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

>thrown away a card, or missed the making of a trick which she might by

any possibility have made; but her opponent’s hand had been too powerful

for her, and he had won.

 

She looked upon herself as a species of state prisoner, who would have

to be taken good care of. A second Iron Mask, who must be provided for

in some comfortable place of confinement. She abandoned herself to a

dull indifference. She had lived a hundred lives within the space of the

last few days of her existence, and she had worn out her capacity for

suffering—for a time at least.

 

She ate her breakfast, and took her morning bath, and emerged, with

perfumed hair and in the most exquisitely careless of morning toilets,

from her luxurious dressing-room. She looked at herself in the

cheval-glass before she left the room. A long night’s rest had brought

back the delicate rose-tints of her complexion, and the natural luster

of her blue eyes. That unnatural light which had burned so fearfully the

day before had gone, and my lady smiled triumphantly as she contemplated

the reflection of her beauty. The days were gone in which her enemies

could have branded her with white-hot irons, and burned away the

loveliness which had done such mischief. Whatever they did to her they

must leave her her beauty, she thought. At the worst, they were

powerless to rob her of that.

 

The March day was bright and sunny, with a cheerless sunshine certainly.

My lady wrapped herself in an Indian shawl; a shawl that had cost Sir

Michael a hundred guineas. I think she had an idea that it would be well

to wear this costly garment; so that if hustled suddenly away, she might

carry at least one of her possessions with her. Remember how much she

had periled for a fine house and gorgeous furniture, for carriages and

horses, jewels and laces; and do not wonder if she clings with a

desperate tenacity to gauds and gew-gaws, in the hour of her despair. If

she had been Judas, she would have held to her thirty pieces of silver

to the last moment of her shameful life.

 

Mr. Robert Audley breakfasted in the library. He sat long over his

solitary cup of tea, smoking his meerschaum pipe, and meditating darkly

upon the task that lay before him.

 

“I will appeal to the experience of this Dr. Mosgrave,” he though;

“physicians and lawyers are the confessors of this prosaic nineteenth

century. Surely, he will be able to help me.”

 

The first fast train from London arrived at Audley at half-past ten

o’clock, and at five minutes before eleven, Richards, the grave servant,

announced Dr. Alwyn Mosgrave.

 

The physician from Saville Row was a tall man of about fifty years of

age. He was thin and sallow, with lantern jaws, and eyes of a pale,

feeble gray, that seemed as if they had once been blue, and had faded by

the progress of time to their present neutral shade. However powerful

the science of medicine as wielded by Dr. Alwyn Mosgrave, it had not

been strong enough to put flesh upon his bones, or brightness into his

face. He had a strangely expressionless, and yet strangely attentive

countenance. He had the face of a man who had spent the greater part of

his life in listening to other people, and who had parted with his own

individuality and his own passions at the very outset of his career.

 

He bowed to Robert Audley, took the opposite seat indicated by him, and

addressed his attentive face to the young barrister. Robert saw that the

physician’s glance for a moment lost its quiet look of attention, and

became earnest and searching.

 

“He is wondering whether I am the patient,” thought Mr. Audley, “and is

looking for the diagnoses of madness in my face.”

 

Dr. Mosgrave spoke as if in answer to this thought.

 

“Is it not about your own—health—that you wish to consult me?” he

said, interrogatively.

 

“Oh, no!”

 

Dr. Mosgrave looked at his watch, a fifty-guinea Benson-made

chronometer, which he carried loose in his waistcoat pocket as

carelessly as if it had been a potato.

 

“I need not remind you that my time is precious,” he said; “your

telegram informed me that my services were required in a case

of—danger—as I apprehend, or I should not be here this morning.”

 

Robert Audley had sat looking gloomily at the fire, wondering how he

should begin the conversation, and had needed this reminder of the

physician’s presence.

 

“You are very good, Dr. Mosgrave,” he said, rousing himself by an

effort, “and I thank you very much for having responded to my summons. I

am about to appeal to you upon a subject which is more painful to me

than words can describe. I am about to implore your advice in a most

difficult case, and I trust almost blindly to your experience to rescue

me, and others who are very dear to me, from a cruel and complicated

position.”

 

The business-like attention in Dr. Mosgrave’s face grew into a look of

interest as he listened to Robert Audley.

 

“The revelation made by the patient to the physician is, I believe, as

sacred as the confession of a penitent to his priest?” Robert asked,

gravely.

 

“Quite as sacred.”

 

“A solemn confidence, to be violated under no circumstances?”

 

“Most certainly.”

 

Robert Audley looked at the fire again. How much should he tell, or how

little, of the dark history of his uncle’s second wife?

 

“I have been given to understand, Dr. Mosgrave, that you have devoted

much of your attention to the treatment of insanity.”

 

“Yes, my practice is almost confined to the treatment of mental

diseases.”

 

“Such being the case, I think I may venture to conclude that you

sometimes receive strange, and even terrible, revelations.”

 

Dr. Mosgrave bowed.

 

He looked like a man who could have carried, safely locked in his

passionless breast, the secrets of a nation, and who would have suffered

no inconvenience from the weight of such a burden.

 

“The story which I am about to tell you is not my own story,” said

Robert, after a pause; “you will forgive me, therefore, if I once more

remind you that I can only reveal it upon the understanding that under

no circumstances, or upon no apparent justification, is that confidence

to be betrayed.”

 

Dr. Mosgrave bowed again. A little sternly, perhaps, this time.

 

“I am all attention, Mr. Audley,” he said coldly.

 

Robert Audley drew his chair nearer to that of the physician, and in a

low voice began the story which my lady had told upon her knees in that

same chamber upon the previous night. Dr. Mosgrave’s listening face,

turned always toward the speaker, betrayed no surprise at that strange

revelation. He smiled once, a grave, quiet smile, when Mr. Audley came

to that part of the story which told of the conspiracy at Ventnor; but

he was not surprised. Robert Audley ended his story at the point at

which Sir Michael Audley had interrupted my lady’s confession. He told

nothing of the disappearance of George Talboys, nor of the horrible

suspicions that had grown out of that disappearance. He told nothing of

the fire at the Castle Inn.

 

Dr. Mosgrave shook his head, gravely, when Mr. Audley came to the end of

his story.

 

“You have nothing further to tell me?” he said.

 

“No. I do not think there is anything more that need be told,” Robert

answered, rather evasively.

 

“You would wish to prove that this lady is mad, and therefore

irresponsible for her actions, Mr. Audley?” said the physician.

 

Robert Audley stared, wondering at the mad doctor. By what process had

he so rapidly arrived at the young man’s secret desire?

 

“Yes, I would rather, if possible, think her mad; I should be glad to

find that excuse for her.”

 

“And to save the esclandre of a Chancery suit, I suppose, Mr, Audley,”

said Dr. Mosgrave.

 

Robert shuddered as he bowed an assent to this remark. It was something

worse than a Chancery suit that he dreaded with a horrible fear. It was

a trial for murder that had so long haunted his dreams. How often he had

awoke, in an agony of shame, from a vision of a crowded court-house, and

his uncle’s wife in a criminal dock, hemmed in on every side by a sea of

eager faces.

 

“I fear that I shall not be of any use to you,” the physician said,

quietly; “I will see the lady, if you please, but I do not believe that

she is mad.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because there is no evidence of madness in anything she has done. She

ran away from her home, because her home was not a pleasant one, and she

left in the hope of finding a better. There is no madness in that. She

committed the crime of bigamy, because by that crime she obtained

fortune and position. There is no madness there. When she found herself

in a desperate position, she did not grow desperate. She employed

intelligent means, and she carried out a conspiracy which required

coolness and deliberation in its execution. There is no madness in

that.”

 

“But the traits of hereditary insanity—”

 

“May descend to the third generation, and appear in the lady’s children,

if she have any. Madness is not necessarily transmitted from mother to

daughter. I should be glad to help you, if I could, Mr. Audley, but I do

not think there is any proof of insanity in the story you have told me.

I do not think any jury in England would accept the plea of insanity in

such a case as this. The best thing you can do with this lady is to send

her back to her first husband; if he will have her.”

 

Robert started at this sudden mention of his friend.

 

“Her first husband is dead,” he answered, “at least, he has been missing

for some time—and I have reason to believe that he is dead.”

 

Dr. Mosgrave saw the startled movement, and heard the embarrassment in

Robert Audley’s voice as he spoke of George Talboys.

 

“The lady’s first husband is missing,” he said, with a strange emphasis

on the word—“you think that he is dead?”

 

He paused for a few moments and looked at the fire, as Robert had looked

before.

 

“Mr. Audley,” he said, presently, “there must be no half-confidences

between us. You have not told me all.”

 

Robert, looking up suddenly, plainly expressed in his face the surprise

he felt at these words.

 

“I should be very poorly able to meet the contingencies of my

professional experience,” said Dr. Mosgrave, “if I could not perceive

where confidence ends and reservation begins. You have only told me half

this lady’s story, Mr. Audley. You must tell me more before I can offer

you any advice. What has become of the first husband?”

 

He asked this question in a decisive tone, as if he knew it to be the

keystone of an arch.

 

“I have already told you, Dr. Mosgrave, that I do not know.”

 

“Yes,” answered the physician, “but your face has told me what you have

withheld from me; it has told me that you suspect.”

 

Robert Audley was silent.

 

“If I am to be of use to you, you must trust me, Mr. Audley,” said the

physician. “The first husband disappeared—how and when? I want to know

the history of his disappearance.”

 

Robert paused for some time before he replied to this speech; but, by

and by, he