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

figure of Mrs. Marks gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob.

“Will you pour out my tea for me, Mrs. Marks?” said Robert, seating himself on a horsehair-covered armchair, which fitted him as tightly in every direction as if he had been measured for it.

“You have come straight from the Court, sir?” said Phoebe, as she handed Robert the sugar-basin.

“Yes; I only left my uncle’s an hour ago.”

“And my lady, sir, was she quite well?”

“Yes, quite well.”

“As gay and lighthearted as ever, sir?”

“As gay and lighthearted as ever.”

Phoebe retired respectfully after having given Mr. Audley his tea, but as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again.

“You knew Lady Audley when she was Miss Lucy Graham, did you not?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. I lived at Mrs. Dawson’s when my lady was governess there.”

“Indeed! Was she long in the surgeon’s family?”

“A year and a half, sir.”

“And she came from London?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And she was an orphan, I believe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Always as cheerful as she is now?”

“Always, sir.”

Robert emptied his teacup and handed it to Mrs. Marks. Their eyes met⁠—a lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers.

“This woman would be good in a witness-box,” he thought; “it would take a clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination.”

He finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs, and lighted his pipe, while Phoebe carried off the tea-tray.

The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.

“There’s a triangular draught from those two windows and the door that scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment,” murmured Robert; “and there certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing up to one’s knees in cold water.”

He poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his great coat, rolled a rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horsehair cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-gray wreaths curling upward to the dingy ceiling.

“No,” he murmured, again; “that is a woman who can keep a secret. A counsel for the prosecution could get very little out of her.”

I have said that the bar-parlor was only separated from the sitting-room occupied by Robert by a lath-and-plaster partition. The young barrister could hear the two or three village tradesmen and a couple of farmers laughing and talking round the bar, while Luke Marks served them from his stock of liquors.

Very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlord’s, for he spoke in a coarse, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner than any of his customers.

“The man is a fool,” said Robert, as he laid down his pipe. “I’ll go and talk to him by-and-by.”

He waited till the few visitors to the Castle had dropped away one by one, and when Luke Marks had bolted the door upon the last of his customers, he strolled quietly into the bar-parlor, where the landlord was seated with his wife.

Phoebe was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim work-box, with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. She was darning the coarse gray stockings that adorned her husband’s awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had been my lady’s delicate silken hose.

I say that she took no color from external things, and that the vague air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in the society of her boorish husband at the Castle Inn as in Lady Audley’s boudoir at the Court.

She looked up suddenly as Robert entered the bar-parlor. There was some shade of vexation in her pale gray eyes, which changed to an expression of anxiety⁠—nay, rather of almost terror⁠—as she glanced from Mr. Audley to Luke Marks.

“I have come in for a few minutes’ chat before I go to bed,” said Robert, settling himself very comfortably before the cheerful fire. “Would you object to a cigar, Mrs. Marks? I mean, of course, to my smoking one,” he added, explanatorily.

“Not at all, sir.”

“It would be a good ’un her objectin’ to a bit o’ ’bacca,” growled Mr. Marks, “when me and the customers smokes all day.”

Robert lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of Phoebe’s making that adorned the chimneypiece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before he spoke.

“I want you to tell me all about Mount Stanning, Mr. Marks,” he said, presently.

“Then that’s pretty soon told,” replied Luke, with a harsh, grating laugh. “Of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about the dullest. Not that the business don’t pay pretty tidy; I don’t complain of that; but I should ha’ liked a public at Chelmsford, or Brentwood, or Romford, or some place where there’s a bit of life in the streets; and I might have had it,” he added, discontentedly, “if folks hadn’t been so precious stingy.”

As her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, Phoebe looked up from her work and spoke to him.

“We forgot the brew-house door, Luke,” she said. “Will you come with me and help me put up the bar?”

“The brew-house door can bide for tonight,” said Mr. Marks; “I ain’t agoin’ to move now. I’ve seated myself for a comfortable smoke.”

He took a long clay pipe from a corner of the fender as he spoke, and began to fill it deliberately.

“I don’t feel easy about that brew-house door, Luke,” remonstrated his wife; “there are always tramps about, and they can get in easily when the bar isn’t up.”

“Go and put the bar up yourself, then, can’t you?” answered Mr. Marks.

“It’s too heavy for me to lift.”

“Then let it bide, if you’re too fine a lady to see to it yourself. You’re very anxious all of a sudden about this here brew-house door. I suppose you don’t want me to open my mouth