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

out some cooling drink into a mug, and carried it

to her son.

 

He drank it in an eager hurry, as if he felt that the brief remainder of

his life must be a race with the pitiless pedestrian, Time.

 

“Stop where you are,” he said to his mother, pointing to a chair at the

foot of the bed.

 

The old woman obeyed, and seated herself meekly opposite to Mr. Audley.

 

“I’ll ask you another question, mother,” said Luke, “and I think it’ll

be strange if you can’t answer it. Do you remember when I was at work

upon Atkinson’s farm; before I was married you know, and when I was

livin’ down here along of you?”

 

“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Marks answered, nodding triumphantly, “I remember that,

my dear. It were last fall, just about as the apples was bein’ gathered

in the orchard across our lane, and about the time as you had your new

sprigged wesket. I remember, Luke, I remember.”

 

Mr. Audley wondered where all this was to lead to, and how long he would

have to sit by the sick man’s bed, hearing a conversation that had no

meaning to him.

 

“If you remember that much, maybe you’ll remember more, mother,” said

Luke. “Can you call to mind my bringing some one home here one night,

while Atkinsons was stackin’ the last o’ their corn?”

 

Once more Mr. Audley started violently, and this time he looked up

earnestly at the face of the speaker, and listened, with a strange,

breathless interest, that he scarcely understood himself, to what Luke

Marks was saying.

 

“I rek’lect your bringing home Phoebe,” the old woman answered, with

great animation. “I rek’lect your bringin’ Phoebe home to take a cup o’

tea, or a little snack o’ supper, a mort o’ times.”

 

“Bother Phoebe,” cried Mr. Marks, “who’s a talkin’ of Phoebe? What’s

Phoebe, that anybody should go to put theirselves out about her? Do you

remember my bringin’ home a gentleman after ten o’clock, one September

night; a gentleman as was wet through to the skin, and was covered with

mud and slush, and green slime and black muck, from the crown of his

head to the sole of his foot, and had his arm broke, and his shoulder

swelled up awful; and was such a objeck that nobody would ha’ knowed

him; a gentleman as had to have his clothes cut off him in some places,

and as sat by the kitchen fire, starin’ at the coals as if he had gone

mad or stupid-like, and didn’t know where he was, or who he was; and as

had to be cared for like a baby, and dressed, and dried, and washed, and

fed with spoonfuls of brandy, that had to be forced between his locked

teeth, before any life could be got into him? Do you remember that,

mother?”

 

The old woman nodded, and muttered something to the effect that she

remembered all these circumstances most vividly, now that Luke happened

to mention them.

 

Robert Audley uttered a wild cry, and fell down upon his knees by the

side of the sick man’s bed.

 

“My God!” he ejaculated, “I think Thee for Thy wondrous mercies. George

Talboys is alive!”

 

“Wait a bit,” said Mr. Marks, “don’t you be too fast. Mother, give us

down that tin box on the shelf over against the chest of drawers, will

you?”

 

The old woman obeyed, and after fumbling among broken teacups and

milk-jugs, lidless wooden cotton-boxes, and a miscellaneous litter of

rags and crockery, produced a tin snuff-box with a sliding lid; a

shabby, dirty-looking box enough.

 

Robert Audley still knelt by the bedside with his face hidden by his

clasped hands. Luke Marks opened the tin box.

 

“There ain’t no money in it, more’s the pity,” he said, “or if there had

been it wouldn’t have been let stop very long. But there’s summat in it

that perhaps you’ll think quite as valliable as money, and that’s what

I’m goin’ to give you as a proof that a drunken brute can feel thankful

to them as is kind to him.”

 

He took out two folded papers, which he gave into Robert Audley’s hands.

 

They were two leaves torn out of a pocketbook, and they were written

upon in pencil, and in a handwriting that was quite strange to Mr.

Audley—a cramped, stiff, and yet scrawling hand, such as some plowman

might have written.

 

“I don’t know this writing,” Robert said, as he eagerly unfolded the

first of the two papers. “What has this to do with my friend? Why do you

show me these?”

 

“Suppose you read ‘em first,” said Mr. Marks, “and ask me questions

about them afterwards.”

 

The first paper which Robert Audley had unfolded contained the following

lines, written in that cramped, yet scrawling hand which was so strange

to him:

 

“MY DEAR FRIEND—I write to you in such utter confusion of mind as

perhaps no man ever before suffered. I cannot tell you what has happened

to me, I can only tell you that something has happened which will drive

me from England a broken-hearted man, to seek some corner of the earth

in which I may live and die unknown and forgotten. I can only ask you to

forget me. If your friendship could have done me any good, I would have

appealed to it. If your counsel could have been any help to me, I would

have confided in you. But neither friendship nor counsel can help me;

and all I can say to you is this, God bless you for the past, and teach

you to forget me in the future. G.T.”

 

The second paper was addressed to another person, and its contents were

briefer than those of the first.

 

“HELEN—May God pity and forgive you for that which you have done

to-day, as truly as I do. Rest in peace. You shall never hear of me

again; to you and to the world I shall henceforth be that which you

wished me to be to-day. You need fear no molestation from me. I leave

England never to return.

 

“G.T.”

 

Robert Audley sat staring at these lines in hopeless bewilderment. They

were not in his friend’s familiar hand, and yet they purported to be

written by him and were signed with his initials.

 

He looked scrutinizingly at the face of Luke Marks, thinking that

perhaps some trick was being played upon him.

 

“This was not written by George Talboys,” he said.

 

“It was,” answered Luke Marks, “it was written by Mr. Talboys, every

line of it. He wrote it with his own hand; but it was his left hand, for

he couldn’t use his right because of his broken arm.”

 

Robert Audley looked up suddenly, and the shadow of suspicion passed

away from his face.

 

“I understand,” he said, “I understand. Tell me all; tell me how it was

that my poor friend was saved.”

 

“I was at work up at Atkinson’s farm, last September,” said Luke Marks,

“helping to stack the last of the corn, and as the nighest way from the

farm to mother’s cottage was through the meadows at the back of the

Court, I used to come that way, and Phoebe used to stand in the garden

wall beyond the lime-walk sometimes, to have a chat with me, knowin’ my

time o’ comin’ home.

 

“I don’t know what Phoebe was a-doin’ upon the evenin’ of the seventh o’

September—I rek’lect the date because Farmer Atkinson paid me my wages

all of a lump on that day, and I’d had to sign a bit of a receipt for

the money he give me—I don’t know what she was a-doin’, but she warn’t

at the gate agen the lime-walk, so I went round to the other side o’ the

gardens and jumped across the dry ditch, for I wanted partic’ler to see

her that night, as I was goin’ away to work upon a farm beyond

Chelmsford the next day. Audley church clock struck nine as I was

crossin’ the meadows between Atkinson’s and the Court, and it must have

been about a quarter past nine when I got into the kitchen garden.

 

“I crossed the garden, and went into the lime-walk; the nighest way to

the servants’ hall took me through the shrubbery and past the dry well.

It was a dark night, but I knew my way well enough about the old place,

and the light in the window of the servants’ hall looked red and

comfortable through the darkness. I was close against the mouth of the

dry well when I heard a sound that made my blood creep. It was a

groan—a groan of a man in pain, as was lyin’ somewhere hid among the

bushes. I warn’t afraid of ghosts and I warn’t afraid of anythink in a

general way, but there was somethin in hearin’ this groan as chilled me

to the very heart, and for a minute I was struck all of a heap, and

didn’t know what to do. But I heard the groan again, and then I began to

search among the bushes. I found a man lyin’ hidden under a lot o’

laurels, and I thought at first he was up to no good, and I was a-goin’

to collar him to take him to the house, when he caught me by the wrist

without gettin’ up from the ground, but lookin’ at me very earnest, as I

could see by the way his face was turned toward me in the darkness, and

asked me who I was, and what I was, and what I had to do with the folks

at the Court.

 

“There was somethin’ in the way he spoke that told me he was a

gentleman, though I didn’t know him from Adam, and couldn’t see his

face; and I answered his questions civil.

 

“‘I want to get away from this place,’ he said, ‘without bein’ seen by

any livin’ creetur, remember that. I’ve been lyin’ here ever since four

o’clock to-day, and I’m half dead, but I want to get away without bein’

seen, mind that.’

 

“I told him that was easy enough, but I began to think my first thoughts

of him might have been right enough, after all, and that he couldn’t

have been up to no good to want to sneak away so precious quiet.

 

“‘Can you take me to any place where I can get a change of dry clothes,’

he says, ‘without half a dozen people knowin’ it?’

 

“He’d got up into a sittin’ attitude by this time, and I could see that

his right arm hung close by his side, and that he was in pain.

 

“I pointed to his arm, and asked him what was the matter with it; but he

only answered, very quiet like: ‘Broken, my lad, broken. Not that that’s

much,’ he says in another tone, speaking to himself like, more than to

me. ‘There’s broken hearts as well as broken limbs, and they’re not so

easy mended.’

 

“I told him I could take him to mother’s cottage, and that he could dry

his clothes there and welcome.

 

“‘Can your mother keep a secret?’ he asked.

 

“‘Well, she could keep one well enough if she could remember it,’ I told

him; ‘but you might tell her all the secrets of the Freemasons, and

Foresters, and Buffalers and Oddfellers as ever was, tonight: and she’d

have forgotten all about ‘em tomorrow mornin’.’

 

“He seemed satisfied with this, and he got himself up by holdin’ on to

me, for it seemed as if his limbs was cramped, the use of ‘em was almost

gone. I