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

colorless, her eyes terrible in their unnatural light.

 

“Take me away,” she said, “and let me sleep! Let me sleep, for my brain

is on fire!”

 

As she was leaving the room with her maid, she turned and looked at

Robert. “Is Sir Michael gone?” she asked.

 

“He will leave in half an hour.”

 

“There were no lives lost in the fire at Mount Stanning?”

 

“None.”

 

“I am glad of that.”

 

“The landlord of the house, Marks, was very terribly burned, and lies in

a precarious state at his mother’s cottage; but he may recover.”

 

“I am glad of that—I am glad no life was lost. Good-night, Mr. Audley.”

 

“I shall ask to see you for half an hour’s conversation in the course of

tomorrow, my lady.”

 

“Whenever you please. Good night.”

 

“Good night.”

 

She went away quietly leaning upon her maid’s shoulder, and leaving

Robert with a sense of strange bewilderment that was very painful to

him.

 

He sat down by the broad hearth upon which the red embers were fading,

and wondered at the change in that old house which, until the day of his

friend’s disappearance, had been so pleasant a home for all who

sheltered beneath its hospitable roof. He sat brooding over the desolate

hearth, and trying to decide upon what must be done in this sudden

crisis. He sat helpless and powerless to determine upon any course of

action, lost in a dull revery, from which he was aroused by the sound of

carriage-wheels driving up to the little turret entrance.

 

The clock in the vestibule struck nine as Robert opened the library

door. Alicia had just descended the stairs with her maid; a rosy-faced

country girl.

 

“Good-by, Robert,” said Miss Audley, holding out her hand to her cousin;

“good-by, and God bless you! You may trust me to take care of papa.”

 

“I am sure I may. God bless you, my dear.”

 

For the second time that night Robert Audley pressed his lips to his

cousin’s candid forehead, and for the second time the embrace was of a

brotherly or paternal character, rather than the rapturous proceeding

which it would have been had Sir Harry Towers been the privileged

performer.

 

It was five minutes past nine when Sir Michael came downstairs,

followed by his valet, grave and gray-haired like himself. The baronet

was pale, but calm and self-possessed. The hand which he gave to his

nephew was as cold as ice, but it was with a steady voice that he bade

the young man good-by.

 

“I leave all in your hands, Robert,” he said, as he turned to leave the

house in which he had lived so long. “I may not have heard the end, but

I have heard enough. Heaven knows I have no need to hear more. I leave

all to you, but you will not be cruel—you will remember how much I

loved—”

 

His voice broke huskily before he could finish the sentence.

 

“I will remember you in everything, sir,” the young man answered. “I

will do everything for the best.”

 

A treacherous mist of tears blinded him and shut out his uncle’s face,

and in another minute the carriage had driven away, and Robert Audley

sat alone in the dark library, where only one red spark glowed among the

pale gray ashes. He sat alone, trying to think what he ought to do, and

with the awful responsibility of a wicked woman’s fate upon his

shoulders.

 

“Good Heaven!” he thought; “surely this must be God’s judgment upon the

purposeless, vacillating life I led up to the seventh day of last

September. Surely this awful responsibility has been forced upon me in

order that I may humble myself to an offended Providence, and confess

that a man cannot choose his own life. He cannot say, ‘I will take

existence lightly, and keep out of the way of the wretched, mistaken,

energetic creatures, who fight so heartily in the great battle.’ He

cannot say, ‘I will stop in the tents while the strife is fought, and

laugh at the fools who are trampled down in the useless struggle.’ He

cannot do this. He can only do, humbly and fearfully, that which the

Maker who created him has appointed for him to do. If he has a battle to

fight, let him fight it faithfully; but woe betide him if he skulks when

his name is called in the mighty muster-roll, woe betide him if he hides

in the tents when the tocsin summons him to the scene of war!”

 

One of the servants brought candles into the library and relighted the

fire, but Robert Audley did not stir from his seat by the hearth. He sat

as he had often sat in his chambers in Figtree Court, with his elbows

resting upon the arms of his chair, and his chin upon his hand.

 

But he lifted his head as the servant was about to leave the room.

 

“Can I send a message from here to London?” he asked.

 

“It can be sent from Brentwood, sir—not from here.”

 

Mr. Audley looked at his watch thoughtfully.

 

“One of the men can ride over to Brentwood, sir, if you wish any message

to be sent.”

 

“I do wish to send a message; will you manage it for me, Richards?”

 

“Certainly, sir.”

 

“You can wait, then, while I write the message.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

The man brought writing materials from one of the side-tables, and

placed them before Mr. Audley.

 

Robert dipped a pen in the ink, and stared thoughtfully at one of the

candles for a few moments before he began to write.

 

The message ran thus:

 

“From Robert Audley, of Audley Court, Essex, to Francis Wilmington, of

Paper-buildings, Temple.

 

“DEAR WILMINGTON—If you know any physician experienced in cases of

mania, and to be trusted with a secret, be so good as to send me his

address by telegraph.”

 

Mr. Audley sealed this document in a stout envelope, and handed it to

the man, with a sovereign.

 

“You will see that this is given to a trustworthy person, Richards,” he

said, “and let the man wait at the station for the return message. He

ought to get it in an hour and a half.”

 

Mr. Richards, who had known Robert Audley in jackets and turn-down

collars, departed to execute his commission. Heaven forbid that we

should follow him into the comfortable servants’ hall at the Court,

where the household sat round the blazing fire, discussing in utter

bewilderment the events of the day.

 

Nothing could be wider from the truth than the speculations of these

worthy people. What clew had they to the mystery of that firelit room in

which a guilty woman had knelt at their master’s feet to tell the story

of her sinful life? They only knew that which Sir Michael’s valet had

told them of this sudden journey. How his master was as pale as a sheet,

and spoke in a strange voice that didn’t sound like his own, somehow,

and how you might have knocked him—Mr. Parsons, the valet—down with a

feather, if you had been minded to prostrate him by the aid of so feeble

a weapon.

 

The wiseheads of the servants’ hall decided that Sir Michael had

received sudden intelligence through Mr. Robert—they were wise enough

to connect the young man with the catastrophe—either of the death of

some near and dear relation—the elder servants decimated the Audley

family in their endeavors to find a likely relation—or of some alarming

fall in the funds, or of the failure of some speculation or bank in

which the greater part of the baronet’s money was invested. The general

leaning was toward the failure of a bank, and every member of the

assembly seemed to take a dismal and raven-like delight in the fancy,

though such a supposition involved their own ruin in the general

destruction of that liberal household.

 

Robert sat by the dreary hearth, which seemed dreary even now when the

blaze of a great wood-fire roared in the wide chimney, and listened to

the low wail of the March wind moaning round the house and lifting the

shivering ivy from the walls it sheltered. He was tired and worn out,

for remember that he had been awakened from his sleep at two o’clock

that morning by the hot breath of blazing timber and the sharp crackling

of burning woodwork. But for his presence of mind and cool decision, Mr.

Luke Marks would have died a dreadful death. He still bore the traces of

the night’s peril, for the dark hair had been singed upon one side of

his forehead, and his left hand was red and inflamed, from the effect of

the scorching atmosphere out of which he had dragged the landlord of the

Castle Inn. He was thoroughly exhausted with fatigue and excitement, and

he fell into a heavy sleep in his easy-chair before the bright fire,

from which he was only awakened by the entrance of Mr. Richards with the

return message.

 

This return message was very brief.

 

“DEAR AUDLEY—Always glad to oblige. Alwyn Mosgrave, M.D., 12 Saville

Row. Safe.”

 

This with names and addresses, was all that it contained.

 

“I shall want another message taken to Brentwood tomorrow morning,

Richards,” said Mr. Audley, as he folded the telegram. “I should be glad

if the man would ride over with it before breakfast. He shall have half

a sovereign for his trouble.”

 

Mr. Richards bowed.

 

“Thank you, sir—not necessary, sir; but as you please, of course, sir,”

he murmured. “At what hour might you wish the man to go?”

 

Mr. Audley might wish the man to go as early as he could, so it was

decided that he should go at six.

 

“My room is ready, I suppose, Richards?” said Robert.

 

“Yes, sir—your old room.”

 

“Very good. I shall go to bed at once. Bring me a glass of brandy and

water as hot as you can make it, and wait for the telegram.”

 

This second message was only a very earnest request to Doctor Mosgrave

to pay an immediate visit to Audley Court on a matter of serious moment.

 

Having written this message, Mr. Audley felt that he had done all that

he could do. He drank his brandy and water. He had actual need of the

diluted alcohol, for he had been chilled to the bone by his adventures

during the fire. He slowly sipped the pale golden liquid and thought of

Clara Talboys, of that earnest girl whose brother’s memory was now

avenged, whose brother’s destroyer was humiliated in the dust. Had she

heard of the fire at the Castle Inn? How could she have done otherwise

than hear of it in such a place as Mount Stanning? But had she heard

that he had been in danger, and that he had distinguished himself by

the rescue of a drunken boor? I fear that, even sitting by that desolate

hearth, and beneath the roof whose noble was an exile from his own

house, Robert Audley was weak enough to think of these things—weak

enough to let his fancy wander away to the dismal fir-trees under the

cold March sky, and the dark-brown eyes that were so like the eyes of

his lost friend.

 

CHAPTER XXXVI.

 

DR. MOSGRAVE’S ADVICE.

 

My lady slept. Through that long winter night she slept soundly.

Criminals have often so slept their last sleep upon earth; and have been

found in the gray morning slumbering peacefully, by the jailer who came

to wake them.

 

The game had been played and lost. I do not think that my lady had