The broad outer moat was dry and grass-grown, and the laden trees of the orchard hung over it with gnarled straggling branches that drew fantastical patterns upon the green slope. Within this moat there was, as I have said, the fish-pond—a sheet of water that extended the whole length of the garden, and bordering which there was an avenue called the lime-tree walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky, so screened from observation by the thick shelter of the overarching trees, that it seemed a chosen place for secret meetings or for stolen interviews; a place in which a conspiracy might have been planned or a lover’s vow registered with equal safety; and yet it was scarcely twenty paces from the house.
At the end of this dark arcade there was the shrubbery, where, half buried amongst the tangled branches and the neglected weeds, stood the rusty wheel of that old well of which I have spoken. It had been of good service in its time, no doubt; and busy nuns have perhaps drawn the cool water with their own fair hands; but it had fallen with disuse now, and scarcely any one at Audley Court knew whether the spring had dried up or not. But sheltered as was the solitude of this lime-tree walk, I doubt very much if it was ever put to any romantic uses. Often in the cool of the evening Sir Michael Audley would stroll up and down smoking his cigar, with his dog at his heels, and his pretty young wife dawdling by his side; but in about ten minutes the baronet and his companion would grow tired of the rustling limes and the still water, hidden under the spreading leaves of the water-lilies, and the long green vista with the broken well at the end, and would stroll back to the white drawing-room, where my lady played dreamy melodies by Beethoven and Mendelssohn till her husband fell asleep in his easy chair.
Sir Michael Audley was fifty-six years of age, and he had married a second wife three months after his fifty-fifth birthday. He was a big man, tall and stout, with a deep sonorous voice, handsome black eyes, and a white beard—a white beard which made him look venerable against his will, for he was as active as a boy, and one of the hardest riders in the county. For seventeen years he had been a widower with an only child, a daughter, Alicia Audley, now eighteen, and by no means too well pleased at having a step-mother brought home to the Court; for Miss Alicia had reigned supreme in her father’s house since her earliest childhood, and had carried the keys, and jingled them in the pockets of her silk aprons, and lost them in the shrubbery, and dropped them into the pond, and given all manner of trouble about them from the hour in which she entered her teens, and had on that account deluded herself into the sincere belief that for the whole of that period she had been keeping house.
But Miss Alicia’s day was over; and now, when she asked anything of the housekeeper, the housekeeper would tell her that she would speak to my lady, or she would consult my lady, and if my lady pleased it should be done. So the baronet’s daughter, who was an excellent horsewoman and a very clever artist, spent most of her time out of doors, riding about the green lanes, and sketching the cottage children, and the ploughboys, and the cattle, and all manner of animal life that came in her way. She set her face with a sulky determination against any intimacy between herself and the baronet’s young wife; and amiable as that lady was, she found it quite impossible to overcome Miss Alicia’s prejudices and dislike; or to convince the spoilt girl that she had not done her a cruel injury in marrying Sir Michael Audley.
The truth was that Lady Audley had, in becoming the wife of Sir Michael, made one of those apparently advantageous matches which are apt to draw upon a woman the envy and hatred of her sex. She had come into the neighbourhood as a governess in the family of a surgeon in the village near Audley Court. No one knew anything of her except that she came in answer to an advertisement which Mr Dawson, the surgeon, had inserted in the Times. She came from London; and the only reference she gave was to a lady at a school at Brompton, where she had once been a teacher. But this reference was so satisfactory that none other was needed, and Miss Lucy Graham was received by the surgeon as the instructress of his daughters. Her accomplishments were so brilliant and numerous, that it seemed strange that she should have answered an advertisement offering such very moderate terms of remuneration as those named by Mr Dawson: but Miss Graham seemed perfectly well satisfied with her situation, and she taught the girls to play sonatas by Beethoven, and to paint from Nature after Creswick,* and walked through the dull, out-of-the-way village to the humble little church three times on Sunday, as contentedly as if she had no higher aspiration in the world than to do so all the rest of her life.
People who observed this accounted for it by saying that it was part of her amiable and gentle nature always to be light-hearted, happy, and contented under any circumstances.
Wherever she went she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. In the cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam. She would sit for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away, leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her benevolence), the old woman would burst out into senile raptures with her grace, her beauty, and her kindliness, such as she never bestowed upon the vicar’s wife, who half fed and clothed her. For you see Miss Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Every one loved, admired, and praised her. The boy who opened the five-barred gate that stood in her pathway ran home to his mother to tell of her pretty looks, and the sweet voice in which she thanked him for the little service. The verger at the church who ushered her into the surgeon’s pew; the vicar who saw the soft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he preached his simple sermon; the porter from the railway-station who brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants; everybody, high and low, united in declaring that Lucy Graham was the sweetest girl that ever lived.
Perhaps it was this cry which penetrated into the quiet chambers of Audley Court; or perhaps it was the sight of her pretty face, looking over the surgeon’s high pew every Sunday morning. However it was, it was certain that Sir Michael Audley suddenly experienced a strong desire to be better acquainted with Mr Dawson’s governess.
He had only to hint this to the worthy doctor for a little party to be got up, to which the vicar and his wife, and the baronet and his daughter, were invited.
That one quiet evening sealed Sir Michael’s fate. He could no more resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice; the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny. Destiny! Why, she was his destiny! He had never loved before. What had been his marriage with Alicia’s mother but a dull, jog-trot bargain, made to keep some estate in the family that would have been just as well out of it? What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful, smouldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But this was love—this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain, miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his white beard; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair, and a slim waist, such as he had had twenty years before; these wakeful nights and melancholy days, so gloriously brightened if he chanced to catch a glimpse of her sweet face behind the window curtains as he drove past the surgeon’s house; all these signs gave token of the truth; and told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, Sir Michael Audley had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love.
I do not think that throughout his courtship the baronet once calculated upon his wealth or his position as a strong reason for his success. If he ever remembered these things, he dismissed the thought of them with a shudder. It pained him too much to believe for a moment that
any one so lovely and innocent could value herself against a splendid house or a good old title. No; his hope was that as her life had been most likely one of toil and dependence, and as she was very young (nobody exactly knew her age, but she looked little more than twenty), she might never have formed any attachment, and that he, being the first to woo her, might by tender attentions, by generous watchfulness, by a love which should recall to her the father she had lost, and by a protecting care that should make him necessary to her, win her young heart, and obtain from her fresh and earliest love alone the promise of her hand. It was a very romantic day dream, no doubt; but, for all that, it seemed in a very fair way to be realised. Lucy Graham appeared by no means to dislike the baronet’s attentions. There was nothing whatever in her manner of the shallow artifice employed by a woman who wishes to captivate a rich man. She was so used to admiration from every one, high and low, that Sir Michael’s conduct made very little impression upon her. Again, he had been so many years a widower that people had given up the idea of his ever marrying again. At last, however, Mrs Dawson spoke to the governess on the subject. The surgeon’s wife was sitting in the school-room busy at work, while Lucy was putting the finishing touches to some water-coloured sketches done by her pupils.
‘Do you know, my dear Miss Graham,’ said Mrs Dawson, ‘I think you ought to consider yourself a remarkably lucky girl.’
The governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude, and stared wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of curls. They were the most wonderful curls in the world—soft and feathery, always floating away from her face, and making a pale halo round her head when the sunlight shone through them.
‘What do you mean, my dear Mrs Dawson?’ she asked, dipping her camel’s-hair brush into the wet aquamarine upon the palette, and poising it carefully before putting in the delicate streak of purple which was to brighten the horizon in her pupil’s sketch.
‘Why, I mean, my dear, that it only rests with yourself to become Lady Audley, and the mistress of Audley Court.’
Lucy Graham dropped the brush upon the picture, and flushed scarlet to the roots of her fair hair; and then grew pale again, far paler than Mrs Dawson had ever seen her before.
‘My dear, don’t agitate yourself,’ said the surgeon’s wife, soothingly; ‘you know that nobody asks you to marry Sir Michael unless you wish. Of course it would be a magnificent match; he has a splendid income, and is one of the most generous of men. Your position would be very high, and you would be enabled to do a great deal of good; but, as I said before, you must be entirely guided by your own feelings. Only one thing I must say, and that is, that if Sir Michael’s attentions are not agreeable to you, it is really scarcely honourable to encourage him.’
‘His attentions—encourage him!’ muttered Lucy, as if the words bewildered her. ‘Pray, pray don’t talk to me, Mrs Dawson. I had no idea of this. It is the last thing that would have occurred to me.’ She leaned her elbows on the drawing-board before her, and clasping her hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply. She wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket or a cross, or a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket was, she always kept it hidden under her dress. Once or twice, while she sat silently thinking, she removed one of her hands from before her face, and fidgeted nervously with the ribbon, clutching at it with a half-angry gesture, and twisting it backwards and forwards between her fingers.
‘I think some people are born to be unlucky, Mrs Dawson,’ she said, by-and-by; ‘it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to become Lady Audley.’
She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the surgeon’s wife looked up at her with surprise.
‘You unlucky, my dear!’ she exclaimed. ‘I think you’re the last person who ought to talk like that—you, such a bright, happy creature, that it does every one good to see you, I’m sure I don’t know what we shall do if Sir Michael robs us of you.’
After this conversation they often spoke upon the subject, and Lucy never again showed any emotion whatever when the baronet’s admiration for her was canvassed. It was a tacitly understood thing in the surgeon’s family that whenever Sir Michael proposed, the governess would quietly accept him; and, indeed, the simple Dawsons would have thought it something more than madness in a penniless girl to reject such an offer.
So one misty June evening Sir Michael, sitting opposite to Lucy Graham at a window in the surgeon’s little drawing-room, took an opportunity, while the family happened by some accident to be absent from the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. He made the governess in few but solemn words an offer of his hand. There was something almost touching in the manner and tone in which he spoke to her—half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly expect to be the choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that she would reject him, even though she broke his heart by doing so, than that she should accept his offer if she did not love him.
‘I scarcely think there is a greater sin, Lucy,’ he said solemnly, ‘than that of the woman who marries a man she does not love. You are so precious to me, my beloved, that deeply as my heart is set on this, and bitter as the mere thought of disappointment is to me, I would not have you commit such a sin for any happiness of mine. If my happiness could be achieved by such an act, which it could not—which it never could,’ he repeated earnestly, ‘nothing but misery can result from a marriage dictated by any motive but truth and love.’
Lucy Graham was not looking at Sir Michael, but straight out into the misty twilight and the dim landscape far away beyond the little garden. The baronet tried to see her face, but her profile was turned to him, and he could not discover the expression of her eyes. If he could have done so, he would have seen a yearning gaze which seemed as if it would have pierced the far obscurity and looked away—away into another world.
‘Lucy, you heard me?’
‘Yes,’ she said gravely; not coldly, or in any way as if she were offended at his words.
‘And your answer?’
She did not remove her gaze from the darkening country side, but for some moments was quite silent; then turning to him with a sudden passion in her manner, that lighted up her face with a new and wonderful beauty which the baronet perceived even in the growing twilight, she fell on her knees at his feet.
‘No, Lucy; no, no!’ he cried vehemently, ‘not here, not here!’
‘Yes, here, here,’ she said, the strange passion which agitated her making her voice sound shrill and piercing—not loud, but preter-naturally distinct; ‘here, and nowhere else. How good you are—how noble and how generous! Love you! Why there are women a hundred times my superiors in beauty and in goodness who might love you dearly; but you ask too much of me. You ask too much of me! Remember what my life has been; only remember that. From my very babyhood I have never seen anything but poverty. My father was a gentleman; clever, accomplished, generous, handsome—but poor. My mother ——But do not let me speak of her. Poverty, poverty, trials, vexations, humiliations, deprivations! You cannot tell; you, who are amongst those for whom life is so smooth and easy; you can never guess what is endured by such as we. Do not ask too much of me, then. I cannot be disinterested; I cannot be blind to the advantages of such an alliance. I cannot, I cannot!’
Beyond her agitation and her passionate vehemence, there was an undefined something in her manner which filled the baronet with a vague alarm. She was still on the ground at his feet, crouching rather than kneeling, her thin white dress clinging about her, her pale hair streaming over her shoulders, her great blue eyes glittering in the dusk, and her hands clutching at the black ribbon about her throat, as if it had been strangling her.
‘Don’t ask too much of me,’ she kept repeating; ‘I have been selfish from my babyhood.’
‘Lucy, Lucy, speak plainly. Do you dislike me?’
‘Dislike you! No, no!’
‘But is there any one else whom you love
?’
She laughed aloud at his question. ‘I do not love any one in the world,’ she answered.
He was glad of her reply; and yet that and the strange laugh jarred upon his feelings. He was silent for some moments, and then said with a kind of effort, —
‘Well, Lucy, I will not ask too much of you. I dare say I am a romantic old fool; but if you do not dislike me, and if you do not love any one else, I see no reason why we should not make a very happy couple. Is it a bargain, Lucy?’
‘Yes.’
The baronet lifted her in his arms, and kissed her once upon the forehead; then, after quietly bidding her good night, he walked straight out of the house.
He walked straight out of the house, this foolish old man, because there was some strong emotion at work in his heart—neither joy, nor triumph, but something almost akin to disappointment; some stifled and unsatisfied longing which lay heavy and dull at his heart, as if he had carried a corpse in his bosom. He carried the corpse of that hope which had died at the sound of Lucy’s words. All the doubts and fears and timid aspirations were ended now. He must be contented, like other men of his age, to be married for his fortune and his position.
Lucy Graham went slowly up the stairs to her little room at the top of the house. She placed her dim candle on the chest of drawers, and seated herself on the edge of the white bed; still and white as the draperies hanging round her.
‘No more dependence, no more drudgery, no more humiliations,’ she said; ‘every trace of the old life melted away—every clue to identity buried and forgotten—except these, except these.’
She had never taken her left hand from the black ribbon at her throat. She drew it from her bosom as she spoke, and looked at the object attached to it.
It was neither a locket, a miniature, nor a cross: it was a ring wrapped in an oblong piece of paper—the paper partly printed, partly written, yellow with age, and crumpled with much folding.
Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics) Page 6
