no feverish sleeper traveling in a strange dream ever looked out more wonderingly upon a world that seemed unreal than robert audley, as he stared absently at the flat swamps and dismal poplars between villebrumeuse and brussels. could it be that he was returning to his uncle's house without the woman who had reigned in it for nearly two years as queen and mistress? he felt as if he had carried off my lady, and had made away with her secretly and darkly, and must now render up an account to sir michael of the fate of that woman, whom the baronet had so dearly loved.
"what shall i tell him?" he thought. "shall i tell the truth—the horrible, ghastly truth? no; that would be too cruel. his generous spirit would sink under the hideous revelation. yet, in his ignorance of the extent of this wretched woman's wickedness, he may think, perhaps, that i have been hard with her."
brooding thus, mr. robert audley absently watched the cheerless landscape from the seat in the shabby coupé of the diligence, and thought how great a leaf had been torn out of his life, now that the dark story of george talboys was finished.
what had he to do next? a crowd of horrible thoughts rushed into his mind as he remembered the story that he had heard from the white lips of helen talboys. his friend—his murdered friend—lay hidden among the moldering ruins of the old well at audley court. he had lain there for six long months, unburied, unknown; hidden in the darkness of the old convent well. what was to be done?
to institute a search for the remains of the murdered man was to inevitably bring about a coroner's inquest. should such an inquest be held, it was next to impossible that the history of my lady's crime could fail to be brought to light. to prove that george talboys met with his death at audley court, was to prove almost as surely that my lady had been the instrument of that mysterious death; for the young man had been known to follow her into the lime-walk upon the day of his disappearance.
"my god!" robert exclaimed, as the full horror of his position became evident to him; "is my friend to rest in this unhallowed burial-place because i have condoned the offenses of the woman who murdered him?"
he felt that there was no way out of this difficulty. sometimes he thought that it little mattered to his dead friend whether he lay entombed beneath a marble monument, whose workmanship should be the wonder of the universe, or in that obscure hiding-place in the thicket at audley court. at another time he would be seized with a sudden horror at the wrong that had been done to the murdered man, and would fain have traveled even more rapidly than the express between brussels and paris could carry him in his eagerness to reach the end of his journey, that he might set right this cruel wrong.
he was in london at dusk on the second day after that on which he had left audley court, and he drove straight to the clarendon, to inquire after his uncle. he had no intention of seeing sir michael, as he had not yet determined how much or how little he should tell him, but he was very anxious to ascertain how the old man had sustained the cruel shock he had so lately endured.
"i will see alicia," he thought, "she will tell me all about her father. it is only two days since he left audley. i can scarcely expect to hear of any favorable change."
but mr. audley was not destined to see his cousin that evening, for the servants at the clarendon told him that sir michael and his daughter had left by the morning mail for paris, on their way to vienna.
robert was very well pleased to receive this intelligence; it afforded him a welcome respite, for it would be decidedly better to tell the baronet nothing of his guilty wife until he returned to england, with health unimpaired and spirits re-established, it was to be hoped.
mr. audley drove to the temple. the chambers which had seemed dreary to him ever since the disappearance of george talboys, were doubly so to-night. for that which had been only a dark suspicion had now become a horrible certainty. there was no longer room for the palest ray, the most transitory glimmer of hope. his worst terrors had been too well founded.
george talboys had been cruelly and treacherously murdered by the wife he had loved and mourned.
there were three letters waiting for mr. audley at his chambers. one was from sir michael, and another from alicia. the third was addressed in a hand the young barrister knew only too well, though he had seen it but once before. his face flushed redly at the sight of the superscription, and he took the letter in his hand, carefully and tenderly, as if it had been a living thing, and sentient to his touch. he turned it over and over in his hands, looking at the crest upon the envelope, at the post-mark, at the color of the paper, and then put it into the bosom of his waistcoat with a strange smile upon his face.
"what a wretched and unconscionable fool i am!" he thought. "have i laughed at the follies of weak men all my life, and am i to be more foolish than the weakest of them at last? the beautiful brown-eyed creature! why did i ever see her? why did my relentless nemesis ever point the way to that dreary house in dorsetshire?"
he opened the first two letters. he was foolish enough to keep the last for a delicious morsel—a fairy-like dessert after the commonplace substantialities of a dinner.
alicia's letter told him that sir michael had borne his agony with such a persevering tranquility that she had become at last far more alarmed by his patient calmness than by any stormy manifestation of despair. in this difficulty she had secretly called upon the physician who attended the audley household in any cases of serious illness, and had requested this gentleman to pay sir michael an apparently accidental visit. he had done so, and after stopping half an hour with the baronet, had told alicia that there was no present danger of any serious consequence from this great grief, but that it was necessary that every effort should be made to arouse sir michael, and to force him, however unwillingly, into action.
alicia had immediately acted upon this advice, had resumed her old empire as a spoiled child, and reminded her father of a promise he had made of taking her through germany. with considerable difficulty she had induced him to consent to fulfilling this old promise, and having once gained her point, she had contrived that they should leave england as soon as it was possible to do so, and she told robert, in conclusion, that she would not bring her father back to his old house until she had taught him to forget the sorrows associated with it.
the baronet's letter was very brief. it contained half a dozen blank checks on sir michael audley's london bankers.
"you will require money, my dear robert," he wrote, "for such arrangements as you may think fit to make for the future comfort of the person i committed to your care. i need scarcely tell you that those arrangements cannot be too liberal. but perhaps it is as well that i should tell you now, for the first and only time, that it is my earnest wish never again to hear that person's name. i have no wish to be told the nature of the arrangements you may make for her. i am sure that you will act conscientiously and mercifully. i seek to know no more. whenever you want money, you will draw upon me for any sums that you may require; but you will have no occasion to tell me for whose use you want that money."
robert audley breathed a long sigh of relief as he folded this letter. it released him from a duty which it would have been most painful for him to perform, and it forever decided his course of action with regard to the murdered man.
george talboys must lie at peace in his unknown grave, and sir michael audley must never learn that the woman he had loved bore the red brand of murder on her soul.
robert had only the third letter to open—the letter which he had placed in his bosom while he read the others; he tore open the envelope, handling it carefully and tenderly as he had done before.
the letter was as brief as sir michael's. it contained only these few lines:
"dear mr. audley—the rector of this place has been twice to see marks, the man you saved in the fire at the castle inn. he lies in a very precarious state at his mother's cottage, near audley court, and is not expected to live many days. his wife is attending him, and both he and she have expressed a most earnest desire that you should see him before he dies. pray come without delay.
"yours very sincerely,
"clara talboys.
"mount stanning rectory, march 6."
robert audley folded this letter very reverently, and placed it underneath that part of his waistcoat which might be supposed to cover the region of his heart. having done this, he seated himself in his favorite arm-chair, filled and lighted a pipe and smoked it out, staring reflectingly at the fire as long as his tobacco lasted. "what can that man marks want with me," thought the barrister. "he is afraid to die until he has made confession, perhaps. he wishes to tell me that which i know already—the story of my lady's crime. i knew that he was in the secret. i was sure of it even upon the night on which i first saw him. he knew the secret, and he traded on it."
robert audley shrank strangely from returning to essex. how should he meet clara talboys now that he knew the secret of her brother's fate? how many lies he should have to tell, or how much equivocation he must use in order to keep the truth from her? yet would there be any mercy in telling that horrible story, the knowledge of which must cast a blight upon her youth, and blot out every hope she had even secretly cherished? he knew by his own experience how possible it was to hope against hope, and to hope unconsciously; and he could not bear that her heart should be crushed as his had been by the knowledge of the truth. "better that she should hope vainly to the last," he thought; "better that she should go through life seeking the clew to her lost brother's fate, than that i should give that clew into her hands, and say, 'our worst fears are realized. the brother you loved has been foully murdered in the early promise of his youth.'"
but clara talboys had written to him, imploring him to return to essex without delay. could he refuse to do her bidding, however painful its accomplishment might be? and again, the man was dying, perhaps, and had implored to see him. would it not be cruel to refuse to go—to delay an hour unnecessarily? he looked at his watch. it wanted only five minutes to nine. there was no train to audley after the ipswich mail, which left london at half-past eight; but there was a train that left shoreditch at eleven, and stopped at brentwood between twelve and one. robert decided upon going by this train, and walking the distance between brentwood and audley, which was upwards of six miles.
fleet street was quiet and lonely at this late hour, and robert audley being in a ghost-seeing mood, would have been scarcely astonished had he seen johnson's set come roystering westward in the lamp-light, or blind john milton groping his way down the steps before saint bride's church.
mr. audley hailed a hansom at the corner of farrington street, and was rattled rapidly away across tenantless smithfield market, and into a labyrinth of dingy streets that brought him out upon the broad grandeur of finsbury pavement.
the hansom rattled up the steep and stony approach to shoreditch station, and deposited robert at the doors of that unlovely temple. there were very few people going to travel by this midnight train, and robert walked up and down the long wooden platform, reading the huge advertisements whose gaunt lettering looked wan and ghastly in the dim lamplight.
he had the carriage in which he sat all to himself. all to himself did i say? had he not lately summoned to his side that ghostly company which of all companionship is the most tenacious? the shadow of george talboys pursued him, even in the comfortable first-class carriage, and was behind him when he looked out of the window, and was yet far ahead of him and the rushing engine, in that thicket toward which the train was speeding, by the side of the unhallowed hiding-place in which the mortal remains of the dead man lay, neglected and uncared for.
"i must give my lost friend decent burial," robert thought, as the chill wind swept across the flat landscape, and struck him with such frozen breath as might have emanated from the lips of the dead. "i must do it; or i shall die of some panic like this which has seized upon me to-night. i must do it; at any peril; at any cost. even at the price of that revelation which will bring the mad woman back from her safe hiding-place, and place her in a criminal dock." he was glad when the train stopped at brentwood at a few minutes after twelve.
it was half-past one o'clock when the night wanderer entered the village of audley, and it was only there that he remembered that clara talboys had omitted to give him any direction by which he might find the cottage in which luke marks lay.
"it was dawson who recommended that the poor creature should be taken to his mother's cottage," robert thought, by-and-by, "and, i dare say. dawson has attended him ever since the fire. he'll be able to tell me the way to the cottage."
acting upon this idea, mr. audley stopped at the house in which helen talboys had lived before her second marriage. the door of the little surgery was ajar, and there was a light burning within. robert pushed the door open and peeped in. the surgeon was standing at the mahogany counter, mixing a draught in a glass measure, with his hat close beside him. late as it was, he had evidently only just come in. the harmonious snoring of his assistant sounded from a little room within the surgery.
"i am sorry to disturb you, mr. dawson," robert said, apologetically, as the surgeon looked up and recognized him, "but i have come down to see marks, who, i hear, is in a very bad way, and i want you to tell me the way to his mother's cottage."
"i'll show you the way, mr. audley," answered the surgeon, "i am going there this minute."
"the man is very bad, then?"
"so bad that he can be no worse. the change that can happen is that change which will take him beyond the reach of any earthly suffering."
"strange!" exclaimed robert. "he did not appear to be much burned."
"he was not much burnt. had he been, i should never have recommended his being removed from mount stanning. it is the shock that has done the business. he has been in a raging fever for the last two days; but to-night he is much calmer, and i'm afraid, before to-morrow night, we shall have seen the last of him."
"he has asked to see me, i am told," said mr. audley.
"yes," answered the surgeon, carelessly. "a sick man's fancy, no doubt. you dragged him out of the house, and did your best to save his life. i dare say, rough and boorish as the poor fellow is, he thinks a good deal of that."
they had left the surgery, the door of which mr. dawson had locked behind him. there was money in the till, perhaps, for surely the village apothecary could not have feared that the most daring housebreaker would imperil his liberty in the pursuit of blue pill and colocynth, of salts and senna.
the surgeon led the way along the silent street, and presently turned into a lane at the end of which robert audley saw the wan glimmer of a light; a light which told of the watch that is kept by the sick and dying; a pale, melancholy light, which always has a dismal aspect when looked upon in this silent hour betwixt night and morning. it shone from the window of the cottage in which luke marks lay, watched by his wife and mother.
mr. dawson lifted the latch, and walked into the common room of the little tenement, followed by robert audley. it was empty, but a feeble tallow candle, with a broken back, and a long, cauliflower-headed wick, sputtered upon the table. the sick man lay in the room above.
"shall i tell him you are here?" asked mr. dawson.
"yes, yes, if you please. but be cautious how you tell him, if you think the news likely to agitate him. i am in no hurry. i can wait. you can call me when you think i can safely come up-stairs."
the surgeon nodded, and softly ascended the narrow wooden stairs leading to the upper chamber.
robert audley seated himself in a windsor chair by the cold hearth-stone, and stared disconsolately about him. but he was relieved at last by the low voice of the surgeon, who looked down from the top of the little staircase to tell him that luke marks was awake, and would be glad to see him.
robert immediately obeyed this summons. he crept softly up the stairs, and took off his hat before he bent his head to enter at the low doorway of the humble rustic chamber. he took off his hat in the presence of this common peasant man, because he knew that there was another and a more awful presence hovering about the room, and eager to be admitted.
phoebe marks was sitting at the foot of the bed, with her eyes fixed upon her husband's face—not with any very tender expression in the pale light, but with a sharp, terrified anxiety, which showed that it was the coming of death itself that she dreaded, rather than the loss of her husband. the old woman was busy at the fire-place, airing linen, and preparing some mess of broth which it was not likely the patient would ever eat. the sick man lay with his head propped up by pillows, his coarse face deadly pale, and his great hands wandering uneasily about the coverlet. phoebe had been reading to him, for an open testament lay among the medicine and lotion bottles upon the table near the bed. every object in the room was neat and orderly, and bore witness of that delicate precision which had always been a distinguishing characteristic of phoebe.
the young woman rose as robert audley crossed the threshold, and hurried toward him.
"let me speak to you for a moment, sir, before you talk to luke," she said, in an eager whisper. "pray let me speak to you first."
"what's the gal a-sayin', there?" asked the invalid in a subdued roar, which died away hoarsely on his lips. he was feebly savage, even in his weakness. the dull glaze of death was gathering over his eyes, but they still watched phoebe with a sharp glance of dissatisfaction. "what's she up to there?" he said. "i won't have no plottin' and no hatchin' agen me. i want to speak to mr. audley my own self; and whatever i done i'm goin' to answer for. if i done any mischief, i'm a-goin' to try and undo it. what's she a-sayin'?"
"she ain't a-sayin' nothin', lovey," answered the old woman, going to the bedside of her son, who even when made more interesting than usual by illness, did not seem a very fit subject for this tender appellation.
"she's only a-tellin' the gentleman how bad you've been, my pretty."
"what i'm a-goin' to tell i'm only a-goin' to tell to him, remember," growled mr. mark; "and ketch me a-tellin' of it to him if it warn't for what he done for me the other night."
"to be sure not, lovey," answered the old woman soothingly.
phoebe marks had drawn mr. audley out of the room and onto the narrow landing at the top of the little staircase. this landing was a platform of about three feet square, and it was as much as the two could manage to stand upon it without pushing each other against the whitewashed wall, or backward down the stairs.
"oh, sir, i wanted to speak to you so badly," phoebe answered, eagerly; "you know what i told you when i found you safe and well upon the night of the fire?"
"yes, yes."
"i told you what i suspected; what i think still."
"yes, i remember."
"but i never breathed a word of it to anybody but you, sir, and i think that luke has forgotten all about that night; i think that what went before the fire has gone clean out of his head altogether. he was tipsy, you know, when my la—when she came to the castle; and i think he was so dazed and scared like by the fire that it all went out of his memory. he doesn't suspect what i suspect, at any rate, or he'd have spoken of it to anybody or everybody; but he's dreadful spiteful against my lady, for he says if she'd have let him have a place at brentwood or chelmsford, this wouldn't have happened. so what i wanted to beg of you, sir, is not to let a word drop before luke."
"yes, yes, i understand; i will be careful."
"my lady has left the court, i hear, sir?"
"yes."
"never to come back, sir?"
"never to come back."
"but she has not gone where she'll be cruelly treated; where she'll be ill-used?"
"no: she will be very kindly treated."
"i'm glad of that, sir; i beg your pardon for troubling you with the question, sir, but my lady was a kind mistress to me."
luke's voice, husky and feeble, was heard within the little chamber at this period of the conversation, demanding angrily when "that gal would have done jawing;" upon which phoebe put her finger to her lips, and led mr. audley back into the sick-room.
"i don't want you" said mr. marks, decisively, as his wife re-entered the chamber—"i don't want you; you've no call to hear what i've got to say—i only want mr. audley, and i wants to speak to him all alone, with none o' your sneakin' listenin' at doors, d'ye hear? so you may go down-stairs and keep there till you're wanted; and you may take mother—no, mother may stay, i shall want her presently."
the sick man's feeble hand pointed to the door, through which his wife departed very submissively.
"i've no wish to hear anything, luke," she said, "but i hope you won't say anything against those that have been good and generous to you."
"i shall say what i like," answered mr. marks, fiercely, "and i'm not a-goin' to be ordered by you. you ain't the parson, as i've ever heerd of; nor the lawyer neither."
the landlord of the castle inn had undergone no moral transformation by his death-bed sufferings, fierce and rapid as they had been. perhaps some faint glimmer of a light that had been far off from his life now struggled feebly through the black obscurities of ignorance that darkened his soul. perhaps a half angry, half sullen penitence urged him to make some rugged effort to atone for a life that had been selfish and drunken and wicked. be it how it might he wiped his white lips, and turning his haggard eyes earnestly upon robert audley, pointed to a chair by the bedside.
"you made game of me in a general way, mr. audley," he said, presently, "and you've drawed me out, and you've tumbled and tossed me about like in a gentlemanly way, till i was nothink or anythink in your hands; and you've looked me through and through, and turned me inside out till you thought you knowed as much as i knowed. i'd no particular call to be grateful to you, not before the fire at the castle t'other night. but i am grateful to you for that. i'm not grateful to folks in a general way, p'r'aps, because the things as gentlefolks have give have a'most allus been the very things i didn't want. they've give me soup, and tracks, and flannel, and coals; but, lord, they've made such a precious noise about it that i'd have been to send 'em all back to 'em. but when a gentleman goes and puts his own life in danger to save a drunken brute like me, the drunkenest brute as ever was feels grateful like to that gentleman, and wishes to say before he dies—which he sees in the doctor's face as he ain't got long to live—'thank ye, sir, i'm obliged to you."
luke marks stretched out his left hand—the right hand had been injured by the fire, and was wrapped in linen—and groped feebly for that of mr. robert audley.
the young man took the coarse but shrunken hand in both his own, and pressed it cordially.
"i need no thanks, luke marks," he said; "i was very glad to be of service to you."
mr. marks did not speak immediately. he was lying quietly upon his side, staring reflectingly at robert audley.
"you was oncommon fond of that gent as disappeared at the court, warn't you, sir?" he said at last.
robert started at the mention of his dead friend.
"you was oncommon fond of that mr. talboys, i've heard say, sir," repeated luke.
"yes, yes," answered robert, rather impatiently, "he was my very dear friend."
"i've heard the servants at the court say how you took on when you couldn't find him. i've heered the landlord of the sun inn say how cut up you was when you first missed him. 'if the two gents had been brothers,' the landlord said, 'our gent,' meanin' you, sir, 'couldn't have been more cut up when he missed the other.'"
"yes, yes, i know, i know," said robert; "pray do not speak any more of this subject. i cannot tell you how much it distresses me."
was he to be haunted forever by the ghost of his unburied friend? he came here to comfort the sick man, and even here he was pursued by this relentless shadow; even here he was reminded of the secret crime which had darkened his life.
"listen to me, marks," he said, earnestly; "believe me that i appreciate your grateful words, and that i am very glad to have been of service to you. but before you say anything more, let me make one most solemn request. if you have sent for me that you may tell me anything of the fate of my lost friend, i entreat you to spare yourself and to spare me that horrible story. you can tell me nothing which i do not already know. the worst you can tell me of the woman who was once in your power, has already been revealed to me by her own lips. pray, then, be silent upon this subject; i say again, you can tell me nothing which i do not know."
luke marks looked musingly at the earnest face of his visitor, and some shadowy expression, which was almost like a smile, flitted feebly across the sick man's haggard features.
"i can't tell you nothin' you don't know?" he asked.
"nothing."
"then it ain't no good for me to try," said the invalid, thoughtfully. "did she tell you?" he asked, after a pause.
"i must beg, marks, that you will drop the subject," robert answered, almost sternly. "i have already told you that i do not wish to hear it spoken of. whatever discoveries you made, you made your market out of them. whatever guilty secrets you got possession of, you were paid for keeping silence. you had better keep silence to the end."
"had i?" cried luke marks, in an eager whisper. "had i really now better hold my tongue to the last?"
"i think so, most decidedly. you traded on your secret, and you were paid to keep it. it would be more honest to hold to your bargain, and keep it still."
"would it now?" said mr. marks with a ghastly grin; "but suppose my lady had one secret and i another. how then?"
"what do you mean?"
"suppose i could have told something all along; and would have told it, perhaps, if i'd been a little better treated; if what was give to me had been give a little more liberal like, and not flung at me as if i was a dog, and was only give it to be kep' from bitin'. suppose i could have told somethin', and would have told it but for that? how then?"
it was impossible to describe the ghastliness of the triumphant grin that lighted up the sick man's haggard face.
"his mind is wandering," robert thought; "i had need be patient with him, poor fellow. it would be strange if i could not be patient with a dying man."
luke marks lay staring at mr. audley for some moments with that triumphant grin upon his face. the old woman, wearied out with watching her dying son, had dropped into a doze, and sat nodding her sharp chin over the handful of fire, upon which the broth that was never to be eaten, still bubbled and simmered.
mr. audley waited very patiently until it should be the sick man's pleasure to speak. every sound was painfully distinct in that dead hour of the night. the dropping of the ashes on the hearth, the ominous crackling of the burning coals, the slow and ponderous ticking of the sulky clock in the room below, the low moaning of the march wind (which might have been the voice of an english banshee, screaming her dismal warning to the watchers of the dying), the hoarse breathing of the sick man--every sound held itself apart from all other sounds, and made itself into a separate voice, loud with a gloomy portent in the solemn stillness of the house.
robert sat with his face shaded by his hands, thinking what was to become of him now that the secret of his friend's fate had been told, and the dark story of george talboys and his wicked wife had been finished in the belgian mad-house. what was to become of him?
he had no claim upon clara talboys; for he had resolved to keep the horrible secret that had been told to him. how then could he dare to meet her with that secret held back fom her? how could he ever look into her earnest eyes, and yet withhold the truth? he felt that all power of reservation would fail before the searching glance of those calm brown eyes. if he was indeed to keep this secret he must never see her again. to reveal it would be to embitter her life. could he, for any selfish motive of his own, tell her this terrible story?--or could he think that if he told her she would suffer her murdered brother to lie unavenged and forgotten in his unhallowed grave?
hemmed in on every side by difficulties which seemed utterly insumountable; with the easy temperament which was natural to him embittered by the gloomy burden he had borne so long, robert audley looked hopelessly forward to the life which lay before him, and thought that it would have been better for him had he perished among the burning ruins of the castle inn.
"who would have been sorry for me? no one but my poor little alicia," he thought, "and hers would have only been an april sorrow. would clara talboys have been sorry? no! she would have only regretted me as a lost link in the mystery of her brother's death. she would only--"
