Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (books to read in your 20s female .TXT) 📗
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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They were going up-stairs, when Alicia turned and spoke to the girl.
“After we have been in the drawing-room, I should like to show these
gentlemen Lady Audley’s rooms. Are they in good order, Phoebe?”
“Yes, miss; but the door of the anteroom is locked, and I fancy that my
lady has taken the key to London.”
“Taken the key! Impossible!” cried Alicia.
“Indeed, miss, I think she has. I cannot find it, and it always used to
be in the door.”
“I declare,” said Alicia, impatiently, “that is not at all unlike my
lady to have taken this silly freak into her head. I dare say she was
afraid we should go into her rooms, and pry about among her pretty
dresses, and meddle with her jewelry. It is very provoking, for the best
pictures in the house are in that antechamber. There is her own
portrait, too, unfinished but wonderfully like.”
“Her portrait!” exclaimed Robert Audley. “I would give anything to see
it, for I have only an imperfect notion of her face. Is there no other
way of getting into the room, Alicia?”
“Another way?”
“Yes; is there any door, leading through some of the other rooms, by
which we can contrive to get into hers?”
His cousin shook her head, and conducted them into a corridor where
there were some family portraits. She showed them a tapestried chamber,
the large figures upon the faded canvas looking threatening in the dusky
light.
“That fellow with the battle-ax looks as if he wanted to split George’s
head open,” said Mr. Audley, pointing to a fierce warrior, whose
uplifted arm appeared above George Talboys’ dark hair.
“Come out of this room, Alicia,” added the young man, nervously; “I
believe it’s damp, or else haunted. Indeed, I believe all ghosts to be
the result of damp or dyspepsia. You sleep in a damp bed—you awake
suddenly in the dead of the night with a cold shiver, and see an old
lady in the court costume of George the First’s time, sitting at the
foot of the bed. The old lady’s indigestion, and the cold shiver is a
damp sheet.”
There were lighted candles in the drawing-room. No new-fangled lamps had
ever made their appearance at Audley Court. Sir Michael’s rooms were
lighted by honest, thick, yellow-looking wax candles, in massive silver
candlesticks, and in sconces against the walls.
There was very little to see in the drawing-room; and George Talboys
soon grew tired of staring at the handsome modern furniture, and at a
few pictures of some of the Academicians.
“Isn’t there a secret passage, or an old oak chest, or something of that
kind, somewhere about the place, Alicia?” asked Robert.
“To be sure!” cried Miss Audley, with a vehemence that startled her
cousin; “of course. Why didn’t I think of it before? How stupid of me,
to be sure!”
“Why stupid?”
“Because, if you don’t mind crawling upon your hands and knees, you can
see my lady’s apartments, for that passage communicates with her
dressing-room. She doesn’t know of it herself, I believe. How astonished
she’d be if some black-visored burglar, with a dark-lantern, were to
rise through the floor some night as she sat before her looking-glass,
having her hair dressed for a party!”
“Shall we try the secret passage, George?” asked Mr. Audley.
“Yes, if you wish it.”
Alicia led them into the room which had once been her nursery. It was
now disused, except on very rare occasions when the house was full of
company.
Robert Audley lifted a corner of the carpet, according to his cousin’s
directions, and disclosed a rudely-cut trap-door in the oak flooring.
“Now listen to me,” said Alicia. “You must let yourself down by the
hands into the passage, which is about four feet high; stoop your head,
walk straight along it till you come to a sharp turn which will take you
to the left, and at the extreme end of it you will find a short ladder
below a trap-door like this, which you will have to unbolt; that door
opens into the flooring of my lady’s dressing-room, which is only
covered with a square Persian carpet that you can easily manage to
raise. You understand me?”
“Perfectly.”
“Then take the light; Mr. Talboys will follow you. I give you twenty
minutes for your inspection of the paintings—that is, about a minute
apiece—and at the end of that time I shall expect to see you return.”
Robert obeyed her implicitly, and George submissively following his
friend, found himself, in five minutes, standing amidst the elegant
disorder of Lady Audley’s dressing-room.
She had left the house in a hurry on her unlooked-for journey to London,
and the whole of her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the
marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive
for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not
been replaced. A bunch of hothouse flowers was withering upon a tiny
writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the
ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within.
Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china were scattered
here and there about the apartment. George Talboys saw his bearded face
and tall, gaunt figure reflected in the glass, and wondered to see how
out of place he seemed among all these womanly luxuries.
They went from the dressing-room to the boudoir, and through the boudoir
into the antechamber, in which there were, as Alicia had said, about
twenty valuable paintings, besides my lady’s portrait.
My lady’s portrait stood on an easel, covered with a green baize in the
center of the octagonal chamber. It had been a fancy of the artist to
paint her standing in this very room, and to make his background a
faithful reproduction of the pictured walls. I am afraid the young man
belonged to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for he had spent a most
unconscionable time upon the accessories of this picture—upon my lady’s
crispy ringlets and the heavy folds of her crimson velvet dress.
The two young men looked at the paintings on the walls first, leaving
this unfinished portrait for a bonne bouche.
By this time it was dark, the candle carried by Robert only making one
nucleus of light as he moved about holding it before the pictures one by
one. The broad, bare window looked out upon the pale sky, tinged with
the last cold flicker of the twilight. The ivy rustled against the glass
with the same ominous shiver as that which agitated every leaf in the
garden, prophetic of the storm that was to come.
“There are our friend’s eternal white horses,” said Robert, standing
beside a Wouvermans. “Nicholas Poussin—Salvator—ha—hum! Now for the
portrait.”
He paused with his hand on the baize, and solemnly addressed his friend.
“George Talboys,” he said, “we have between us only one wax candle, a
very inadequate light with which to look at a painting. Let me,
therefore, request that you will suffer us to look at it one at a time;
if there is one thing more disagreeable than another, it is to have a
person dodging behind your back and peering over your shoulder, when
you’re trying to see what a picture’s made of.”
George fell back immediately. He took no more interest in any lady’s
picture than in all the other wearinesses of this troublesome world. He
fell back, and leaning his forehead against the window-panes, looked out
at the night.
When he turned round he saw that Robert had arranged the easel very
conveniently, and that he had seated himself on a chair before it for
the purpose of contemplating the painting at his leisure.
He rose as George turned round.
“Now, then, for your turn, Talboys,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary
picture.”
He took George’s place at the window, and George seated himself in the
chair before the easel.
Yes, the painter must have been a pre-Raphaelite. No one but a
pre-Raphaelite would have painted, hair by hair, those feathery masses
of ringlets, with every glimmer of gold, and every shadow of pale brown.
No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of
that delicate face as to give a lurid brightness to the blonde
complexion, and a strange, sinister light to the deep blue eyes. No one
but a pre-Raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the
hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait.
It was so like, and yet so unlike. It was as if you had burned
strange-colored fires before my lady’s face, and by their influence
brought out new lines and new expressions never seen in it before. The
perfection of feature, the brilliancy of coloring, were there; but I
suppose the painter had copied quaint mediaeval monstrosities until his
brain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her, had
something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend.
Her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange
picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames, her fair head
peeping out of the lurid mass of color as if out of a raging furnace.
Indeed the crimson dress, the sunshine on the face, the red gold
gleaming in the yellow hair, the ripe scarlet of the pouting lips, the
glowing colors of each accessory of the minutely painted background, all
combined to render the first effect of the painting by no means an
agreeable one.
But strange as the picture was, it could not have made any great
impression on George Talboys, for he sat before it for about a quarter
of an hour without uttering a word—only staring blankly at the painted
canvas, with the candlestick grasped in his strong right hand, and his
left arm hanging loosely by his side. He sat so long in this attitude,
that Robert turned round at last.
“Why, George, I thought you had gone to sleep!”
“I had almost.”
“You’ve caught a cold from standing in that damp tapestried room. Mark
my words, George Talboys, you’ve caught a cold; you’re as hoarse as a
raven. But come along.”
Robert Audley took the candle from his friend’s hand, and crept back
through the secret passage, followed by George—very quiet, but scarcely
more quiet than usual.
They found Alicia in the nursery waiting for them.
“Well?” she said, interrogatively.
“We managed it capitally. But I don’t like the portrait; there’s
something odd about it.”
“There is,” said Alicia; “I’ve a strange fancy on that point. I think
that sometimes a painter is in a manner inspired, and is able to see,
through the normal expression of the face, another expression that is
equally a part of it, though not to be perceived by common eyes. We have
never seen my lady look as she does in that picture; but I think that
she could look so.”
“Alicia,” said Robert Audley, imploringly, “don’t be German!”
“But, Robert—”
“Don’t be German, Alicia, if you love me. The picture is—the picture:
and my lady is—my lady. That’s my way of taking things, and I’m not
metaphysical; don’t unsettle me.”
He repeated this several times with an air of terror that was perfectly
sincere; and then, having borrowed an umbrella in case of being
overtaken by the coming storm, left the Court, leading passive George
Talboys away with him. The one hand of the stupid clock had skipped to
nine by the time they reached the archway; but before they could pass
under its shadow they had to step aside
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