Lady Audley’s Secret, M. E. Braddon [good books to read for young adults TXT] 📗

mother,” said Luke, “and I think it’ll be strange if you can’t answer it. Do you remember when I was at work upon Atkinson’s farm; before I was married you know, and when I was livin’ down here along of you?”

“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Marks answered, nodding triumphantly, “I remember that, my dear. It were last fall, just about as the apples was bein’ gathered in the orchard across our lane, and about the time as you had your new sprigged wesket. I remember, Luke, I remember.”

Mr. Audley wondered where all this was to lead to, and how long he would have to sit by the sick man’s bed, hearing a conversation that had no meaning to him.

“If you remember that much, maybe you’ll remember more, mother,” said Luke. “Can you call to mind my bringing someone home here one night, while Atkinsons was stackin’ the last o’ their corn?”

Once more Mr. Audley started violently, and this time he looked up earnestly at the face of the speaker, and listened, with a strange, breathless interest, that he scarcely understood himself, to what Luke Marks was saying.

“I rek’lect your bringing home Phoebe,” the old woman answered, with great animation. “I rek’lect your bringin’ Phoebe home to take a cup o’ tea, or a little snack o’ supper, a mort o’ times.”

“Bother Phoebe,” cried Mr. Marks, “who’s a talkin’ of Phoebe? What’s Phoebe, that anybody should go to put theirselves out about her? Do you remember my bringin’ home a gentleman after ten o’clock, one September night; a gentleman as was wet through to the skin, and was covered with mud and slush, and green slime and black muck, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, and had his arm broke, and his shoulder swelled up awful; and was such a objeck that nobody would ha’ knowed him; a gentleman as had to have his clothes cut off him in some places, and as sat by the kitchen fire, starin’ at the coals as if he had gone mad or stupid-like, and didn’t know where he was, or who he was; and as had to be cared for like a baby, and dressed, and dried, and washed, and fed with spoonfuls of brandy, that had to be forced between his locked teeth, before any life could be got into him? Do you remember that, mother?”

The old woman nodded, and muttered something to the effect that she remembered all these circumstances most vividly, now that Luke happened to mention them.

Robert Audley uttered a wild cry, and fell down upon his knees by the side of the sick man’s bed.

“My God!” he ejaculated, “I think Thee for Thy wondrous mercies. George Talboys is alive!”

“Wait a bit,” said Mr. Marks, “don’t you be too fast. Mother, give us down that tin box on the shelf over against the chest of drawers, will you?”

The old woman obeyed, and after fumbling among broken teacups and milk-jugs, lidless wooden cotton-boxes, and a miscellaneous litter of rags and crockery, produced a tin snuffbox with a sliding lid; a shabby, dirty-looking box enough.

Robert Audley still knelt by the bedside with his face hidden by his clasped hands. Luke Marks opened the tin box.

“There ain’t no money in it, more’s the pity,” he said, “or if there had been it wouldn’t have been let stop very long. But there’s summat in it that perhaps you’ll think quite as valliable as money, and that’s what I’m goin’ to give you as a proof that a drunken brute can feel thankful to them as is kind to him.”

He took out two folded papers, which he gave into Robert Audley’s hands.

They were two leaves torn out of a pocketbook, and they were written upon in pencil, and in a handwriting that was quite strange to Mr. Audley⁠—a cramped, stiff, and yet scrawling hand, such as some plowman might have written.

“I don’t know this writing,” Robert said, as he eagerly unfolded the first of the two papers. “What has this to do with my friend? Why do you show me these?”

“Suppose you read ’em first,” said Mr. Marks, “and ask me questions about them afterwards.”

The first paper which Robert Audley had unfolded contained the following lines, written in that cramped, yet scrawling hand which was so strange to him:

“My Dear Friend⁠—I write to you in such utter confusion of mind as perhaps no man ever before suffered. I cannot tell you what has happened to me, I can only tell you that something has happened which will drive me from England a brokenhearted man, to seek some corner of the earth in which I may live and die unknown and forgotten. I can only ask you to forget me. If your friendship could have done me any good, I would have appealed to it. If your counsel could have been any help to me, I would have confided in you. But neither friendship nor counsel can help me; and all I can say to you is this, God bless you for the past, and teach you to forget me in the future. G. T.”

The second paper was addressed to another person, and its contents were briefer than those of the first.

“Helen⁠—May God pity and forgive you for that which you have done today, as truly as I do. Rest in peace. You shall never hear of me again; to you and to the world I shall henceforth be that which you wished me to be today. You need fear no molestation from me. I leave England never to return.

“G. T.”

Robert Audley sat staring at these lines in hopeless bewilderment. They were not in his friend’s familiar hand, and yet they purported to be written by him and were signed with his initials.

He looked scrutinizingly at the face of Luke Marks, thinking that perhaps some trick was being played upon him.

“This was not written by George Talboys,” he said.

“It was,” answered Luke Marks, “it was written by Mr. Talboys, every line