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

Robert Audley wondered who or what Tonks could be; a diary, perhaps, or a memorandum-book⁠—some obscure rival of Letsome.

Mrs. Vincent rung the bell, which was answered by the maidservant who had admitted Robert.

“Ask Miss Tonks to come to me,” she said. “I want to see her particularly.”

In less than five minutes Miss Tonks made her appearance. She was wintry and rather frostbitten in aspect, and seemed to bring cold air in the scanty folds of her somber merino dress. She was no age in particular, and looked as if she had never been younger, and would never grow older, but would remain forever working backward and forward in her narrow groove, like some self-feeding machine for the instruction of young ladies.

“Tonks, my dear,” said Mrs. Vincent, without ceremony, “this gentleman is a relative of Miss Graham’s. Do you remember how long it is since she came to us at Crescent Villas?”

“She came in August, 1854,” answered Miss Tonks; “I think it was the eighteenth of August, but I’m not quite sure that it wasn’t the seventeenth. I know it was on a Tuesday.”

“Thank you, Tonks; you are a most invaluable darling,” exclaimed Mrs. Vincent, with her sweetest smile. It was, perhaps, because of the invaluable nature of Miss Tonks’ services that she had received no remuneration whatever from her employer for the last three or four years. Mrs. Vincent might have hesitated to pay from very contempt for the pitiful nature of the stipend as compared with the merits of the teacher.

“Is there anything else that Tonks or I can tell you, Mr. Audley?” asked the schoolmistress. “Tonks has a far better memory than I have.”

“Can you tell me where Miss Graham came from when she entered your household?” Robert inquired.

“Not very precisely,” answered Mrs. Vincent. “I have a vague notion that Miss Graham said something about coming from the seaside, but she didn’t say where, or if she did I have forgotten it. Tonks, did Miss Graham tell you where she came from?”

“Oh, no!” replied Miss Tonks, shaking her grim little head significantly. “Miss Graham told me nothing; she was too clever for that. She knows how to keep her own secrets, in spite of her innocent ways and her curly hair,” Miss Tonks added, spitefully.

“You think she had secrets?” Robert asked, rather eagerly.

“I know she had,” replied Miss Tonks, with frosty decision; “all manner of secrets. I wouldn’t have engaged such a person as junior teacher in a respectable school, without so much as one word of recommendation from any living creature.”

“You had no reference, then, from Miss Graham?” asked Robert, addressing Mrs. Vincent.

“No,” the lady answered, with some little embarrassment; “I waived that. Miss Graham waived the question of salary; I could not do less than waive the question of reference. She quarreled with her papa, she told me, and she wanted to find a home away from all the people she had ever known. She wished to keep herself quite separate from these people. She had endured so much, she said, young as she was, and she wanted to escape from her troubles. How could I press her for a reference under these circumstances, especially when I saw that she was a perfect lady. You know that Lucy Graham was a perfect lady, Tonks, and it is very unkind for you to say such cruel things about my taking her without a reference.”

“When people make favorites, they are apt to be deceived in them,” Miss Tonks answered, with icy sententiousness, and with no very perceptible relevance to the point in discussion.

“I never made her a favorite, you jealous Tonks,” Mrs. Vincent answered, reproachfully. “I never said she was as useful as you, dear. You know I never did.”

“Oh, no!” replied Miss Tonks, with a chilling accent, “you never said she was useful. She was only ornamental; a person to be shown off to visitors, and to play fantasias on the drawing-room piano.”

“Then you can give me no clue to Miss Graham’s previous history?” Robert asked, looking from the schoolmistress to her teacher. He saw very clearly that Miss Tonks bore an envious grudge against Lucy Graham⁠—a grudge which even the lapse of time had not healed.

“If this woman knows anything to my lady’s detriment, she will tell it,” he thought. “She will tell it only too willingly.”

But Miss Tonks appeared to know nothing whatever; except that Miss Graham had sometimes declared herself an ill-used creature, deceived by the baseness of mankind, and the victim of unmerited sufferings, in the way of poverty and deprivation. Beyond this, Miss Tonks could tell nothing; and although she made the most of what she did know, Robert soon sounded the depth of her small stock of information.

“I have only one more question to ask,” he said at last. “It is this: Did Miss Graham leave any books or knickknacks, or any other kind of property whatever, behind her, when she left your establishment?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Mrs. Vincent replied.

“Yes,” cried Miss Tonks, sharply. “She did leave something. She left a box. It’s upstairs in my room. I’ve got an old bonnet in it. Would you like to see the box?” she asked, addressing Robert.

“If you will be so good as to allow me,” he answered, “I should very much like to see it.”

“I’ll fetch it down,” said Miss Tonks. “It’s not very big.”

She ran out of the room before Mr. Audley had time to utter any polite remonstrance.

“How pitiless these women are to each other,” he thought, while the teacher was absent. “This one knows intuitively that there is some danger to the other lurking beneath my questions. She sniffs the coming trouble to her fellow female creature, and rejoices in it, and would take any pains to help me. What a world it is, and how these women take life out of her hands. Helen Maldon, Lady Audley, Clara Talboys, and now Miss Tonks⁠—all womankind from beginning to end.”

Miss Tonks re-entered while the young barrister was meditating upon the