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

“No, no, I assure you,” repeated Mr. Talboys, “you labor under a sad mistake.”

“You believe that I am mistaken in thinking your son dead?” asked Robert.

“Most certainly,” replied Mr. Talboys, with a smile, expressive of the serenity of wisdom. “Most certainly, my dear sir. The disappearance was a very clever trick, no doubt, but it was not sufficiently clever to deceive me. You must permit me to understand this matter a little better than you, Mr. Audley, and you must also permit me to assure you of three things. In the first place, your friend is not dead. In the second place, he is keeping out of the way for the purpose of alarming me, of trifling with my feelings as a⁠—as a man who was once his father, and of ultimately obtaining my forgiveness. In the third place, he will not obtain that forgiveness, however long he may please to keep out of the way; and he would therefore act wisely by returning to his ordinary residence and avocations without delay.”

“Then you imagine him to purposely hide himself from all who know him, for the purpose of⁠—”

“For the purpose of influencing me,” exclaimed Mr. Talboys, who, taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point of view. “For the purpose of influencing me. He knew the inflexibility of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed purpose of my life, would fail. He therefore tried extraordinary means; he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time he discovers that he has not alarmed me, he will return to his old haunts. When he does so,” said Mr. Talboys, rising to sublimity, “I will forgive him. Yes, sir, I will forgive him. I shall say to him: You have attempted to deceive me, and I have shown you that I am not to be deceived; you have tried to frighten me, and I have convinced you that I am not to be frightened; you did not believe in my generosity, I will show you that I can be generous.”

Harcourt Talboys delivered himself of these superb periods with a studied manner, that showed they had been carefully composed long ago.

Robert Audley sighed as he heard them.

“Heaven grant that you may have an opportunity of saying this to your son, sir,” he answered sadly. “I am very glad to find that you are willing to forgive him, but I fear that you will never see him again upon this earth. I have a great deal to say to you upon this⁠—this sad subject, Mr. Talboys; but I would rather say it to you alone,” he added, glancing at the lady in the window.

“My daughter knows my ideas upon this subject, Mr. Audley,” said Harcourt Talboys; “there is no reason why she should not hear all you have to say. Miss Clara Talboys, Mr. Robert Audley,” he added, waving his hand majestically.

The young lady bent her head in recognition of Robert’s bow.

“Let her hear it,” he thought. “If she has so little feeling as to show no emotion upon such a subject, let her hear the worst I have to tell.”

There was a few minutes’ pause, during which Robert took some papers from his pocket; among them the document which he had written immediately after George’s disappearance.

“I shall require all your attention, Mr. Talboys,” he said, “for that which I have to disclose to you is of a very painful nature. Your son was my very dear friend⁠—dear to me for many reasons. Perhaps most of all dear, because I had known him and been with him through the great trouble of his life; and because he stood comparatively alone in the world⁠—cast off by you who should have been his best friend, bereft of the only woman he had ever loved.”

“The daughter of a drunken pauper,” Mr. Talboys remarked, parenthetically.

“Had he died in his bed, as I sometimes thought he would,” continued Robert Audley, “of a broken heart, I should have mourned for him very sincerely, even though I had closed his eyes with my own hands, and had seen him laid in his quiet resting-place. I should have grieved for my old schoolfellow, and for the companion who had been dear to me. But this grief would have been a very small one compared to that which I feel now, believing, as I do only too firmly, that my poor friend has been murdered.”

“Murdered!”

The father and daughter simultaneously repeated the horrible word. The father’s face changed to a ghastly duskiness of hue; the daughter’s face dropped upon her clasped hands, and was never lifted again throughout the interview.

“Mr. Audley, you are mad!” exclaimed Harcourt Talboys; “you are mad, or else you are commissioned by your friend to play upon my feelings. I protest against this proceeding as a conspiracy, and I⁠—I revoke my intended forgiveness of the person who was once my son!”

He was himself again as he said this. The blow had been a sharp one, but its effect had been momentary.

“It is far from my wish to alarm you unnecessarily, sir,” answered Robert. “Heaven grant that you may be right and I wrong. I pray for it, but I cannot think it⁠—I cannot even hope it. I come to you for advice. I will state to you plainly and dispassionately the circumstances which have aroused my suspicions. If you say those suspicions are foolish and unfounded I am ready to submit to your better judgment. I will leave England; and I abandon my search for the evidence wanting to⁠—to confirm my fears. If you say go on, I will go on.”

Nothing could be more gratifying to the vanity of Mr. Harcourt Talboys than this appeal. He declared himself ready to listen to all that Robert might have to say,