Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (popular books of all time .TXT) đ
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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peculiar to her when affected by any intense agitationââby what right,
Mr. Audley, do you come to me, and torment me about George Talboysâby
what right do you dare to say that his wife is still alive?â
âBy the right of circumstantial evidence, Lady Audley,â answered
Robertââby the right of that circumstantial evidence which will
sometimes fix the guilt of a manâs murder upon that person who, on the
first hearing of the case, seems of all other men the most unlikely to
be guilty.â
âWhat circumstantial evidence?â
âThe evidence of time and place. The evidence of handwriting. When Helen
Talboys left her fatherâs at Wildernsea, she left a letter behind herâa
letter in which she declared that she was weary of her old life, and
that she wished to seek a new home and a new fortune. That letter is in
my possession.â
âIndeed.â
âShall I tell you whose handwriting resembles that of Helen Talboys so
closely, that the most dexterous expert could perceive no distinction
between the two?â
âA resemblance between the handwriting of two women is no very uncommon
circumstance now-a-days,â replied my lady carelessly. âI could show you
the caligraphies of half-a-dozen female correspondents, and defy you to
discover any great difference in them.â
âBut what if the handwriting is a very uncommon one, presenting marked
peculiarities by which it may be recognized among a hundred?â
âWhy, in that case the coincidence is rather curious,â answered my lady;
âbut it is nothing more than a coincidence. You cannot deny the fact of
Helen Talboys death on the ground that her handwriting resembles that of
some surviving person.â
âBut if a series of such coincidences lead up to the same point,â said
Robert. âHelen Talboys left her fatherâs house, according to the
declaration in her own handwriting, because she was weary of her old
life, and wished to begin a new one. Do you know what I infer from
this?â
My lady shrugged her shoulders.
âI have not the least idea,â she said; âand as you have detained me in
this gloomy place nearly half-an-hour, I must beg that you will release
me, and let me go and dress for dinner.â
âNo, Lady Audley,â answered Robert, with a cold sternness that was so
strange to him as to transform him into another creatureâa pitiless
embodiment of justice, a cruel instrument of retributionââno, Lady
Audley,â he repeated, âI have told you that womanly prevarication will
not help you; I tell you now that defiance will not serve you. I have
dealt fairly with you, and have given you fair warning. I gave you
indirect notice of your danger two months ago.â
âWhat do you mean?â asked my lady, suddenly.
âYou did not choose to take that warning, Lady Audley,â pursued Robert,
âand the time has come in which I must speak very plainly to you. Do you
think the gifts which you have played against fortune are to hold you
exempt from retribution? No, my lady, your youth and beauty, your grace
and refinement, only make the horrible secret of your life more
horrible. I tell you that the evidence against you wants only one link
to be strong enough for your condemnation, and that link shall be added.
Helen Talboys never returned to her fatherâs house. When she deserted
that poor old father, she went away from his humble shelter with the
declared intention of washing her hands of that old life. What do people
generally do when they wish to begin a new existenceâto start for a
second time in the race of life, free from the incumbrances that had
fettered their first journey. They change their names, Lady Audley.
Helen Talboys deserted her infant sonâshe went away from Wildernsea
with the predetermination of sinking her identity. She disappeared as
Helen Talboys upon the 16th of August, 1854, and upon the 17th of that
month she reappeared as Lucy Graham, the friendless girl who undertook a
profitless duty in consideration of a home in which she was asked no
questions.â
âYou are mad, Mr. Audley!â cried my lady. âYou are mad, and my husband
shall protect me from your insolence. What if this Helen Talboys ran
away from her home upon one day, and I entered my employerâs house upon
the next, what does that prove?â
âBy itself, very little,â replied Robert Audley; âbut with the help of
other evidenceââ
âWhat evidence?â
âThe evidence of two labels, pasted one over the other, upon a box left
by you in possession of Mrs. Vincent, the upper label bearing the name
of Miss Graham, the lower that of Mrs. George Talboys.â
My lady was silent. Robert Audley could not see her face in the dusk,
but he could see that her two small hands were clasped convulsively over
her heart, and he knew that the shot had gone home to its mark.
âGod help her, poor, wretched creature,â he thought. âShe knows now that
she is lost. I wonder if the judges of the land feel as I do now when
they put on the black cap and pass sentence of death upon some poor,
shivering wretch, who has never done them any wrong. Do they feel a
heroic fervor of virtuous indignation, or do they suffer this dull
anguish which gnaws my vitals as I talk to this helpless woman?â
He walked by my ladyâs side, silently, for some minutes. They had been
pacing up and down the dim avenue, and they were now drawing near the
leafless shrubbery at one end of the lime-walkâthe shrubbery in which
the ruined well sheltered its unheeded decay among the tangled masses of
briery underwood.
A winding pathway, neglected and half-choked with weeds, led toward this
well. Robert left the lime-walk, and struck into this pathway. There was
more light in the shrubbery than in the avenue, and Mr. Audley wished to
see my ladyâs face.
He did not speak until they reached the patch of rank grass beside the
well. The massive brickwork had fallen away here and there, and loose
fragments of masonry lay buried amidst weeds and briars. The heavy posts
which had supported the wooden roller still remained, but the iron
spindle had been dragged from its socket and lay a few paces from the
well, rusty, discolored, and forgotten.
Robert Audley leaned against one of the moss-grown posts and looked down
at my ladyâs face, very pale in the chill winter twilight. The moon had
newly risen, a feebly luminous crescent in the gray heavens, and a
faint, ghostly light mingled with the misty shadows of the declining
day. My ladyâs face seemed like that face which Robert Audley had seen
in his dreams looking out of the white foam-flakes on the green sea
waves and luring his uncle to destruction.
âThose two labels are in my possession, Lady Audley,â he resumed. âI
took them from the box left by you at Crescent Villas. I took them in
the presence of Mrs. Vincent and Miss Tonks. Have you any proofs to
offer against this evidence? You say to me, âI am Lucy Graham and I have
nothing whatever to do with Helen Talboys.â In that case you will
produce witnesses who will declare your antecedents. Where had you been
living prior to your appearance at Crescent Villas? You must have
friends, relations, connections, who can come forward to prove as much
as this for you? If you were the most desolate creature upon this earth,
you would be able to point to someone who could identify you with the
past.â
âYes,â cried my lady, âif I were placed in a criminal dock I could, no
doubt, bring forward witnesses to refute your absurd accusation. But I
am not in a criminal dock, Mr. Audley, and I do not choose to do
anything but laugh at your ridiculous folly. I tell you that you are
mad! If you please to say that Helen Talboys is not dead, and that I am
Helen Talboys, you may do so. If you choose to go wandering about in the
places in which I have lived, and to the places in which this Mrs.
Talboys has lived, you must follow the bent of your own inclination, but
I would warn you that such fancies have sometimes conducted people, as
apparently sane as yourself, to the life-long imprisonment of a private
lunatic-asylum.â
Robert Audley started and recoiled a few paces among the weeds and
brushwood as my lady said this.
âShe would be capable of any new crime to shield her from the
consequences of the old one,â he thought. âShe would be capable of using
her influence with my uncle to place me in a madhouse.â
I do not say that Robert Audley was a coward, but I will admit that a
shiver of horror, something akin to fear, chilled him to the heart as he
remembered the horrible things that have been done by women since that
day upon which Eve was created to be Adamâs companion and help-meet in
the garden of Eden. âWhat if this womanâs hellish power of dissimulation
should be stronger than the truth, and crush him? She had not spared
George Talboys when he stood in her way and menaced her with a certain
peril; would she spare him who threatened her with a far greater danger?
Are women merciful, or loving, or kind in proportion to their beauty and
grace? Was there not a certain Monsieur Mazers de Latude, who had the
bad fortune to offend the all-accomplished Madam de Pompadour, who
expiated his youthful indiscretion by a life-long imprisonment; who
twice escaped from prison, to be twice cast back into captivity; who,
trusting in the tardy generosity of his beautiful foe, betrayed himself
to an implacable fiend? Robert Audley looked at the pale face of the
woman standing by his side; that fair and beautiful face, illumined by
starry-blue eyes, that had a strange and surely a dangerous light in
them; and remembering a hundred stories of womanly perfidy, shuddered as
he thought how unequal the struggle might be between himself and his
uncleâs wife.
âI have shown her my cards,â he thought, âbut she has kept hers hidden
from me. The mask that she wears is not to be plucked away. My uncle
would rather think me mad than believe her guilty.â
The pale face of Clara Talboysâthat grave and earnest face, so
different in its character to my ladyâs fragile beautyâarose before
him.
âWhat a coward I am to think of myself or my own danger,â he thought.
âThe more I see of this woman the more reason I have to dread her
influence upon others; the more reason to wish her far away from this
house.â
He looked about him in the dusky obscurity. The lonely garden was as
quiet as some solitary graveyard, walled in and hidden away from the
world of the living.
âIt was somewhere in this garden that she met George Talboys upon the
day of his disappearance,â he thought. âI wonder where it was they met;
I wonder where it was that he looked into her cruel face and taxed her
with her falsehood?â
My lady, with her little hand resting lightly upon the opposite post to
that against which Robert leaned, toyed with her pretty foot among the
long weeds, but kept a furtive watch upon her enemyâs face.
âIt is to be a duel to the death, then, my lady,â said Robert Audley,
solemnly. âYou refuse to accept my warning. You refuse to run away and
repent of your wickedness in some foreign place, far from the generous
gentleman you have deceived and fooled by your false witcheries.
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