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

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Once or twice he gave a sleepy shout, scarcely loud enough to scare the birds in the branches above his head, or the trout in the stream at his feet; but receiving no answer, grew tired of the exertion, and dawdled on, yawning as he went, and still looking for George Talboys.

  By-and-by he took out his watch, and was surprised to find that it was a quarter past four.

  ‘Why, the selfish beggar must have gone home to his dinner!’ he muttered reflectively; ‘and yet that isn’t much like him, for he seldom remembers even his meals unless I jog his memory.’

  Even a good appetite, and the knowledge that his dinner would very likely suffer by this delay, could not quicken Mr Robert Audley’s constitutional dawdle, and by the time he strolled in at the front door of the Sun the clocks were striking five. He so fully expected to find George Talboys waiting for him in the little sitting-room, that the absence of that gentleman seemed to give the apartment a dreary look, and Robert groaned aloud.

  ‘This is lively!’ he said. ‘A cold dinner, and nobody to eat it with!’

  The landlord of the Sun came himself to apologise for his ruined dishes.

  ‘As fine a pair of ducks, Mr Audley, as ever you clapped eyes on, but burnt up to a cinder along of being kep’ hot.’

  ‘Never mind the ducks,’ Robert said, impatiently; ‘where’s Mr Talboys?’

  ‘He ain’t been in, sir, since you went out together this morning.’

  ‘What!’ cried Robert. ‘Why, in Heaven’s name, what has the man done with himself?’

  He walked to the window and looked out upon the broad white high road. There was a waggon laden with trusses of hay crawling slowly past, the lazy horses and the lazy waggoner dropping their heads with a weary stoop under the afternoon sunshine. There was a flock of sheep straggling about the road, with a dog running himself into a fever in the endeavour to keep them decently together. There were some bricklayers just released from work—a tinker mending some kettles by the road-side; there was a dog-cart dashing down the road, carrying the master of the Audley hounds to his seven o’clock dinner; there were a dozen common village sights and sounds that mixed themselves up into a cheerful bustle and confusion; but there was no George Talboys.

  ‘Of all the extraordinary things that ever happened to me in the whole course of my life,’ said Mr Robert Audley, ‘this is the most miraculous!’

  The landlord, still in attendance, opened his eyes as Robert made this remark. What could there be so extraordinary in the simple fact of a gentleman being late for his dinner?

  ‘I shall go and look for him,’ said Robert, snatching up his hat and walking straight out of the house.

  But the question was where to look for him. He certainly was not by the trout stream, so it was no good going back there in search of him. Robert was standing before the inn, deliberating on what was best to be done, when the landlord came out after him.

  ‘I forgot to tell you, Mr Audley, as how your uncle called here five minutes after you was gone, and left a message asking of you and the other gentleman to go down to dinner at the Court.’

  ‘Then I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Robert, ‘if George Talboys has gone down to the Court to call upon my uncle. It isn’t like him, but it’s just possible that he has done it.’

  It was six o’clock when Robert knocked at the door of his uncle’s house. He did not ask to see any of the family, but inquired at once for his friend.

  Yes, the servant told him; Mr Talboys had been there at two o’clock, or a little after.

  ‘And not since?’

  ‘No, not since.’

  Was the man sure that it was at two Mr Talboys called? Robert asked.

  Yes, perfectly sure. He remembered the hour because it was the servants’ dinner hour, and he had left the table to open the door to Mr Talboys.

  ‘Why, what can have become of the man?’ thought Robert, as he turned his back upon the Court. ‘From two till six—four good hours—and no signs of him!’

  If any one had ventured to tell Mr Robert Audley that he could possibly feel a strong attachment to any creature breathing, that cynical gentleman would have elevated his eyebrows in supreme contempt at the preposterous notion. Yet here he was, flurried and anxious, bewildering his brain by all manner of conjectures about his missing friend, and, false to every attribute of his nature, walking fast.

  ‘I haven’t walked fast since I was at Eton,’ he murmured, as he hurried across one of Sir Michael’s meadows in the direction of the village; ‘and the worst of it is that I haven’t the most remote idea where I am going.’

  He crossed another meadow, and then seating himself upon a stile, rested his elbows upon his knees, buried his face in his hands, and set himself seriously to think the matter out.

  ‘I have it!’ he said, after a few minutes’ thought; ‘the railway station!’ He sprang over the stile, and started off in the direction of the little red-brick building.

  There was no train expected for another half hour, and the clerk was taking his tea in an apartment on one side of the office, on the door of which was inscribed, in large white letters, ‘Private.’

  But Mr Audley was too much occupied with the one idea of looking for his friend to pay any attention to this warning. He strode at once to the door, and rattling his cane against it, brought the clerk out of his sanctum in a perspiration from hot tea, and with his mouth full of bread and butter.

  ‘Do you remember the gentleman that came down to Audley with me, Smithers?’ asked Robert.

  ‘Well, to tell you the real truth, Mr Audley, I can’t say I do. You came by the four o’clock, if you remember, and there’s always a many by that train.’

  ‘You don’t remember him, then?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’

  ‘That’s provoking! I want to know, Smithers, whether he has taken a ticket for London since two o’clock to-day. He’s a tall, broad-chested young fellow, with a big brown beard. You couldn’t well mistake him.’

  ‘There was four or five gentlemen as took tickets for the 3.30 up,’ said the clerk rather vaguely, casting an anxious glance over his shoulder at his wife, who looked by no means pleased at this interruption to the harmony of the tea-table.

  ‘Four or five gentlemen! But did either of them answer to the description of my friend?’

  ‘Well, I think one of them had a beard, sir.’

  ‘A dark brown beard?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know but what it was brownish like.’

  ‘Was he dressed in grey?’

  ‘I believe it was grey: a many gents wears grey. He asked for the ticket sharp and short like, and when he’d got it walked straight out on to the platform whistling.’

  ‘That’s George!’ said Robert. ‘Thank you, Smithers: I needn’t trouble you any more. It’s as clear as daylight,’ he muttered, as he left the station, ‘he’s got one of his gloomy fits on him, and he’s gone back to London without saying a word about it. I’ll leave Audley myself to-morrow morning; and for to-night—why, I may as well go down to the Court, and make the acquaintance of my uncle’s young wife. They don’t dine till seven: if I get back across the fields I shall be in time. Bob—otherwise Robert Audley, this sort of thing will never do: you are falling over head and ears in love with your aunt.’

  CHAPTER XI

  THE MARK UPON MY LADY’S WRIST

  ROBERT found Sir Michael and Lady Audley in the drawing-room. My lady was sitting on a music-stool before the grand piano, turning over the leaves of some new music. She twirled round upon this revolving seat, making a rustling with her silk flounces, as Mr Robert Audley’s name was announced; then, leaving the piano, she made her nephew a pretty mock ceremonious curtsey. ‘Thank you so much for the sables,’ she said, holding out her little fingers, all glittering and twinkling with the diamonds she wore upon them; ‘thank you for those beautiful sables. How good it was of you to get them for me!’

  Robert had almost forgotten the commission he had executed for Lady
Audley during his Russian expedition. His mind was so full of George Talboys that he only acknowledged my lady’s gratitude by a bow.

  ‘Would you believe it, Sir Michael?’ he said. ‘That foolish chum of mine has gone back to London, leaving me in the lurch.’

  ‘Mr George Talboys returned to town!’ exclaimed my lady, lifting her eyebrows.

  ‘What a dreadful catastrophe!’ said Alicia maliciously, ‘since Pythias, in the person of Mr Robert Audley, cannot exist for half an hour without Damon,* commonly known as George Talboys.’

  ‘He’s a very good fellow,’ Robert said stoutly; ‘and to tell the honest truth, I’m rather uneasy about him.’

  Uneasy about him! My lady was quite anxious to know why Robert was uneasy about his friend.

  ‘I’ll tell you why, Lady Audley,’ answered the young barrister. ‘George had a bitter blow a year ago in the death of his wife. He has never got over that trouble. He takes life pretty quietly—almost as quietly as I do—but he often talks very strangely, and I sometimes think that one day this grief will get the better of him, and he’ll do something rash.’ Mr Robert Audley spoke vaguely; but all three of his listeners knew that the something rash to which he alluded was that one deed for which there is no repentance.

  There was a brief pause, during which Lady Audley arranged her yellow ringlets by the aid of the glass over the console table opposite to her.

  ‘Dear me!’ she said, ‘this is very strange. I did not think men were capable of these deep and lasting affections. I thought that one pretty face was as good as another pretty face to them, and that when number one with blue eyes and fair hair died, they had only to look out for number two with black eyes and hair, by way of variety.’

  ‘George Talboys is not one of those men. I firmly believe that his wife’s death broke his heart.’

  ‘How sad!’ murmured Lady Audley. ‘It seems almost cruel of Mrs Talboys to die, and grieve her poor husband so much.’

  ‘Alicia was right; she is childish,’ thought Robert, as he looked at his aunt’s pretty face.

  My lady was very charming at the dinner-table; she professed the most bewitching incapacity for carving the pheasant set before her, and called Robert to her assistance.

  ‘I could carve a leg of mutton at Mr Dawson’s,’ she said, laughing; ‘but a leg of mutton is so easy; and then I used to stand up.’

  Sir Michael watched the impression my lady made upon his nephew with a proud delight in her beauty and fascination.

  ‘I am so glad to see my poor little woman in her usual good spirits once more,’ he said. ‘She was very down-hearted yesterday at a disappointment she met with in London.’

  ‘A disappointment!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Audley, a very cruel one,’ answered my lady. ‘I received the other morning a telegraphic message from my dear old friend and schoolmistress, telling me that she was dying, and that if I wanted to see her again I must hasten to her immediately. The telegraphic despatch contained no address, and of course, from that very circum-stance, I imagined that she must be living in the house in which I left her three years ago. Sir Michael and I hurried up to town immediately, and drove straight to the old address. The house was occupied by strange people, who could give me no tidings of my friend. It is in a retired place, where there are very few tradespeople about. Sir Michael made inquiries at the few shops there are, but, after taking an immense deal of trouble, could discover nothing whatever likely to lead to the information we wanted. I have no friends in London, and had therefore no one to assist me except my dear, generous husband, who did all in his power, but in vain, to find my friend’s new residence.’

  ‘It was very foolish not to send the address in the telegraphic message,’ said Robert.

  ‘When people are dying it is not so easy to think of all these things,’ murmured my lady, looking reproachfully at Mr Audley with her soft blue eyes.

  In spite of Lady Audley’s fascination, and in spite of Robert’s very unqualified admiration of her, the barrister could not overcome a vague feeling of uneasiness on this quiet September evening.

  As he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my lady, his mind wandered away to shady Fig-tree Court, and he thought of poor George Talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the dogs and the canaries. ‘I wish I’d never felt any friendliness for the fellow,’ he thought. ‘I feel like a man who has an only son whose life has gone wrong with him. I wish to Heaven I could give him back his wife, and send him down to Ventnor to finish his days in peace.’

  Still my lady’s pretty musical prattle ran on as merrily and continuously as the babble of some brook; and still Robert’s thoughts wandered, in spite of himself, to George Talboys.

  He thought of him hurrying down to Southampton by the mail train to see his boy. He thought of him as he had often seen him, spelling over the shipping advertisements in the Times, looking for a vessel to take him back to Australia. Once he thought of him with a shudder, lying cold and stiff at the bottom of some shallow stream, with his dead face turned towards the darkening sky.

  Lady Audley noticed his abstraction, and asked him what he was thinking of.

  ‘George Talboys,’ he answered abruptly.

  She gave a little nervous shudder.

  ‘Upon my word,’ she said, ‘you make me quite uncomfortable by the way in which you talk of Mr Talboys. One would think that something extraordinary had happened to him.’

  ‘God forbid! But I cannot help feeling uneasy about him.’

  Later in the evening Sir Michael asked for some music, and my lady went to the piano. Robert Audley strolled after her to the instrument to turn over the leaves of her music; but she played from memory, and he was spared the trouble his gallantry would have imposed upon him.

  He carried a pair of lighted candles to the piano, and arranged them conveniently for the pretty musician. She struck a few chords, and then wandered into a pensive sonata of Beethoven’s. It was one of the many paradoxes in her character, that love of sombre and melancholy melodies, so opposite to her gay, frivolous nature.

  Robert Audley lingered by her side, and as he had no occupation in turning over the leaves of her music, he amused himself by watching her jewelled white hands gliding softly over the keys, with the lace sleeves dropping away from her graceful arched wrists. He looked at her pretty fingers one by one; this one glittering with a ruby heart; that encoiled by an emerald serpent; and about them all a starry glitter of diamonds. From the fingers his eyes wandered to the rounded wrists: the broad, flat, gold bracelet upon her right wrist dropped over her hand, as she executed a rapid passage. She stopped abruptly to re-arrange it; but before she could do so, Robert Audley noticed a bruise upon her delicate skin.

  ‘You have hurt your arm, Lady Audley,’ he exclaimed. She hastily replaced the bracelet.

  ‘It is nothing,’ she said. ‘I am unfortunate in having a skin which the slightest touch bruises.’

  She went on playing, but Sir Michael came across the room to look into the matter of the bruise upon his wife’s pretty wrist.

  ‘What is it, Lucy?’ he asked; ‘and how did it happen?’

  ‘How foolish you all are to trouble yourselves about anything so absurd!’ said Lady Audley, laughing. ‘I am rather absent in mind, and amused myself a few days ago by tying a piece of ribbon round my arm so tightly, that it left a bruise when I removed it.’

  ‘Hum!’ thought Robert. ‘My lady tells little childish white lies; the bruise is of a more recent date than a few days ago; the skin has only just begun to change colour.’

  Sir Michael took the slender wrist in his strong hand.

  ‘Hold the candles, Robert,’ he said, ‘and let us look at this poor little arm.’

  It was not one bruise, but four slender, purple marks, such as might have been made by the four fingers of a powerful hand that had grasped the delicate wrist a shade too roughly. A narrow ribbon, bound tightly, might have left some such marks, it is true, an
d my lady protested once more that, to the best of her recollection, that must have been how they were made.

  Across one of the faint purple marks there was a darker tinge, as if a ring worn on one of these strong and cruel fingers had been ground into the tender flesh.

  ‘I am sure my lady must tell white lies,’ thought Robert, ‘for I can’t believe the story of the ribbon.’

  He wished his relations good night and good-by at about half-past ten o’clock; he said that he should run up to London by the first train to look for George, in Fig-tree Court.

  ‘If I don’t find him there, I shall go to Southampton,’ he said; ‘and if I don’t find him there——’

  ‘What then?’ asked my lady.

  ‘I shall think that something strange has happened.’

  Robert Audley felt very low-spirited as he walked slowly home between the shadowy meadows; more low-spirited still when he reentered the sitting-room at the Sun Inn, where he and George had lounged together, staring out of the window, and smoking their cigars.

  ‘To think,’ he said, meditatively, ‘that it is possible to care so much for a fellow! But come what may, I’ll go up to town after him the first thing to-morrow morning, and sooner than be balked in finding him, I’ll go to the very end of the world.’

  With Mr Robert Audley’s lymphatic nature, determination was so much the exception, rather than the rule, that when he did for once in his life resolve upon any course of action, he had a certain dogged, iron-like obstinacy that pushed him on to the fulfilment of his purpose.

  The lazy bent of his mind, which prevented him from thinking of half a dozen things at a time, and not thinking thoroughly of any one of them, as is the manner of your more energetic people, made him remarkably clear-sighted upon any point to which he ever gave his serious attention.