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

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choose to remain here and defy me.”

 

“I do,” answered Lady Audley, lifting her head and looking full at the

young barrister. “It is no fault of mine if my husband’s nephew goes

mad, and chooses me for the victim of his monomania.”

 

“So be it, then, my lady,” answered Robert. “My friend George Talboys

was last seen entering these gardens by the little iron gate by which we

came in tonight. He was last heard inquiring for you. He was seen to

enter these gardens, but he was never seen to leave them. I believe that

he met his death within the boundary of these grounds; and that his body

lies hidden below some quiet water, or in some forgotten corner of this

place. I will have such a search made as shall level that house to the

earth and root up every tree in these gardens, rather than I will fail

in finding the grave of my murdered friend.”

 

Lucy Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms

above her head with a wild gesture of despair, but she made no answer to

the ghastly charge of her accuser. Her arms slowly dropped, and she

stood staring at Robert Audley, her white face gleaming through the

dusk, her blue eyes glittering and dilated.

 

“You shall never live to do this,” she said. “I will kill you first.

Why have you tormented me so? Why could you not let me alone? What harm

had I ever done you that you should make yourself my persecutor, and dog

my steps, and watch my looks, and play the spy upon me? Do you want to

drive me mad? Do you know what it is to wrestle with a mad-woman? No,”

cried my lady, with a laugh, “you do not, or you would never—”

 

She stopped abruptly and drew herself suddenly to her fullest hight. It

was the same action which Robert had seen in the old half-drunken

lieutenant; and it had that same dignity—the sublimity of extreme

misery.

 

“Go away, Mr. Audley,” she said. “You are mad, I tell you, you are mad.”

 

“I am going, my lady,” answered Robert, quietly. “I would have condoned

your crimes out of pity to your wretcheness. You have refused to accept

my mercy. I wished to have pity upon the living. I shall henceforth only

remember my duty to the dead.”

 

He walked away from the lonely well under the shadow of the limes. My

lady followed him slowly down that long, gloomy avenue, and across the

rustic bridge to the iron gate. As he passed through the gate, Alicia

came out of a little half-glass door that opened from an oak-paneled

breakfast-room at one angle of the house, and met her cousin upon the

threshold of the gateway.

 

“I have been looking for you everywhere, Robert,” she said. “Papa has

come down to the library, and will be glad to see you.”

 

The young man started at the sound of his cousin’s fresh young voice.

“Good Heaven!” he thought, “can these two women be of the same clay? Can

this frank, generous-hearted girl, who cannot conceal any impulse of her

innocent nature, be of the same flesh and blood as that wretched

creature whose shadow falls upon the path beside me!”

 

He looked from his cousin to Lady Audley, who stood near the gateway,

waiting for him to stand aside and let her pass him.

 

“I don’t know what has come to your cousin, my dear Alicia,” said my

lady. “He is so absent-minded and eccentric as to be quite beyond my

comprehension.”

 

“Indeed,” exclaimed Miss Audley; “and yet I should imagine, from the

length of your tete-a-tete, that you had made some effort to

understand him.”

 

“Oh, yes,” said Robert, quietly, “my lady and I understand each other

very well; but as it is growing late I will wish you good-evening,

ladies. I shall sleep tonight at Mount Stanning, as I have some

business to attend to up there, and I will come down and see my uncle

tomorrow.”

 

“What, Robert,” cried Alicia, “you surely won’t go away without seeing

papa?”

 

“Yes, my dear,” answered the young man. “I am a little disturbed by some

disagreeable business in which I am very much concerned, and I would

rather not see my uncle. Good-night, Alicia. I will come or write

tomorrow.”

 

He pressed his cousin’s hand, bowed to Lady Audley, and walked away

under the black shadows of the archway, and out into the quiet avenue

beyond the Court.

 

My lady and Alicia stood watching him until he was out of sight.

 

“What in goodness’ name is the matter with my Cousin Robert?” exclaimed

Miss Audley, impatiently, as the barrister disappeared. “What does he

mean by these absurd goings-on? Some disagreeable business that disturbs

him, indeed! I suppose the unhappy creature has had a brief forced upon

him by some evil-starred attorney, and is sinking into a state of

imbecility from a dim consciousness of his own incompetence.”

 

“Have you ever studied your cousin’s character, Alicia?” asked my lady,

very seriously, after a pause.

 

“Studied his character! No, Lady Audley. Why should I study his

character?” said Alicia. “There is very little study required to

convince anybody that he is a lazy, selfish Sybarite, who cares for

nothing in the world except his own ease and comfort.”

 

“But have you never thought him eccentric?”

 

“Eccentric!” repeated Alicia, pursing up her red lips and shrugging up

her shoulders. “Well, yes—I believe that is the excuse generally made

for such people. I suppose Bob is eccentric.”

 

“I have never heard you speak of his father and mother,” said my lady,

thoughtfully. “Do you remember them?”

 

“I never saw his mother. She was a Miss Dalrymple, a very dashing girl,

who ran away with my uncle, and lost a very handsome fortune in

consequence. She died at Nice when poor Bob was five years old.”

 

“Did you ever hear anything particular about her?”

 

“How do you mean ‘particular?’” asked Alicia.

 

“Did you ever hear that she was eccentric—what people call ‘odd?’”

 

“Oh, no,” said Alicia, laughing. “My aunt was a very reasonable woman, I

believe, though she did marry for love. But you must remember that she

died before I was born, and I have not, therefore, felt very much

curiosity about her.”

 

“But you recollect your uncle, I suppose.”

 

“My Uncle Robert?” said Alicia. “Oh, yes, I remember him very well,

indeed.”

 

“Was he eccentric—I mean to say, peculiar in his habits, like your

cousin?”

 

“Yes, I believe Robert inherits all his absurdities from his father. My

uncle expressed the same indifference for his fellow-creatures as my

cousin, but as he was a good husband, an affectionate father, and a kind

master, nobody ever challenged his opinions.”

 

“But he was eccentric?”

 

“Yes; I suppose he was generally thought a little eccentric.”

 

“Ah,” said my lady, gravely, “I thought as much. Do you know, Alicia,

that madness is more often transmitted from father to daughter, and from

mother to daughter than from mother to son? Your cousin, Robert Audley,

is a very handsome young man, and I believe, a very good-hearted young

man, but he must be watched, Alicia, for he is mad!”

 

“Mad!” cried Miss Audley, indignantly; “you are dreaming, my lady,

or—or—you are trying to frighten me,” added the young lady, with

considerable alarm.

 

“I only wish to put you on your guard, Alicia,” answered my lady. “Mr.

Audley may be as you say, merely eccentric; but he has talked to me this

evening in a manner that has filled me with absolute terror, and I

believe that he is going mad? I shall speak very seriously to Sir

Michael this very night.”

 

“Speak to papa,” exclaimed Alicia; “you surely won’t distress papa by

suggesting such a possibility!”

 

“I shall only put him on his guard, my dear Alicia.”

 

“But he’ll never believe you,” said Miss Audley; “he will laugh at such

an idea.”

 

“No, Alicia; he will believe anything that I tell him,” answered my

lady, with a quiet smile.

 

CHAPTER XXX.

 

PREPARING THE GROUND.

 

Lady Audley went from the garden to the library, a pleasant,

oak-paneled, homely apartment in which Sir Michael liked to sit reading

or writing, or arranging the business of his estate with his steward, a

stalwart countryman, half agriculturalist, half lawyer, who rented a

small farm a few miles from the Court.

 

The baronet was seated in a capacious easy-chair near the hearth. The

bright blaze of the fire rose and fell, flashing now upon the polished

carvings of the black-oak bookcase, now upon the gold and scarlet

bindings of the books; sometimes glimmering upon the Athenian helmet of

a marble Pallas, sometimes lighting up the forehead of Sir Robert Peel.

 

The lamp upon the reading-table had not yet been lighted, and Sir

Michael sat in the firelight waiting for the coming of his young wife.

 

It is impossible for me ever to tell the purity of his generous love—it

is impossible to describe that affection which was as tender as the love

of a young mother for her first born, as brave and chivalrous as the

heroic passion of a Bayard for his liege mistress.

 

The door opened while he was thinking of this fondly-loved wife, and

looking up, the baronet saw the slender form standing in the doorway.

 

“Why, my darling!” he exclaimed, as my lady closed the door behind her,

and came toward his chair, “I have been thinking of you and waiting for

you for an hour. Where have you been, and what have you been doing?”

 

My lady, standing in the shadow rather than the light, paused a few

moments before replying to this question.

 

“I have been to Chelmsford,” she said, “shopping; and—”

 

She hesitated—twisting her bonnet strings in her thin white fingers

with an air of pretty embarrassment.

 

“And what, my dear?” asked the baronet—“what have you been doing since

you came from Chelmsford? I heard a carriage stop at the door an hour

ago. It was yours, was it not?”

 

“Yes, I came home an hour ago,” answered my lady, with the same air of

embarrassment.

 

“And what have you been doing since you came home?”

 

Sir Michael Audley asked this question with a slightly reproachful

accent. His young wife’s presence made the sunshine of his life; and

though he could not bear to chain her to his side, it grieved him to

think that she could willingly remain unnecessarily absent from him,

frittering away her time in some childish talk or frivolous occupation.

 

“What have you been doing since you came home, my dear?” he repeated.

“What has kept you so long away from me?”

 

“I have been—talking—to—Mr. Robert Audley.”

 

She still twisted her bonnet-string round and round her fingers.

 

She still spoke with the same air of embarrassment.

 

“Robert!” exclaimed the baronet; “is Robert here?”

 

“He was here a little while ago.”

 

“And is here still, I suppose?”

 

“No, he has gone away.”

 

“Gone away!” cried Sir Michael. “What do you mean, my darling?”

 

“I mean that your nephew came to the Court this afternoon. Alicia and I

found him idling about the gardens. He stayed here till about a quarter

of an hour ago talking to me, and then he hurried off without a word of

explanation; except, indeed, some ridiculous excuse about business at

Mount Stanning.”

 

“Business at Mount Stanning! Why, what business can he possibly have in

that out-of-the-way place? He has gone to sleep at Mount