Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (popular books of all time .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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wrist, and speaking in a low, earnest voice, but with a certain
imperious air that challenged contradiction and commanded obedience.
“Listen to me, Phoebe,” she repeated. “I am going to the Castle Inn
tonight; whether it is early or late is of very little consequence to
me; I have set my mind upon going, and I shall go. You have asked me
why, and I have told you. I am going in order that I may pay this debt
myself; and that I may see for myself that the money I give is applied
to the purpose for which I give it. There is nothing out of the common
course of life in my doing this. I am going to do what other women in my
position very often do. I am going to assist a favorite servant.”
“But it’s getting on for twelve o’clock, my lady,” pleaded Phoebe.
Lady Audley frowned impatiently at this interruption.
“If my going to your house to pay this man should be known,” she
continued, still retaining her hold of Phoebe’s wrist, “I am ready to
answer for my conduct; but I would rather that the business should be
kept quiet. I think that I can leave this house without being seen by
any living creature, if you will do as I tell you.”
“I will do anything you wish, my lady,” answered Phoebe, submissively.
“Then you will wish me good-night presently, when my maid comes into the
room, and you will suffer her to show you out of the house. You will
cross the courtyard and wait for me in the avenue upon the other side of
the archway. It may be half an hour before I am able to join you, for I
must not leave my room till the servants have all gone to bed, but you
may wait for me patiently, for come what may I will join you.”
Lady Audley’s face was no longer pale. An unnatural luster gleamed in
her great blue eyes. She spoke with an unnatural rapidity. She had
altogether the appearance and manner of a person who has yielded to the
dominant influence of some overpowering excitement. Phoebe Marks stared
at her late mistress in mute bewilderment. She began to fear that my
lady was going mad.
The bell which Lady Audley rang was answered by the smart lady’s-maid
who wore rose-colored ribbons, and black silk gowns, and other
adornments which were unknown to the humble people who sat below the
salt in the good old days when servants wore linsey-woolsey.
“I did not know that it was so late, Martin,” said my lady, in that
gentle tone which always won for her the willing service of her
inferiors. “I have been talking with Mrs. Marks and have let the time
slip by me. I sha’n’t want anything tonight, so you may go to bed when
you please.”
“Thank you, my lady,” answered the girl, who looked very sleepy, and had
some difficulty in repressing a yawn even in her mistress’ presence, for
the Audley household usually kept very early hours. “I’d better show
Mrs. Marks out, my lady, hadn’t I?” asked the maid, “before I go to
bed?”
“Oh, yes, to be sure; you can let Phoebe out. All the other servants
have gone to bed, then, I suppose?”
“Yes, my lady.”
Lady Audley laughed as she glanced at the timepiece.
“We have been terrible dissipated up here, Phoebe,” she said.
“Good-night. You may tell your husband that his rent shall be paid.”
“Thank you very much, my lady, and good-night,” murmured Phoebe as she
backed out of the room, followed by the lady’s maid.
Lady Audley listened at the door, waiting till the muffled sounds of
their footsteps died away in the octagon chamber and on the carpeted
staircase.
“Martin sleeps at the top of the house,” she said, “half a mile away
from this room. In ten minutes I may safely make my escape.”
She went back into her dressing-room, and put on her cloak and bonnet
for the second time. The unnatural color still burnt like a flame in her
cheeks; the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes. The excitement
which she was under held her in so strong a spell that neither her mind
nor her body seemed to have any consciousness of fatigue. However
verbose I may be in my description of her feelings, I can never describe
a tithe of her thoughts or her sufferings. She suffered agonies that
would fill closely printed volumes, bulky with a thousand pages, in that
one horrible night. She underwent volumes of anguish, and doubt, and
perplexity; sometimes repeating the same chapters of her torments over
and over again; sometimes hurrying through a thousand pages of her
misery without one pause, without one moment of breathing time. She
stood by the low fender in her boudoir, watching the minute-hand of the
clock, and waiting till it should be time for her to leave the house in
safety.
“I will wait ten minutes,” she said, “not a moment beyond, before I
enter on my new peril.”
She listened to the wild roaring of the March wind, which seemed to have
risen with the stillness and darkness of the night.
The hand slowly made its inevitable way to the figures which told that
the ten minutes were past. It was exactly a quarter to twelve when my
lady took her lamp in her hand, and stole softly from the room. Her
footfall was as light as that of some graceful wild animal, and there
was no fear of that airy step awakening any echo upon the carpeted stone
corridors and staircase. She did not pause until she reached the
vestibule upon the ground floor. Several doors opened out of the
vestibule, which was octagon, like my lady’s antechamber. One of these
doors led into the library, and it was this door which Lady Audley
opened softly and cautiously.
To have attempted to leave the house secretly by any of the principal
outlets would have been simple madness, for the housekeeper herself
superintended the barricading of the great doors, back and front. The
secrets of the bolts, and bars, and chains, and bells which secured
these doors, and provided for the safety of Sir Michael Audley’s
plate-room, the door of which was lined with sheet-iron, were known only
to the servants who had to deal with them. But although all these
precautions were taken with the principal entrances to the citadel, a
wooden shutter and a slender iron bar, light enough to be lifted by a
child, were considered sufficient safeguard for the half-glass door
which opened out of the breakfast-room into the graveled pathway and
smooth turf in the courtyard.
It was by this outlet that Lady Audley meant to make her escape. She
could easily remove the bar and unfasten the shutter, and she might
safely venture to leave the window ajar while she was absent. There was
little fear of Sir Michael’s awaking for some time, as he was a heavy
sleeper in the early part of the night, and had slept more heavily than
usual since his illness.
Lady Audley crossed the library, and opened the door of the
breakfast-room, which communicated with it. This latter apartment was
one of the later additions to the Court. It was a simple, cheerful
chamber, with brightly papered walls and pretty maple furniture, and was
more occupied by Alicia than any one else. The paraphernalia of that
young lady’s favorite pursuits were scattered about the
room—drawing-materials, unfinished scraps of work, tangled skeins of
silk, and all the other tokens of a careless damsel’s presence; while
Miss Audley’s picture—a pretty crayon sketch of a rosy-faced hoyden in
a riding-habit and hat—hung over the quaint Wedgewood ornaments on the
chimneypiece. My lady looked upon these familiar objects with scornful
hatred flaming in her blue eyes.
“How glad she will be if any disgrace befalls me,” she thought; “how she
will rejoice if I am driven out of this house!”
Lady Audley set the lamp upon a table near the fireplace, and went to
the window. She removed the iron-bar and the light wooden shutter, and
then opened the glass-door. The March night was black and moonless, and
a gust of wind blew in upon her as she opened this door, and filled the
room with its chilly breath, extinguishing the lamp upon the table.
“No matter,” my lady muttered, “I could not have left it burning. I
shall know how to find my way through the house when I come back. I have
left all the doors ajar.”
She stepped quickly out upon the smooth gravel, and closed the
glass-door behind her. She was afraid lest that treacherous wind should
blow-to the door opening into the library, and thus betray her.
She was in the quadrangle now, with that chill wind sweeping against
her, and swirling her silken garments round her with a shrill, rustling
noise, like the whistling of a sharp breeze against the sails of a
yacht. She crossed the quadrangle and looked back—looked back for a
moment at the firelight gleaming between the rosy-tinted curtains in her
boudoir, and the dim gleam of the lamp through the mullioned windows in
the room where Sir Michael Audley lay asleep.
“I feel as if I were running away,” she thought; “I feel as if I were
running away secretly in the dead of the night, to lose myself and be
forgotten. Perhaps it would be wiser in me to run away, to take this
man’s warning, and escape out of his power forever. If I were to run
away and disappear as—as George Talboys disappeared. But where could I
go? what would become of me? I have no money; my jewels are not worth a
couple of hundred pounds, now that I have got rid of the best part of
them. What could I do? I must go back to the old life, the old, hard,
cruel, wretched life—the life of poverty, and humiliation, and
vexation, and discontent. I should have to go back and wear myself out
in that long struggle, and die—as my mother died, perhaps!”
My lady stood still for a moment on the smooth lawn between the
quadrangle and the archway, with her head drooping upon her breast and
her hands locked together, debating this question in the unnatural
activity of her mind. Her attitude reflected the state of that mind—it
expressed irresolution and perplexity. But presently a sudden change
came over her; she lifted her head—lifted it with an action of defiance
and determination.
“No! Mr. Robert Audley,” she said, aloud, in a low, clear voice; “I will
not go back—I will not go back. If the struggle between us is to be a
duel to the death, you shall not find me drop my weapon.”
She walked with a firm and rapid step under the archway. As she passed
under that massive arch, it seemed as if she disappeared into some black
gulf that had waited open to receive her. The stupid clock struck
twelve, and the whole archway seemed to vibrate under its heavy strokes,
as Lady Audley emerged upon the other side and joined Phoebe Marks, who
had waited for her late mistress very near the gateway of the Court.
“Now, Phoebe,” she said, “it is three miles from here to Mount Stanning,
isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Then we can walk the distance in an hour and a half.”
Lady Audley had not stopped to say this; she was walking quickly along
the avenue with her humble companion by her side. Fragile and delicate
as she was in appearance, she was a very good walker. She had been
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