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

>hysterical excitement from which she had only just recovered had left

its effects upon her, but she controlled herself, and her tone grew

calmer as she resumed:

 

“Robert Audley is mad,” she said, decisively. “What is one of the

strangest diagnostics of madness—what is the first appalling sign of

mental aberration? The mind becomes stationary; the brain stagnates; the

even current of reflection is interrupted; the thinking power of the

brain resolves itself into a monotone. As the waters of a tideless pool

putrefy by reason of their stagnation, the mind becomes turbid and

corrupt through lack of action; and the perpetual reflection upon one

subject resolves itself into monomania. Robert Audley is a monomaniac.

The disappearance of his friend, George Talboys, grieved and bewildered

him. He dwelt upon this one idea until he lost the power of thinking of

anything else. The one idea looked at perpetually became distorted to

his mental vision. Repeat the commonest word in the English language

twenty times, and before the twentieth repetition you will have begun to

wonder whether the word which you repeat is really the word you mean to

utter. Robert Audley has thought of his friend’s disappearance until the

one idea has done its fatal and unhealthy work. He looks at a common

event with a vision that is diseased, and he distorts it into a gloomy

horror engendered of his own monomania. If you do not want to make me as

mad as he is, you must never let me see him again. He declared tonight

that George Talboys was murdered in this place, and that he will root up

every tree in the garden, and pull down every brick in the house in

search for—”

 

My lady paused. The words died away upon her lips. She had exhausted

herself by the strange energy with which she had spoken. She had been

transformed from a frivolous, childish beauty into a woman, strong to

argue her own cause and plead her own defense.

 

“Pull down this house?” cried the baronet. “George Talboys murdered at

Audley Court! Did Robert say this, Lucy?”

 

“He said something of that kind—something that frightened me very

much.”

 

“Then he must be mad,” said Sir Michael, gravely. “I’m bewildered by

what you tell me. Did he really say this, Lucy, or did you misunderstand

him?”

 

“I—I—don’t think I did,” faltered my lady. “You saw how frightened I

was when I first came in. I should not have been so much agitated if he

hadn’t said something horrible.”

 

Lady Audley had availed herself of the very strongest arguments by which

she could help her cause.

 

“To be sure, my darling, to be sure,” answered the baronet. “What could

have put such a horrible fancy into the unhappy boy’s head. This Mr.

Talboys—a perfect stranger to all of us—murdered at Audley Court!

I’ll go to Mount Stanning tonight, and see Robert. I have known him

ever since he was a baby, and I cannot be deceived in him. If there is

really anything wrong, he will not be able to conceal it from me.”

 

My lady shrugged her shoulders.

 

“That is rather an open question,” she said. “It is generally a stranger

who is the first to observe any psychological peculiarity.”

 

The big words sounded strange from my lady’s rosy lips; but her

newly-adopted wisdom had a certain quaint prettiness about it, which

charmed and bewildered her husband.

 

“But you must not go to Mount Stanning, my dear darling,” she said,

tenderly. “Remember that you are under strict orders to stay in doors

until the weather is milder, and the sun shines upon this cruel

ice-bound country.”

 

Sir Michael Audley sank back in his capacious chair with a sigh of

resignation.

 

“That’s true, Lucy,” he said; “we must obey Mr. Dawson. I suppose Robert

will come to see me tomorrow.”

 

“Yes, dear. I think he said he would.”

 

“Then we must wait till tomorrow, my darling. I can’t believe that

there really is anything wrong with the poor boy—I can’t believe it,

Lucy.”

 

“Then how do you account for this extraordinary delusion about this Mr.

Talboys?” asked my lady.

 

Sir Michael shook his head.

 

“I don’t know, Lucy—I don’t know,” he answered. “It is always so

difficult to believe that any one of the calamities that continually

befall our fellow-men will ever happen to us. I can’t believe that my

nephew’s mind is impaired—I can’t believe it. I—I’ll get him to stop

here, Lucy, and I’ll watch him closely. I tell you, my love, if there is

anything wrong I am sure to find it out. I can’t be mistaken in a young

man who has always been the same to me as my own son. But, my darling,

why were you so frightened by Robert’s wild talk? It could not affect

you.”

 

My lady sighed piteously.

 

“You must think me very strong-minded, Sir Michael,” she said, with

rather an injured air, “if you imagine I can hear of these sort of

things indifferently. I know I shall never be able to see Mr. Audley

again.”

 

“And you shall not, my dear—you shall not.”

 

“You said just now you would have him here,” murmured Lady Audley.

 

“But I will not, my darling girl, if his presence annoys you. Good

Heaven! Lucy, can you imagine for a moment that I have any higher wish

than to promote your happiness? I will consult some London physician

about Robert, and let him discover if there is really anything the

matter with my poor brother’s only son. You shall not be annoyed,

Lucy.”

 

“You must think me very unkind, dear,” said my lady, “and I know I

ought not to be annoyed by the poor fellow; but he really seems to

have taken some absurd notion into his head about me.”

 

“About you, Lucy!” cried Sir Michael.

 

“Yes, dear. He seems to connect me in some vague manner—which I cannot

quite understand—with the disappearance of this Mr. Talboys.”

 

“Impossible, Lucy! You must have misunderstood him.”

 

“I don’t think so.”

 

“Then he must be mad,” said the baronet—“he must be mad. I will wait

till he goes back to town, and then send some one to his chambers to

talk to him. Good Heaven! what a mysterious business this is.”

 

“I fear I have distressed you, darling,” murmured Lady Audley.

 

“Yes, my dear, I am very much distressed by what you have told me; but

you were quite right to talk to me frankly about this dreadful business.

I must think it over, dearest, and try and decide what is best to be

done.”

 

My lady rose from the low ottoman on which she had been seated. The fire

had burned down, and there was only a faint glow of red light in the

room. Lucy Audley bent over her husband’s chair, and put her lips to his

broad forehead.

 

“How good you have always been to me, dear,” she whispered softly. “You

would never let any one influence you against me, would you, dear?”

 

“Influence me against you?” repeated the baronet. “No, my love.”

 

“Because you know, dear,” pursued my lady, “there are wicked people as

well as mad people in the world, and there may be some persons to whose

interest it would be to injure me.”

 

“They had better not try it, then, my dear,” answered Sir Michael; “they

would find themselves in rather a dangerous position if they did.”

 

Lady Audley laughed aloud, with a gay, triumphant, silvery peal of

laughter that vibrated through the quiet room.

 

“My own dear darling,” she said, “I know you love me. And now I must run

away, dear, for it’s past seven o’clock. I was engaged to dine at Mrs.

Montford’s, but I must send a groom with a message of apology, for Mr.

Audley has made me quite unfit for company. I shall stay at home and

nurse you, dear. You’ll go to bed very early, won’t you, and take great

care of yourself?”

 

“Yes, dear.”

 

My lady tripped out of the room to give her orders about the message

that was to be carried to the house at which she was to have dined. She

paused for a moment as she closed the library door—she paused, and laid

her hand upon her breast to check the rapid throbbing of her heart.

 

“I have been afraid of you, Mr. Robert Audley,” she thought; “but

perhaps the time may come in which you will have cause to be afraid of

me.”

 

CHAPTER XXXI.

 

PHOEBE’S PETITION.

 

The division between Lady Audley and her step-daughter had not become

any narrower in the two months which had elapsed since the pleasant

Christmas holiday time had been kept at Audley Court. There was no open

warfare between the two women; there was only an armed neutrality,

broken every now and then by brief feminine skirmishes and transient

wordy tempests. I am sorry to say that Alicia would very much have

preferred a hearty pitched battle to this silent and undemonstrative

disunion; but it was not very easy to quarrel with my lady. She had soft

answers for the turning away of wrath. She could smile bewitchingly at

her step-daughter’s open petulance, and laugh merrily at the young

lady’s ill-temper. Perhaps had she been less amiable, had she been more

like Alicia in disposition, the two ladies might have expended their

enmity in one tremendous quarrel, and might ever afterward have been

affectionate and friendly. But Lucy Audley would not make war. She

carried forward the sum of her dislike, and put it out at a steady rate

of interest, until the breach between her step-daughter and herself,

widening a little every day, became a great gulf, utterly impassable by

olive-branch-bearing doves from either side of the abyss. There can be

no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. There must be a

battle, a brave, boisterous battle, with pennants waving and cannon

roaring, before there can be peaceful treaties and enthusiastic shaking

of hands. Perhaps the union between France and England owes its greatest

force to the recollection of Cressy and Waterloo, Navarino and

Trafalgar. We have hated each other and licked each other and _had it

out_, as the common phrase goes; and we can afford now to fall into each

others’ arms and vow eternal friendship and everlasting brotherhood. Let

us hope that when Northern Yankeedom has decimated and been decimated,

blustering Jonathan may fling himself upon his Southern brother’s

breast, forgiving and forgiven.

 

Alicia Audley and her father’s pretty wife had plenty of room for the

comfortable indulgence of their dislike in the spacious old mansion. My

lady had her own apartments, as we know—luxurious chambers, in which

all conceivable elegancies had been gathered for the comfort of their

occupant. Alicia had her own rooms in another part of the large house.

She had her favorite mare, her Newfoundland dog, and her drawing

materials, and she made herself tolerably happy. She was not very happy,

this frank, generous-hearted girl, for it was scarcely possible that she

could be altogether at ease in the constrained atmosphere of the Court.

Her father was changed; that dear father over whom she had once reigned

supreme with the boundless authority of a spoiled child, had accepted

another ruler and submitted to a new dynasty. Little by little my lady’s

petty power made itself felt in that narrow household; and Alicia saw

her father gradually lured across the gulf that divided Lady Audley from

her step-daughter, until he stood at last quite upon the other side of

the abyss, and looked coldly upon his only child across that widening

chasm.

 

Alicia felt that he was lost to her.