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

waiting for you for an hour. Where have you been, and what have you been doing?”

My lady, standing in the shadow rather than the light, paused a few moments before replying to this question.

“I have been to Chelmsford,” she said, “shopping; and⁠—”

She hesitated⁠—twisting her bonnet strings in her thin white fingers with an air of pretty embarrassment.

“And what, my dear?” asked the baronet⁠—“what have you been doing since you came from Chelmsford? I heard a carriage stop at the door an hour ago. It was yours, was it not?”

“Yes, I came home an hour ago,” answered my lady, with the same air of embarrassment.

“And what have you been doing since you came home?”

Sir Michael Audley asked this question with a slightly reproachful accent. His young wife’s presence made the sunshine of his life; and though he could not bear to chain her to his side, it grieved him to think that she could willingly remain unnecessarily absent from him, frittering away her time in some childish talk or frivolous occupation.

“What have you been doing since you came home, my dear?” he repeated. “What has kept you so long away from me?”

“I have been⁠—talking⁠—to⁠—Mr. Robert Audley.”

She still twisted her bonnet-string round and round her fingers.

She still spoke with the same air of embarrassment.

“Robert!” exclaimed the baronet; “is Robert here?”

“He was here a little while ago.”

“And is here still, I suppose?”

“No, he has gone away.”

“Gone away!” cried Sir Michael. “What do you mean, my darling?”

“I mean that your nephew came to the Court this afternoon. Alicia and I found him idling about the gardens. He stayed here till about a quarter of an hour ago talking to me, and then he hurried off without a word of explanation; except, indeed, some ridiculous excuse about business at Mount Stanning.”

“Business at Mount Stanning! Why, what business can he possibly have in that out-of-the-way place? He has gone to sleep at Mount Stanning, then, I suppose?”

“Yes; I think he said something to that effect.”

“Upon my word,” exclaimed the baronet, “I think that boy is half mad.”

My lady’s face was so much in shadow, that Sir Michael Audley was unaware of the bright change that came over its sickly pallor as he made this very commonplace observation. A triumphant smile illuminated Lucy Audley’s countenance, a smile that plainly said, “It is coming⁠—it is coming; I can twist him which way I like. I can put black before him, and if I say it is white, he will believe me.”

But Sir Michael Audley in declaring that his nephew’s wits were disordered, merely uttered that commonplace ejaculation which is well-known to have very little meaning. The baronet had, it is true, no very great estimate of Robert’s faculty for the business of this everyday life. He was in the habit of looking upon his nephew as a good-natured nonentity⁠—a man whose heart had been amply stocked by liberal Nature with all the best things the generous goddess had to bestow, but whose brain had been somewhat overlooked in the distribution of intellectual gifts. Sir Michael Audley made that mistake which is very commonly made by easygoing, well-to-do-observers, who have no occasion to look below the surface. He mistook laziness for incapacity. He thought because his nephew was idle, he must necessarily be stupid. He concluded that if Robert did not distinguish himself, it was because he could not.

He forgot the mute inglorious Miltons, who die voiceless and inarticulate for want of that dogged perseverance, that blind courage, which the poet must possess before he can find a publisher; he forgot the Cromwells, who see the noble vessels of the state floundering upon a sea of confusion, and going down in a tempest of noisy bewilderment, and who yet are powerless to get at the helm; forbidden even to send out a lifeboat to the sinking ship. Surely it is a mistake to judge of what a man can do by that which he has done.

The world’s Valhalla is a close borough, and perhaps the greatest men may be those who perish silently far away from the sacred portal. Perhaps the purest and brightest spirits are those who shrink from the turmoil of the racecourse⁠—the tumult and confusion of the struggle. The game of life is something like the game of écarté, and it may be that the very best cards are sometimes left in the pack.

My lady threw off her bonnet, and seated herself upon a velvet-covered footstool at Sir Michael’s feet. There was nothing studied or affected in this girlish action. It was so natural to Lucy Audley to be childish, that no one would have wished to see her otherwise. It would have seemed as foolish to expect dignified reserve or womanly gravity from this amber-haired siren, as to wish for rich basses amid the clear treble of a skylark’s song.

She sat with her pale face turned away from the firelight, and with her hands locked together upon the arm of her husband’s easy-chair. They were very restless, these slender white hands. My lady twisted the jeweled fingers in and out of each other as she talked to her husband.

“I wanted to come to you, you know, dear,” said she⁠—“I wanted to come to you directly I got home, but Mr. Audley insisted upon my stopping to talk to him.”

“But what about, my love?” asked the baronet. “What could Robert have to say to you?”

My lady did not answer this question. Her fair head dropped upon her husband’s knee, her rippling, yellow curls fell over her face.

Sir Michael lifted that beautiful head with his strong hands, and raised my lady’s face. The firelight shining on that pale face lit up the large, soft blue eyes and showed them drowned in tears.

“Lucy, Lucy!” cried the baronet, “what is the meaning of this? My love, my love! what has happened to distress you in this manner?”

Lady Audley tried to speak, but the words died inarticulately upon her trembling lips. A choking sensation in her throat seemed to strangle