Clara Talboys,” he murmured slowly, as he looked critically at the clearly-shaped letters of his name and address. “Yes, from Clara Talboys, most decidedly; I recognized a feminine resemblance to poor George’s hand; neater than his, and more decided than his, but very like, very like.”
He turned the letter over and examined the seal, which bore his friend’s familiar crest.
“I wonder what she says to me?” he thought. “It’s a long letter, I dare say; she’s the kind of woman who would write a long letter — a letter that will urge me on, drive me forward, wrench me out of myself, I’ve no doubt. But that can’t be helped — so here goes!”
He tore open the envelope with a sigh of resignation. It contained nothing but George’s two letters, and a few words written on the flap: “I send the letters; please preserve and return them — C.T.”
The letter, written from Liverpool, told nothing of the writer’s life except his sudden determination of starting for a new world, to redeem the fortunes that had been ruined in the old. The letter written almost immediately after George’s marriage, contained a full description of his wife — such a description as a man could only write within three weeks of a love match — a description in which every feature was minutely catalogued, every grace of form or beauty of expression fondly dwelt upon, every charm of manner lovingly depicted.
Robert Audley read the letter three times before he laid it down.
“If George could have known for what a purpose this description would serve when he wrote it,” thought the young barrister, “surely his hand would have fallen paralyzed by horror, and powerless to shape one syllable of these tender words.”
Chapter 25
Retrograde Investigation.
The dreary London January dragged its dull length slowly out. The last slender records of Christmas time were swept away, and Robert Audley still lingered in town — still spent his lonely evenings in his quiet sitting-room in Figtree Court — still wandered listlessly in the Temple Gardens on sunny mornings, absently listening to the children’s babble, idly watching their play. He had many friends among the inhabitants of the quaint old buildings round him; he had other friends far away in pleasant country places, whose spare bedrooms were always at Bob’s service, whose cheerful firesides had snugly luxurious chairs specially allotted to him. But he seemed to have lost all taste for companionship, all sympathy with the pleasures and occupations of his class, since the disappearance of George Talboys. Elderly benchers indulged in facetious observations upon the young man’s pale face and moody manner. They suggested the probability of some unhappy attachment, some feminine ill-usage as the secret cause of the change. They told him to be of good cheer, and invited him to supper-parties, at which “lovely woman, with all her faults, God bless her,” was drunk by gentlemen who shed tears as they proposed the toast, and were maudlin and unhappy in their cups toward the close of the entertainment. Robert had no inclination for the wine-bibbing and the punch-making. The one idea of his life had become his master. He was the bonden slave of one gloomy thought — one horrible presentiment. A dark cloud was brooding above his uncle’s house, and it was his hand which was to give the signal for the thunder-clap, and the tempest that was to ruin that noble life.
“If she would only take warning and run away,” he said to himself sometimes. “Heaven knows, I have given her a fair chance. Why doesn’t she take it and run away?”
He heard sometimes from Sir Michael, sometimes from Alicia. The young lady’s letter rarely contained more than a few curt lines informing him that her papa was well; and that Lady Audley was in very high spirits, amusing herself in her usual frivolous manner, and with her usual disregard for other people.
A letter from Mr. Marchmont, the Southampton schoolmaster, informed Robert that little Georgey was going on very well, but that he was behindhand in his education, and had not yet passed the intellectual Rubicon of words of two syllables. Captain Maldon had called to see his grandson, but that privilege had been withheld from him, in accordance with Mr. Audley’s instructions. The old man had furthermore sent a parcel of pastry and sweetmeats to the little boy, which had also been rejected on the ground of indigestible and bilious tendencies in the edibles.
Toward the close of February, Robert received a letter from his cousin Alicia, which hurried him one step further forward toward his destiny, by causing him to return to the house from which he had become in a manner exiled at the instigation of his uncle’s wife,
“Papa is very ill,” Alicia wrote; “not dangerously ill, thank God; but confined to his room by an attack of low fever which has succeeded a violent cold. Come and see him, Robert, if you have any regard for your nearest relations. He has spoken about you several times; and I know he will be glad to have you with him. Come at once, but say nothing about this letter.
“From your affectionate cousin, ALICIA.”
A sick and deadly terror chilled Robert Audley’s heart, as he read this letter — a vague yet hideous fear, which he dared not shape into any definite form.
“Have I done right?” he thought, in the first agony of this new horror —“have I done right to tamper with justice; and to keep the secret of my doubts in the hope that I was shielding those I love from sorrow and disgrace? What shall I do if I find him ill, very ill, dying perhaps, dying upon her breast! What shall I do?”
One course lay clear before him; and the first step of that course was a rapid journey to Audley Court. He packed his portmanteau, jumped into a cab, and reached the railway station within an hour of his receipt of Alicia’s letter, which had come by the afternoon post.
The dim village lights flickered faintly through the growing dusk when Robert reached Audley. He left his portmanteau with the station-master, and walked at a leisurely pace through the quiet lanes that led away to the still loneliness of the Court. The over-arching trees stretched their leafless branches above his head, bare and weird in the dusky light. A low moaning wind swept across the flat meadow land, and tossed those rugged branches hither and thither against the dark gray sky. They looked like the ghostly arms of shrunken and withered giants, beckoning Robert to his uncle’s house. They looked like threatening phantoms in the chill winter twilight, gesticulating to him to hasten upon his journey. The long avenue so bright and pleasant when the perfumed limes scattered their light bloom upon the pathway, and the dog-rose leaves floated on the summer air, was terribly bleak and desolate in the cheerless interregnum that divides the homely joys of Christmas from the pale blush of coming spring — a dead pause in the year, in which Nature seems to lie in a tranced sleep, awaiting the wondrous signal for the budding of the flower.
A mournful presentiment crept into Robert Audley’s heart as he drew nearer to his uncle’s house. Every changing outline in the landscape was familiar to him; every bend of the trees; every caprice of the untrammeled branches; every undulation in the bare hawthorn hedge, broken by dwarf horse-chestnuts, stunted willows, blackberry and hazel bushes.
Sir Michael had been a second father to the young man, a generous and noble friend, a grave and earnest adviser; and perhaps the strongest sentiment of Robert’s heart was his love for the gray-bearded baronet. But the grateful affection was so much a part of himself, that it seldom found an outlet in words, and a stranger would never have fathomed the depth of feeling which lay, a deep and powerful current, beneath the stagnant surface of the barrister’s character.
“What would become of this place if my uncle were to die?” he thought,
