‘What a morning, Mr Audley,’ she said, ‘what a morning!’
‘Yes, indeed! Why did you come out in such weather, Lady Audley?’
‘Because I wished to see you—particularly.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Yes,’ said my lady, with an air of considerable embarrassment, playing with the button of her glove, and almost wrenching it off in her restlessness—‘yes, Mr Audley, I felt that you had not been well treated; that—that you had, in short, reason to complain; and that an apology was due to you.’
‘I do not wish for any apology, Lady Audley.’
‘But you are entitled to one,’ answered my lady, quietly. ‘Why, my dear Robert, should we be so very ceremonious towards each other? You were very comfortable at Audley; we were very glad to have you there; but my dear, silly husband must needs take it into his foolish head that it is dangerous for his poor little wife’s peace of mind to have a nephew of eight or nine-and-twenty smoking his cigars in her boudoir, and, behold! our pleasant little family circle is broken up.’
Lucy Audley spoke with that peculiar childish vivacity which seemed so natural to her. Robert looked down almost sadly at her bright, animated face.
‘Lady Audley,’ he said, ‘Heaven forbid that either you or I should ever bring grief or dishonour upon my uncle’s generous heart! Better, perhaps, that I should be out of the house—better, perhaps, that I had never entered it!’
My lady had been looking at the fire while her nephew spoke, but at his last words she lifted her head suddenly, and looked him full in the face with a wondering expression—an earnest, questioning gaze, whose full meaning the young barrister understood.
‘Oh, pray do not be alarmed, Lady Audley,’ he said gravely. ‘You have no sentimental nonsense, no silly infatuation, borrowed from Balzac, or Dumas fils,* to fear from me. The benchers of the Inner Temple will tell you that Robert Audley is troubled with none of the epidemics whose outward signs are turn-down collars and Byronic neckties.* I say that I wish I had never entered my uncle’s house during the last year; but I say it with a far more solemn meaning than any sentimental one.’
My lady shrugged her shoulders.
‘If you insist on talking in enigmas, Mr Audley,’ she said, ‘you must forgive a poor little woman if she declines to answer them.’
Robert made no reply to this speech.
‘But tell me,’ said my lady, with an entire change of tone, ‘what could have induced you to come up to this dismal place?’
‘Curiosity.’
‘Curiosity!’
‘Yes; I felt an interest in that bull-necked man, with the dark red hair and wicked grey eyes. A dangerous man, my lady—a man in whose power I should not like to be.’
A sudden change came over Lady Audley’s face; the pretty roseate flush faded out from her cheeks, and left them waxen white, and angry flashes lightened in her blue eyes.
‘What have I done to you, Robert Audley,’ she cried passionately—‘what have I done to you, that you should hate me so?’
He answered her very gravely,—
‘I had a friend, Lady Audley, whom I loved very dearly, and since I have lost him I fear that my feelings towards other people are strangely embittered.’
‘You mean—the Mr Talboys who went to Australia?’
‘Yes, I mean the Mr Talboys, who I was told set out for Liverpool with the idea of going to Australia.’
‘And you do not believe in his having sailed for Australia?’
‘I do not.’
‘But why not?’
‘Forgive me, Lady Audley, if I decline to answer that question.’
‘As you please,’ she said carelessly.
‘A week after my friend disappeared,’ continued Robert, ‘I posted an advertisement to the Sydney and Melbourne papers, calling upon him, if he was in either city when the advertisement appeared, to write and tell me of his whereabouts, and also calling on any one who had met him, either in the colonies or on the voyage out, to give me any information respecting him. George Talboys left Essex, or disappeared from Essex, on the 6th of September last.* I ought to receive some answer to this advertisement by the end of this month. To-day is the 27th; the time draws very near.’
‘And if you receive no answer?’ asked Lady Audley.
‘If I receive no answer I shall think that my fears have not been unfounded, and I shall do my best to act.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Ah, Lady Audley, you remind me how very powerless I am in this matter. My friend might have been made away with in this very inn, stabbed to death upon this hearth-stone on which I now stand, and I might stay here for a twelvemonth, and go away at the last as ignorant of his fate as if I had never crossed the threshold. What do we know of the mysteries that may hang about the houses we enter? If I were to go to-morrow into that common-place, plebeian, eight-roomed house in which Maria Manning and her husband murdered their guest,* I should have no awful prescience of that bygone horror. Foul deeds have been done under the most hospitable roofs, terrible crimes have been committed amid the fairest scenes, and have left no trace upon the spot where they were done. I do not believe in mandrake,* or in blood-stains that no time can efface. I believe rather that we may walk unconsciously in an atmosphere of crime, and breathe none the less freely. I believe that we may look into the smiling face of a murderer, and admire its tranquil beauty.’
My lady laughed at Robert’s earnestness.
‘You seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects,’ she said, rather scornfully; ‘you ought to have been a detective police officer.’*
‘I sometimes think I should have been a good one.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am patient.’
‘But to return to Mr George Talboys, whom we lost sight of in your eloquent discussion. What if you receive no answer to your advertisements?’
‘I shall then consider myself justified in concluding that my friend is dead.’
‘Yes, and then——?’
‘I shall examine the effects he left at my chambers.’
‘Indeed! and what are they? Coats, waistcoats, varnished boots, and meerschaum pipes, I suppose,’ said Lady Audley, laughing.
‘No; letters—letters from his friends, his old school-fellows, his father, his brother-officers.’
‘Yes?’
‘Letters, too, from his wife.’
My lady was silent for some few moments, looking thoughtfully at the fire.
‘Have you ever seen any of the letters written by the late Mrs Talboys?’ she asked presently.
‘Never. Poor soul! her letters are not likely to throw much light upon my friend’s fate. I dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, Lady Audley.’
‘Ah, you know my hand of course.’
‘Yes, I know it very well indeed.’
My lady warmed her hands once more, and then taking up the big muff which she had laid aside upon a chair, prepared to take her departure.
‘You have refused to accept my apology, Mr Audley,’ she said; ‘but I trust you are not the less assured of my feelings towards you.’
‘Perfectly assured, Lady Audley.’
‘Then good-by, and let me recommend you not to stay long in this miserable draughty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism back to Fig-tree Court.’
‘I shall return to town to-morrow morning to see after my letters.’
‘Then, once more, good-by.’
She held out her hand; he took it loosely in his own. It seemed such a feeble little hand that he might have crushed it in his strong grasp, had he chosen to be so pitiless.
He attended her to her carriage, and watched it as it drove off, not towards Audley, but in the direction of Brentwood, which was about six miles from Mount Stanning.
About an hour and a half after this, as Robert stood at the door of the inn, smoking a cigar an
d watching the snow falling in the whitened fields opposite, he saw the brougham drive back, empty this time, to the door of the inn.
‘Have you taken Lady Audley back to the Court?’ he said to the coachman, who had stopped to call for a mug of hot spiced ale.
‘No, Sir; I’ve just come from the Brentwood station. My lady started for London by the 12.40 train.’
‘For town?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘My lady gone to London!’ said Robert, as he returned to the little sitting-room. ‘Then I’ll follow her by the next train; and if I’m not very much mistaken, I know where to find her.’
He packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, which was carefully receipted by Phœbe Marks, fastened his dogs together with a couple of leathern collars and a chain, and stepped into the rumbling fly kept at the Castle Inn for the convenience of Mount Stanning. He caught an express that left Brentwood at three o’clock, and settled himself comfortably in a corner of an empty first-class carriage, coiled up in a couple of huge railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in mild defiance of the authorities. ‘The Company may make as many bye-laws as they please,’ he murmured, ‘but I shall take the liberty of enjoying my cheroot as long as I’ve half-a-crown left to give the guard.’
CHAPTER XIX
THE BLACKSMITH’S MISTAKE
IT was exactly five minutes past four as Mr Robert Audley stepped out upon the platform at Shoreditch, and waited placidly until such time as his dogs and his portmanteau should be delivered up to the attendant porter who had called his cab, and undertaken the general conduct of his affairs, with that disinterested courtesy which does such infinite credit to a class of servitors who are forbidden to accept the tribute of a grateful public. Robert Audley waited with consummate patience for a considerable time; but as the express was generally a long train, and as there were a great many passengers from Norfolk carrying guns and pointers, and other paraphernalia of a critical description, it took a long while to make matters agreeable to all claimants, and even the barrister’s seraphic indifference to mundane affairs nearly gave way.
‘Perhaps, when that gentleman who is making such a noise about a pointer with liver-coloured spots, has discovered the particular pointer and spots that he wants—which happy combination of events scarcely seems likely to arrive—they’ll give me my luggage and let me go. The designing wretches knew at a glance that I was born to be imposed upon; and that if they were to trample the life out of me upon this very platform, I should never have the spirit to bring an action against the Company.’ Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he left the porter to struggle for the custody of his goods, and walked round to the other side of the station.
He had heard a bell ring, and, looking at the clock, had remembered that the down-train for Colchester started at this time. He had learned what it was to have an honest purpose since the disappearance of George Talboys; and he reached the opposite platform in time to see the passengers take their seats.
There was one lady who had evidently only just arrived at the station; for she hurried on to the platform at the very moment that Robert approached the train, and almost ran against that gentleman in her haste and excitement.
‘I beg your pardon——’ she began, ceremoniously; then raising her eyes from Mr Audley’s waistcoat, which was about on a level with her pretty face, she exclaimed, ‘Robert! You in London already?’
‘Yes, Lady Audley; you were quite right, the Castle Inn is a dismal place, and——’
‘You got tired of it—I knew you would. Please open the carriage-door for me: the train will start in two minutes.’
Robert Audley was looking at his uncle’s wife with rather a puzzled expression of countenance.
‘What does it mean?’ he thought. ‘She is altogether a different being to the wretched, helpless creature who dropped her mask for a moment, and looked at me with her own pitiful face, in the little room at Mount Stanning, four hours ago. What has happened to cause the change?’
He opened the door for her while he thought this, and helped her to settle herself in her seat, spreading her furs over her knees, and arranging the huge velvet mantle in which her slender little figure was almost hidden.
‘Thank you very much; how good you are to me!’ she said, as he did this. ‘You will think me very foolish to travel upon such a day, without my dear darling’s knowledge too; but I went up to town to settle a very terrific milliner’s bill, which I did not wish my best of husbands to see; for indulgent as he is, he might think me extravagant; and I cannot bear to suffer even in his thoughts.’
‘Heaven forbid that you ever should, Lady Audley,’ Robert said, gravely.
She looked at him for a moment with a smile, which had something defiant in its brightness.
‘Heaven forbid it, indeed,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t think I ever shall.’
The second bell rang, and the train moved as she spoke. The last Robert Audley saw of her was that bright defiant smile.
‘Whatever object brought her to London has been successfully accomplished,’ he thought. ‘Has she baffled me by some piece of womanly jugglery? Am I never to get any nearer to the truth; but am I to be tormented all my life by vague doubts, and wretched suspicions, which may grow upon me till I become a monomaniac?* Why did she come to London?’
He was still mentally asking himself this question as he ascended the stairs in Fig-tree Court, with one of his dogs under each arm, and his railway rugs over his shoulder.
He found his chambers in their accustomed order. The geraniums had been carefully tended, and the canaries had retired for the night under cover of a square of green baize, testifying to the care of honest Mrs Maloney. Robert cast a hurried glance round the sitting-room; then setting down the dogs upon the hearth-rug, he walked straight into the little inner chamber which served as his dressing-room.
It was in this room that he kept disused portmanteaus, battered japanned cases, and other lumber; and it was in this room that George Talboys had left his luggage. Robert lifted a portmanteau from the top of a large trunk, and kneeling down before it with a lighted candle in his hand, carefully examined the lock.
To all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which George had left it when he laid his mourning garments aside and placed them in this shabby repository, with all other memorials of his dead wife. Robert brushed his coat-sleeve across the worn leather-covered lid, upon which the initials G. T. were inscribed with big brass-headed nails; but Mrs Maloney, the laundress, must have been the most precise of housewives, for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk was dusty.
Mr Audley despatched a boy to fetch his Irish attendant, and paced up and down his sitting-room, waiting anxiously for her arrival.
She came in about ten minutes, and, after expressing her delight in the return of ‘the masther,’ humbly awaited his orders.
‘I only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here; that is to say, if anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day—any lady?’
‘Lady? No, indeed, yer honour; there’s been no lady for the kay; barrin’ it’s the blacksmith yer honour manes.’
‘The blacksmith!’
‘Yes; the blacksmith your honour ordered to come to-day.’
‘I order a blacksmith!’ exclaimed Robert. ‘I left a bottle of French brandy in the cupboard,’ he thought, ‘and Mrs M. has been evidently enjoying herself.’
‘Sure, and the blacksmith your honour tould to see to the locks,’* replied Mrs Maloney. ‘It’s him that lives down in one of the little streets by the bridge,’ she added, giving a very lucid description of the man’s whereabouts.
Robert lifted his eyebrows in mute despair.
‘If you’ll sit down and compose yourself, Mrs M.,’ he said—he abbreviated her name thus on principle, for the avoidance of unnecessary labour—‘perhaps we shall be able by-and-by to understand each other. You say a blacksmith has been here?’
‘Sure and I did, sir.’
; ‘To-day?’
‘Quite correct, sir.’
Step by step Mr Audley elicited the following information. A locksmith had called upon Mrs Maloney that afternoon at three o’clock, and had asked for the key of Mr Audley’s chambers, in order that he might look to the locks of the doors, which he stated were all out of repair. He declared that he was acting upon Mr Audley’s own orders, conveyed to him by a letter from the country, where the gentleman was spending his Christmas. Mrs Maloney, believing in the truth of this statement, had admitted the man to the chambers, where he stayed about half an hour.
‘But you were with him while he examined the locks, I suppose?’ Mr Audley asked.
‘Sure I was, sir, in and out, as you may say, all the time; for I’ve been cleaning the stairs this afternoon, and I took the opporchunity to begin my scouring while the man was at work.’
‘Oh, you were in and out all the time. If you could conveniently give me a plain answer, Mrs M., I should be glad to know what was the longest time that you were out while the locksmith was in my chambers?’
But Mrs Maloney could not give a plain answer. It might have been ten minutes; though she didn’t think it was as much. It might have been a quarter of an hour; but she was sure it wasn’t more. It didn’t seem to her more than five minutes; but ‘thim stairrs, your honour—’ and here she rambled off into a disquisition upon the scouring of stairs in general, and the stairs outside Robert’s chambers in particular.
Mr Audley sighed the weary sigh of mournful resignation.
‘Never mind, Mrs M.,’ he said; ‘the locksmith had plenty of time to do anything he wanted to do, I dare say, without your being any the wiser.’
Mrs Maloney stared at her employer with mingled surprise and alarm.
‘Sure, there wasn’t anythin’ for him to stale, your honour, barrin’ the birrds and the geranums, and——’
‘No, no, I understand. There, that’ll do, Mrs M. Tell me where the man lives, and I’ll go and see him.’
‘But you’ll have a bit of dinner first, sir?’
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