‘If you can,’ she answered, with a little laugh.
‘Because for you this house is haunted.’
‘Haunted?’
‘Yes, haunted by the ghost of George Talboys.’
Robert Audley heard my lady’s quickened breathing: he fancied he could almost hear the loud beating of her heart as she walked by his side, shivering now and then, and with her sable cloak wrapped tightly round her.
‘What do you mean?’ she cried suddenly, after a pause of some moments. ‘Why do you torment me about this George Talboys, who happens to have taken it into his head to keep out of your way for a few months? Are you going mad, Mr Audley, and do you select me as the victim of your monomania? What is George Talboys to me that you should worry me about him?’
‘He was a stranger to you, my lady, was he not?’
‘Of course!’ answered Lady Audley. ‘What should he be but a stranger?’
‘Shall I tell you the story of my friend’s disappearance as I read that story, my lady?’ asked Robert.
‘No,’ cried Lady Audley; ‘I wish to know nothing of your friend. If he is dead, I am sorry for him. If he lives, I have no wish either to see him or to hear of him. Let me go in to see my husband, if you please, Mr Audley; unless you wish to detain me in this gloomy place until I catch my death of cold.’
‘I wish to detain you until you have heard what I have to say, Lady Audley,’ answered Robert, resolutely. ‘I will detain you no longer than is necessary; and when you have heard me, you shall choose your own course of action.’
‘Very well, then; pray lose no time in saying what you have to say,’ replied my lady, carelessly. ‘I promise to attend very patiently.’
‘When my friend George Talboys returned to England,’ Robert began gravely, ‘the thought which was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife.’
‘Whom he had deserted,’ said my lady quickly. ‘At least,’ she added, more deliberately, ‘I remember your telling us something to that effect when you first told us your friend’s story.’
Robert Audley did not notice this interruption.
‘The thought that was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife,’ he repeated. ‘His fairest hope in the future was the hope of making her happy, and lavishing upon her the fortune which he had won by the force of his own strong arm in the gold-fields of Australia. I saw him within a few hours of his reaching England, and I was a witness of the joyful pride with which he looked forward to his reunion with his wife. I was also a witness of the blow which struck him to the very heart—which changed him from the man he had been, to a creature as unlike that former self as one human being can be unlike another. The blow which made that cruel change was the announcement of his wife’s death in the Times newspaper. I now believe that that announcement was a black and bitter lie.’
‘Indeed!’ said my lady; ‘and what reason could any one have for announcing the death of Mrs Talboys, if Mrs Talboys had been alive?’
‘The lady herself might have had a reason,’ Robert answered, quietly.
‘What reason?’
‘How if she had taken advantage of George’s absence to win a richer husband? How if she had married again, and wished to throw my poor friend off the scent by this false announcement?’
Lady Audley shrugged her shoulders.
‘Your suppositions are rather ridiculous, Mr Audley,’ she said; ‘it is to be hoped that you have some reasonable grounds for them.’
‘I have examined a file of each of the newspapers published in Chelmsford and Colchester,’ continued Robert, without replying to my lady’s last observation, ‘and I find in one of the Colchester papers, dated July the 2nd, 1857, a brief paragraph amongst numerous miscellaneous scraps of information copied from other newspapers, to the effect that a Mr George Talboys, an English gentleman, had arrived at Sydney from the gold-fields, carrying with him nuggets and gold-dust to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, and that he had realised his property and sailed for Liverpool in the fast-sailing clipper Argus. This is a very small fact of course, Lady Audley, but it is enough to prove that any person residing in Essex in the July of the year fifty-seven, was likely to become aware of George Talboys’ return from Australia. Do you follow me?’
‘Not very clearly,’ said my lady. ‘What have the Essex papers to do with the death of Mrs Talboys?’
‘We will come to that by-and-by, Lady Audley. I say that I believe the announcement in the Times to have been a false announcement, and a part of the conspiracy which was carried out by Helen Talboys and Lieutenant Maldon against my poor friend.’
‘A conspiracy!’
‘Yes, a conspiracy concocted by an artful woman, who had speculated upon the chances of her husband’s death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of committing a crime; a bold woman, my lady, who thought to play her comedy out to the end without fear of detection; a wicked woman, who did not care what misery she might inflict upon the honest heart of the man she betrayed; but a foolish woman, who looked at life as a game of chance, in which the best player was likely to hold the winning cards, forgetting that there is a Providence above the pitiful speculators, and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long hidden. If this woman of whom I speak had never been guilty of any blacker sin than the publication of that lying announcement in the Times newspaper, I should still hold her as the most detestable and despicable of her sex—the most pitiless and calculating of human creatures. That cruel lie was a base and cowardly blow in the dark; it was the treacherous dagger-thrust of an infamous assassin.’
‘But how do you know that the announcement was a false one?’ asked my lady. ‘You told us that you had been to Ventnor with Mr Talboys to see his wife’s grave. Who was it who died at Ventnor if it was not Mrs Talboys?’
‘Ah, Lady Audley,’ said Robert, ‘that is a question which only two or three people can answer, and one or other of those persons shall answer it to me before very long. I tell you, my lady, that I am determined to unravel the mystery of George Talboys’ death. Do you think I am to be put off by feminine prevarication—by womanly trickery? No! Link by link I have put together the chain of evidence, which wants but a link here and there to be complete in its terrible strength. Do you think I will suffer myself to be baffled? Do you think I shall fail to discover those missing links? No, Lady Audley, I shall not fail, for I know where to look for them! There is a fair-haired woman at Southampton—a woman called Plowson, who has some share in the secrets of the father of my friend’s wife. I have an idea that she can help me to discover the history of the woman who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard, and I will spare no trouble in making that discovery; unless——’
‘Unless what?’ asked my lady, eagerly.
‘Unless the woman I wish to save from degradation and punishment accepts the mercy I offer her, and takes warning while there is still time.’
My lady shrugged her graceful shoulders, and flashed bright defiance out of her blue eyes.
‘She would be a very foolish woman if she suffered herself to be influenced by any such absurdity,’ she said. ‘You are hypochondriacal, Mr Audley, and you must take camphor, or red lavender, or sal volatile. What can be more ridiculous than this idea which you have taken into your head? You lose your friend George Talboys in rather a mysterious manner—that is to say, that gentleman chooses to leave England without giving you due notice. What of that? You confess that he became an altered man after his wife’s death. He grew eccentric and misanthropical; he affected an utter indifference as to what became of him. What more likely, then, that he grew tired of the monotony of civilised life, and ran away to those savage gold-fields to find a distraction for his grief? It is rather a romantic story, but by no means an uncommon one. But you are not satisfied with this simple interpretation of your friend’s disappearance, and you build up some absurd theory of a conspiracy which has no existence except in your own overheated brain. Helen Talboys is dead. The Times newspaper declar
es she is dead. Her own father tells you that she is dead. The headstone of the grave in Ventnor churchyard bears record of her death. By what right,’ cried my lady, her voice rising to that shrill and piercing tone peculiar to her when affected by any intense agitation—‘by what right, Mr Audley, do you come to me and torment me about George Talboys—by what right do you dare to say that his wife is still alive?’
‘By the right of circumstantial evidence, Lady Audley,’ answered Robert—‘by the right of that circumstantial evidence which will sometimes fix the guilt of a man’s murder upon that person who, on the first hearing of the case, seems of all other men the most unlikely to be guilty.’
‘What circumstantial evidence?’
‘The evidence of time and place. The evidence of handwriting. When Helen Talboys left her father’s house at Wildernsea, she left a letter behind her—a letter in which she declared that she was weary of her old life, and that she wished to seek a new home and a new fortune. That letter is in my possession.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Shall I tell you whose handwriting resembles that of Helen Talboys so closely, that the most dexterous expert could perceive no distinction between the two?’
‘A resemblance between the handwriting of two women is no very uncommon circumstance now-a-days,’ replied my lady, carelessly. ‘I could show you the calligraphies of half a dozen of my female correspondents, and defy you to discover any great differences in them.’
‘But what if the handwriting is a very uncommon one, presenting marked peculiarities by which it may be recognised among a hundred?’
‘Why, in that case the coincidence is rather curious,’ answered my lady; ‘but it is nothing more than a coincidence. You cannot deny the fact of Helen Talboys’ death on the ground that her handwriting resembles that of some surviving person.’
‘But if a series of such coincidences leads up to the same point,’ said Robert. ‘Helen Talboys left her father’s house, according to the declaration in her own handwriting, because she was weary of her old life, and wished to begin a new one. Do you know what I infer from this?’
My lady shrugged her shoulders.
‘I have not the least idea,’ she said: ‘and as you have detained me in this gloomy place nearly half an hour, I must beg that you will release me, and let me go and dress for dinner.’
‘No, Lady Audley,’ answered Robert, with a cold sternness that was so strange to him as to transform him into another creature—a pitiless embodiment of justice, a cruel instrument of retribution—‘no, Lady Audley,’ he repeated, ‘I have told you that womanly prevarication will not help you; I tell you now that defiance will not serve you. I have dealt fairly with you, and have given you fair warning. I gave you indirect notice of your danger two months ago.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked my lady, suddenly.
‘You did not choose to take that warning, Lady Audley,’ pursued Robert, ‘and the time has come in which I must speak very plainly to you. Do you think the gifts which you have played against fortune are to hold you exempt from retribution? No, my lady, your youth and beauty, your grace and refinement, only make the horrible secret of your life more horrible. I tell you that the evidence against you wants only one link to be strong enough for your condemnation, and that link shall be added. Helen Talboys never returned to her father’s house. When she deserted that poor old father, she went away from his humble shelter with the declared intention of washing her hands of that old life. What do people generally do when they wish to begin a new existence—to start for a second time in the race of life, free from the encumbrances that had fettered their first journey? They change their names, Lady Audley. Helen Talboys deserted her infant son—she went away from Wildernsea with the predetermination of sinking her identity. She disappeared as Helen Talboys upon the 16th of August, 1854, and upon the 17th of that month she reappeared as Lucy Graham, the friendless girl who undertook a profitless duty in consideration of a home in which she was asked no questions.’
‘You are mad, Mr Audley!’ cried my lady. ‘You are mad, and my husband shall protect me from your insolence. What if this Helen Talboys ran away from her home upon one day, and I entered my employer’s house upon the next, what does that prove?’
‘By itself, very little,’ replied Robert Audley; ‘but with the help of other evidence—’
‘What evidence?’
‘The evidence of two labels, pasted one over the other, upon a box left by you in the possession of Mrs Vincent, the upper label bearing the name of Miss Graham, the lower that of Mrs George Talboys.’
My lady was silent. Robert Audley could not see her face in the dusk, but he could see that her two small hands were clasped convulsively over her heart, and he knew that the shot had gone home to its mark.
‘God help her, poor, wretched creature,’ he thought. ‘She knows now that she is lost. I wonder if the judges of the land feel as I do now, when they put on the black cap and pass sentence of death upon some poor, shivering wretch who has never done them any wrong. Do they feel a heroic fervour of virtuous indignation, or do they suffer this dull anguish which gnaws my vitals as I talk to this helpless woman?’
He walked by my lady’s side, silently, for some minutes. They had been pacing up and down the dim avenue, and they were now drawing near the leafless shrubbery at one end of the lime-walk—the shrubbery in which the ruined well sheltered its unheeded decay among the tangled masses of briery underwood.
A winding pathway, neglected and half choked with weeds, led towards this well. Robert left the lime-walk, and struck into this pathway. There was more light in the shrubbery than in the avenue, and Mr Audley wished to see my lady’s face.
He did not speak until they reached the patch of rank grass beside the well. The massive brickwork had fallen away here and there, and loose fragments of masonry lay buried amidst weeds and briers. The heavy posts which had supported the wooden roller still remained, but the iron spindle had been dragged from its socket, and lay a few paces from the well, rusty, discoloured, and forgotten.
Robert Audley leant against one of the moss-grown posts and looked down at my lady’s face, very pale in the chill winter twilight. The moon had newly risen, a feebly luminous crescent in the grey heavens, and a faint, ghostly light mingled with the misty shadows of the declining day. My lady’s face seemed like that face which Robert Audley had seen in his dreams looking out of the white foam flakes on the green sea waves, and luring his uncle to destruction.
‘Those two labels are in my possession, Lady Audley,’ he resumed. ‘I took them from the box left by you at Crescent Villas. I took them in the presence of Mrs Vincent and Miss Tonks. Have you any proof to offer against this evidence? You say to me, “I am Lucy Graham, and I have nothing whatever to do with Helen Talboys.” In that case, you can produce witnesses who will declare your antecedents. Where had you been living prior to your appearance at Crescent Villas? You must have friends, relations, connections, who can come forward to prove as much as this for you. If you were the most desolate creature upon this earth, you would be able to point to some one who could identify you with the past.’
‘Yes,’ cried my lady, ‘if I were placed in a criminal dock, I could, no doubt, bring forward witnesses to refute your absurd accusation. But I am not in a criminal dock, Mr Audley, and I do not choose to do anything but laugh at your ridiculous folly. I tell you that you are mad! If you please to say that Helen Talboys is not dead, and that I am Helen Talboys, you may do so. If you choose to go wandering about to the places in which I have lived, and to the places in which this Mrs Talboys has lived, you must follow the bent of your own inclination; but I would warn you that such fancies have sometimes conducted people, as apparently sane as yourself, to the life-long imprisonment of a private lunatic asylum.’
Robert Audley started, and recoiled a few paces among the weeds and brushwood as my lady said this.
‘She would be capable of any new crime to shield her from the cons
equences of the old one,’ he thought. ‘She would be capable of using her influence with my uncle to place me in a mad-house.’
I do not say that Robert Audley was a coward, but I will admit that a shiver of horror, something akin to fear, chilled him to the heart, as he remembered the horrible things that have been done by women, since that day upon which Eve was created to be Adam’s companion and help-meet in the garden of Eden. What if this woman’s hellish power of dissimulation should be stronger than the truth, and crush him? She had not spared George Talboys when he had stood in her way, and menaced her with a certain peril; would she spare him who threatened her with a far greater danger? Are women merciful, or loving, or kind in proportion to their beauty and their grace? Was there not a certain Monsieur Mazers de Latude,* who had the bad fortune to offend the all-accomplished Madame de Pompadour, who expiated his youthful indiscretion by a life-long imprisonment; who twice escaped from prison, to be twice cast back into captivity; who, trusting in the tardy generosity of his beautiful foe, betrayed himself to an implacable fiend? Robert Audley looked at the pale face of the woman standing by his side: that fair and beautiful face, illumined by starry blue eyes, that had a strange and surely a dangerous light in them; and remembering a hundred stories of womanly perfidy, shuddered as he thought how unequal the struggle might be between himself and his uncle’s wife.
‘I have shown her my cards,’ he thought, ‘but she has kept hers hidden from me. The mask that she wears is not to be plucked away. My uncle would rather think me mad than believe her guilty.’
The pale face of Clara Talboys—that grave and earnest face so different in its character to my lady’s fragile beauty—arose before him.
Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics) Page 33
