Aurora Floyd & Lady Audley's Secret (Victorian Mysteries). Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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old woman. Shall I ever grow old, Phoebe? Will my hair ever drop off as the leaves are falling from those trees, and leave me wan and bare like them? What is to become of me when I grow old?”
She shivered at the thought of this more than she had done at the cold, wintry breeze, and muffling herself closely in her fur, walked so fast that her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her.
“Do you remember, Phoebe,” she said, presently, relaxing her pace, “do you remember that French story we read — the story of a beautiful woman who had committed some crime — I forget what — in the zenith of her power and loveliness, when all Paris drank to her every night, and when the people ran away from the carriage of the king to flock about hers, and get a peep at her face? Do you remember how she kept the secret of what she had done for nearly half a century, spending her old age in her family chateau, beloved and honored by all the province as an uncanonized saint and benefactress to the poor; and how, when her hair was white, and her eyes almost blind with age, the secret was revealed through one of those strange accidents by which such secrets always are revealed in romances, and she was tried, found guilty, and condemned to be burned alive? The king who had worn her colors was dead and gone; the court of which she had been a star had passed away; powerful functionaries and great magistrates, who might perhaps have helped her, were moldering in the graves; brave young cavaliers, who would have died for her, had fallen upon distant battle-fields; she had lived to see the age to which she had belonged fade like a dream; and she went to the stake, followed by only a few ignorant country people, who forgot all her bounties, and hooted at her for a wicked sorceress.”
“I don’t care for such dismal stories, my lady,” said Phoebe Marks with a shudder. “One has no need to read books to give one the horrors in this dull place.”
Lady Audley shrugged her shoulders and laughed at her maid’s candor.
“It is a dull place, Phoebe,” she said, “though it doesn’t do to say so to my dear old husband. Though I am the wife of one of the most influential men in the county, I don’t know that I wasn’t nearly as well off at Mr. Dawson’s; and yet it’s something to wear sables that cost sixty guineas, and have a thousand pounds spent on the decoration of one’s apartments.”
Treated as a companion by her mistress, in the receipt of the most liberal wages, and with perquisites such as perhaps lady’s maid never had before, it was strange that Phoebe Marks should wish to leave her situation; but it was not the less a fact that she was anxious to exchange all the advantages of Audley Court for the very unpromising prospect which awaited her as the wife of her Cousin Luke.
The young man had contrived in some manner to associate himself with the improved fortunes of his sweetheart. He had never allowed Phoebe any peace till she had obtained for him, by the aid of my lady’s interference, a situation as undergroom of the Court.
He never rode out with either Alicia or Sir Michael; but on one of the few occasions upon which my lady mounted the pretty little gray thoroughbred reserved for her use, he contrived to attend her in her ride. He saw enough, in the very first half hour they were out, to discover that, graceful as Lucy Audley might look in her long blue cloth habit, she was a timid horsewoman, and utterly unable to manage the animal she rode.
Lady Audley remonstrated with her maid upon her folly in wishing to marry the uncouth groom.
The two women were seated together over the fire in my lady’s dressing-room, the gray sky closing in upon the October afternoon, and the black tracery of ivy darkening the casement windows.
“You surely are not in love with the awkward, ugly creature are you, Phoebe?” asked my lady sharply.
The girl was sitting on a low stool at her mistress feet. She did not answer my lady’s question immediately, but sat for some time looking vacantly into the red abyss in the hollow fire.
Presently she said, rather as if she had been thinking aloud than answering Lucy’s question:
“I don’t think I can love him. We have been together from children, and I promised, when I was little better than fifteen, that I’d be his wife. I daren’t break that promise now. There have been times when I’ve made up the very sentence I meant to say to him, telling him that I couldn’t keep my faith with him; but the words have died upon my lips, and I’ve sat looking at him, with a choking sensation, in my throat that wouldn’t let me speak. I daren’t refuse to marry him. I’ve often watched and watched him, as he has sat slicing away at a hedge-stake with his great clasp-knife, till I have thought that it is just such men as he who have decoyed their sweethearts into lonely places, and murdered them for being false to their word. When he was a boy he was always violent and revengeful. I saw him once take up that very knife in a quarrel with his mother. I tell you, my lady, I must marry him.”
“You silly girl, you shall do nothing of the kind!” answered Lucy. “You think he’ll murder you, do you? Do you think, then, if murder is in him, you would be any safer as his wife? If you thwarted him, or made him jealous; if he wanted to marry another woman, or to get hold of some poor, pitiful bit of money of yours, couldn’t he murder you then? I tell you you sha’n’t marry him, Phoebe. In the first place I hate the man; and, in the next place I can’t afford to part with you. We’ll give him a few pounds and send him about his business.”
Phoebe Marks caught my lady’s hand in hers, and clasped them convulsively.
“My lady — my good, kind mistress!” she cried, vehemently, “don’t try to thwart me in this — don’t ask me to thwart him. I tell you I must marry him. You don’t know what he is. It will be my ruin, and the ruin of others, if I break my word. I must marry him!”
“Very well, then, Phoebe,” answered her mistress, “I can’t oppose you. There must be some secret at the bottom of all this.” “There is, my lady,” said the girl, with her face turned away from Lucy.
“I shall be very sorry to lose you; but I have promised to stand your friend in all things. What does your cousin mean to do for a living when, you are married?”
“He would like to take a public house.”
“Then he shall take a public house, and the sooner he drinks himself to death the better. Sir Michael dines at a bachelor’s party at Major Margrave’s this evening, and my step-daughter is away with her friends at the Grange. You can bring your cousin into the drawing-room after dinner, and I’ll tell him what I mean to do for him.”
“You are very good, my lady,” Phoebe answered with a sigh.
Lady Audley sat in the glow of firelight and wax candles in the luxurious drawing-room; the amber damask cushions of the sofa contrasting with her dark violet velvet dress, and her rippling hair falling about her neck in a golden haze. Everywhere around her were the evidences of wealth and splendor; while in strange contrast to all this, and to her own beauty; the awkward groom stood rubbing his bullet head as my lady explained to him what she intended to do for her confidential maid. Lucy’s promises were very liberal, and she had expected that, uncouth as the man was, he would, in his own rough manner, have expressed his gratitude.
To her surprise he stood staring at the floor without uttering a word in answer to her offer. Phoebe was standing close to his elbow, and seemed distressed at the man’s rudeness.
“Tell my lady how thankful you are, Luke,” she said.
“But I’m not so over and above thankful,” answered her lover, savagely. “Fifty pound ain’t much to start a public. You’ll make it a hundred, my lady?”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Lady Audley, her clear blue eyes flashing with indignation, “and I wonder at your impertinence in asking it.”
“Oh, yes, you will, though,” answered Luke, with quiet insolence that had a hidden meaning. “You’ll make it a hundred, my lady.”
Lady Audley rose from her seat, looked the man steadfastly in the face till his determined gaze sunk under hers; then walking straight up to her maid, she said in a high, piercing voice, peculiar to her in moments of intense