The whisper in which he uttered these words was too low to reach the other side of the room where Alicia sat.
Lucy Audley’s eyes met those of the speaker with some gleam of triumph in their light.
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘Those who strike me must strike through him.’
She pointed to the sleeper as she spoke, still looking at Robert Audley. She defied him with her blue eyes, their brightness intensified by the triumph in their glance. She defied him with her quiet smile—a smile of fatal beauty, full of lurking significance and mysterious meaning—the smile which the artist had exaggerated in his portrait of Sir Michael’s wife.
Robert turned away from the lovely face, and shaded his eyes with his hand, putting a barrier between my lady and himself; a screen which baffled her penetration and provoked her curiosity. Was he still watching her, or was he thinking? and of what was he thinking?
Robert Audley had been seated at the bedside for upwards of an hour before his uncle woke. The baronet was delighted at his nephew’s coming.
‘It was very good of you to come to me, Bob,’ he said. ‘I have been thinking of you a good deal since I’ve been ill. You and Lucy must be good friends, you know, Bob; and you must learn to think of her as your aunt, sir; though she is young and beautful; and—and—and—you understand, eh?’
Robert grasped his uncle’s hand, but he looked down gravely as he answered—
‘I do understand you, sir,’ he said quietly; ‘and I give you my word of honour that I am steeled against my lady’s fascinations. She knows that as well as I do.’
Lucy Audley made a little grimace with her pretty lips.
‘Bah, you silly Robert,’ she exclaimed; ‘you take everything au sérieux. If I thought you were rather too young for a nephew, it was only in my fear of other people’s foolish gossip; not from any——’
She hesitated for a moment, and escaped any conclusion to her sentence by the timely intervention of Mr Dawson, her late employer, who entered the room upon his evening visit while she was speaking.
He felt the patient’s pulse; asked two or three questions; pronounced the baronet to be steadily improving; exchanged a few common-place remarks with Alicia and Lady Audley; and prepared to leave the room. Robert rose and accompanied him to the door.
‘I will light you to the staircase,’ he said, taking a candle from one of the tables, and lighting it at the lamp.
‘No, no, Mr Audley, pray do not trouble yourself,’ expostulated the surgeon; ‘I know my way very well indeed.’
Robert insisted; and the two men left the room together. As they entered the octagon ante-chamber, the barrister paused and shut the door behind him.
‘Will you see that the other door is closed, Mr Dawson?’ he said, pointing to that which opened upon the staircase. ‘I wish to have a few moments’ private conversation with you.’
‘With much pleasure,’ replied the surgeon, complying with Robert’s request; ‘but if you are at all alarmed about your uncle, Mr Audley, I can set your mind at rest. There is no occasion for the least uneasiness. Had his illness been at all serious, I should have telegraphed immediately for the family physician.’
‘I am sure that you would have done your duty, sir,’ answered Robert, gravely. ‘But I am not going to speak of my uncle. I wish to ask you two or three questions about another person.’
‘Indeed.’
‘The person who once lived in your family as Miss Lucy Graham; the person who is now Lady Audley.’
Mr Dawson looked up with an expression of surprise upon his quiet face.
‘Pardon me, Mr Audley,’ he answered; ‘you can scarcely expect me to answer any questions about your uncle’s wife, without Sir Michael’s express permission. I can understand no motive which can prompt you to ask such questions—no worthy motive, at least.’ He looked severely at the young man, as much as to say, ‘You have been falling in love with your uncle’s pretty wife, sir, and you want to make me a go-between in some treacherous flirtation; but it won’t do, sir; it won’t do.’
‘I always respected the lady as Miss Graham, sir,’ he said, ‘and I esteem her doubly as Lady Audley—not on account of her altered position, but because she is the wife of one of the noblest men in Christendom.’
‘You cannot respect my uncle or my uncle’s honour more sincerely than I do,’ answered Robert. ‘I have no unworthy motive for the questions I am about to ask; and you must answer them.
‘Must!’ echoed Mr Dawson, indignantly.
‘Yes; you are my uncle’s friend. It was at your house he met the woman who is now his wife. She called herself an orphan, I believe, and enlisted his pity as well as his admiration in her behalf. She told him that she stood alone in the world, did she not?—without friends or relatives. That was all I could ever learn of her antecedents.’
‘What reason have you to wish to know more?’ asked the surgeon.
‘A very terrible reason,’ answered Robert Audley. ‘For some months past I have struggled with doubts and suspicions which have embittered my life. They have grown stronger every day; and they will not be set at rest by the commonplace sophistries and the shallow arguments with which men try to deceive themselves, rather than believe that which of all things upon earth they most fear to believe. I do not think that the woman who bears my uncle’s name is worthy to be his wife. I may wrong her. Heaven grant that it is so. But if I do, the fatal chain of circumstantial evidence never yet linked itself so closely about an innocent person. I wish to set my doubts at rest, or—or to confirm my fears. There is but one manner in which I can do this. I must trace the life of my uncle’s wife backwards, minutely and carefully, from this night to a period of six years ago. This is the twenty-fourth of February, fifty-nine. I want to know every record of her life between to-night and the February of the year fifty-three.’
‘And your motive is a worthy one?’
‘Yes, I wish to clear her from a very dreadful suspicion.’
‘Which exists only in your mind?’
‘And in the mind of one other person.’
‘May I ask who that person is?’
‘No, Mr Dawson,’ answered Robert, decisively; ‘I cannot reveal anything more than what I have already told you. I am a very irresolute, vacillating man in most things. In this matter I am compelled to be decided. I repeat once more that I must know the history of Lucy Graham’s life. If you refuse to help me to the small extent in your power, I will find others who will help me. Painful as it would be to me, I will ask my uncle for the information which you would withhold, rather than be baffled in the first step of my investigation.’
Mr Dawson was silent for some minutes.
‘I cannot express how much you have astonished and alarmed me, Mr Audley,’ he said. ‘I can tell you so little about Lady Audley’s antecedents, that it would be mere obstinacy to withhold the small amount of information I possess. I have always considered your uncle’s wife one of the most amiable of women. I cannot bring myself to think her otherwise. It would be an uprooting of one of the strongest convictions of my life, were I compelled to think her otherwise. You wish to follow her life backwards from the present hour to the year fifty-three?’
‘I do.’
‘She was married to your uncle last June twelvemonth, in the midsummer of fifty-seven. She had lived in my house a little more than thirteen months. She became a member of my household upon the fourteenth of May, in the year fifty-six.’
‘And she came to you——?’
‘From a school at Brompton; a school kept by a lady of the name of Vincent. It was Mrs Vincent’s strong recommendation that induced me to receive Miss Graham into my family without any more especial knowledge of her antecedents.’
‘Did you see this Mrs Vincent?’
‘I did not. I advertised for a governess, and Miss Graham answered my advertisement. In her letter she referred me to Mrs Vincent, the proprietress of a school in which she was then residing as junior teacher. My t
ime is always so fully occupied, that I was glad to escape the necessity of a day’s loss in going from Audley to London to inquire about the young lady’s qualifications. I looked for Mrs Vincent’s name in the Directory,* found it, concluded that she was a responsible person, and wrote to her. Her reply was perfectly satisfactory:—Miss Lucy Graham was assiduous and conscientious; as well as fully qualified for the situation I offered. I accepted this reference, and I had no cause to regret what may have been an indiscretion. And now, Mr Audley, I have told you all that I have the power to tell.’
‘Will you be so kind as to give me the address of this Mrs Vincent?’ asked Robert, taking out his pocket-book.
‘Certainly. She was then living at No. 9, Crescent Villas, Brompton.’
‘Ah, to be sure,’ muttered Mr Audley, a recollection of last September flashing suddenly back upon him as the surgeon spoke. ‘Crescent Villas—yes, I have heard the address before, from Lady Audley herself. This Mrs Vincent telegraphed to my uncle’s wife early in last September. She was ill—dying, I believe—and sent for my lady; but had removed from her old house and was not to be found.’
‘Indeed! I never heard Lady Audley mention the circumstance.’
‘Perhaps not. It occurred while I was down here. Thank you, Mr Dawson, for the information which you have so kindly and honestly given me. It takes me back two and a half years in the history of my lady’s life; but I have still a blank of three years to fill up, before I can exonerate her from my terrible suspicion. Good evening.’
Robert shook hands with the surgeon and returned to his uncle’s room. He had been away about a quarter of an hour. Sir Michael had fallen asleep once more, and my lady’s loving hands had lowered the heavy curtains and shaded the lamp by the bedside. Alicia and her father’s wife were taking tea in Lady Audley’s boudoir, the room next to the ante-chamber in which Robert and Mr Dawson had been seated.
Lucy Audley looked up from her occupation amongst the fragile china cups, and watched Robert rather anxiously, as he walked softly to his uncle’s room, and back again to the boudoir. She looked very pretty and innocent, seated behind the graceful group of delicate opal china and glittering silver. Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea. The most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance. The floating mists from the boiling liquid in which she infuses the soothing herbs, whose secrets are known to her alone, envelop her in a cloud of scented vapour, through which she seems a social fairy, weaving potent spells with Gunpowder and Bohea.* At the tea-table she reigns omnipotent, unapproachable. What do men know of the mysterious beverage? Read how poor Hazlitt made his tea,* and shudder at the dreadful barbarism. How clumsily the wretched creatures attempt to assist the witch president of the tea-tray; how hopelessly they hold the kettle, how continually they imperil the frail cups and saucers, or the taper hands of the priestess. To do away with the tea-table is to rob woman of her legitimate empire. To send a couple of hulking men about amongst your visitors, distributing a mixture made in the housekeeper’s room, is to reduce the most social and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of rations. Better the pretty influence of the teacups and saucers gracefully wielded in a woman’s hand, than all the inappropriate power snatched at the point of the pen from the unwilling sterner sex. Imagine all the women of England elevated to the high level of masculine intellectuality; superior to crinoline; above pearl powder and Mrs Rachel Levison;* above taking the pains to be pretty; above making themselves agreeable; above tea-tables, and that cruelly scandalous and rather satirical gossip which even strong men delight in; and what a dreary, utilitarian, ugly life the sterner sex must lead.
My lady was by no means strong-minded. The starry diamond upon her white fingers flashed hither and thither amongst the tea-things, and she bent her pretty head over the marvellous Indian tea-caddy of sandal-wood, and silver, with as much earnestness as if life held no higher purpose than the infusion of Bohea.
‘You’ll take a cup of tea with us, Mr Audley?’ she asked, pausing with the teapot in her hand to look up at Robert, who was standing near the door.
‘If you please.’
‘But you have not dined, perhaps? Shall I ring and tell them to bring you something a little more substantial than biscuits and transparent bread-and-butter?’
‘No, thank you, Lady Audley. I took some lunch before I left town. I’ll trouble you for nothing but a cup of tea.’
He seated himself at the little table and looked across it at his cousin Alicia, who sat with a book in her lap, and had the air of being very much absorbed by its pages. The bright brunette complexion had lost its glowing crimson, and the animation of the young lady’s manner was suppressed—on account of her father’s illness, no doubt, Robert thought.
‘Alicia, my dear,’ the barrister said, after a very leisurely contemplation of his cousin, ‘you’re not looking well.’
Miss Audley shrugged her shoulders, but did not condescend to lift her eyes from her book.
‘Perhaps not,’ she answered, contemptuously. ‘What does it matter? I’m growing a philosopher of your school, Robert Audley. What does it matter? Who cares whether I am well or ill?’
‘What a spitfire she is,’ thought the barrister. He always knew his cousin was angry with him when she addressed him as ‘Robert Audley.’
‘You needn’t pitch into a fellow because he asks you a civil question, Alicia,’ he said, reproachfully. ‘As to nobody caring about your health, that’s nonsense. I care.’ Miss Audley looked up with a bright smile. ‘Sir Harry Towers cares.’ Miss Audley returned to her book with a frown.
‘What are you reading there, Alicia?’ Robert asked, after a pause, during which he had sat thoughtfully stirring his tea.
‘Changes and Chances.’
‘A novel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who is it by?’
‘The author of Follies and Faults,’ answered Alicia, still pursuing her study of the romance upon her lap.
‘Is it interesting?’
Miss Audley pursed up her mouth, and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Not particularly,’ she said.
‘Then I think you might have better manners than to read it while your first cousin is sitting opposite you,’ observed Mr Audley, with some gravity, ‘especially as he has only come to pay you a flying visit, and will be off to-morrow morning.’
‘To-morrow morning!’ exclaimed my lady, looking up suddenly.
Though the look of joy upon Lady Audley’s face was as brief as a flash of lightning on a summer sky, it was not unperceived by Robert.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I shall be obliged to run up to London to-morrow on business, but I shall return the next day, if you will allow me, Lady Audley, and stay here till my uncle recovers.’
‘But you are not seriously alarmed about him, are you?’ asked my lady, anxiously. ‘You do not think him very ill?’
‘No,’ answered Robert. ‘Thank Heaven, I think there is not the slightest cause for apprehension.’
My lady sat silent for a few moments, looking at the empty teacups with a prettily thoughtful face—a face grave with the innocent seriousness of a musing child.
‘But you were closeted such a long time with Mr Dawson just now,’ she said, after this brief pause.—‘I was quite alarmed at the length of your conversation. Were you talking of Sir Michael all the time?’
‘No; not all the time.’
My lady looked down at the teacups once more.
‘Why, what could you find to say to Mr Dawson, or he to say to you?’ she asked, after another pause. ‘You are almost strangers to each other.’
‘Suppose Mr Dawson wished to consult me about some law business.’
‘Was it that?’ cried Lady Audley, eagerly.
‘It would be rather unprofessional to tell you if it were so, my lady,’ answered Robert, gravely.
My lady bit her lip, and rela
psed into silence. Alicia threw down her book, and watched her cousin’s pre-occupied face. He talked to her now and then for a few minutes, but it was evidently an effort to him to arouse himself from his reverie.
‘Upon my word, Robert Audley, you are a very agreeable companion,’ exclaimed Alicia at length, her rather limited stock of patience quite exhausted by two or three of these abortive attempts at conversation. ‘Perhaps the next time you come to the Court, you will be good enough to bring your mind with you. By your present inanimate appearance, I should imagine that you had left your intellect, such as it is, somewhere in the Temple. You were never one of the liveliest of people, but latterly you have really grown almost unendurable. I suppose you are in love, Mr Audley, and are thinking of the honoured object of your affections.’
He was thinking of Clara Talboys’ uplifted face, sublime in its unutterable grief; of her impassioned words, still ringing in his ears as clearly as when they were first spoken. Again he saw her looking at him with her bright brown eyes. Again he heard that solemn question, ‘Shall you or I find my brother’s murderer?’ And he was in Essex; in the little village from which he firmly believed George Talboys had never departed. He was on the spot at which all record of his friend’s life ended as suddenly as a story ends when the reader shuts the book. And could he withdraw now from the investigation in which he found himself involved? Could he stop now? For any consideration? No; a thousand times no! Not with the image of that grief-stricken face imprinted on his mind. Not with the accents of that earnest appeal ringing on his ear.
CHAPTER VIII
SO FAR AND NO FARTHER
ROBERT left Audley the next morning by an early train, and reached Shoreditch a little after nine o’clock. He did not return to his chambers, but called a cab and drove straight to Crescent Villas, West Brompton. He knew that he should fail in finding the lady he went to seek at this address, as his uncle had failed a few months before, but he thought it possible to obtain some clue to the schoolmistress’s new residence, in spite of Sir Michael’s ill success.
Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics) Page 28
