Sir Michael shook his head as the rejected suitor rode away.
‘I don’t know about that,’ he muttered. ‘Bob’s a good lad, and the girl might do worse; but he hangs back, as if he didn’t care for her. There’s some mystery—there’s some mystery!’
The old baronet said this in that semi-thoughtful tone with which we speak of other people’s affairs. The shadows of the early winter twilight, gathering thickest under the low oak ceiling of the hall, and the quaint curve of the arched doorway, fell darkly round his handsome head; but the light of his declining life, his beautiful and beloved young wife, was near him, and he could see no shadows when she was by.
She came skipping through the hall to meet him, and shaking her golden ringlets, buried her bright head on her husband’s breast.
‘So the last of our visitors is gone, dear, and we’re all alone,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that nice?’
‘Yes, darling,’ he answered fondly, stroking her bright hair.
‘Except Mr Robert Audley. How long is that nephew of yours going to stay here?’
‘As long as he likes, my pet; he’s always welcome,’ said the baronet; and then, as if remembering himself, he added tenderly, ‘but not unless his visit is agreeable to you, darling; not if his lazy habits, or his smoking, or his dogs, or anything about him, is displeasing to you.’
Lady Audley pursed up her rosy lips, and looked thoughtfully at the ground.
‘It isn’t that,’ she said hesitatingly. ‘Mr Audley is a very agreeable young man, and a very honourable young man; but you know, Sir Michael, I’m rather a young aunt for such a nephew, and——’
‘And what, Lucy?’ asked the baronet fiercely.
‘Poor Alicia is rather jealous of any attention Mr Audley pays me, and—and—I think it would be better for her happiness if your nephew were to bring his visit to a close.’
‘He shall go to-night, Lucy!’ exclaimed Sir Michael. ‘I’ve been a blind, neglectful fool not to have thought of this before. My lovely little darling, it was scarcely just to Bob to expose the poor lad to your fascinations. I know him to be as good and true-hearted a fellow as ever breathed, but—but—he shall go to-night.’
‘But you won’t be too abrupt, dear! You won’t be rude?’
‘Rude! No, Lucy. I left him smoking in the lime-walk. I’ll go and tell him that he must get out of the house in an hour.’
So in that leafless avenue, under whose gloomy shade George Talboys had stood on that thunderous evening before the day of his disappearance, Sir Michael Audley told his nephew that the Court was no home for him, and that my lady was too young and pretty to accept the attentions of a handsome nephew of eight-and-twenty.
Robert only shrugged his shoulders and elevated his thick black eyebrows, as Sir Michael delicately hinted all this.
‘I have been attentive to my lady,’ he said. ‘She interests me—strongly, strangely interests me;’ and then, with a change in his voice, and an emotion not common to him, he turned to the baronet, and grasping his hand, exclaimed—‘God forbid, my dear uncle, that I should ever bring trouble upon such a noble heart as yours! God forbid that the lightest shadow of dishonour should ever fall upon your honoured head—least of all through any agency of mine!’
The young man uttered these few words in a broken and disjointed fashion in which Sir Michael had never heard him speak before, and then, turning away his head, fairly broke down.
He left the Court that night, but he did not go far. Instead of taking the evening train for London, he went straight up to the little village of Mount Stanning, and walking into the neatly-kept inn, asked Phœbe Marks if he could be accommodated with apartments.
CHAPTER XVII
AT THE CASTLE INN
THE little sitting-room into which Phœbe Marks ushered the baronet’s nephew was situated on the ground floor, and only separated by a lath-and-plaster partition from the little bar-parlour occupied by the innkeeper and his wife.
It seemed as though the wise architect who had superintended the building of the Castle Inn had taken especial care that nothing but the frailest and most flimsy material should be employed in its construction, and that the wind, having a special fancy for this unprotected spot, should have full play for the indulgence of its caprices.
To this end pitiful woodwork had been used instead of solid masonry; rickety ceilings had been propped up by fragile rafters, and beams that threatened on every stormy night to fall upon the heads of those beneath them; doors whose speciality was never to be shut, yet always to be banging; windows constructed with a peculiar view to letting in the draught when they were closed, and keeping out the air when they were open. The hand of genius had devised this lonely country inn; and there was not an inch of woodwork, or a trowelful of plaster employed in all the rickety construction, that did not offer its own peculiar weak point to every assault of its indefatigable foe.
Robert looked about him with a feeble smile of resignation.
It was a change, decidedly, from the luxurious comforts of Audley Court, and it was rather a strange fancy of the young barrister to prefer loitering at this dreary village hostelry, to returning to his snug chambers in Fig-tree Court.
But he had brought his Lares and Penates* with him, in the shape of his German pipe, his tobacco canister, half a dozen French novels, and his two ill-conditioned canine favourites, who sat shivering before the smoky little fire, barking shortly and sharply now and then, by way of hinting for some slight refreshment.
While Mr Robert Audley contemplated his new quarters, Phœbe Marks summoned a little village lad who was in the habit of running errands for her, and taking him into the kitchen, gave him a tiny note, carefully folded and sealed.
‘You know Audley Court?’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘If you’ll run there with this letter to-night, and see that it’s put safely into Lady Audley’s hands, I’ll give you a shilling.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘You understand? Ask to see my lady; you can say you’ve a message—not a note, mind—but a message from Phœbe Marks; and when you see her give this into her own hand.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘You won’t forget?’
‘No, Mum.’
‘Then be off with you.’
The boy waited for no second bidding, but in another moment was scudding along the hilly high road, down the sharp descent that led to Audley.
Phœbe Marks went to the window, and looked out at the black figure of the lad hurrying through the dusky winter evening.
‘If there’s any bad meaning in his coming here,’ she thought, ‘my lady will know of it in time, at any rate.’
Phœbe herself brought the neatly-arranged tea-tray; and the little covered dish of ham and eggs which had been prepared for this unlooked-for visitor. Her pale hair was as smoothly braided, and her light grey dress fitted as precisely, as of old. The same neutral tints pervaded her person and her dress; no showy rose-coloured ribbons or rustling silk gown proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper’s wife. Phœbe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.
Robert looked at her thoughtfully as she spread the cloth, and drew the table nearer to the fire-place.
‘That,’ he thought, ‘is a woman who could keep a secret.’
The dogs looked rather suspiciously at the quiet figure of Mrs Marks gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob.
‘Will you pour out my tea for me, Mrs Marks?’ said Robert, seating himself in a horse-hair-covered arm-chair, which fitted him as tightly in every direction as if he had been measured for it.
‘You have come straight from the Court, Sir?’ said Phœbe, as she handed Robert the sugar-basin.
‘Yes; I only left my uncle’s an hour ago.’
‘And my lady, Sir, was she quite well?’
‘Yes, quite well.’
‘As gay and light-hearted as ever, Sir?’
‘As gay and light-hearted as ever.’
Phœbe retired respectfully after having given Mr Audley his tea, but as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again.
‘You knew Lady Audley when she was Miss Lucy Graham, did you not?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Sir. I lived at Mrs Dawson’s when my lady was governess there.’
‘Indeed! Was she long in the surgeon’s family?’
‘A year and a half, Sir.’
‘And she came from London?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘And she was an orphan, I believe?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Always as cheerful as she is now?’
‘Always, Sir.’
Robert emptied his teacup and handed it to Mrs Marks. Their eyes met—a lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers.
‘This woman would be good in a witness-box,’ he thought; ‘it would take a clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination.’
He finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs, and lighted his pipe, while Phœbe carried off the tea-tray.
The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.
‘There’s a triangular draught from those two windows and the door that scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment,’ murmured Robert; ‘and there certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing up to one’s knees in cold water.’
He poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his great-coat, rolled a rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horsehair cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-grey wreaths curling slowly upwards to the dingy ceiling.
‘No,’ he murmured again; ‘that is a woman who can keep a secret. A counsel for the prosecution would get very little out of her.’
I have said that the bar-parlour was only separated from the sitting-room occupied by Robert by a lath-and-plaster partition. The young barrister could hear the two or three village tradesmen and a couple of farmers laughing and talking round the bar, while Luke Marks served them from his stock of liquors.
Very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlord’s, for he spoke in a coarse, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner than any of his customers.
‘The man is a fool,’ said Robert, as he laid down his pipe. ‘I’ll go and talk to him by-and-by.’
He waited till the few visitors to the Castle had dropped away one by one, and, when Luke Marks had bolted the front door upon the last of his customers, he strolled quietly into the bar-parlour where the landlord was seated with his wife.
Phœbe was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim workbox, with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. She was darning the coarse grey stockings that adorned her husband’s awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had been my lady’s delicate silken hose.
I say that she took no colour from external things, and that the vague air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in the society of her boorish husband at the Castle Inn as in Lady Audley’s fairy boudoir at the Court.
She looked up suddenly as Robert entered the bar-parlour. There was some shade of vexation in her pale grey eyes, which changed to an expression of anxiety—nay, rather, of almost terror—as she glanced from Mr Audley to Luke Marks.
‘I have come in for a few minutes’ chat before I go to bed,’ said Robert, settling himself comfortably before the cheerful fire. ‘Would you object to a cigar, Mrs Marks? I mean, of course, to my smoking one,’ he added, explanatorily.
‘Not at all, Sir.’
‘It would be a good ’un her objectin’ to a bit o’ bacca,’ growled Mr Marks, ‘when me and the customers smokes all day.’
Robert lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of Phœbe’s making that adorned the chimney-piece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before he spoke.
‘I want you to tell me all about Mount Stanning, Mr Marks,’ he said presently.
‘Then that’s pretty soon told,’ replied Luke, with a harsh, grating laugh. ‘Of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about the dullest. Not that the business don’t pay pretty tidy; I don’t complain of that; but I should ha’ liked a public at Chelmsford, or Brentwood, or Romford, or some place where there’s a bit of life in the streets; and I might have had it,’ he added, discontentedly, ‘if folks hadn’t been so precious stingy.’
As her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, Phœbe looked up from her work and spoke to him.
‘We forgot the brewhouse door, Luke,’ she said. ‘Will you come with me and help me put up the bar?’
‘The brewhouse door can bide for to-night,’ said Mr Marks; ‘I ain’t agoin’ to move now I’ve seated myself for a comfortable smoke.’
He took a long clay pipe from a corner of the fender as he spoke, and began to fill it deliberately.
‘I don’t feel easy about that brewhouse door, Luke,’ remonstrated his wife; ‘there are always tramps about, and they can get in easily when the bar isn’t up.’
‘Go and put the bar up yourself, then, can’t you!’ answered Mr Marks.
‘It’s too heavy for me to lift.’
‘Then let it bide, if you’re too fine a lady to see to it yourself. You’re very anxious all of a sudden about this here brewhouse door. I suppose you don’t want me to open my mouth to this gent, that’s about it. Oh, you needn’t frown at me to stop my speaking! You’re always putting in your tongue and clipping off my words before I’ve half said ’em; but I won’t stand it. Do you hear? I won’t stand it!’
Phœbe Marks shrugged her shoulders, folded her work, shut her workbox, and crossing her hands in her lap, sat with her grey eyes fixed upon her husband’s bull-like face.
‘Then you don’t particularly care to live at Mount Stanning?’ said Robert, politely, as if anxious to change the conversation.
‘No, I don’t,’ answered Luke; ‘and I don’t care who knows it; and, as I said before, if folks hadn’t been so precious stingy, I might have had a public in a thrivin’ market town, instead of this tumble-down old place, where a man has his hair blowed off his head on a windy day. What’s fifty pound, or what’s a hundred pound——?’
‘Luke! Luke!’
‘No, you’re not agoin’ to stop my mouth with all your “Luke, Lukes!”’ answered Mr Marks, to his wife’s remonstrance. ‘I say again, what’s a hundred pound?’
‘No,’ answered Robert Audley, speaking with wonderful distinctness, and addressing his words to Luke Marks, but fixing his eyes upon Phœbe’s anxious face. ‘What, indeed, is a hundred pounds to a man possessed of the power which you hold, or rather which your wife holds, over the person in question?’
Phœbe’s face, at all times almost colourless, seemed scarcely capable of growing paler; but as her eyelids dropped under Robert Audley’s searching glance, a visible change came over the pallid hues of her complexion.
‘A quarter to twelve,’ said Robert, looking at his watch. ‘Late hours for such a quiet village as Mount Stanning. Good night, my worthy host. Good night, Mrs Marks. You needn’t send me my shaving water till nine o’clock to-morrow morning.’
CHAPTER XVIII
ROBERT RECEIVES A VISITOR WHOM HE HAD SCARCELY EXPECTED
ELEVEN o’clock struck the next morning, and found Mr Robert Audley still lounging over the well-ordered little breakfast-table, with one of his dogs at each side of his armchair, regarding him with watchful eyes and opened mouth, awaiting the expected morsel of ham or toast. Robert had a county paper on his knees, and made a feeble effort now and then to read the first page, which was filled with advertisements of farming stock, quack medicines, and other interesting matter.
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br /> The weather had changed, and the snow, which had for the last few days been looming blackly in the frosty sky, fell in great feathery flakes against the windows, and lay piled in the little bit of garden ground without.
The long, lonely road leading towards Audley seemed untrodden by a footstep, as Robert looked out at the wintry landscape.
‘Lively,’ he said, ‘for a man used to the fascinations of Temple Bar!’
As he watched the snow-flakes falling every moment thicker and faster upon the lonely road, he was surprised by seeing a brougham* driving slowly up the hill.
‘I wonder what unhappy wretch has too restless a spirit to stop at home on such a morning as this,’ he muttered, as he returned to the arm-chair by the fire.
He had only re-seated himself a few minutes when Phœbe Marks entered the room to announce Lady Audley.
‘Lady Audley! Pray beg her to come in,’ said Robert; and then, as Phœbe left the room to usher in this unexpected visitor, he muttered between his teeth—
‘A false move, my lady, and one I never looked for from you.’
Lucy Audley was radiant on this cold and snowy January morning. Other people’s noses are rudely assailed by the sharp fingers of the grim ice-king, but not my lady’s; other people’s lips turn pale and blue with the chilling influence of the bitter weather, but my lady’s pretty little rosebud of a mouth retained its brightest colouring and cheeriest freshness.
She was wrapped in the very sables which Robert Audley had brought from Russia, and carried a muff that the young man thought seemed almost as big as herself.
She looked a childish, helpless, babyfied little creature; and Robert watched her with some touch of pity in his eyes, as she came up to the hearth by which he was standing, and warmed her tiny gloved hands at the blaze.
Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics) Page 19