The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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      “Why, you know, my lady,” answered Phoebe, half reluctantly, “Luke is very extravagant; and all I can say to him, I can’t get him to be careful or steady. He’s not sober; and when he’s drinking with a lot of rough countrymen, and drinking, perhaps even more than they do, it isn’t likely that his head can be very clear for accounts. If it hadn’t been for me we should have been ruined before this; and hard as I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to keep the ruin off. You remember giving me the money for the brewer’s bill, my lady?”

      “Yes, I remember very well,” answered Lady Audley, with a bitter laugh, “for I wanted that money to pay my own bills.”

      “I know you did, my lady, and it was very, very hard for me to have to come and ask you for it, after all that we’d received from you before. But that isn’t the worst: when Luke sent me down here to beg the favor of that help he never told me that the Christmas rent was still owing; but it was, my lady, and it’s owing now, and — and there’s a bailiff in the house to-night, and we’re to be sold up to-morrow unless —”

      “Unless I pay your rent, I suppose,” cried Lucy Audley. “I might have guessed what was coming.”

      “Indeed, indeed, my lady, I wouldn’t have asked it,” sobbed Phoebe Marks, “but he made me come.”

      “Yes,” answered my lady, bitterly, “he made you come; and he will make you come whenever he pleases, and whenever he wants money for the gratification of his low vices; and you and he are my pensioners as long as I live, or as long as I have any money to give; for I suppose when my purse is empty and my credit ruined, you and your husband will turn upon me and sell me to the highest bidder. Do you know, Phoebe Marks, that my jewel-case has been half emptied to meet your claims? Do you know that my pin-money, which I thought such a princely allowance when my marriage settlement was made, and when I was a poor governess at Mr. Dawson’s, Heaven help me! my pin-money has been overdrawn half a year to satisfy your demands? What can I do to appease you? Shall I sell my Marie Antoinette cabinet, or my pompadour china, Leroy’s and Benson’s ormolu clocks, or my Gobelin tapestried chairs and ottomans? How shall I satisfy you next?”

      “Oh, my lady, my lady,” cried Phoebe, piteously, “don’t be so cruel to me; you know, you know that it isn’t I who want to impose upon you.”

      “I know nothing,” exclaimed Lady Audley, “except that I am the most miserable of women. Let me think,” she cried, silencing Phoebe’s consolatory murmurs with an imperious gesture. “Hold your tongue, girl, and let me think of this business, if I can.”

      She put her hands to her forehead, clasping her slender fingers across her brow, as if she would have controlled the action of her brain by their convulsive pressure.

      “Robert Audley is with your husband,” she said, slowly, speaking to herself rather than to her companion. “These two men are together, and there are bailiffs in the house, and your brutal husband is no doubt brutally drunk by this time, and brutally obstinate and ferocious in his drunkenness. If I refuse to pay this money his ferocity will be multiplied by a hundredfold. There’s little use in discussing that matter. The money must be paid.”

      “But if you do pay it,” said Phoebe, earnestly, “I hope you will impress upon Luke that it is the last money you will ever give him while he stops in that house.”

      “Why?” asked Lady Audley, letting her hands fall on her lap, and looking inquiringly at Mrs. Marks.

      “Because I want Luke to leave the Castle.”

      “But why do you want him to leave?”

      “Oh, for ever so many reasons, my lady,” answered Phoebe. “He’s not fit to be the landlord of a public-house. I didn’t know that when I married him, or I would have gone against the business, and tried to persuade him to take to the farming line. Not that I suppose he’d have given up his own fancy, either; for he’s obstinate enough, as you know, my lady. He’s not fit for his present business. He’s scarcely ever sober after dark; and when he’s drunk he gets almost wild, and doesn’t seem to know what he does. We’ve had two or three narrow escapes with him already.”

      “Narrow escapes!” repeated Lady Audley. “What do you mean?”

      “Why, we’ve run the risk of being burnt in our beds through his carelessness.”

      “Burnt in your beds through his carelessness! Why, how was that?” asked my lady, rather listlessly. She was too selfish, and too deeply absorbed in her own troubles to take much interest in any danger which had befallen her some-time lady’s-maid.

      “You know what a queer old place the Castle is, my lady; all tumble-down wood-work, and rotten rafters, and such like. The Chelmsford Insurance Company won’t insure it; for they say if the place did happen to catch fire of a windy night it would blaze away like so much tinder, and nothing in the world could save it. Well, Luke knows this; and the landlord has warned him of it times and often, for he lives close against us, and he keeps a pretty sharp eye upon all my husband’s goings on; but when Luke’s tipsy he doesn’t know what he’s about, and only a week ago he left a candle burning in one of the out-houses, and the flame caught one of the rafters of the sloping roof, and if it hadn’t been for me finding it out when I went round the house the last thing, we should have all been burnt to death, perhaps. And that’s the third time the same kind of thing has happened in the six months we’ve had the place, and you can’t wonder that I’m frightened, can you, my lady?”

      My lady had not wondered, she had not thought about the business at all. She had scarcely listened to these commonplace details; why should she care for this low-born waiting-woman’s perils and troubles? Had she not her own terrors, her own soul-absorbing perplexities to usurp every thought of which her brain was capable?

      She did not make any remark upon that which poor Phoebe just told her; she scarcely comprehended what had been said, until some moments after the girl had finished speaking, when the words assumed their full meaning, as some words do after they have been heard without being heeded.

      “Burnt in your beds,” said the young lady, at last. “It would have been a good thing for me if that precious creature, your husband, had been burnt in his bed before to-night.”

      A vivid picture had flashed upon her as she spoke. The picture of that frail wooden tenement, the Castle Inn, reduced to a roofless chaos of lath and plaster, vomiting flames from its black mouth, and spitting blazing sparks upward toward the cold night sky.

      She gave a weary sigh as she dismissed this image from her restless brain. She would be no better off even if this enemy should be for ever silenced. She had another and far more dangerous foe — a foe who was not to be bribed or bought off, though she had been as rich as an empress.

      “I’ll give you the money to send this bailiff away,” my lady said, after a pause. “I must give you the last sovereign in my purse, but what of that? you know as well as I do that I dare not refuse you.”

      Lady Audley rose and took the lighted lamp from her writing-table. “The money is in my dressing-room,” she said; “I will go and fetch it.”

      “Oh, my lady,” exclaimed Phoebe, suddenly, “I forgot something; I was in such a way about this business that I quite forgot it.”

      “Quite forgot what?”

      “A letter that was given me to bring to you, my lady, just before I left home.”

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