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

rugged effort to atone for a life that had been selfish and drunken and wicked. Be it how it might he wiped his white lips, and turning his haggard eyes earnestly upon Robert Audley, pointed to a chair by the bedside.

“You made game of me in a general way, Mr. Audley,” he said, presently, “and you’ve drawed me out, and you’ve tumbled and tossed me about like in a gentlemanly way, till I was nothink or anythink in your hands; and you’ve looked me through and through, and turned me inside out till you thought you knowed as much as I knowed. I’d no particular call to be grateful to you, not before the fire at the Castle t’other night. But I am grateful to you for that. I’m not grateful to folks in a general way, p’r’aps, because the things as gentlefolks have give have a’most allus been the very things I didn’t want. They’ve give me soup, and tracks, and flannel, and coals; but, Lord, they’ve made such a precious noise about it that I’d have been to send ’em all back to ’em. But when a gentleman goes and puts his own life in danger to save a drunken brute like me, the drunkenest brute as ever was feels grateful like to that gentleman, and wishes to say before he dies⁠—which he sees in the doctor’s face as he ain’t got long to live⁠—‘Thank ye, sir, I’m obliged to you.’ ”

Luke Marks stretched out his left hand⁠—the right hand had been injured by the fire, and was wrapped in linen⁠—and groped feebly for that of Mr. Robert Audley.

The young man took the coarse but shrunken hand in both his own, and pressed it cordially.

“I need no thanks, Luke Marks,” he said; “I was very glad to be of service to you.”

Mr. Marks did not speak immediately. He was lying quietly upon his side, staring reflectingly at Robert Audley.

“You was oncommon fond of that gent as disappeared at the Court, warn’t you, sir?” he said at last.

Robert started at the mention of his dead friend.

“You was oncommon fond of that Mr. Talboys, I’ve heard say, sir,” repeated Luke.

“Yes, yes,” answered Robert, rather impatiently, “he was my very dear friend.”

“I’ve heard the servants at the Court say how you took on when you couldn’t find him. I’ve heered the landlord of the Sun Inn say how cut up you was when you first missed him. ‘If the two gents had been brothers,’ the landlord said, ‘our gent,’ meanin’ you, sir, ‘couldn’t have been more cut up when he missed the other.’ ”

“Yes, yes, I know, I know,” said Robert; “pray do not speak any more of this subject. I cannot tell you how much it distresses me.”

Was he to be haunted forever by the ghost of his unburied friend? He came here to comfort the sick man, and even here he was pursued by this relentless shadow; even here he was reminded of the secret crime which had darkened his life.

“Listen to me, Marks,” he said, earnestly; “believe me that I appreciate your grateful words, and that I am very glad to have been of service to you. But before you say anything more, let me make one most solemn request. If you have sent for me that you may tell me anything of the fate of my lost friend, I entreat you to spare yourself and to spare me that horrible story. You can tell me nothing which I do not already know. The worst you can tell me of the woman who was once in your power, has already been revealed to me by her own lips. Pray, then, be silent upon this subject; I say again, you can tell me nothing which I do not know.”

Luke Marks looked musingly at the earnest face of his visitor, and some shadowy expression, which was almost like a smile, flitted feebly across the sick man’s haggard features.

“I can’t tell you nothin’ you don’t know?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then it ain’t no good for me to try,” said the invalid, thoughtfully. “Did she tell you?” he asked, after a pause.

“I must beg, Marks, that you will drop the subject,” Robert answered, almost sternly. “I have already told you that I do not wish to hear it spoken of. Whatever discoveries you made, you made your market out of them. Whatever guilty secrets you got possession of, you were paid for keeping silence. You had better keep silence to the end.”

“Had I?” cried Luke Marks, in an eager whisper. “Had I really now better hold my tongue to the last?”

“I think so, most decidedly. You traded on your secret, and you were paid to keep it. It would be more honest to hold to your bargain, and keep it still.”

“Would it now?” said Mr. Marks with a ghastly grin; “but suppose my lady had one secret and I another. How then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose I could have told something all along; and would have told it, perhaps, if I’d been a little better treated; if what was give to me had been give a little more liberal like, and not flung at me as if I was a dog, and was only give it to be kep’ from bitin’. Suppose I could have told somethin’, and would have told it but for that? How then?”

It was impossible to describe the ghastliness of the triumphant grin that lighted up the sick man’s haggard face.

“His mind is wandering,” Robert thought; “I had need be patient with him, poor fellow. It would be strange if I could not be patient with a dying man.”

Luke Marks lay staring at Mr. Audley for some moments with that triumphant grin upon his face. The old woman, wearied out with watching her dying son, had dropped into a doze, and sat nodding her sharp chin over the handful of fire, upon which the broth that was never to be eaten, still bubbled and simmered.

Mr. Audley waited very patiently until it should be the sick man’s pleasure to speak. Every