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

before as she’d

told me her missus was selfish and extravagant, and we might wait a long

time before we could get what we wanted from her.

 

“So I says to her, ‘Why, this is rather sudden like, Phoebe;’ and she

says, ‘Yes, it is sudden;’ and she smiles again, just the same sort of

smile as before. Upon that I turns round upon her sharp, and says:

 

“I’ll tell you what it is, my gal, you’re a-keepin’ somethink from me;

somethink you’ve been told, or somethink you’ve found out; and if you

think you’re a-goin’ to try that game on with me, you’ll find you’re

very much mistaken; and so I give you warnin’.”

 

“But she laughed it off like, and says, ‘Lor’ Luke, what could have put

such fancies into your head?’

 

“‘Perhaps other people can keep secrets as well as you,’ I said, ‘and

perhaps other people can make friends as well as you. There was a

gentleman came here to see your missus yesterday, warn’t there—a tall

young gentleman with a brown beard?’

 

“Instead of answering of me like a Christian, my Cousin Phoebe bursts

out a-cryin’, and wrings her hands, and goes on awful, until I’m dashed

if I can make out what she’s up to.

 

“But little by little I got it out of her, for I wouldn’t stand no

nonsense; find she told me how she’d been sittin’ at work at the window

of her little room, which was at the top of the house, right up in one

of the gables, and overlooked the lime-walk, and the shrubbery and the

well, when she see my lady walking with a strange gentleman, and they

walked together for a long time, until by-and-by they—”

 

“Stop!” cried Robert, “I know the rest.”

 

“Well, Phoebe told me all about what she see, and she told me she’d met

her lady almost directly afterward, and somethin’ had passed between

‘em, not much, but enough to let her missus know that the servant what

she looked down upon had found out that as would put her in that

servant’s power to the last day of her life.

 

“‘And she is in my power, Luke,’ says Phoebe; ‘and she’ll do anythin’ in

the world for us if we keep her secret.’

 

“So you see both my Lady Audley and her maid thought as the gentleman as

I’d seen safe off by the London train was lying dead at the bottom of

the well. If I was to give the letter they’d find out the contrary of

this; and if I was to give the letter, Phoebe and me would lose the

chance of gettin’ started in life by her missus.

 

“So I kep’ the letter and kep’ my secret, and my lady kep’ hern. But I

thought if she acted liberal by me, and gave me the money I wanted, free

like, I’d tell her everythink, and make her mind easy.

 

“But she didn’t. Whatever she give me she throwed me as if I’d been a

dog. Whenever she spoke to me, she spoke as she might have spoken to a

dog; and a dog she couldn’t abide the sight of. There was no word in her

mouth that was too bad for me; there was no toss as she could give her

head that was too proud and scornful for me; and my blood b’iled agen

her, and I kep’ my secret, and let her keep hern. I opened the two

letters, and I read ‘em, but I couldn’t make much sense out of ‘em, and

I hid ‘em away; and not a creature but me has seen ‘em until this

night.”

 

Luke Marks had finished his story, and lay quietly enough, exhausted by

having talked so long. He watched Robert Audley’s face, fully expecting

some reproof, some grave lecture; for he had a vague consciousness that

he had done wrong.

 

But Robert did not lecture him; he had no fancy for an office which he

did not think himself fitted to perform.

 

Robert Audley sat until long after daybreak with the sick man, who fell

into a heavy slumber a short time after he had finished his story. The

old woman had dozed comfortably throughout her son’s confession. Phoebe

was asleep upon the press bedstead in the room below; so the young

barrister was the only watcher.

 

He could not sleep; he could only think of the story he had heard. He

could only thank God for his friend’s preservation, and pray that he

might be able to go to Clara Talboys, and say, “Your brother still

lives, and has been found.”

 

Phoebe came up-stairs at eight o’clock, ready to take her place at the

sick-bed, and Robert Audley went away, to get a bed at the Sun Inn. It

was nearly dusk when he awoke out of a long dreamless slumber, and

dressed himself before dining in the little sitting-room, in which he

and George had sat together a few months before.

 

The landlord waited upon him at dinner, and told him that Luke Marks had

died at five o’clock that afternoon. “He went off rather sudden like,”

the man said, “but very quiet.”

 

Robert Audley wrote a long letter that evening, addressed to Madame

Taylor, care of Monsieur Val, Villebrumeuse; a long letter in which he

told the wretched woman who had borne so many names, and was to bear a

false one for the rest of her life, the story that the dying man had

told him.

 

“It may be some comfort to her to hear that her husband did not perish

in his youth by her wicked hand,” he thought, “if her selfish soul can

hold any sentiment of pity or sorrow for others.”

 

CHAPTER XL.

 

RESTORED.

 

Clara Talboys returned to Dorsetshire, to tell her father that his only

son had sailed for Australia upon the 9th of September, and that it was

most probable he yet lived, and would return to claim the forgiveness of

the father he had never very particularly injured; except in the matter

of having made that terrible matrimonial mistake which had exercised so

fatal an influence upon his youth.

 

Mr. Harcourt-Talboys was fairly nonplused. Junius Brutus had never been

placed in such a position as this, and seeing no way of getting out of

this dilemma by acting after his favorite model, Mr. Talboys was fain to

be natural for once in his life, and to confess that he had suffered

much uneasiness and pain of mind about his only son since his

conversation with Robert Audley, and that he would be heartily glad to

take his poor boy to his arms, whenever he should return to England. But

when was he likely to return? and how was he to be communicated with?

That was the question. Robert Audley remembered the advertisements which

he had caused to be inserted in the Melbourne and Sydney papers. If

George had re-entered either city alive, how was it that no notice had

ever been taken of that advertisement? Was it likely that his friend

would be indifferent to his uneasiness? But then, again, it was just

possible that George Talboys had not happened to see this advertisement;

and, as he had traveled under a feigned name, neither his fellow

passengers nor the captain of the vessel would have been able to

identify him with the person advertised for. What was to be done? Must

they wait patiently till George grew weary of his exile, and returned to

his friends who loved him? or were there any means to be taken by which

his return might be hastened? Robert Audley was at fault! Perhaps, in

the unspeakable relief of mind which he had experienced upon the

discovery of his friend’s escape, he was unable to look beyond the one

fact of that providential preservation.

 

In this state of mind he went down to Dorsetshire to pay a visit to Mr.

Talboys, who had given way to a perfect torrent of generous impulses,

and had gone so far as to invite his son’s friend to share the prim

hospitality of the square, red brick mansion.

 

Mr. Talboys had only two sentiments upon the subject of George’s story;

one was a natural relief and happiness in the thought that his son had

been saved, the other was an earnest wish that my lady had been his

wife, and that he might thus have had the pleasure of making a signal

example of her.

 

“It is not for me to blame you, Mr. Audley,” he said, “for having

smuggled this guilty woman out of the reach of justice, and thus, as I

may say, paltered with the laws of your country. I can only remark that,

had the lady fallen into my hands, she would have been very differently

treated.”

 

It was in the middle of April when Robert Audley found himself once more

under those black fir-trees beneath which his wandering thoughts had so

often stayed since his first meeting with Clara Talboys. There were

primroses and early violets in the hedges now, and the streams, which,

upon his first visit, had been hard and frost-bound as the heart of

Harcourt Talboys, had thawed, like that gentleman, and ran merrily under

the blackthorn bushes in the capricious April sunshine.

 

Robert had a prim bedroom, and an uncompromising dressing-room allotted

him in the square house, and he woke every morning upon a metallic

spring mattress, which always gave him the idea of sleeping upon some

musical instrument, to see the sun glaring in upon him through the

square, white blinds and lighting up the two lackered urns which adorned

the foot of the blue iron bedstead, until they blazed like two tiny

brazen lamps of the Roman period. He emulated Mr. Harcourt Talboys in

the matter of shower-baths and cold water, and emerged prim and blue as

that gentleman himself, as the clock in the hall struck seven, to join

the master of the house in his ante-breakfast constitutional under the

fir-trees in the stiff plantation.

 

But there was generally a third person who assisted in the

constitutional promenades, and that third person was Clara Talboys, who

used to walk by her father’s side, more beautiful than the morning—for

that was sometimes dull and cloudy, while she was always fresh and

bright—in a broad-leaved straw-hat and flapping blue ribbons, one

quarter of an inch of which Mr. Audley would have esteemed a prouder

decoration than ever adorned a favored creature’s button-hole.

 

At first they were very ceremonious toward each other, and were only

familiar and friendly upon the one subject of George’s adventures; but

little by little a pleasant intimacy arose between them, and before the

first three weeks of Robert’s visit had elapsed, Miss Talboys made him

happy, by taking him seriously in hand and lecturing him on the

purposeless life he had led so long, and the little use he had made of

the talents and opportunities that had been given to him.

 

How pleasant it was to be lectured by the woman he loved! How pleasant

it was to humiliate himself and depreciate himself before her! How

delightful it was to get such splendid opportunities of hinting that if

his life had been sanctified by an object he might indeed have striven

to be something better than an idle flaneur upon the smooth pathways

that have no particular goal; that, blessed by the ties which would have

given a solemn purpose to every hour of his existence, he might indeed

have fought the battle earnestly and unflinchingly. He generally wound

up with a gloomy insinuation to the effect that it was only likely he

would drop quietly over the edge of the Temple Gardens some afternoon

when the