Lady Audley’s Secret by M. E. Braddon (top ebook reader TXT) 📕

Audley on her mare about half an hour after they had come to the determination of leaving Essex early the next morning. The young lady was very much surprised and disappointed at hearing her cousin’s determination, and for that very reason pretended to take the matter with supreme indifference.

“You are very soon tired of Audley, Robert,” she said, carelessly; “but of course you have no friends here, except your relations at the Court; while in London, no doubt, you have the most delightful society and⁠—”

“I get good tobacco,” murmured Robert, interrupting his cousin. “Audley is the dearest old place, but when a man has to smoke dried cabbage leaves, you know, Alicia⁠—”

“Then you are really going tomorrow morning?”

“Positively⁠—by the express train that leaves at 10:50.”

“Then Lady Audley will lose an introduction to Mr. Talboys, and Mr. Talboys will lose the chance of seeing the prettiest woman in Essex.”

“Really⁠—” stammered George.

“The prettiest woman in Essex would have a poor chance of getting much admiration out of my friend, George Talboys,” said Robert. “His heart is at Southampton, where he has a curly-headed little urchin, about as high as his knee, who calls him ‘the big gentleman,’ and asks him for sugarplums.”

“I am going to write to my stepmother by tonight’s post,” said Alicia. “She asked me particularly in her letter how long you were going to stop, and whether there was any chance of her being back in time to receive you.”

Miss Audley took a letter from the pocket of her riding-jacket as she spoke⁠—a pretty, fairy-like note, written on shining paper of a peculiar creamy hue.

“She says in her postcript, ‘Be sure you answer my question about Mr. Audley and his friend, you volatile, forgetful Alicia!’ ”

“What a pretty hand she writes!” said Robert, as his cousin folded the note.

“Yes, it is pretty, is it not? Look at it, Robert.”

She put the letter into his hand, and he contemplated it lazily for a few minutes, while Alicia patted the graceful neck of her chestnut mare, which was anxious to be off once more.

“Presently, Atalanta, presently. Give me back my note, Bob.”

“It is the prettiest, most coquettish little hand I ever saw. Do you know, Alicia, I have no great belief in those fellows who ask you for thirteen postage stamps, and offer to tell you what you have never been able to find out yourself; but upon my word I think that if I had never seen your aunt, I should know what she was like by this slip of paper. Yes, here it all is⁠—the feathery, gold-shot, flaxen curls, the penciled eyebrows, the tiny, straight nose, the winning, childish smile; all to be guessed in these few graceful upstrokes and downstrokes. George, look here!”

But absentminded and gloomy George Talboys had strolled away along the margin of the ditch, and stood striking the bulrushes with his cane, half a dozen paces away from Robert and Alicia.

“Nevermind,” said the young lady, impatiently; for she by no means relished this long disquisition upon my lady’s note. “Give me the letter, and let me go; it’s past eight, and I must answer it by tonight’s post. Come, Atalanta! Goodbye, Robert⁠—goodbye, Mr. Talboys. A pleasant journey to town.”

The chestnut mare cantered briskly through the lane, and Miss Audley was out of sight before those two big, bright tears that stood in her eyes for one moment, before her pride sent them, back again, rose from her angry heart.

“To have only one cousin in the world,” she cried, passionately, “my nearest relation after papa, and for him to care about as much for me as he would for a dog!”

By the merest of accidents, however, Robert and his friend did not go by the 10:50 express on the following morning, for the young barrister awoke with such a splitting headache, that he asked George to send him a cup of the strongest green tea that had ever been made at the Sun, and to be furthermore so good as to defer their journey until the next day. Of course George assented, and Robert Audley spent the forenoon in a darkened room with a five-days’-old Chelmsford paper to entertain himself withal.

“It’s nothing but the cigars, George,” he said, repeatedly. “Get me out of the place without my seeing the landlord; for if that man and I meet there will be bloodshed.”

Fortunately for the peace of Audley, it happened to be market-day at Chelmsford; and the worthy landlord had ridden off in his chaise-cart to purchase supplies for his house⁠—among other things, perhaps, a fresh stock of those very cigars which had been so fatal in their effect upon Robert.

The young men spent a dull, dawdling, stupid, unprofitable day; and toward dusk Mr. Audley proposed that they should stroll down to the Court, and ask Alicia to take them over the house.

“It will kill a couple of hours, you know, George: and it seems a great pity to drag you away from Audley without having shown you the old place, which, I give you my honor, is very well worth seeing.”

The sun was low in the skies as they took a shortcut through the meadows, and crossed a stile into the avenue leading to the archway⁠—a lurid, heavy-looking, ominous sunset, and a deathly stillness in the air, which frightened the birds that had a mind to sing, and left the field open to a few captious frogs croaking in the ditches. Still as the atmosphere was, the leaves rustled with that sinister, shivering motion which proceeds from no outer cause, but is rather an instinctive shudder of the frail branches, prescient of a coming storm. That stupid clock, which knew no middle course, and always skipped from one hour to the other, pointed to seven as the young men passed under the archway; but, for all that, it was nearer eight.

They found Alicia in the lime-walk, wandering listlessly up and down under the black shadow of the trees, from which every now and then a withered leaf flapped slowly to the ground.

Strange to