Lady Audley’s Secret M. E. Braddon (best historical fiction books of all time TXT) 📖

She bit her lip as her lover spoke, and looked away. He went on cutting and chopping at a rude handle he was fashioning to the stake, whistling softly to himself all the while, and not once looking at his cousin.

For some time they were silent, but by-and-by she said, with her face still turned away from her companion:

“What a fine thing it is for Miss Graham that was, to travel with her maid and her courier, and her chariot and four, and a husband that thinks there isn’t one spot upon all the earth that’s good enough for her to set her foot upon!”

“Ay, it is a fine thing, Phoebe, to have lots of money,” answered Luke, “and I hope you’ll be warned by that, my lass, to save up your wages agin we get married.”

“Why, what was she in Mr. Dawson’s house only three months ago?” continued the girl, as if she had not heard her cousin’s speech. “What was she but a servant like me? Taking wages and working for them as hard, or harder, than I did. You should have seen her shabby clothes, Luke⁠—worn and patched, and darned and turned and twisted, yet always looking nice upon her, somehow. She gives me more as lady’s-maid here than ever she got from Mr. Dawson then. Why, I’ve seen her come out of the parlor with a few sovereigns and a little silver in her hand, that master had just given her for her quarter’s salary; and now look at her!”

“Never you mind her,” said Luke; “take care of yourself, Phoebe; that’s all you’ve got to do. What should you say to a public-house for you and me, by-and-by, my girl? There’s a deal of money to be made out of a public-house.”

The girl still sat with her face averted from her lover, her hands hanging listlessly in her lap, and her pale gray eyes fixed upon the last low streak of crimson dying out behind the trunks of the trees.

“You should see the inside of the house, Luke,” she said; “it’s a tumbledown looking place enough outside; but you should see my lady’s rooms⁠—all pictures and gilding, and great looking-glasses that stretch from the ceiling to the floor. Painted ceilings, too, that cost hundreds of pounds, the housekeeper told her, and all done for her.”

“She’s a lucky one,” muttered Luke, with lazy indifference.

“You should have seen her while we were abroad, with a crowd of gentlemen hanging about her; Sir Michael not jealous of them, only proud to see her so much admired. You should have heard her laugh and talk with them; throwing all their compliments and fine speeches back at them, as it were, as if they had been pelting her with roses. She set everybody mad about her, wherever she went. Her singing, her playing, her painting, her dancing, her beautiful smile, and sunshiny ringlets! She was always the talk of a place, as long as we stayed in it.”

“Is she at home tonight?”

“No; she has gone out with Sir Michael to a dinner party at the Beeches. They’ve seven or eight miles to drive, and they won’t be back till after eleven.”

“Then I’ll tell you what, Phoebe, if the inside of the house is so mighty fine, I should like to have a look at it.”

“You shall, then. Mrs. Barton, the housekeeper, knows you by sight, and she can’t object to my showing you some of the best rooms.”

It was almost dark when the cousins left the shrubbery and walked slowly to the house. The door by which they entered led into the servants’ hall, on one side of which was the housekeeper’s room. Phoebe Marks stopped for a moment to ask the housekeeper if she might take her cousin through some of the rooms, and having received permission to do so, lighted a candle at the lamp in the hall, and beckoned to Luke to follow her into the other part of the house.

The long, black oak corridors were dim in the ghostly twilight⁠—the light carried by Phoebe looking only a poor speck in the broad passages through which the girl led her cousin. Luke looked suspiciously over his shoulder now and then, half-frightened by the creaking of his own hobnailed boots.

“It’s a mortal dull place, Phoebe,” he said, as they emerged from a passage into the principal hall, which was not yet lighted; “I’ve heard tell of a murder that was done here in old times.”

“There are murders enough in these times, as to that, Luke,” answered the girl, ascending the staircase, followed by the young man.

She led the way through a great drawing-room, rich in satin and ormolu, buhl and inlaid cabinets, bronzes, cameos, statuettes, and trinkets, that glistened in the dusky light; then through a morning room, hung with proof engravings of valuable pictures; through this into an antechamber, where she stopped, holding the light above her head.

The young man stared about him, open-mouthed and open-eyed.

“It’s a rare fine place,” he said, “and must have cost a heap of money.”

“Look at the pictures on the walls,” said Phoebe, glancing at the panels of the octagonal chamber, which were hung with Claudes and Poussins, Wouvermans and Cuyps. “I’ve heard that those alone are worth a fortune. This is the entrance to my lady’s apartments, Miss Graham that was.” She lifted a heavy green cloth curtain which hung across a doorway, and led the astonished countryman into a fairy-like boudoir, and thence to a dressing-room, in which the open doors of a wardrobe and a heap of dresses flung about a sofa showed that it still remained exactly as its occupants had left it.

“I’ve got all these things to put away before my lady comes home, Luke; you might sit down here while I do it, I shan’t be long.”

Her cousin looked around in gawky embarrassment, bewildered by the splendor of the room; and after some deliberation selected the most substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he