Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (popular books of all time .TXT) đ
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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hairs in my head the week before last, and an impertinent crow has
planted a delicate impression of his foot under my right eye. Yes, Iâm
getting old upon the right side; and whyâwhy should it be so?â
He pushed away his plate and lifted his eyebrows, staring at the crumbs
upon the glistening damask, as he pondered the question.
âWhat the devil am I doing in this galere?â he asked. âBut I am in it,
and I canât get out of it; so I better submit myself to the brown-eyed
girl, and do what she tells me patiently and faithfully. What a
wonderful solution to lifeâs enigma there is in petticoat government!
Man might lie in the sunshine, and eat lotuses, and fancy it âalways
afternoon,â if his wife would let him! But she wonât, bless her
impulsive heart and active mind! She knows better than that. Who ever
heard of a woman taking life as it ought to be taken? Instead of
supporting it as an unavoidable nuisance, only redeemable by its
brevity, she goes through it as if it were a pageant or a procession.
She dresses for it, and simpers and grins, and gesticulates for it. She
pushes her neighbors, and struggles for a good place in the dismal
march; she elbows, and writhes, and tramples, and prances to the one end
of making the most of the misery. She gets up early and sits up late,
and is loud, and restless, and noisy, and unpitying. She drags her
husband on to the woolsack, or pushes him into Parliament. She drives
him full butt at the dear, lazy machinery of government, and knocks and
buffets him about the wheels, and cranks, and screws, and pulleys; until
somebody, for quietâs sake, makes him something that she wanted him to
be made. Thatâs why incompetent men sometimes sit in high places, and
interpose their poor, muddled intellects between the things to be done
and the people that can do them, making universal confusion in the
helpless innocence of well-placed incapacity. The square men in the
round holes are pushed into them by their wives. The Eastern potentate
who declared that women were at the bottom of all mischief, should have
gone a little further and seen why it is so. It is because women are
never lazy. They donât know what it is to be quiet. They are
Semiramides, and Cleopatras, and Joans of Arc, Queen Elizabeths, and
Catharines the Second, and they riot in battle, and murder, and clamor
and desperation. If they canât agitate the universe and play at ball
with hemispheres, theyâll make mountains of warfare and vexation out of
domestic molehills, and social storms in household teacups. Forbid them
to hold forth upon the freedom of nations and the wrongs of mankind, and
theyâll quarrel with Mrs. Jones about the shape of a mantle or the
character of a small maid-servant. To call them the weaker sex is to
utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the noisier, the
more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. They want freedom of
opinion, variety of occupation, do they? Let them have it. Let them be
lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, soldiers, legislatorsâanything
they likeâbut let them be quietâif they can.â
Mr. Audley pushed his hands through the thick luxuriance of his straight
brown hair, and uplifted the dark mass in his despair.
âI hate women,â he thought, savagely. âTheyâre bold, brazen, abominable
creatures, invented for the annoyance and destruction of their
superiors. Look at this business of poor Georgeâs! Itâs all womanâs work
from one end to the other. He marries a woman, and his father casts him
off penniless and professionless. He hears of the womanâs death and he
breaks his heartâhis good honest, manly heart, worth a million of the
treacherous lumps of self-interest and mercenary calculation which beats
in womenâs breasts. He goes to a womanâs house and he is never seen
alive again. And now I find myself driven into a corner by another
woman, of whose existence I had never thought until this day. Andâand
then,â mused Mr. Audley, rather irrelevantly, âthereâs Alicia, too;
sheâs another nuisance. Sheâd like me to marry her I know; and sheâll
make me do it, I dare say, before sheâs done with me. But Iâd much
rather not; though she is a dear, bouncing, generous thing, bless her
poor little heart.â
Robert paid his bill and rewarded the waiter liberally. The young
barrister was very willing to distribute his comfortable little income
among the people who served him, for he carried his indifference to all
things in the universe, even to the matter of pounds, shillings and
pence. Perhaps he was rather exceptional in this, as you may frequently
find that the philosopher who calls life an empty delusion is pretty
sharp in the investment of his moneys, and recognizes the tangible
nature of India bonds, Spanish certificates, and Egyptian scripâas
contrasted with the painful uncertainty of an Ego or a non-Ego in
metaphysics.
The snug rooms in Figtree Court seemed dreary in their orderly quiet to
Robert Audley upon this particular evening. He had no inclination for
his French novels, though there was a packet of uncut romances, comic
and sentimental, ordered a month before, waiting his pleasure upon one
of the tables. He took his favorite meerschaum and dropped into his
favorite chair with a sigh.
âItâs comfortable, but it seems so deuced lonely tonight. If poor
George were sitting opposite to me, orâor even Georgeâs sisterâsheâs
very like himâexistence might be a little more endurable. But when a
fellowâs lived by himself for eight or ten years he begins to be bad
company.â
He burst out laughing presently as he finished his first pipe.
âThe idea of my thinking of Georgeâs sister,â he thought; âwhat a
preposterous idiot I am!â
The next dayâs post brought him a letter in a firm but feminine hand,
which was strange to him. He found the little packet lying on his
breakfast-table, beside the warm French roll wrapped in a napkin by Mrs.
Maloneyâs careful but rather dirty hands. He contemplated the envelope
for some minutes before opening itânot in any wonder as to his
correspondent, for the letter bore the postmark of Grange Heath, and he
knew that there was only one person who was likely to write to him from
that obscure village, but in that lazy dreaminess which was a part of
his character.
âFrom Clara Talboys,â he murmured slowly, as he looked critically at the
clearly-shaped letters of his name and address. âYes, from Clara
Talboys, most decidedly; I recognized a feminine resemblance to poor
Georgeâs hand; neater than his, and more decided than his, but very
like, very like.â
He turned the letter over and examined the seal, which bore his friendâs
familiar crest.
âI wonder what she says to me?â he thought. âItâs a long letter, I dare
say; sheâs the kind of woman who would write a long letterâa letter
that will urge me on, drive me forward, wrench me out of myself, Iâve no
doubt. But that canât be helpedâso here goes!â
He tore open the envelope with a sigh of resignation. It contained
nothing but Georgeâs two letters, and a few words written on the flap:
âI send the letters; please preserve and return themâC.T.â
The letter, written from Liverpool, told nothing of the writerâs life
except his sudden determination of starting for a new world, to redeem
the fortunes that had been ruined in the old. The letter written almost
immediately after Georgeâs marriage, contained a full description of his
wifeâsuch a description as a man could only write within three weeks of
a love matchâa description in which every feature was minutely
catalogued, every grace of form or beauty of expression fondly dwelt
upon, every charm of manner lovingly depicted.
Robert Audley read the letter three times before he laid it down.
âIf George could have known for what a purpose this description would
serve when he wrote it,â thought the young barrister, âsurely his hand
would have fallen paralyzed by horror, and powerless to shape one
syllable of these tender words.â
CHAPTER XXV.
RETROGRADE INVESTIGATION.
The dreary London January dragged its dull length slowly out. The last
slender records of Christmas time were swept away, and Robert Audley
still lingered in townâstill spent his lonely evenings in his quiet
sitting-room in Figtree Courtâstill wandered listlessly in the Temple
Gardens on sunny mornings, absently listening to the childrenâs babble,
idly watching their play. He had many friends among the inhabitants of
the quaint old buildings round him; he had other friends far away in
pleasant country places, whose spare bedrooms were always at Bobâs
service, whose cheerful firesides had snugly luxurious chairs specially
allotted to him. But he seemed to have lost all taste for companionship,
all sympathy with the pleasures and occupations of his class, since the
disappearance of George Talboys. Elderly benchers indulged in facetious
observations upon the young manâs pale face and moody manner. They
suggested the probability of some unhappy attachment, some feminine
ill-usage as the secret cause of the change. They told him to be of good
cheer, and invited him to supper-parties, at which âlovely woman, with
all her faults, God bless her,â was drunk by gentlemen who shed tears as
they proposed the toast, and were maudlin and unhappy in their cups
toward the close of the entertainment. Robert had no inclination for the
wine-bibbing and the punch-making. The one idea of his life had become
his master. He was the bonden slave of one gloomy thoughtâone horrible
presentiment. A dark cloud was brooding above his uncleâs house, and it
was his hand which was to give the signal for the thunder-clap, and the
tempest that was to ruin that noble life.
âIf she would only take warning and run away,â he said to himself
sometimes. âHeaven knows, I have given her a fair chance. Why doesnât
she take it and run away?â
He heard sometimes from Sir Michael, sometimes from Alicia. The young
ladyâs letter rarely contained more than a few curt lines informing him
that her papa was well; and that Lady Audley was in very high spirits,
amusing herself in her usual frivolous manner, and with her usual
disregard for other people.
A letter from Mr. Marchmont, the Southampton schoolmaster, informed
Robert that little Georgey was going on very well, but that he was
behindhand in his education, and had not yet passed the intellectual
Rubicon of words of two syllables. Captain Maldon had called to see his
grandson, but that privilege had been withheld from him, in accordance
with Mr. Audleyâs instructions. The old man had furthermore sent a
parcel of pastry and sweetmeats to the little boy, which had also been
rejected on the ground of indigestible and bilious tendencies in the
edibles.
Toward the close of February, Robert received a letter from his cousin
Alicia, which hurried him one step further forward toward his destiny,
by causing him to return to the house from which he had become in a
manner exiled at the instigation of his uncleâs wife,
âPapa is very ill,â Alicia wrote; ânot dangerously ill, thank God; but
confined to his room by an attack of low fever which has succeeded a
violent cold. Come and see him, Robert, if you have any regard for your
nearest relations. He has spoken about you several times; and I know he
will be glad to have you with him. Come at once, but say nothing about
this letter.
âFrom your affectionate cousin, ALICIA.â
A sick and deadly terror chilled Robert Audleyâs heart, as he read this
letterâa vague yet hideous fear, which he dared not shape into any
definite
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