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

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governess in the family of a surgeon in the village near Audley Court.

No one knew anything of her, except that she came in answer to an

advertisement which Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, had inserted in The

Times. She came from London; and the only reference she gave was to a

lady at a school at Brompton, where she had once been a teacher. But

this reference was so satisfactory that none other was needed, and Miss

Lucy Graham was received by the surgeon as the instructress of his

daughters. Her accomplishments were so brilliant and numerous, that it

seemed strange that she should have answered an advertisement offering

such very moderate terms of remuneration as those named by Mr. Dawson;

but Miss Graham seemed perfectly well satisfied with her situation, and

she taught the girls to play sonatas by Beethoven, and to paint from

nature after Creswick, and walked through a dull, out-of-the-way village

to the humble little church, three times every Sunday, as contentedly as

if she had no higher aspiration in the world than to do so all the rest

of her life.

 

People who observed this, accounted for it by saying that it was a part

of her amiable and gentle nature always to be light-hearted, happy and

contented under any circumstances.

 

Wherever she went she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. In the

cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam. She would sit

for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as

pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been

listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away,

leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her

benevolence), the old woman would burst out into senile raptures with

her grace, beauty, and her kindliness, such as she never bestowed upon

the vicar’s wife, who half fed and clothed her. For you see, Miss Lucy

Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a

woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Every one loved,

admired, and praised her. The boy who opened the five-barred gate that

stood in her pathway, ran home to his mother to tell of her pretty

looks, and the sweet voice in which she thanked him for the little

service. The verger at the church, who ushered her into the surgeon’s

pew; the vicar, who saw the soft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he

preached his simple sermon; the porter from the railway station, who

brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for

reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants;

everybody, high and low, united in declaring that Lucy Graham was the

sweetest girl that ever lived.

 

Perhaps it was the rumor of this which penetrated into the quiet chamber

of Audley Court; or, perhaps, it was the sight of her pretty face,

looking over the surgeon’s high pew every Sunday morning; however it

was, it was certain that Sir Michael Audley suddenly experienced a

strong desire to be better acquainted with Mr. Dawson’s governess.

 

He had only to hint his wish to the worthy doctor for a little party to

be got up, to which the vicar and his wife, and the baronet and his

daughter, were invited.

 

That one quiet evening sealed Sir Michael’s fate. He could no more

resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the

graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its

wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice;

the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly

charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny! Destiny! Why,

she was his destiny! He had never loved before. What had been his

marriage with Alicia’s mother but a dull, jog-trot bargain made to keep

some estate in the family that would have been just as well out of it?

What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful,

smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But

this was love—this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain,

miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an

insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his white

beard; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair,

and a slim waist, such as he had twenty years before; these, wakeful

nights and melancholy days, so gloriously brightened if he chanced to

catch a glimpse of her sweet face behind the window curtains, as he

drove past the surgeon’s house; all these signs gave token of the truth,

and told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, Sir

Michael Audley had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love.

 

I do not think that, throughout his courtship, the baronet once

calculated upon his wealth or his position as reasons for his success.

If he ever remembered these things, he dismissed the thought of them

with a shudder. It pained him too much to believe for a moment that any

one so lovely and innocent could value herself against a splendid house

or a good old title. No; his hope was that, as her life had been most

likely one of toil and dependence, and as she was very young nobody

exactly knew her age, but she looked little more than twenty, she might

never have formed any attachment, and that he, being the first to woo

her, might, by tender attentions, by generous watchfulness, by a love

which should recall to her the father she had lost, and by a protecting

care that should make him necessary to her, win her young heart, and

obtain from her fresh and earliest love, the promise or her hand. It was

a very romantic day-dream, no doubt; but, for all that, it seemed in a

very fair way to be realized. Lucy Graham appeared by no means to

dislike the baronet’s attentions. There was nothing whatever in her

manner that betrayed the shallow artifices employed by a woman who

wishes to captivate a rich man. She was so accustomed to admiration from

every one, high and low, that Sir Michael’s conduct made very little

impression upon her. Again, he had been so many years a widower that

people had given up the idea of his ever marrying again. At last,

however, Mrs. Dawson spoke to the governess on the subject. The

surgeon’s wife was sitting in the school-room busy at work, while Lucy

was putting the finishing touches on some water-color sketches done by

her pupils.

 

“Do you know, my dear Miss Graham,” said Mrs. Dawson, “I think you ought

to consider yourself a remarkably lucky girl?”

 

The governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude, and stared

wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of curls. They were

the most wonderful curls in the world—soft and feathery, always

floating away from her face, and making a pale halo round her head when

the sunlight shone through them.

 

“What do you mean, my dear Mrs. Dawson?” she asked, dipping her

camel’s-hair brush into the wet aquamarine upon the palette, and poising

it carefully before putting in the delicate streak of purple which was

to brighten the horizon in her pupil’s sketch.

 

“Why, I mean, my dear, that it only rests with yourself to become Lady

Audley, and the mistress of Audley Court.”

 

Lucy Graham dropped the brush upon the picture, and flushed scarlet to

the roots of her fair hair; and then grew pale again, far paler than

Mrs. Dawson had ever seen her before.

 

“My dear, don’t agitate yourself,” said the surgeon’s wife, soothingly;

“you know that nobody asks you to marry Sir Michael unless you wish. Of

course it would be a magnificent match; he has a splendid income, and is

one of the most generous of men. Your position would be very high, and

you would be enabled to do a great deal of good; but, as I said before,

you must be entirely guided by your own feelings. Only one thing I must

say, and that is that if Sir Michael’s attentions are not agreeable to

you, it is really scarcely honorable to encourage him.”

 

“His attentions—encourage him!” muttered Lucy, as if the words

bewildered her. “Pray, pray don’t talk to me, Mrs. Dawson. I had no idea

of this. It is the last thing that would have occurred to me.” She

leaned her elbows on the drawing-board before her, and clasping her

hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply. She

wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket, or a cross, or

a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket was, she

always kept it hidden under her dress. Once or twice, while she sat

silently thinking, she removed one of her hands from before her face,

and fidgeted nervously with the ribbon, clutching at it with a

half-angry gesture, and twisting it backward and forward between her

fingers.

 

“I think some people are born to be unlucky, Mrs. Dawson,” she said,

by-and-by; “it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to

become Lady Audley.”

 

She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the surgeon’s

wife looked up at her with surprise.

 

“You unlucky, my dear!” she exclaimed. “I think you are the last person

who ought to talk like that—you, such a bright, happy creature, that it

does every one good to see you. I’m sure I don’t know what we shall do

if Sir Michael robs us of you.”

 

After this conversation they often spoke upon the subject, and Lucy

never again showed any emotion whatever when the baronet’s admiration

for her was canvassed. It was a tacitly understood thing in the

surgeon’s family that whenever Sir Michael proposed, the governess would

quietly accept him; and, indeed, the simple Dawsons would have thought

it something more than madness in a penniless girl to reject such an

offer.

 

So, one misty August evening, Sir Michael, sitting opposite to Lucy

Graham, at a window in the surgeon’s little drawing-room, took an

opportunity while the family happened by some accident to be absent from

the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. He made the

governess, in a few but solemn words, an offer of his hand. There was

something almost touching in the manner and tone in which he spoke to

her—half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly expect to be the

choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that she would

reject him, even though she broke his heart by doing so, than that she

should accept his offer if she did not love him.

 

“I scarcely think there is a greater sin, Lucy,” he said, solemnly,

“than that of a woman who marries a man she does not love. You are so

precious to me, my beloved, that deeply as my heart is set on this, and

bitter as the mere thought of disappointment is to me, I would not have

you commit such a sin for any happiness of mine. If my happiness could

be achieved by such an act, which it could not—which it never could,”

he repeated, earnestly—“nothing but misery can result from a marriage

dictated by any motive but truth and love.”

 

Lucy Graham was not looking at Sir Michael, but straight out into the

misty twilight and dim landscape far away beyond the little garden. The

baronet tried to see her face, but her profile was turned to him, and he

could not discover the expression of her eyes. If he could have