Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (popular books of all time .TXT) đź“–
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dead.”
It may be that Mr. Talboys’ complexion faded to a paler shade of buff as
Robert said this; but he only elevated his bristling gray eyebrows and
shook his head gently.
“No,” he said, “no, I assure you, no.”
“I believe that George Talboys died in the month of September.”
The girl who had been addressed as Clara, sat with work primly folded
upon her lap, and her hands lying clasped together on her work, and
never stirred when Robert spoke of his friend’s death. He could not
distinctly see her face, for she was seated at some distance from him,
and with her back to the window.
“No, no, I assure you,” repeated Mr. Talboys, “you labor under a sad
mistake.”
“You believe that I am mistaken in thinking your son dead?” asked
Robert.
“Most certainly,” replied Mr. Talboys, with a smile, expressive of the
serenity of wisdom. “Most certainly, my dear sir. The disappearance was
a very clever trick, no doubt, but it was not sufficiently clever to
deceive me. You must permit me to understand this matter a little better
than you, Mr. Audley, and you must also permit me to assure you of three
things. In the first place, your friend is not dead. In the second
place, he is keeping out of the way for the purpose of alarming me, of
trifling with my feelings as a—as a man who was once his father, and of
ultimately obtaining my forgiveness. In the third place, he will not
obtain that forgiveness, however long he may please to keep out of the
way; and he would therefore act wisely by returning to his ordinary
residence and avocations without delay.”
“Then you imagine him to purposely hide himself from all who know him,
for the purpose of—”
“For the purpose of influencing me,” exclaimed Mr. Talboys, who,
taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that
one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point
of view. “For the purpose of influencing me. He knew the inflexibility
of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew
that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed
purpose of my life, would fail. He therefore tried extraordinary means;
he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time
he discovers that he has not alarmed me, he will return to his old
haunts. When he does so,” said Mr. Talboys, rising to sublimity, “I will
forgive him. Yes, sir, I will forgive him. I shall say to him: You have
attempted to deceive me, and I have shown you that I am not to be
deceived; you have tried to frighten me, and I have convinced you that I
am not to be frightened; you did not believe in my generosity, I will
show you that I can be generous.”
Harcourt Talboys delivered himself of these superb periods with a
studied manner, that showed they had been carefully composed long ago.
Robert Audley sighed as he heard them.
“Heaven grant that you may have an opportunity of saying this to your
son, sir,” he answered sadly. “I am very glad to find that you are
willing to forgive him, but I fear that you will never see him again
upon this earth. I have a great deal to say to you upon this—this sad
subject, Mr. Talboys; but I would rather say it to you alone,” he added,
glancing at the lady in the window.
“My daughter knows my ideas upon this subject, Mr. Audley,” said
Harcourt Talboys; “there is no reason why she should not hear all you
have to say. Miss Clara Talboys, Mr. Robert Audley,” he added, waving
his hand majestically.
The young lady bent her head in recognition of Robert’s bow.
“Let her hear it,” he thought. “If she has so little feeling as to show
no emotion upon such a subject, let her hear the worst I have to tell.”
There was a few minutes’ pause, during which Robert took some papers
from his pocket; among them the document which he had written
immediately after George’s disappearance.
“I shall require all your attention, Mr. Talboys,” he said, “for that
which I have to disclose to you is of a very painful nature. Your son
was my very dear friend—dear to me for many reasons. Perhaps most of
all dear, because I had known him and been with him through the great
trouble of his life; and because he stood comparatively alone in the
world—cast off by you who should have been his best friend, bereft of
the only woman he had ever loved.”
“The daughter of a drunken pauper,” Mr. Talboys remarked,
parenthetically.
“Had he died in his bed, as I sometimes thought be would,” continued
Robert Audley, “of a broken heart, I should have mourned for him very
sincerely, even though I had closed his eyes with my own hands, and had
seen him laid in his quiet resting-place. I should have grieved for my
old schoolfellow, and for the companion who had been dear to me. But
this grief would have been a very small one compared to that which I
feel now, believing, as I do only too firmly, that my poor friend has
been murdered.”
“Murdered!”
The father and daughter simultaneously repeated the horrible word. The
father’s face changed to a ghastly duskiness of hue; the daughter’s face
dropped upon her clasped hands, and was never lifted again throughout
the interview.
“Mr. Audley, you are mad!” exclaimed Harcourt Talboys; “you are mad, or
else you are commissioned by your friend to play upon my feelings. I
protest against this proceeding as a conspiracy, and I—I revoke my
intended forgiveness of the person who was once my son!”
He was himself again as he said this. The blow had been a sharp one, but
its effect had been momentary.
“It is far from my wish to alarm you unnecessarily, sir,” answered
Robert. “Heaven grant that you may be right and I wrong. I pray for it,
but I cannot think it—I cannot even hope it. I come to you for advice.
I will state to you plainly and dispassionately the circumstances which
have aroused my suspicions. If you say those suspicions are foolish and
unfounded I am ready to submit to your better judgment. I will leave
England; and I abandon my search for the evidence wanting to—to confirm
my fears. If you say go on, I will go on.”
Nothing could be more gratifying to the vanity of Mr. Harcourt Talboys
than this appeal. He declared himself ready to listen to all that Robert
might have to say, and ready to assist him to the uttermost of his
power.
He laid some stress upon this last assurance, deprecating the value of
his advice with an affectation that was as transparent as his vanity
itself.
Robert Audley drew his chair nearer to that of Mr. Talboys, and
commenced a minutely detailed account of all that had occurred to George
from the time of his arrival in England to the hour of his
disappearance, as well as all that had occurred since his disappearance
in any way touching upon that particular subject. Harcourt Talboys
listened with demonstrative attention, now and then interrupting the
speaker to ask some magisterial kind of question. Clara Talboys never
once lifted her face from her clasped hands.
The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past eleven when Robert
began his story. The clock struck twelve as he finished.
He had carefully suppressed the names of his uncle and his uncle’s wife
in relating the circumstances in which they had been concerned.
“Now, sir,” he said, when the story had been told, “I await your
decision. You have heard my reasons for coming to this terrible
conclusion. In what manner do these reasons influence you?”
“They don’t in any way turn me from my previous opinion,” answered Mr.
Harcourt Talboys, with the unreasoning pride of an obstinate man. “I
still think, as I thought before, that my son is alive, and that his
disappearance is a conspiracy against myself. I decline to become the
victim of that conspiracy,”
“And you tell me to stop?” asked Robert, solemnly.
“I tell you only this: If you go on, you go on for your own
satisfaction, not for mine. I see nothing in what you have told me to
alarm me for the safety of—your friend.”
“So be it, then!” exclaimed Robert, suddenly; “from this moment I wash
my hands of this business. From this moment the purpose of my life shall
be to forget it.”
He rose as he spoke, and took his hat from the table on which he had
placed it. He looked at Clara Talboys. Her attitude had never changed
since she had dropped her face upon her hands. “Good morning, Mr.
Talboys,” he said, gravely. “God grant that you are right. God grant
that I am wrong. But I fear a day will come when you will have reason to
regret your apathy respecting the untimely fate of your only son.”
He bowed gravely to Mr. Harcourt Talboys and to the lady, whose face was
hidden by her hands.
He lingered for a moment looking at Miss Talboys, thinking that she
would look up, that she would make some sign, or show some desire to
detain him.
Mr. Talboys rang for the emotionless servant, who led Robert off to the
hall-door with the solemnity of manner which would have been in perfect
keeping had he been leading him to execution.
“She is like her father,” thought Mr. Audley, as he glanced for the last
time at the drooping head. “Poor George, you had need of one friend in
this world, for you have had very few to love you.”
CLARA.
Robert Audley found the driver asleep upon the box of his lumbering
vehicle. He had been entertained with beer of so hard a nature as to
induce temporary strangulation in the daring imbiber thereof, and he was
very glad to welcome the return of his fare. The old white horse, who
looked as if he had been foaled in the year in which the carriage had
been built, and seemed, like the carriage, to have outlived the fashion,
was as fast asleep as his master, and woke up with a jerk as Robert came
down the stony flight of steps, attended by his executioner, who waited
respectfully till Mr. Audley had entered the vehicle and been turned
off.
The horse, roused by a smack of his driver’s whip and a shake of the
shabby reins, crawled off in a semi-somnambulent state; and Robert, with
his hat very much over his eyes, thought of his missing friend.
He had played in these stiff gardens, and under these dreary firs, years
ago, perhaps—if it were possible for the most frolicsome youth to be
playful within the range of Mr. Harcourt Talboys’ hard gray eyes. He had
played beneath these dark trees, perhaps, with the sister who had heard
of his fate to day without a tear. Robert Audley looked at the rigid
primness of the orderly grounds, wondering how George could have grown
up in such a place to be the frank, generous, careless friend whom he
had known. How was it that with his father perpetually before his eyes,
he had not grown up after the father’s disagreeable model, to be a
nuisance to his fellow-men? How was it? Because we have Some One higher
than our parents to
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