Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (free ebook reader for android TXT) 📗

the Cromwells, who see the noble vessels of the state floundering upon a sea of confusion, and going down in a tempest of noisy bewilderment, and who yet are powerless to get at the helm; forbidden even to send out a life-boat to the sinking ship. Surely it is a mistake to judge of what a man can do by that which he has done.

The world's Valhalla is a close borough, and perhaps the greatest men may be those who perish silently far away from the sacred portal. Perhaps the purest and brightest spirits are those who shrink from the turmoil of the race-course--the tumult and confusion of the struggle. The game of life is something like the game of _ecarte_, and it may be that the very best cards are sometimes left in the pack.

My lady threw off her bonnet, and seated herself upon a velvet-covered footstool at Sir Michael's feet. There was nothing studied or affected in this girlish action. It was so natural to Lucy Audley to be childish, that no one would have wished to see her otherwise. It would have seemed as foolish to expect dignified reserve or womanly gravity from this amber-haired siren, as to wish for rich basses amid the clear treble of a sky-lark's song.

She sat with her pale face turned away from the firelight, and with her hands locked together upon the arm of her husband's easy-chair. They were very restless, these slender white hands. My lady twisted the jeweled fingers in and out of each other as she talked to her husband.

"I wanted to come to you, you know, dear," said she--"I wanted to come to you directly I got home, but Mr. Audley insisted upon my stopping to talk to him."

"But what about, my love?" asked the baronet. "What could Robert have to say to you?"

My lady did not answer this question. Her fair head dropped upon her husband's knee, her rippling, yellow curls fell over her face.

Sir Michael lifted that beautiful head with his strong hands, and raised my lady's face. The firelight shining on that pale face lit up the large, soft blue eyes and showed them drowned in tears.

"Lucy, Lucy!" cried the baronet, "what is the meaning of this? My love, my love! what has happened to distress you in this manner?"

Lady Audley tried to speak, but the words died inarticulately upon her trembling lips. A choking sensation in her throat seemed to strangle those false and plausible words, her only armor against her enemies. She could not speak. The agony she had endured silently in the dismal lime-walk had grown too strong for her, and she broke into a tempest of hysterical sobbing. It was no simulated grief that shook her slender frame and tore at her like some ravenous beast that would have rent her piecemeal with its horrible strength. It was a storm of real anguish and terror, of remorse and misery. It was the one wild outcry, in which the woman's feebler nature got the better of the siren's art.

It was not thus that she had meant to fight her terrible duel with Robert Audley. Those were not the weapons which she had intended to use; but perhaps no artifice which she could have devised would have served her so well as this one outburst of natural grief. It shook her husband to the very soul. It bewildered and terrified him. It reduced the strong intellect of the man to helpless confusion and perplexity. It struck at the one weak point in a good man's nature. It appealed straight to Sir Michael Audley's affection for his wife.

Ah, Heaven help a strong man's tender weakness for the woman he loves! Heaven pity him when the guilty creature has deceived him and comes with her tears and lamentations to throw herself at his feet in self-abandonment and remorse; torturing him with the sight of her agony; rending _his_ heart with her sobs, lacerating _his_ breast with her groans--multiplying her sufferings into a great anguish for him to bear! multiplying them by twenty-fold; multiplying them in a ratio of a brave man's capacity for endurance. Heaven forgive him, if maddened by that cruel agony, the balance wavers for a moment, and he is ready to forgive _anything_; ready to take this wretched one to the shelter of his breast, and to pardon that which the stern voice of manly honor urges must not be pardoned. Pity him, pity him! The wife's worst remorse when she stands without the threshold of the home she may never enter more is not equal to the agony of the husband who closes the portal on that familiar and entreating face. The anguish of the mother who may never look again upon her children is less than the torment of the father who has to say to those little ones, "My darlings, you are henceforth motherless."

Sir Michael Audley rose from his chair, trembling with indignation, and ready to do immediate battle with the person who had caused his wife's grief.

"Lucy," he said, "Lucy, I insist upon your telling me what and who has distressed you. I insist upon it. Whoever has annoyed you shall answer to me for your grief. Come, my love, tell me directly what it is."

He seated himself and bent over the drooping figure at his feet, calming his own agitation in his desire to soothe his wife's distress.

"Tell me what it is, my dear," he whispered, tenderly.

The sharp paroxysm had passed away, and my lady looked up. A glittering light shone through the tears in her eyes, and the lines about her pretty rosy mouth, those hard and cruel lines which Robert Audley had observed in the pre-Raphaelite portrait, were plainly visible in the firelight.

"I am very silly," she said; "but really he has made me quite hysterical."

"Who--who has made you hysterical?"

"Your nephew--Mr. Robert Audley."

"Robert," cried the baronet. "Lucy, what do you mean?"

"I told you that Mr. Audley insisted upon my going into the lime-walk, dear," said my lady. "He wanted to talk to me, he said, and I went, and he said such horrible things that--"

"What horrible things, Lucy?"

Lady Audley shuddered, and clung with convulsive fingers to the strong hand that had rested caressingly upon her shoulder.

"What did he say, Lucy?"

"Oh, my dear love, how can I tell you?" cried my lady. "I know that I shall distress you--or you will laugh at me, and then--"

"Laugh at you? no, Lucy."

Lady Audley was silent for a moment. She sat looking straight before her into the fire, with her fingers still locked about her husband's hand.

"My dear," she said, slowly, hesitating now and then between her words, as if she almost shrunk from uttering them, "have you ever--I am so afraid of vexing you--have you ever thought Mr. Audley a little--a little--"

"A little what, my darling?"

"A little out of his mind?" faltered Lady Audley.

"Out of his mind!" cried Sir Michael. "My dear girl, what are you thinking of?"

"You said just now, dear, that you thought he was half mad."

"Did I, my love?" said the baronet, laughing. "I don't remember saying it, and it was a mere _façon de parler_, that meant nothing whatever. Robert may be a little eccentric--a little stupid, perhaps--he mayn't be overburdened with wits, but I don't think he has brains enough for madness. I believe it's generally your great intellects that get out of order."

"But madness is sometimes hereditary," said my lady. "Mr. Audley may have inherited--"

"He has inherited no madness from his father's family," interrupted Sir Michael. "The Audleys have never peopled private lunatic asylums or feed mad doctors."

"Nor from his mother's family?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"People generally keep these things a secret," said my lady, gravely. "There may have been madness in your sister-in-law's family."

"I don't think so, my dear," replied Sir Michael. "But, Lucy, tell me what, in Heaven's name, has put this idea into your head."

"I have been trying to account for your nephew's conduct. I can account for it in no other manner. If you had heard the things he said to me to-night, Sir Michael, you too might have thought him mad."

"But what did he say, Lucy?"

"I can scarcely tell you. You can see how much he has stupefied and bewildered me. I believe he has lived too long alone in those solitary Temple chambers. Perhaps he reads too much, or smokes too much. You know that some physicians declare madness to be a mere illness of the brain--an illness to which any one is subject, and which may be produced by given causes, and cured by given means."

Lady Audley's eyes were still fixed upon the burning coals in the wide grate. She spoke as if she had been discussing a subject that she had often heard discussed before. She spoke as if her mind had almost wandered away from the thought of her husband's nephew to the wider question of madness in the abstract.

"Why should he not be mad?" resumed my lady. "People are insane for years and years before their insanity is found out. _They_ know that they are mad, but they know how to keep their secret; and, perhaps, they may sometimes keep it till they die. Sometimes a paroxysm seizes them, and in an evil hour they betray themselves. They commit a crime, perhaps. The horrible temptation of opportunity assails them; the knife is in their hand, and the unconscious victim by their side. They may conquer the restless demon and go away and die innocent of any violent deed; but they _may_ yield to the horrible temptation--the frightful, passionate, hungry craving for violence and horror. They sometimes yield and are lost."

Lady Audley's voice rose as she argued this dreadful question, The hysterical excitement from which she had only just recovered had left its effects upon her, but she controlled herself, and her tone grew calmer as she resumed:

"Robert Audley is mad," she said, decisively. "What is one of the strangest diagnostics of madness--what is the first appalling sign of mental aberration? The mind becomes stationary; the brain stagnates; the even current of reflection is interrupted; the thinking power of the brain resolves itself into a monotone. As the waters of a tideless pool putrefy by reason of their stagnation, the mind becomes turbid and corrupt through lack of action; and the perpetual reflection upon one subject resolves itself into monomania. Robert Audley is a monomaniac. The disappearance of his friend, George Talboys, grieved and bewildered him. He dwelt upon this one idea until he lost the power of thinking of anything else. The one idea looked at perpetually became distorted to his mental vision. Repeat the commonest word in the English language twenty times, and before the twentieth repetition you will have begun to wonder whether the word which you repeat is really the word you mean to utter. Robert Audley has thought of his friend's disappearance until the one idea has done its fatal and unhealthy work. He looks at a common event with a vision that is diseased, and he distorts it into a gloomy horror engendered of his own monomania. If you do not want to make me as mad as he is, you must never let me see him again. He declared to-night that George Talboys was murdered in this place, and that he will root up every tree in the garden, and pull down every brick in the house in search for--"

My lady paused.