Lady Audley's Secret Part 53

"My lady," she cried, "you are not going out to-night?"

"Yes, I am, Phoebe," Lady Audley answered, very quietly. "I am going to Mount Stanning with you to see this bailiff, and to pay and dismiss him myself."

"But, my lady, you forget what the time is; you can't go out at such an hour."

Lady Audley did not answer. She stood with her finger resting lightly upon the handle of the bell, meditating quietly.

"The stables are always locked, and the men in bed by ten o'clock," she murmured, "when we are at home. It will make a terrible hubbub to get a carriage ready; but yet I dare say one of the servants could manage the matter quietly for me."

"But why should you go to-night, my lady?" cried Phoebe Marks.

"To-morrow will do quite as well. A week hence will do as well. Our landlord would take the man away if he had your promise to settle the debt."

Lady Audley took no notice of this interruption. She went hastily into the dressing-room, and flung off her bonnet and cloak, and then returned to the boudoir, in her simple dinner-costume, with her curls brushed carelessly away from her face.

"Now, Phoebe Marks, listen to me," she said, grasping her confidante's wrist, and speaking in a low, earnest voice, but with a certain imperious air that challenged contradiction and commanded obedience.

"Listen to me, Phoebe," she repeated. "I am going to the Castle Inn to-night; whether it is early or late is of very little consequence to me; I have set my mind upon going, and I shall go. You have asked me why, and I have told you. I am going in order that I may pay this debt myself; and that I may see for myself that the money I give is applied to the purpose for which I give it. There is nothing out of the common course of life in my doing this. I am going to do what other women in my position very often do. I am going to a.s.sist a favorite servant."

"But it's getting on for twelve o'clock, my lady," pleaded Phoebe.

Lady Audley frowned impatiently at this interruption.

"If my going to your house to pay this man should be known," she continued, still retaining her hold of Phoebe's wrist, "I am ready to answer for my conduct; but I would rather that the business should be kept quiet. I think that I can leave this house without being seen by any living creature, if you will do as I tell you."

"I will do anything you wish, my lady," answered Phoebe, submissively.

"Then you will wish me good-night presently, when my maid comes into the room, and you will suffer her to show you out of the house. You will cross the courtyard and wait for me in the avenue upon the other side of the archway. It may be half an hour before I am able to join you, for I must not leave my room till the servants have all gone to bed, but you may wait for me patiently, for come what may I will join you."

Lady Audley's face was no longer pale. An unnatural l.u.s.ter gleamed in her great blue eyes. She spoke with an unnatural rapidity. She had altogether the appearance and manner of a person who has yielded to the dominant influence of some overpowering excitement. Phoebe Marks stared at her late mistress in mute bewilderment. She began to fear that my lady was going mad.

The bell which Lady Audley rang was answered by the smart lady's-maid who wore rose-colored ribbons, and black silk gowns, and other adornments which were unknown to the humble people who sat below the salt in the good old days when servants wore linsey-woolsey.

"I did not know that it was so late, Martin," said my lady, in that gentle tone which always won for her the willing service of her inferiors. "I have been talking with Mrs. Marks and have let the time slip by me. I sha'n't want anything to-night, so you may go to bed when you please."

"Thank you, my lady," answered the girl, who looked very sleepy, and had some difficulty in repressing a yawn even in her mistress' presence, for the Audley household usually kept very early hours. "I'd better show Mrs. Marks out, my lady, hadn't I?" asked the maid, "before I go to bed?"

"Oh, yes, to be sure; you can let Phoebe out. All the other servants have gone to bed, then, I suppose?"

"Yes, my lady."

Lady Audley laughed as she glanced at the timepiece.

"We have been terrible dissipated up here, Phoebe," she said.

"Good-night. You may tell your husband that his rent shall be paid."

"Thank you very much, my lady, and good-night," murmured Phoebe as she backed out of the room, followed by the lady's maid.

Lady Audley listened at the door, waiting till the m.u.f.fled sounds of their footsteps died away in the octagon chamber and on the carpeted staircase.

"Martin sleeps at the top of the house," she said, "half a mile away from this room. In ten minutes I may safely make my escape."

She went back into her dressing-room, and put on her cloak and bonnet for the second time. The unnatural color still burnt like a flame in her cheeks; the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes. The excitement which she was under held her in so strong a spell that neither her mind nor her body seemed to have any consciousness of fatigue. However verbose I may be in my description of her feelings, I can never describe a t.i.the of her thoughts or her sufferings. She suffered agonies that would fill closely printed volumes, bulky with a thousand pages, in that one horrible night. She underwent volumes of anguish, and doubt, and perplexity; sometimes repeating the same chapters of her torments over and over again; sometimes hurrying through a thousand pages of her misery without one pause, without one moment of breathing time. She stood by the low fender in her boudoir, watching the minute-hand of the clock, and waiting till it should be time for her to leave the house in safety.

"I will wait ten minutes," she said, "not a moment beyond, before I enter on my new peril."

She listened to the wild roaring of the March wind, which seemed to have risen with the stillness and darkness of the night.

The hand slowly made its inevitable way to the figures which told that the ten minutes were past. It was exactly a quarter to twelve when my lady took her lamp in her hand, and stole softly from the room. Her footfall was as light as that of some graceful wild animal, and there was no fear of that airy step awakening any echo upon the carpeted stone corridors and staircase. She did not pause until she reached the vestibule upon the ground floor. Several doors opened out of the vestibule, which was octagon, like my lady's ante-chamber. One of these doors led into the library, and it was this door which Lady Audley opened softly and cautiously.

To have attempted to leave the house secretly by any of the princ.i.p.al outlets would have been simple madness, for the housekeeper herself superintended the barricading of the great doors, back and front. The secrets of the bolts, and bars, and chains, and bells which secured these doors, and provided for the safety of Sir Michael Audley's plate-room, the door of which was lined with sheet-iron, were known only to the servants who had to deal with them. But although all these precautions were taken with the princ.i.p.al entrances to the citadel, a wooden shutter and a slender iron bar, light enough to be lifted by a child, were considered sufficient safeguard for the half-gla.s.s door which opened out of the breakfast-room into the graveled pathway and smooth turf in the courtyard.

It was by this outlet that Lady Audley meant to make her escape. She could easily remove the bar and unfasten the shutter, and she might safely venture to leave the window ajar while she was absent. There was little fear of Sir Michael's awaking for some time, as he was a heavy sleeper in the early part of the night, and had slept more heavily than usual since his illness.

Lady Audley crossed the library, and opened the door of the breakfast-room, which communicated with it. This latter apartment was one of the later additions to the Court. It was a simple, cheerful chamber, with brightly papered walls and pretty maple furniture, and was more occupied by Alicia than any one else. The paraphernalia of that young lady's favorite pursuits were scattered about the room--drawing-materials, unfinished sc.r.a.ps of work, tangled skeins of silk, and all the other tokens of a careless damsel's presence; while Miss Audley's picture--a pretty crayon sketch of a rosy-faced hoyden in a riding-habit and hat--hung over the quaint Wedgewood ornaments on the chimneypiece. My lady looked upon these familiar objects with scornful hatred flaming in her blue eyes.

"How glad she will be if any disgrace befalls me," she thought; "how she will rejoice if I am driven out of this house!"

Lady Audley set the lamp upon a table near the fireplace, and went to the window. She removed the iron-bar and the light wooden shutter, and then opened the gla.s.s-door. The March night was black and moonless, and a gust of wind blew in upon her as she opened this door, and filled the room with its chilly breath, extinguishing the lamp upon the table.

"No matter," my lady muttered, "I could not have left it burning. I shall know how to find my way through the house when I come back. I have left all the doors ajar."

She stepped quickly out upon the smooth gravel, and closed the gla.s.s-door behind her. She was afraid lest that treacherous wind should blow-to the door opening into the library, and thus betray her.

She was in the quadrangle now, with that chill wind sweeping against her, and swirling her silken garments round her with a shrill, rustling noise, like the whistling of a sharp breeze against the sails of a yacht. She crossed the quadrangle and looked back--looked back for a moment at the firelight gleaming between the rosy-tinted curtains in her boudoir, and the dim gleam of the lamp through the mullioned windows in the room where Sir Michael Audley lay asleep.

"I feel as if I were running away," she thought; "I feel as if I were running away secretly in the dead of the night, to lose myself and be forgotten. Perhaps it would be wiser in me to run away, to take this man's warning, and escape out of his power forever. If I were to run away and disappear as--as George Talboys disappeared. But where could I go? what would become of me? I have no money; my jewels are not worth a couple of hundred pounds, now that I have got rid of the best part of them. What could I do? I must go back to the old life, the old, hard, cruel, wretched life--the life of poverty, and humiliation, and vexation, and discontent. I should have to go back and wear myself out in that long struggle, and die--as my mother died, perhaps!"

My lady stood still for a moment on the smooth lawn between the quadrangle and the archway, with her head drooping upon her breast and her hands locked together, debating this question in the unnatural activity of her mind. Her att.i.tude reflected the state of that mind--it expressed irresolution and perplexity. But presently a sudden change came over her; she lifted her head--lifted it with an action of defiance and determination.

"No! Mr. Robert Audley," she said, aloud, in a low, clear voice; "I will not go back--I will not go back. If the struggle between us is to be a duel to the death, you shall not find me drop my weapon."

She walked with a firm and rapid step under the archway. As she pa.s.sed under that ma.s.sive arch, it seemed as if she disappeared into some black gulf that had waited open to receive her. The stupid clock struck twelve, and the whole archway seemed to vibrate under its heavy strokes, as Lady Audley emerged upon the other side and joined Phoebe Marks, who had waited for her late mistress very near the gateway of the Court.

"Now, Phoebe," she said, "it is three miles from here to Mount Stanning, isn't it?"

"Yes, my lady."

"Then we can walk the distance in an hour and a half."

Lady Audley had not stopped to say this; she was walking quickly along the avenue with her humble companion by her side. Fragile and delicate as she was in appearance, she was a very good walker. She had been in the habit of taking long country rambles with Mr. Dawson's children in her old days of dependence, and she thought very little of a distance of three miles.

"Your beautiful husband will sit up for you, I suppose, Phoebe?" she said, as they struck across an open field that was used as a short cut from Audley Court to the high-road.

"Oh, yes, my lady; he's sure to sit up. He'll be drinking with the man, I dare say."

"The man! What man?"

"The man that's in possession, my lady."