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

Robert Audley being in a ghost-seeing mood, would have been scarcely astonished had he seen Johnson’s set come roystering westward in the lamplight, or blind John Milton groping his way down the steps before Saint Bride’s Church.

Mr. Audley hailed a hansom at the corner of Farrington street, and was rattled rapidly away across tenantless Smithfield market, and into a labyrinth of dingy streets that brought him out upon the broad grandeur of Finsbury Pavement.

The hansom rattled up the steep and stony approach to Shoreditch Station, and deposited Robert at the doors of that unlovely temple. There were very few people going to travel by this midnight train, and Robert walked up and down the long wooden platform, reading the huge advertisements whose gaunt lettering looked wan and ghastly in the dim lamplight.

He had the carriage in which he sat all to himself. All to himself did I say? Had he not lately summoned to his side that ghostly company which of all companionship is the most tenacious? The shadow of George Talboys pursued him, even in the comfortable first-class carriage, and was behind him when he looked out of the window, and was yet far ahead of him and the rushing engine, in that thicket toward which the train was speeding, by the side of the unhallowed hiding-place in which the mortal remains of the dead man lay, neglected and uncared for.

“I must give my lost friend decent burial,” Robert thought, as the chill wind swept across the flat landscape, and struck him with such frozen breath as might have emanated from the lips of the dead. “I must do it; or I shall die of some panic like this which has seized upon me tonight. I must do it; at any peril; at any cost. Even at the price of that revelation which will bring the mad woman back from her safe hiding-place, and place her in a criminal dock.” He was glad when the train stopped at Brentwood at a few minutes after twelve.

It was half-past one o’clock when the night wanderer entered the village of Audley, and it was only there that he remembered that Clara Talboys had omitted to give him any direction by which he might find the cottage in which Luke Marks lay.

“It was Dawson who recommended that the poor creature should be taken to his mother’s cottage,” Robert thought, by-and-by, “and, I dare say. Dawson has attended him ever since the fire. He’ll be able to tell me the way to the cottage.”

Acting upon this idea, Mr. Audley stopped at the house in which Helen Talboys had lived before her second marriage. The door of the little surgery was ajar, and there was a light burning within. Robert pushed the door open and peeped in. The surgeon was standing at the mahogany counter, mixing a draught in a glass measure, with his hat close beside him. Late as it was, he had evidently only just come in. The harmonious snoring of his assistant sounded from a little room within the surgery.

“I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Dawson,” Robert said, apologetically, as the surgeon looked up and recognized him, “but I have come down to see Marks, who, I hear, is in a very bad way, and I want you to tell me the way to his mother’s cottage.”

“I’ll show you the way, Mr. Audley,” answered the surgeon, “I am going there this minute.”

“The man is very bad, then?”

“So bad that he can be no worse. The change that can happen is that change which will take him beyond the reach of any earthly suffering.”

“Strange!” exclaimed Robert. “He did not appear to be much burned.”

“He was not much burnt. Had he been, I should never have recommended his being removed from Mount Stanning. It is the shock that has done the business. He has been in a raging fever for the last two days; but tonight he is much calmer, and I’m afraid, before tomorrow night, we shall have seen the last of him.”

“He has asked to see me, I am told,” said Mr. Audley.

“Yes,” answered the surgeon, carelessly. “A sick man’s fancy, no doubt. You dragged him out of the house, and did your best to save his life. I dare say, rough and boorish as the poor fellow is, he thinks a good deal of that.”

They had left the surgery, the door of which Mr. Dawson had locked behind him. There was money in the till, perhaps, for surely the village apothecary could not have feared that the most daring housebreaker would imperil his liberty in the pursuit of blue pill and colocynth, of salts and senna.

The surgeon led the way along the silent street, and presently turned into a lane at the end of which Robert Audley saw the wan glimmer of a light; a light which told of the watch that is kept by the sick and dying; a pale, melancholy light, which always has a dismal aspect when looked upon in this silent hour betwixt night and morning. It shone from the window of the cottage in which Luke Marks lay, watched by his wife and mother.

Mr. Dawson lifted the latch, and walked into the common room of the little tenement, followed by Robert Audley. It was empty, but a feeble tallow candle, with a broken back, and a long, cauliflower-headed wick, sputtered upon the table. The sick man lay in the room above.

“Shall I tell him you are here?” asked Mr. Dawson.

“Yes, yes, if you please. But be cautious how you tell him, if you think the news likely to agitate him. I am in no hurry. I can wait. You can call me when you think I can safely come upstairs.”

The surgeon nodded, and softly ascended the narrow wooden stairs leading to the upper chamber.

Robert Audley seated himself in a Windsor chair by the cold hearthstone, and stared disconsolately about him. But he was relieved at last by the low voice of the surgeon, who looked down from the top of the little staircase