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

eyelashes at the two young men.

 

They were going up-stairs, when Alicia turned and spoke to the girl.

 

“After we have been in the drawing-room, I should like to show these

gentlemen Lady Audley’s rooms. Are they in good order, Phoebe?”

 

“Yes, miss; but the door of the anteroom is locked, and I fancy that my

lady has taken the key to London.”

 

“Taken the key! Impossible!” cried Alicia.

 

“Indeed, miss, I think she has. I cannot find it, and it always used to

be in the door.”

 

“I declare,” said Alicia, impatiently, “that is not at all unlike my

lady to have taken this silly freak into her head. I dare say she was

afraid we should go into her rooms, and pry about among her pretty

dresses, and meddle with her jewelry. It is very provoking, for the best

pictures in the house are in that antechamber. There is her own

portrait, too, unfinished but wonderfully like.”

 

“Her portrait!” exclaimed Robert Audley. “I would give anything to see

it, for I have only an imperfect notion of her face. Is there no other

way of getting into the room, Alicia?”

 

“Another way?”

 

“Yes; is there any door, leading through some of the other rooms, by

which we can contrive to get into hers?”

 

His cousin shook her head, and conducted them into a corridor where

there were some family portraits. She showed them a tapestried chamber,

the large figures upon the faded canvas looking threatening in the dusky

light.

 

“That fellow with the battle-ax looks as if he wanted to split George’s

head open,” said Mr. Audley, pointing to a fierce warrior, whose

uplifted arm appeared above George Talboys’ dark hair.

 

“Come out of this room, Alicia,” added the young man, nervously; “I

believe it’s damp, or else haunted. Indeed, I believe all ghosts to be

the result of damp or dyspepsia. You sleep in a damp bed—you awake

suddenly in the dead of the night with a cold shiver, and see an old

lady in the court costume of George the First’s time, sitting at the

foot of the bed. The old lady’s indigestion, and the cold shiver is a

damp sheet.”

 

There were lighted candles in the drawing-room. No new-fangled lamps had

ever made their appearance at Audley Court. Sir Michael’s rooms were

lighted by honest, thick, yellow-looking wax candles, in massive silver

candlesticks, and in sconces against the walls.

 

There was very little to see in the drawing-room; and George Talboys

soon grew tired of staring at the handsome modern furniture, and at a

few pictures of some of the Academicians.

 

“Isn’t there a secret passage, or an old oak chest, or something of that

kind, somewhere about the place, Alicia?” asked Robert.

 

“To be sure!” cried Miss Audley, with a vehemence that startled her

cousin; “of course. Why didn’t I think of it before? How stupid of me,

to be sure!”

 

“Why stupid?”

 

“Because, if you don’t mind crawling upon your hands and knees, you can

see my lady’s apartments, for that passage communicates with her

dressing-room. She doesn’t know of it herself, I believe. How astonished

she’d be if some black-visored burglar, with a dark-lantern, were to

rise through the floor some night as she sat before her looking-glass,

having her hair dressed for a party!”

 

“Shall we try the secret passage, George?” asked Mr. Audley.

 

“Yes, if you wish it.”

 

Alicia led them into the room which had once been her nursery. It was

now disused, except on very rare occasions when the house was full of

company.

 

Robert Audley lifted a corner of the carpet, according to his cousin’s

directions, and disclosed a rudely-cut trap-door in the oak flooring.

 

“Now listen to me,” said Alicia. “You must let yourself down by the

hands into the passage, which is about four feet high; stoop your head,

walk straight along it till you come to a sharp turn which will take you

to the left, and at the extreme end of it you will find a short ladder

below a trap-door like this, which you will have to unbolt; that door

opens into the flooring of my lady’s dressing-room, which is only

covered with a square Persian carpet that you can easily manage to

raise. You understand me?”

 

“Perfectly.”

 

“Then take the light; Mr. Talboys will follow you. I give you twenty

minutes for your inspection of the paintings—that is, about a minute

apiece—and at the end of that time I shall expect to see you return.”

 

Robert obeyed her implicitly, and George submissively following his

friend, found himself, in five minutes, standing amidst the elegant

disorder of Lady Audley’s dressing-room.

 

She had left the house in a hurry on her unlooked-for journey to London,

and the whole of her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the

marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive

for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not

been replaced. A bunch of hothouse flowers was withering upon a tiny

writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the

ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within.

Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china were scattered

here and there about the apartment. George Talboys saw his bearded face

and tall, gaunt figure reflected in the glass, and wondered to see how

out of place he seemed among all these womanly luxuries.

 

They went from the dressing-room to the boudoir, and through the boudoir

into the antechamber, in which there were, as Alicia had said, about

twenty valuable paintings, besides my lady’s portrait.

 

My lady’s portrait stood on an easel, covered with a green baize in the

center of the octagonal chamber. It had been a fancy of the artist to

paint her standing in this very room, and to make his background a

faithful reproduction of the pictured walls. I am afraid the young man

belonged to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for he had spent a most

unconscionable time upon the accessories of this picture—upon my lady’s

crispy ringlets and the heavy folds of her crimson velvet dress.

 

The two young men looked at the paintings on the walls first, leaving

this unfinished portrait for a bonne bouche.

 

By this time it was dark, the candle carried by Robert only making one

nucleus of light as he moved about holding it before the pictures one by

one. The broad, bare window looked out upon the pale sky, tinged with

the last cold flicker of the twilight. The ivy rustled against the glass

with the same ominous shiver as that which agitated every leaf in the

garden, prophetic of the storm that was to come.

 

“There are our friend’s eternal white horses,” said Robert, standing

beside a Wouvermans. “Nicholas Poussin—Salvator—ha—hum! Now for the

portrait.”

 

He paused with his hand on the baize, and solemnly addressed his friend.

 

“George Talboys,” he said, “we have between us only one wax candle, a

very inadequate light with which to look at a painting. Let me,

therefore, request that you will suffer us to look at it one at a time;

if there is one thing more disagreeable than another, it is to have a

person dodging behind your back and peering over your shoulder, when

you’re trying to see what a picture’s made of.”

 

George fell back immediately. He took no more interest in any lady’s

picture than in all the other wearinesses of this troublesome world. He

fell back, and leaning his forehead against the window-panes, looked out

at the night.

 

When he turned round he saw that Robert had arranged the easel very

conveniently, and that he had seated himself on a chair before it for

the purpose of contemplating the painting at his leisure.

 

He rose as George turned round.

 

“Now, then, for your turn, Talboys,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary

picture.”

 

He took George’s place at the window, and George seated himself in the

chair before the easel.

 

Yes, the painter must have been a pre-Raphaelite. No one but a

pre-Raphaelite would have painted, hair by hair, those feathery masses

of ringlets, with every glimmer of gold, and every shadow of pale brown.

No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of

that delicate face as to give a lurid brightness to the blonde

complexion, and a strange, sinister light to the deep blue eyes. No one

but a pre-Raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the

hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait.

 

It was so like, and yet so unlike. It was as if you had burned

strange-colored fires before my lady’s face, and by their influence

brought out new lines and new expressions never seen in it before. The

perfection of feature, the brilliancy of coloring, were there; but I

suppose the painter had copied quaint mediaeval monstrosities until his

brain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her, had

something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend.

 

Her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange

picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames, her fair head

peeping out of the lurid mass of color as if out of a raging furnace.

Indeed the crimson dress, the sunshine on the face, the red gold

gleaming in the yellow hair, the ripe scarlet of the pouting lips, the

glowing colors of each accessory of the minutely painted background, all

combined to render the first effect of the painting by no means an

agreeable one.

 

But strange as the picture was, it could not have made any great

impression on George Talboys, for he sat before it for about a quarter

of an hour without uttering a word—only staring blankly at the painted

canvas, with the candlestick grasped in his strong right hand, and his

left arm hanging loosely by his side. He sat so long in this attitude,

that Robert turned round at last.

 

“Why, George, I thought you had gone to sleep!”

 

“I had almost.”

 

“You’ve caught a cold from standing in that damp tapestried room. Mark

my words, George Talboys, you’ve caught a cold; you’re as hoarse as a

raven. But come along.”

 

Robert Audley took the candle from his friend’s hand, and crept back

through the secret passage, followed by George—very quiet, but scarcely

more quiet than usual.

 

They found Alicia in the nursery waiting for them.

 

“Well?” she said, interrogatively.

 

“We managed it capitally. But I don’t like the portrait; there’s

something odd about it.”

 

“There is,” said Alicia; “I’ve a strange fancy on that point. I think

that sometimes a painter is in a manner inspired, and is able to see,

through the normal expression of the face, another expression that is

equally a part of it, though not to be perceived by common eyes. We have

never seen my lady look as she does in that picture; but I think that

she could look so.”

 

“Alicia,” said Robert Audley, imploringly, “don’t be German!”

 

“But, Robert—”

 

“Don’t be German, Alicia, if you love me. The picture is—the picture:

and my lady is—my lady. That’s my way of taking things, and I’m not

metaphysical; don’t unsettle me.”

 

He repeated this several times with an air of terror that was perfectly

sincere; and then, having borrowed an umbrella in case of being

overtaken by the coming storm, left the Court, leading passive George

Talboys away with him. The one hand of the stupid clock had skipped to

nine by the time they reached the archway; but before they could pass

under its shadow they had to step aside