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

her eyes fixed

upon her husband’s face—not with any very tender expression in the pale

light, but with a sharp, terrified anxiety, which showed that it was the

coming of death itself that she dreaded, rather than the loss of her

husband. The old woman was busy at the fireplace, airing linen, and

preparing some mess of broth which it was not likely the patient would

ever eat. The sick man lay with his head propped up by pillows, his

coarse face deadly pale, and his great hands wandering uneasily about

the coverlet. Phoebe had been reading to him, for an open Testament lay

among the medicine and lotion bottles upon the table near the bed. Every

object in the room was neat and orderly, and bore witness of that

delicate precision which had always been a distinguishing characteristic

of Phoebe.

 

The young woman rose as Robert Audley crossed the threshold, and hurried

toward him.

 

“Let me speak to you for a moment, sir, before you talk to Luke,” she

said, in an eager whisper. “Pray let me speak to you first.”

 

“What’s the gal a-sayin’, there?” asked the invalid in a subdued roar,

which died away hoarsely on his lips. He was feebly savage, even in his

weakness. The dull glaze of death was gathering over his eyes, but they

still watched Phoebe with a sharp glance of dissatisfaction. “What’s she

up to there?” he said. “I won’t have no plottin’ and no hatchin’ agen

me. I want to speak to Mr. Audley my own self; and whatever I done I’m

goin’ to answer for. If I done any mischief, I’m a-goin’ to try and undo

it. What’s she a-sayin’?”

 

“She ain’t a-sayin’ nothin’, lovey,” answered the old woman, going to

the bedside of her son, who even when made more interesting than usual

by illness, did not seem a very fit subject for this tender appellation.

 

“She’s only a-tellin’ the gentleman how bad you’ve been, my pretty.”

 

“What I’m a-goin’ to tell I’m only a-goin’ to tell to him, remember,”

growled Mr. Mark; “and ketch me a-tellin’ of it to him if it warn’t for

what he done for me the other night.”

 

“To be sure not, lovey,” answered the old woman soothingly.

 

Phoebe Marks had drawn Mr. Audley out of the room and onto the narrow

landing at the top of the little staircase. This landing was a platform

of about three feet square, and it was as much as the two could manage

to stand upon it without pushing each other against the whitewashed

wall, or backward down the stairs.

 

“Oh, sir, I wanted to speak to you so badly,” Phoebe answered, eagerly;

“you know what I told you when I found you safe and well upon the night

of the fire?”

 

“Yes, yes.”

 

“I told you what I suspected; what I think still.”

 

“Yes, I remember.”

 

“But I never breathed a word of it to anybody but you, sir, and I think

that Luke has forgotten all about that night; I think that what went

before the fire has gone clean out of his head altogether. He was tipsy,

you know, when my la—when she came to the Castle; and I think he was so

dazed and scared like by the fire that it all went out of his memory. He

doesn’t suspect what I suspect, at any rate, or he’d have spoken of it

to anybody or everybody; but he’s dreadful spiteful against my lady, for

he says if she’d have let him have a place at Brentwood or Chelmsford,

this wouldn’t have happened. So what I wanted to beg of you, sir, is not

to let a word drop before Luke.”

 

“Yes, yes, I understand; I will be careful.”

 

“My lady has left the Court, I hear, sir?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Never to come back, sir?”

 

“Never to come back.”

 

“But she has not gone where she’ll be cruelly treated; where she’ll be

ill-used?”

 

“No: she will be very kindly treated.”

 

“I’m glad of that, sir; I beg your pardon for troubling you with the

question, sir, but my lady was a kind mistress to me.”

 

Luke’s voice, husky and feeble, was heard within the little chamber at

this period of the conversation, demanding angrily when “that gal would

have done jawing;” upon which Phoebe put her finger to her lips, and led

Mr. Audley back into the sick-room.

 

“I don’t want you” said Mr. Marks, decisively, as his wife re-entered

the chamber—“I don’t want you; you’ve no call to hear what I’ve got

to say—I only want Mr. Audley, and I wants to speak to him all alone,

with none o’ your sneakin’ listenin’ at doors, d’ye hear? so you may go

downstairs and keep there till you’re wanted; and you may take

mother—no, mother may stay, I shall want her presently.”

 

The sick man’s feeble hand pointed to the door, through which his wife

departed very submissively.

 

“I’ve no wish to hear anything, Luke,” she said, “but I hope you won’t

say anything against those that have been good and generous to you.”

 

“I shall say what I like,” answered Mr. Marks, fiercely, “and I’m not

a-goin’ to be ordered by you. You ain’t the parson, as I’ve ever heerd

of; nor the lawyer neither.”

 

The landlord of the Castle Inn had undergone no moral transformation by

his death-bed sufferings, fierce and rapid as they had been. Perhaps

some faint glimmer of a light that had been far off from his life now

struggled feebly through the black obscurities of ignorance that

darkened his soul. Perhaps a half angry, half sullen penitence urged him

to make some rugged effort to atone for a life that had been selfish and

drunken and wicked. Be it how it might he wiped his white lips, and

turning his haggard eyes earnestly upon Robert Audley, pointed to a

chair by the bedside.

 

“You made game of me in a general way, Mr. Audley,” he said, presently,

“and you’ve drawed me out, and you’ve tumbled and tossed me about like

in a gentlemanly way, till I was nothink or anythink in your hands; and

you’ve looked me through and through, and turned me inside out till you

thought you knowed as much as I knowed. I’d no particular call to be

grateful to you, not before the fire at the Castle t’other night. But I

am grateful to you for that. I’m not grateful to folks in a general way,

p’r’aps, because the things as gentlefolks have give have a’most allus

been the very things I didn’t want. They’ve give me soup, and tracks,

and flannel, and coals; but, Lord, they’ve made such a precious noise

about it that I’d have been to send ‘em all back to ‘em. But when a

gentleman goes and puts his own life in danger to save a drunken brute

like me, the drunkenest brute as ever was feels grateful like to that

gentleman, and wishes to say before he dies—which he sees in the

doctor’s face as he ain’t got long to live—‘Thank ye, sir, I’m obliged

to you.”

 

Luke Marks stretched out his left hand—the right hand had been injured

by the fire, and was wrapped in linen—and groped feebly for that of Mr.

Robert Audley.

 

The young man took the coarse but shrunken hand in both his own, and

pressed it cordially.

 

“I need no thanks, Luke Marks,” he said; “I was very glad to be of

service to you.”

 

Mr. Marks did not speak immediately. He was lying quietly upon his side,

staring reflectingly at Robert Audley.

 

“You was oncommon fond of that gent as disappeared at the Court, warn’t

you, sir?” he said at last.

 

Robert started at the mention of his dead friend.

 

“You was oncommon fond of that Mr. Talboys, I’ve heard say, sir,”

repeated Luke.

 

“Yes, yes,” answered Robert, rather impatiently, “he was my very dear

friend.”

 

“I’ve heard the servants at the Court say how you took on when you

couldn’t find him. I’ve heered the landlord of the Sun Inn say how cut

up you was when you first missed him. ‘If the two gents had been

brothers,’ the landlord said, ‘our gent,’ meanin’ you, sir, ‘couldn’t

have been more cut up when he missed the other.’”

 

“Yes, yes, I know, I know,” said Robert; “pray do not speak any more of

this subject. I cannot tell you now much it distresses me.”

 

Was he to be haunted forever by the ghost of his unburied friend? He

came here to comfort the sick man, and even here he was pursued by this

relentless shadow; even here he was reminded of the secret crime which

had darkened his life.

 

“Listen to me, Marks,” he said, earnestly; “believe me that I appreciate

your grateful words, and that I am very glad to have been of service to

you. But before you say anything more, let me make one most solemn

request. If you have sent for me that you may tell me anything of the

fate of my lost friend, I entreat you to spare yourself and to spare me

that horrible story. You can tell me nothing which I do not already

know. The worst you can tell me of the woman who was once in your power,

has already been revealed to me by her own lips. Pray, then, be silent

upon this subject; I say again, you can tell me nothing which I do not

know.”

 

Luke Marks looked musingly at the earnest face of his visitor, and some

shadowy expression, which was almost like a smile, flitted feebly across

the sick man’s haggard features.

 

“I can’t tell you nothin’ you don’t know?” he asked.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Then it ain’t no good for me to try,” said the invalid, thoughtfully.

“Did she tell you?” he asked, after a pause.

 

“I must beg, Marks, that you will drop the subject,” Robert answered,

almost sternly. “I have already told you that I do not wish to hear it

spoken of. Whatever discoveries you made, you made your market out of

them. Whatever guilty secrets you got possession of, you were paid for

keeping silence. You had better keep silence to the end.”

 

“Had I?” cried Luke Marks, in an eager whisper. “Had I really now better

hold my tongue to the last?”

 

“I think so, most decidedly. You traded on your secret, and you were

paid to keep it. It would be more honest to hold to your bargain, and

keep it still.”

 

“But, suppose I want to tell something,” cried Luke, with feverish

energy, “suppose I feel I can’t die with a secret on my mind, and have

asked to see you on purpose that I might tell you; suppose that, and

you’ll suppose nothing but the truth. I’d have been burnt alive before

I’d have told her.” He spoke these words between his set teeth, and

scowled savagely as he uttered them. “I’d have been burnt alive first. I

made her pay for her pretty insolent ways; I made her pay for her airs

and graces; I’d never have told her—never, never! I had my power over

her, and I kept it; I had my secret and was paid for it; and there

wasn’t a petty slight as she ever put upon me or mine that I didn’t pay

her out for twenty times over!”

 

“Marks, Marks, for Heaven’s sake be calm” said Robert, earnestly. “What

are you talking of? What is it that you could have told?”

 

“I’m a-goin to tell you,” answered Luke, wiping his lips. “Give us a

drink, mother.”

 

The old woman poured