Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (popular books of all time .TXT) 📖

>down to the inn for two or three day’s fishing.”

 

“George—George who?”

 

“George Talboys.”

 

“What, has he come?” cried Alicia. “I’m so glad; for I’m dying to see

this handsome young widower.”

 

“Are you, Alicia?” said her cousin, “Then egad, I’ll run and fetch him,

and introduce you to him at once.”

 

Now, so complete was the dominion which Lady Audley had, in her own

childish, unthinking way, obtained over her devoted husband, that it was

very rarely that the baronet’s eyes were long removed from his wife’s

pretty face. When Robert, therefore, was about to re-enter the inn, it

needed but the faintest elevation of Lucy’s eyebrows, with a charming

expression of weariness and terror, to make her husband aware that she

did not want to be bored by an introduction to Mr. George Talboys.

 

“Never mind tonight, Bob,” he said. “My wife is a little tired after

our long day’s pleasure. Bring your friend to dinner tomorrow, and then

he and Alicia can make each other’s acquaintance. Come round and speak

to Lady Audley, and then we’ll drive home.”

 

My lady was so terribly fatigued that she could only smile sweetly, and

hold out a tiny gloved hand to her nephew by marriage.

 

“You will come and dine with us tomorrow, and bring your interesting

friend?” she said, in a low and tired voice. She had been the chief

attraction of the race-course, and was wearied out by the exertion of

fascinating half the county.

 

“It’s a wonder she didn’t treat you to her never-ending laugh,”

whispered Alicia, as she leaned over the carriage-door to bid Robert

good-night; “but I dare say she reserves that for your delectation

tomorrow. I suppose you are fascinated as well as everybody else?”

added the young lady, rather snappishly.

 

“She is a lovely creature, certainly,” murmured Robert, with placid

admiration.

 

“Oh, of course! Now, she is the first woman of whom I ever heard you say

a civil word, Robert Audley. I’m sorry to find you can only admire wax

dolls.”

 

Poor Alicia had had many skirmishes with her cousin upon that particular

temperament of his, which, while it enabled him to go through life with

perfect content and tacit enjoyment, entirely precluded his feeling one

spark of enthusiasm upon any subject whatever.

 

“As to his ever falling in love,” thought the young lady sometimes, “the

idea is preposterous. If all the divinities on earth were ranged before

him, waiting for his sultanship to throw the handkerchief, he would only

lift his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead, and tell them to

scramble for it.”

 

But, for once in his life, Robert was almost enthusiastic.

 

“She’s the prettiest little creature you ever saw in your life, George,”

he cried, when the carriage had driven off and he returned to his

friend. “Such blue eyes, such ringlets, such a ravishing smile, such a

fairy-like bonnet—all of a-tremble with heart’s-ease and dewy spangles,

shining out of a cloud of gauze. George Talboys, I feel like the hero of

a French novel: I am falling in love with my aunt.”

 

The widower only sighed and puffed his cigar fiercely out of the open

window. Perhaps he was thinking of that far-away time—little better

than five years ago, in fact; but such an age gone by to him—when he

first met the woman for whom he had worn crape round his hat three days

before. They returned, all those old unforgotten feelings; they came

back, with the scene of their birth-place. Again he lounged with his

brother officers upon the shabby pier at the shabby watering-place,

listening to a dreary band with a cornet that was a note and a half

flat. Again he heard the old operatic airs, and again she came

tripping toward him, leaning on her old father’s arm, and pretending

(with such a charming, delicious, serio-comic pretense) to be listening

to the music, and quite unaware of the admiration of half a dozen

open-mouthed cavalry officers. Again the old fancy came back that she

was something too beautiful for earth, or earthly uses, and that to

approach her was to walk in a higher atmosphere and to breathe a purer

air. And since this she had been his wife, and the mother of his child.

She lay in the little churchyard at Ventnor, and only a year ago he had

given the order for her tombstone. A few slow, silent tears dropped upon

his waistcoat as he thought of these things in the quiet and darkening

room.

 

Lady Audley was so exhausted when she reached home, that she excused

herself from the dinner-table, and retired at once to her dressing-room,

attended by her maid, Phoebe Marks.

 

She was a little capricious in her conduct to this maid—sometimes very

confidential, sometimes rather reserved; but she was a liberal mistress,

and the girl had every reason to be satisfied with her situation.

 

This evening, in spite of her fatigue, she was in extremely high

spirits, and gave an animated account of the races, and the company

present at them.

 

“I am tired to death, though, Phoebe,” she said, by-and-by. “I am afraid

I must look a perfect fright, after a day in the hot sun.”

 

There were lighted candles on each side of the glass before which Lady

Audley was standing unfastening her dress. She looked full at her maid

as she spoke, her blue eyes clear and bright, and the rosy childish lips

puckered into an arch smile.

 

“You are a little pale, my lady,” answered the girl, “but you look as

pretty as ever.”

 

“That’s right, Phoebe,” she said, flinging herself into a chair, and

throwing back her curls at the maid, who stood, brush in hand, ready to

arrange the luxuriant hair for the night. “Do you know, Phoebe, I have

heard some people say that you and I are alike?”

 

“I have heard them say so, too, my lady,” said the girl, quietly “but

they must be very stupid to say it, for your ladyship is a beauty, and I

am a poor, plain creature.”

 

“Not at all, Phoebe,” said the little lady, superbly; “you are like

me, and your features are very nice; it is only color that you want. My

hair is pale yellow shot with gold, and yours is drab; my eyebrows and

eyelashes are dark brown, and yours are almost—I scarcely like to say

it, but they’re almost white, my dear Phoebe. Your complexion is sallow,

and mine is pink and rosy. Why, with a bottle of hair-dye, such as we

see advertised in the papers, and a pot of rouge, you’d be as

good-looking as I, any day, Phoebe.”

 

She prattled on in this way for a long time, talking of a hundred

different subjects, and ridiculing the people she had met at the races,

for her maid’s amusement. Her step-daughter came into the dressing-room

to bid her good-night, and found the maid and mistress laughing aloud

over one of the day’s adventures. Alicia, who was never familiar with

her servants, withdrew in disgust at my lady’s frivolity.

 

“Go on brushing my hair, Phoebe,” Lady Audley said, every time the girl

was about to complete her task, “I quite enjoy a chat with you.”

 

At last, just as she had dismissed her maid, she suddenly called her

back. “Phoebe Marks,” she said, “I want you to do me a favor.”

 

“Yes, my lady.”

 

“I want you to go to London by the first train tomorrow morning to

execute a little commission for me. You may take a day’s holiday

afterward, as I know you have friends in town; and I shall give you a

five-pound note if you do what I want, and keep your own counsel about

it.”

 

“Yes, my lady.”

 

“See that that door is securely shut, and come and sit on this stool at

my feet.”

 

The girl obeyed. Lady Audley smoothed her maid’s neutral-tinted hair

with her plump, white, and bejeweled hand as she reflected for a few

moments.

 

“And now listen, Phoebe. What I want you to do is very simple.”

 

It was so simple that it was told in five minutes, and then Lady Audley

retired into her bedroom, and curled herself up cozily under the

eider-down quilt. She was a chilly creature, and loved to bury herself

in soft wrappings of satin and fur.

 

“Kiss me, Phoebe,” she said, as the girl arranged the curtains. “I hear

Sir Michael’s step in the anteroom; you will meet him as you go out, and

you may as well tell him that you are going up by the first train

tomorrow morning to get my dress from Madam Frederick for the dinner at

Morton Abbey.”

 

It was late the next morning when Lady Audley went down to

breakfast—past ten o’clock. While she was sipping her coffee a servant

brought her a sealed packet, and a book for her to sign.

 

“A telegraphic message!” she cried; for the convenient word telegram had

not yet been invented. “What can be the matter?”

 

She looked up at her husband with wide-open, terrified eyes, and seemed

half afraid to break the seal. The envelope was addressed to Miss Lucy

Graham, at Mr. Dawson’s, and had been sent on from the village.

 

“Read it, my darling,” he said, “and do not be alarmed; it may be

nothing of any importance.”

 

It came from a Mrs. Vincent, the schoolmistress with whom she had lived

before entering Mr. Dawson’s family. The lady was dangerously ill, and

implored her old pupil to go and see her.

 

“Poor soul! she always meant to leave me her money,” said Lucy, with a

mournful smile. “She has never heard of the change in my fortunes. Dear

Sir Michael, I must go to her.”

 

“To be sure you must, dearest. If she was kind to my poor girl in her

adversity, she has a claim upon her prosperity that shall never be

forgotten. Put on your bonnet, Lucy; we shall be in time to catch the

express.”

 

“You will go with me?”

 

“Of course, my darling. Do you suppose I would let you go alone?”

 

“I was sure you would go with me,” she said, thoughtfully.

 

“Does your friend send any address?”

 

“No; but she always lived at Crescent Villa, West Brompton; and no doubt

she lives there still.”

 

There was only time for Lady Audley to hurry on her bonnet and shawl

before she heard the carriage drive round to the door, and Sir Michael

calling to her at the foot of the staircase.

 

Her suite of rooms, as I have said, opened one out of another, and

terminated in an octagon antechamber hung with oil-paintings. Even in

her haste she paused deliberately at the door of this room,

double-locked it, and dropped the key into her pocket. This door once

locked cut off all access to my lady’s apartments.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

 

BEFORE THE STORM.

 

So the dinner at Audley Court was postponed, and Miss Alicia had to wait

still longer for an introduction to the handsome young widower, Mr.

George Talboys.

 

I am afraid, if the real truth is to be told, there was, perhaps,

something of affectation in the anxiety this young lady expressed to

make George’s acquaintance; but if poor Alicia for a moment calculated

upon arousing any latent spark of jealousy lurking in her cousin’s

breast by this exhibition of interest, she was not so well acquainted

with Robert Audley’s disposition as she might have been. Indolent,

handsome, and indifferent, the young barrister took life as altogether

too absurd a mistake for any one event in its foolish course to