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

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘So I went to the station with him. We was in time to catch the train as stops at Brentwood at half-after eight, and we had five minutes to spare. So he takes me into a corner of the platform, and he says: “I wants you to deliver these here letters for me,” which I told him I was willin’. “Very well, then,” he says, “look here, you know Audley Court?” “Yes,” I says, “I ought to, for my sweetheart lives lady’s-maid there.” “Whose lady’s-maid?” he says. So I tells him “My lady’s, the new lady what was governess at Mr Dawson’s.” “Very well, then,” he says, “this here letter with the cross upon the envelope is for Lady Audley, but you’re to be sure to give it into her own hands; and remember to take care as nobody sees you give it.” I promises to do this, and he hands me the first letter. And then he says, “Do you know. Mr Audley, as is nevy to Sir Michael?” and I said, “Yes, I’ve heerd tell on him, and I’d heerd as he was a reg’lar swell, but affable and free spoken” (for I had heerd tell on you, you know),’ Luke added parenthetically. ‘“Now look here,” the young chap says, “You’re to give this other letter to Mr Robert Audley, who’s a stayin’ at the Sun Inn, in the village;” and I tell him it’s all right, as I’ve know’d the Sun ever since I was a baby. So then he gives me the second letter, what’s got nothink wrote upon the envelope, and he gives me a five-pound note, accordin’ to promise; and then he says “Good day, and thank you for all your trouble,” and he gets into a second-class carriage, and the last I sees of him is a face as white as a sheet of writin’ paper and a great patch of stickin’ plaster criss-crossed upon his forehead.’

  ‘Poor George! poor George!’

  ‘I went back to Audley, and I went straight to the Sun Inn, and asked for you, meanin’ to deliver both letters faithful, so help me God, then; but the landlord told me as you’d started off that mornin’ for London, and he didn’t know when you’d come back, and he didn’t know the name o’ the place where you lived in London, though he said he thought it was in one o’ them Law Courts, such as Westminster Hall or Doctors’ Commons, or somethin’ like that. So what was I to do? I couldn’t send the letter by post, not knowin’ where to direct to, and I couldn’t give it into your own hands, and I’d been told partikler not to let anybody else know of it; so I’d nothin’ to do but to wait and see if you come back, and bide my time for givin’ of it to you.

  ‘I thought I’d go over to the Court in the evenin’ and see Phœbe, and find out from her when there’d be a chance of my seein’ her lady, for I know’d she could manage it if she liked. So I didn’t go to work that day, though I ought to ha’ done, and I lounged and idled about until it was nigh upon dusk, and then I goes down to the meadows behind the Court, and there I finds Phœbe sure enough waitin’ agen the wooden door in the wall, on the look-out for me.

  ‘Well I went into the shrubbery with her, and I was a turnin’ towards the old well, for we’d been in the habit of sittin’ upon the brickwork about it often of a summer’s evening, but Phœbe comes over as pale as a ghost all of a sudden, and says, “Not there! not there!” So I asks, “Why not there?” and she answers “as she don’t know, but she feels nervous like this evenin’, and she’s heerd as the well’s haunted. I tells her as that’s all a pack o’gammon,* but she says, whether it is, or whether it isn’t, she won’t go agen the well. So we goes back to the gate, and she leans upon it talkin’ to me.

  ‘I hadn’t been talkin’ to her long before I see there was somethink wrong with her, and I told her as much.

  ‘ “Well,” she says, “I ain’t quite myself this evenin’, for I had a upset, yesterday, and I ain’t got over it yet.”

  ‘ “A upset,” I says. “You had a quarrel with your missus, I suppose.”

  ‘She didn’t answer me directly, but she smiled the queerest smile as ever I see, and presently she says,

  ‘ “No, Luke, it weren’t nothin’ o’ that kind; and what’s more, nobody could be friendlier towards me than my lady; I think she’d do anythink for me a’most, and I think whether it was a bit o’ farming stock and furniture or such like, or whether it was the good-will of a public-house, she wouldn’t refuse me anythink as I asked her.”

  ‘I couldn’t make out this, for it was only a few days before, as she’d told me her missus was selfish and extravagant, and we might wait a long time before we could get what we wanted from her.

  ‘So I says to her, “Why, this is rather sudden like, Phœbe,” and she says, “Yes, it is sudden;” and she smiles again, just the same sort of smile as before. Upon that I turns round upon her sharp, and says,

  ‘ “I’ll tell you what it is, my gal, you’re a keepin’ somethink from me; somethink you’ve been told, or somethink you’ve found out; and if you think you’re a goin’ to try that game on with me, you’ll find you’re very much mistaken; and so I give you warnin’.”

  ‘But she laughed it off like, and says, “Lor, Luke, what could have put such fancies into your head?”

  ‘I says, “If I’ve got fancies in my head it’s you that have put ’em there; and I tell you once more I won’t stand no nonsense, and if you want to keep secrets from the man as you’re a goin’ to marry, you’d better marry somebody else and keep secrets from him, for you won’t do it from me, and so I tell you.”

  ‘Upon which she begins to whimper a bit, but I takes no notice o’ that, but begins to question her about my lady. I had the letter marked with the pencil cross in my pocket, and I wanted to find out how I was to deliver it.

  ‘ “Perhaps other people can keep secrets as well as you,” I said, “and perhaps other people can make friends as well as you. There were a gentleman came here to see your missus yesterday, warn’t there; a tall young gentleman with a brown beard?”

  ‘Instead of answering of me like a Christian, my cousin Phœbe bursts out a cryin’, and wrings her hands, and goes on awful, until I’m dashed if I can make out what she’s up to.

  ‘But little by little I got it out of her, for I wouldn’t stand no nonsense; and she told me how she’d been sittin’ at work at the window of her little room, which was at the top of the house, right up in one of the gables, and overlooked the lime-walk and the shubbery and the well, when she see my lady walkin’ with a strange gentleman, and they walked together for a long time, until by-and-by they—’

  ‘Stop,’ cried Robert Audley, ‘I know the rest.’

  ‘Well Phœbe told me all about what she see, and she told me as she’d met her lady almost directly afterwards, and somethin’ had passed between ’em, not much, but enough to let her missus know that the servant what she looked down upon had found out that as would put her in that servant’s power to the last day of her life.

  ‘ “And she is in my power, Luke,” says Phœbe, “and she’ll do any-thin’ in the world for us if we keep her secret.”

  ‘So you see both my Lady Audley and her maid thought as the gentleman as I’d seen safe off by the London train was lyin’ dead at the bottom of the well. If I was to give the letter they’d find out the contrairy of this, and if I was to give the letter, Phœbe and me would lose the chance of gettin’ started in life by her missus.

  ‘So I kep’ the letter and kep’ my secret, and my lady kep’ hern. But I thought if she acted liberal by me, and gave me the money I wanted, free like, I’d tell her everythink and make her mind easy.

  ‘But she didn’t. Whatever she give me she throwed me as if I’d been a dog. Whenever she spoke to me, she spoke as she might have spoken to a dog; and a dog she couldn’t abide the sight on. There was no word in her mouth that was too bad for me. There was no toss as she could give her head that was too proud and scornful for me; and my blood biled agen her, and I kep’ my secret, and let her keep hern. I opened the two letters and I read ’em, but I couldn’t make much sense out of ’em, and I hid ’em away; and not a creature but me has see ’em until this night.’

  Luke Marks had finished his story, and lay quietly enough, exhausted by having talked so long. He watched Robert Audley
’s face, fully expecting some reproof, some grave lecture; for he had a vague consciousness that he had done wrong.

  But Robert did not lecture him; he had no fancy for an office which he did not think himself fitted to perform.

  ‘The clergyman will talk to him and comfort him when he comes to-morrow morning,’ Mr Audley thought; ‘and if the poor creature needs a sermon it will come better from his lips than from mine. What should I say to him? His sin has recoiled upon his own head; for had my lady’s mind been set at ease, the Castle Inn would not have been burned down. Who shall dare to try and order his own life after this? who can fail to recognise God’s hand in this strange story?’

  He thought very humbly of the deductions he had made and acted upon. He remembered how implicitly he had trusted in the pitiful light of his own reason; but he was comforted by remembering also that he had tried simply and honestly to do his duty; faithfully alike to the dead and to the living.

  Robert Audley sat until long after daybreak with the sick man, who fell into a heavy slumber a short time after he had finished his story. The old woman had dozed comfortably throughout her son’s confession. Phœbe was asleep upon the press bedstead in the room below; so the young barrister was the only watcher.

  He could not sleep; he could only think of the story he had heard. He could only thank God for his friend’s preservation, and pray that he might be able to go to Clara Talboys, and say, ‘You brother still lives, and has been found.’

  Phœbe came up-stairs at eight o’clock, ready to take her place at the sick bed, and Robert Audley went away to get a bed at the Sun Inn. He had had no more comfortable rest than such odd snatches of sleep as are to be got in railway carriages and on board steamers, during the last three nights, and he was completely worn out. It was nearly dusk when he awoke out of a long dreamless slumber, and dressed himself before dining in the little sitting-room, in which he and George had sat together a few months before.

  The landlord waited upon him at dinner, and told him that Luke Marks had died at five o’clock that afternoon. ‘He went off rather sudden like,’ the man said, ‘but very quiet.’

  Robert Audley wrote a long letter that evening, addressed to Madame Taylor, care of Monsieur Val, Villebrumeuse; a long letter in which he told the wretched woman who had borne so many names and was to bear a false one for the rest of her life, the story that the dying man had told him.

  ‘It may be some comfort to her to hear that her husband did not perish in his youth by her wicked hand,’ he thought, ‘if her selfish soul can hold any sentiment of pity or sorrow for others.’

  CHAPTER IX

  RESTORED

  CLARA TALBOYS returned to Dorsetshire to tell her father that his only son had sailed for Australia upon the 9th of September, and that it was most probable he yet lived, and would return to claim the forgiveness of the father he had never very particularly injured; except in the matter of having made that terrible matrimonial mistake which had exercised so fatal an influence upon his youth.

  Mr Harcourt Talboys was fairly nonplussed. Junius Brutus had never been placed in such a position as this, and seeing no way of getting out of this dilemma, by acting after his favourite model, Mr Talboys was fain to be natural for once in his life, and to confess that he had suffered much uneasiness and pain of mind about his only son, since his conversation with Robert Audley; and that he would be heartily glad to take his poor boy to his arms, whenever he should return to England. But when was he likely to return? and how was he to be communicated with? That was the question. Robert Audley remembered the advertisements which he had caused to be inserted in the Melbourne and Sydney papers. If George had re-entered either city alive, how was it that no notice had ever been taken of that advertisement? Was it likely his friend would be indifferent to his uneasiness? But then, again, it was just possible that George Talboys had not happened to see this advertisement; and, as he had travelled under a feigned name, neither his fellow-passengers nor the captain of the vessel would have been able to identify him with the person advertised for. What was to be done? Must they wait patiently till George grew weary of his exile, and returned to the friends who loved him; or were there any means to be taken by which his return might be hastened? Robert Audley was at fault! Perhaps, in the unspeakable relief of mind which he had experienced upon the discovery of his friend’s escape, he was unable to look beyond the one fact of that providential preservation.

  In this state of mind he went down to Dorsetshire to pay a visit to Mr Talboys, who had given way to a perfect torrent of generous impulses, and had gone so far as to invite his son’s friend to share the prim hospitality of the square, red-brick mansion.

  Mr Talboys had only two sentiments upon the subject of George’s story; one was a natural relief and happiness in the thought that his son had been saved; the other was an earnest wish that my lady had been his wife, and that he might thus have had the pleasure of making a signal example of her.

  ‘It is not for me to blame you, Mr Audley,’ he said, ‘for having smuggled this guilty woman out of the reach of justice, and thus, as I may say, paltered with the laws of your country. I can only remark that, had the lady fallen into my hands, she would have been very differently treated.’

  It was in the middle of April when Robert Audley found himself once more under those black fir-trees beneath which his wandering thoughts had so often strayed since his first meeting with Clara Talboys. There were primroses and early violets in the hedges now, and the streams which, upon his first visit, had been hard and frost-bound as the heart of Harcourt Talboys, had thawed, like that gentleman, and ran merrily under the blackthorn bushes in the capricious April sunshine.

  Robert had a prim bed-room, and an uncompromising dressing-room allotted to him in the square house, and he woke every morning upon a metallic spring-mattress which always gave him the idea of sleeping upon some musical instrument, to see the sun glaring in upon him through the square white blinds, and lighting up the two lacquered urns which adorned the foot of his blue iron bedstead, until they blazed like two tiny brazen lamps of the Roman period.

  A visit to Mr Harcourt Talboys was perhaps rather more like a return to boyhood and boarding-school than is quite consonant with the Sybarite view of human enjoyment. There were the same curtainless windows, and narrow strips of bedside carpet; the same clanging bell in the early morning; the same uncompromising servants filing into a long dining-room to assist at perhaps the same prayers; and there was altogether rather too much of the ‘private academy for the sons of gentlemen preparing for the church and the army’ in the Talboys establishment.

  But if the square-built, red-brick mansion had been the palace of Armida,* and the prim, linen-jacketed man represented by a legion of houris,* Robert Audley could have scarcely seemed better satisfied with his entertainment.

  He awoke to the sound of the clanging bell, and made his toilet in the cruel early morning sunshine, which is bright without being cheerful, and makes you wink without making you warm. He emulated Mr Harcourt Talboys in the matter of shower-baths and cold water, and emerged prim and blue as that gentleman himself, as the clock in the hall struck seven, to join the master of the house in his ante-breakfast constitutional under the fir-trees in the stiff plantation.

  But there was generally a third person who assisted in these constitutional promenades, and that third person was Clara Talboys, who used to walk by her father’s side, more beautiful than the morning,—for that was sometimes dull and cloudy, while she was always fresh and bright,—in a broad-leaved straw hat and flapping blue ribbons, one quarter of an inch of which Mr Audley would have esteemed a prouder decoration than ever adorned a favoured creature’s buttonhole.

  Absent George was often talked of in these morning walks, and Robert Audley seldom took his place at the long breakfast-table without remembering the morning upon which he had first sat in that room, telling his friend’s story, and hating Clara Talboys for her cold self-possession. He knew her bet
ter now, and knew that she was one of the most noble and beautiful of women. But had she yet discovered how dear she was to her brother’s friend? Robert used to wonder sometimes if it were possible that he had not yet betrayed himself; if it could be possible that the love which made her very presence a magical influence to him had failed to make itself known by some inadvertent glance, by some unconscious tremble in the voice, that seemed to take another tone when he addressed her.

  The dull life in the square-built house was only relieved now and then by a stiff dinner party, at which a few country people assembled to bore each other by mutual consent; and by occasional inroads of morning callers, who took the drawing-room by storm, and held it for about an hour, to the utter discomfiture of Mr Audley. That gentleman nourished sentiments of peculiar malevolence upon the subject of the fresh-coloured young country squires, who generally appeared with their mammas and sisters upon these occasions.

  It was impossible, of course, that these young men could come within the radius of Clara’s brown eyes without falling wildly in love with her; and it was impossible, therefore, that Robert Audley could do otherwise than furiously hate them as impertinent rivals and interlopers. He was jealous of anybody and everybody who came into the region inhabited by those calm brown eyes; jealous of a fat widower of eight-and-forty; of an elderly baronet with purple whiskers; of the old women about the neighbourhood whom Clara Talboys visited and ministered to; of the flowers in the conservatory, which occupied so much of her time and distracted her attention from him.

  At first they were very ceremonious towards each other, and were only familiar and friendly upon the one subject of George’s adventures; but, little by little, a pleasant intimacy arose between them, and before the first three weeks of Robert’s visit had elapsed, Miss Talboys made him happy, by taking him seriously in hand and lecturing him on the purposeless life he had led so long, and the little use he had made of the talents and opportunities that had been given to him.