Aurora Floyd & Lady Audley's Secret (Victorian Mysteries). Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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СКАЧАТЬ in the old house, and sit under the low oak ceilings in the homely familiar rooms?”

      That wonderful faculty of association, so interwoven with the inmost fibers of even the hardest nature, filled the young man’s breast with a prophetic pain as he remembered that, however long or late, the day must come on which the oaken shutters would be closed for awhile, and the sunshine shut out of the house he loved. It was painful to him even to remember this; as it must always be painful to think of the narrow lease the greatest upon this earth can ever hold of its grandeurs. Is it so wonderful that some wayfarers drop asleep under the hedges, scarcely caring to toil onward on a journey that leads to no abiding habitation? Is it wonderful that there have been quietists in the world ever since Christ’s religion was first preached upon earth. Is it strange that there is a patient endurance and tranquil resignation, calm expectation of that which is to come on the further shore of the dark flowing river? Is it not rather to be wondered that anybody should ever care to be great for greatness’ sake; for any other reason than pure conscientiousness; the simple fidelity of the servant who fears to lay his talents by in a napkin, knowing that indifference is near akin to dishonesty? If Robert Audley had lived in the time of Thomas a’Kempis, he would very likely have built himself a narrow hermitage amid some forest loneliness, and spent his life in tranquil imitation of the reputed author of The Imitation. As it was, Figtree Court was a pleasant hermitage in its way, and for breviaries and Books of Hours, I am ashamed to say the young barrister substituted Paul de Kock and Dumas, fils. But his sins were of so simply negative an order, that it would have been very easy for him to have abandoned them for negative virtues.

      Only one solitary light was visible in the long irregular range of windows facing the archway, as Robert passed under the gloomy shade of the rustling ivy, restless in the chill moaning of the wind. He recognized that lighted window as the large oriel in his uncle’s room. When last he had looked at the old house it had been gay with visitors, every window glittering like a low star in the dusk; now, dark and silent, it faced the winter’s night like some dismal baronial habitation, deep in a woodland solitude.

      The man who opened the door to the unlooked-for visitor, brightened as he recognized his master’s nephew.

      “Sir Michael will be cheered up a bit, sir, by the sight of you,” he said, as he ushered Robert Audley into the fire-lit library, which seemed desolate by reason of the baronet’s easy-chair standing empty on the broad hearth-rug. “Shall I bring you some dinner here, sir, before you go up-stairs?” the servant asked. “My lady and Miss Audley have dined early during my master’s illness, but I can bring you anything you would please to take, sir.”

      “I’ll take nothing until I have seen my uncle,” Robert answered, hurriedly; “that is to say, if I can see him at once. He is not too ill to receive me, I suppose?” he added, anxiously.

      “Oh, no, sir — not too ill; only a little low, sir. This way, if you please.”

      He conducted Robert up the short flight of shallow oaken stairs to the octagon chamber in which George Talboys had sat long five months before, staring absently at my lady’s portrait. The picture was finished now, and hung in the post of honor opposite the window, amidst Claudes, Poussins and Wouvermans, whose less brilliant hues were killed by the vivid coloring of the modern artist. The bright face looked out of that tangled glitter of golden hair, in which the Pre–Raphaelites delight, with a mocking smile, as Robert paused for a moment to glance at the well-remembered picture. Two or three moments afterward he had passed through my lady’s boudoir and dressing-room and stood upon the threshold of Sir Michael’s room. The baronet lay in a quiet sleep, his arm laying outside the bed, and his strong hand clasped in his young wife’s delicate fingers. Alicia sat in a low chair beside the broad open hearth, on which the huge logs burned fiercely in the frosty atmosphere. The interior of this luxurious bedchamber might have made a striking picture for an artist’s pencil. The massive furniture, dark and somber, yet broken up and relieved here and there by scraps of gilding, and masses of glowing color; the elegance of every detail, in which wealth was subservient to purity of taste; and last, but greatest in importance, the graceful figures of the two women, and the noble form of the old man would have formed a worthy study for any painter.

      Lucy Audley, with her disordered hair in a pale haze of yellow gold about her thoughtful face, the flowing lines of her soft muslin dressing-gown falling in straight folds to her feet, and clasped at the waist by a narrow circlet of agate links might have served as a model for a mediaeval saint, in one of the tiny chapels hidden away in the nooks and corners of a gray old cathedral, unchanged by Reformation or Cromwell; and what saintly martyr of the Middle Ages could have borne a holier aspect than the man whose gray beard lay upon the dark silken coverlet of the stately bed?

      Robert paused upon the threshold, fearful of awaking his uncle. The two ladies had heard his step, cautious though he had been, and lifted their heads to look at him. My lady’s face, quietly watching the sick man, had worn an anxious earnestness which made it only more beautiful; but the same face recognizing Robert Audley, faded from its delicate brightness, and looked scared and wan in the lamplight.

      “Mr. Audley!” she cried, in a faint, tremulous voice.

      “Hush!” whispered Alicia, with a warning gesture; “you will wake papa. How good of you to come, Robert,” she added, in the same whispered tones, beckoning to her cousin to take an empty chair near the bed.

      The young man seated himself in the indicated seat at the bottom of the bed, and opposite to my lady, who sat close beside the pillows. He looked long and earnestly at the face of the sleeper; still longer, still more earnestly at the face of Lady Audley, which was slowly recovering its natural hues.

      “He has not been very ill, has he?” Robert asked, in the same key as that in which Alicia had spoken.

      My lady answered the question.

      “Oh, no, not dangerously ill,” she said, without taking her eyes from her husband’s face; “but still we have been anxious, very, very anxious.”

      Robert never relaxed his scrutiny of that pale face.

      “She shall look at me,” he thought; “I will make her meet my eyes, and I will read her as I have read her before. She shall know how useless her artifices are with me.”

      He paused for a few minutes before he spoke again. The regular breathing of the sleeper the ticking of a gold hunting-watch at the head of the bed, and the crackling of the burning logs, were the only sounds that broke the stillness.

      “I have no doubt you have been anxious, Lady Audley,” Robert said, after a pause, fixing my lady’s eyes as they wandered furtively to his face. “There is no one to whom my uncle’s life I can be of more value than to you. Your happiness, your prosperity, your safety depend alike upon his existence.”

      The whisper in which he uttered these words was too low to reach the other side of the room, where Alicia sat.

      Lucy Audley’s eyes met those of the speaker with some gleam of triumph in their light.

      “I know that,” she said. “Those who strike me must strike through him.”

      She pointed to the sleeper as she spoke, still looking at Robert Audley. She defied him with her blue eyes, their brightness intensified by the triumph in their glance. She defied him with her quiet smile — a smile of fatal beauty, full of lurking significance and mysterious meaning — the smile which the artist had exaggerated in his portrait of Sir Michael’s wife.

      Robert turned away from the lovely face, and shaded his eyes with his hand; putting a barrier between my lady and himself; a screen which baffled her penetration and provoked her curiosity. СКАЧАТЬ