Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics)

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Robert awoke with the memory of this dream in his mind, and a sensation of physical relief, as if some heavy weight, which had oppressed him all the night, had been lifted from his breast.

  He fell asleep again, and did not wake until the broad winter sunlight shone upon the window-blind, and the shrill voice of the chamber-maid at his door announced that it was half-past eight o’clock. At a quarter before ten he had left the Victoria Hotel, and was making his way along the lonely platform in front of a row of shadow-less houses that faced the sea.

  This row of hard, uncompromising, square-built habitations stretched away to the little harbour, in which two or three merchant vessels and a couple of colliers were anchored. Beyond the harbour there loomed, grey and cold upon the wintry horizon, a dismal barrack, parted from the Wildernsea houses by a narrow creek, spanned by an iron draw-bridge. The scarlet coat of the sentinel who walked backwards and forwards between two cannons, placed at remote angles before the barrack wall, was the only scrap of colour that relieved the neutral-tinted picture of the grey stone houses and the leaden sea.

  On one side of the harbour a long stone pier stretched out far away into the cruel loneliness of the sea, as if built for the especial accommodation of some modern Timon,* too misanthropical to be satisfied even by the solitude of Wildernsea, and anxious to get still further away from his fellow-creatures.

  It was on that pier George Talboys had first met his wife, under the yellow glory of a sunny sky, and to the music of a braying band. It was there that the young cornet had first yielded to that sweet delusion, that fatal infatuation which had exercised so dark an influence upon his after-life.

  Robert looked savagely at the solitary watering-place—the shabby seaport.

  ‘It is such a place as this,’ he thought, ‘that works a strong man’s ruin. He comes here, heart whole and happy, with no better experience of woman than is to be learnt at a flower-show or in a ball-room; with no more familiar knowledge of the creature than he has of the far-away satellites of the remoter planets; with a vague notion that she is a whirling teetotum* in pink or blue gauze, or a graceful automaton for the display of milliners’ manufacture. He comes to some place of this kind, and the universe is suddenly narrowed into about half a dozen acres; the mighty scheme of creation is crushed into a bandbox. The far-away creatures whom he had seen floating about him, beautiful and indistinct, are brought under his very nose; and before he has time to recover his bewilderment, hey, presto! the witchcraft has begun: the magic circle is drawn around him, the spells are at work, the whole formula of sorcery is in full play, and the victim is as powerless to escape as the marble-legged prince in the Eastern story.’*

  Ruminating in this wise, Robert Audley reached the house to which he had been directed as the residence of Mrs Barkamb. He was admitted immediately by a prim, elderly servant, who ushered him into a sitting-room as prim and elderly-looking as herself. Mrs Barkamb, a comfortable matron of about sixty years of age, was sitting in an armchair before a bright handful of fire in the shining grate. An elderly terrier, whose black-and-tan coat was thickly sprinkled with grey, reposed in Mrs Barkamb’s lap. Every object in the quiet sitting-room had an elderly aspect; an aspect of simple comfort and precision, which is the evidence of outward repose.

  ‘I should like to live here,’ Robert thought, ‘and watch the grey sea slowly rolling over the grey sand under the still grey sky. I should like to live here, and tell the beads upon my rosary, and repent and rest.’

  He seated himself in the arm-chair opposite Mrs Barkamb, at that lady’s invitation, and placed his hat upon the ground. The elderly terrier descended from his mistress’s lap to bark at and otherwise take objection to this hat.

  ‘You were wishing, I suppose, sir, to take one—be quiet, Dash—one of the cottages,’ suggested Mrs Barkamb, whose mind ran in one narrow groove, and whose life during the last twenty years had been an unvarying round of house-letting.

  Robert Audley explained the purpose of his visit.

  ‘I come to ask one simple question,’ he said, in conclusion. ‘I wish to discover the exact date of Mrs Talboys’ departure from Wildernsea. The proprietor of the Victoria Hotel informed me that you were the most likely person to afford me that information.’

  Mrs Barkamb deliberated for some moments.

  ‘I can give you the date of Captain Maldon’s departure,’ she said, ‘for he left No. 17 considerably in my debt, and I have the whole business in black and white; but with regard to Mrs Talboys——’

  Mrs Barkamb paused for a few moments before resuming.

  ‘You are aware that Mrs Talboys left rather abruptly?’ she asked.

  ‘I was not aware of that fact.’

  ‘Indeed! Yes, she left abruptly, poor little woman! She tried to support herself after her husband’s desertion by giving music lessons; she was a very brilliant pianist, and succeeded pretty well, I believe. But I suppose her father took her money from her, and spent it in public-houses. However that might be, they had a very serious misunderstanding one night; and the next morning Mrs Talboys left Wildernsea, leaving her little boy, who was out at nurse in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘But you cannot tell me the date of her departure?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ answered Mrs Barkamb; ‘and yet, stay. Captain Maldon wrote to me upon the day his daughter left. He was in very great distress, poor old gentleman, and he always came to me in his troubles. If I could find that letter, it might be dated, you know—mightn’t it, now?’

  Mr Audley said that it was only probable the letter was dated.

  Mrs Barkamb retired to a table in the window on which stood an old-fashioned mahogany desk lined with green baize, and suffering from a plethora of documents, which oozed out of it in every direction. Letters, receipts, bills, inventories, and tax-papers were mingled in hopeless confusion; and amongst these Mrs Barkamb set to work to search for Captain Maldon’s letter.

  Mr Audley waited very patiently, watching the grey clouds sailing across the grey sky, the grey vessels gliding past upon the grey sea.

  After about ten minutes’ search, and a great deal of rustling, crackling, folding and unfolding of the papers, Mrs Barkamb uttered an exclamation of triumph.

  ‘I’ve got the letter,’ she said; ‘and there’s a note inside it from Mrs Talboys.’

  Robert Audley’s pale face flushed a vivid crimson as he stretched out his hand to receive the papers.

  ‘The person who stole Helen Maldon’s love-letters from George’s trunk in my chambers might have spared themselves the trouble,’ he thought.

  The letter from the old lieutenant was not long, but almost every other word was underscored.

  ‘My generous friend,’ the writer began——

  [Mr Maldon had tried the lady’s generosity pretty severely during his residence in her house, rarely paying his rent until threatened with the intruding presence of the broker’s man.]

  ‘I am in the depths of despair. My daughter has left me! You may imagine my feelings! We had a few words last night upon the subject of money matters, which subject has always been a disagreeable one between us, and on rising this morning I found that I was deserted! The enclosed from Helen was waiting for me on the parlour table.

  ‘Yours in distraction and despair,

  ‘HENRY MALDON.

  ‘North Cottages,

  August 16th, 1854.’

  The note from Mrs Talboys was still more brief. It began abruptly thus:—

  ‘I am weary of my life here, and wish, if I can, to find a new one. I go out into the world, dissevered from every link which binds me to the hateful past, to seek another home and another fortune. Forgive me if I have been fretful, capricious, changeable. You should forgive me, for you know why I have been so. You know the secret which is the key to my life.

  ‘HELEN TALBOYS.’

  These lines were written in a hand that Robert Audley knew only too well.

  He sat for a long time pondering silently o
ver the letter written by Helen Talboys.

  What was the meaning of those two last sentences—‘You should forgive me, for you know why I have been so. You know the secret which is the key to my life?’

  He wearied his brain in endeavouring to find a clue to the signification of those two sentences. He could remember nothing, nor could he imagine anything that would throw a light upon their meaning. The date of Helen’s departure, according to Mr Maldon’s letter, was the 16th of August, 1854. Miss Tonks had declared that Lucy Graham entered the school at Crescent Villas upon the 17th or 18th of August in the same year. Between the departure of Helen Talboys from the Yorkshire watering-place, and the arrival of Lucy Graham at the Brompton school, not more than eight-and-forty hours could have elapsed. This made a very small link in the chain of circumstantial evidence, perhaps; but it was a link, nevertheless, and it fitted neatly into its place.

  ‘Did Mr Maldon hear from his daughter after she had left Wildernsea?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Well, I believe he did hear from her,’ Mrs Barkamb answered; ‘but I didn’t see much of the old gentleman after that August. I was obliged to sell him up in November, poor fellow, for he owed me fifteen months’ rent; and it was only by selling his poor little bits of furniture that I could get him out of my place. We parted very good friends, in spite of my sending in the brokers; and the old gentleman went to London with the child, who was scarcely a twelvemonth old.’

  Mrs Barkamb had nothing more to tell, and Robert had no further questions to ask. He requested permission to retain the two letters written by the lieutenant and his daughter, and left the house with them in his pocket-book.

  He walked straight back to the hotel, where he called for a timetable. An express for London left Wildernsea at a quarter-past one. Robert sent his portmanteau to the station, paid his bill, and walked up and down the stone terrace fronting the sea, waiting for the starting of the train.

  ‘I have traced the histories of Lucy Graham and Helen Talboys to a vanishing point,’ he thought; ‘my next business is to discover the history of the woman who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard.’

  CHAPTER X

  HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE

  UPON his return from Wildernsea, Robert Audley found a letter from his cousin, Alicia, awaiting him at his chambers.

  ‘Papa is much better,’ the young lady wrote, ‘and is very anxious to have you at the Court. For some inexplicable reason, my step-mother has taken it into her head that your presence is extremely desirable, and worries me with her frivolous questions about your movements. So pray come without delay, and set these people at rest. Your affectionate cousin, A. A.’

  ‘So my lady is anxious to know my movements,’ thought Robert Audley, as he sat brooding and smoking by his lonely fireside. ‘She is anxious; and she questions her step-daughter in that pretty, childlike manner which has such a bewitching air of innocent frivolity. Poor little creature; poor unhappy little golden-haired sinner; the battle between us seems terribly unfair. Why doesn’t she run away while there is still time? I have given her fair warning, I have shown her my cards, and worked openly enough in this business, Heaven knows. Why doesn’t she run away?’

  He repeated this question again and again as he filled and emptied his meerschaum, surrounding himself with the blue vapour from his pipe until he looked like some modern magician, seated in his laboratory.

  ‘Why doesn’t she run away? I would bring no needless shame upon that house, of all other houses upon this wide earth. I would only do my duty to my missing friend, and to that brave and generous man who has pledged his faith to a worthless woman. Heaven knows I have no wish to punish, Heaven knows I was never born to be the avenger of guilt or the persecutor of the guilty. I only wish to do my duty. I will give her one more warning, a full and fair one and then——’

  His thoughts wandered away to that gloomy prospect in which he saw no gleam of brightness to relieve the dull, black obscurity that encompassed the future, shutting in his pathway on every side, and spreading a dense curtain around and about him, which Hope was powerless to penetrate. He was for ever haunted by the vision of his uncle’s anguish, for ever tortured by the thought of that ruin and desolation, which, being brought about by his instrumentality, would seem in a manner his handiwork. But amid all, and through all, Clara Talboys, with an imperious gesture, beckoned him onwards to her brother’s unknown grave.

  ‘Shall I go down to Southampton,’ he thought, ‘and endeavour to discover the history of the woman who died at Ventnor? Shall I work underground, bribing the paltry assistants in that foul conspiracy, until I find my way to the thrice guilty principal? No! not till I have tried other means of discovering the truth. Shall I go to that miserable old man, and charge him with his share in the shameful trick which I believe to have been played upon my poor friend? No; I will not torture that terror-stricken wretch as I tortured him a few weeks ago. I will go straight to the arch conspirator, and will tear away the beautiful veil under which she hides her wickedness, and will wring from her the secret of my friend’s fate and banish her for ever from the house which her presence has polluted.’

  He started early the next morning for Essex, and reached Audley before eleven o’clock.

  Early as it was, my lady was out. She had gone to Chelmsford upon a shopping expedition with her step-daughter. She had several calls to make in the neighbourhood of the town, and was not likely to return until dinner time. Sir Michael’s health was very much improved, and he would come downstairs in the afternoon. Would Mr Audley go to his uncle’s room.

  No: Robert had no wish to meet that generous kinsman. What could he say to him? How could he smooth the way to the trouble that was to come?—how soften the cruel blow of the great grief that was preparing for that noble and trusting heart?

  ‘If I could forgive her the wrong done to my friend,’ Robert thought, ‘I should still abhor her for the misery her guilt must bring upon the man who has believed in her.’

  He told his uncle’s servant that he would stroll into the village, and return before dinner. He walked slowly away from the Court, wandering across the meadows between his uncle’s house and the village, purposeless and indifferent, with the great trouble and perplexity of his life stamped upon his face and reflected in his manner.

  ‘I will go into the churchyard,’ he thought, ‘and stare at the tombstones. There is nothing I can do that will make me more gloomy than I am.’

  He was in those very meadows through which he had hurried from Audley Court to the station upon the September day in which George Talboys had disappeared. He looked at the pathway by which he had gone upon that day, and remembered his unaccustomed hurry, and the vague feeling of terror which had taken possession of him immediately upon losing sight of his friend.

  ‘Why did that unaccountable terror seize upon me?’ he thought. ‘Why was it that I saw some strange mystery in my friend’s disappearance? Was it a monition or a monomania?* What if I am wrong after all? What if this chain of evidence which I have constructed link by link is woven out of my own folly? What if this edifice of horror and suspicion is a mere collection of crochets—the nervous fancies of a hypochondriacal bachelor? Mr Harcourt Talboys sees no meaning in the events out of which I have created a horrible mystery. I lay the separate links of the chain before him, and he cannot recognise their fitness. He is unable to put them together. Oh, my God, if it should be in myself all this time that the misery lies; if——’ he smiled bitterly, and shook his head. ‘I have the handwriting in my pocket-book which is the evidence of the conspiracy,’ he thought. ‘It remains for me to discover the darker half of my lady’s secret.’

  He avoided the village, still keeping to the meadows. The church lay a little way back from the straggling High Street, and a rough wooden gate opened from the churchyard into a broad meadow, that was bordered by a running stream, and sloped down into a grassy valley dotted by groups of cattle.

  Robert slowly ascended the narrow hill-side pathw
ay leading up to the gate in the churchyard. The quiet dulness of the lonely landscape harmonised with his own gloom. The solitary figure of an old man hobbling towards a stile at the further end of the wide meadow was the only human creature visible upon the area over which the young barrister looked. The smoke slowly ascending from the scattered houses in the long High Street was the only evidence of human life. The slow progress of the hands of the old clock in the church steeple was the only token by which a traveller could perceive that the sluggish course of rural time had not come to a full stop in the village of Audley.

  Yes, there was one other sign. As Robert opened the gate of the churchyard, and strolled listlessly into the little enclosure, he became aware of the solemn music of an organ, audible through a half-open window in the steeple.

  He stopped and listened to the slow harmonies of a dreamy melody that sounded like an extempore composition of an accomplished player.

  ‘Who would have believed that Audley church could boast such an organ?’ thought Robert. ‘When last I was here, the national schoolmaster* used to accompany his children by a primitive performance of common chords. I didn’t think the old organ had such music in it.’

  He lingered at the gate, not caring to break the lazy spell woven about him by the monotonous melancholy of the organist’s performance. The tones of the instrument, now swelling to their fullest power, now sinking to a low, whispering softness, floated towards him upon the misty winter atmosphere, and had a soothing influence, that seemed to comfort him in his trouble.

  He closed the gate softly, and crossed the little patch of gravel before the door of the church. This door had been left ajar—by the organist, perhaps. Robert Audley pushed it open, and walked into the square porch, from which a flight of narrow stone steps wound upwards to the organ-loft and the belfry. Mr Audley took off his hat, and opened the door between the porch and the body of the church. He stepped softly into the holy edifice, which had a damp, mouldy smell upon week-days. He walked down the narrow aisle to the altar-rails, and from that point of observation took a survey of the church. The little gallery was exactly opposite to him, but the scanty green curtains before the organ were closely drawn, and he could not get a glimpse of the player.