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

never been broken before in eight-and-twenty tranquil, easy-going

years. His mind was beginning to grow confused upon the point of time.

It seemed to him months since he had lost sight of George Talboys. It

was so difficult to believe that it was less than forty-eight hours ago

that the young man had left him asleep under the willows by the trout

stream.

 

His eyes were painfully weary for want of sleep. He searched about the

room for some time, looking in all sorts of impossible places for a

letter from George Talboys, and then threw himself dressed upon his

friend’s bed, in the room with the canaries and geraniums.

 

“I shall wait for tomorrow morning’s post,” he said; “and if that

brings no letter from George, I shall start for Liverpool without a

moment’s delay.”

 

He was thoroughly exhausted, and fell into a heavy sleep—a sleep which

was profound without being in any way refreshing, for he was tormented

all the time by disagreeable dreams—dreams which were painful, not from

any horror in themselves, but from a vague and wearying sense of their

confusion and absurdity.

 

At one time he was pursuing strange people and entering strange houses

in the endeavor to unravel the mystery of the telegraphic dispatch; at

another time he was in the churchyard at Ventnor, gazing at the

headstone George had ordered for the grave of his dead wife. Once in the

long, rambling mystery of these dreams he went to the grave, and found

this headstone gone, and on remonstrating with the stonemason, was told

that the man had a reason for removing the inscription; a reason that

Robert would some day learn.

 

In another dream he saw the grave of Helen Talboys open, and while he

waited, with the cold horror lifting up his hair, to see the dead woman

rise and stand before him with her stiff, charnel-house drapery clinging

about her rigid limbs, his uncle’s wife tripped gaily put of the open

grave, dressed in the crimson velvet robes in which the artist had

painted her, and with her ringlets flashing like red gold in the

unearthly light that shone about her.

 

But into all these dreams the places he had last been in, and the people

with whom he had last been concerned, were dimly interwoven—sometimes

his uncle; sometimes Alicia; oftenest of all my lady; the trout stream

in Essex; the lime-walk at the Court. Once he was walking in the black

shadows of this long avenue, with Lady Audley hanging on his arm, when

suddenly they heard a great knocking in the distance, and his uncle’s

wife wound her slender arms around him, crying out that it was the day

of judgment, and that all wicked secrets must now be told. Looking at

her as she shrieked this in his ear, he saw that her face had grown

ghastly white, and that her beautiful golden ringlets were changing into

serpents, and slowly creeping down her fair neck.

 

He started from his dream to find that there was some one really

knocking at the outer door of his chambers.

 

It was a dreary, wet morning, the rain beating against the windows, and

the canaries twittering dismally to each other—complaining, perhaps, of

the bad weather. Robert could not tell how long the person had been

knocking. He had mixed the sound with his dreams, and when he woke he

was only half conscious of other things.

 

“It’s that stupid Mrs. Maloney, I dare say,” he muttered. “She may knock

again for all I care. Why can’t she use her duplicate key, instead of

dragging a man out of bed when he’s half dead with fatigue.”

 

The person, whoever it was, did knock again, and then desisted,

apparently tired out; but about a minute afterward a key turned in the

door.

 

“She had her key with her all the time, then,” said Robert. “I’m very

glad I didn’t get up.”

 

The door between the sitting-room and bedroom was half open, and he

could see the laundress bustling about, dusting the furniture, and

rearranging things that had never been disarranged.

 

“Is that you, Mrs. Maloney?” he asked.

 

“Yes, sir,”

 

“Then why, in goodness’ name, did you make that row at the door, when

you had a key with you all the time?”

 

“A row at the door, sir?”

 

“Yes; that infernal knocking.”

 

“Sure I never knocked, Mister Audley, but walked straight in with my

kay—”

 

“Then who did knock? There’s been some one kicking up a row at that door

for a quarter of an hour, I should think; you must have met him going

downstairs.”

 

“But I’m rather late this morning, sir, for I’ve been in Mr. Martin’s

rooms first, and I’ve come straight from the floor above.”

 

“Then you didn’t see any one at the door, or on the stairs?”

 

“Not a mortal soul, sir.”

 

“Was ever anything so provoking?” said Robert. “To think that I should

have let this person go away without ascertaining who he was, or what he

wanted! How do I know that it was not some one with a message or a

letter from George Talboys?”

 

“Sure if it was, sir, he’ll come again,” said Mrs. Maloney, soothingly.

 

“Yes, of course, if it was anything of consequence he’ll come again,”

muttered Robert. The fact was, that from the moment of finding the

telegraphic message at Southampton, all hope of hearing of George had

faded out of his mind. He felt that there was some mystery involved in

the disappearance of his friend—some treachery toward himself, or

toward George. What if the young man’s greedy old father-in-law had

tried to separate them on account of the monetary trust lodged in Robert

Audley’s hands? Or what if, since even in these civilized days all kinds

of unsuspected horrors are constantly committed—what if the old man had

decoyed George down to Southampton, and made away with him in order to

get possession of that �20,000, left in Robert’s custody for little

Georgey’s use?

 

But neither of these suppositions explained the telegraphic message, and

it was the telegraphic message which had filled Robert’s mind with a

vague sense of alarm. The postman brought no letter from George Talboys,

and the person who had knocked at the door of the chambers did not

return between seven and nine o’clock, so Robert Audley left Figtree

Court once more in search of his friend. This time he told the cabman to

drive to the Euston Station, and in twenty minutes he was on the

platform, making inquiries about the trains.

 

The Liverpool express had started half an hour before he reached the

station, and he had to wait an hour and a quarter for a slow train to

take him to his destination.

 

Robert Audley chafed cruelly at this delay. Half a dozen vessels might

sail for Australia while he roamed up and down the long platform,

tumbling over trucks and porters, and swearing at his ill-luck.

 

He bought the Times newspaper, and looked instinctively at the second

column, with a morbid interest in the advertisements of people

missing—sons, brothers, and husbands who had left their homes, never to

return or to be heard of more.

 

There was one advertisement of a young man found drowned somewhere on

the Lambeth shore.

 

What if that should have been George’s fate? No; the telegraphic message

involved his father-in-law in the fact of his disappearance, and every

speculation about him must start from that one point.

 

It was eight o’clock in the evening when Robert got into Liverpool; too

late for anything except to make inquiries as to what vessel had sailed

within the last two days for the antipodes.

 

An emigrant ship had sailed at four o’clock that afternoon—the

Victoria Regia, bound for Melbourne.

 

The result of his inquiries amounted to this—If he wanted to find out

who had sailed in the Victoria Regia, he must wait till the next

morning, and apply for information of that vessel.

 

Robert Audley was at the office at nine o’clock the next morning, and

was the first person after the clerks who entered it.

 

He met with every civility from the clerk to whom he applied. The young

man referred to his books, and running his pen down the list of

passengers who had sailed in the Victoria Regia, told Robert that

there was no one among them of the name of Talboys. He pushed his

inquiries further. Had any of the passengers entered their names within

a short time of the vessel’s sailing?

 

One of the other clerks looked up from his desk as Robert asked this

question. Yes, he said; he remembered a young man’s coming into the

office at half-past three o’clock in the afternoon, and paying his

passage money. His name was the last on the list—Thomas Brown.

 

Robert Audley shrugged his shoulders. There could have been no possible

reason for George’s taking a feigned name. He asked the clerk who had

last spoken if he could remember the appearance of this Mr. Thomas

Brown.

 

No; the office was crowded at the time; people were running in and out,

and he had not taken any particular notice of this last passenger.

 

Robert thanked them for their civility, and wished them good-morning. As

he was leaving the office, one of the young men called after him:

 

“Oh, by-the-by, sir,” he said, “I remember one thing about this Mr.

Thomas Brown—his arm was in a sling.”

 

There was nothing more for Robert Audley to do but to return to town. He

re-entered his chambers at six o’clock that evening, thoroughly worn out

once more with his useless search.

 

Mrs. Maloney brought him his dinner and a pint of wine from a tavern in

the Strand. The evening was raw and chilly, and the laundress had

lighted a good fire in the sitting-room grate.

 

After eating about half a mutton-chop, Robert sat with his wine untasted

upon the table before him, smoking cigars and staring into the blaze.

 

“George Talboys never sailed for Australia,” he said, after long and

painful reflection. “If he is alive, he is still in England; and if he

is dead, his body is hidden in some corner of England.”

 

He sat for hours smoking and thinking—trouble and gloomy thoughts

leaving a dark shadow upon his moody face, which neither the brilliant

light of the gas nor the red blaze of the fire could dispel.

 

Very late in the evening he rose from his chair, pushed away the table,

wheeled his desk over to the fireplace, took out a sheet of foolscap,

and dipped a pen in the ink.

 

But after doing this he paused, leaned his forehead upon his hand, and

once more relapsed into thought.

 

“I shall draw up a record of all that has occurred between our going

down to Essex and tonight, beginning at the very beginning.”

 

He drew up this record in short, detached sentences, which he numbered

as he wrote.

 

It ran thus:

 

“_Journal of Facts connected with the Disappearance of George Talboys,

inclusive of Facts which have no apparent Relation to that

Circumstance._”

 

In spite of the troubled state of his mind, he was rather inclined to be

proud of the official appearance of this heading. He sat for some time

looking at it with affection, and with the feather of his pen in his

mouth. “Upon my word,” he said, “I begin to think that I ought to have

pursued my profession, instead of dawdling my life away as I have done.”

 

He smoked half a cigar before he had got his thoughts in proper train,

and