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

confidante’s

wrist, and speaking in a low, earnest voice, but with a certain

imperious air that challenged contradiction and commanded obedience.

“Listen to me, Phoebe,” she repeated. “I am going to the Castle Inn

tonight; whether it is early or late is of very little consequence to

me; I have set my mind upon going, and I shall go. You have asked me

why, and I have told you. I am going in order that I may pay this debt

myself; and that I may see for myself that the money I give is applied

to the purpose for which I give it. There is nothing out of the common

course of life in my doing this. I am going to do what other women in my

position very often do. I am going to assist a favorite servant.”

 

“But it’s getting on for twelve o’clock, my lady,” pleaded Phoebe.

 

Lady Audley frowned impatiently at this interruption.

 

“If my going to your house to pay this man should be known,” she

continued, still retaining her hold of Phoebe’s wrist, “I am ready to

answer for my conduct; but I would rather that the business should be

kept quiet. I think that I can leave this house without being seen by

any living creature, if you will do as I tell you.”

 

“I will do anything you wish, my lady,” answered Phoebe, submissively.

 

“Then you will wish me good-night presently, when my maid comes into the

room, and you will suffer her to show you out of the house. You will

cross the courtyard and wait for me in the avenue upon the other side of

the archway. It may be half an hour before I am able to join you, for I

must not leave my room till the servants have all gone to bed, but you

may wait for me patiently, for come what may I will join you.”

 

Lady Audley’s face was no longer pale. An unnatural luster gleamed in

her great blue eyes. She spoke with an unnatural rapidity. She had

altogether the appearance and manner of a person who has yielded to the

dominant influence of some overpowering excitement. Phoebe Marks stared

at her late mistress in mute bewilderment. She began to fear that my

lady was going mad.

 

The bell which Lady Audley rang was answered by the smart lady’s-maid

who wore rose-colored ribbons, and black silk gowns, and other

adornments which were unknown to the humble people who sat below the

salt in the good old days when servants wore linsey-woolsey.

 

“I did not know that it was so late, Martin,” said my lady, in that

gentle tone which always won for her the willing service of her

inferiors. “I have been talking with Mrs. Marks and have let the time

slip by me. I sha’n’t want anything tonight, so you may go to bed when

you please.”

 

“Thank you, my lady,” answered the girl, who looked very sleepy, and had

some difficulty in repressing a yawn even in her mistress’ presence, for

the Audley household usually kept very early hours. “I’d better show

Mrs. Marks out, my lady, hadn’t I?” asked the maid, “before I go to

bed?”

 

“Oh, yes, to be sure; you can let Phoebe out. All the other servants

have gone to bed, then, I suppose?”

 

“Yes, my lady.”

 

Lady Audley laughed as she glanced at the timepiece.

 

“We have been terrible dissipated up here, Phoebe,” she said.

“Good-night. You may tell your husband that his rent shall be paid.”

 

“Thank you very much, my lady, and good-night,” murmured Phoebe as she

backed out of the room, followed by the lady’s maid.

 

Lady Audley listened at the door, waiting till the muffled sounds of

their footsteps died away in the octagon chamber and on the carpeted

staircase.

 

“Martin sleeps at the top of the house,” she said, “half a mile away

from this room. In ten minutes I may safely make my escape.”

 

She went back into her dressing-room, and put on her cloak and bonnet

for the second time. The unnatural color still burnt like a flame in her

cheeks; the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes. The excitement

which she was under held her in so strong a spell that neither her mind

nor her body seemed to have any consciousness of fatigue. However

verbose I may be in my description of her feelings, I can never describe

a tithe of her thoughts or her sufferings. She suffered agonies that

would fill closely printed volumes, bulky with a thousand pages, in that

one horrible night. She underwent volumes of anguish, and doubt, and

perplexity; sometimes repeating the same chapters of her torments over

and over again; sometimes hurrying through a thousand pages of her

misery without one pause, without one moment of breathing time. She

stood by the low fender in her boudoir, watching the minute-hand of the

clock, and waiting till it should be time for her to leave the house in

safety.

 

“I will wait ten minutes,” she said, “not a moment beyond, before I

enter on my new peril.”

 

She listened to the wild roaring of the March wind, which seemed to have

risen with the stillness and darkness of the night.

 

The hand slowly made its inevitable way to the figures which told that

the ten minutes were past. It was exactly a quarter to twelve when my

lady took her lamp in her hand, and stole softly from the room. Her

footfall was as light as that of some graceful wild animal, and there

was no fear of that airy step awakening any echo upon the carpeted stone

corridors and staircase. She did not pause until she reached the

vestibule upon the ground floor. Several doors opened out of the

vestibule, which was octagon, like my lady’s antechamber. One of these

doors led into the library, and it was this door which Lady Audley

opened softly and cautiously.

 

To have attempted to leave the house secretly by any of the principal

outlets would have been simple madness, for the housekeeper herself

superintended the barricading of the great doors, back and front. The

secrets of the bolts, and bars, and chains, and bells which secured

these doors, and provided for the safety of Sir Michael Audley’s

plate-room, the door of which was lined with sheet-iron, were known only

to the servants who had to deal with them. But although all these

precautions were taken with the principal entrances to the citadel, a

wooden shutter and a slender iron bar, light enough to be lifted by a

child, were considered sufficient safeguard for the half-glass door

which opened out of the breakfast-room into the graveled pathway and

smooth turf in the courtyard.

 

It was by this outlet that Lady Audley meant to make her escape. She

could easily remove the bar and unfasten the shutter, and she might

safely venture to leave the window ajar while she was absent. There was

little fear of Sir Michael’s awaking for some time, as he was a heavy

sleeper in the early part of the night, and had slept more heavily than

usual since his illness.

 

Lady Audley crossed the library, and opened the door of the

breakfast-room, which communicated with it. This latter apartment was

one of the later additions to the Court. It was a simple, cheerful

chamber, with brightly papered walls and pretty maple furniture, and was

more occupied by Alicia than any one else. The paraphernalia of that

young lady’s favorite pursuits were scattered about the

room—drawing-materials, unfinished scraps of work, tangled skeins of

silk, and all the other tokens of a careless damsel’s presence; while

Miss Audley’s picture—a pretty crayon sketch of a rosy-faced hoyden in

a riding-habit and hat—hung over the quaint Wedgewood ornaments on the

chimneypiece. My lady looked upon these familiar objects with scornful

hatred flaming in her blue eyes.

 

“How glad she will be if any disgrace befalls me,” she thought; “how she

will rejoice if I am driven out of this house!”

 

Lady Audley set the lamp upon a table near the fireplace, and went to

the window. She removed the iron-bar and the light wooden shutter, and

then opened the glass-door. The March night was black and moonless, and

a gust of wind blew in upon her as she opened this door, and filled the

room with its chilly breath, extinguishing the lamp upon the table.

 

“No matter,” my lady muttered, “I could not have left it burning. I

shall know how to find my way through the house when I come back. I have

left all the doors ajar.”

 

She stepped quickly out upon the smooth gravel, and closed the

glass-door behind her. She was afraid lest that treacherous wind should

blow-to the door opening into the library, and thus betray her.

 

She was in the quadrangle now, with that chill wind sweeping against

her, and swirling her silken garments round her with a shrill, rustling

noise, like the whistling of a sharp breeze against the sails of a

yacht. She crossed the quadrangle and looked back—looked back for a

moment at the firelight gleaming between the rosy-tinted curtains in her

boudoir, and the dim gleam of the lamp through the mullioned windows in

the room where Sir Michael Audley lay asleep.

 

“I feel as if I were running away,” she thought; “I feel as if I were

running away secretly in the dead of the night, to lose myself and be

forgotten. Perhaps it would be wiser in me to run away, to take this

man’s warning, and escape out of his power forever. If I were to run

away and disappear as—as George Talboys disappeared. But where could I

go? what would become of me? I have no money; my jewels are not worth a

couple of hundred pounds, now that I have got rid of the best part of

them. What could I do? I must go back to the old life, the old, hard,

cruel, wretched life—the life of poverty, and humiliation, and

vexation, and discontent. I should have to go back and wear myself out

in that long struggle, and die—as my mother died, perhaps!”

 

My lady stood still for a moment on the smooth lawn between the

quadrangle and the archway, with her head drooping upon her breast and

her hands locked together, debating this question in the unnatural

activity of her mind. Her attitude reflected the state of that mind—it

expressed irresolution and perplexity. But presently a sudden change

came over her; she lifted her head—lifted it with an action of defiance

and determination.

 

“No! Mr. Robert Audley,” she said, aloud, in a low, clear voice; “I will

not go back—I will not go back. If the struggle between us is to be a

duel to the death, you shall not find me drop my weapon.”

 

She walked with a firm and rapid step under the archway. As she passed

under that massive arch, it seemed as if she disappeared into some black

gulf that had waited open to receive her. The stupid clock struck

twelve, and the whole archway seemed to vibrate under its heavy strokes,

as Lady Audley emerged upon the other side and joined Phoebe Marks, who

had waited for her late mistress very near the gateway of the Court.

 

“Now, Phoebe,” she said, “it is three miles from here to Mount Stanning,

isn’t it?”

 

“Yes, my lady.”

 

“Then we can walk the distance in an hour and a half.”

 

Lady Audley had not stopped to say this; she was walking quickly along

the avenue with her humble companion by her side. Fragile and delicate

as she was in appearance, she was a very good walker. She had been