LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET
By
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
CHAPTER I.
LUCY.
It lay down in a hollow, rich with fine old timber and luxuriant
pastures; and you came upon it through an avenue of limes, bordered on
either side by meadows, over the high hedges of which the cattle looked
inquisitively at you as you passed, wondering, perhaps, what you wanted;
for there was no thorough-fare, and unless you were going to the Court
you had no business there at all.
At the end of this avenue there was an old arch and a clock tower, with
a stupid, bewildering clock, which had only one hand - and which jumped
straight from one hour to the next - and was therefore always in
extremes. Through this arch you walked straight into the gardens of
Audley Court.
A smooth lawn lay before you, dotted with groups of rhododendrons, which
grew in more perfection here than anywhere else in the county. To the
right there were the kitchen gardens, the fish-pond, and an orchard
bordered by a dry moat, and a broken ruin of a wall, in some places
thicker than it was high, and everywhere overgrown with trailing ivy,
yellow stonecrop, and dark moss. To the left there was a broad graveled
walk, down which, years ago, when the place had been a convent, the
quiet nuns had walked hand in hand; a wall bordered with espaliers, and
shadowed on one side by goodly oaks, which shut out the flat landscape,
and circled in the house and gardens with a darkening shelter.
The house faced the arch, and occupied three sides of a quadrangle. It
was very old, and very irregular and rambling. The windows were uneven;
some small, some large, some with heavy stone mullions and rich stained
glass; others with frail lattices that rattled in every breeze; others
so modern that they might have been added only yesterday. Great piles of
chimneys rose up here and there behind the pointed gables, and seemed as
if they were so broken down by age and long service that they must have
fallen but for the straggling ivy which, crawling up the walls and
trailing even over the roof, wound itself about them and supported them.
The principal door was squeezed into a corner of a turret at one angle
of the building, as if it were in hiding from dangerous visitors, and
wished to keep itself a secret - a noble door for all that - old oak, and
studded with great square-headed iron nails, and so thick that the sharp
iron knocker struck upon it with a muffled sound, and the visitor rung a
clanging bell that dangled in a corner among the ivy, lest the noise of
the knocking should never penetrate the stronghold.
A glorious old place. A place that visitors fell in raptures with;
feeling a yearning wish to have done with life, and to stay there
forever, staring into the cool fish-ponds and counting the bubbles as
the roach and carp rose to the surface of the water. A spot in which
peace seemed to have taken up her abode, setting her soothing hand on
every tree and flower, on the still ponds and quiet alleys, the shady
corners of the old-fashioned rooms, the deep window-seats behind the
painted glass, the low meadows and the stately avenues - ay, even upon
the stagnant well, which, cool and sheltered as all else in the old
place, hid itself away in a shrubbery behind the gardens, with an idle
handle that was never turned and a lazy rope so rotten that the pail had
broken away from it, and had fallen into the water.
A noble place; inside as well as out, a noble place - a house in which
you incontinently lost yourself if ever you were so rash as to attempt
to penetrate its mysteries alone; a house in which no one room had any
sympathy with another, every chamber running off at a tangent into an
inner chamber, and through that down some narrow staircase leading to a
door which, in its turn, led back into that very part of the house from
which you thought yourself the furthest; a house that could never have
been planned by any mortal architect, but must have been the handiwork
of that good old builder, Time, who, adding a room one year, and
knocking down a room another year, toppling down a chimney coeval with
the Plantagenets, and setting up one in the style of the Tudors; shaking
down a bit of Saxon wall, allowing a Norman arch to stand here; throwing
in a row of high narrow windows in the reign of Queen Anne, and joining
on a dining-room after the fashion of the time of Hanoverian George I,
to a refectory that had been standing since the Conquest, had contrived,
in some eleven centuries, to run up such a mansion as was not elsewhere
to be met with throughout the county of Essex. Of course, in such a
house there were secret chambers; the little daughter of the present
owner, Sir Michael Audley, had fallen by accident upon the discovery of
one. A board had rattled under her feet in the great nursery where she
played, and on attention being drawn to it, it was found to be loose,
and so removed, revealed a ladder, leading to a hiding-place between the
floor of the nursery and the ceiling of the room below - a hiding-place
so small that he who had hid there must have crouched on his hands and
knees or lain at full length, and yet large enough to contain a quaint
old carved oak chest, half filled with priests' vestments, which had
been hidden away, no doubt, in those cruel days when the life of a man
was in danger if he was discovered to have harbored a Roman Catholic
priest, or to have mass said in his house.
The broad outer moat was dry and grass-grown, and the laden trees of the
orchard hung over it with gnarled, straggling branches that drew
fantastical shadows upon the green slope. Within this moat there was, as
I have said, the fish-pond - a sheet of water that extended the whole
length of the garden and bordering which there was an avenue called the
lime-tree walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky, so screened
from observation by the thick shelter of the over-arching trees that it
seemed a chosen place for secret meetings or for stolen interviews; a
place in which a conspiracy might have been planned, or a lover's vow
registered with equal safety; and yet it was scarcely twenty paces from
the house.
At the end of this dark arcade there was the shrubbery, where, half
buried among the tangled branches and the neglected weeds, stood the
rusty wheel of that old well of which I have spoken. It had been of good
service in its time, no doubt; and busy nuns have perhaps drawn the cool
water with their own fair hands; but it had fallen into disuse now, and
scarcely any one at Audley Court knew whether the spring had dried up or
not. But sheltered as was the solitude of this lime-tree walk, I doubt
very much if it was ever put to any romantic uses. Often in the cool of
the evening Sir Michael Audley would stroll up and down smoking his
cigar, with his dogs at his heels, and his pretty young wife dawdling by
his side; but in about ten minutes the baronet and his companion would
grow tired of the rustling limes and the still water, hidden under the
spreading leaves of the water-lilies, and the long green vista with the
broken well at the end, and would stroll back to the drawing-room, where
my lady played dreamy melodies by Beethoven and Mendelssohn till her
husband fell asleep in his easy-chair.
Sir Michael Audley was fifty-six years of age, and he had married a
second wife three months after his fifty-fifth birthday. He was a big
man, tall and stout, with a deep, sonorous voice, handsome black eyes,
and a white beard - a white beard which made him look venerable against
his will, for he was as active as a boy, and one of the hardest riders
in the country. For seventeen years he had been a widower with an only
child, a daughter, Alicia Audley, now eighteen, and by no means too well
pleased at having a step-mother brought home to the Court; for Miss
Alicia had reigned supreme in her father's house since her earliest
childhood, and had carried the keys, and jingled them in the pockets of
her silk aprons, and lost them in the shrubbery, and dropped them into
the pond, and given all manner of trouble about them from the hour in
which she entered her teens, and had, on that account, deluded herself
into the sincere belief, that for the whole of that period, she had been
keeping the house.
But Miss Alicia's day was over; and now, when she asked anything of the
housekeeper, the housekeeper would tell her that she would speak to my
lady, or she would consult my lady, and if my lady pleased it should be
done. So the baronet's daughter, who was an excellent horsewoman and a
very clever artist, spent most of her time out of doors, riding about
the green lanes, and sketching the cottage children, and the plow-boys,
and the cattle, and all manner of animal life that came in her way. She
set her face with a sulky determination against any intimacy between
herself and the baronet's young wife; and amiable as that lady was, she
found it quite impossible to overcome Miss Alicia's prejudices and
dislike; or to convince the spoilt girl that she had not done her a
cruel injury by marrying Sir Michael Audley. The truth was that Lady
Audley had, in becoming the wife of Sir Michael, made one of those
apparently advantageous matches which are apt to draw upon a woman the
envy and hatred of her sex. She had come into the neighborhood as a
governess in the family of a surgeon in the village near Audley Court.
No one knew anything of her, except that she came in answer to an
advertisement which Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, had inserted in The
_Times_. She came from London; and the only reference she gave was to a
lady at a school at Brompton, where she had once been a teacher. But
this reference was so satisfactory that none other was needed, and Miss
Lucy Graham was received by the surgeon as the instructress of his
daughters. Her accomplishments were so brilliant and numerous, that it
seemed strange that she should have answered an advertisement offering
such very moderate terms of remuneration as those named by Mr. Dawson;
but Miss Graham seemed perfectly well satisfied with her situation, and
she taught the girls to play sonatas by Beethoven, and to paint from
nature after Creswick, and walked through a dull, out-of-the-way village
to the humble little church, three times every Sunday, as contentedly as
if she had no higher aspiration in the world than to do so all the rest
of her life.
People who observed this, accounted for it by saying that it was a part
of her amiable and gentle nature always to be light-hearted, happy and
contented under any circumstances.
Wherever she went she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. In the
cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam. She would sit
for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as
pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been
listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away,
leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her
benevolence), the old woman would burst out into senile raptures with
her grace, beauty, and her kindliness, such as she never bestowed upon
the vicar's wife, who half fed and clothed her. For you see, Miss Lucy
Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a
woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Every one loved,
admired, and praised her. The boy who opened the five-barred gate that
stood in her pathway, ran home to his mother to tell of her pretty
looks, and the sweet voice in which she thanked him for the little
service. The verger at the church, who ushered her into the surgeon's
pew; the vicar, who saw the soft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he
preached his simple sermon; the porter from the railway station, who
brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for
reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants;
everybody, high and low, united in declaring that Lucy Graham was the
sweetest girl that ever lived.
Perhaps it was the rumor of this which penetrated into the quiet chamber
of Audley Court; or, perhaps, it was the sight of her pretty face,
looking over the surgeon's high pew every Sunday morning; however it
was, it was certain that Sir Michael Audley suddenly experienced a
strong desire to be better acquainted with Mr. Dawson's governess.
He had only to hint his wish to the worthy doctor for a little party to
be got up, to which the vicar and his wife, and the baronet and his
daughter, were invited.
That one quiet evening sealed Sir Michael's fate. He could no more
resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the
graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its
wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice;
the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly
charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny! Destiny! Why,
she was his destiny! He had never loved before. What had been his
marriage with Alicia's mother but a dull, jog-trot bargain made to keep
some estate in the family that would have been just as well out of it?
What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful,
smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But
_this_ was love - this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain,
miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an
insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his white
beard; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair,
and a slim waist, such as he had twenty years before; these, wakeful
nights and melancholy days, so gloriously brightened if he chanced to
catch a glimpse of her sweet face behind the window curtains, as he
drove past the surgeon's house; all these signs gave token of the truth,
and told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, Sir
Michael Audley had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love.
I do not think that, throughout his courtship, the baronet once
calculated upon his wealth or his position as reasons for his success.
If he ever remembered these things, he dismissed the thought of them
with a shudder. It pained him too much to believe for a moment that any
one so lovely and innocent could value herself against a splendid house
or a good old title. No; his hope was that, as her life had been most
likely one of toil and dependence, and as she was very young nobody
exactly knew her age, but she looked little more than twenty, she might
never have formed any attachment, and that he, being the first to woo
her, might, by tender attentions, by generous watchfulness, by a love
which should recall to her the father she had lost, and by a protecting
care that should make him necessary to her, win her young heart, and
obtain from her fresh and earliest love, the promise or her hand. It was
a very romantic day-dream, no doubt; but, for all that, it seemed in a
very fair way to be realized. Lucy Graham appeared by no means to
dislike the baronet's attentions. There was nothing whatever in her
manner that betrayed the shallow artifices employed by a woman who
wishes to captivate a rich man. She was so accustomed to admiration from
every one, high and low, that Sir Michael's conduct made very little
impression upon her. Again, he had been so many years a widower that
people had given up the idea of his ever marrying again. At last,
however, Mrs. Dawson spoke to the governess on the subject. The
surgeon's wife was sitting in the school-room busy at work, while Lucy
was putting the finishing touches on some water-color sketches done by
her pupils.
"Do you know, my dear Miss Graham," said Mrs. Dawson, "I think you ought
to consider yourself a remarkably lucky girl?"
The governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude, and stared
wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of curls. They were
the most wonderful curls in the world - soft and feathery, always
floating away from her face, and making a pale halo round her head when
the sunlight shone through them.
"What do you mean, my dear Mrs. Dawson?" she asked, dipping her
camel's-hair brush into the wet aquamarine upon the palette, and poising
it carefully before putting in the delicate streak of purple which was
to brighten the horizon in her pupil's sketch.
"Why, I mean, my dear, that it only rests with yourself to become Lady
Audley, and the mistress of Audley Court."
Lucy Graham dropped the brush upon the picture, and flushed scarlet to
the roots of her fair hair; and then grew pale again, far paler than
Mrs. Dawson had ever seen her before.
"My dear, don't agitate yourself," said the surgeon's wife, soothingly;
"you know that nobody asks you to marry Sir Michael unless you wish. Of
course it would be a magnificent match; he has a splendid income, and is
one of the most generous of men. Your position would be very high, and
you would be enabled to do a great deal of good; but, as I said before,
you must be entirely guided by your own feelings. Only one thing I must
say, and that is that if Sir Michael's attentions are not agreeable to
you, it is really scarcely honorable to encourage him."
"His attentions - encourage him!" muttered Lucy, as if the words
bewildered her. "Pray, pray don't talk to me, Mrs. Dawson. I had no idea
of this. It is the last thing that would have occurred to me." She
leaned her elbows on the drawing-board before her, and clasping her
hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply. She
wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket, or a cross, or
a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket was, she
always kept it hidden under her dress. Once or twice, while she sat
silently thinking, she removed one of her hands from before her face,
and fidgeted nervously with the ribbon, clutching at it with a
half-angry gesture, and twisting it backward and forward between her
fingers.
"I think some people are born to be unlucky, Mrs. Dawson," she said,
by-and-by; "it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to
become Lady Audley."
She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the surgeon's
wife looked up at her with surprise.
"You unlucky, my dear!" she exclaimed. "I think you are the last person
who ought to talk like that - you, such a bright, happy creature, that it
does every one good to see you. I'm sure I don't know what we shall do
if Sir Michael robs us of you."
After this conversation they often spoke upon the subject, and Lucy
never again showed any emotion whatever when the baronet's admiration
for her was canvassed. It was a tacitly understood thing in the
surgeon's family that whenever Sir Michael proposed, the governess would
quietly accept him; and, indeed, the simple Dawsons would have thought
it something more than madness in a penniless girl to reject such an
offer.
So, one misty August evening, Sir Michael, sitting opposite to Lucy
Graham, at a window in the surgeon's little drawing-room, took an
opportunity while the family happened by some accident to be absent from
the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. He made the
governess, in a few but solemn words, an offer of his hand. There was
something almost touching in the manner and tone in which he spoke to
her - half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly expect to be the
choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that she would
reject him, even though she broke his heart by doing so, than that she
should accept his offer if she did not love him.
"I scarcely think there is a greater sin, Lucy," he said, solemnly,
"than that of a woman who marries a man she does not love. You are so
precious to me, my beloved, that deeply as my heart is set on this, and
bitter as the mere thought of disappointment is to me, I would not have
you commit such a sin for any happiness of mine. If my happiness could
be achieved by such an act, which it could not - which it never could,"
he repeated, earnestly - "nothing but misery can result from a marriage
dictated by any motive but truth and love."
Lucy Graham was not looking at Sir Michael, but straight out into the
misty twilight and dim landscape far away beyond the little garden. The
baronet tried to see her face, but her profile was turned to him, and he
could not discover the expression of her eyes. If he could have done so,
he would have seen a yearning gaze which seemed as if it would have
pierced the far obscurity and looked away - away into another world.
"Lucy, you heard me?"
"Yes," she said, gravely; not coldly, or in any way as if she were
offended at his words.
"And your answer?"
She did not remove her gaze from the darkening country side, but for
some moments was quite silent; then turning to him, with a sudden
passion in her manner, that lighted up her face with a new and wonderful
beauty which the baronet perceived even in the growing twilight, she
fell on her knees at his feet.
"No, Lucy; no, no!" he cried, vehemently, "not here, not here!"
"Yes, here, here," she said, the strange passion which agitated her
making her voice sound shrill and piercing - not loud, but
preternaturally distinct; "here and nowhere else. How good you are - how
noble and how generous! Love you! Why, there are women a hundred times
my superiors in beauty and in goodness who might love you dearly; but
you ask too much of me! Remember what my life has been; only remember
that! From my very babyhood I have never seen anything but poverty. My
father was a gentleman: clever, accomplished, handsome - but poor - and
what a pitiful wretch poverty made of him! My mother - But do not let me
speak of her. Poverty - poverty, trials, vexations, humiliations,
deprivations. You cannot tell; you, who are among those for whom life is
so smooth and easy, you can never guess what is endured by such as we.
Do not ask too much of me, then. I cannot be disinterested; I cannot be
blind to the advantages of such an alliance. I cannot, I cannot!"
Beyond her agitation and her passionate vehemence, there is an undefined
something in her manner which fills the baronet with a vague alarm. She
is still on the ground at his feet, crouching rather than kneeling, her
thin white dress clinging about her, her pale hair streaming over her
shoulders, her great blue eyes glittering in the dusk, and her hands
clutching at the black ribbon about her throat, as if it had been
strangling her. "Don't ask too much of me," she kept repeating; "I have
been selfish from my babyhood."
"Lucy - Lucy, speak plainly. Do you dislike me?"
"Dislike you? No - no!"
"But is there any one else whom you love?"
She laughed aloud at his question. "I do not love any one in the world,"
she answered.
He was glad of her reply; and yet that and the strange laugh jarred upon
his feelings. He was silent for some moments, and then said, with a kind
of effort:
"Well, Lucy, I will not ask too much of you. I dare say I am a romantic
old fool; but if you do not dislike me, and if you do not love any one
else, I see no reason why we should not make a very happy couple. Is it
a bargain, Lucy?"
"Yes."
The baronet lifted her in his arms and kissed her once upon the
forehead, then quietly bidding her good-night, he walked straight out of
the house.
He walked straight out of the house, this foolish old man, because there
was some strong emotion at work in his breast - neither joy nor triumph,
but something almost akin to disappointment - some stifled and
unsatisfied longing which lay heavy and dull at his heart, as if he had
carried a corpse in his bosom. He carried the corpse of that hope which
had died at the sound of Lucy's words. All the doubts and fears and
timid aspirations were ended now. He must be contented, like other men
of his age, to be married for his fortune and his position.
Lucy Graham went slowly up the stairs to her little room at the top of
the house. She placed her dim candle on the chest of drawers, and seated
herself on the edge of the white bed, still and white as the draperies
hanging around her.
"No more dependence, no more drudgery, no more humiliations," she said;
"every trace of the old life melted away - every clew to identity buried
and forgotten - except these, except these."
She had never taken her left hand from the black ribbon at her throat.
She drew it from her bosom, as she spoke, and looked at the object
attached to it.
It was neither a locket, a miniature, nor a cross; it was a ring wrapped
in an oblong piece of paper - the paper partly written, partly printed,
yellow with age, and crumpled with much folding.
CHAPTER II.
ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
He threw the end of his cigar into the water, and leaning his elbows
upon the bulwarks, stared meditatively at the waves.
"How wearisome they are," he said; "blue and green, and opal; opal, and
blue, and green; all very well in their way, of course, but three months
of them are rather too much, especially - "
He did not attempt to finish his sentence; his thoughts seemed to wander
in the very midst of it, and carry him a thousand miles or so away.
"Poor little girl, how pleased she'll be!" he muttered, opening his
cigar-case, lazily surveying its contents; "how pleased and how
surprised? Poor little girl. After three years and a half, too; she
_will_ be surprised."
He was a young man of about five-and-twenty, with dark face bronzed by
exposure to the sun; he had handsome brown eyes, with a lazy smile in
them that sparkled through the black lashes, and a bushy beard and
mustache that covered the whole lower part of his face. He was tall and
powerfully built; he wore a loose gray suit and a felt hat, thrown
carelessly upon his black hair. His name was George Talboys, and he was
aft-cabin passenger on board the good ship _Argus_, laden with
Australian wool and sailing from Sydney to Liverpool.
There were very few passengers in the aft-cabin of the _Argus_. An
elderly wool-stapler returning to his native country with his wife and
daughters, after having made a fortune in the colonies; a governess of
three-and-thirty years of age, going home to marry a man to whom she had
been engaged fifteen years; the sentimental daughter of a wealthy
Australian wine-merchant, invoiced to England to finish her education,
and George Talboys, were the only first-class passengers on board.
This George Talboys was the life and soul of the vessel; nobody knew who
or what he was, or where he came from, but everybody liked him. He sat
at the bottom of the dinner-table, and assisted the captain in doing the
honors of the friendly meal. He opened the champagne bottles, and took
wine with every one present; be told funny stories, and led the life
himself with such a joyous peal that the man must have been a churl who
could not have laughed for pure sympathy. He was a capital hand at
speculation and vingt-et-un, and all the merry games, which kept the
little circle round the cabin-lamp so deep in innocent amusement, that a
hurricane might have howled overhead without their hearing it; but he
freely owned that he had no talent for whist, and that he didn't know a
knight from a castle upon the chess-board.
Indeed, Mr. Talboys was by no means too learned a gentleman. The pale
governess had tried to talk to him about fashionable literature, but
George had only pulled his beard and stared very hard at her, saying
occasionally, "Ah, yes, by Jove!" and "To be sure, ah!"
The sentimental young lady, going home to finish her education, had
tried him with Shelby and Byron, and he had fairly laughed in her face,
as if poetry where a joke. The woolstapler sounded him on politics, but
he did not seem very deeply versed in them; so they let him go his own
way, smoke his cigars and talk to the sailors, lounge over the bulwarks
and stare at the water, and make himself agreeable to everybody in his
own fashion. But when the _Argus_ came to be within about a fortnight's
sail of England everybody noticed a change in George Talboys. He grew
restless and fidgety; sometimes so merry that the cabin rung with his
laughter; sometimes moody and thoughtful. Favorite as he was among the
sailors, they were tired at last of answering his perpetual questions
about the probable time of touching land. Would it be in ten days, in
eleven, in twelve, in thirteen? Was the wind favorable? How many knots
an hour was the vessel doing? Then a sudden passion would sieze him, and
he would stamp upon the deck, crying out that she was a rickety old
craft, and that her owners were swindlers to advertise her as the
fast-sailing _Argus_. She was not fit for passenger traffic; she was not
fit to carry impatient living creatures, with hearts and souls; she was
fit for nothing but to be laden with bales of stupid wool, that might
rot on the sea and be none the worse for it.
The sun was drooping down behind the waves as George Talboys lighted his
cigar upon this August evening. Only ten days more, the sailors had told
him that afternoon, and they would see the English coast. "I will go
ashore in the first boat that hails us," he cried; "I will go ashore in
a cockle-shell. By Jove, if it comes to that, I will swim to land."
His friends in the aft-cabin, with the exception of the pale governess,
laughed at his impatience; she sighed as she watched the young man,
chafing at the slow hours, pushing away his untasted wine, flinging
himself restlessly about upon the cabin sofa, rushing up and down the
companion ladder, and staring at the waves.
As the red rim of the sun dropped into the water, the governess ascended
the cabin stairs for a stroll on deck, while the passengers sat over
their wine below. She stopped when she came up to George, and, standing
by his side, watched the fading crimson in the western sky.
The lady was very quiet and reserved, seldom sharing in the after-cabin
amusements, never laughing, and speaking very little; but she and George
Talboys had been excellent friends throughout the passage.
"Does my cigar annoy you, Miss Morley?" he said, taking it out of his
mouth.
"Not at all; pray do not leave off smoking. I only came up to look at
the sunset. What a lovely evening!"
"Yes, yes, I dare say," he answered, impatiently; "yet so long, so long!
Ten more interminable days and ten more weary nights before we land."
"Yes," said Miss Morley, sighing. "Do you wish the time shorter?"
"Do I?" cried George. "Indeed I do. Don't you?"
"Scarcely."
"But is there no one you love in England? Is there no one you love
looking out for your arrival?"
"I hope so," she said gravely. They were silent for some time, he
smoking his cigar with a furious impatience, as if he could hasten the
course of the vessel by his own restlessness; she looking out at the
waning light with melancholy blue eyes - eyes that seemed to have faded
with poring over closely-printed books and difficult needlework; eyes
that had faded a little, perhaps, by reason of tears secretly shed in
the lonely night.
"See!" said George, suddenly, pointing in another direction from that
toward which Miss Morley was looking, "there's the new moon!"
She looked up at the pale crescent, her own face almost as pale and wan.
"This is the first time we have seen it."
"We must wish!" said George. "I know what I wish."
"What?"
"That we may get home quickly."
"My wish is that we may find no disappointment when we get there," said
the governess, sadly.
"Disappointment!"
He started as if he had been struck, and asked what she meant by talking
of disappointment.
"I mean this," she said, speaking rapidly, and with a restless motion of
her thin hands; "I mean that as the end of the voyage draws near, hope
sinks in my heart; and a sick fear comes over me that at the last all
may not be well. The person I go to meet may be changed in his feelings
toward me; or he may retain all the old feeling until the moment of
seeing me, and then lose it in a breath at sight of my poor wan face,
for I was called a pretty girl, Mr. Talboys, when I sailed for Sydney,
fifteen years ago; or he may be so changed by the world as to have grown
selfish and mercenary, and he may welcome me for the sake of my fifteen
years' savings. Again, he may be dead. He may have been well, perhaps,
up to within a week of our landing, and in that last week may have taken
a fever, and died an hour before our vessel anchors in the Mersey. I
think of all these things, Mr. Talboys, and act the scenes over in my
mind, and feel the anguish of them twenty times a day. Twenty times a
day," she repeated; "why I do it a thousand times a day."
George Talboys had stood motionless, with his cigar in his hand,
listening to her so intently that, as she said the last words, his hold
relaxed, and the cigar dropped in the water.
"I wonder," she continued, more to herself than to him, "I wonder,
looking back, to think how hopeful I was when the vessel sailed; I never
thought then of disappointment, but I pictured the joy of meeting,
imagining the very words that would be said, the very tones, the very
looks; but for this last month of the voyage, day by day, and hour by
hour my heart sinks and my hopeful fancies fade away, and I dread the
end as much as if I knew that I was going to England to attend a
funeral."
The young man suddenly changed his attitude, and turned his face full
upon his companion, with a look of alarm. She saw in the pale light that
the color had faded from his cheek.
"What a fool!" he cried, striking his clinched fist upon the side of the
vessel, "what a fool I am to be frightened at this? Why do you come and
say these things to me? Why do you come and terrify me out of my senses,
when I am going straight home to the woman I love; to a girl whose heart
is as true as the light of Heaven; and in whom I no more expect to find
any change than I do to see another sun rise in to-morrow's sky? Why do
you come and try to put such fancies in my head when I am going home to
my darling wife?"
"Your wife," she said; "that is different. There is no reason that my
terrors should terrify you. I am going to England to rejoin a man to
whom I was engaged to be married fifteen years ago. He was too poor to
marry then, and when I was offered a situation as governess in a rich
Australian family, I persuaded him to let me accept it, so that I might
leave him free and unfettered to win his way in the world, while I saved
a little money to help us when we began life together. I never meant to
stay away so long, but things have gone badly with him in England. That
is my story, and you can understand my fears. They need not influence
you. Mine is an exceptional case."
"So is mine," said George, impatiently. "I tell you that mine is an
exceptional case: although I swear to you that until this moment, I have
never known a fear as to the result of my voyage home. But you are
right; your terrors have nothing to do with me. You have been away
fifteen years; all kinds of things may happen in fifteen years. Now it
is only three years and a half this very month since I left England.
What can have happened in such a short time as that?"
Miss Morley looked at him with a mournful smile, but did not speak. His
feverish ardor, the freshness and impatience of his nature were so
strange and new to her, that she looked at him half in admiration, half
in pity.
"My pretty little wife! My gentle, innocent, loving little wife! Do you
know, Miss Morley," he said, with all his old hopefulness of manner,
"that I left my little girl asleep, with her baby in her arms, and with
nothing but a few blotted lines to tell her why her faithful husband had
deserted her?"
"Deserted her!" exclaimed the governess.
"Yes. I was an ensign in a cavalry regiment when I first met my little
darling. We were quartered at a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived
with her shabby old father, a half-pay naval officer; a regular old
humbug, as poor as Job, and with an eye for nothing but the main chance.
I saw through all his shallow tricks to catch one of us for his pretty
daughter. I saw all the pitiable, contemptible, palpable traps he set
for us big dragoons to walk into. I saw through his shabby-genteel
dinners and public-house port; his fine talk of the grandeur of his
family; his sham pride and independence, and the sham tears of his
bleared old eyes when he talked of his only child. He was a drunken old
hypocrite, and he was ready to sell my poor, little girl to the highest
bidder. Luckily for me, I happened just then to be the highest bidder;
for my father, is a rich man, Miss Morley, and as it was love at first
sight on both sides, my darling and I made a match of it. No sooner,
however, did my father hear that I had married a penniless little girl,
the daughter of a tipsy old half-pay lieutenant, than he wrote me a
furious letter, telling me he would never again hold any communication
with me, and that my yearly allowance would stop from my wedding-day.
"As there was no remaining in such a regiment as mine, with nothing but
my pay to live on, and my pretty little wife to keep, I sold out,
thinking that before the money was exhausted, I should be sure to drop
into something. I took my darling to Italy, and we lived there in
splendid style as long as my two thousand pounds lasted; but when that
began to dwindle down to a couple of hundred or so, we came back to
England, and as my darling had a fancy for being near that tiresome old
father of hers, we settled at the watering-place where he lived. Well,
as soon as the old man heard that I had a couple of hundred pounds left,
he expressed a wonderful degree of affection for us, and insisted on our
boarding in his house. We consented, still to please my darling, who had
just then a peculiar right to have every whim and fancy of her innocent
heart indulged. We did board with him, and finally he fleeced us; but
when I spoke of it to my little wife, she only shrugged her shoulders,
and said she did not like to be unkind to her 'poor papa.' So poor papa
made away with our little stock of money in no time; and as I felt that
it was now becoming necessary to look about for something, I ran up to
London, and tried to get a situation as a clerk in a merchant's office,
or as accountant, or book-keeper, or something of that kind. But I
suppose there was the stamp of a heavy dragoon about me, for do what I
would I couldn't get anybody to believe in my capacity; and tired out,
and down-hearted, I returned to my darling, to find her nursing a son
and heir to his father's poverty. Poor little girl, she was very
low-spirited; and when I told her that my London expedition had failed,
she fairly broke down, and burst in to a storm of sobs and lamentations,
telling me that I ought not to have married her if I could give her
nothing but poverty and misery; and that I had done her a cruel wrong in
making her my wife. By heaven! Miss Morley, her tears and reproaches
drove me almost mad; and I flew into a rage with her, myself, her
father, the world, and everybody in it, and then rail out of the house.
I walked about the streets all that day, half out of my mind, and with a
strong inclination to throw myself into the sea, so as to leave my poor
girl free to make a better match. 'If I drown myself, her father must