Lady Audley's Secret Part 6

The woman took him into the little bedroom in which his wife had died.

He knelt down by the bed and kissed the pillow tenderly, the landlady crying as he did so.

While he was kneeling, praying, perhaps, with his face buried in this humble, snow-white pillow, the woman took something from a drawer. She gave it to him when he rose from his knees; it was a long tress of hair wrapped in silver paper.

"I cut this off when she lay in her coffin," she said, "poor dear?"

He pressed the soft lock to his lips. "Yes," he murmured; "this is the dear hair that I have kissed so often when her head lay upon my shoulder. But it always had a rippling wave in it then, and now it seems smooth and straight."

"It changes in illness," said the landlady. "If you'd like to see where they have laid her, Mr. Talboys, my little boy shall show you the way to the churchyard."

So George Talboys and his faithful friend walked to the quiet spot, where, beneath a mound of earth, to which the patches of fresh turf hardly adhered, lay that wife of whose welcoming smile George had dreamed so often in the far antipodes.

Robert left the young man by the side of this newly-made grave, and returning in about a quarter of an hour, found that he had not once stirred.

He looked up presently, and said that if there was a stone-mason's anywhere near he should like to give an order.

They very easily found the stonemason, and sitting down amidst the fragmentary litter of the man's yard, George Talboys wrote in pencil this brief inscription for the headstone of his dead wife's grave:

Sacred to the Memory of HELEN, THE BELOVED WIFE OF GEORGE TALBOYS, "Who departed this life August 24th, 18--, aged 22, Deeply regretted by her sorrowing Husband.

CHAPTER VI.

ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD.

When they returned to Lansdowne Cottage they found the old man had not yet come in, so they walked down to the beach to look for him. After a brief search they found him, sitting upon a heap of pebbles, reading a newspaper and eating filberts. The little boy was at some distance from his grandfather, digging in the sand with a wooden spade. The c.r.a.pe round the old man's shabby hat, and the child's poor little black frock, went to George's heart. Go where he would he met fresh confirmation of this great grief of his life. His wife was dead.

"Mr. Maldon," he said, as he approached his father-in-law.

The old man looked up, and, dropping his newspaper, rose from the pebbles with a ceremonious bow. His faded light hair was tinged with gray; he had a pinched hook nose; watery blue eyes, and an irresolute-looking mouth; he wore his shabby dress with an affectation of foppish gentility; an eye-gla.s.s dangled over his closely b.u.t.toned-up waistcoat, and he carried a cane in his ungloved hand.

"Great Heaven!" cried George, "don't you know me?"

Mr. Maldon started and colored violently, with something of a frightened look, as he recognized his son-in-law.

"My dear boy," he said, "I did not; for the first moment I did not. That beard makes such a difference. You find the beard makes a great difference, do you not, sir?" he said, appealing to Robert.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed George Talboys, "is this the way you welcome me? I come to England to find my wife dead within a week of my touching land, and you begin to chatter to me about my beard--you, her father!"

"True! true!" muttered the old man, wiping his bloodshot eyes; "a sad shock, a sad shock, my dear George. If you'd only been here a week earlier."

"If I had," cried George, in an outburst of grief and pa.s.sion, "I scarcely think that I would have let her die. I would have disputed for her with death. I would! I would! Oh G.o.d! why did not the _Argus_ go down with every soul on board her before I came to see this day?"

He began to walk up and down the beach, his father-in-law looking helplessly at him, rubbing his feeble eyes with a handkerchief.

"I've a strong notion that that old man didn't treat his daughter too well," thought Robert, as he watched the half-pay lieutenant. "He seems, for some reason or other, to be half afraid of George."

While the agitated young man walked up and down in a fever of regret and despair, the child ran to his grandfather, and clung about the tails of his coat.

"Come home, grandpa, come home," he said. "I'm tired."

George Talboys turned at the sound of the babyish voice, and looked long and earnestly at the boy.

He had his father's brown eyes and dark hair.

"My darling! my darling!" said George, taking the child in his arms, "I am your father, come across the sea to find you. Will you love me?"

The little fellow pushed him away. "I don't know you," he said. "I love grandpa and Mrs. Monks at Southampton."

"Georgey has a temper of his own, sir," said the old man. "He has been spoiled."

They walked slowly back to the cottage, and once more George Talboys told the history of that desertion which had seemed so cruel. He told, too, of the twenty thousand pounds banked by him the day before. He had not the heart to ask any questions about the past, and his father-in-law only told him that a few months after his departure they had gone from the place where George left them to live at Southampton, where Helen got a few pupils for the piano, and where they managed pretty well till her health failed, and she fell into the decline of which she died. Like most sad stories it was a very brief one.

"The boy seems fond of you, Mr. Maldon," said George, after a pause.

"Yes, yes," answered the old man, smoothing the child's curling hair; "yes. Georgey is very fond of his grandfather."

"Then he had better stop with you. The interest of my money will be about six hundred a year. You can draw a hundred of that for Georgey's education, leaving the rest to acc.u.mulate till he is of age. My friend here will be trustee, and if he will undertake the charge, I will appoint him guardian to the boy, allowing him for the present to remain under your care."

"But why not take care of him yourself, George?" asked Robert Audley.

"Because I shall sail in the very next vessel that leaves Liverpool for Australia. I shall be better in the diggings or the backwoods than ever I could be here. I'm broken for a civilized life from this hour, Bob."

The old man's weak eyes sparkled as George declared this determination.

"My poor boy, I think you're right," he said, "I really think you're right. The change, the wild life, the--the--" He hesitated and broke down as Robert looked earnestly at him.

"You're in a great hurry to get rid of your son-in-law, I think, Mr.

Maldon," he said, gravely.

"Get rid of him, dear boy! Oh, no, no! But for his own sake, my dear sir, for his own sake, you know."

"I think for his own sake he'd much better stay in England and look after his son," said Robert.

"But I tell you I can't," cried George; "every inch of this accursed ground is hateful to me--I want to run out of it as I would out of a graveyard. I'll go back to town to-night, get that business about the money settled early to-morrow morning, and start for Liverpool without a moment's delay. I shall be better when I've put half the world between me and her grave."

"Before he left the house he stole out to the landlady, and asked same more questions about his dead wife.

"Were they poor?" he asked, "were they pinched for money while she was ill?"

"Oh, no!" the woman answered; "though the captain dresses shabby, he has always plenty of sovereigns in his purse. The poor lady wanted for nothing."

George was relieved at this, though it puzzled him to know where the drunken half-pay lieutenant could have contrived to find money for all the expenses of his daughter's illness.

But he was too thoroughly broken down by the calamity which had befallen him to be able to think much of anything, so he asked no further questions, but walked with his father-in-law and Robert Audley down to the boat by which they were to cross to Portsmouth.