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

Within an hour of the receipt of this message, Mr. Audley arrived at the King’s-cross station, and took his ticket for Wildernsea by an express train that started at a quarter before two.

The shrieking engine bore him on the dreary northward journey, whirling him over desert wastes of flat meadow-land and bare cornfields, faintly tinted with fresh sprouting green. This northern road was strange and unfamiliar to the young barrister, and the wide expanse of the wintry landscape chilled him by its aspect of bare loneliness. The knowledge of the purpose of his journey blighted every object upon which his absent glances fixed themselves for a moment, only to wander wearily away; only to turn inward upon that far darker picture always presenting itself to his anxious mind.

It was dark when the train reached the Hull terminus, but Mr. Audley’s journey was not ended. Amidst a crowd of porters and scattered heaps of that incongruous and heterogeneous luggage with which travelers encumber themselves, he was led, bewildered and half asleep, to another train which was to convey him along the branch line that swept past Wildernsea, and skirted the border of the German Ocean.

Half an hour after leaving Hull, Robert felt the briny freshness of the sea upon the breeze that blew in at the open window of the carriage, and an hour afterward the train stopped at a melancholy station, built amid a sandy desert, and inhabited by two or three gloomy officials, one of whom rung a terrific peal upon a harshly clanging bell as the train approached.

Mr. Audley was the only passenger who alighted at the dismal station. The train swept on to the gayer scenes before the barrister had time to collect his senses, or to pick up the portmanteau which had been discovered with some difficulty amid a black cavern of baggage only illuminated by one lantern.

“I wonder whether settlers in the backwoods of America feel as solitary and strange as I feel tonight?” he thought, as he stared hopelessly about him in the darkness.

He called to one of the officials, and pointed to his portmanteau.

“Will you carry that to the nearest hotel for me?” he asked⁠—“that is to say, if I can get a good bed there.”

The man laughed as he shouldered the portmanteau.

“You can get thirty beds, I dare say, sir, if you wanted ’em,” he said. “We ain’t over busy at Wildernsea at this time o’ year. This way, sir.”

The porter opened a wooden door in the station wall, and Robert Audley found himself upon a wide bowling-green of smooth grass, which surrounded a huge, square building, that loomed darkly on him through the winter’s night, its black solidity only relieved by two lighted windows, far apart from each other, and glimmering redly like beacons on the darkness.

“This is the Victoria Hotel, sir,” said the porter. “You wouldn’t believe the crowds of company we have down here in the summer.”

In the face of the bare grass-plat, the tenantless wooden alcoves, and the dark windows of the hotel, it was indeed rather difficult to imagine that the place was ever gay with merry people taking pleasure in the bright summer weather; but Robert Audley declared himself willing to believe anything the porter pleased to tell him, and followed his guide meekly to a little door at the side of the big hotel, which led into a comfortable bar, where the humbler classes of summer visitors were accommodated with such refreshments as they pleased to pay for, without running the gantlet of the prim, white-waistcoated waiters on guard at the principal entrance.

But there were very few attendants retained at the hotel in the bleak February season, and it was the landlord himself who ushered Robert into a dreary wilderness of polished mahogany tables and horsehair cushioned chairs, which he called the coffee-room.

Mr. Audley seated himself close to the wide steel fender, and stretched his cramped legs upon the hearthrug, while the landlord drove the poker into the vast pile of coal, and sent a ruddy blaze roaring upward through the chimney.

“If you would prefer a private room, sir⁠—” the man began.

“No, thank you,” said Robert, indifferently; “this room seems quite private enough just now. If you will order me a mutton chop and a pint of sherry, I shall be obliged.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And I shall be still more obliged if you will favor me with a few minutes’ conversation before you do so.”

“With very great pleasure, sir,” the landlord answered, good-naturedly. “We see so very little company at this season of the year, that we are only too glad to oblige those gentlemen who do visit us. Any information which I can afford you respecting the neighborhood of Wildernsea and its attractions,” added the landlord, unconsciously quoting a small handbook of the watering-place which he sold in the bar, “I shall be most happy to⁠—”

“But I don’t want to know anything about the neighborhood of Wildernsea,” interrupted Robert, with a feeble protest against the landlord’s volubility. “I want to ask you a few questions about some people who once lived here.”

The landlord bowed and smiled, with an air which implied his readiness to recite the biographies of all the inhabitants of the little seaport, if required by Mr. Audley to do so.

“How many years have you lived here?” Robert asked, taking his memorandum book from his pocket. “Will it annoy you if I make notes of your replies to my questions?”

“Not at all, sir,” replied the landlord, with a pompous enjoyment of the air of solemnity and importance which pervaded this business. “Any information which I can afford that is likely to be of ultimate value⁠—”

“Yes, thank you,” Robert murmured, interrupting the flow of words. “You have lived here⁠—”

“Six years, sir.”

“Since the year fifty-three?”

“Since November, in the year fifty-two, sir. I was in business at Hull prior to that time. This house was only completed in the October before I entered it.”

“Do you remember a lieutenant in the navy, on half-pay, I believe, at that time,