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

and there upon

this boulevard; stately houses, entre cour et jardin, and with plaster

vases of geraniums on the stone pillars of the ponderous gateways. The

rumbling hackney-carriage drove upward of three-quarters of a mile along

this smooth roadway before it drew up against a gateway, older and more

ponderous than any of those they had passed.

 

My lady gave a little scream as she looked out of the coach-window. The

gaunt gateway was lighted by an enormous lamp; a great structure of iron

and glass, in which one poor little shivering flame struggled with the

March wind.

 

The coachman rang the bell, and a little wooden door at the side of the

gate was opened by a gray-haired man, who looked out at the carriage,

and then retired. He reappeared three minutes afterward behind the

folding iron gates, which he unlocked and threw back to their full

extent, revealing a dreary desert of stone-paved courtyard.

 

The coachman led his wretched horses into the courtyard, and piloted the

vehicle to the principal doorway of the house, a great mansion of gray

stone, with several long ranges of windows, many of which were dimly

lighted, and looked out like the pale eyes of weary watchers upon the

darkness of the night.

 

My lady, watchful and quiet as the cold stars in the wintry sky, looked

up at these casements with an earnest and scrutinizing gaze. One of the

windows was shrouded by a scanty curtain of faded red; and upon this

curtain there went and came a dark shadow, the shadow of a woman with a

fantastic head dress, the shadow of a restless creature, who paced

perpetually backward and forward before the window.

 

Sir Michael Audley’s wicked wife laid her hand suddenly upon Robert’s

arm, and pointed with the other hand to this curtained window.

 

“I know where you have brought me,” she said. “This is a MADHOUSE.”

 

Mr. Audley did not answer her. He had been standing at the door of the

coach when she addressed him, and he quietly assisted her to alight, and

led her up a couple of shallow stone steps, and into the entrance-hall

of the mansion. He handed Dr. Mosgrave’s letter to a neatly-dressed,

cheerful-looking, middle-aged woman, who came tripping out of a little

chamber which opened out of the hall, and was very much like the bureau

of an hotel. This person smilingly welcome Robert and his charge: and

after dispatching a servant with the letter, invited them into her

pleasant little apartment, which was gayly furnished with bright amber

curtains and heated by a tiny stove.

 

“Madam finds herself very much fatigued?” the Frenchwoman said,

interrogatively, with a look of intense sympathy, as she placed an

arm-chair for my lady.

 

“Madam” shrugged her shoulders wearily, and looked round the little

chamber with a sharp glance of scrutiny that betokened no very great

favor.

 

“WHAT is this place, Robert Audley?” she cried fiercely. “Do you think I

am a baby, that you may juggle with and deceive me—what is it? It is

what I said just now, is it not?”

 

“It is a maison de sante, my lady,” the young man answered, gravely.

“I have no wish to juggle with or to deceive you.”

 

My lady paused for a few moments, looking reflectively at Robert.

 

“A maison de sante,” she repeated. “Yes, they manage these things

better in France. In England we should call it a madhouse. This a house

for mad people, this, is it not, madam?” she said in French, turning

upon the woman, and tapping the polished floor with her foot.

 

“Ah, but no, madam,” the woman answered with a shrill scream of protest.

“It is an establishment of the most agreeable, where one amuses one’s

self—”

 

She was interrupted by the entrance of the principal of this agreeable

establishment, who came beaming into the room with a radiant smile

illuminating his countenance, and with Dr. Mosgrave’s letter open in his

hand.

 

It was impossible to say how enchanted he was to make the acquaintance

of M’sieu. There was nothing upon earth which he was not ready to do for

M’sieu in his own person, and nothing under heaven which he would not

strive to accomplish for him, as the friend of his acquaintance, so very

much distinguished, the English doctor. Dr. Mosgrave’s letter had given

him a brief synopsis of the case, he informed Robert, in an undertone,

and he was quite prepared to undertake the care of the charming and very

interesting “Madam—Madam—”

 

He rubbed his hands politely, and looked at Robert. Mr. Audley

remembered, for the first time, that he had been recommended to

introduce his wretched charge under a feigned name.

 

He affected not to hear the proprietor’s question. It might seem a very

easy matter to have hit upon a heap of names, any one of which would

have answered his purpose; but Mr. Audley appeared suddenly to have

forgotten that he had ever heard any mortal appellation except that of

himself and of his lost friend.

 

Perhaps the proprietor perceived and understood his embarrassment. He at

any rate relieved it by turning to the woman who had received them, and

muttering something about No. 14, Bis. The woman took a key from a long

range of others, that hung over the mantelpiece, and a wax candle from

a bracket in a corner of the room, and having lighted the candle, led

the way across the stone-paved hall, and up a broad, slippery staircase

of polished wood.

 

The English physician had informed his Belgian colleague that money

would be of minor consequence in any arrangements made for the comfort

of the English lady who was to be committed to his care. Acting upon

this hint, Monsieur Val opened the outer doer of a stately suite of

apartments, which included a lobby, paved with alternate diamonds of

black and white marble, but of a dismal and cellar-like darkness; a

saloon furnished with gloomy velvet draperies, and with a certain

funereal splendor which is not peculiarly conducive to the elevation of

the spirits; and a bedchamber, containing a bed so wondrously made, as

to appear to have no opening whatever in its coverings, unless the

counterpane had been split asunder with a pen-knife.

 

My lady stared dismally round at the range of rooms, which looked dreary

enough in the wan light of a single wax-candle. This solitary flame,

pale and ghost-like in itself, was multiplied by paler phantoms of its

ghostliness, which glimmered everywhere about the rooms; in the shadowy

depths of the polished floors and wainscot, or the window-panes, in the

looking-glasses, or in those great expanses of glimmering something

which adorned the rooms, and which my lady mistook for costly mirrors,

but which were in reality wretched mockeries of burnished tin.

 

Amid all the faded splendor of shabby velvet, and tarnished gilding, and

polished wood, the woman dropped into an arm-chair, and covered her face

with her hands. The whiteness of them, and the starry light of diamonds

trembling about them, glittered in the dimly-lighted chamber. She sat

silent, motionless, despairing, sullen, and angry, while Robert and the

French doctor retired to an outer chamber, and talked together in

undertones. Mr. Audley had very little to say that had not been already

said for him, with a far better grace than he himself could have

expressed it, by the English physician. He had, after great trouble of

mind, hit upon the name of Taylor, as a safe and simple substitute for

that other name, to which alone my lady had a right. He told the

Frenchman that this Mrs. Taylor was distantly related to him—that she

had inherited the seeds of madness from her mother, as indeed Dr.

Mosgrave had informed Monsieur Val; and that she had shown some fearful

tokens of the lurking taint that was latent in her mind; but that she

was not to be called “mad.” He begged that she might be treated with all

tenderness and compassion; that she might receive all reasonable

indulgences; but he impressed upon Monsieur Val, that under no

circumstances was she to be permitted to leave the house and grounds

without the protection of some reliable person, who should be answerable

for her safe-keeping. He had only one other point to urge, and that was,

that Monsieur Val, who, as he had understood, was himself a

Protestant—the doctor bowed—would make arrangements with some kind and

benevolent Protestant clergyman, through whom spiritual advice and

consolation might be secured for the invalid lady; who had especial

need, Robert added, gravely, of such advantages.

 

This—with all necessary arrangements as to pecuniary matters, which

were to be settled from time to time between Mr. Audley and the doctor,

unassisted by any agents whatever—was the extent of the conversation

between the two men, and occupied about a quarter of an hour.

 

My lady sat in the same attitude when they re-entered the bedchamber in

which they had left her, with her ringed hands still clasped over her

face.

 

Robert bent over to whisper in her ear.

 

“Your name is Madam Taylor here,” he said. “I do not think you would

wish to be known by your real name.”

 

She only shook her head in answer to him, and did not even remove her

hands from over her face.

 

“Madam will have an attendant entirely devoted to her service.” said

Monsieur Val. “Madam will have all her wishes obeyed; her reasonable

wishes, but that goes without saying,” monsieur adds, with a quaint

shrug. “Every effort will be made to render madam’s sojourn at

Villebrumeuse agreeable. The inmates dine together when it is wished. I

dine with the inmates sometimes; my subordinate, a clever and a worthy

man always. I reside with my wife and children in a little pavilion in

the grounds; my subordinate resides in the establishment. Madam may rely

upon our utmost efforts being exerted to insure her comfort.”

 

Monsieur is saying a great deal more to the same effect, rubbing his

hands and beaming radiantly upon Robert and his charge, when madam rises

suddenly, erect and furious, and dropping her jeweled fingers from

before her face, tells him to hold his tongue.

 

“Leave me alone with the man who has brought me here.” she cried,

between her set teeth. “Leave me!”

 

She points to the door with a sharp, imperious gesture; so rapid that

the silken drapery about her arm makes a swooping sound as she lifts her

hand. The sibilant French syllables hiss through her teeth as she utters

them, and seem better fitted to her mood and to herself than the

familiar English she has spoken hitherto.

 

The French doctor shrugs his shoulders as he goes out into the lobby,

and mutters something about a “beautiful devil,” and a gesture worthy of

“the Mars.” My lady walked with a rapid footstep to the door between the

bedchamber and the saloon; closed it, and with the handle of the door

still in her hand, turned and looked at Robert Audley.

 

“You have brought me to my grave, Mr. Audley,” she cried; “you have used

your power basely and cruelly, and have brought me to a living grave.”

 

“I have done that which I thought just to others and merciful to you,”

Robert answered, quietly. “I should have been a traitor to society had I

suffered you to remain at liberty after—the disappearance of George

Talboys and the fire at Castle Inn. I have brought you to a place in

which you will be kindly treated by people who have no knowledge of your

story—no power to taunt or to reproach you. You will lead a quiet and

peaceful life, my lady; such a life as many a good