen a little lower.

 

“Shall I tell you by whose agency the destruction of the Castle Inn was

brought about, my lady?”

 

There was no answer.

 

“Shall I tell you?”

 

Still the same obstinate silence.

 

“My Lady Audley,” cried Robert, suddenly, “you are the incendiary. It

was you whose murderous hand kindled those flames. It was you who

thought by that thrice-horrible deed to rid yourself of me, your enemy

and denouncer. What was it to you that other lives might be sacrificed?

If by a second massacre of Saint Bartholomew you could have ridded

yourself of me you would have sacrificed an army of victims. The day

is past for tenderness and mercy. For you I can no longer know pity or

compunction. So far as by sparing your shame I can spare others who must

suffer by your shame, I will be merciful, but no further. If there were

any secret tribunal before which you might be made to answer for your

crimes, I would have little scruple in being your accuser, but I would

spare that generous and high-born gentleman upon whose noble name your

infamy would be reflected.”

 

His voice softened as he made this allusion, and for a moment he broke

down, but he recovered himself by an effort and continued:

 

“No life was lost in the fire of last night. I slept lightly, my lady,

for my mind was troubled, as it has been for a long time, by the misery

which I knew was lowering upon this house. It was I who discovered the

breaking out of the fire in time to give the alarm and to save the

servant girl and the poor drunken wretch, who was very much burnt in

spite of efforts, and who now lies in a precarious state at his mother’s

cottage. It was from him and from his wife that I learned who had

visited the Castle Inn in the dead of the night. The woman was almost

distracted when she saw me, and from her I discovered the particulars of

last night. Heaven knows what other secrets of yours she may hold, my

lady, or how easily they might be extorted from her if I wanted her aid,

which I do not. My path lies very straight before me. I have sworn to

bring the murderer of George Talboys to justice, and I will keep my

oath. I say that it was by your agency