‘When people make favourites, they are apt to be deceived by them,’ Miss Tonks answered, with icy sententiousness, and with no very perceptible relevance to the point in discussion.
‘I never made her a favourite, you jealous Tonks,’ Mrs Vincent answered, reproachfully. ‘I never said she was as useful as you, dear. You know I never did.’
‘Oh, no!’ replied Miss Tonks, with a chilling accent, ‘you never said she was useful. She was only ornamental; a person to be shown off to visitors, and to play fantasias on the drawing-room piano.’
‘Then you can give me no clue to Miss Graham’s previous history?’ Robert asked, looking from the schoolmistress to her teacher. He saw very clearly that Miss Tonks bore an envious grudge against Lucy Graham—a grudge which even the lapse of time had not healed.
‘If this woman knows anything to my lady’s detriment, she will tell it,’ he thought. ‘She will tell it only too willingly.’
But Miss Tonks appeared to know nothing whatever; except that Miss Graham had sometimes declared herself an ill-used creature, deceived by the baseness of mankind, and the victim of unmerited sufferings in the way of poverty and deprivation. Beyond this, Miss Tonks could tell nothing; and although she made the most of what she did know, Robert very soon sounded the depth of her small stock of information.
‘I have only one more question to ask,’ he said at last. ‘It is this. Did Miss Graham leave any books or knick-knacks, or any kind of property whatever behind her, when she left your establishment?’
‘Not to my knowledge,’ Mrs Vincent replied.
‘Yes,’ cried Miss Tonks, sharply. ‘She did leave something. She left a box. It’s up-stairs in my room. I’ve got an old bonnet in it. Would you like to see the box?’ she asked, addressing Robert.
‘If you will be so good as to allow me,’ he answered, ‘I should very much like to see it.’
‘I’ll fetch it down,’ said Miss Tonks. ‘It’s not very big.’
She ran out of the room before Mr Audley had time to utter any polite remonstrance.
‘How pitiless these women are to each other,’ he thought, while the teacher was absent. ‘This one knows intuitively that there is some danger to the other lurking beneath my questions. She sniffs the coming trouble to her fellow female creature, and rejoices in it, and would take any pains to help me. What a world it is, and how these women take life out of our hands. Helen Maldon, Lady Audley, Clara Talboys, and now Miss Tonks—all womankind from beginning to end.’
Miss Tonks re-entered while the young barrister was meditating upon the infamy of her sex. She carried a dilapidated paper-covered bonnet-box, which she submitted to Robert’s inspection.
Mr Audley knelt down to examine the scraps of railway labels and addresses which were pasted here and there upon the box. It had been battered upon a great many different lines of railway, and had evidently travelled considerably. Many of the labels had been torn off, but fragments of some of them remained, and upon one yellow scrap of paper Robert read the letters TURI.
‘The box has been to Italy,’ he thought. ‘Those are the first four letters of the word Turin, and the label is a foreign one.’
The only direction which had not been either defaced or torn away was the last, which bore the name of Miss Graham, passenger to London. Looking very closely at this label, Mr Audley discovered that it had been pasted over another.
‘Will you be so good as to let me have a little water and a piece of sponge?’ he said. ‘I want to get off this upper label. Believe me that I am justified in what I am doing.’
Miss Tonks ran out of the room, and returned immediately with a basin of water and a sponge.
‘Shall I take off the label?’ she asked.
‘No, thank you,’ Robert answered, coldly. ‘I can do it very well myself.’
He damped the upper label several times before he could loosen the edges of the paper; but after two or three careful attempts, the moistened surface peeled off without injury to the underneath address.
Miss Tonks could not contrive to read this address across Robert’s shoulder, though she exhibited considerable dexterity in her endeavours to accomplish that object.
Mr Audley repeated his operations upon the lower label, which he removed from the box, and placed very carefully between two blank leaves of his pocket-book.
‘I need intrude upon you no longer, ladies,’ he said, when he had done this. ‘I am extremely obliged to you for having afforded me all the information in your power. I wish you good morning.’
Mrs Vincent smiled and bowed, murmuring some complacent conventionality about the delight she had felt in Mr Audley’s visit. Miss Tonks, more observant, stared at the white change which had come over the young man’s face since he had removed the upper label from the box.
Robert walked slowly away from Acacia Cottage. ‘If that which I have found to-day is no evidence for a jury,’ he thought, ‘it is surely enough to convince my uncle that he has married a designing and infamous woman.’
CHAPTER IX
BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END
ROBERT AUDLEY walked slowly through the leafless grove, under the bare and shadowless trees in the grey February atmosphere, thinking as he went of the discovery he had just made.
‘I have that in my pocket-book,’ he pondered, ‘which forms the connecting link between the woman whose death George Talboys read of in the Times newspaper and the woman who rules in my uncle’s house. The history of Lucy Graham ends abruptly on the threshold of Mrs Vincent’s school. She entered that establishment in August, 1854. The schoolmistress and her assistant can tell me this, but they cannot tell me whence she came. They cannot give me one clue to the secrets of her life from the day of her birth until the day she entered that house. I can go no further in this backward investigation of my lady’s antecedents. What am I to do, then, if I mean to keep my promise to Clara Talboys?’
He walked on for a few paces revolving this question in his mind, with a darker shadow than the shadows of the gathering winter twilight on his face, and a heavy oppression of mingled sorrow and dread weighing down his heart.
‘My duty is clear enough,’ he thought—‘not the less clear because it is painful—not the less clear because it leads me step by step, carrying ruin and desolation with me, to the home I love. I must begin at the other end—I must begin at the other end, and discover the history of Helen Talboys from the hour of George’s departure until the day of the funeral in the churchyard at Ventnor.’
Mr Audley hailed a passing Hansom, and drove back to his chambers.
He reached Fig-tree Court in time to write a few lines to Miss Talboys, and to post his letter at St Martin’s-le-Grand* before six ’clock.
‘It will save me a day,’ he thought, as he drove to the General Post Office with this brief epistle.
He had written to Clara Talboys to inquire the name of the little seaport town in which George had met Captain Maldon and his daughter; for in spite of the intimacy between the two young men, Robert Audley knew very few particulars of his friend’s brief married life.
From the hour in which George Talboys had read the announcement of his wife’s death in the columns of the Times, he had avoided all mention of the tender history which had been so cruelly broken, the familiar record which had been so darkly blotted out.
There was so much that was painful in that brief story! There was such bitter self-reproach involved in the recollection of that desertion which must have seemed so cruel to her who waited and watched at home! Robert Audley comprehended this, and he did not wonder at his friend’s silence. The sorrowful story had been tacitly avoided by both, and Robert was as ignorant of the unhappy history of this one year in his schoolfellow’s life as if they had never lived together in friendly companionship in those snug Temple chambers.
The letter, written to Miss Talboys by her brother George within a month of his marriage, was dated Harrogate. It was at Harrogate, therefore, Robert concluded, the young co
uple spent their honeymoon.
Robert Audley had requested Clara Talboys to telegraph an answer to his question, in order to avoid the loss of a day in the accomplishment of the investigation he had promised to perform.
The telegraphic answer reached Fig-tree Court before twelve o’clock the next day.
The name of the seaport town was Wildernsea,* Yorkshire.
Within an hour of the receipt of this message Mr Audley arrived at the King’s Cross station, and took his ticket for Wildernsea by an express train that started at a quarter before two.
The shrieking engine bore him on the dreary northward journey, whirling him over desert wastes of flat meadow-land and bare corn-fields, faintly tinted with fresh sprouting green. This northern road was strange and unfamiliar to the young barrister, and the wide expanse of the wintry landscape chilled him by its aspect of bare loneliness. The knowledge of the purpose of his journey blighted every object upon which his absent glances fixed themselves for a moment; only to wander wearily away; only to turn inwards upon that far darker picture always presenting itself to his anxious mind.
It was dark when the train reached the Hull terminus; but Mr Audley’s journey was not ended. Amidst a crowd of porters and scattered heaps of that incongruous and heterogeneous luggage with which travellers encumber themselves, he was led, bewildered and half asleep, to another train, which was to convey him along the branch line that swept past Wildernsea, and skirted the border of the German Ocean.
Half an hour after leaving Hull, Robert felt the briny freshness of the sea upon the breeze that blew in at the open window of the carriage, and an hour afterwards the train stopped at a melancholy station, built amid a sandy desert, and inhabited by two or three gloomy officials, one of whom rang a terrific peal upon a harshly clanging bell as the train approached.
Mr Audley was the only passenger who alighted at the dismal station. The train swept on to gayer scenes before the barrister had time to collect his scattered senses, or to pick up the portmanteau, which had been discovered with some difficulty amid a black cavern of luggage, only illuminated by one lantern.
‘I wonder whether settlers in the back-woods of America feel as solitary and strange as I feel to-night?’ he thought, as he stared hopelessly about him in the darkness.
He called to one of the officials, and pointed to his portmanteau.
‘Will you carry that to the nearest hotel for me?’ he asked—‘that is to say, if I can get a good bed there.’
The man laughed as he shouldered the portmanteau.
‘You could get thirty beds, I dare say, sir, if you wanted ’em,’ he said. ‘We ain’t over busy at Wildernsea at this time o’ year. This way, sir.’
The porter opened a wooden door in the station wall, and Robert Audley found himself upon a wide bowling-green of smooth grass, which surrounded a huge square building that loomed darkly on him through the winter’s night, its black solidity only relieved by two lighted windows, far apart from each other, and glimmering redly like beacons on the darkness.
‘This is the Victoria Hotel, sir,’ said the porter. ‘You wouldn’t believe the crowds of company we have down here in the summer.’
In the face of the bare grass-plat, the tenantless wooden alcoves, and the dark windows of the hotel, it was indeed rather difficult to imagine that the place was ever gay with merry people taking pleasure in the bright summer weather; but Robert Audley declared himself willing to believe anything the porter pleased to tell him, and followed his guide meekly to a little door at the side of the big hotel, which led into a comfortable bar, where the humbler classes of summer visitors were accommodated with such refreshments as they pleased to pay for, without running the gauntlet of the prim, white-waistcoated waiters on guard at the principal entrance.
But there were very few attendants retained at the hotel in this bleak February season, and it was the landlord himself who ushered Robert into a dreary wilderness of polished mahogany tables and horsehair-cushioned chairs, which he called the coffee room.
Mr Audley seated himself close to the wide steel fender, and stretched his cramped legs upon the hearthrug, while the landlord drove the poker into the vast pile of coal, and sent a ruddy blaze roaring upward through the chimney.
‘If you would prefer a private room, sir—’ the man began.
‘No, thank you,’ said Robert, indifferently; ‘this room seems quite private enough just now. If you will order me a mutton chop and a pint of sherry, I shall be obliged.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘And I shall be still more obliged if you will favour me with a few minutes’ conversation before you do so.’
‘With very great pleasure, sir,’ the landlord answered, good naturedly. ‘We see so very little company at this season of the year, that we are only too glad to oblige those gentlemen who do visit us. Any information which I can afford you respecting the neighbourhood of Wildernsea and its attractions,’ added the landlord, unconsciously quoting a small hand-book of the watering place which he sold in the bar, ‘I shall be most happy to—’
‘But I don’t want to know anything about the neighbourhood of Wildernsea,’ interrupted Robert, with a feeble protest against the landlord’s volubility. ‘I want to ask you a few questions about some people who once lived here.’
The landlord bowed and smiled, with an air which implied his readiness to recite the biographies of all the inhabitants of the little seaport, if required by Mr Audley to do so.
‘How many years have you lived here?’ Robert asked, taking his memorandum-book from his pocket. ‘Will it annoy you if I make notes of your replies to my questions?’
‘Not at all, sir,’ replied the landlord, with a pompous enjoyment of the air of solemnity and importance which pervaded this business. ‘Any information which I can afford that is likely to be of ultimate value—’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Robert murmured, interrupting the flow of words. ‘You have lived here—’
‘Six years, sir.’
‘Since the year fifty-three?’
‘Since November in the year fifty-two, sir. I was in business in Hull prior to that time. This house was only completed in the October before I entered it.’
‘Do you remember a lieutenant in the navy, on half-pay I believe at that time, called Maldon?’
‘Captain Maldon, sir?’
‘Yes, commonly called Captain Maldon. I see you do remember him.’
‘Yes, sir. Captain Maldon was one of our best customers. He used to spend his evenings in this very room, though the walls were damp at that time, and we weren’t able to paper the place for nearly a twelvemonth afterwards. His daughter married a young officer that came here with his regiment at Christmas time in fifty-two. They were married here, sir, and they travelled on the Continent for six months, and came back here again. But the gentleman ran away to Australia, and left the lady, a week or two after her baby was born. The business made quite a sensation in Wildernsea, sir, and Mrs—Mrs—I forget the name—’
‘Mrs Talboys,’ suggested Robert.
‘To be sure, sir, Mrs Talboys. Mrs Talboys was very much pitied by the Wildernsea folks, sir, I was going to say, for she was very pretty, and had such nice winning ways, that she was a favourite with every body who knew her.’
‘Can you tell me how long Mr Maldon and his daughter remained at Wildernsea after Mr Talboys left them?’ Robert asked.
‘Well—no, sir,’ answered the landlord, after a few moments’ deliberation. ‘I can’t say exactly how long it was. I know Mr Maldon used to sit here in this very parlour, and tell people how badly his daughter had been treated, and how he’d been deceived by a young man he’d put so much confidence in; but I can’t say how long it was before he left Wildernsea. But Mrs Barkamb could tell you, sir,’ added the landlord, briskly.
‘Mrs Barkamb?’
‘Yes, Mrs Barkamb is the person who owns No. 17, North Cottages, the house in which Mr Maldon and his daughter lived. She’s a nice, c
ivil-spoken, motherly woman, sir, and I’m sure she’ll tell you anything you may want to know.’
‘Thank you, I will call upon Mrs Barkamb to-morrow. Stay—one more question. Should you recognise Mrs Talboys if you were to see her?’
‘Certainly, sir. As sure as I should recognise one of my own daughters.’
Robert Audley wrote Mrs Barkamb’s address in his pocket-book, ate his solitary dinner, drank a couple of glasses of sherry, smoked a cigar, and then retired to the apartment in which a fire had been lighted for his comfort.
He soon fell asleep, worn out with the fatigue of hurrying from place to place during the last two days; but his slumber was not a heavy one, and he heard the disconsolate moaning of the wind upon the sandy wastes, and the long waves rolling in monotonously upon the flat shore. Mingling with these dismal sounds, the melancholy thoughts engendered by his joyless journey repeated themselves in ever-varying succession in the chaos of his slumbering brain, and made themselves into visions of things that never had been and never could be upon this earth; but which had some vague relation to real events, remembered by the sleeper.
In those troublesome dreams he saw Audley Court, rooted up from amidst the green pastures and the shady hedgerows of Essex, standing bare and unprotected upon that desolate northern shore, threatened by the rapid rising of a boisterous sea, whose waves seemed gathering upward to descend and crush the house he loved. As the hurrying waves rolled nearer and nearer to the stately mansion, the sleeper saw a pale, starry face looking out of the silvery foam, and knew that it was my lady, transformed into a mermaid, beckoning his uncle to destruction. Beyond that rising sea great masses of cloud, blacker than the blackest ink, more dense than the darkest night, lowered upon the dreamer’s eye; but as he looked at the dismal horizon the storm clouds slowly parted, and from a narrow rent in the darkness a ray of light streamed out upon the hideous waves, which slowly, very slowly, receded, leaving the old mansion safe and firmly rooted on the shore.
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