Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (books to read in your 20s female .TXT) 📗

Stanning, then,

I suppose?

 

“Yes; I think he said something to that effect.”

 

“Upon my word,” exclaimed the baronet, “I think that boy is half mad.”

 

My lady’s face was so much in shadow, that Sir Michael Audley was

unaware of the bright change that came over its sickly pallor as he made

this very commonplace observation. A triumphant smile illuminated Lucy

Audley’s countenance, a smile that plainly said, “It is coming—it is

coming; I can twist him which way I like. I can put black before him,

and if I say it is white, he will believe me.”

 

But Sir Michael Audley in declaring that his nephew’s wits were

disordered, merely uttered that commonplace ejaculation which is

well-known to have very little meaning. The baronet had, it is true, no

very great estimate of Robert’s faculty for the business of this

everyday life. He was in the habit of looking upon his nephew as a

good-natured nonentity—a man whose heart had been amply stocked by

liberal Nature with all the best things the generous goddess had to

bestow, but whose brain had been somewhat overlooked in the distribution

of intellectual gifts. Sir Michael Audley made that mistake which is

very commonly made by easy-going, well-to-do-observers, who have no

occasion to look below the surface. He mistook laziness for incapacity.

He thought because his nephew was idle, he must necessarily be stupid.

He concluded that if Robert did not distinguish himself, it was because

he could not.

 

He forgot the mute inglorious Miltons, who die voiceless and

inarticulate for want of that dogged perseverance, that blind courage,

which the poet must possess before he can find a publisher; he forgot

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 fa�on 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

tonight, 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