Aurora Floyd & Lady Audley's Secret (Victorian Mysteries). Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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While Mr. Robert Audley contemplated his new quarters, Phoebe Marks summoned a little village lad who was in the habit of running errands for her, and taking him into the kitchen, gave him a tiny note, carefully folded and sealed.
“You know Audley Court?”
“Yes, mum.”
“If you’ll run there with this letter to-night, and see that it’s put safely in Lady Audley’s hands, I’ll give you a shilling.”
“Yes, mum.”
“You understand? Ask to see my lady; you can say you’ve a message — not a note, mind — but a message from Phoebe Marks; and when you see her, give this into her own hand.”
“Yes, mum.”
“You won’t forget?”
“No, mum.”
“Then be off with you.”
The boy waited for no second bidding, but in another moment was scudding along the lonely high road, down the sharp descent that led to Audley.
Phoebe Marks went to the window, and looked out at the black figure of the lad hurrying through the dusky winter evening.
“If there’s any bad meaning in his coming here,” she thought, “my lady will know of it in time, at any rate,”
Phoebe herself brought the neatly arranged tea-tray, and the little covered dish of ham and eggs which had been prepared for this unlooked-for visitor. Her pale hair was as smoothly braided, and her light gray dress fitted as precisely as of old. The same neutral tints pervaded her person and her dress; no showy rose-colored ribbons or rustling silk gown proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper’s wife. Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no color from the outer world.
Robert looked at her thoughtfully as she spread the cloth, and drew the table nearer to the fireplace.
“That,” he thought, “is a woman who could keep a secret.”
The dogs looked rather suspiciously at the quiet figure of Mrs. Marks gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob.
“Will you pour out my tea for me, Mrs. Marks?” said Robert, seating himself on a horsehair-covered arm-chair, which fitted him as tightly in every direction as if he had been measured for it.
“You have come straight from the Court, sir?” said Phoebe, as she handed Robert the sugar-basin.
“Yes; I only left my uncle’s an hour ago.”
“And my lady, sir, was she quite well?”
“Yes, quite well.”
“As gay and light-hearted as ever, sir?”
“As gay and light-hearted as ever.”
Phoebe retired respectfully after having given Mr. Audley his tea, but as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again.
“You knew Lady Audley when she was Miss Lucy Graham, did you not?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. I lived at Mrs. Dawson’s when my lady was governess there.”
“Indeed! Was she long in the surgeon’s family?”
“A year and a half, sir.”
“And she came from London?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And she was an orphan, I believe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Always as cheerful as she is now?”
“Always, sir.”
Robert emptied his teacup and handed it to Mrs. Marks. Their eyes met — a lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers.
“This woman would be good in a witness-box,” he thought; “it would take a clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination.”
He finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs, and lighted his pipe, while Phoebe carried off the tea-tray.
The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.
“There’s a triangular draught from those two windows and the door that scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment,” murmured Robert; “and there certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing up to one’s knees in cold water.”
He poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his great coat, rolled a rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horsehair cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-gray wreaths curling upward to the dingy ceiling.
“No,” he murmured, again; “that is a woman who can keep a secret. A counsel for the prosecution could get very little out of her.”
I have said that the bar-parlor was only separated from the sitting-room occupied by Robert by a lath-and-plaster partition. The young barrister could hear the two or three village tradesmen and a couple of farmers laughing and talking round the bar, while Luke Marks served them from his stock of liquors.
Very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlord’s, for he spoke in a coarse, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner than any of his customers.
“The man is a fool,” said Robert, as he laid down his pipe. “I’ll go and talk to him by-and-by.”
He waited till the few visitors to the Castle had dropped away one by one, and when Luke Marks had bolted the door upon the last of his customers, he strolled quietly into the bar-parlor, where the landlord was seated with his wife.
Phoebe was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim work-box, with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. She was darning the coarse gray stockings that adorned her husband’s awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had been my lady’s delicate silken hose.
I say that she took no color from external things, and that the vague air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in the society of her boorish husband at the Castle Inn as in Lady Audley’s boudoir at the Court.
She looked up suddenly as Robert entered the bar-parlor. There was some shade of vexation in her pale gray eyes, which changed to an expression of anxiety — nay, rather of almost terror — as she glanced from Mr. Audley to Luke Marks.
“I have come in for a few minutes’ chat before I go to bed,” said Robert, settling himself very comfortably before the cheerful fire. “Would you object to a cigar, Mrs. Marks? I mean, of course, to my smoking one,” he added, explanatorily.
“Not at all, sir.”
“It would be a good ’un her objectin’ to a bit o’ ‘bacca,” growled Mr. Marks, “when me and the customers smokes all day.”
Robert lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of Phoebe’s making that adorned the chimney-piece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before he spoke.
“I want you to tell me all about Mount Stanning, Mr. Marks,” he said, presently.
“Then that’s pretty soon told,” replied Luke, with a harsh, grating laugh. “Of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about the dullest. Not that the business don’t pay pretty tidy; I don’t complain of that; but I should ha’ liked a public at Chelmsford, or Brentwood, or Romford, or some place where there’s a bit of life in the streets; and I might have had it,” he added, discontentedly, “if folks hadn’t been so precious stingy.”
As her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, Phoebe looked up from