The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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The emotionless man looked at Robert Audley with a vacant stare of unmitigated horror, and opening one of the heavy oak doors, led the way into a large dining-room furnished with the severe simplicity of an apartment which is meant to be ate in, but never lived in; and at top of a table which would have accommodated eighteen persons Robert beheld Mr. Harcourt Talboys.
Mr. Talboys was robed in a dressing-gown of gray cloth, fastened about his waist with a girdle. It was a severe looking garment, and was perhaps the nearest approach to the toga to be obtained within the range of modern costume. He wore a buff waistcoat, a stiffly starched cambric cravat, and a faultless shirt collar. The cold gray of his dressing gown was almost the same as the cold gray of his eyes, and the pale buff of his waistcoat was the pale buff of his complexion.
Robert Audley had not expected to find Harcourt Talboys at all like George in his manners or disposition, but he had expected to see some family likeness between the father and the son. There was none. It would have been impossible to imagine any one more unlike George than the author of his existence. Robert scarcely wondered at the cruel letter he received from Mr. Talboys when he saw the writer of it. Such a man could scarcely have written otherwise.
There was a second person in the large room, toward whom Robert glanced after saluting Harcourt Talboys, doubtful how to proceed. This second person was a lady, who sat at the last of a range of four windows, employed with some needlework, the kind which is generally called plain work, and with a large wicker basket, filled with calicoes and flannels, standing by her.
The whole length of the room divided this lady from Robert, but he could see that she was young, and that she was like George Talboys.
“His sister!” he thought in that one moment, during which he ventured to glance away from the master of the house toward the female figure at the window. “His sister, no doubt. He was fond of her, I know. Surely, she is not utterly indifferent as to his fate?”
The lady half rose from her seat, letting her work, which was large and awkward, fall from her lap as she did so, and dropping a reel of cotton, which rolled away upon the polished oaken flooring beyond the margin of the Turkey carpet.
“Sit down, Clara,” said the hard voice of Mr. Talboys.
That gentleman did not appear to address his daughter, nor had his face been turned toward her when she rose. It seemed as if he had known it by some social magnetism peculiar to himself; it seemed, as his servants were apt disrespectfully to observe, as if he had eyes in the back of his head.
“Sit down, Clara,” he repeated, “and keep your cotton in your workbox.”
The lady blushed at this reproof, and stooped to look for the cotton. Mr. Robert Audley, who was unabashed by the stern presence of the master of the house, knelt on the carpet, found the reel, and restored it to its owner; Harcourt Talboys staring at the proceeding with an expression of unmitigated astonishment.
“Perhaps, Mr. —— Mr. Robert Audley!” he said, looking at the card which he held between his finger and thumb, “perhaps when you have finished looking for reels of cotton, you will be good enough to tell me to what I owe the honor of this visit?”
He waved his well-shaped hand with a gesture which might have been admired in the stately John Kemble; and the servant, understanding the gesture, brought forward a ponderous red-morocco chair.
The proceeding was so slow and solemn, that Robert had at first thought that something extraordinary was about to be done; but the truth dawned upon him at last, and he dropped into the massive chair.
“You may remain, Wilson,” said Mr. Talboys, as the servant was about to withdraw; “Mr. Audley would perhaps like coffee.”
Robert had eaten nothing that morning, but he glanced at the long expanse of dreary table-cloth, the silver tea and coffee equipage, the stiff splendor, and the very little appearance of any substantial entertainment, and he declined Mr. Talboys’ invitation.
“Mr. Audley will not take coffee, Wilson,” said the master of the house. “You may go.”
The man bowed and retired, opening and shutting the door as cautiously as if he were taking a liberty in doing it at all, or as if the respect due to Mr. Talboys demanded his walking straight through the oaken panel like a ghost in a German story.
Mr. Harcourt Talboys sat with his gray eyes fixed severely on his visitor, his elbows on the red-morocco arms of his chair, and his finger-tips joined. It was the attitude in which, had he been Junius Brutus, he would have sat at the trial of his son. Had Robert Audley been easily to be embarrassed, Mr. Talboys might have succeeded in making him feel so: as he would have sat with perfect tranquility upon an open gunpowder barrel lighting his cigar, he was not at all disturbed upon this occasion. The father’s dignity seemed a very small thing to him when he thought of the possible causes of the son’s disappearance.
“I wrote to you some time since, Mr. Talboys,” he said quietly, when he saw that he was expected to open the conversation.
Harcourt Talboys bowed. He knew that it was of his lost son that Robert came to speak. Heaven grant that his icy stoicism was the paltry affectation of a vain man, rather than the utter heartlessness which Robert thought it. He bowed across his finger-tips at his visitor. The trial had begun, and Junius Brutus was enjoying himself.
“I received your communication, Mr. Audley,” he said. “It is among other business letters: it was duly answered.”
“That letter concerned your son.”
There was a little rustling noise at the window where the lady sat, as Robert said this: he looked at her almost instantaneously, but she did not seem to have stirred. She was not working, but she was perfectly quiet.
“She’s as heartless as her father, I expect, though she is like George,” thought Mr. Audley.
“If your letter concerned the person who was once my son, perhaps, sir,” said Harcourt Talboys, “I must ask you to remember that I have no longer a son.”
“You have no reason to remind me of that, Mr. Talboys,” answered Robert, gravely; “I remember it only too well. I have fatal reason to believe that you have no longer a son. I have bitter cause to think that he is dead.”
It may be that Mr. Talboys’ complexion faded to a paler shade of buff as Robert said this; but he only elevated his bristling gray eyebrows and shook his head gently.
“No,” he said, “no, I assure you, no.”
“I believe that George Talboys died in the month of September.”
The girl who had been addressed as Clara, sat with work primly folded upon her lap, and her hands lying clasped together on her work, and never stirred when Robert spoke of his friend’s death. He could not distinctly see her face, for she was seated at some distance from him, and with her back to the window.
“No, no, I assure you,” repeated Mr. Talboys, “you labor under a sad mistake.”
“You believe that I am mistaken in thinking your son dead?” asked Robert.
“Most certainly,” replied Mr. Talboys, with a smile, expressive of the serenity of wisdom. “Most certainly, my dear sir. The disappearance was a very clever trick, no doubt, but it was not sufficiently clever to deceive me. You must permit me to understand this matter a little better than you, Mr. Audley, and you must also permit me to assure you of three things. In the first place, your friend is not dead. In the second place, he is keeping out of the way for the purpose of alarming me, of trifling with my feelings as a — as a man who was once his father, and of ultimately obtaining my forgiveness. In the third place, he will not obtain that forgiveness, however long he may please to keep out of the way; and he would therefore act wisely by returning to his ordinary residence and avocations without delay.”
“Then you imagine him to purposely hide himself from all who know him, for the purpose of —”
“For the purpose of influencing me,” exclaimed Mr. Talboys,