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

those false and plausible words, her only armor against her enemies. She could not speak. The agony she had endured silently in the dismal lime-walk had grown too strong for her, and she broke into a tempest of hysterical sobbing. It was no simulated grief that shook her slender frame and tore at her like some ravenous beast that would have rent her piecemeal with its horrible strength. It was a storm of real anguish and terror, of remorse and misery. It was the one wild outcry, in which the woman’s feebler nature got the better of the siren’s art.

It was not thus that she had meant to fight her terrible duel with Robert Audley. Those were not the weapons which she had intended to use; but perhaps no artifice which she could have devised would have served her so well as this one outburst of natural grief. It shook her husband to the very soul. It bewildered and terrified him. It reduced the strong intellect of the man to helpless confusion and perplexity. It struck at the one weak point in a good man’s nature. It appealed straight to Sir Michael Audley’s affection for his wife.

Ah, Heaven help a strong man’s tender weakness for the woman he loves! Heaven pity him when the guilty creature has deceived him and comes with her tears and lamentations to throw herself at his feet in self-abandonment and remorse; torturing him with the sight of her agony; rending his heart with her sobs, lacerating his breast with her groans⁠—multiplying her sufferings into a great anguish for him to bear! multiplying them by twenty-fold; multiplying them in a ratio of a brave man’s capacity for endurance. Heaven forgive him, if maddened by that cruel agony, the balance wavers for a moment, and he is ready to forgive anything; ready to take this wretched one to the shelter of his breast, and to pardon that which the stern voice of manly honor urges must not be pardoned. Pity him, pity him! The wife’s worst remorse when she stands without the threshold of the home she may never enter more is not equal to the agony of the husband who closes the portal on that familiar and entreating face. The anguish of the mother who may never look again upon her children is less than the torment of the father who has to say to those little ones, “My darlings, you are henceforth motherless.”

Sir Michael Audley rose from his chair, trembling with indignation, and ready to do immediate battle with the person who had caused his wife’s grief.

“Lucy,” he said, “Lucy, I insist upon your telling me what and who has distressed you. I insist upon it. Whoever has annoyed you shall answer to me for your grief. Come, my love, tell me directly what it is.”

He seated himself and bent over the drooping figure at his feet, calming his own agitation in his desire to soothe his wife’s distress.

“Tell me what it is, my dear,” he whispered, tenderly.

The sharp paroxysm had passed away, and my lady looked up. A glittering light shone through the tears in her eyes, and the lines about her pretty rosy mouth, those hard and cruel lines which Robert Audley had observed in the pre-Raphaelite portrait, were plainly visible in the firelight.

“I am very silly,” she said; “but really he has made me quite hysterical.”

“Who⁠—who has made you hysterical?”

“Your nephew⁠—Mr. Robert Audley.”

“Robert,” cried the baronet. “Lucy, what do you mean?”

“I told you that Mr. Audley insisted upon my going into the lime-walk, dear,” said my lady. “He wanted to talk to me, he said, and I went, and he said such horrible things that⁠—”

“What horrible things, Lucy?”

Lady Audley shuddered, and clung with convulsive fingers to the strong hand that had rested caressingly upon her shoulder.

“What did he say, Lucy?”

“Oh, my dear love, how can I tell you?” cried my lady. “I know that I shall distress you⁠—or you will laugh at me, and then⁠—”

“Laugh at you? no, Lucy.”

Lady Audley was silent for a moment. She sat looking straight before her into the fire, with her fingers still locked about her husband’s hand.

“My dear,” she said, slowly, hesitating now and then between her words, as if she almost shrunk from uttering them, “have you ever⁠—I am so afraid of vexing you⁠—have you ever thought Mr. Audley a little⁠—a little⁠—”

“A little what, my darling?”

“A little out of his mind?” faltered Lady Audley.

“Out of his mind!” cried Sir Michael. “My dear girl, what are you thinking of?”

“You said just now, dear, that you thought he was half mad.”

“Did I, my love?” said the baronet, laughing. “I don’t remember saying it, and it was a mere façon de parler, that meant nothing whatever. Robert may be a little eccentric⁠—a little stupid, perhaps⁠—he mayn’t be overburdened with wits, but I don’t think he has brains enough for madness. I believe it’s generally your great intellects that get out of order.”

“But madness is sometimes hereditary,” said my lady. “Mr. Audley may have inherited⁠—”

“He has inherited no madness from his father’s family,” interrupted Sir Michael. “The Audleys have never peopled private lunatic asylums or fed mad doctors.”

“Nor from his mother’s family?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“People generally keep these things a secret,” said my lady, gravely. “There may have been madness in your sister-in-law’s family.”

“I don’t think so, my dear,” replied Sir Michael. “But, Lucy, tell me what, in Heaven’s name, has put this idea into your head.”

“I have been trying to account for your nephew’s conduct. I can account for it in no other manner. If you had heard the things he said to me tonight, Sir Michael, you too might have thought him mad.”

“But what did he say, Lucy?”

“I can scarcely tell you. You can see how much he has stupefied and bewildered me. I believe he has lived too long alone in those solitary Temple chambers. Perhaps he reads too much, or smokes too much. You know that some physicians declare madness to be a mere illness of the