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

felt as he came agen me, that his clothes was wet and mucky.

 

“‘You haven’t been and fell into the fishpond, have you, sir?’ I asked.

 

“He made no answer to my question; he didn’t seem even to have heard it.

I could see now he was standin’ upon his feet that he was a tall,

fine-made man, a head and shoulders higher than me.

 

“‘Take me to your mother’s cottage,’ he said, ‘and get me some dry

clothes if you can; I’ll pay you well for your trouble.’

 

“I knew that the key was mostly left in the wooden gate in the garden

wall, so I led him that way. He could scarcely walk at first, and it was

only by leanin’ heavily upon my shoulder that he managed to get along. I

got him through the gate, leavin’ it unlocked behind me, and trustin’ to

the chance of that not bein’ noticed by the under-gardener, who had the

care of the key, and was a careless chap enough. I took him across the

meadows, and brought him up here, still keepin’ away from the village,

and in the fields, where there wasn’t a creature to see us at that time

o’ night; and so I got him into the room downstairs, where mother was

a-sittin’ over the fire gettin’ my bit o’ supper ready for me.

 

“I put the strange chap in a chair agen the fire, and then for the first

time I had a good look at him. I never see anybody in such a state

before. He was all over green damp and muck, and his hands was scratched

and cut to pieces. I got his clothes off him how I could, for he was

like a child in my hands, and sat starin’ at the fire as helpless as any

baby; only givin’ a long heavy sigh now and then, as if his heart was

a-goin’ to bust. At last he dropped into a kind of a doze, a stupid sort

of sleep, and began to nod over the fire, so I ran and got a blanket and

wrapped him in it, and got him to lie down on the press bedstead in the

room under this. I sent mother to bed, and I sat by the fire and watched

him, and kep’ the fire up till it was just upon daybreak, when he ‘woke

up all of a sudden with a start, and said he must go, directly this

minute.

 

“I begged him not to think of such a thing and told him he warn’t fit to

move for ever so long; but he said he must go, and he got up, and though

he staggered like, and at first could hardly stand steady two minutes

together, he wouldn’t be beat, and he got me to dress him in his clothes

as I’d dried and cleaned as well as I could while he laid asleep. I did

manage it at last, but the clothes was awful spoiled, and he looked a

dreadful objeck, with his pale face and a great cut on his forehead that

I’d washed and tied up with a handkercher. He could only get his coat on

by buttoning it on round his neck, for he couldn’t put a sleeve upon his

broken arm. But he held out agen everything, though he groaned every now

and then; and what with the scratches and bruises on his hands, and the

cut upon his forehead, and his stiff limbs and broken arm, he’d plenty

of call to groan; and by the time it was broad daylight he was dressed

and ready to go.

 

“‘What’s the nearest town to this upon the London road?’ he asked me.

 

“I told him as the nighest town was Brentwood.

 

“‘Very well, then,’ he says, ‘if you’ll go with me to Brentwood, and

take me to some surgeon as’ll set my arm, I’ll give you a five pound

note for that and all your other trouble.’

 

“I told him that I was ready and willin’ to do anything as he wanted

done; and asked him if I shouldn’t go and see if I could borrow a cart

from some of the neighbors to drive him over in, for I told him it was a

good six miles’ walk.

 

“He shook his head. No, no, no, he said, he didn’t want anybody to know

anything about him; he’d rather walk it.

 

“He did walk it; and he walked like a good ‘un, too; though I know as

every step he took o’ them six miles he took in pain; but he held out as

he’d held out before; I never see such a chap to hold out in all my

blessed life. He had to stop sometimes and lean agen a gateway to get

his breath; but he held out still, till at last we got into Brentwood,

and then he says, ‘Take me to the nighest surgeon’s,’ and I waited while

he had his arm set in splints, which took a precious long time. The

surgeon wanted him to stay in Brentwood till he was better, but he said

it warn’t to be heard on, he must get up to London without a minute’s

loss of time; so the surgeon made him as comfortable as he could,

considering and tied up his arm in a sling.”

 

Robert Audley started. A circumstance connected with his visit to

Liverpool dashed suddenly back upon his memory. He remembered the clerk

who had called him back to say there was a passenger who took his berth

on board the Victoria Regia within an hour or so of the vessel’s

sailing; a young man with his arm in a sling, who had called himself by

some common name, which Robert had forgotten.

 

“When his arm was dressed,” continued Luke, “he says to the surgeon,

‘Can you give me a pencil to write something before I go away?’ The

surgeon smiles and shakes his head: ‘You’ll never be able to write with

that there hand to-day,’ he says, pointin’ to the arm as had just been

dressed. ‘P’raps not,’ the young chap answers, quiet enough, ‘but I can

write with the other,’ ‘Can’t I write it for you?’ says the surgeon.

‘No, thank you,’ answers the other; ‘what I’ve got to write is private.

If you can give me a couple of envelopes, I’ll be obliged to you.’

 

“With that the surgeon goes to fetch the envelopes, and the young chap

takes a pocketbook out of his coat pocket with his left hand; the cover

was wet and dirty, but the inside was clean enough, and he tears out a

couple of leaves and begins to write upon ‘em as you see; and he writes

dreadful awk’ard with his left hand, and he writes slow, but he

contrives to finish what you see, and then he puts the two bits o’

writin’ into the envelopes as the surgeon brings him, and he seals ‘em

up, and he puts a pencil cross upon one of ‘em, and nothing on the

other: and then he pays the surgeon for his trouble, and the surgeon

says, ain’t there nothin’ more he can do for him, and can’t he persuade

him to stay in Brentwood till his arm’s better; but he says no, no, it

ain’t possible; and then he says to me, ‘Come along o’ me to the railway

station, and I’ll give you what I’ve promised.’

 

“So I went to the station with him. We was in time to catch the train as

stops at Brentwood at half after eight, and we had five minutes to

spare. So he takes me into a corner of the platform, and he says, ‘I

wants you to deliver these here letters for me,’ which I told him I was

willin’. ‘Very well, then,’ he says; ‘look here; you know Audley Court?’

‘Yes,’ I says, ‘I ought to, for my sweetheart lives lady’s maid there.’

‘Whose lady’s maid?’ he says. So I tells him, ‘My lady’s, the new lady

what was governess at Mr. Dawson’s.’ ‘Very well, then,’ he says; ‘this

here letter with the cross upon the envelope is for Lady Audley, but

you’re to be sure to give it into her own hands; and remember to take

care as nobody sees you give it.’ I promises to do this, and he hands me

the first letter. And then he says, ‘Do you know Mr. Audley, as is nevy

to Sir Michael?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I’ve heerd tell on him, and I’ve

heerd as he was a reg’lar swell, but affable and free-spoken’ (for I

heerd ‘em tell on you, you know),” Luke added, parenthetically. “‘Now

look here,’ the young chap says, ‘you’re to give this other letter to

Mr. Robert Audley, whose a-stayin’ at the Sun Inn, in the village;’ and

I tells him it’s all right, as I’ve know’d the Sun ever since I was a

baby. So then he gives me the second letter, what’s got nothing wrote

upon the envelope, and he gives me a five-pound note, accordin’ to

promise; and then he says, ‘Good-day, and thank you for all your

trouble,‘and he gets into a second-class carriage; and the last I sees

of him is a face as white as a sheet of writin’ paper, and a great patch

of stickin’-plaster criss-crossed upon his forehead.”

 

“Poor George! poor George!”

 

“I went back to Audley, and I went straight to the Sun Inn, and asked

for you, meanin’ to deliver both letters faithful, so help me God! then;

but the landlord told me as you’d started off that mornin’ for London,

and he didn’t know when you’d come back, and he didn’t know the name o’

the place where you lived in London, though he said he thought it was in

one o’ them law courts, such as Westminster Hall or Doctors’ Commons, or

somethin’ like that. So what was I to do? I couldn’t send a letter by

post, not knowin’ where to direct to, and I couldn’t give it into your

own hands, and I’d been told partickler not to let anybody else know of

it; so I’d nothing to do but to wait and see if you come back, and bide

my time for givin’ of it to you.

 

“I thought I’d go over to the Court in the evenin’and see Phoebe, and

find out from her when there’d be a chance of seein’ her lady, for I

know’d she could manage it if she liked. So I didn’t go to work that

day, though I ought to ha’ done, and I lounged and idled about until it

was nigh upon dusk, and then I goes down to the meadows behind the

Court, and there I finds Phoebe sure enough, waitin’ agen the wooden

door in the wall, on the lookout for me.

 

“I hadn’t been talkin’ to her long before I see there was somethink

wrong with her and I told her as much.

 

“Well,’ she says, ‘I ain’t quite myself this evenin’, for I had a upset

yesterday, and I ain’t got over it yet.’

 

“‘A upset,’ I says. ‘You had a quarrel with your missus, I suppose.’

 

“She didn’t answer me directly, but she smiled the queerest smile as

ever I see, and presently she says:

 

“No, Luke, it weren’t nothin’ o’ that kind; and what’s more, nobody

could be friendlier toward me than my lady. I think she’d do any think

for me a’most; and I think, whether it was a bit o’ farming stock and

furniture or such like, or whether it was the good-will of a

public-house, she wouldn’t refuse me anythink as I asked her.’

 

“I couldn’t make out this, for it was only a few days