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

river was bright and placid in the low sunlight, and the little

children had gone home to their tea.

 

“Do you think I can read French novels and smoke mild Turkish until I am

three-score-and-ten, Miss Talboys?” he asked. “Do you think there will

not come a day in which my meerschaums will be foul, and the French

novels more than usually stupid, and life altogether such a dismal

monotony that I shall want to get rid of it somehow or other?”

 

I am sorry to say that while this hypocritical young barrister was

holding forth in this despondent way, he had mentally sold up his

bachelor possessions, including all Michel Levy’s publications, and half

a dozen solid silver-mounted meerschaums; pensioned off Mrs. Maloney,

and laid out two or three thousand pounds in the purchase of a few acres

of verdant shrubbery and sloping lawn, embosomed amid which there should

be a fairy cottage ornee, whose rustic casements should glimmer out of

bowers of myrtle and clematis to see themselves reflected in the purple

bosom of the lake.

 

Of course, Clara Talboys was far from discovering the drift of these

melancholy lamentations. She recommended Mr. Audley to read hard and

think seriously of his profession, and begin life in real earnest. It

was a hard, dry sort of existence, perhaps, which she recommended; a

life of serious work and application, in which he should strive to be

useful to his fellow-creatures, and win a reputation for himself.

 

“I’d do all that,” he thought, “and do it earnestly, if I could be sure

of a reward for my labor. If she would accept my reputation when it was

won, and support me in the struggle by her beloved companionship. But

what if she sends me away to fight the battle, and marries some hulking

country squire while my back is turned?”

 

Being naturally of a vacillating and dilatory disposition, there is no

saying how long Mr. Audley might have kept his secret, fearful to speak

and break the charm of that uncertainty which, though not always

hopeful, was very seldom quite despairing, had not he been hurried by

the impulse of an unguarded moment into a full confession of the truth.

 

He had stayed five weeks at Grange Heath, and felt that he could not, in

common decency, stay any longer; so he had packed his portmanteau one

pleasant May morning, and had announced his departure.

 

Mr. Talboys was not the sort of man to utter any passionate lamentations

at the prospect of losing his guest, but he expressed himself with a

cool cordiality which served with him as the strongest demonstration of

friendship.

 

“We have got on very well together, Mr. Audley,” he said, “and you have

been pleased to appear sufficiently happy in the quiet routine of our

orderly household; nay, more, you have conformed to our little domestic

regulations in a manner which I cannot refrain from saying I take as an

especial compliment to myself.”

 

Robert bowed. How thankful he was to the good fortune which had never

suffered him to oversleep the signal of the clanging bell, or led him

away beyond the ken of clocks at Mr. Talboys’ luncheon hour.

 

“I trust as we have got on so remarkably well together,” Mr. Talboys

resumed, “you will do me the honor of repeating your visit to

Dorsetshire whenever you feel inclined. You will find plenty of sport

among my farms, and you will meet with every politeness and attention

from my tenants, if you like to bring your gun with you.”

 

Robert responded most heartily to these friendly overtures. He declared

that there was no earthly occupation that was more agreeable to him than

partridge-shooting, and that he should be only too delighted to avail

himself of the privilege so kindly offered to him. He could not help

glancing toward Clara as he said this. The perfect lids drooped a little

over the brown eyes, and the faintest shadow of a blush illuminated the

beautiful face.

 

But this was the young barrister’s last day in Elysium, and there must

be a dreary interval of days and nights and weeks and months before the

first of September would give him an excuse for returning to

Dorsetshire; a dreary interval which fresh colored young squires or fat

widowers of eight-and-forty, might use to his disadvantage. It was no

wonder, therefore, that he contemplated this dismal prospect with moody

despair, and was bad company for Miss Talboys that morning.

 

But in the evening after dinner, when the sun was low in the west, and

Harcourt Talboys closeted in his library upon some judicial business

with his lawyer and a tenant farmer, Mr. Audley grew a little more

agreeable. He stood by Clara’s side in one of the long windows of the

drawing-room, watching the shadows deepening in the sky and the rosy

light growing every moment rosier as the sun died out. He could not help

enjoying that quiet tete-a-tete, though the shadow of the next

morning’s express which was to carry him away to London loomed darkly

across the pathway of his joy. He could not help being happy in her

presence; forgetful of the past, reckless of the future.

 

They talked of the one subject which was always a bond of union between

them. They talked of her lost brother George. She spoke of him in a very

melancholy tone this evening. How could she be otherwise than sad,

remembering that if he lived—and she was not even sure of that—he was

a lonely wanderer far away from all who loved him, and carrying the

memory of a blighted life wherever he went.

 

“I cannot think how papa can be so resigned to my poor brother’s

absence,” she said, “for he does love him, Mr. Audley; even you must

have seen lately that he does love him. But I cannot think how he can so

quietly submit to his absence. If I were a man, I would go to Australia,

and find him, and bring him back; if he was still to be found among the

living,” she added, in a lower voice.

 

She turned her face away from Robert, and looked out at the darkening

sky. He laid his hand upon her arm. It trembled in spite of him, and his

voice trembled, too, as he spoke to her.

 

“Shall I go to look for your brother?” he said.

 

“You!” She turned her head, and looked at him earnestly through her

tears. “You, Mr. Audley! Do you think that I could ask you to make such

a sacrifice for me, or for those I love?”

 

“And do you think, Clara, that I should think any sacrifice too great a

one if it were made for you? Do you think there is any voyage I would

refuse to take, if I knew that you would welcome me when I came home,

and thank me for having served you faithfully? I will go from one end of

the continent of Australia to the other to look for your brother, if you

please, Clara; and will never return alive unless I bring him with me,

and will take my chance of what reward you shall give me for my labor.”

 

Her head was bent, and it was some moments before she answered him.

 

“You are very good and generous, Mr. Audley,” she said, at last, “and I

feel this offer too much to be able to thank you for it. But what you

speak of could never be. By what right could I accept such a sacrifice?”

 

“By the right which makes me your bounden slave forever and ever,

whether you will or no. By right of the love I bear you, Clara,” cried

Mr. Audley, dropping on his knees—rather awkwardly, it must be

confessed—and covering a soft little hand, that he had found half

hidden among the folds of a silken dress, with passionate kisses.

 

“I love you, Clara,” he said, “I love you. You may call for your father,

and have me turned out of the house this moment, if you like; but I

shall go on loving you all the same; and I shall love you forever and

ever, whether you will or no.”

 

The little hand was drawn away from his, but not with a sudden or angry

gesture, and it rested for one moment lightly and tremulously upon his

dark hair.

 

“Clara, Clara!” he murmured, in a low, pleading voice, “shall I go to

Australia to look for your brother?”

 

There was no answer. I don’t know how it is, but there is scarcely

anything more delicious than silence in such cases. Every moment of

hesitation is a tacit avowal; every pause is a tender confession.

 

“Shall we both go, dearest? Shall we go as man and wife? Shall we go

together, my dear love, and bring our brother back between us?”

 

Mr. Harcourt Talboys, coming into the lamplit room a quarter of an hour

afterward, found Robert Audley alone, and had to listen to a revelation

which very much surprised him. Like all self-sufficient people, he was

tolerably blind to everything that happened under his nose, and he had

fully believed that his own society, and the Spartan regularity of his

household, had been the attractions which had made Dorsetshire

delightful to his guest.

 

He was rather disappointed, therefore; but he bore his disappointment

pretty well, and expressed a placid and rather stoical satisfaction at

the turn which affairs had taken.

 

So Robert Audley went back to London, to surrender his chambers in

Figtree Court, and to make all due inquiries about such ships as sailed

from Liverpool for Sydney in the month of June.

 

He had lingered until after luncheon at Grange Heath, and it was in the

dusky twilight that he entered the shady Temple courts and found his way

to his chambers. He found Mrs. Maloney scrubbing the stairs, as was her

wont upon a Saturday evening, and he had to make his way upward amidst

an atmosphere of soapy steam, that made the balusters greasy under his

touch.

 

“There’s lots of letters, yer honor,” the laundress said, as she rose

from her knees and flattened herself against the wall to enable Robert

to pass her, “and there’s some parcels, and there’s a gentleman which

has called ever so many times, and is waitin’ tonight, for I towld him

you’d written to me to say your rooms were to be aired.”

 

He opened the door of his sitting-room, and walked in. The canaries were

singing their farewell to the setting sun, and the faint, yellow light

was flickering upon the geranium leaves. The visitor, whoever he was,

sat with his back to the window and his head bent upon his breast. But

he started up as Robert Audley entered the room, and the young man

uttered a great cry of delight and surprise, and opened his arms to his

lost friend, George Talboys.

 

We know how much Robert had to tell. He touched lightly and tenderly

upon that subject which he knew was cruelly painful to his friends; he

said very little of the wretched woman who was wearing out the remnant

of her wicked life in the quiet suburb of the forgotten Belgian city.

 

George Talboys spoke very briefly of that sunny seventh of September,

upon which he had left his friend sleeping by the trout stream while he

went to accuse his false wife of that conspiracy which had well nigh

broken his heart.

 

“God knows that from the moment in which I sunk into the black pit,

knowing the treacherous hand that had sent me to what might have been my

death, my chief thought was of