‘But if you do pay it, my lady,’ said Phœbe, very earnestly, ‘I hope you will impress upon Luke that it is the last money you will ever give him while he stops in that house.’
‘Why?’ asked Lady Audley, letting her hands fall on her lap, and looking inquiringly at Mrs Marks.
‘Because I want Luke to leave the Castle.’
‘But why do you want him to leave?’
‘Oh, for ever so many reasons, my lady,’ answered Phœbe. ‘He’s not fit to be the landlord of a public-house. I didn’t know that when I married him, or I would have gone against the business, and tried to persuade him to take to the farming line. Not that I suppose he’d have given up his own fancy, though, either; for he’s obstinate enough, as you know, my lady. He’s not fit for his present business, though. He’s scarcely ever sober after dark, and when he’s drunk he gets almost wild, and doesn’t seem to know what he does. We’ve had two or three narrow escapes with him already.’
‘Narrow escapes!’ repeated Lady Audley. ‘What do you mean!’
‘Why, we’ve run the risk of being burnt in our beds through his carelessness.’
‘Burnt in your beds through his carelessness! Why, how was that?’ asked my lady, rather listlessly. She was too selfish, and too deeply absorbed in her own troubles, to take much interest in any danger which had befallen her sometime lady’s-maid.
‘You know what a queer old place the Castle is, my lady; all tumble-down woodwork, and rotten rafters, and such like. The Chelmsford Insurance Company won’t insure it, for they say if the place did happen to catch fire upon a windy night it would blaze away like so much tinder, and nothing in the world could save it. Well, Luke knows this, and the landlord has warned him of it times and often, for he lives close against us, and he keeps a pretty sharp eye upon all my husband’s goings on, but when Luke’s tipsy he doesn’t know what he’s about, and only a week ago he left a candle burning in one of the outhouses, and the flame caught one of the rafters of the sloping roof, and if it hadn’t been for me finding it out when I went round the house the last thing, we should have all been burnt to death perhaps. And that’s the third time the same kind of thing has happened in the six months we’ve had the place, and you can’t wonder that I’m frightened; can you, my lady?’
My lady had not wondered, she had not thought about the business at all. She had scarcely listened to these commonplace details; why should she care for this low-born waiting-woman’s perils and troubles? Had she not her own terrors, her own soul-absorbing perplexities to usurp every thought of which her brain was capable?
She did not make any remark upon that which poor Phœbe had just told her; she scarcely comprehended what had been said, until some moments after the girl had finished speaking, when the words assumed their full meaning, as some words do two or three minutes after they have been heard without being heeded.
‘Burnt in your beds,’ said my lady, at last. ‘It would have been a good thing for me if that precious creature, your husband, had been burnt in his bed before to-night.’
A vivid picture flashed upon her as she spoke. The picture of that frail wooden tenement, the Castle Inn, reduced to a roofless chaos of lath and plaster, vomiting flames from its black mouth and spitting sparks of fire upward towards the cold night sky.
She gave a weary sigh as she dismissed this image from her restless brain. She would be no better off even if this enemy should be for ever silenced. She had another and far more dangerous foe—a foe who was not to be bribed or bought off, though she had been as rich as an empress.
‘I’ll give you the money to send this bailiff away,’ my lady said, after a pause. ‘I must give you the last sovereign in my purse, but what of that? You know as well as I do that I dare not refuse you.’
Lady Audley rose and took the lighted lamp from her writing-table. ‘The money is in my dressing-room,’ she said; ‘I will go and fetch it.’
‘Oh, my lady,’ exclaimed Phœbe, suddenly. ‘I forgot something; I was in such a way about this business that I quite forgot it.’
‘Quite forgot what?’
‘A letter that was given me to bring to you, my lady, just before I left home.’
‘What letter?’
‘A letter from Mr Audley. He heard my husband mention that I was coming down here, and he asked me to carry this letter.’
Lady Audley set the lamp down upon the table nearest to her, and held out her hand to receive the letter. Phœbe Marks could scarcely fail to observe that the little jewelled hand shook like a leaf.
‘Give it me—give it me,’ cried my lady; ‘let me see what more he has to say.’
She almost snatched the letter from Phœbe’s hand in her wild impatience. She tore open the envelope and flung it from her; she could scarcely unfold the sheet of note-paper in her eager excitement.
The letter was very brief. It contained only these words:—
‘Should Mrs George Talboys really have survived the date of her supposed death, as recorded in the public prints, and upon the tombstone in Ventnor churchyard, and should she exist in the person of the lady suspected and accused by the writer of this, there can be no great difficulty in finding some one able and willing to identify her. Mrs Barkamb, the owner of North Cottages, Wildernsea, would no doubt consent to throw some light upon this matter, either to dispel a delusion or to confirm a suspicion.
‘ROBERT AUDLEY.
‘March 3rd, 1859.
‘The Castle Inn, Mount Stanning.’
My lady crushed the letter fiercely in her hand, and flung it from her into the flames.
‘If he stood before me now, and I could kill him,’ she muttered in a strange inward whisper, ‘I would do it—I would do it!’ She snatched up the lamp and rushed into the adjoining room. She shut the door behind her. She could not endure any witness of her horrible despair—she could endure nothing; neither herself nor her surroundings.
END OF VOL. II
VOLUME III
CHAPTER I
THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY
THE door between my lady’s dressing-room and the bed-chamber in which Sir Michael lay, had been left open. The baronet slept peacefully, his noble face plainly visible in the subdued lamplight. His breathing was low and regular, his lips curved in a half smile—a smile of tender happiness which he often wore when he looked at his beautiful wife, the smile of an all-indulgent father, who looked admiringly at his favourite child.
Some touch of womanly feeling, some sentiment of compassion softened Lady Audley’s glance as it fell upon that noble reposing figure. For a moment the horrible egotism of her own misery yielded to her pitying tenderness for another. It was perhaps only a semi-selfish tenderness after all, in which pity for herself was as powerful as pity for her husband; but for once in a way, her thoughts ran out of the narrow groove of her own terrors and her own troubles to dwell with prophetic grief upon the coming sorrows of another.
‘If they make him believe, how wretched he will be,’ she thought.
But intermingled with that thought there was another—there was the thought of her lovely face, her bewitching manner, her arch smile, her low musical laugh, which was like a peal of silvery bells ringing across a broad expanse of flat pasture, and a rippling river in the misty summer evening. She thought of all these things with a transient thrill of triumph, which was stronger even than her terror.
If Sir Michael Audley lived to be a hundred years old, whatever he might learn to believe of her, however he might grow to despise her, would he ever be able to disassociate her from these attributes? No; a thousand times, no. To the last hour of his life his memory would present her to him invested with the loveliness that had first won his enthusiastic admiration, his devoted affection. Her worst enemies could not rob her of that fairy dower which had been so fatal in its influence upon her frivolous mind.
She paced up and down the dressing-room in the silvery lamplight, pondering upon the strange letter which she had received from Robert Au
dley. She walked backwards and forwards in that monotonous wandering for some time before she was able to steady her thoughts—before she was able to bring the scattered forces of her narrow intellect to bear upon the one all-important subject of the threat contained in the barrister’s letter.
‘He will do it,’ she said, between her set teeth; ‘he will do it, unless I get him into a lunatic asylum first; or unless—’
She did not finish the thought in words. She did not even think out the sentence; but some new and unnatural pulse in her heart seemed to beat out each separate syllable against her breast.
The thought was this: ‘He will do it, unless some strange calamity befalls him and silences him for ever.’ The red blood flashed up into my lady’s face with as sudden and transient a blaze as the flickering flame of a fire, and died as suddenly away, leaving her more pale than winter snow. Her hands, which had before been locked convulsively together, fell apart and dropped heavily at her sides. She stopped in her rapid pacing to and fro—stopped as Lot’s wife may have stopped, after that fatal backward glance at the perishing city,* with every pulse slackening, with every drop of blood congealing in her veins, in the terrible process that was to transform her from a woman into a statue.
Lady Audley stood still for about five minutes in that strangely statuesque attitude, her head erect, her eyes staring straight before her—staring far beyond the narrow boundary of her chamber wall, into dark distances of peril and horror.
But, by-and-by, she started from that rigid attitude almost as abruptly as she had fallen into it. She roused herself from that semi-lethargy, and walked rapidly to her dressing-table, and seating herself before it, pushed away the litter of golden-stoppered bottles, and delicate china essence-boxes, and looked at her reflection in the large oval glass. She was very pale; but there was no other trace of agitation visible in her girlish face. The lines of her exquisitely-moulded lips were so beautiful, that it was only a very close observer who could have perceived a certain rigidity that was unusual to them. She saw this herself, and tried to smile away that statue-like immobility; but to-night the rosy lips refused to obey her: they were firmly locked, and were no longer the slaves of her will and pleasure. All the latent forces of her character concentrated themselves in this one feature. She might command her eyes; but she could not control the muscles of her mouth. She rose from before her dressing-table and took a dark velvet cloak and bonnet from the recesses of her wardrobe, and dressed herself for walking. The little ormolu clock on the chimney-piece struck the quarter after eleven while Lady Audley was employed in this manner; five minutes afterwards, she re-entered the room in which she had left Phœbe Marks.
The innkeeper’s wife was sitting before the low hearth very much in the same attitude as that in which her late mistress had brooded over that lonely hearth earlier in the evening. Phœbe had replenished the fire, and had re-assumed her bonnet and shawl. She was anxious to get home to that brutal husband, who was only too apt to fall into some mischief in her absence. She looked up as Lady Audley entered the room, and uttered an exclamation of surprise at seeing her mistress in a walking costume.
‘My lady,’ she cried, ‘you are not going out to-night?’
‘Yes, I am Phœbe,’ Lady Audley answered, very quietly; ‘I am going to Mount Stanning with you, to see this bailiff, and to pay and dismiss him myself.’
‘But, my lady, you forget what the time is; you can’t go out at such an hour.’
Lady Audley did not answer. She stood, with her fingers resting lightly upon the handle of the bell, meditating quietly.
‘The stables are always locked, and the men in bed by ten o’clock,’ she murmured, ‘when we are at home. It will make a terrible hubbub to get a carriage ready; but yet I dare say one of the servants could manage the matter quietly for me.’
‘But why should you go to-night, my lady?’ cried Phœbe Marks. ‘To-morrow will do quite as well. A week hence will do as well. Our landlord would take the man away if he had your promise to settle the debt.’
Lady Audley took no notice of this interruption. She went hastily into the dressing-room, and flung off her bonnet and cloak, and then returned to the boudoir, in her simple dinner costume, with her curls brushed carelessly away from her face. ‘Now, Phœbe Marks, listen to me,’ she said, grasping her confidante’s wrist, and speaking in a low, earnest voice, but with a certain imperious air that challenged contradiction, and commanded obedience.
‘Listen to me, Phœbe,’ she said, ‘I am going to the Castle Inn, tonight; whether it is early or late is of very little consequence to me; I have set my mind upon going, and I shall go. You have asked me why, and I have told you. I am going in order that I may pay this debt myself, and that I may see for myself that the money I give is applied to the purpose for which I give it. There is nothing out of the common course of life in my doing this. I am going to do what other women in my position very often do. I am going to assist a favourite servant.’
‘But it’s getting on for twelve o’clock, my lady,’ pleaded Phœbe.
Lady Audley frowned impatiently at this interruption.
‘If my going to your house to pay this man should be known,’ she continued, still retaining her hold of Phœbe’s wrist, ‘I am ready to answer for my conduct: but I would rather that the business should be kept quiet. I think that I can leave this house and return to it without being seen by any living creature, if you will do as I tell you.’
‘I will do anything that you wish, my lady,’ answered Phœbe, submissively.
‘Then you will wish me good-night presently, when my maid comes into the room, and you will suffer her to show you out of the house. You will cross the courtyard and wait for me in the avenue upon the other side of the archway. It may be half an hour before I am able to join you, for I must not leave my room till the servants have all gone to bed; but you may wait for me patiently, for come what may, I will join you.’
Lady Audley’s face was no longer pale. An unnatural crimson spot burned in the centre of each rounded cheek, and an unnatural lustre gleamed in her great blue eyes. She spoke with an unnatural clearness, and an unnatural rapidity. She had altogether the appearance and manner of a person who has yielded to the dominant influence of some overpowering excitement. Phœbe Marks stared at her late mistress in mute bewilderment. She began to fear that my lady was going mad.
The bell which Lady Audley rang was answered by the smart lady’s-maid, who wore rose-coloured ribbons and black silk gowns, and other adornments which were unknown to the humble people who sat below the salt in the good old days when servants wore linsey-woolsey.*
‘I did not know that it was so late, Martin,’ said my lady, in that gentle tone which always won for her the willing service of her inferiors. ‘I have been talking with Mrs Marks, and have let the time slip by me. I shan’t want anything to-night, so you may go to bed when you please.’
‘Thank you, my lady,’ answered the girl, who looked very sleepy, and had some difficulty in repressing a yawn even in her mistress’s presence, for the Audley household usually kept very early hours. ‘I’d better show Mrs Marks out, my lady, hadn’t I,’ asked the maid, ‘before I go to bed?’
‘Oh, yes, to be sure, you can let Phœbe out. All the other servants have gone to bed, then, I suppose?’
‘Yes, my lady.’
Lady Audley laughed as she glanced at the time-piece.
‘We have been terribly dissipated up here, Phœbe,’ she said. ‘Good night. You may tell your husband that his rent shall be paid.’
‘Thank you very much, my lady, and good-night,’ murmured Phœbe, as she backed out of the room followed by the lady’s-maid.
Lady Audley listened at the door, waiting till the muffled sound of their footsteps died away in the octagon chamber, and on the carpeted staircase.
‘Martin sleeps at the top of the house,’ she said, ‘ever so far away from this room. In ten minutes I may safely make my escape.’
She wen
t back into her dressing-room, and put on her cloak and bonnet for the second time. The unnatural colour still burnt like a flame in her cheeks, the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes. The excitement which she was under held her in so strong a spell that neither her mind nor her body seemed to have any consciousness of fatigue. However verbose I may be in my description of her feelings, I can never describe a tithe of her thoughts or her sufferings. She suffered agonies that would fill closely printed volumes, bulky with a thousand pages, in that one horrible night. She underwent volumes of anguish, and doubt, and perplexity; sometimes repeating the same chapters of her torments over and over again; sometimes hurrying through a thousand pages of her misery without one pause, without one moment of breathing time. She stood by the low fender in her boudoir, watching the minute hand of the clock, and waiting till it should be time for her to leave the house in safety.
‘I will wait ten minutes,’ she said, ‘not a moment beyond, before I enter upon my new peril.’
She listened to the wild roaring of the March wind, which seemed to have risen with the stillness and darkness of the night.
The hand slowly made its inevitable way to the figures which told that the ten minutes were past. It was exactly a quarter to twelve when my lady took her lamp in her hand, and stole softly from the room. Her footfall was as light as that of some graceful wild animal, and there was no fear of that airy step awakening any echo upon the carpeted stone corridors and staircase. She did not pause until she reached the vestibule upon the ground floor. Several doors opened out of this vestibule, which was an octagon, like my lady’s antechamber. One of these doors led into the library, and it was this door which Lady Audley opened softly and cautiously.
To have attempted to leave the house secretly by any of the principal outlets would have been simple madness, for the housekeeper herself superintended the barricading of the great doors, back and front. The secrets of the bolts, and bars, and chains, and bells which secured these doors, and provided for the safety of Sir Michael Audley’s plate-room, the door of which was lined with sheet-iron, were known only to the servants who had to deal with them. But although all these precautions were taken with the principal entrances to the citadel, a wooden shutter and a slender iron bar, light enough to be lifted by a child, were considered sufficient safeguard for the half-glass door which opened out of the breakfast-room into the gravelled pathway and smooth turf in the courtyard.
Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics) Page 37